#Egg and Sperm cells Made From Adult Cells For the first time, scientists have made human sperm and egg precursor cells from human adult skin cells.
The work, detailed in a recent Cell paper, could ultimately change the age at which women stop having children."
"This paper represents another step forward in a very important area of stem cell biology,"Renee Riejo Pera,
a leading developmental biologist with Montana State university, told Bioscience Technology. Pera was uninvolved in the research.""The paper uncovers fundamentals in producing the earliest stage germ cells.
Studies such as this help tremendously towards a goal of helping infertile men and women.""he feedback has been extremely positive, the Weizmann Institute Jacob Hanna,
one of two senior authors on the paper, told Bioscience Technology. think this is a major leap forward."
"Built on Kyoto University research The work is built on research done by the Kyoto University lab of stem cell researcher Mitinori Saitou.
In 2012, Saitou team reported in Science creating mouse pups from oocytes created by turning back the clock on adult skin cells.
In 2011, Saitou did the same using sperm created from adult skin cells. He could not fully create mature sperm and egg cells in a dish.
Rather, after turning them backwards into the induced pluripotent stem (ips) cell stage, he differentiated them into rudimentary egg and sperm cells,
then placed them into mouse testes and ovaries which did the rest of the job.
The human cells In the recent Cell paper researchers led by Hanna and Azim Surani of the University of Cambridge reported they had replicated the in vitro part of Saitou mouse work.
Other groups have found the transition from mouse to human cells difficult. One reason: standard mouse embryonic stem (ES) and ips cells are aïve, unlike standard human ES and ips cells,
more responsive to attempts to differentiate into any number of mature cells. But Hanna had created some of the first naïve human ES cells in a Nature study published in 2013.
When his team tried Saitou recipe on Hanna naïve human female and male ES and ips cells, it worked, and well.
The teams were able to make precursor cells of human oocytes and sperm with 25 to 40 percent efficiency.
The cells share many qualities with natural human primordial germ cells. Their pigeneticpatternhe placement of chemicals outside of DNA that turn genes on and offas similar
for example. Also similar were protein markers. aive cells have differences in gene expression, but also in their epigenome,
which is probably more important, Hanna told Bioscience Technology. or example, H3k27me3, a repressive chromatin mark, is depleted over developmental regulators in naive conditions.
We suspect this is key for the success of our protocol. One key difference between the mouse and human work:
in human cells, a protein called SOX17 performed critical tasks that in mice are performed by SOX2. t will be interesting to test in the future a variety of conditions
and understand which ones are competent and which are not, and then try to correlate that with molecular signatures,
Hanna said. But the end result was a great likeness between natural human primordial germ cells (PGCS)
The groups are also following Saitou progress as he works on creating fully mature egg and sperm cells in the dish.
federal law still forbids federal funding for the creation of human embryos for research. Such laws may need to be reversed
Hanna concluded to Bioscience Technology. was not surprised in a way. I was confident that the failure with conventional ipscs would be resolved by toggling them back towards an alternative more naive state.
director of the Scripps Institute Center for Regenerative medicine, tried to use the Hanna lab's recipe for making naive cells.
"but he couldn't get anything to work, "she said. That doesn't mean the approach doesn't work,
she said. But her lab is now waiting for other labs to repeat it before she tackles it again."
"This work sets the stage for studies that will help us understand oogenesis. t
#Technology Detects Lingering Cancer cells During Breast Surgery Many patients undergoing lumpectomy surgery at NYU Langone Medical center for the removal of an early detected breast tumor the surgical option of choice for this diagnosis
--are benefitting from new intra-operative technology that detects microscopic amounts of cancer cells on removed tumor tissue not visible during or following surgical intervention.
The Division of Breast Surgery at NYU Langone was the first in New york city to utilize Marginprobe for early stage breast cancer.
Manufactured and marketed by Dune Medical devices, Marginprobe utilizes non-destructive radio-frequency spectroscopy technology in the operating room to analyze the outer margins of removed cancerous tissue to detect traces of cancer cells.
If cancer cells are detected along the margins of the removed tissue, the surgeon excises additional tissue from the surgical site to ensure that no additional cancer cells remain. he greatest benefit of Marginprobe is that we can perform this additional tissue removal during a patient initial surgery,
thereby sparing them the anxiety and frustration of additional follow-up surgery, said Freya Schnabel, MD, Director of Breast Surgery at NYU Langone.
