Mason, Ohio-based Atricure Inc. has inked an agreement to buy Redwood City, Calif.-based Sentreheart Inc., which has developed and markets the Lariat percutaneous, epicardial suture delivery device for soft tissue closure. The deal includes an upfront payment of $40 million in cash and stock, plus additional payments related to regulatory and reimbursement milestones over the next several years.

Screening for early signs of cognitive impairment and dementia amongst the elderly is a task that's often unevenly attended to by primary care physicians. But the routine personal consumer devices that we use every day might offer a clearer and more consistent window into early declines in cognitive and memory function, according to data from a feasibility study that were reported this week at the Association for Computing Machinery's Knowledge, Discovery and Data Mining conference in Anchorage, Alaska.