Texas Business reports:  HOUSTON—Instead of building a better mousetrap, a team of Rice University freshmen took a mousetrap and built a better way to treat dehydration among children in the developing world. 

Texas Business reports:  HOUSTON—Pulmotect Inc., a Houston-based biotechnology company, received $7.1 million from the Cancer Prevention & Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) to advance its product, PUL-042, which offers the promise of better protecting patients receiving chemotherapy from infection, allowing for significantly higher treatment success.

Texas Business reports: University of Texas at Arlington researchers have obtained a patent for a device aimed at saving babies’ lives through improved and rapid detection of breathing problems including Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

Texas Business reports: Two mechanical engineering professors at The University of Texas at El Paso have received a grant worth nearly $400,000 from the United States Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR).

Texas Business reports: COLLEGE STATION—Aruba Networks Inc. announced that Texas A&M University is in the process of replacing its legacy Cisco wireless network with a campus-wide Aruba 802.11n mobile network based on the Aruba Mobile Virtual Enterprise (MOVE) architecture.

Texas Business reports:  GALVESTON—Birmingham’s Southern Research will collaborate with the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston to develop and validate a high-volume, high-throughput screening platform in their Galveston National Laboratory (GNL).

Texas Business reports: HOUSTON—Heart-failure patients may someday get a life-saving charge from technology developed by students at Rice University.

Texas Business reports: AUSTIN—Chaotic Moon Studios acquired Symbiot, a risk metrics and security provider.

Texas Business reports:  SALT LAKE CITY—LANDesk Software, a provider of systems lifecycle management, endpoint security and IT service management, acquired Managed Planet. 

Texas Business reports: COLLEGE STATION—Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) Space Systems completed wind tunnel testing of a scale model of the Dream Chaser orbital crew vehicle in the Oran W. Nicks Low Speed Wind Tunnel at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. 

Texas Business reports: A University of Texas at Arlington multi-disciplinary team received a $360,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to build artificial nanopores made of silicon that can detect “bad molecules” as a very early indication of cancer and other diseases.

Texas Business reports:  TEMPLE—McLane Advanced Technologies (MAT) announced that as the subcontractor to SAIC, the company was awarded a contract by the Software Engineering Center (SEC-Lee) for Property Book Unit Supply Enhanced (PBUSE). 

Texas Business reports: Comic book hero superpowers may be one step closer to reality after the latest technological feats made by researchers at UT Dallas. They have designed an imager chip that could turn mobile phones into devices that can see through walls, wood, plastics, paper and other objects.

Texas Business reports:  HOUSTON—The 2012 Rice Business Plan Competition (RBPC) crowned NuMat Technologies from Northwestern University as the world champion startup company for its invention of a nanomaterial that can store gases just like a sponge soaks up water.

Texas Business reports:  DALLAS—Biometric Signature ID Inc. (BSI), developers of patented gesture biometrics software for Identity authentication over the Internet, closed a Series A financing with Mohegan Biometrics LLC, a subsidiary of the Mohegan Tribe of Indians of Connecticut.

Texas Business reports:  ARLINGTON— Shimadzu Scientific Instruments  opened the Shimadzu Center for Advanced Analytical Chemistry at The University of Texas at Arlington.

Kelsey Horter

Texas Business reports: HOUSTON—Undergraduate students at Rice University have come up with what they hope will prove to be a better and safer version of cervical collars to stabilize the heads and necks of accident victims. 

Texas Business reports:  FORT WORTH, TX & HUNT VALLEY, MD—Bell Helicopter and Textron Systems operating unit AAI Unmanned Aircraft Systems, both Textron Inc. companies, have teamed to develop a Manned Unmanned Operations (MUMO) Capability Development Laboratory in Huntsville, AL. to enable a software and hardware-in-the-loop (HWIL) development test capability using operationally relevant systems specific to manned unmanned teaming. 

Texas Business reports:  HOUSTON—Rice University and IBM formed a partnership to build the first IBM Blue Gene supercomputer in Texas.

Texas Business reports:  AUSTIN—Asuragen Inc .received notice of a $6.8 million commercialization award to pursue Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) applications from the state of Texas through the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT).

Texas Business reports:  HOUSTON—Want a see-through cellphone you can wrap around your wrist? Such a thing may be possible before long, according to Rice University chemist James Tour, whose lab has developed transparent, flexible memories using silicon oxide as the active component.

Texas Business reports: WESLACO  –  Citrus growers worldwide who currently have no cure for a devastating, tree-killing disease may soon find relief from an unlikely source: spinach. 

Jellyfish Robot

Texas Business reports:  DALLAS—Researchers at The University of Texas at Dallas and Virginia Tech have created an undersea vehicle inspired by the common jellyfish that runs on renewable energy and could be used in ocean rescue and surveillance missions. 

Texas Business reports: A San Antonio firm won an $82 million contract for internet security, the U.S. Department of Defense announced.

Texas Business reports:  HOUSTON—They look like fruit, and indeed the nanoscale stars of new research at Rice University have tasty implications for medical imaging and chemical sensing. 

Texas Business reports:  AUSTIN--A University of Texas at Austin professor and his research collaborators have been awarded a $2.5 million grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health to conduct research that will significantly increase knowledge about artificial heart valves and lead to the development of valves that are more durable and dependable than those currently used in heart treatment.

