It’s been a really good week for space programs across the world.

We’re hearing rumbling that NASA is plotting a new manned outpost on the moon (as well as launching a new water-seeking rover), and now the U.K. government has decided to increase its funding to the European Space Agency (ESA).

Government officials are currently spending about £170 million (about $270 million) on funding to the agency but will now increase that amount by another £60 million (about $95 million). Officials cite the space program’s impressive financial returns, as well as the program’s potential to boost job growth, as justification for the fresh funding. The funding also comes despite a five percent reduction in overall civil research spending since 2010.

“We have underestimated the strength of our space industry. In fact, we are a global player in satellite and telecommunications technology,” Chancellor George Osborne told BBC News. “This additional investment is a signal to ESA and commercial companies that we are going to continue to support space science and technology.”

Hear that, America? Spending money on the space program is a good investment — and one that world-renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson would most definitely agree with. Tyson made an impassioned speech to Congress earlier this year, urging it to double NASA’s funding from a half-cent on every dollar to a full cent.

As for the British space effort, I think it would (probably) gain another big funding increase if it officially labeled the program the Ministry of Space, as cited in the fictional graphic novel written by Warren Ellis. (It just sounds cooler.)

The video game industry isn’t such an odd stepchild in entertainment anymore. The $67 billion worldwide industry is breaking through barriers on the cultural, legal, and political fronts, according to the annual report of the Entertainment Software Association, the U.S. industry’s trade group with 37 game publishes as members.

The most astounding stat just might be how many people are playing games in the U.S. The ESA said that 72 percent of U.S. households play games, a greater percentage than ever. Of these, 82 percent are adults, and 42 percent are women.

Gaming has also seen a great deal of activity in the political arena. During 2011, the ESA faced 171 bills that attempted to regulate video games in 39 states. But in the summer of 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court put an end to much of the debate by ruling that video games are a protected form of speech under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The group said that lawmakers in Florida, Puerto Rico, Texas, and Utah acknowledged the industry’s economic benefits by enacting bills that created tax incentives for computer and video game production. Twenty-two states now provide such incentives. A total of 25 tax incentive proposals became law in 13 states and one U.S. territory. Nine bills in three states sought to eliminate incentives. All of those suffered defeat. Even the conservative bastion of Texas approved $32 million to fund its industry incentive over the next two years.

During the year, the Entertainment Software Rating Board, which game companies fund, launched a mobile version of its game rating system that helps parents manage their children’s gameplay. A survey said that 85 percent of parents are aware of the ESRB’s ratings system.

The group lobbied Congress through the launch of its E-Tech Caucus, which held a reception celebrating games in Washington, D.C. Gallagher testified before the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology at a hearing on the growing uses of computer and video games in education. The ESA also held its second annual Games and Learning Summit during the E3 2011 trade show.

The Video Game Voters Network, which recruits consumers to support causes protecting video games as free speech, grew to more than 310,000 members. Its Facebook page has more than 18,000 friends, and it has 3,100 Twitter followers. The program has ambassadors on 390 U.S. college campuses.

The Electronics Entertainment Expo trade show remains a top draw, in both attendance and mind share. The 2011 E3 drew 24 billion media impressions and 45,000 attendees. In a survey of the 2011 crowd, 93 percent said they planned to participate in E3 2012.

The ESA remains active in the fight against software piracy as well. The trade group joined with the Congressional International Anti-Piracy Caucus to name Canada, China, Russia, Spain, and Ukraine to a “watch list” of high piracy countries. The ESA conducted 45 training sessions for 1,500 law enforcement officials about detecting and identifying game piracy. Six major pirates were prosecuted in the U.S. Dozens of other raids were pursued in other countries.

---

GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

---

The city of Los Angeles is planning to tear down the West Hall of the convention center as part of its proposed Farmers Field football stadium.

Mike Gallagher, head of the Entertainment Software Association, said in a conversation with GamesBeat at a Microsoft event on Monday evening that a decision about moving out or staying in LA was “imminent.” He said the proposal from the ESA has been with the city for months and now is the time to act on it. Among the issues related to a remodeling of the convention center are traffic, construction, and a smaller amount of floor space.

The show is a big deal to LA because it generates more than 30,000 hotel room stays, draws 46,000 attendees, and generates $40 million in revenue for the city. That comes in the form of direct spending on lodging, restaurants, taxis, construction workers and booth attendants.

