NCTimes.com Blogs

San Diego County is facing tougher competition in the growing cyber security sector, and could lose business if it’s complacent, local business leaders said.
With the Obama administration pouring billions into the technology sector, areas around the country are competing fiercely, said Duane Roth, director of the technology entrepreneur group Connect, and Michael Jones, president of The Security Network, a local trade group.
Charleston, S.C. has mounted a particularly significant challenge, Roth said. A business alliance there is seeking to gain cyber security work now handled in San Diego by the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, or SpaWar. The agency administers a total of about $2.4 billion in contracts per year.
Since Charleston has its own SpaWar facilities, the challenge is particularly serious, Roth said.
“Cyber security’s a huge area, not only in defense, but in everything —- patient records, business practices, all kinds of things,” Roth said. “We just can’t take it for granted.”
Cyber security’s reach keeps expanding as the Internet and related communications technologies move further into the nation’s infrastructure, Jones said. The “smart grid” that brings two-way communications between utilities and users is one example.
“There’s a huge need to protect the information,” Jones said. “If a bad person gets in, they could turn off the electricity. There’s all kinds of things that could be done.”
Military networks face the same challenge as they move toward being “interoperable,” with common standards, Jones said. The easier it is for the networks to communicate with each other, the easier it will be for intruders to get in.
Part of the region’s expertise will be put on display next week at a conference by The Security Network on robotics, information security and sensors.
San Diego is one of the top areas for cyber security work, Jones said, but quantifying it more precisely is difficult because much of the activity is classified. It includes research centers such as UC San Diego and work performed by the region’s large defense industry.
Stefan Savage, a noted cyber security expert at UCSD, said academic research is less vulnerable to a change in SpaWar operations than business activities, because SpaWar typically passes along money already allocated to a particular researcher.

LA JOLLA —- Genes that regulate insulin also influence the body’s circadian clock, according to a study by scientists at UCSD and the University of Pennsylvania.
The finding help explain links between sleeping disorders and development of other major health problems. Moreover, the scientists say, the finding provides insight into possible treatments.
The study, published online Thursday in the journal Cell, found 200 genes that affect the circadian clock. Seven of these genes are already known to help regulate insulin.
(NOTE: I’ll put up a link to the article when it’s up.)
Sleep disorders often occur along with obesity, high blood pressure and insulin resistance. The latter three are part of “metabolic syndrome,” which can lead to heart disease, stroke and Type 2 diabetes.
“People knew that the clock regulates many different processes, but what they didn’t realize what that when you tweak those processes, it feeds back and alters the clock,” said UCSD’s Steve Kay, in a press release. Kay, dean of biological sciences, led the study with John Hogenesch of the University of Pennsylvania.
The genes were found in cell cultures; even outside the body, the cells retain their daily activity cycle.
The study also found evidence that genes governing three other control systems also affect the circadian clock, one that governs the use of folate, a B-vitamin; and two that control cellular life cycles.
The researchers are sharing their discoveries; they’ve put information about the genes into an open-access database called BioGPS, at http://biogps.gnf.org.

SAN DIEGO —- Cymer Inc. raised its revenue estimates for the third quarter Monday, citing increased demand for its light sources, used in making semiconductor chips.

Cymer said it now expects third quarter revenues to increase by about 30 percent from $62 million in the second quarter. It had previously estimated an increase of about 15 percent.

The forecast is considerably brighter than in January, when Cymer said sales for its products had “declined sharply.” Then, the company laid off 100 employees and temporarily cut pay by 10 percent.

Around noon Monday PDT, Cymer shares were up 34 cents, to $37.15 each. The stock has rallied strongly since March, when it dipped below $17 per share.

Cymer’s light sources are used to etch circuit patterns on chips, such as those used in flash memory. While it’s by far the dominant maker of these light sources, the business is cyclical. Moreover, the company is in the throes of introducing a new generation of products, using EUV (extreme ultraviolet) lithography — actually soft X-rays — to etch the patterns.