Texas Business reports: HOUSTON—The U.S.- and Singapore-based creators of the I-slate educational tablet and local government officials in India’s Mahabubnagar District plan to adopt 50,000 of the low-cost electronic educational slates into middle and high school classrooms throughout the district over the next three years.

Texas Business reports:  UT Arlington industrial engineers have patented an innovative method that can obtain optimal decisions for a broad class of real-world problems not previously solvable.

Texas Business reports: Brahman Industrie LLC, developer of a tsunami and flood shelter system, has joined forces with Houston’s Martinez Marine Design Inc and Creative Systems Inc.

Texas Business reports:  DALLAS—Texas Instruments Incorporated and iRobot Corp. formed a partnership to develop robotic technologies using TI's smart multicore OMAP platform.

Texas Business reports:  CSI fans and would-be forensic investigators the world over can try their hand at solving an arson murder mystery online, thanks to a new federally funded expansion of Rice University’s hit educational game “CSI: Web Adventures.”

Texas Business reports: A Fort Worth firm won a $24 million contract change for creating a data farm for the military. 

Texas Business reports:  FORT WORTH—Abbott has entered into an agreement with the University of North Texas Science Center, a forensics institution, to evaluate the company's PLEX-ID technology for use in analyzing human remains to support missing persons and human trafficking investigations.

Texas Business reports:  Apple will expand its presence in Texas with a $304 million investment in a new campus in Austin that will create more than 3,600 new jobs.

Texas Business reports:  DALLAS—Teakwood Capital acquired Long Range Systems Inc., a customer and staff paging and management systems firm. 

Texas Business reports:  A UT Arlington electrical engineering professor has received a $300,000 National Science Foundation grant to determine how much closer technology can push toward the upper boundary of a smart grid’s threshold.

During the heated debate over bids in Congress to pass Internet-policing legislation earlier this year, such opponents as Google co-founder Sergey Brin branded the bills as attempts at outright censorship that could shove the U.S. Internet toward an experience that looks more like China. Yet others disagree.

 Texas Business reports:  AUSTIN—Intersections of the future will not need stop lights or stop signs, but will look like a somewhat chaotic flow of driverless, autonomous cars slipping past one another as they are managed by a virtual traffic controller.

Texas Business reports:  A group of California community colleges and open-education advocates announced a partnership with the Rice University-based open-education platform Connexions and the California-based 20 Million Minds Foundation to enable their new course materials developed with a $20 million federal stimulus grant to be available free online for any educator to use, modify and tailor for their own needs.

Texas Business reports: AUSTIN—University of Texas at Austin researchers have demonstrated a new and more effective method for regrowing blood vessels in the heart and limbs — a research advancement that could have major implications for how health care treats heart disease, the leading cause of death in the Western world. 

Texas Business reports:  AUSTIN—Silverback Enterprise Group, which acquires and builds enterprise software companies, acquired PowerSteering Software Inc., a provider of cloud-based enterprise project and portfolio management (PPM) software, and Tenrox Inc., a provider of cloud-based, workflow-driven project workforce management software.

Texas Business reports:  A Rice University undergraduate will depart with not only a degree but also a possible patent for his invention of an efficient way to create protein libraries, an important component of biomolecular research.

Texas Business reports:  AUSTIN, Texas — A systematic analysis of power usage in microprocessors could help lower the energy consumption of both small cellphones and giant data centers, report computer science professors from The University of Texas at Austin and the Australian National University.

Texas Business reports: Researchers at Rice University are using carbon nanotubes as the critical component of a robust terahertz polarizer that could accelerate the development of new security and communication devices, sensors and non-invasive medical imaging systems as well as fundamental studies of low-dimensional condensed matter systems.

Texas Business reports:  A Round Rock firm sold $20 million for software licenses and support to the U.S. military, according to the U.S. Department of Defense.

Texas Business reports: Graphene is largely transparent to the eye and, as it turns out, largely transparent to water.

Texas Business reports:  AUSTIN—Alliance Tech, an Austin -based business intelligence solutions provider focusing on technology and marketing metrics for trade shows, conferences and events, has been selected as a technology partner by the South by Southwest    Conference & Festival, March 9-18, 2012 in Austin, Texas.

Texas Business reports:  A California firm won a $376 million military satellite contract to be performed in Fort Worth, according to the U.S. Department of Defense.

Texas Business reports:  A McKinney firm won a $44.7 million contract for high-tech targeting systems, the U.S. Department of Defense announced. 

Texas Business reports:  HOUSTON—NASA's Johnson Space Center and Texas A&M University will sign an agreement Dec. 19 to begin the move of the primary space shuttle launch and landing trainer, the Shuttle Motion Simulator, to College Station.

Texas Business reports: HOUSTON—The Houston Technology Center (HTC) and NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) formed a partnership to further expand HTC's mission of accelerating the growth of emerging technology companies in the Houston region and to develop the insights required to support NASA's long-term goals of increasing private/public collaboration.

Texas Business reports:  Graphene's star is rising as a material that could become essential to efficient, environmentally sound oil production. Rice University researchers are taking advantage of graphene's outstanding strength, light weight and solubility to enhance fluids used to drill oil wells. 