Sources close to the association said that San Francisco, New York, Chicago, and New Orleans are among the alternative cities. E3 has been in LA for 16 of its 18 years, with a detour to Atlanta for a couple of years. Having been to almost all of them, I recall the muggy summer days in Atlanta and won’t necessarily welcome New Orleans or Chicago. New York is pretty expensive, and San Francisco has smaller venues.

But I think the driving reason that the show should be in LA is because that is the nexus of the entertainment industry. Perhaps it might be OK to move the show out for a couple of years and then return when LA gets its act together. But for the long term, the show should be in LA.

As a further thought, San Francisco is the home of the Game Developers Conference. That event is for developers, and it makes sense because so many developers are based in Los Angeles. But LA is where a lot of the powerful entertainment industry leaders hold court. Since E3 is a publisher’s show, a show for the marketers and power brokers, it belongs in LA and not San Francisco.

An estimated 45,000 people are going to attend industry trade show Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) this week at the Los Angeles Convention Center in downtown L.A., Calif.

That’s the same number as last year, and at first glance, it might seem like nothing has changed with the show or the industry. But some game companies are in a bad state as the industry shifts under their feet. They’re trying to adapt, and so is the show. The good thing is that E3 remains the biggest place to see the new entertainment coming for gamers in the next year.

More than 200 companies will exhibit their wares across 370,000 square feet of exhibit space, according to Rich Taylor, senior vice president of communications at the Entertainment Software Association, the trade industry group for game publishers. Thousands of games will be on display.

“As a gamer, I’ll be so excited to see what’s coming myself,” he said. “The show continues to evolve and reflect the industry. There are broader market games with mobile and social companies coming. We’re seeing platforms for families to play games everywhere.”

The theme of the show is “innovation unveiled.” E3 will portray an industry in flux, with old stalwarts like THQ dropping from the show floor. But Japan’s Gree has taken up a big booth to show off mobile games as it launches its mobile social gaming network in the U.S.

Video game sales crashed 42 percent in April compared to a year before, according to NPD game stats. But those numbers don’t include “digital” sales, or those sold via online distribution or games played on mobile devices or social networks. If you look at that broader market, the industry is healthy, Taylor said.

Taylor notes that a big hit can generate much more revenue today than in the past. In 2006, the top seller, Electronic Arts’ Madden NFL 2007, sold more than 1.8 million units in its first week on sale. But Diablo III, launched last month by Blizzard Entertainment after a nine-year development cycle, sold more than 6.3 million units in the first week. He also noted that digital revenues for EA exceeded $1 billion in 2011.

The attendees include media, retailers, and game company executives. The attendance number is just about the same as the numbers for the past two years, Taylor said. The ESA still restricts the size of the show so that it retains its value to the movers and shakers in the industry. And the show remains closed to the general public.

Big game company press conferences will kick off with Microsoft on Monday morning, Sony on Monday evening, and Nintendo on Tuesday morning. Then the actual exhibition will run from Tuesday through Thursday.

As for the trends of the show, Taylor said, “Your guess is as good as mine. But we’ll see all the entertainment that people will enjoy for the next year. There are titles I’m exciting about and some surprises, too.”

---

GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

---

The video game industry trade group, the Entertainment Software Association, (headed by Mike Gallagher, pictured) issued a statement today that said, ”From the beginning, ESA has been committed to the passage of balanced legislation to address the illegal theft of intellectual property found on foreign rogue sites. Although the need to address this pervasive threat to our industry’s creative investment remains, concerns have been expressed about unintended consequences stemming from the current legislative proposals.”

“Accordingly, we call upon Congress, the Obama Administration, and stakeholders to refocus their energies on producing a solution that effectively balances both creative and technology interests. As an industry of innovators and creators, we understand the importance of both technological innovation and content protection and are committed to working with all parties to encourage a balanced solution.”

Earlier, the ESA said that it was in favor of SOPA, which drew huge protests because of provisions in the bill that seemed tantamount to censorship of internet sites in favor of Hollywood congolmerates. The SOPA vote has been delayed, due in large part to huge protests that arose on the internet.

The ESA’s previous stance didn’t seem particularly friendly toward consumers, and some groups took it to task. The bill drew opposition from the Entertainment Consumers Association, and it prompted Mark Kern, CEO of Red 5 Studios, to form a rival game organization called the League For Gamers.