SAN DIEGO —- The struggle to find an AIDS vaccine has been a heartbreaking record of failure. But researchers at The Scripps Research Institute and two biotech companies have made a discovery that could at last put the effort on the right path.
The researchers have found two powerful antibodies that attack HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. These “broadly neutralizing antibodies” attack many different varieties of HIV-1. Only four were known before the discovery. They are also the first to be discovered in developing countries, where AIDS is most threatening.
HIV mutates prolifically, so an effective vaccine must target parts of the virus that don’t change much. These two newly discovered antibodies, called PG9 and PG16, appear to target such a region, found in the “viral spike” HIV-1 uses to gain entry into cells. This could be an ideal target to exploit: If the virus can’t enter cells, it can’t infect them.
Perhaps even more importantly, the researchers found these antibodies with a new test that directly measures their ability to block HIV infection. Previous tests, working indirectly, may have missed many.
“I think it’s a very hopeful development,” said Scripps researcher Dennis Burton.
However, much more work needs to be done, said Burton, scientific director of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative’s Neutralizing Antibody Center at Scripps. The nonprofit initiative is funding research to develop an AIDS vaccine for use around the world. It launched an effort to find new broadly neutralizing antibodies in 2006.
Burton and the other researchers published their study, “Broad and Potent Neutralizing Antibodies from an African Donor Reveal a New
HIV-1 Vaccine Target,” in the Thursday online edition of Science. They include scientists from Theraclone Sciences and Monogram Biosciences as well as Scripps.

Down to the atoms
Burton said the initiative is using these antibodies to help map the exceedingly complex structure of HIV. The antibodies connect to the virus at specific points that complements their structure, much like a key fitting into a lock. But precisely how that works has yet to be determined.
“We have to understand in atomic level, at the molecular level, how these antibodies see the viral spike,” Burton said.
With that knowledge, the researchers can design a vaccine that will cause uninfected people to develop their own neutralizing antibodies.
In addition, scientists believe a successful vaccine will also have to activate white blood cells called T-cells to fight infection. HIV mainly infects T-cells, wearing down the body’s ability to resist infection from other microbes. That declining resistance results in AIDS, although some HIV-infected persons don’t show symptoms.

Helping developing countries
While drugs can hold AIDS in check for a long time, the virus can’t be eradicated from someone infected. Also, the drugs are expensive. So blocking the infection from occurring appears to hold out the most hope for those in poor countries, where AIDS is most threatening. That’s a major goal of the initiative.
The two new antibodies were discovered in an HIV-infected African. The four previously discovered antibodies are most effective for varieties of HIV common in North America and Europe.
The research team examined blood serum from about 1,800 HIV-infected donors, in sub-Saharan Africa, Australia, Thailand, the United Kingdom and the United States. The samples were tested by Monogram Biosciences of South San Francisco, working with Scripps’ Neutralizing Antibody Center and the initiatives AIDS vaccine laboratory in New York City.
Monogram supplied a new “micro-neutralization” test that measured the ability of antibodies found in the samples to block HIV from infecting target cells.
Tests previously used measured how well the antibodies bound to dissolved proteins from the “viral spike.” That was considered to be an indicator of how well the antibodies would block a virus from infecting a whole cell, but that turned out not to be the case, Burton said.
“A key to the success of this project is that we looked at lots and lots of antibodies to see whether they could neutralize the virus, rather than looking to see whether they bound to any given protein,” Burton said. “We had to look through 30,000 to find these two.”

So the warm blood flows

Through the large four-chambered heart

Maintaining the very high metabolism rate they have

— “Mammal”, They Might Be Giants

So just how did mammals get their four-chambered heart? From a genetic factor linked to heart development in turtles and other reptiles, say, scientists at the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease, located at UC San Francisco.

Moreover, the link may help shed light on human congenital heart disease. The research was published in the September 3 issue of the journal Nature, and released online at 10 a.m. PDT.

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