Marginprobe was the subject of a major multi-institutional retrospective study led by Dr. Schnabel and published in the March 2014 edition in Annals of Surgical Oncology.
The study examined close to 600 patients who underwent lumpectomies for non-palpable breast malignancies. It concluded that the utilization of Marginprobe was as much as three times more effective in finding additional cancer on the margins of removed tumor tissue,
compared to more traditional intra-operative imaging and other assessment tools. e found that adjunctive use of the Marginprobe device in the operating room significantly improved surgeonsability to identify additional cancer cells on the margins of removed tumors,
Dr. Schnabel said. arginprobe detection of additional cancer cells along the margins of removed tissue indicates that additional tissue removal is warranted.
This, in turn, improves the rate of a completely successful lumpectomy with no additional follow-up surgery required.
Dr. Schnabel has used Marginprobe in more than 50 cases, and is encouraged extremely with the results. he Marginprobe allows us to increase the likelihood that patients will leave the OR with a successful lumpectomy,
she said. his technology is a real advance, and represents a further refinement of the lumpectomy procedure.
Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer affecting women in the U s, . with over 285,000 new cases diagnosed each year.
It is estimated that between 60 to 75 percent of these patients opt for a lumpectomy the removal of the cancerous lesion,
Most patients will undergo some form of post-surgical treatment, either chemotherapy or radiation therapy, or a combination of the two.
Marginprobe greatest benefit is that it provides added assurance to both the surgeon and the patient that all cancer cells are removed during the initial surgery. t is critically important to spare patients the additional burden of re-excision procedures
and the time that is lost from work and family. Marginprobe helps us achieve that. i
#Is American Entrepreneurship On Life Support? With all the attention paid to Silicon valley and Alley startups, financing and acquisitions,
no one could be blamed for thinking American entrepreneurship is growing at a breakneck pace. But some numbers indicate that it actually not doing so well.
According to the Census data, Clifton says, there are around 400,000 new business each year, but 470,000 are closing.
Layoffs, difficulties obtaining credit, and a desert of customers during the recession are still fresh on many minds.
And Millennials may be all for nontraditional work rules, but theye not so hot on starting their own companies.
Maybe because being part of a startup means no work-life balance? According to the GEM 2014 Global Report, an annual report on global entrepreneurship, nnovation-driven economieslike the U s. tend to have the greatest fear of failure and fewer aspiring entrepreneurs,
and the biggest reasons for shuttering a company are personaloney comes second. Don forget: intrapreneurship is entrepreneurshipintrapreneurshose working for change from the insideave a lot in common with entrepreneurs,
They may not want to go out on their own and deal with the risk and stress of a startup,
After two years of trial, Adobe recently launched Kickbox, a program to help encourage innovation.
which designed the program for in-house use, likes it so much theye made it available as a free download under a Creative Commons license.
Innovation hubsr clustersxist because they can create environments supportive of business growth. If youe a hospitality startup, it helps to have vendors, consultants,
and investors around who know something about hospitality. But theye not the only environments where startups thrive.
As the technology that enables virtualization becomes more sophisticated, activity outside of traditional (and often urban) innovation centers will increaseike Fruitworks,
a company in The english town in Canterbury, 60 miles from London. A more relaxed pace, lower cost of living and working,
and the psychological benefits of not being part of a startup environment, amongst other factors, can make for a great startup location.
E-commerce startup Shopify, for example, is headquartered in Ottawa, Canada capital city, because cofounder Tobias Lütke wife worked for the federal government.
has raised $122 million in funding, and is about to go public with a dual U s. and Canada offering.
Hyperconnectivity is pushing globalization to new levels, according to research by The Economist Intelligence Unit and SAP.
A startup anywhere in the world might have onsite staff from six different countries and hire remote workers from another six.
get The Economist Intelligence Unit and SAP report here. Want more on forward-focused business strategies?
#Leftfield Ideas To Keep Your Workforce Engaged Forget the once-a-year employee barbecue some companies are taking employee incentives to a whole other level.
