In today’s Bulldog Update of technology news: Biogen donates hemophilia medicines made in RTP to Africa; new tool expands tracking of personal data online; Google part of $100M raise by messaging startup Symphony, Twitter cutting workforce.
Biogen donates hemophilia therapy
The first shipments of much-needed hemophilia therapy have started to arrive at treatment centers across the developing world from Biogen (NASDAQ: BIIB). These shipments are part of the largest humanitarian aid pledge of its kind to help people with hemophilia in developing countries.
The donation will provide up to 500 million units of hemophilia therapy over five years and represents a significant contribution to the expansion of their Humanitarian Aid Program, a 20-year old initiative dedicated to providing treatment and care for people with hemophilia in the developing world. This initiative is the first phase of Biogen and Sobi’s ten-year commitment to produce 1 billion International Units (IUs) of hemophilia therapy for humanitarian use.
Hemophilia is a rare, chronic, inherited disorder in which the ability of a person’s blood to clot is impaired. “The majority of people with hemophilia in developing countries do not live past adulthood and if they do, they face a life of severe disability and chronic pain,” said Assad E. Haffar, M.D., WFH Humanitarian Aid Program Director. “The lack of access to clotting factor concentrates in these countries presents an urgent and important public health challenge.”
The first recipient countries of the donation include Senegal, Kenya, Philippines, Dominican Republic, Uzbekistan, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Pakistan, El Salvador, Indonesia, Ghana, Myanmar, India, Sri Lanka and Nigeria.
Sunlight tool matches ads to online users
Computer scientists, Augustin Chaintreau and Daniel Hsu, and graduate students Mathias Lecuyer, Riley Spahn and Yannis Spiliopoulos, Geambasu of Columbia University have designed a second-generation tool for bringing transparency to the Web. It’s called Sunlight and builds on its predecessor, XRay, which linked ads shown to Gmail users with text in their emails, and recommendations on Amazon and YouTube with their shopping and viewing patterns.
The researchers will present the new tool and a related study on Oct. 14 in Denver, at the Association for Computing Machinery’s annual conference on security.
Sunlight works at a wider scale than XRay, and more accurately matches user-tailored ads and recommendations to tidbits of information supplied by users, the researchers say. Prior researchers have traced specific ads, product recommendations and prices to specific inputs like location, search terms and gender, one by one.
Sunlight’s intended audience is regulators, consumer watchdogs and journalists. The tool lets them explore how personal information is being used and decide where closer investigation is needed, they said. “In many ways the web has been a force for good, but there needs to be accountability if it’s going to remain that way,” said Chaintreau.
For more see: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-10/cu-nte100915.php
Google joins $100M funding of Symphony Communication Services
Symphony Communication Services, a chat service for financial firms, corporate customers, and individuals to place all their digital communications in a centralized platform, has raised $100 million from investors including Google, UBS Group AG, and Lakestar, a European venture capital firm.
The company previously raised $66 million from a group of 14 banks, including Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., and JP Morgan Chase & Co.
The Symphone service is aimed at businesses with more than 50 users and costs $15 per user a month. Smaller businesses and individuals can use it free.
For more information see: http://tinyurl.com/pugousg
Twitter cutting workforce
Twiter Inc (TWTR.N) says it will lay off as many as 336 employees or 8 percent of its global workforce to streamline operations.
The layoffs follow the appointment of co-founder Jack Dorsey as permanent CEO. The layoffs will affect mostly product and engineering divisions.
“We feel strongly that engineering will move much faster with a smaller and nimbler team, while remaining the biggest percentage of our workforce,” Dorsey said in a letter to employees. “And the rest of the organization will be streamlined in parallel.”
The company’s shares rose about 1.5 percent in pre-market trading Tuesday to $29.18. The company expects its third-quarter revenue to come in at the higher range of its forecast of $545 to $560 million.
Twitter shares dropped about 20 percent this year.