In a statement, the League for Gamers said, “While we applaud the ESA’s decision, we wished it had come before the death of these bills, rather than afterwards. Perhaps most significantly, it means that gamers have become an incredibly important voice in the gaming industry, and that the LFG has won it’s first battle with the aid of all of your support.”

The LFG added, “The fact that the ESA was a huge financial backer of this legislation, means the LFG must remain an ever vigilant proponent for gamers and like-minded developers against future misguided legislation.
SOPA and PIPA will surely resurface under new names, with perhaps different wording, but with ever bit as destructive force as the original versions. We will be there. We will never forget. We will always be watching.”

Meanwhile, the Consumer Electronics Association chief executive Gary Shapiro declared victory in “What we did right and Hollywood did wrong” in a post. Shapiro said that the “content lobby” spent a lot of money in favor of the bill, “but we won a big one this week as a public avalanche of input persuaded politicians that they should actually read the legislation they co-sponsor and support.” The CEA warned legislators of the “bad legislation,” Shapiro said. At the Consumer Electronics Association, Shapiro called on an “army of geeks” to defeat the legislation.

---

GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

---

Frustrated by the Entertainment Software Association‘s (ESA) support of the proposed anti-piracy SOPA and PIPA legislation, Red 5 Studios CEO Mark Kern has founded the League For Gamers (LFG), which intends to advocate for developers’ and gamers’ rights and give them a voice in Washington.

The group’s first action is a petition to ESA to drop their support of the Stop Online Privacy Act bill and the Protect IP Act, “which would trample on the free speech of videogames and innovation in the game industry.” LFG also calls for a media boycott of the ESA-organized E3 tradeshow.

LFG President and Red 5 Studios CEO Mark Kern is a former World of Warcraft team lead and a graduate of Boston University School of Law. Speaking to VentureBeat, Mark Kern criticized the ESA as “too focused on the large publisher, box retail product motif – part of their support for PIPA and SOPA stems from this. When are we going to learn from what happened to the music industry, and find new ways and new business models that offer consumers better alternatives to piracy? Rather than preserve a dying model in the face of digital distribution, free-to-play and cloud-based gaming, we should embrace the change and shift our focus to these new models.”

Kern had a call with the ESA General Counsel where they agreed that tools are needed to combat piracy. But in Kern’s opinion “the ESA is blind to any potential for abuse and feels they and the courts will be fair arbiters of this extensive power. Anyone who has witnessed the recent DNS takedowns, and spurious DCMA actions last year, can see this is a ridiculous statement for blind and naive faith. I also pointed out that many developers oppose SOPA and PIPA, and [big companies] have all quietly dropped SOPA support… so who the heck is the ESA representing at this point?”

When asked whether a second industry association besides ESA wouldn’t split and weaken the industry’s voice, Kern responded “The truth is that the ESA fractured the support base. They did so by going forward with $190,000 worth of PIPA and SOPA support without consulting their members, and by ignoring the fact that their membership was split on the issue. Even worse than that, they turned their backs on gamers, who supported them through their subsidiary organization, the VGVN (Video Game Voters Network). You can see hundreds of angry complaints on their Facebook page and in the press on their quite hypocritical and dual-faced stance. The ESA needed the VGVN to help fight and win First Amendment rights to free speech for videogames. Now they are conveniently ignoring the same gamers who helped them.”

LFG was funded with a $50,000 pledge by Mark Kern and is currently filing for non-profit status. The next step is opening up a paid membership program with benefits that, according to Kern, “will foster gaming, in addition to representing gamers in Washington. We aim to be the NRA for gamers.”

SOPA gives both the U.S. government and copyright holders the authority to seek court orders against foreign-operated websites associated with infringing, pirating or counterfeiting intellectual property. If it becomes law, it could drastically change the way the Internet operates. For example, if a website is accused of containing copyright-infringing content (like a song, picture, video clip etc.), the site could be blocked by ISPs, de-indexed from search engines and even prevented from doing business online with services like PayPal. The LFG views it as “overbearing legislation which would not only fail to protect IP rights for developers, but would also have a chilling effect on free speech, live streaming, e-Sports, gaming innovation and user created content”.

Red 5 Studios will join the likes of Wikipedia and shut down its web site on January 18^th as a sign of protest “against misguided and overbearing legislative initiatives such as SOPA, (Stop Online Privacy Act), and PIPA, (Protect IP Act), in order to perpetuate and continue industry growth.” The test servers for the company’s upcoming free-to-play MMO Firefall will also be closed for the day.