Chinese company Tiens Group celebrated its 20th birthday by taking 6, 400 employees on a four-day, all-expense paid trip to France.
but the bar for employee incentives is getting higher. Free gourmet lunches, ping pong tables, and in-office yoga classes have become commonplace.
Companies are getting creative with ideas that go beyond the standard year-end bonus to keep employees feeling engaged and appreciated.
After all, money isn everything especially for today new generation of workers (who, by the way, just overtook the preceding generation in terms of work numbers.
The company offered to pay full tuition for the junior and senior years of online learning at Arizona State university.
While employees don get to choose their school, covering the entire year bill is quite a generous deal.
expanding the offering to cover an entire undergraduate degree. Software company Fullcontact really wants its employees to take a break.
Pushing back against today 24-7 workaholic society the company offers employees $7500 towards an annual vacation what it calls aid PAID vacationwith the condition that employees must totally disconnect from work.
Company CEO Brett Lorang wrote this post explaining the motivation behind the move. An on-site Olympic-sized swimming pool and on-site dental services are two of the perks Oklahoma city gas producer Chesapeake Energy offers its employees.
Oh, and Botox. Employees of sports outfitter Burton love the snow, as you expect from a company that was an early snowboarding pioneer.
So if two or more feet of snow falls within 24 hours Burton closes up shop so workers can hit the slopes.
What the point of working near the water if you don have a boat? Redwood City, California-based icracked,
which repairs broken phones and sells phones, offers a full menu of perks: meals, choose your own hardware,
field tripsnd a company yacht. Watertown, Massachusetts-based UX design outfit Fresh Tilled Soil sends employees to envy-inducing places
so they can refresh and have some fun while working and it fully covered by the company.
Workations are becoming a thing. Hey, they worked for Uber. San francisco communications company Asana gives new employees $10,
000 to set up their workspaces however they like. That could cover the cost of a really nice ergonomic chair.
Real estate startup 42floors gives new employees pre-cations, time off before they have to show up at the office.
and cofounder Jason Freedman told Slate of one recent hire: H e just came in so refreshed and energized;
AP likes to thank employees, too. The SAP Winner Circle is an all-expense paid trip to Hawaii for high-performing employees and their families.
Interested in more ideas about how to adapt to the future of work? Take a look at SAP and Oxford Economicsglobal survey Workforce 2020.
For more insight on future-focused HR practices, see How Empowering Employees Creates a More Engaged Workforce e
#The Effect Of Global Mega Trends On The Chemical industry The global economic situation is extremely volatile, especially for the chemical industry.
Emerging competition is coming from nontraditional sectors such as energy utilities, and mining, and it especially heavy from healthcare, pharma,
and life sciences companies. Chemical companies hoping to retain or grow market share are looking for ways to become more agile.
it no longer enough to have just a website, no matter how informative it may be. Today, companies are fielding their own mobile apps
so that customers can have constant connection. In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2016, use of mobile apps will exceed Internet access to domain names.
Unlike complex on-premise systems that are costly and disruptive to upgrade, cloud solutions are updated typically on a frequent basis. As report formats change
and in-memory databases. As technology advances companies are using more data sources to help hone their predictions.
Plants monitor production in real time using sensors that feed quality and performance data to dashboards in real time.
Weather patterns or politics on the other side of the world may affect demand for products,
and chemical companies are tapping into both structured and unstructured data for insight. Trends like mass customization and ot size 1have also reached the chemical industry
Contact us today to find out more about how the chemical industry of the future will use technology as the cornerstone of global growth o
A people-Centric Paradox The front line of HR has always been recruitment, from my perspective. There no HR without talent.
The workplace is about to span five generations for the first time ever in history. Silents. Boomers. Gen X. Millennials.
The number of employed human resources and labor relations specialists is expected to increase 13 percent per year, some 2%faster than the average for all occupations.
That nearly twice the 7 percent rate of growth for all business and finance professions. Everything about HR and its leading edge, recruitment is being retooled profoundly.
As Bersin has reported, most companies want to retool their own HR systems from the inside out. Work is networked global
To recruit in this environment is like being part wizard part astronaut, part diplomat, part guidance counselor.