Texas Business reports:  The University of Texas at San Antonio, University of Texas at Dallas (UT Dallas) and Purdue University received a five-year, $3 million grant from the National Science Foundation for new cyber security research.

Texas Business reports:  AUSTIN—The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin will expand the center’s current high performance computing (HPC) data center to house the new Stampede supercomputer, which will be built in late 2012 and go into full production to the national science community in January 2013.

Texas Business reports:  A Hurst firm won an $85 million contract to upgrade software for a military helicopter program.

Texas Business reports:  GARLAND—Raytheon Company s acquired Pikewerks Corporation, a privately held company, to further extend Raytheon's capabilities to defend against sophisticated cybersecurity threats facing customers in the intelligence community, Department of Defense and commercial organizations.

Texas Business reports: AUSTIN—A Texas firm that allows sports fans to order their hotdogs from their seats and not miss the game is continuing its rapid growth. 

Texas Business reports:  Rice University chemists have found a way to load more than 2 million tiny gold particles called nanorods into a single cancer cell. The breakthrough could speed development of cancer treatments that would use nanorods like tiny heating elements to cook tumors from the inside. 

Texas Business reports:  Seattle’s GeoBio Energy Inc. bought Houston-based El Gas North America  LLC. 

Texas Business reports: AUSTIN—Molecular Imprints Inc., a provider for nanopatterning systems and solutions, won a contract by a leading IC manufacturer to build the industry's first 450mm capable lithography system. 

Alan Stern performed 20 runs aboard a NASTAR STS-400 High Performance Human Centrifuge, with some runs reaching the 6-G accelerations that many suborbital launches will create.

Texas Business reports:  Two researchers set to fly aboard suborbital spacecraft as a part of Southwest Research Institute's next-generation suborbital research program completed another milestone last week when they evaluated commercial spaceflight equipment during an intensive series of centrifuge runs that closely mimicked launches and re-entries aboard suborbital spacecraft.

Texas Business reports:   SunGard Availability Services formed a partnership with the University of Texas at Austin to create a Cloud Computing Research Center. 

Texas Business reports: San Antonio—Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) recently acquired an extended range electric vehicle to include its batteries in the Energy Storage System Evaluation and Safety (EssEs) Consortium. Information obtained through evaluation of the batteries will be included in the EssEs database that is available to all members.

Texas Business reports:  American Aerospace and Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi have successfully completed their first airborne science mission using unmanned aircraft over the Gulf of Mexico.

Texas Business reports: AUSTIN— MyEdu, the nation's leading student academic platform for completing college, announced today that it has partnered with the University of Texas System (UT System) to provide an enhanced student academic platform, helping students across UT System institutions to significantly increase their return on education by raising graduation rates, decreasing time to graduation and supporting career readiness goals.

Texas Business reports: SNYDER— A site many people have never heard of, located more than 75 miles away from Dyess Air Force Base, Texas, rests a secure facility that provides Air Force aircrews some of the most advanced training throughout the armed forces.

Texas Business reports:  SAN ANTONIO—St. Louis-based World Wide Technology Inc., a systems integrator that provides technology and supply chain solutions, opened a new office in San Antonio.

Texas Business reports:  Giant flakes of graphene oxide in water aggregate like a stack of pancakes, but infinitely thinner, and in the process gain characteristics that materials scientists may find delicious.

Texas Business reports:  AUSTIN— A new patent covering tumor suppression technologies, including the company's lead product candidate Oncoprex, was recently awarded to The University of Texas System by the Japan Patent Office.

Texas Business reports:  Internationally renowned physicist and member of the National Academy of Sciences, Marlan O. Scully, who is best known for his work in theoretical quantum optics, has been named distinguished research academician of science and engineering at Baylor University.

Texas Business reports: SOUTHLAKE, Texas—GetThere, a travel technology company serving corporations, and Gogo, a provider of in-air connectivity, signed an agreement that allows GetThere to offer Gogo in-flight Wi-Fi services at a discounted rate.

James McLurkin works on an early version of the inexpensive new R-one multi-robot platform. Photo by Jeff Fitlow/Rice University.

Texas Business reports:  Robots for everyone.

That's James McLurkin's dream, and as the director of a Rice University robotics lab, he's creating an inexpensive and sophisticated robot called the "R-one" to make the dream a reality.

Texas Business reports:  David Elieser Deutsch pioneered the field of quantum computing.  Rice University scientists are bringing the technology closer to reality. Rice University physicists have created a tiny “electron superhighway” that could one day be useful for building a quantum computer, a new type of computer that will use quantum particles in place of the digital transistors found in today's microchips.

Texas Business reports:  A McKinney firm won a $28.6 million contract for targeting systems for the Air Force, the U.S. Department of Defense announced.

Texas Business reports:  SEOUL, Korea & AUSTIN, Texas—SK TIC and SK Innovation, members of the SK Group, Korea's energy, chemicals and telecommunications giant, and HelioVolt Corporation, an Austin-based manufacturer of high-efficiency thin-film photovoltaic modules, reached an agreement to collaborate on technology development and global manufacturing expansion.

