The pharmaceutical and agro-biotechnology industries have been confronted by dwindling product pipelines and rapid developments in life sciences, thus demanding a strategic rethink of conventional research and development. Despite offering both industries a solution to the pipeline problem, the life sciences have also brought complex regulatory challenges for firms. In this paper, we comment on...

Energy supply routes to a given TIAM region (say E.U.) are subject to randomness, resulting in partial or total closure of a route (corridor). For instance: a pipeline may be subject to technical problems that reduce its capacity. Or, oil supply by tanker may be reduced for political reasons or because of equipment mishaps at the point of origin, or again by a conscious decision by the supplier...

Forskolin is a promising medicinal compound belonging to a plethora of specialized plant metabolites that constitute a rich source of bioactive high-value compounds. A major obstacle for exploitation of plant metabolites is that they often are produced in small amounts and in plants difficult to cultivate. This may result in insufficient and unreliable supply leading to fluctuating and high sal...

Despite decades of support for international food assistance programs by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Office of Food for Peace, relatively little is known about the commodity pipeline and management issues these programs face in post-conflict and politically volatile settings. Based on an audit of the program's commodity tracking system and interviews with 13 key progra...

A goal of synthetic biology bio-foundries is to innovate through an iterative design/build/test/learn pipeline. In assessing the value of new chemical production routes, the intellectual property (IP) novelty of the pathway is important. Exploratory studies can be carried using knowledge of the patent/IP landscape for synthetic biology and metabolic engineering. In this paper, we perform an ass...

Recent advances in optogenetics have opened new routes to drug discovery, particularly in neuroscience. Physiological cellular assays probe functional phenotypes that connect genomic data to patient health. Optogenetic tools, in particular tools for all-optical electrophysiology, now provide a means to probe cellular disease models with unprecedented throughput and information content. These te...

offshore pipelines used for oil and gas transportation are often buried to avoid damage from fishing activities and to provide thermal insulation. thermal expansion and contraction of the pipeline during operation can lead to lateral or upheaval buckling. a safe buried pipeline design must take into account a reliable evaluation of soil uplift resistance and pipe embedment depth. while the cost...

using natural gas as a clean, plentiful and inexpensive source of energy in recent years has progressively increased in iran. pipelines are the most common system to transport natural gas from field to different regions of iran. these pipelines always pose risks to surrounding population and environments. the aim of this study was to assess the potential health, safety, and environment risk of ...