We’ve sent a message to the ESA for a response.

---

GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

---

VB: What can we expect to see this year at E3?

MG: If you liked it last year, then you’ll love it this year. Our momentum has continued. The eyes of the world will be on Los Angeles to see what’s coming next in entertainment. That’s where the video game industry is now. We define the entertainment experience for the rest of the world, and E3 is where you see it first. We went back to the key stakeholders: you, the media; the analysts; publishers and developers. We decided to crank things up a little bit. We have 10 percent more attendees at about 45,000. We cut off registration because we feel no need to overshoot that number. We want to preserve the chemistry. We’ll have 300 exhibitors across 350,000 square feet, and that is up. We have 4,500 mainstream print, broadcast and online journalists. We have 1,000 foreign journalists coming and 200 buyers. The White House chief technology officer Aneesh Chopra is coming. The trend line is good, and the buzz is very high.

VB: It seems like gesture controls or motion sensing will be a big theme at the show?

MG: Last year, I said our industry was redefining the interface between humans and computers. Nintendo set that in motion with the motion-sensing Wii controller. It made it easy for everyone to be a gamer. That has been a key component of our industry’s success and Nintendo’s success. We saw the teasing of more of that last year. And this year, you get to play with things like Project Natal from Microsoft and Sony’s Move controller. We will also see an interesting announcement in the handheld space from Nintendo. We will see a number of titles that we can play from Microsoft and Sony.

VB: It seems like you’re saying the whole world should be watching games because things are happening in the game industry that are important to the rest of society?

MG: Absolutely true. The video game industry has never been broader than it is today. About 38 percent of women are gamers. The average gamer is 35. A quarter of gamers are over 50. We are reaching every segment of society. If you want sports, shooters, strategy or other games — all of those are under one roof at E3. If you are looking for the cutting edge of creativity, the cutting edge of innovation, you do it in video games. Musicians do it through music games. James Cameron spoke at length about Avatar the film last year. But he also talked much more about the intersection of games and motion pictures going forward. This was well before Avatar was the blockbuster it would become. There is a huge amount of interest in our industry, and it is all on display at E3.

VB: On the other hand, the U.S. console game sales reports have been bumpy, going up and down, this year. How concerned are you about that?

MG: Our industry has never enjoyed a greater level of interest from the consumer. Everywhere there is a screen, people want to play a game. Whether it’s the iPad or plasma television or PC, people want to turn it on and play games. That is a great wind in the sails of our industry. We are working on monetizing that. John Riccitiello, chief executive of Electronic Arts, pointed out that in 2003, there were 200 million gamers. In 2009, there were 1.2 billion. The trend lines are positive, and it’s much broader than just the consoles. Now the consoles are becoming the hub in the home, and they all have connections to Twitter, Facebook and Netflix. You see an increasing relevance across the board. On monetization issues, you see progress being made. It’s just not reported by the industry analysts that track this stuff. I’m very encouraged when I see that there are $5 billion to $6 billion in digital transactions in games, in addition to the traditional console space where we are pretty good at counting. It speaks to the dynamic nature of the industry.

VB: Are you working to get more of the interesting platform companies into the show, like Apple or Zynga?

MG: What you have to realize is that there are some very interesting companies already in the show. We do outreach to companies like the ones you listed. But remember, EA bought Playfish. Those types of games from Facebook are represented at E3. It was probably a little too early for Zynga, since they have been so busy growing. We have a great dialogue with them. I have visited them and am very impressed with their success. The doors are always open for those companies to come to E3. We have a great deal of interest in the smartphone game market. The screens are so much better and the games are reaching new consumers.

VB: Is this transition to digital online games critical to your members, and are they handling the transition well?

MG: Our industry is handling it far better than other forms of media. Newspapers are falling off the face of the earth because they lived in denial of the digital transition to the web. Movies are figuring it out as they go, and they are seeing a major erosion of one of their primary revenue streams in DVD sales. The traditional music industry was eaten alive by the digital environment because they weren’t ready for piracy. We are integrating the digital experience while maintaining the traditional one as well. We are going to bridge this gap. It’s happening now, incrementally. EA is offering everything from free-to-play games to console games to social gaming. More members are adopting a variety of business models. At the same time, you see traditional games like Red Dead Redemption doing fabulous sales.

VB: How strong is the ESA’s membership now?