New populations, new tools, new culture, new outlooks, new roles for recruiters. Those who acquire
Psychology at the core of recruiting. Ie known some top recruiters who even at the peak of the powers remain deeply empathetic,
That people-centric radar has to be recalibrated to work across an interconnected range of social media channels and multiple platforms,
which means being an increasingly effective communicator who can bring a personal touch to an impersonal arena.
For instance, turnover: Once anathema to the Boomer generation, it now accepted among Millennials that changing jobs is part of working.
The employee brand as always had to be infallible, clear, and palpable, and it has fallen long to the recruiter to be able to convey the culture (and appeal) of an employee brand to candidates.
But the issue of brand was less sticky than it is now. Perception was related to more discreet information,
An employer brand is far more pervasive and also far more influential. The recruiter is still a conduit,
but the integrated and multiplatform culture of work means that nothing dwells outside the purview of perception
when employers have to get it right. The recruiter role may extend as well to de facto benchmarking,
since the Cande findings show that there a lag on the part of employers: Three-quarters (75.4 percent) of candidates said they were asked never about their experience by an employer.
The function of aligning talent with employment opportunities is a more multifunctional act than ever. By necessity, a recruiter has to thrive within a new paradox:
a well-attuned personal acumen that effectively straddles myriad networks and platforms with a global reach.
The 260-plus HR-focused undergraduate degree programs at U s. colleges and universities, as well as certificate and diploma programs offered by organizations such as SHRM
and The Sourcing Institute reflect a legitimizing and consolidation. About time. Not only is recruiting still all about talent,
I looking forward to watching them work. Want more on the changing role of HR?
when employees are unhappy and work with them to fix problems in the office before it too late.
which makes software for human resources departments. The system delivers notifications about when employees might be getting ready to quit,
and allows managers to intervene before it's too late. It looks for trends within employee activity
when promotions were last handed out, regional factors, changes in the industry and other data to make its predictions.
The recommendations can improve over time as employers train the system.""We've had some great results to date with the data, Amy Gannaway,
VMWARE senior director for worldwide human resources information systems, said at a Workday conference in September. The tool gave VMWARE"a very high percentage"of accurate predictions for
which employees would leave the company, she said. Workday can do this because the technology underpinning it is based on machine learning bag of advanced statistical techniques that lets companies lay out complex problems,
spot patterns and come up with predictions. Machine learning has been available in one form or another for decades,
but its commercial uses have traditionally been the exclusive domain of the richest, data-stuffed companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Netflix.
Finally, younger tech companies, including Airbnb, Box and Workday, are able to hop on the predictive-cloud bandwagon."
"In the past five years, because of the steady advance of computers and storage and so on, everybody has sufficient data,
"says Alexander Gray, the cofounder of Skytree, which provides machine-learning tools to businesses. ow, we all have the same magic that Google has."
"Box, a file storage provider that's expected to go public next year, acquired a startup last year named DLOOP to help develop predictive capabilities for its applications.
DLOOP's technology can analyze the contents and attributes of a document, and automatically tag them.
Box has been testing this with the company's own legal department to figure out which files may contain confidential information that would require extra precautions with how they're stored and shared.
The experiment looks at about 100 documents a day. And it works, says Sanam Saaber, Box senior commercial counsel."
"We have enough confidence in this product to go live on a day-to-day basis, she says. Similar to the Workday system, Box legal team had to train the DLOOP software to improve the recommendations.
It got so good at classifying documents that it reached a 100 percent accuracy rate, according to Saaber."
"As more and more data goes into our platform, we can produce important and useful insights to customers around how their data is being shared,
who can be seeing what kinds of content, where are potential security anomalies, or how can we dramatically accelerate a business process by connecting the dots for you,
Computer predictions aren just about making office life a little more pleasant. Airbnb uses a variation of these algorithms to predict which renters
and guests would be the best fit. The room-rental site says the technology has improved matches by 4 percent.
Airbnb is currently developing a system to look at the photos of homes uploaded to the site
and figure out how ttractivethey are to customers. e are trying to promote listings with more attractive images,
"Workday ability to identify which employees have one foot out the door also originated from an acquisition.
The company bought Identified in February after getting a demonstration of the startup data-powered crystal ball.
Mohammad Sabah, who was the chief data officer at Identified, had joined the startup from Netflix and Facebook.
