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A pre-designed biomanufacturing facility with advance planning permission is the latest carrot devised by the Industrial Development Authority (IDA) Ireland in its efforts to attract international biopharmaceutical manufacturing projects.

The European Commission is reviving a push for a common patent policy by asking for input of ideas from industry and stakeholders - a move that would renew a fierce debate that has spanned more than three decades.

Researchers at the Advanced Technology Institute at the University of Surrey recently reported that they have shown and observed a phenomenon called negative differential resistance - holding out the prospect of a new generation of cheap and fast semiconductors.

Venture capitalists are once again funding nanotech start-ups, but their overall investment is small compared with government funding and corporate R&D spending, says to a new report.

The UK's stem cell community has reacted with collective dismay at the final confirmation that Hwang Woo-suk's claims to have generated patient-specific embryonic stem cell lines were fraudulent. Nuala Moran takes a look.

For some it was like a very bad Greek tragedy, for others a hoax more naive than the Piltdown man. But Hwang Wo-suk's fall from grace puts the UK on level terms with South Korea in the race to generate embryonic stem cells from cloned embryos.

In his first interview since taking up the job, Bruno van Pottelsberghe, the 37-year-old newly appointed chief economist at the European Patent Office, bemoans the failure to create a single EU-wide patent.

Scientific Generics, the technology consultancy based in Cambridge, UK, has exported its 'Innovation Angels' methodology to Oslo in a pilot programme supported by the industrial development agency Innovation Norway.

The concept of angel investing - in which individuals devote both their time and money to nurturing young companies - has evolved over the past decade from an unknown or poorly understand phenomena in many parts of Europe to an established form of finance.

Venture capital firms used to moan that business angels were unprofessional and hard to work with. But Europe's new breed of angel investor networks appears anything but that, says Mary Lisbeth D'Amico

Marc Van Montagu, Europe's founding father of genetically modified crops and a powerful advocate for their acceptance in Europe, speaks to Science|Business News Editor Thomas Lau.