MG: We are up to 34 publisher members. We added eight this year and 10 last year. They represent the full breadth of the industry.

VB: You still don’t have Activision Blizzard as a member. I suppose you’re working on that?

MG: That is their choice. The door is open. The ESA has a very important mission to pursue for the industry, and the members benefit. When we go to the state legislatures to seek incentives for our industry — and we have been successful in more than 20 states — members and non-members benefit. We work on anti-piracy techniques with internet service providers, using both legal and technical resources. We share those approaches with the members. The members lead and the non-members follow. We have doubled our membership since Activision left.

VB: If Activision Blizzard had joined, I suppose you would have been more vocal about the problems the Blizzard Entertainment division had with the (temporary) ban of World of Warcraft in China?

MG: China is a very complicated space, for us and every other industry. You have an opportunity for spectacular growth in a premium market. But there are serious and fundamental flaws in their policies on market access and other matters. Activision Blizzard has had to deal with those problems on its own without the resources of the ESA. We assist our membership on a targeted basis in China. We have meetings with my counterparts from throughout the world. We are moving forward. We have a very important mission, and that has been underscored by the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court is going to look at a video game case.

VB: How are you expecting the Supreme Court case (about laws banning violent video games sales to minors) to go?

MG: We are looking at the chance to put this behind the industry once and for all. The Supreme Court is very intelligent, and we will advocate our case zealously on behalf of our industry, artists and consumers. We want to focus much more on the positive aspects of what this industry means to the country and to our culture.

VB: You mentioned the state subsidies. I know that Canada has made a good run at recruiting American companies. Is that a concern? They are offering a lot of financial incentives.

MG: It’s an opportunity for our companies. Canada has a good educated workforce and their incentives are generous. What we are doing in the U.S. is going to the states to make sure they are doing what they can to be competitive. In Texas, the state legislature tripled the incentive pool over two years to $60 million. That’s a significant move that helps put Texas on a more equal footing. The goal for us in the U.S. is to reach the same level of success. It’s a concern from the U.S. perspective. We want to close that gap.

VB: How do members look at used game sales as an issue?

MG: This is a very sensitive issue. There are antitrust concerns at the association level, where it’s not legal for us to discuss pricing. We scrupulously follow those antitrust rules. I don’t have a lot to say. We have no discussions on it. It is not an agenda market. What you can see in the market is that there are different techniques being used by the publishers to deal with used games.

VB: What’s the latest on piracy?

MG: Last year, I called it a scourge. It has only gotten worse. With the growth of broadband, the magnitude of piracy has expanded dramatically. We did a survey of member games. There were 13 million illegal downloads of top-tier member titles in December alone. Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 became the most pirated game of the year after it came out in November. In a matter of six weeks, there were 3.8 million illegal copies made. That is an enormous lost opportunity for the industry. We make enforcement a priority.

VB: What do you think of digital distribution? OnLive is getting started next week.

MG: I think the server-based games or web-based games are illustrative of the consumer’s desire to play games on any screen they come in contact with. I see it as an indicator of the innovation, excitement, and adoption of games as a culturally leading form of entertainment. Within that, there is turbulence. Some new avenues for the industry are being opened up at E3.

VB: What are you personally looking forward to at the show?

MG: I have to fight like crazy to get a couple of hours to see the show floor. I want to see the new hardware enhancements, what Nintendo is showing on the handheld space, and the new titles. You see the richness of the visuals and sound and stories behind games when you walk the floor at E3. It’s hypnotic.

---

GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

---

New restrictions, which the panel didn’t spell out, could put a serious crimp in ESA sales, which currently amount to billions of dollars for Amgen and Johnson & Johnson. The two companies have also been taking a public-relations battering in terms of how they promote the drugs. Yesterday, the NYT ran a front-page piece that detailed how rebates offered by Amgen and J&J encourage doctors to overuse the drugs, and today the WSJ followed with a look at whistleblower allegations that J&J boosted EPO sales by pushing higher-than-approved doses.

It’s worth remembering that while the storm is currently walloping industry giants like Amgen and J&J, plenty of smaller biotechs that have staked their hopes on getting into the anemia-treatment game could eventually be affected as well. These companies include Affymax, FibroGen and Neose. Only Affymax is public; another potential ESA competitor, GlycoFi, was acquired by Merck last year.

