GSA Technology Council

CSC (NYSE: CSC) announced today that its World Sourcing Services location in Blythewood, S.C., is sponsoring the state’s first federally recognized apprenticeship program in the information technology field. In conjunction with Apprenticeship Carolina(TM), a division of the South Carolina Technical College System, CSC will begin its apprenticeship program by training UNIX administrators and is planning to expand the program into other occupations in partnership with Midlands Technical College.

In response to the emerging shortage of skilled UNIX engineers, CSC’s apprenticeship training program helps equip employee participants with the technical skills needed to meet industry standards and assist them in reaching their career aspirations while also allowing the company to potentially benefit from new hires becoming proficient as quickly as possible.

“We are pleased to partner with the state of South Carolina in a training program that will enable CSC to meet its need for skilled workers,” said Gary Adams, managing director of CSC’s South Carolina Onshore Delivery Center. “We plan to grow by approximately 300 jobs over the next 12 months in the Blythewood area. As a leader in the IT sector, we recognize the need to build talent and are firmly committed to evaluating more training programs in association with the state.”

An apprenticeship is a time-tested method of employee career development that combines supervised on-the-job learning and job-related education. A program registered with the U.S. Department of Labor shows an employer’s visible commitment to developing a high-quality workforce that meets nationally recognized training standards. Registered apprenticeship programs also enable employees to receive incremental wage increases as they demonstrate new competencies throughout the training program. CSC’s apprentice program, based on the company’s UNIX Academy Program, will train and mentor participants on the job for approximately two-and-a-half years and provide 440 hours of additional education.

“CSC’s registration of their program for UNIX administrators clearly demonstrates the effectiveness of apprenticeship as a career development tool in a wide range of occupations,” said Ann Marie Stieritz, Director of Apprenticeship Carolina. “As our state expands its position within the knowledge economy, Apprenticeship Carolina and all of our technical colleges look forward to working with more South Carolina companies in the information technology sector.”

CSC’s World Sourcing Services operations in Blythewood are part of the company’s integrated network of more than 50 global delivery centers, including locations in Canada, Chile, China, the Czech Republic, India, Lithuania, Malaysia, Spain and Vietnam. These operations provide complete coverage of all CSC clients’ current requirements and have been designed to support future client business needs. The Blythewood center is the cornerstone of CSC’s onshore delivery network for North American Public Sector, Aerospace & Defense and commercial clients adhering to government-regulated ITAR security requirements.

About Apprenticeship Carolina(TM)

Apprenticeship Carolina(TM) is a new division of the South Carolina Technical College System that works to ensure all employers in South Carolina have access to the information and technical assistance they need to create demand-driven registered apprenticeship programs. Apprenticeship consultants are available to guide companies through the registered apprenticeship development process from initial information to full recognition in the National Registered Apprenticeship System. These services are available to South Carolina employers free of charge. Interested employers are encouraged to contact Apprenticeship Carolina(TM) at (803) 896-5287 or to visit http://www.apprenticeshipcarolina.com.

About CSC

CSC is a global leader in providing technology-enabled solutions and services through three primary lines of business. These include Business Solutions & Services, Global Outsourcing Services and the North American Public Sector. CSC’s advanced capabilities include systems design and integration, information technology and business process outsourcing, applications software development, Web and application hosting, mission support and management consulting. Headquartered in Falls Church, Va., CSC has approximately 91,000 employees and reported revenue of $17.3 billion for the 12 months ended Oct. 3, 2008. For more information, visit the company’s Web site at http://www.csc.com.

via: CSC

Collexis Holdings, Inc. announced today that the Asklepios Group, which operates hospitals and specialized rehabilitation clinics in Europe and the United States, has incorporated the voice and video communication functionalities of Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, providing information about the availability of experts and direct voice and video communication possibilities.

“Utilizing SharePoint and new technologies from the unified communications stack, we’ve worked with Collexis to connect Asklepios caregivers to existing expertise and knowledge within their network — meaning that patients reap the benefits of faster access to the best of what the healthcare institutions have to offer,” said Tim Smokoff, General Manager, Worldwide Health, Microsoft. “Increased communication between physician and patient as well as between healthcare providers is an important factor in enhancing the satisfaction of patients and staff while still helping improve treatment quality at affordable prices.”

