Samsung Sticking to Microchip Investment Plans

Despite a slump in the global semiconductor market, Samsung Electronics will stick a plan to invest W7 trillion in computer chips in the second half of this year( US$1=W1,149). Kwon Oh-hyun, the head of Samsung's semiconductor division, confirmed this at the launch of the new growing industry forum held in the National Assembly on Tuesday. This contrasts starkly with other global semiconductor companies like Hynix, Elpida and Power Chip who have decided to cut production this year due to oversupply and the recession. In March, Hynix cut investment plans for the second half of this year from W1.7 trillion to W700 billion.

But Kwon said while the semiconductor industry is in its most serious slump ever, “the crisis offers new opportunities. We won’t be shaken by short-term factors and will stick to our original plan again next year with a long-term outlook.”

Kwon also revealed that takeover negotiations for U.S.-based memory chip maker SanDisk are still in progress. “We are still negotiating the price, and we have finished the legal review to see if we would violate antitrust laws if we acquire SanDisk,” he said. Samsung Electronics last Wednesday officially offered to buy SanDisk for $26 per share, or $5.85 billion in total, but the SanDisk board rejected the offer.

Human Genome Project

The Human Genome Project (HGP) was an international scientific research project with a primary goal to determine the sequence of chemical base pairs which make up DNA and to identify the approximately 25,000 genes of the human genome from both a physical and functional standpoint.

The project began in 1990 initially headed by James D. Watson at the U.S. National Institutes of Health. A working draft of the genome was released in 2000 and a complete one in 2003, with further analysis still being published. A parallel project was conducted by the private company Celera Genomics. Most of the sequencing was performed in universities and research centers from the United States, Canada and Britain. The mapping of human genes is an important step in the development of medicines and other aspects of health care.

While the objective of the Human Genome Project is to understand the genetic makeup of the human species, the project also has focused on several other nonhuman organisms such as E. coli, the fruit fly, and the laboratory mouse. It remains one of the largest single investigational projects in modern science.

Anaerobic biodegradation of pollutants

Anaerobic microbial mineralization of recalcitrant organic pollutants is of great environmental significance and involves intriguing novel biochemical reactions. In particular, hydrocarbons and halogenated compounds have long been doubted to be degradable in the absence of oxygen, but the isolation of hitherto unknown anaerobic hydrocarbon-degrading and reductively dehalogenating bacteria during the last decades provided ultimate proof for these processes in nature. Many novel biochemical reactions were discovered enabling the respective metabolic pathways, but progress in the molecular understanding of these bacteria was rather slow, since genetic systems are not readily applicable for most of them. However, with the increasing application of genomics in the field of environmental microbiology, a new and promising perspective is now at hand to obtain molecular insights into these new metabolic properties. Several complete genome sequences were determined during the last few years from bacteria capable of anaerobic organic pollutant degradation. The ~4.7 Mb genome of the facultative denitrifying Aromatoleum aromaticum strain EbN1 was the first to be determined for an anaerobic hydrocarbon degrader (using toluene or ethylbenzene as substrates). The genome sequence revealed about two dozen gene clusters (including several paralogs) coding for a complex catabolic network for anaerobic and aerobic degradation of aromatic compounds.