Texas Business reports:  The days of waiting for smartphones to upload video may be numbered. Rice University engineering researchers have made a breakthrough that could allow wireless phone companies to double throughput on their networks without adding a single cell tower.

Texas Business reports:  SAN ANTONIO—Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and the Motoman Robotics Division of Yaskawa America, Inc. reached an agreement to collaborate on integrating Motoman Robotics' line of industrial robots with the open-source ROS (Robot Operating System) software.

Texas Business reports: Thin gold wires often used in high-end electronic applications are wonderfully flexible as well as conductive. But those qualities don't necessarily apply to the same wires at the nanoscale.

Texas Business reports:  CAMRIS Technologies Corporation announced today it is commercializing a new, innovative technology for industrial water treatment.

Texas Business reports:  AUSTIN—To address the growing concerns around the complexity and cost of verifying patent title ownership, Innography, the intellectual property business intelligence company, announced it is simplifying the patent title validation process with the release of PatentGuard, the world's first automated Intellectual Property Title Assurance platform.

Texas Business reports: WACO--New Jersey firm Axion International, a producer of industrial building products and railroad ties made from recycled plastic, signed a contract manufacturing agreement with Coll Materials that will provide expanded manufacturing capacity located at Coll's Waco, Texas facility.

Texas Business reports:  Scientists can make graphene out of just about anything with carbon -- even Girl Scout Cookies.

Texas Business reports:  AUSTIN—KLD Energy Technologies Inc., a provider of electric propulsion and generation systems, it’s second installment, $1.4 million,  from the Texas Emerging Technology Fund (TETF).

Texas Business reports:  DALLAS—An ophthalmologist at UT Southwestern Medical Center has helped create a convenient device that lets patients who have a degenerative eye disease better track vision changes.

Texas Business reports:  HOUSTON—The world at large runs on lithium ion batteries. New research at Rice University shows that tiny worlds may soon do the same.

Texas Business reports:  AUSTIN—A partnership among the National Science Foundation (NSF) and 17 institutions, including the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), announced the debut of the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE), the most advanced and powerful collection of integrated advanced digital resources and services in the world.

Texas Business reports:  A Texas Tech University chemistry researcher received a four-year, $1.06 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study more effective methods for creating compounds used in pharmaceuticals.

he new Estuarine Research Center at the Marine Science Institute in Port Aransas

Texas Business reports:  PORT ARANSAS—The University of Texas Marine Science Institute officially opens its newest campus building, the Estuarine Research Center, this weekend in Port Aransas.

Texas Business reports:  AUSTIN—Convergen LifeSciences, Inc. announced that another patent has been awarded by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office jointly to The University of Texas System Board of Regents and The Secretary, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

 Texas Business reports:  AUSTIN—The University of Texas at Austin reached an agreement with Canada-based Hydro-Quebec for lithium-ion material technology invented and patented by John Goodenough, a scientist at the university.

Emily Hunter

Texas Business reports:  Research universities with an organizational climate that actively supports commercialization and encourages interdisciplinary collaboration among researchers are more likely to produce invention disclosures and patent applications, according to a Baylor University study.

Carlos Fernandez examines one of four bioreactors prior to growing microalgae for studies. (AgriLife Research photo by Rod Santa Ana)

Texas Business reports:  CORPUS CHRISTI  –  Just as corn and peanuts stunned the world decades ago with their then-newly discovered multi-beneficial uses and applications, Texas AgriLife Research scientists in Corpus Christi think microalgae holds even more promise.

Texas Business reports:  ARLINGTON—Scientists know space weather caused by solar flares and other phenomenon holds the potential to disable electrical grids and disrupt the use of the global positioning system (GPS) that everyone from farmers to oil well drillers depend on. 

Texas Business reports: LUBBOCK—Four Texas Tech University professors recently received a four-year $1.2 million grant from the Office of Naval Research to develop more effective detection systems for finding explosive material.

Texas Business reports:  Arlington—The University of Texas at Arlington announced a licensing agreement with 1st Resource Group Inc. of Fort Worth to commercialize a new, efficient process for converting natural gas to clean, synthetic fuel at a cost lower than current market rates.

Nathan Lujan holds one of the new catfish finds. This specimen is likely an adult male spectacularly ornamented with long, rigid bristles (called odontodes) that loricariids use in male-male combat and for territorial defense. Photo courtesy of Lujan.

Texas Business reports: College Station—“Think of them as underwater wood-chippers” said a Texas A&M University researcher in describing three new species of wood-eating armored catfish from the Amazon he and his team have discovered.

Texas Business reports:  Austin’s National Instruments signed a definitive merger agreement under which NI will acquire California-based AWR Corporation (AWR) in a $58 million deal.

Texas Business reports:  Austin’s National Instruments  acquired San Jose, California-based Phase Matrix Inc.  

Texas Business reports:  In what seems like an old science fiction movie, the U.S. Army is paying UT Austin $6.7 million to for pulsed power and hypervelocity physics, the U.S. Department of Defense announced.

Erica Bruce

Texas Business reports:  A new study by Baylor University environmental health researchers found that zebra fish exposed to several different technical mixtures of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) - a common fire retardant - during early development can cause developmental malformations, changes in behavior and death.

