Xeround, a provider of software solutions for subscriber management and high performance database systems, announced the general availability of Xeround Sound™ Version 2. The new version of Xeround’s flagship product features breakthrough scalability and price performance.

Xeround Sound addresses the need for fast, reliable access to subscriber data and common data stores while delivering unparalleled total cost of ownership. To validate its industry-leading results for real-time performance and online scale-out abilities, the company also released the findings of a report using the Nokia Network Database Benchmark (NDB).

Xeround Sound is a distributed data management system specifically tuned for subscriber-centric and real-time transactions found in next generation networks (NGN) and business support systems (BSS). It is the only solution of its kind to deliver massive and linear scalability, multi-site support with global data distribution and virtualization, continuous availability, high responsiveness, and guaranteed data integrity with native support for both Structured Query Language (SQL) and Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) interfaces. Xeround Sound is tuned for today’s leading commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware solutions and requires minimal administration, resulting in dramatic improvements in total cost of ownership.

Horizon Semiconductors, a leading provider of highly integrated silicon solutions that enable secure video and audio compression & transmission for the consumer electronics and broadcast markets, announced the immediate availability of a multi-standard native 1080/60p professional encoder IC for the Cable, Satellite, Telco, Terrestrial & Mobile triple/quad-play broadcast markets.

Horizon's Hz2010 supports wide range of features and capabilities uniquely designed to meet the emerging requirements of the broadcast & professional encoding equipment markets. The Hz2010 incorporates a multi-standard high definition video encoder natively supporting resolutions of 1080/60p and below, and implementing leading compression standards including AVC (up to HP@L4.2), VC-1 (AP@L3 and MP@HL), MPEG-2 (MP@HL) & MPEG-4/H.263, an advanced video pre-processor featuring motion compensated spatio-temporal noise reduction filtering, motion-adaptive de-interlacer, frame rate conversion and advanced scaling, a high performance audio encoder engine enabling encoding to various audio formats such as MPEG-1, AC-3, Dolby Digital Plus, DTS, AAC and WMA, a programmable high-bandwidth transport processor, as well as a multi-standard conditional access/digital rights management security processor. Horizon's Hz2010 is provided with a comprehensive software stack and a reference hardware platform designed to significantly accelerate OEM/ODM development cycle.

Mitralign has successfully performed its first implantation of the Mitralign Percutaneous Annuloplasty System(TM) for mitral valve repair at French Hospital in Asuncion, Paraguay.
The patient was treated by an experienced medical team led by Adrian Ebner, MD of the French Hospital and Lutz Buellesfeld, MD of Helios Heart Center, Siegburg, Germany.The Mitralign System was able to remodel the valve and reduce the patient's mitral regurgitation from 3+ to 2+, 24 hours after the procedure based on core lab assessment. The patient spent less than 48 hours in the hospital after the procedure and continues to do well at home.

The Mitralign System emulates the open surgical procedure of suture-based mitral annuloplasty. The implant was percutaneously delivered though a single 14F femoral arterial sheath, and provides direct geometric reduction of the posterior annulus. The condition treated, mitral valve regurgitation (MR), is common in patients with Congestive Heart Failure (CHF). Clinical studies have proven that MR significantly increases the risk of mortality in patients afflicted with CHF, a disease affecting 25 million worldwide. Studies hence recommend earlier treatment of MR in these patients.

Combining surgical precision with interventional therapy, Mitralign is developing an innovative, catheter-based method to effectively treat mitral regurgitation in patients suffering from Congestive Heart Failure. Mitralign's goal is to emulate the technique employed in traditional open heart surgery but in a far less invasive manner.

Former Intel Fellow and currently visiting Professor at the Technion Institute, Dr. Uri Weiser joins Lucid’s Advisory Board. Lucid is an innovator in real time distributed processing for visual computing applications.

In addition to serving as a visiting Professor at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology Uri is also the CTO for Commex Technologies, a leading developer of next generation x86 systems' innovative chip set. He joins graphics software expert, Nick Triantos CEO at TokBox on the company’s Advisory Board. Tokbox is a company pioneering live Internet video chat.


Uri Weiser began his career as a research and systems engineer for the Israeli Department of Defense. Employed by Intel from 1988 through 2006, he initiated the definition of the first Pentium® processor and drove the development of Intel's MMX(TM) technology architecture. He holds the distinguished titles of Intel Fellow, IEEE Fellow and ACM Fellow. Prior to his career at Intel, Uri led the design of the NS32532 micro processor at National Semiconductor Israel.

Nick Triantos has more than 15 years of experience in software engineering and engineering management. Prior to his current position at TokBox, Nick served as Chief Software Architect at NVIDIA, where his teams built cross-platform, advanced 3D graphics software, and real time JIT compilers. An expert in computer graphics and system software architecture, he also has work experience in the set-top box, console games and business productivity software markets, from his previous work at Navio, 3DO, and Claris.

BioLineRx (TASE: BLRX), a clinical stage drug development company, disclosed positive results from a Phase 2a trial of BL-1020, a GABA-enhanced antipsychotic. BL-1020 showed statistically significant efficacy with no significant change in weight and no increase in extrapyramidal symptoms at study completion.

The trial was an open label, 6-week study conducted under Good Clinical Practices guidelines designed to determine the safety and maximum tolerated dose of BL-1020 in schizophrenic patients. The study was conducted on 36 refractory hospitalized patients of whom only 3 withdrew early from the study. Patients were started on 32mg (20mg free base) of BL-1020 and received increasing dosages over the first 7 days in order to reach the maximum dose of 64 mg (40mg free base). Significant improvement was seen already after 7 days of treatment.

