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30/07/2014
Barcelona among the top 10 cities in the world
Barcelona ranks 6th among cities in the world for the best global brand, 4th for the organization of international congresses, 10th for the number of foreign direct investment projects and 11th for scientific production. The capital of Catalonia ranks 7th among European cities with best perspectives for 2014/2015.
 
These figures, which confirm the attractiveness and competitiveness of Barcelona, are some of the data taken from the Observatori Barcelona 2014 report released on last July 9 by the City Council of Barcelona and the Chamber of Commerce.
 
This report, which annually compares the capital with the main cities in the world on the basis of different economic and sociologic indicators, shows that Barcelona improves its economic and entrepreneurial positioning at global level.
 
Observatori Barcelona 2014 report (in Catalan)

Press release (in Catalan)
 
24/07/2014
Researchers prove the effectiveness of a new drug against malaria using synchrotron light
Researchers from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech (UPC), the Institute of Medical Chemistry (IQM-CSIC) and the University of Glasgow have proved that the CD27 drug is a true alternative against malaria. They have analysed the crystalline structure of the DNA with the drug by performing X-ray diffraction experiments at the ALBA Synchrotron. This work has been published in the journal Acta Crystallographica D.

Read the full press release published by the ALBA Synchrotron
17/07/2014
Creation of the Health Technologies Cluster
At the end of last month, the health technologies cluster was created at the instigation of leading companies in this sector and the Catalan government through the ACCIO agency in charge of fostering entrepreneurial innovation and internationalization. Among the companies joining the board, NTE-SENER from the Barcelona Synchrotron Park can be mentioned.

The main purpose of this new structure is to promote competitiveness all along the value chain of this sector. By the way, health technologies in Catalonia gather more than 300 companies and public players with a €3.6 billion annual turnover and currently employ about 15,000 people. This innovative sector (4.5% of the turnover is reinvested in R&D) counts for about 2% of the Catalan GDP.

The health technologies sector is a €200 billion market worldwide with an annual growth of 4%.

The health technologies cluster is initiated thanks to the leadership of 17 companies and Catalan institutions with a €650 million turnover and 6,500 employees. NTE-SENER recently located in the Barcelona Synchrotron Park is one of them.

The main strategic challenges of the new cluster consist in fostering technology innovation, internationalization in the markets with most potential, creating public-private alliances to face the new market demands and the personalized solutions for patients in a global context of population aging.

News based on the TicSalut foundation press release (in Spanish).
10/07/2014
An international team of scientists led by researchers from the UAB creates the world's first magnetic hose
An international team of scientists led by researchers from the Department of Physics of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) which the Barcelona Synchrotron Park works with, has developed a material which guides and transports a magnetic field from one location to the other, similar to how an optical fibre transports light or a hose transports water.

Participating in the research, published late June in the prestigious Physical Review Letters magazine , were Carles Navau, Jordi Prat and Àlvar Sànchez, from the Department of Physics of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona; Oriol Romero Isart, from the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and lecturer at the University of Innsbruck; and the recent winner of the prestigious Wolf Prize in Physics Juan Ignacio Cirac, from the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany.

UAB press release
03/07/2014
CaixaBank and Oracle set up a Big Data Centre of Excellence in the Barcelona Synchrotron Park
CaixaBank and Oracle set up a Big Data Centre of Excellence in the Barcelona Synchrotron Park (BSP).

The initial phase culminated in late June with the deployment of infrastructure for a centralized data repository (Data Pool).

“Being one of the world's first banks to incorporate Big Data into daily business procedures further emphasises our commitment to innovation,” explains CaixaBank Deputy Chairman and CEO.

“The experience gained will help us to transform the newly-announced Center of Excellence into a Big Data reference site for the whole of Europe”, says Loïc le Guisquet, Executive Vice President of Oracle EMEA.
 
According to CaixaBank, the new Centre of Excellence will provide services such as:

• Training. The Centre of Excellence will help to train new Oracle and CaixaBank specialists, as well as staff from other public and private organisations via agreements with institutions and businesses, running training courses and learning programmes.

• Knowledge management. The centre will generate optimal Big Data solutions working side by side with Oracle development teams. It will also generate industry-specific Big Data solutions, starting with the financial sector, and subsequently share its experience and expertise to develop Big Data solutions across Europe.

• Spreading best practices on Big Data technology and architecture to other countries in Europe. The Barcelona Centre will represent a “mentor”, fostering the adoption of optimal Big Data solutions applied to each industry and each specific business case.

• Providing a catalyst to business development and new Big Data projects. Via operations at the Centre, Oracle will seek to create new business opportunities associated with Big Data.

• Representing a driver of Big Data technologies, generating innovative solutions and new technologies that will allow organizations to fully leverage data to enhance their businesses.
 
CaixaBank press release
26/06/2014
The Barcelona Supercomputing Center hosts two important new international projects
In addition to the ALBA synchrotron in the Barcelona Synchrotron Park (BSP) and the National Center for Genomic Analysis (CNAG in Catalan), the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) is another large scientific facility located in Barcelona.
 
With its iconic MareNostrum supercomputer housed… in a chapel (see photo, by courtesy of Barcelona Supercomputing Center, www.bsc.es), BSC recently joined two new important international projects:
 
  • The European Genome-phenome Archive, the EGA, stores genome and phenome data on over 100,000 people, from 200 centres and research groups from all around the world, and is a fundamental resource for the advancement of personalised medicine. At the moment, the EGA stores the data generated by over 700 scientific studies on cancer, diabetes, autoimmune diseases, cardiovascular problems and neurological disorders, amongst other illnesses. This data, which adds up to around 1,000,000 Gigabytes, will be stored in the Barcelona Supercomputing Center facilities and subsequently analysed by the MareNostrum supercomputer.
 
  • Spain is the leader in a worldwide project on dust and sandstorms forecast, the so-called ‘Barcelona Dust Forecast Center’ project, the first World Meteorological Organization (WMO) operative center working on atmospheric dust forecast for North Africa, Middle East and Europe.  This project was presented in Madrid on last June 10 at the Spanish Meteorological State Agency (AEMET in Spanish) that will lead it in association with the Barcelona Supercomputing Center.

Barcelona Supercomputing Center - BSC

Press release (EGA)

Press release (Barcelona Dust Forecast Center, in Spanish)
 
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