Collexis’ proprietary “Fingerprinting” technology analyzed scientific and medical texts to develop Expert Profiles of Asklepios’ physicians and researchers. The result is a detailed “Knowledge Map” of the Group’s shared expertise. Working with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, Asklepios providers can instantly search a central knowledge and skills management system in order to better diagnose and treat patients. Within seconds, providers can then draw on the experience of a colleague in another Asklepios clinic for advice on a disease, diagnosis or therapy.

The Collexis expert profiling solution in combination with the unified communication functionalities from Microsoft redefine the concept of medical cooperation, but also provides concrete benefits for patients, in the form of shorter waiting times and routes on the way to diagnosis and improved treatment success.

“Using these new technologies from Collexis and Microsoft, Asklepios is breaking new ground with this innovative form of medical knowledge management, and we also aim to underline our market-leading role as Europe’s largest private clinic operator,” explains Dr. Tobias Kaltenbach, Chief Executive Officer of Asklepios Kliniken.

With more than 32,000 employees in more than 100 facilities in Europe and the United States, Asklepios needed a way to make professional information, past experience with patients, disease patterns and treatment methods quickly available to doctors across the organization. The project was undertaken within the framework of the Asklepios Future Hospital, a program which aims to set new standards of quality and efficiency in the Healthcare service and to implement consistency throughout all processes. Microsoft Corp. and SyynX

Solutions, a Collexis subsidiary, belong to the more than 20 companies that work with Asklepios in this program.

“We are pleased to see Asklepios, Collexis’ initial healthcare customer, expand its engagement with the addition of Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007. Together with the Collexis Expert Profiling system, internal knowledge that is invariably bound up with individuals will be made available to the entire community in the most advanced manner that will benefit the patients and the physicians,” explains Christian Herzog, General Manager of Life Sciences for Collexis Holdings, Inc.

The Asklepios Group of Hamburg, Germany — a Collexis HealthCare customer since 2005 — began its engagement with the implementation of the Expert Profiling system to develop and maintain a central knowledge and skills management system to enhance collaboration among its clinics and providers. The solution was implemented by Collexis’ German subsidiary SyynX Solutions.

In addition to Asklepios, Collexis is bringing its innovative technology to other healthcare providers, research organizations and universities world-wide, including the National Institutes of Health, Mayo Clinic Libraries; Johns Hopkins University; Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, the University of California, San Francisco; the University of South Carolina; Bristol-Myers Squibb, and the World Health Organization.

via: Collexis

Numbers from the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics show that South Carolina ranks among the top five states for employment in several important engineering occupations. In three categories, South Carolina has the second-highest employment concentration of engineers in the nation. Those include: chemical engineers, health and safety engineers and industrial engineers. South Carolina ranks fourth in the nation for employment concentration of nuclear engineers.

Press Release appears below:

Engineering 112008

Reed Bolton Byrum, Chair of Greenville’s The Byrum Innovation Group, has been elected to the Board of the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce. The South Carolina Chamber of Commerce is the state’s largest statewidebroad-based business and industry trade association, representing more than 6,500 member companies and more than 600,000 member employees.

Press Release appears below:

Byrum Named to SC Chamber Board

The 2008 Innovision Awards dinner was held at the Palmetto Expo Center last night and the following awards were presented:

2008 Hall of Fame Award for Innovation in Education

Furman University Classics Department

Dr. Christopher Blackwell, a professor in Furman University’s Classics department, helped make three ancient manuscripts of Homer’s Iliad available digitally for students and scholars to study online. These manuscripts, bound books with pages made of sheepskin, date from A.D. 950, are so highly restricted that fewer than 20 scholars have been able to study them over the past 150 years. We’ve digitized the three manuscripts, and developed an online application where users can view online the original pages on which specific references appear.

