Arizona Daily Star | Posted: Saturday, February 27, 2010 12:00 am

Tempronics Inc., a Tucson-based company developing new solid-state electronics technologies for heating, cooling and power generation, has raised $2.7 million in venture-capital financing in a deal led by the San Francisco-based venture firm Nth Power.

Tempronics is led by CEO Tarek Makansi, an electrical engineer who spent 21 years with IBM Corp. Matt Jones and Brian Walsh from Nth Power will join the Tempronics board of directors.

Investors from Tucson’s Desert Angels also participated in the financing round.

Tempronics said its nanotechnology improves energy conversion in solid-state electronics and could help boost the development of solid-state replacements for current rotary devices like compressors, gas turbines, steam turbines and electrical generators.

Tempronics contracted services from the University of Arizona Micro/Nano Fabrication Center for its early prototypes.

Published on Friday, February 26, 2010

Inside Tucson Business

Arizona Cancer Center scientist Jesse Martinez, has been awarded a nearly $1 million grant from the National Cancer Institute to research chemoprevention of colon cancer. The four-year grant will enable Martinez to study the mechanisms of ursodeoxycholic acid, or UDCA, an acid found in bile that may play a role in preventing colon cancer. Colorectal cancer is the third most common cancer in both men and women and accounts for almost nine percent of all cancer deaths in America.

How long would an automaker stay in business if every car was custom made to the needs and specifications of each individual customer?

That is the business model for Universal Cryogenics, 1815 W. Gardner Lane, which makes custom cryogenic testing beds and dewars – a vacuum chamber designed to hold a temperature – for the space and astronomy industries.

“Every dewar or testing bed has to be made to work for the specific needs of each of our clients,” said Richard Schickling, co-owner of Universal Cryogenics. “There is no one-size-fits-all solution for what they need to do, so we make ourselves easy to work with so that nothing is a hassle for the customer.”

Arizona Daily Star – Feb. 20, 2010 – Ian Friedman.

Arizona Canning Co., a Tucson-based food manufacturer, announced Friday it has purchased the Luck’s brand from ConAgra Foods for an undisclosed price.

The brand acquisition will add 40 Tucson jobs, said Shane Gesbeck, Arizona Canning’s plant manager. The plant at 8755 S. Rita Road currently employs 94.

The additional jobs will be in production, maintenance, logistics, quality assurance and engineering. The company will fill the jobs through external hires, Gesbeck said.

Arizona Canning will sell, produce, warehouse and fulfill customer orders of the Luck’s brand directly from Tucson to across the U.S.

“We are continuing to look at how we can grow our business to fill out our capacity and the Luck’s brand was part of an active search we were doing for brand acquisitions,” Gesbeck said.

There’s one kiss you didn’t want to get on Valentine’s Day.

A University of Arizona study found that 40 percent of 164 kissing bugs collected in Tucson carried a parasite known to cause a potentially deadly disease that infects millions of people in Latin America.

There have been no cases of Chagas’ disease reported in Arizona, and only six reported cases contracted from kissing bugs in the United States.

It’s unclear if the specific strain of the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi found in Tucson’s bugs causes the disease. It also isn’t certain that the local species of kissing bug, Triatoma rubida, has the ability to transmit the parasite to humans, said Carolina Reisenman, a main researcher for the study.

Tucsonans’ used cooking oil is about to get a second life as biodiesel with the opening of the region’s first large-scale biodiesel manufacturing and refining facility.

EDG Fuels, a division of Environmental Development Group, based in Silver City, N.M., is planning to open its facility next month at 8969 S. Eisenhower Road near Interstate 19 and Hughes Access Road.

A grand opening celebration is planned for 8:30 a.m. March 13.

JILL TORRANCE / ARIZONA DAILY STAR UA senior Matt Bunting shows off his hexapod, a robot that learns how to move on its own and can reconfigure itself if damaged.

Picture a spiderlike robot that teaches itself to walk, can adapt when damaged and watches its maker as he moves around the room. That might sound terrifying.

Add artificial intelligence into the mix and you have all the makings of a science-fiction horror film.

Luckily, the UA electrical engineering senior and creator of the hexapod, Matt Bunting, said he plans to teach the robot only basic emotions.

“I’ve definitely thought about adding (artificial emotion), but the emotions would be very simplistic – happy, sad, bored – just very simple emotions. You can only do so much,” he said.