Engineers and technicians at IBM are assembling the final pieces of what they hope will soon become the world's most powerful supercomputer - doubling the speed of the today's fastest machine.

Electronic components vendor Maxell, along with laboratory equipment partners, has demonstrated a 96-rack test tube system that uses an embedded radio frequency identification (RFID) chip in each test tube to improve tracking of lab samples and specimens.

International Data Corp (IDC), a leading provider of IT market data, has jumped into the life science market with the launch of Life Science Insights (LSI), a subsidiary focused on serving life science companies.

The Macintosh may not be an established player is scientific computing, but Apple Computer is beginning to get some respect as a player in the space, according to the company's vice-president of software technology, Guy 'Bud' Tribble, who pitched the case for the Mac to attendees of the Biosilico 2003 conference at Stanford University last week.

Influential IDC life science analyst Debra Goldfarb has joined IBM's Deep Computing organisation, where she will serve as vice president of strategy.

Vietnam plans to open six national biotech laboratories between now and 2006 to extend the range of the country's research, the official Vietnam News Agency (VNA) has reported.

With 180 companies, universities, and non-profit organisations involved in agricultural biotechnology, four companies account for 57 per cent of all R&D. And just three companies -- Monsanto, DuPont and Bayer -- accounted for 3824 field trials of genetically modified crops last year, according to a new report from Bio Economic Research Associates, a US consulting firm.

The bio-IT market in the Greater China region is expected to reach $US756 million ($AUD1.2 billion) by 2006, according to research firm IDC.

Research firm IDC is to host two breakfast briefings on the bio-IT industry, with a particular focus on Australia and the Asia-Pacific.

In a bold declaration to US Congress on May 25, 1961, President John F Kennedy stated, "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth." ... Our generation is challenged with a mission no less ambitious (or outrageous) than the moon: to leverage the full potential of genomic knowledge to revolutionise how we cure disease.

The high-performance computing (HPC) market is unlike any other. Although it is a small, niche market, its influence is powerful and pervasive. In fact, one could argue that it is intrinsically linked to the health of our society from an economic, defense, and public well-being standpoint.