Technology Application Award

Innegrity, LLC and Sealed Air Corporation

Innegrity, LLC, is a four-year-old Upstate company whose main product is a high-modulus, thermoplastic fiber, Innegra S, originally designed to replace fiberglass in composites, ropes and ballistics. Recently, however, the fiber exceeded expectations when tested in ballistics applications such as body armor, particularly when combined with existing high-strength fibers such as Kevlar. Because the production cost of Innegra S is a fraction of that of Kevlar and similar materials, replacing armor made solely from those materials with a hybrid that includes Innegra S would allow the same protection to individuals at a lower cost in both military and civilian applications. Because purchasing hard and soft armor has historically been so expensive, there are still a large number of military vehicles, for example, that go unarmored.

Sealed Air Corporation is a global manufacturer of fresh food and protective packaging with a technology and innovation organization located in Duncan, South Carolina. After several years of research in the area of radio frequency identification, that organization developed an application of a custom-designed radio-frequency identification tag as a means to monitoring temperature in the shipping containers in which foods and other sensitive materials were transported.

2008 Technology Development Award

Zipit Wireless, Inc

ZipIt Wireless introduced the Zipit Wireless Messenger 2 (Z2) in late 2007. Developed in June of 2007, Zipit Wireless’ Z2 marked the company’s second breakthrough product launch with a variety of new features and technical enhancements. The company’s profile within the electronics industry has risen dramatically following the much-heralded launch of the Z2 and the company’s highly successful viral marketing campaign. The patented Z2 is a unique, all-in-one Wi-Fi messaging device that leverages Wi-Fi technology to enable heavy messaging teens and pre-teens to stay connected with their friends without the hassles of being tied to the family computer or incurring high messaging bills on a cell phone.

2008 Innovation in Education Award

Furman University Dept. of Chemistry

The students of Furman University’s Chemistry department have created a high-quality e-textbook with its Bio-organic Wiki Textbook project. As a result in the change to the sequence of organic chemistry courses, a new teaching track was developed in which no textbook existed. Using a free wiki engine, a piece of server software that allows users to freely create and edit content using any browser, we created a platform through which students could write, referee and modify an e-textbook, with as little faculty input as possible. More than 100 students collaborated to successfully complete this e-textbook for the organic chemistry course.

2008 Community Service Award

Enallage Communications

Enallage Communications, based in Easley, provides documentation, illustration and other technical services to Upstate clients. In 2007, Enallage developed a software application, the PRIDE Information Manager, for an Upstate non-profit to help streamline its functions. The program was implemented by the organization Providing Resources in Developmental Education, or PRIDE. PRIDE sends out monthly developmental milestone cards to more than 3,000 families across the Upstate, in both English and Spanish, to help families catch missed academic milestones in their children and to encourage them to take early action.

2008 Small Enterprise Award

CreatiVasc

CreatiVasc Medical is a Greenville company that provides innovative, easy-to-use and intuitive vascular technologies for solving the universal problem of connecting patients to kidney dialysis machines. Founded in 2004, CreatiVasc has a five member board including Dr. David L. Cull, MD, a nationally recognized surgeon and Chief Research Editor for the Greenville Hospital System. The challenge with connecting patients to dialysis machines includes finding arteries and veins that traditionally are located using tactile skills to feel vibrations of blood flowing through arteries or veins.

The US Treasury and Federal banking regulators say as many as eighteen hundred publicly held institutions could apply in the next few weeks for government investments as a part of the $700 billion Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). This program is designed to assist banks with needed liquidity and capital so that they may resume meeting the banking needs of borrowers and depositors.

The Bank of South Carolina Corporation, (Nasdaq: BKSC) the parent company of The Bank of South Carolina, elected to opt out of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) because its financial health does not necessitate any government investment. The Bank is sufficiently liquid and capitalized with strong asset quality and earnings. All of these factors allow The Bank of South Carolina to continue as normal: making loans, receiving deposits and providing banking service to the community.

Hugh C. Lane, Jr., President and Chief Executive Officer stated: “The Bank of South Carolina is electing not to participate in the Treasury’s TARP. For twenty-one years, The Bank of South Carolina has followed the critically important fundamentals of banking, priding itself on wise investment strategies, valuable asset quality and a strong liquidity position. Because of these fundamentally sound banking practices it is unnecessary for The Bank of South Carolina to participate in TARP.”