First embryonic stem-cell trial edges forward – By early next year, Geron plans to be injecting recent spinal-injury patients with nerve cells grown from embryonic stem cells, in hopes of regenerating damaged nerve pathways. This trial was supposed to be underway already, but last year the FDA requested more animal data for safety purposes. Geron CEO Thomas Okarma says the treatment will have been tested in 2,000 animals before it ever reaches humans. The FT’s Clive Cookson has the story.

Aggressive treatment leads to worse “quality of death” in cancer patients – File this one under things you already knew but didn’t want to think about. A study of 243 advanced cancer patients revealed that a greater number of aggressive treatments — including the use of ventilators and non-palliative chemotherapy — in the last week of life was associated with greater physical and psychological distress and a lower chance of dying in a preferred location (often home). Money quotes:

[Said study lead author Gabriel Silverman:] “These results suggest that when patients are actively dying, the use of aggressive treatments should be considered with caution and only pursued with the full understanding of patients or their surrogate decision makers.

[...]

“As a doctor, if I had a patient or family who wanted aggressive, life-sustaining care toward the end of their life, I would view it as a red flag warning of patient or caregiver distress,” Dr. [Robert] Arnold [of the University of Pittsburgh] concluded. “Often patients and their families are suffering, sad, or distressed at the end of life, and when dying occurs in medical settings they may hope that aggressive treatment will help the suffering, but often it doesn’t.”

Tau gets a little respect – For the past decade or so, Alzheimer’s researchers have concentrated their attention on beta amyloid, the protein that clumps around neurons in “tangles” visible in the autopsied brains of many — though not all — Alzheimer’s patients. Now comes evidence that a dark-horse protein called tau may also bear some responsibility for the disease. Researchers reported last week in Science that they reversed memory loss in mice by tinkering with their genes to produce lower levels of the tau protein. It’s heartening to see competing theories getting some attention in the Alzheimer’s community, which has had an unfortunate tendency to shun researchers who strayed from the majority opinion, but don’t expect beta-amyloid supporters to give much ground until they have to. That might be soon, as a new batch of drugs designed to block formation of beta-amyloid tangles should begin reporting data from human trials later this year.

New genetic heart-disease link – Another whole-genome association study has identified a new genetic variation that appears to increase heart-attack risk by 60 percent in European populations. The catch is that the variation doesn’t appear to be associated with any known gene, and instead exists in the long stretches of non-coding, or “junk,” DNA, meaning that no one has any idea why it should have any effect on heart-attack rates. The NYT has more.

Stem-cell researchers make like Willie Sutton – Near the end of this otherwise unremarkable account of a talk by James Thomson, the Wisconsin researcher who first isolated and grew human embryonic stem cells, comes this interesting nugget: Thomson will open a “satellite laboratory” on the UC Santa Barbara campus for stem-cell collaborations with UCSB researchers. Coincidentally enough, having a presence in the state might also qualify Thomson for funding by California’s $3 billion stem-cell program. Willie Sutton, you’ll recall, is the outlaw who once proclaimed that he robbed banks “because that’s where the money is.” Some sentiments, it seems, are universal.

Hypocrisy in the generic-biologics fight? – The prospect of legislation that clears a path for “generic” versions of expensive biotech drugs appears to have dimmed significantly. But biotech consultant and blogger David Williams — no fan himself of the push for “biogenerics” — notes that biotech companies and their lobbyists may be shooting themselves in the foot when they argue that biogenerics could never be “identical” to branded products now on the market. It’s worth reading his entire post — it’s not long — but the gist is that changing the manufacturing process for name-brand biotech drugs, which happens all the time, opens up the same “equivalence” issues that BIO and its allies find insurmountable where biogenerics are concerned. The main difference is that name-brand manufacturers can handle the issue with short, inexpensive “bioequivalence” trials — but they insist that biogenerics must undergo expensive, full-blown clinical testing to assure their efficacy and safety. If the biogenerics issue heats up again, don’t be surprised to see this argument make a comeback.

Surgical robots in space, stem cells in rodent eyes – These are just two interesting stories from the San Jose Mercury News I haven’t yet had a chance to mention. Last Sunday, the Merc ran this piece on efforts to automate surgery, with the ultimate goal of building robots that could operate on astronauts in space or soldiers on the battlefield. Far off and far out stuff. Similarly, this piece outlined the possibility of growing new blood vessels using an early and highly regenerative stem cell called a hemangioblast. Ultimately, these fast-growing cells could one day regrow blood vessels in the heart, eyes or limbs that were damaged by injury or disease.