In a controversial move, Lawrenceville Plasma Physics (Middlesex) has published a research agreement it made on May 20, 2012, with the Plasma Physics Research Center (PPRC) of Islamic Azad University in Tehran, Iran. The company said it had briefed the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology on the agreement (the full text can be found here).

Lawrenceville is working on aneutronic fusion, a type of nuclear fusion it says will overcome previous fusion research’s problems. Unlike deuterium-tritium fuel methods, aneutronic fusion devices can be compact and cheap, as they don’t need to withstand intense neutron bombardment, the firm said. Some, like a device called the dense plasma focus, can be built for hundreds of thousands of dollars, while others, like inertial electrostatic confinement devices, cost a few million, Lawrenceville added.

The agreement encompasses experiment-related data exchange, joint data publication, simulations and other research-related activities. The company said the PPRC has “over 150 graduate students, including 50 Ph.D. students. By comparison, there are currently only about 90 plasma physics Ph.D. students in the entire U.S. Iran is the only country at present, other than the U.S., which has a substantial research program in aneutronic fusion.”

In other news:

• A Jersey City company, Single Touch Systems, said it had received a patent for “Searching for Mobile Content” that covers data transfer between devices. In a statement, Anthony Macaluso, Single Touch chairman and chief innovation officer, said when a user upgrades from an old phone, the technology covered by the patent allows “the new phone to query the old phone for existing applications and transfer them to the new device.” He added that the patent covers instances where “applications can’t be transferred between devices and the system must search for upgraded applications that are compatible with the new phone.”

• Universal Display’s stock took a hit in mid-May 2012, after the Ewing-based company acknowledged the Japanese High Court may disallow some parts of one of its patents. In reference to patent JP 929, the court confirmed the prior decision of the Japan Patent Office (JPO) by acknowledging the validity of some claimed inventions in the patent but confirming the JPO’s conclusion to invalidate the patent’s broadest claims, Theflyonthewall.com reported. There was also JPO activity in reference to patent JP 024. In this case, JPO upheld some claimed inventions but rejected the broadest claims. Universal said it will appeal this decision, adding that the decisions shouldn’t have an adverse effect on its patent portfolio.

• NYSE Euronext is opening its Mahwah data center to third-party carriers and vendors serving the financial services market. According to a Data Center Dynamics article, these companies can now occupy data center colocation space to provide services to NYSE customers. Additional carrier access will give customers options beyond the SFTI Optic, IP, Wave and VPN services currently supported, the article said.

• Lyndhurst translation startup SpeechTrans now provides  a Photo Translator feature for its app, letting travelers first snap photos of signs written in a foreign language, then obtain the translation in both written and spoken forms. The example the company presents in this video is of a Korean sign providing directions to a hospital emergency room. Cofounder Yan Auerbach points out the feature can be used to “read” menus and newspapers. Just about anything that has writing can be photographed. The company has added Nuance OmniPage Cloud Conversion technology to its arsenal, to power the new feature.

• StrikeForce Technologies, an Edison company that helps prevent online identity theft and data security breaches for consumers, corporations and governments, has announced its Q1 2012 revenues were 14 percent greater than its Q4 2011 gross revenues because several new contracts were executed in the first quarter. The firm said it is continuing its current strategy of concentrating on the financial, healthcare and tech markets, selling products both directly and through distribution channels.

• Software-based video conferencing company Vidyo (Hackensack) said Juniper Networks had joined the company’s Series D round though an investment via the Junos Innovation fund. Junos joined Menlo Ventures, Rho Ventures, Star Ventures and Four Rivers Group in that round. NJTechWeekly.com covered the first stage of this investment round here. Juniper Networks is a strategic investor involved in providing the architecture for the Vidyo network.

• DRS Technologies’s (Parsippany) Tactical Systems division has expanded its product portfolio to include two new thin, ruggedized portable tablet computers. The 7-inch multi-touch tablets are available in both Microsoft Windows and Android OS versions. As we discussed previously, by the end of the year DRS plans to leave Parsippany, consolidating corporate operations in Arlington, Va.