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    George E. Smith Dead: Nobel Prize Winner Was 95

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    Together with Willard S. Boyle, he invented an imaging device that is an essential part of nearly every telescope, photocopier and digital camera used today.George E. Smith, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics for inventing a revolutionary imaging device that has not only allowed scientists to see the universe more clearly but has also made it possible for hundreds of millions of people to record every birthday and vacation for posterity, died on Wednesday at his home in Barnegat Township, N.J. He was 95.His death was confirmed by his daughter Lauren Lanning.It was while he was working at Bell Laboratories in 1969 that Dr. Smith and a colleague, Willard S. Boyle, came up with the idea for what is known as the charge-coupled device, or CCD — a technology that is an essential component of nearly every telescope, medical scanner, photocopier and digital camera in use today. Their work helped build “the foundation to our modern information society,” Gunnar Oquist, the Nobel academy’s secretary general, said when it was announced that Dr. Smith and Dr. Boyle would share the 2009 prize for physics. (They split the award with Charles K. Kao, who was recognized for work that resulted in the development of fiber-optic cables.)Dr. Smith, left, and Dr. Boyle in 2009, at a news conference in Stockholm after they won the Nobel Prize in Physics.Bertil Ericson/Scanpix Sweden, via Associated PressDr. Smith and Dr. Boyle had been trying to create better memory storage for computers when the idea for the CCD arose. They thought the photoelectric effect — which Einstein had explained, an explanation that won him a 1921 Nobel Prize — might offer a solution.The photoelectric phenomenon occurs when electromagnetic radiation, such as light, hits a metal surface, dislodging electrons from atoms and causing a current to flow through the metal. The device that Dr. Smith and Dr. Boyle created employs rows of tiny capacitors to store and transfer the electrical charge — essentially capturing light — and uses the information to construct an image.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Elizabeth Holmes’s Partner Has a New Blood-Testing Start-Up

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      Billy Evans has two children with the Theranos founder, who is in prison for fraud. He’s now trying to raise money for a testing company that promises “human health optimization.”Elizabeth Holmes is in prison for defrauding investors through her blood-testing company, Theranos. In the meantime, her partner is starting one of his own.Billy Evans, who has two children with Ms. Holmes, is trying to raise money for a company that describes itself as “the future of diagnostics” and “a radically new approach to health testing,” according to marketing materials reviewed by The New York Times.If that sounds familiar, it’s because Theranos similarly aimed to revolutionize diagnostic testing. The Silicon Valley start-up captured the world’s attention by claiming, falsely as it turned out, to have developed a blood-testing device that could run a slew of complex lab tests from a mere finger prick.Mr. Evans’s company is named Haemanthus, which is a flower also known as the blood lily. It plans to begin with testing pets for diseases before progressing to humans, according to two investors pitched on the company who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they had agreed to keep the plans secret. Mr. Evans’s marketing materials, which lay out hopes to eventually raise more than $50 million, say the ultimate goal is nothing short of “human health optimization.”The Haemanthus testing device.HaemanthusA photo provided to potential investors of the start-up’s prototype bears more than a passing physical resemblance to Theranos’s infamous blood-testing machine, variously known as the Edison or miniLab. The device that Mr. Evans’s company is developing is a rectangular contraption with a door, a digital display screen and what the investor materials describe as tunable lasers inside.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Haemanthus’s Patent for ‘Raman Spectroscopy System’

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      References Cited

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      US 12,203,862 B1 Page 5

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      Altangerel, Narangerel, et al. “Raman Spectroscopy as a Robust New Tool for Rapid and Accurate Evaluation of Drought Tolerance More

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      Gilead Agrees to Allow Generic Version of Groundbreaking H.I.V. Shot in Poor Countries

