Weekly Links June 12th,2015

“MUST READ”

• Irwin A. Rose, Nobel-Winning Biochemist, Dies at 88 - NYTimes.com

tags: weeklylinks genomics

• Irwin A. Rose, who shared the 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with two collaborators for unraveling the mystery of how cells identify old and damaged proteins and transform them into pieces for new proteins — discoveries that led to the development of a new class of drugs to fight cancer — died on Tuesday in Deerfield, Mass. He was 88.

COMPANIES

• Monsanto Bets $45 Billion on a Pesticide-Soaked Future | Mother Jones

tags: weeklylinks Monsanto

• That rhetoric may have to change, though, if Monsanto succeeds in buying its Swiss rival, pesticide giant Syngenta. On Friday, Syngenta's board rejected a $45 billion takeover bid. But that's hardly the end of the story. Tuesday afternoon, Syngenta's share price was holding steady at a level about 20 percent higher than it was before Monsanto's bid—an indication that investors consider an eventual deal quite possible. As The Wall Street Journal's Helen Thomas put it, the Syngenta board's initial rejection of Monsanto's overture may just be a way of saying, "This deal makes sense, but Syngenta can hold out for more."
• Facebook Opens New AI Research Center In Paris | TechCrunch

tags: weeklylinks

• France has many hidden gems, and Facebook is well-aware of that. The company is building a new artificial intelligence research team in Paris in order to work on ambitious futuristic projects. The new team will work closely with existing Facebook AI Research (FAIR) teams in Menlo Park and New York on image recognition, natural language processing, speech recognition, machine learning, live translating tools and more

SOMETHING DIFFERENT

• Work and Play in Paris's Silicon Sentier - NYTimes.com

tags: weeklylinks paris

• The area of central Paris around rue du Sentier, once home to part of the garment district, is now home to a hive of innovation.
• A decade ago, central Paris around Rue du Sentier — a warren of covered passageways, intimate squares and narrow cobbled streets with names like Cairo, Aboukir and Nile reflecting the area’s development during the Napoleonic campaigns — was an insider destination for cut-rate fashion and accessories in the city’s garment district. Lately, it has morphed into “Silicon Sentier”: a petri dish of entrepreneurial innovation that includes a tech incubator in an old factory as well as a digital arts center and bars where tech workers gather for custom cockta
• Opus 23 – Music for a Gene d'Olivier Calmel: quand le génome humain donne le la | Classicagenda

tags: gene music weeklylinks