Texas Business reports:  Rice University bioengineering students have modified a child-size training mannequin to give medical students hands-on pediatric experience so that real patients can be spared further stress and pain.

Texas Business reports:  Austin—Vermillion Inc., a molecular diagnostics company, announced that the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued a notice of allowance for a patent entitled “Panel of Biomarkers for Peripheral Artery Disease” to the company.

AFN-1252 co-crystallized in the S. aureus FabI enzyme

Texas Business reports:  An Austin drug maker has developed a product to combat staph infection. Affinium Pharmaceuticals announced results of a new multiple ascending dose Phase I study of its novel, selective-spectrum, anti-staphylococcal agent, AFN-1252 in a novel oral formulation.

Texas Business reports:  A Houston electronic health records firm landed another hospital in the ongoing battle over the EHR market.

Texas Business reports:  Spiceworks Inc. closed a $25 million financing round with new investors Adams Street Partners and Tenaya Capital and participation from existing investors.

Texas Business reports:  A consortium of hardware security experts from Rice University, the University of Connecticut, the Polytechnic Institute of New York University and the University of California-Los Angeles has received a $1.2 million federal grant to conduct wide-ranging research aimed at enhancing the integrity of integrated circuits (ICs), the computer chips that are used in virtually all electronic devices today, from cell phones and medical instruments to laptop computers and flat-screen TVs.

Texas Business reports:  A Dallas firm won a $25.4 million contract to sale vision enhancers to the Saudi Arabian National Guard.

Texas Business reports:  The U.S. Air Force intelligence agency headquartered in San Antonio awarded a $69.6 million contract to a Virginia firm to run a virtual information tech desk as part of the service’s cyber combat support, the U.S. Department of Defense announced.

Texas Business reports:  Houston—A Texas firm that sells an ediscovry software product expanded into 51 Canadian offices as the result of an agreement with an  audit, tax and advisory firm.

Texas Business reports: A San Francisco data collection firm formed a partnership with a Houston hospital to improve patient care.

Texas Business reports:  Austin—A new low cost test for acute pancreatitis that gets results much faster than existing tests has been developed by scientists at The University of Texas at Austin.

Texas Business reports:  A Houston grandmother has become the nation’s first Super Wi-Fi user.

Martin B-57A

Texas Business reports:  The Johnson Space Center awarded a contract worth more than a half million for flight helmets for an aircraft designed in the early 1950s.

Texas Business reports:  Austin—User interface design studio, projekt202 LP, was chosen by Charles Schwab to help design StreetSmart Edge, the company’s active trader platform. 

Texas Business reports: StatSlice formed a partnership with XLCubed to provide consulting, training and implementation services on the XLCubed product set. 

Texas Business reports:  A Fort Worth firm won an $18 million contract to provide spare parts for an high-tech helicopter helmet display and sighting system.

Texas Business reports:  Denton—A Dallas firm is designing what is claimed to be the first alternative energy system for a college football stadium. 

Dell To Combine Its California Companies

Texas Business reports:  Round Rock—A Texas computer firm plans to invest in California’s Silicon Valley to combine its California acquisitions.

Texas Business reports:  Dallas—When people think of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA), they envision activities like camping, knot-tying, and canoeing, but soon, they'll need to add robot-building to that list.

Texas Business reports:  Plano—ViewCast Corporation, a developer of solutions for the transformation, management and delivery of digital media over enterprise, broadband, and mobile networks, introduced two Osprey video capture cards - the Osprey 260e and Osprey 460e.

NASA's SOFIA 747SP during an early check flight over the Texas countryside. NASA photo by Carla Thomas

Texas Business reports:  The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA, which was modified in Waco by L-3 Communications, completed its first science flight Wednesday, April 6, using the German Receiver for Astronomy at Terahertz Frequencies (GREAT) scientific instrument. 

Texas Business reports:  The Austin Technology Incubator (ATI), a not-for-profit unit of The University of Texas at Austin, selected Amatra, a global provider of multi-channel smart communication solutions for public and campus safety, and business and government commerce and outreach, for its Landing Pad Program.

Texas Business reports:  Hamlin Memorial Hospital plans to use a software electronic healthcare record (EHR) product to help improve care and meet governmental healthcare requirements.

Texas Business reports:  A Carrolton firm won an $11.2 million contract to supply mine detectors and training to the Army, the U.S. Department of Defense.  

Texas Business reports:  A Maine firm won a $5.3 million bid to install and maintain Fort Hood’s computers and communication support for the next year.

Texas Business reports: Dallas--Texas Instruments will buy California’s National Semiconductor in a $6.5 billion  transaction.

Texas Business reports:  Competitors in the 2011 Rice Business Plan Competition (RBPC) will again be rewarded for commercial space business ideas.

Lane Segerstrom sets a land speed record on a board made of nonwood biomass.

Texas Business reports: McKinney—Two patents from Mississippi State University (MSU) on kenaf are licensed to Texas-based Corn Board Manufacturing Inc. (CBMI) for use in replacing wood products in engineered pressed board.

Texas Business reports:  Austin—tw telecom, a provider of managed voice, internet and data networking solutions for businesses in Texas and throughout the U.S., announced that top-tier data center operator Core NAP has selected it to provide last-mile Ethernet services that will allow the company to greatly expand its reach in Austin.