The Bank of South Carolina, a De Novo Charter, which opened in 1987 at 256 Meeting Street, has offices in Summerville, Mt. Pleasant, and the West Ashley community. It is also available on its website at www.banksc.com. Bank of South Carolina Corporation currently trades its common stock on the NASDAQ stock market under the symbol “BKSC”. Market makers for the stock for Bank of South Carolina Corporation are: Alternate Display Facility, Archipelago Stock Exchange, Automated Trading Desk, Citadel Derivative Group, LLC, Citigroup Global Markets, Inc., Hill, Thompson, Magid and Company, Howe Barnes Investments, Hudson Securities, Inc., JJB Hilliard WL Lyons, Knight Equity Markets, LP, Merrill Lynch, Monroe Securities Inc., Morgan Keegan & Company, Inc., Nasdaq Execution Services, LLC, Sandler O’Neill & Partners, Scott & Stringfellow, Inc., Stern, Agee & Leach, Inc., Susquehanna Financial Group, LLP, Susquehanna Financial Group and USB Securities, LLC.

via: Bank of South Carolina

Posit Science Corporation researcher, Dan Tinker, presented evidence at the Society for Neuroscience Annual Conference in Washington, DC this week indicating that cognitive training may benefit Baby Boomers. The computerized brain plasticity-based Brain Fitness Program (TM) uses adaptive exercises that target auditory and language systems. The exercises are designed to drive generalized improvements in cognition by improving speed and accuracy of information processing and engaging the neuromodulatory systems of the brain. The effectiveness of the program on memory performance has been demonstrated in older adults, age 60 plus.

In the latest research, 20 study participants trained on the Brain Fitness Program, ten of them on the same version as older adults. The other ten trained on a version using accelerated stimuli, requiring faster auditory processing. Study results showed that the effectiveness of the Brain Fitness Program is improved in “Boomers” with the accelerated version.

Posit Science researcher Jessica Morton presented a battery of tests designed to assess changes in hand dexterity associated with aging. As people age, they have less motor control partly because of changes in the somatosensory cortex. The battery was tested on 10 younger and 10 older subjects. The results show significant age-related differences in performance on most tasks.

Posit Science researcher Korie Michalak presented research indicating that the age-related decline in motor control can be renormalized to that of younger adults or beyond through intensive brain plasticity-based training.

Because the brain is plastic, some of this decline can be reversed by improving the sensory representations in the somatosensory cortex.

The researchers developed a custom computer-based training program to improve motor control of the hand. It required the user to move a cursor along pathways and to various regions on the computer screen. Ten older participants trained for ten 1-hour sessions. By the end of training, their performance on the tasks approached or surpassed the baseline measure from the younger participants.

via: Posit Science

The Health Ethics Trust, a division of the Council of Ethical Organizations, has recognized the BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina Government Programs Division with a prestigious 2008 Best Practice Award for health care compliance.

The Government Programs Division includes subsidiary companies Palmetto GBA, PGBA, TrailBlazer Health Enterprises, Q2 Administrators and InStil Health Insurance Co., which contract with the federal government to provide administrative services for health care programs such as Medicare and TRICARE. All subsidiaries have their own compliance officers and departments, which ensure that each contract is administered in accordance with the standards, laws and regulations of its respective government program.

BlueCross was honored with a Best Practice Award for providing continuing compliance education to government programs employees. Efforts include publication of the “Government Programs Compliance Handbook,” the “Compliance Common” newsletter, and the “Ethics Almanac,” a compilation of actual compliance-related cases.

“We place a lot of emphasis on providing continuously updated compliance information to our employees, and we are very pleased to be recognized by such an outstanding organization,” said Cindy Cooper, BlueCross’ Government Programs compliance officer. “Our employees’ commitment to compliance and high ethical standards is a major reason behind the success of our government programs subsidiaries.”

The Health Ethics Trust, based in Alexandria, Va., holds the Best Practice Awards annually to enhance knowledge and awareness of better practices in health care compliance. Goals are to build awareness of the importance of compliance in health care, recognize accomplishments within health care compliance programs, and allow companies to exchange information about compliance programs.

BlueCross’ Government Programs Division, based in Columbia, S.C., employs 6,930 people in five states.