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      Many middle-income countries are left out of the deal, widening a gulf in access to critical medicines.The drugmaker Gilead Sciences on Wednesday announced a plan to allow six generic pharmaceutical companies in Asia and North Africa to make and sell at a lower price its groundbreaking drug lenacapavir, a twice-yearly injection that provides near-total protection from infection with H.I.V.Those companies will be permitted to sell the drug in 120 countries, including all the countries with the highest rates of H.I.V., which are in sub-Saharan Africa. Gilead will not charge the generic drugmakers for the licenses.Gilead says the deal, made just weeks after clinical trial results showed how well the drug works, will provide rapid and broad access to a medication that has the potential to end the decades-long H.I.V. pandemic.But the deal leaves out most middle- and high-income countries — including Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, China and Russia — that together account for about 20 percent of new H.I.V. infections. Gilead will sell its version of the drug in those countries at higher prices. The omission reflects a widening gulf in health care access that is increasingly isolating the people in the middle.Gilead charges $42,250 per patient per year for lenacapavir in the United States, where it is approved as a treatment for H.I.V. The company has said nothing about what lenacapavir will cost when used to prevent H.I.V. infections, a process called pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP.The generics makers — four companies in India, one in Pakistan and one in Egypt — are expected to sell it for much less. Researchers at Liverpool University found the drug could profitably be produced for as little as $40 per patient per year, if it were being purchased in large volumes.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      They Can’t See the Total Solar Eclipse, but LightSound Will Help Them Hear It

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      A device called LightSound is being distributed to help the blind and visually impaired experience this year’s event.On Aug. 21, 2017, Kiki Smith’s teenage sons giddily prepared to watch the partial solar eclipse in Rochester, N.Y. As Ms. Smith listened to their chatter, she felt excluded.“I felt very alone,” she said. Ms. Smith was diagnosed with a degenerative condition as a child and lost the last of her vision in 2011. The local buzz around the eclipse, and the national media attention, unexpectedly touched a nerve.The eclipse “was about experiencing a historic moment in community, and I wasn’t part of that,” she said.Ms. Smith, 52, who works for a community development organization in Rochester, determined to do things differently for the April 8 total eclipse that is passing through her city. She is helping to organize a public gathering that prioritizes accessibility for people with vision loss. Her event will include specially designed devices named LightSound that translate changing light intensity into musical tones, allowing blind and visually impaired people to listen as the sky grows dark and then brightens again.During this eclipse, Ms. Smith said, “I will be with community. And I will have at my fingertips all of these fabulous resources to experience what I felt I missed last time.”People across the United States with limited vision or blindness will experience the eclipse with the aid of about 900 LightSound devices distributed by a team led by Allyson Bieryla, a Harvard University astronomer.The Path of the EclipseOn April 8, a total solar eclipse will cross North America from Mazatlán, Mexico, to the Newfoundland coast near Gander, Canada. Viewers outside the path of the total eclipse will see a partial eclipse, if the sky is clear. More

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      Can Xerox’s PARC, a Silicon Valley Icon, Find New Life with SRI?

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      Two research labs known for some of the tech industry’s most important innovations have merged in hopes of recapturing their glory days. It is one of Silicon Valley’s enduring legends. In 1979, a 24-year old Steve Jobs was permitted to visit Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) to view a demonstration of an experimental personal computer called the Alto. Mr. Jobs took away a handful of ideas that would transform the computing world when they became the heart of Apple’s Lisa and Macintosh computers. More

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      Boss Trump, ‘the Sorest Loser of All Time’