Total Shoulder Arthroplasty

 Texas Business reports:  Ascension Orthopedics, Inc., a provider of PyroCarbon orthopedic devices, released the Titan Modular Shoulder Fracture Prosthesis.

M. Karen Newell Rogers

Texas Business reports:  Cancer research leads to new fuel?

That's what an energy company claims.  A surgical research professor with Texas A&M and Scott  and White Hospital in Temple discovered a process that will be used in commercial biofuels production.

Waco Plans To Replace Less Energy Efficient Lights, Such As This Mercury Vapor Streetlight

Texas Business reports:  The City of Waco is taking bids for LED street light and lamps.

Texas Business reports:  A Fort Worth firm won yet another defense contract, this one for $18 million, to update the the electronics warfare  power supply on the Raptor fleet.

Texas Business reports:  Sugar Land— The University of Houston System   and TimeGate Studios to establish a cutting-edge motion capture studio in Fort Bend County.

Texas Business reports: Houston—A Houston firm will buy carbon dioxide captured from a gasification and liquefaction firm in Wyoming.

SETMA is using IBM business analytics software to design interventions.

Texas Business reports:  Southeast Texas Medical Associates (SETMA) is using IBM business analytics software to gain greater insight into hospital readmissions and data that will help identify causes and design interventions to prevent patients from having to return to the hospital soon after their discharge.

Texas Business reports: An Austin firm is providing the batteries for a European electric car.

Texas Business reports:  A Grand Prairie firm won a $7 million contract to eliminate obsolete components of the Taiwan Patriot Missiles, the U.S. Department of Defense announced. 

Texas Business reports:  Toshiba International Corporation will expand manufacturing capacity at its plant in Houston  for production of high-performance drive motors for hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) and electric vehicles (EVs).

Texas Business reports:  McGregor—Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) and the City of McGregor signed a lease agreement allowing SpaceX to expand the size of its rocket development facility in McGregor.

 Texas Business reports:  The State of Texas Emerging Technology Fund awarded $3 million to Austin Technology Incubator (ATI) member company Firefly LED Lighting for product commercialization.

Texas Business reports:  A McKinney firm won a $48 million contract to provide support for radar and infrared sensor systems for the U.S. Special Operations Command, the U.S. Department of Defense announced. 

 Texas Business reports:  eDoorways International Corporation joined a working partnership led by Create Tech Village, a California-based technology infrastructure creator, and the Ibero American Science and Technology Education Consortium (ISTEC); whose goals include the creation, development and enhancement of technology parks at various locations around the world.

Texas Business reports: HAIFA, Israel— An Israeli defense company will fulfill an order for high tech U.S. army helmets in Fort Worth.

Texas Business reports:  An Amarillo firm won a $13.1 million order for the Osprey electrical upgrades required for its digital map system. 

Texas Business reports:  Dallas—Lockheed Martin's enhanced version of the combat-proven PAC-3 Missile, the PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement (MSE), successfully intercepted a threat representative tactical ballistic missile target in the MSE battlespace at White Sands Missile Range, N.M.

Texas Business reports:  A collaboration between two Texas entities may lead to vaccinations against colorectal and other cancers.

Texas Business reports: A Grand Prairie firm won a $22.1 million contract to provide multiple launch rocket system upgrade kits and training, the U.S. Department of Defense announced.

Texas Business reports:  A Garland firm won a $68 million contract to provide support for an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance system for the military, the U.S. Department of Defense announced.

Texas Business reports:  Austin’s Tocquigny, an interactive agency, was named a finalist for a 2011 SXSW Interactive Award in the Kiosk/Installation category for projects that live outside the standard browser experience.

Texas Business reports: Round Rock--Dell) completed its acquisition of Compellent Technologies Inc., a rapidly-growing provider of highly-virtualized storage solutions with automated data management features, including tiering and thin provisioning, for enterprise and cloud-computing environments.

Texas Business reports:  An Austin firm entered into a joint venture to build what it calls the first blended energy power plant in Texas. 

Texas Business reports:    A Dallas firm won a $68.6 million contract for thermal weapon systems to be delivered to the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense announced.

Texas Business reports:  Fort Worth—The Center for Human Identification at the UNT Health Science Center recently received a three-year $3.5 million grant from Life Technologies Corporation, a provider of forensic DNA testing systems, to train researchers from around the world in forensic DNA analysis techniques. 

Texas Business reports:  A McKinney firm won a contract to develop sophisticated radars for military Navy aircraft. 

Texas Business reports:  A Mansfield firm won the top marketing award from Honeywell Americas.

Texas Business reports:  The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has selected Dell’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Perot Systems Government Services (PSGS), a unit of Round Rock’s Dell Services, as one of the 46 prime service and solutions providers for the agency’s indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity (ID/IQ) Federal Bureau of Investigation Information Technology Supplies and Support Services (FBI IT Triple S) contract.

Texas Business reports:  Skyonic Corporation, a chemical engineering company developing technologies to safely recycle carbon emissions into economic mineral resources, announced a new scrubber technology it claims can remove virtually all sulfur oxides (SOx) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) emitted from flue gas stacks.