Palmetto GBA, PGBA and InStil Health Insurance Co. are based in Columbia, S.C. Palmetto GBA provides primarily administrative and claims-processing services for the Medicare program. PGBA is the nation’s largest processor of medical and hospital claims for the Department of Defense’s TRICARE health program, as well as a provider of Medicare Advantage claims processing, enrollment and financial administrative services. InStil Health Insurance Co. markets Medicare Advantage and Medicare Part D prescription drug plans throughout South Carolina and Georgia, in addition to providing Medicare Advantage administrative services to other plans. TrailBlazer Health Enterprises is based in Dallas, Texas, and provides Medicare-related claims processing and administrative services. Q2 Administrators is headquartered in Ohio and provides appeals services for the Medicare program.

BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina, Palmetto GBA and TrailBlazer Health Enterprises are independent licensees of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association.

via: BCBS of South Carolina

Digitalsmiths has closed a $12 million Series B round of equity financing from a combination of new and returning investors. Boston-based venture capital firm .406 Ventures joined returning investors The Aurora Funds and Chrysalis Ventures in the investment that was announced today by Ben Weinberger, CEO, Digitalsmiths.

“After looking at numerous potential digital video investments, the magnitude of opportunity at Digitalsmiths became crystal clear and we are delighted to have led this financing round,” said Maria Cirino, Managing Director, .406 Ventures. “The quality of Digitalsmiths’ indexing and analytics is unparalleled and as such offers exciting possibilities to content providers and advertisers looking for newer and more promising ways to monetize vast amounts of internet video. The traction that Digitalsmiths has already achieved with blue-chip customers speaks volumes for the company’s market-leading technology and is a credit to Ben and his talented team.”

“With an investment focus in the Southeast U.S., Chrysalis got involved with Digitalsmiths early in its development,” said Wright Steenrod, Principal, Chrysalis Ventures. “The deals the company is striking with major media companies solidify Digitalsmiths’ role in shaping how broadband video will be monetized.”

“Given the feverish pace at which the broadband video marketplace moves, keeping a product offering up to date is often considered a feat in itself,” said Jan Bouten, Principal, The Aurora Funds. “But the team at Digitalsmiths has consistently been ahead of the market with their technology development decisions. The media companies who depend on technological excellence to monetize their content should love them for it.”

“In the next phase of broadband video adoption, success will be earned one video stream at a time,” notes Weinberger. “Our suite of technology solutions insures that our clients have the granular content indexing, distribution, tracking and analytics required to maximize the value of every single viewer experience with their content on every interactive platform.”

The current round of funding will be used to accelerate Digitalsmiths’ product development initiatives with a view to extending the technological leadership and engineering innovation that has kept the company several steps ahead of its competition throughout its history.

Digitalsmiths received $200,000 in SC Launch! funding in 2006, and was a presenting company at Innoventure the same year.

via: Digitalsmiths

Stratatomic, a Greenville-based web design and advertising firm, today announced the launch of a new website and internet marketing campaign for ComputerPlus, a leader in the computer support and service industry. The new website (www.computer-plus.com) also features a new logo and identity also developed by Stratatomic, who will also provide ComputerPlus with brochure and print collateral, as well as trade show display graphics.

ComputerPlus, headquartered in Greer, SC, provides nationwide service and support for business computer systems and technology, including servers, printers, pcs, laptops and storage devices. Founded in 1989, ComputerPlus is a service-disabled veteran owned small business company.

Stratatomic is a full-service creative firm specializing in web, multimedia, advertising, and graphic communications. Stratatomic also offers complete solutions for web site hosting, WebAdmin™ site management software and WebStats™ site analysis tools, providing clients with a singular resource for top-to-bottom implementation of their internet marketing strategies.

Stratatomic’s proprietary WebAdmin™ e-commerce and site-management technology recently surpassed $15 million in online sales transactions and order processing. Today, WebAdmin™ enables clients of all sizes to effectively manage their own site content or storefront and is the power behind websites that receive more than 2 million page requests per month and average hundreds of orders per day. Founded in 2000 by Ryan Owens, Stratatomic LLC is a privately held company based in Greenville, SC.

via: Stratatomic