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      More from our inbox:Does Our Patent System Need to Be Reformed?Former President Donald J. Trump took the stage at a Save America rally in Michigan earlier this month.Brittany Greeson for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “The Mar-a-Lago Machine: Trump as a Modern-Day Party Boss” (front page, April 18):This disturbing and prescient article makes for painful reading. Everything that the hopeful pundits of 2020 predicted — that Donald Trump would fade away after his defeat, that he would run out of money, that his legal troubles would overwhelm him, that he would be exposed as a cheap, huckstering demagogue — has proved wrong.Instead he has emerged stronger than ever, with his legal troubles melting away, money pouring in and vast numbers of Americans fervently supporting him.Since 2020, those same hopeful pundits have been predicting that Mr. Trump won’t run in 2024 and that other Republicans somehow have a chance. But of course he will; why wouldn’t he? And when he does, he will be hard to beat.There is a kind of awful inevitability about Mr. Trump and his gang of Mar-a-Lago sycophants. It will be a dark day for our country if he once again becomes president.Tim ShawCambridge, Mass.To the Editor:“Trump’s Allies Keep Up Fight to Nullify Vote” (front page, April 19) is disturbing. But this never-ending effort to reverse the 2020 election keeps reminding everyone that Donald Trump is a loser — the sorest loser of all time.And one thing we know that Donald Trump detests is a loser.So as the months go by and turn into years, as the court cases and investigations proceed, Mr. Trump continues to remind us he is a loser. No matter how much he and his friends try, while defying facts, logic and the law, no matter how many tantrums he throws or lies he tells, he not only reminds us he’s a loser. He also reminds himself.Rick BeardsleyBoca Raton, Fla.Does Our Patent System Need to Be Reformed? Illustration by Rebecca Chew/The New York Times; photographs by Yevgen Romanenko, moi/amanaimagesRF, Westend61 and Marie Hickman, via Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “Save America’s Patent System” (editorial, Sunday Review, April 17):I commend The Times’s editorial board for making a compelling case for reform of our patent system. I have an incurable cancer. The drugs keeping me alive — which carry a list price of more than $900,000 annually — will one day stop working, so I care deeply about innovation and new drug development. But drugs don’t work if people can’t afford them.When a drug company makes a truly inventive discovery, it should be rewarded with a patent and receive a fair return. But the drug industry would have you believe that every patent granted is an indicator of innovative achievement. That couldn’t be further from the truth.In fact, the industry’s anti-competitive practices actually inhibit innovation. Neither new patents nor new drugs necessarily equal real innovation. Worse, in too many cases manufacturers are gaming America’s patent system to prevent competition and block affordable generic and biosimilar drugs from coming to market.We can — and should — bring down monopoly prices by empowering Medicare to negotiate, but we must also reform our patent system to address the drivers that lead to unjustified monopolies in the first place.David MitchellBethesda, Md.The writer is the founder of Patients for Affordable Drugs Now.To the Editor:America’s biopharmaceutical research companies support solutions that will lower health care costs, while some of the policies outlined in the editorial would simply harm patients.Biopharmaceutical innovation is difficult and risky, with only 12 percent of medicines in the pipeline entering clinical trials ever achieving F.D.A. approval. Patents play an essential role in encouraging innovation by helping fuel the investments that result in new treatments and cures.Patents do not establish a monopoly on treating a condition. Instead, they propel progress. A new patent on a product provides protection only for the invention it protects — it does not provide additional exclusivity for underlying products. Contrary to the editorial board’s assertion, the Patent and Trademark Office is not issuing sham patents.Drugmakers should continue researching ways their medicines can help tackle different diseases, treat new patient populations, like children, and make lifesaving treatments, like chemotherapy, more tolerable for patients. Progress is a good thing, and it should be encouraged, not punished.The Restoring the America Invents Act would benefit big patent infringers, like many big technology companies, and make the legal landscape more uncertain for researchers focused on bringing forward new medical advances for patients.Anne McDonald PritchettWashingtonThe writer is senior vice president, policy, research and membership, for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.To the Editor:It shouldn’t be controversial to expect patented inventions to be new and useful, but it is. That’s because a handful of big companies treat the Patent Office like an A.T.M.: a reliable source of cash for the cost of a small fee. Because the Patent Office depends on those fees, it treats companies applying for protection like customers to be served instead of applicants to be evaluated. What about members of the public who depend on patented technology to earn a living, get an education, or access medical care? We get ignored.The editorial board is absolutely right: The patent system needs to change. But those who benefit from it most will fight tooth and nail to protect it. We need the new director of the Patent Office to prioritize the public’s interest and the patent system’s purpose — promoting scientific and technological progress — no matter how loud the cries of private companies accustomed to five-star service.Alex MossSouth Pasadena, Calif.The writer is executive director of the Public Interest Patent Law Institute.To the Editor:Your editorial wrongly targets our innovative insulin drug, Glargine, as an example of using patents to create a monopoly, ignoring that it has had biosimilar competition since 2016. Focusing on the patents for our delivery device is misleading because they have not prevented the development and sale of biosimilar Glargine products, let alone those with other non-infringing delivery methods.To make its case, the editorial board tied patents to the cost of medicine, which too many Americans struggle to afford. But Sanofi offers a comprehensive insulin safety net, giving uninsured patients ready access to free and low-cost insulin, while commercially insured patients all qualify for co-payment assistance that lowers out-of-pocket costs for most patients to $10 or less. And every Sanofi insulin is included in a Medicare program that caps costs for seniors.We are wary of imperiling a patent system that has put the U.S. first in biomedical innovation and generic drug penetration. We believe that the board would benefit readers by telling the complete story.Adam GluckWashingtonThe writer is senior vice president and head of U.S. corporate affairs at Sanofi. More