Texas Business reports:  Ohio’s Woolpert is buying Bohannan Huston’s Dallas operations by early February.

 Texas Business reports:  A Dallas technology firm won a contract with an international life sciences firm.

Texas Business reports:  Endicott Biofuels LLC (EBF) has signed an agreement with KMTEX Ltd. (KMTEX) to construct a 30-million gallon-per-year biorefinery in Port Arthur that will employ EBF's proprietary technology for the production of high-purity G2 Clear™ biodiesel. 

Texas Business reports:  A Plano online game company now has more than 15 million U.S. players.  

Texas Business reports:  A San Antonio animal medical company entered an arrangement with an Oregon firm to market a new surgical system product.

Texas Business reports:  A multinational energy company bought a Beaumont energy plant, officials announced.

Texas Business reports: Round Rock’s Dell Won its second contract from the U.S. Coast Guard in the last six months.

Texas Business reports: Dallas—Lockheed Martin received two contracts totaling $218 million for the Demonstration Phase of the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency's (DARPA) Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) program.

Texas Business reports:   A San Antonio firm recently produced what it calls the world’s first hybrid bullet-proof car.

Texas Business reports:  An Austin company took a significant step in its nanoimprint lithography system trade. 

Beta-2 Microglobulin

Texas Business reports:  An Austin firm has patented a test for diagnosing peripheral artery disease.

Texas Business notes this story by Product Design & Development: Texas Emerging Technology Fund, Lockheed Martin and UT System combine for $9 million in support of SPEC Center’s Advanced Fabrication Technologies.

Texas Business reports:  Lockheed Martin was selected by the U.S. Department of Defense's Environmental Security Technology Certification Program (ESTCP) to demonstrate an Intelligent Microgrid at a U.S. Army's Brigade Combat Team complex at Fort Bliss. 

Texas Business reports:  Lockheed Martin said Monday at its Dallas office it successfully launched a Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System Plus (GMLRS+) rocket recently in a test at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico. 

Texas Business reports:  An Arlington firm is one of several that are participating in support services for more than 900 training simulators for the U.S. and foreign governments in contracts not to exceed $900 million. 

Texas Business reports:  Minnesota’s PowerObjects, a provider of Microsoft Dynamics CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solutions acquired Quest Business Solutions (Quest), of Dallas.

Texas Business reports: Austin’s BAE Systems plant will provide laser warning sensor sets to protect U.S. military aircraft under a $17.7 million contract by Alliant Techsystems, the company announced today. 

Texas Business reports:  Texas Tech food safety researchers are part of a $2 million grant from the USDA aimed at improving food safety by managing antibiotic resistance in beef and dairy cattle systems in the United States and Canada.

Texas Business reports:  Austin’s Active Power, a backup power and infrastructure systems manufacturer, received nearly $5 million in orders for its PowerHouse solution, a modular continuous critical infrastructure system, company officials announced. 

Texas Business reports:  A San  Antonio firm won a $24 million contract to provide information assurance certification service, the U.S. Department of Defense announced.

Texas Business reports:  The Texas Renewables Conference is set to start Sunday November 7 in San Antonio. 

Texas Business reports:  A Houston computer recycling firm is increasing its operations more than a third this month to meet growing demand. 

Texas Business reports:  NEC Corporation  selected  embedded technology from Austin’s Freescale Semiconductor for the newest generation of PASOLINK microwave communications equipment.

Texas Business reports:  A University of Texas at Austin department received almost a half million-dollar government grant to study carbon dioxide problems. 

Hobby-Eberly Telescope at McDonald Observatory. Photo by EricandHolli.

Texas Business reports:  Two Texas universities are taking the lion’s share of an $8 million National Science Foundation grant to study dark energy. 

Texas Business reports:  It sounds like the premise of a science fiction movie, but it’s real and now.

Texas Business reports:  Irving—Fluor Corporation won an engineering services contract for two new 50 megawatt (MW) concentrating solar power (CSP) plants in Alcazar de San Juan, Spain. 

Texas Business reports:  A New York firm is providing a high tech, “green” solution to charge people for parking cars in Galveston again since Hurricane Ike. 

Texas Business reports:  Leap Wireless International Inc., a leading provider of wireless communications services, and Pocket Communications announced they have formed a Leap-controlled and managed joint venture that provides enhanced mobile communications through Leap's Cricket(R) brand to customers in the South Texas region, from San Antonio to Laredo and in the Rio Grande Valley covering more than 4.4 million potential customers. 

Texas Business reports:  A San Antonio firm won a $9.6 million contract to develop power trains for the U.S. Army TACOM, formerly known as Tank-automotive and Armaments Command, the U.S. Department of Defense announced. 

Texas Business reports:  A Fort Worth firm won a $65.8 million contract for interceptor systems, electronic warfare countermeasures, and various other components for military aircraft. 

Texas Business reports:  FORT WORTH—Teletouch Communications Inc., a premier U.S. wireless services, cellular, consumer electronics and public safety equipment provider,  announced the award of a multi-year contract with the General Services Administration (GSA) for the company's comprehensive product line of public safety, emergency vehicle lighting and siren equipment.

Texas Business reports:  IBC Advanced Alloys Corp announced that Purdue University has filed provisional patents covering IBC-funded current nuclear fuel research and new discoveries, underway at Purdue and Texas A&M universities. 

