Buffalo-based CUBRC could earn $67 million dollars for work on the behalf of the federal government.

Through a grant from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), CUBRC will investigate potential medical treatments for a handful of conditions that currently have no cure.

"Our country and frankly, our world at large, face a growing threat," says Anne Radcliff, director of biological & medical sciences at CUBRC. "That's a threat from deadly infections for which treatments are nonexistent or inadequate. These diseases could be caused by either man made threats, in the case of biological weapons, or emerge naturally."

One of the tasks of the HHS is to fill the gaps in the government's response to possible medical scenarios.

Xerox is bringing a new call center to its Webster, N.Y. manufacturing campus.

But not without a hefty aid package from the state.

"We've got call centers in more than a dozen states," says Xerox spokesman Carl Langsenkamp. "We could have put the call center anywhere."

Xerox is spending $4.3 million on the new customer care center and planning to create up to 500 jobs by the end of 2013, according to Langsenkamp.

To land the project, the state's economic development arm is dishing out up to $6 million in incentives and Monroe County is chipping in with $271,000 in tax relief.

One observer says the cost far outweighs the benefit.

"For the 300 to 500 families who will get a job at the call center, this is great news," Reuters columnist David Cay Johnston tells the Innovation Trail. "For everybody else, this is awful.

"It is the latest example of corporate socialism."

Binghamton looks to many visitors like any other post-industrial city in the Northeast: The historic buildings are in disrepair, and the rundown strip malls hide years of slow progress towards a revitalized Binghamton.

For years, the strategy for rebirth has been to perk up a storefront here, tear down a building there.

That's in evidence at the "Southside Commons," a concrete open space across the river and Route 434 from Binghamton's city center.  The space offers a raised area where bands can play in the summer, and a few tables and chairs scattered around the single lot wedged between two buildings.

It doesn't look like much, but a significant amount of work went into making it happen.

Kevin Purdy makes connections.

When we sat down with the former editor of Gawker's Lifehacker blog at TEDxRochester in November 2011, he had just wrapped up organizing Buffalo's TEDx.

Purdy talked to us about what he's doing when he's not writing about tech, food and "Other Freelance Nonsense."

Top of the list: hooking people up (not like that).

Like the music? It's "The 19th letter - no words" by Buffalo-based Fourem.

Governor Andrew Cuomo called on western New Yorkers to adopt his vision as their own during a visit to Buffalo Wednesday.

But questions surrounding his latest budget proposal are coming from more than one direction.

The first term Democrat has barnstormed the state since unveiling his budget last week.

During these drop-ins, Cuomo repeats the broad strokes of his spending plan, but tweaks the message for that day’s host community.

The state’s second largest city heard the governor again promise to send a $1 billion to spur economic growth, but this time it was tinged with a message of self empowerment.

“Change begins with the man in the mirror ... [With] a billion dollars, we’re going to turn around Buffalo. You know who it starts with? It starts with you!” Cuomo roared. “You have to wake up and say, ‘You know what? I believe in this city. I believe in this region. I’m not going to talk about the past. I’m going to talk about the future!”

Four months ago, Governor Andrew Cuomo launched a new website called CitizenConnects. He hailed the site as an "electronic town hall" that would give New Yorkers, "unprecedented access to the workings of the executive branch."

So has CitizenConnects delivered? Not really.

The tagline for the site reads, "Care enough to connect to your state government."

Unfortunately, no one at the governor's press office cared enough to return several phone calls requesting details about why some information on the site is either missing or out-of-date.

Today in your Trail Mix:

Jobless rates are trending down over last year, but ticked up in December.

The governor takes his billion-for-Buffalo on the road - to Buffalo.

President Obama comes out in favor of fracking.

And Roswell Park tests a cancer vaccine.

In its Energy Outlook for 2012, the Department of Energy has reduced its estimate of unproven "technically recoverable reserve" (TRR) natural gas in the Marcellus Shale from 410 trillion cubic feet to 141 trillion cubic.

For those of you playing at home, 141 trillion down from 410 trillion represents a nearly one-third  two-thirds reduction in natural gas across the whole Marcellus Shale formation.

But it's still pretty far off from the U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) competing estimate, of about 84 trillion cubic feet.

Can a vaccine treat cancer?

That’s the question behind new clinical tests, soon to begin at Buffalo’s Roswell Park Cancer Institute.

The medicine in question is not your average vaccine: Each dose is customized for each cancer patient.

Researchers will draw healthy cells from each study participant, attach a specialized protein in a sterile lab environment and then inject the mixture, now known as a dendritic cell vaccine, back into the body.

“You can see that these cells now come back. They have memory. They’re able to remember that cancer cells are bad. They need to be destroyed. They need to be killed,” says Kunle Odunsi, chair of the Department of Gynecologic Oncology.

Today in your Trail Mix:

Protestors deliver bread to the governor to protest fracking.

Senator Schumer puts on the pressure to recruit a chip fabrication plant to Syracuse.

People continue to gamble on Kodak stock.

And Cornell raises tuition by nearly $2,000.