The results of the study were as follows:

• Patients being treated with BL-1020 experienced a statistically significant improvement from baseline in the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) and Clinical Global Impression of Severity and Improvement (CGI-S; CGI-I), which are widely recognized measures of severity and improvement in schizophrenia.

• No severe or unexpected adverse effects occurred in the trial. There was no significant increase in extrapyramidal symptoms at the end of the trial, and no significant change in weight. No notable findings on ECG, laboratory values or vital signs. All adverse events were characterized as minimal and not treatment limiting.

• Only 3 patients out of 36 withdrew from the trial, reflecting a low level of patient withdrawal in comparison with other drugs for the treatment of schizophrenia. Such high compliance is indicative of the efficacy and tolerability of BL-1020.

CircuLite announced preliminary top-line results of a pilot first-in-man study of four patients that have been implanted with the Synergy Pocket Circulatory Assist Device. Synergy is a micro implantable blood pump, the size of an AA battery that can be implanted superficially in a “pacemaker-like” pocket. The device is designed to provide long-term, partial circulatory support in patients with chronic heart failure.

Four patients were enrolled in the pilot study, which was initiated in June 2007 and evaluated Synergy in individuals awaiting a heart transplant. All patients reached the primary endpoint of successful heart transplantation, with one patient supported for 7 months. Final data from this study will be presented at a future medical meeting.

“Patients implanted with Synergy thus far have demonstrated significant clinical improvements in hemodynamics and, importantly, quality of life,” said Bart Meyns, M.D., Ph.D., Professor and Chief of Cardiac Surgery at Gasthuisberg University Hospital (Katholieke Universiteit) in Leuven, Belgium. “This system was designed to improve the quality of life of chronic heart failure patients by giving them a less invasive option to increase blood flow from the heart, so we are encouraged to see that initial patient experiences have been consistent with this goal.”

The pilot study cohort will be included in CircuLite’s 20-patient long-term support CE Mark trial that is currently enrolling patients. The CE Mark trial is designed to support a CE Mark filing at the end of 2008.

iamba Networks, leading provider of gigabit passive optical networking (GPON) solutions for the telecommunications industry, announced the availability of its new iSN1000 family of GPON ONT ASICs. The iSN1000 family includes three SoCs for three types of ONTs: the iSN1000F for Single Family Units (SFU), the iSN1000T for small office, home offices (SOHO), and the iSN1000D for Multi Dwelling Units (MDU).

The iSN1000 family of ASICs is part of the iamba GPON Eco-System (iGES) solution comprised of next generation ASICs for ONTs and for the OLT, a comprehensive set of software packages, evaluation units and production-ready reference designs.

The iSN1000 ONT ASIC architecture, which include the GPON SERDES function, is based on a multi-core processor module (iMCM) and on iamba's unique, patent pending Traffic Pump Module (iTPM), delivering wire-speed gigabit Ethernet on two ports, multiple voice lines and video channels, all supported by comprehensive QoS and CoS capabilities.

The iMCM architecture consists of three powerful RISC processors delivering 540 DMIPS. A simple software interface facilitates the integration of iamba's standard and optional software packages with customer developed software. The iTMP processing module features a powerful set of packet handling capabilities with full wire-speed throughput.

SURF Communication Solutions, a leading provider of high-capacity multimedia processing boards and chips for the telecommunication infrastructure field, announced it is leveraging Texas Instruments’ high performance TNETV3020 six-core digital signal processor (DSP) to promote the development of open architecture, multimedia processing solutions for telecom applications.

Surf has integrated TI’s DSP into its advanced mezzanine card (AMC), PCI Express card, and chip-level solution to support the development of multimedia gateways and servers that deliver video, voice, fax and modem over mobile and wireline networks.

Surf’s multimedia processing package enables simultaneous support for all types of media – video, voice, fax and modem – on a single DSP. TI’s TNETV3020 DSP provides high performance with low power consumption and a small footprint. The combined solution offers impressive processing performance for video codecs, such as H.264, alongside a large amount of voice channel instances.

Both the SurfRider/AMC™ mezzanine card and the SurfExpress/PCIe™ board feature a modular plug-in that carries up to four pairs of DSPs. The resulting eight multicore DSPs per board delivers unprecedented price performance, ideal for converged distribution of video and voice for a wide variety of telecom applications, including voice and video gateways, MMSC content adaptation engines, and multimedia servers.

Leonardo Media and Pegasus Solutions announced they have entered into agreement to create ContentHub, a comprehensive hotel content management solution. The new service, to be formally introduced in three weeks at ITB Berlin 2008, is designed to provide hotels with a single environment to manage and distribute all of their online hotel content.

ContentHub will enable hotels to seamlessly access, update and manage their images and text, and then distribute the content to the many channels supported by both Pegasus and Leonardo. This enhanced content management service will also enable hotels to take full advantage of the numerous multi-media tools available to ensure their content is up-to-date and compelling.

ContentHub’s single interface enables hotels to manage and distribute their content in a consistent manner to all channels, including the global distribution systems (GDSs), major travel Web sites, search engines, tour operators and travel consortia. This enables hotels to have consistency of content across a wider range of distribution channels, along with improved quality and freshness of content. In addition, the ContentHub will allow hotels to fully optimize their content to truly represent their brand on a global scale with multi-lingual capabilities incorporated into the text and images.