Texas Business reports:  A Garland firm won a $48.7 million contract to supply night vision devices for U.S. Special Operations, the U.S. Department of Defense announced. 

Texas Business reports:  A Fort Worth firm won a $7.9 million contract modification to work on helicopter helmets for the SuperCobra attack helicopter. 

Texas Business reports:  A New York firm bought a College Station company in a $29 million transaction. 

Windmills In West Texas. Photo by Karnegie Musa. Copyright 2010.

Texas Business reports:  U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced today that the Department of Energy is awarding more than $5 million to support U.S. wind energy development, including two projects in Texas.

Texas Business reports:  FORT WORTH—A groundbreaking cryogenic titanium machining process, planned for use in the production of Lockheed Martin's F-35 Lightning II stealth fighter, will make its public debut at the International Manufacturing Technology Show  2010, Sept. 13-18 in Chicago. 

Texas Business notes that the University of Texas business school has added an interesting degree:  The University of Texas at Austin McCombs School of Business is adding the Master of Science in Technology Commercialization Program (MSTC) to its graduate degree offerings, Tom Gilligan, dean of the McCombs School, has announced.

Texas Business recommends this story by Brian Gaar of the Austin American-Statesman:   If you're an expert gamer, maybe you could play a game like "Super Mario Bros." using your toes on the controller.

Texas Business recommends this story by Kirk Ladendorf of the Austin American-Statesman:  Dell rode robust sales to business customers to a stronger second quarter than a year ago, posting a 22 percent gain in revenue and a 16 percent increase in profit, the company said Thursday.

Texas Business recommends this story by Kirk Ladendorf of the Austin American-Statesman:  Xtreme Power Inc., the Kyle-based developer of large energy storage systems, has been named as the storage system provider to a proposed high-profile energy transmission project known as Tres Amigas.

Texas Business notes this story in the New York Times DealBook edited by Andrew Ross Sorkin:  Dell said that it has agreed to buy 3PAR, a data storage company, for about $1.15 billion in cash, as the computer giant races to expand beyond its core PC-making business.

Texas Business recommends this story by Kirk Ladendorf of the Austin American-Statesman:  Dell agreed Monday to pay $1.15 billion in cash for a California-based maker of data storage systems as the computer maker moves to expand its storage offerings to big customers.

Texas Business reports:  Dallas-based Texas Instruments Incorporated today introduced a new symmetric polarity transceiver that protects the system from communication losses and potential damage should the signal wires be inadvertently reversed during installation or maintenance. 

Texas Business reports:  Smooth-Stone today announced it is raising $48 million from a unique syndicate of investors comprising industry leading venture capital firms and semiconductor innovators. 

Texas Business reports:  Intel Corporation today announced it has signed an agreement to acquire Dallas-based Texas Instruments' cable modem product line. 

TexasBusiness.com notes this story by WMBFNews: Daniel Vitiello, a 19-year-old Texas Tech sophomore, taught himself to fix Apple's 3G, 3GS and 4 iPhones, and now fixes dozens of them from his parent's dining room.

TexasBusiness.com reports:  BEIJING—Telestone Technologies Corporation, a leading developer and provider of telecommunications local access networks solutions in China, today announced that its Wireless Fiber Optic Distribution System  has been selected as the local access network technology application for installation at a Houston hospital.

TexasBusiness.com notes: The state mapping project has identified gaps in high-speed Internet service in rural McLennan County, but it’s still unclear if billions of dollars in federal funding will fix the problems.

According to a recently released map of broadband connections allowing high-speed Internet use, 92.4 percent of the county’s households have broadband, or high-speed, Internet service available to their homes, reports Bill Teeter of the Waco Tribune-Herald. 

TexasBusiness.com reports: Evolution Solar Corporation announced today that construction on the solar power lighting demonstration project located in Brookshire has been completed.

The project was announced on May 26. The city of Brookshire supplied the location for the project and will allow Evolution Solar access to the project to use as a demonstration site for potential customers.  

TexasBusiness.com reports: WebWorks, a leading enterprise digital content conversion and publishing software company based in Austin, today announced what it claims to be the first enterprise level content conversion tool with built-in support for the Apple iPad and ePUB standard. WebWorks' ePublisher 2010 Mobile Plus release is the first enterprise solution to support the emerging ePUB standard to create eBooks readable on the newest generation of mobile content devices.

There aren't many people these days who don't have a cellphone. That's a problem for Dallas-based AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc, reports Victor Godinez of the Dallas Morning News. 

Samsung Electronics is holding a job fair Saturday to hire technicians for its expanded Northeast Austin semiconductor plant.  The event is tied to the $3.6 billion expansion of Samsung's giant Fab 2 complex, reports Kirk Ladendorf of the Austin American-Statesman.

Texas Instruments Inc.'s second-quarter profit and revenue jumped as demand continued to recover, yet investors had expected even better results.Shares fell more than 5 percent after the chipmaker's report was released Monday, reports the Austin American-Statesman. 

While SpaceX, which tests its rocket motors in McGregor,. TX, had a major success, Senator Hutchinson believes it threatens the Johnson Space Center.