Sabah had discovered that the same techniques Netflix uses to recommend movies with the familiarity you'd expect from a clued-in friend could be used to determine what going on inside of a company."
but the techniques and the algorithms and the tools are general, Sabah says. By combining company data on employee hiring, promotions, relocations, compensation, employee satisfaction surveys, managerial decisions and job cuts with public data sets like the standard of living in the region and workforce demand for certain skills,
Workday can spot patterns. Businesses can input decades of historical staff data into Workday to inform
and customize the system recommendations. In one case, Workday analyzed more than 1 million data points for 100,000 employees across 25 years to come up with employment suggestions.
To train the software companies must look back on worker-retention predictions and give the software an electronic pat on the head for ones it got it right
and a virtual swat with a newspaper for those it got wrong. The system learns over time how each company works and,
like an experienced HR employee, develops a gut feeling for which people the company needs to keep a closer eye on.
Bob Pasker, a technologist who helped define how the computer industry architects the modern cloud, expects these kinds of machine-learning applications to soon become ubiquitous.
Their potential to improve corporate efficiency means no CEO will want to operate without them.""This is what the computer industry does,
"Pasker says.""We take hard problems that have been solved by scientists and turn them into tools for regular human beings. t
#Why Schools in England Are Teaching 5-Year-Olds How to Code At the start of the fall semester last month,
England's state-run schools began introducing its youngest students to a concept that would confuse most of their parents:
algorithms. The U k. government has overhauled the way it teaches computing to the country's children by adding mandatory programming classes.
After taking advice from the likes of Microsoft and Google, officials were convinced that the state-school curriculum was out of step with modern-day technical standards.
The old system emphasized word processing and spreadsheets, but not much else. The government now wants the nation's kids to not only consume technology
but to build it instead of just playing computer games, they might create them one day. To prevent the youngest pupils from turning into zombies in front of screens
much of the initial learning takes place outside of the computer lab. Five-year-olds will play abstract games
and complete puzzles to familiarize themselves with the concept of algorithms without the complexity. By the time they hit 14,
teachers will guide them on how to use two or more programming languages. All of this is compulsory.
That makes the U k. the first G20 nation to put computer science at the heart of its curriculum."
"These are certainly the biggest changes that have been made to the way the subject has been taught, says John Partridge, a computing teacher in Nottinghamshire, U k. specially for the younger children."
"The U s. has managed to cultivate a tech mecca in Silicon valley in spite of its public-school system. Because the country invented many of the technologies that are the foundation for today's hottest industry,
it's a magnet for the world's sharpest and most ambitious. But the popularity of computing at U s. high schools has been on the slide in recent years.
In 2009, only 19 percent of students graduated with credits in computer science, down from 25 percent in 1990, according to a report from the U s. Department of education.
Like many developed nations the U k. is facing a tech-talent crunch, and the radical retooling of its educational system is a recognition that the problem is likely to persist for many years.
The country is projected to have a shortage of 249,000 workers for technologically skilled jobs by 2020, according to research from Empirica prepared for the European commission.
The effects are being felt within the U k. hottest technology hub. Last year, 45 percent of business leaders at London Tech City said a shortage of skilled workers was their biggest challenge, according to study by market researcher Gfk.
The proliferation of technology in all sorts of industries is exacerbating this shortage. Custom websites and mobile apps are now a must-have for companies in virtually every sector,
while research firm Gartner projects there will be 30 times as many physical devices connected to the Internet by 2020."
"Programming is infiltrating loads of different traditional areas, says Rachel Swidenbank, Codecademy's head of U k. operations."
"Learning how to code allows kids to do their own thing, be creative and secure a job in an area where there will be a huge shortage."
"England will be looking to emulate the feats of Israel, which, following a review of computing in its schools around the turn of the century,
developed one of the world most rigorous computer-science curricula for high schoolers. The country's tech companies now attract more venture capital
and private-equity cash than any European country, according to a report from consulting firm Ernst & young. The U k. commitment to teaching the basics of programming from a young age is bold,
but it won guarantee a solution to the skills shortage. When kids reach 14 it will be up to them to choose
Or perhaps the nine years of force-fed algorithms and coding will scare them away forever."
whether the changes to the curriculum will enhance the attractiveness of a career in computing to children,
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