It’s the dog days of summer. You bite down on a plump, chilled orange. Citrus juice explodes in your mouth in a refreshing, tingling burst. Ahh.
And congratulations—you’ve just been vaccinated for the latest virus.
That’s one of the goals of molecular farming, a vision to have plants synthesize medications and vaccines. Using genetic engineering and synthetic biology, scientists can introduce brand new biochemical pathways into plant cells—or even whole plants—essentially turning them into single-use bioreactors.
“De-Extinction” Biotechnology & Conservation Biology — Ben Novak, Lead Scientist Revive & Restore
Ben Novak is Lead Scientist, at Revive & Restore (https://reviverestore.org/), a California-based non-profit that works to bring biotechnology to conservation biology with the mission to enhance biodiversity through the genetic rescue of endangered and extinct animals (https://reviverestore.org/what-we-do/ted-talk/).
Ben collaboratively pioneers new tools for genetic rescue and de-extinction, helps shape the genetic rescue efforts of Revive & Restore, and leads its flagship project, The Great Passenger Pigeon Comeback, working with collaborators and partners to restore the ecology of the Passenger Pigeon to the eastern North American forests. Ben uses his training in ecology and ancient-DNA lab work to contribute, hands-on, to the sequencing of the extinct Passenger Pigeon genome and to study important aspects of its natural history (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pK2UlLsHkus&t=1s).
Ben’s mission in leading the Great Passenger Pigeon Comeback is to set the standard for de-extinction protocols and considerations in the lab and field. His 2018 review article, “De-extinction,” in the journal Genes, helped to define this new term. More recently, his treatment, “Building Ethical De-Extinction Programs—Considerations of Animal Welfare in Genetic Rescue” was published in December 2019 in The Routledge Handbook of Animal Ethics: 1st Edition.
Ben’s work at Revive & Restore also includes extensive education and outreach, the co-convening of seminal workshops, and helping to develop the Avian and Black-footed Ferret Genetic Rescue programs included in the Revive & Restore Catalyst Science Fund.
A new type of magnetic brain stimulation brought rapid remission to almost 80% of participants with severe depression in a study conducted at the Stanford University School of Medicine.
The treatment, known as Stanford accelerated intelligent neuromodulation therapy (SAINT) or simply Stanford neuromodulation therapy, is an intensive, individualized form of transcranial magnetic stimulation. In the study, remission typically occurred within days and lasted months. The only side effects were temporary fatigue and headaches.
“It works well, it works quickly and it’s noninvasive,” said Nolan Williams, MD, an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences. “It could be a game changer.” Williams is the senior author of the study, which was published Oct. 29 in the American Journal of Psychiatry.
VR can soon become perceptually indistinguishable from the physical reality, even superior in many practical ways, and any artificially created “imaginary” world with a logically consistent ruleset of physics would be ultrarealistic. Advanced immersive technologies incorporating quantum computing, AI, cybernetics, optogenetics and nanotech would make this a new “livable” reality within the next few decades. Can this new immersive tech help us decipher the nature of our own “b… See more.
This company’s entry in the US; market; along with other aluminum giants is said to have caused the shutdown of a large number of Aluminum manufacturers based in the US. It seemed that local US companies were unable to compete with state backed companies which were taking advantage of the free trade agreement.
However, the trade tariffs along with recent events have in turn caused this firm to become insolvent. It’s founder is now being detained by the US under fraud charges.
China Zhongwang Holdings Limited is known as the “King of Aluminum in Asia. On October 15th, China Zhongwang suddenly announced its subsidiaries “had suffered significant losses and operational difficulties. Despite efforts from various parties, they are unable to solve the current problems on their own.” The two subsidiaries mentioned are the primary companies of the corporate business. The debt crisis of Chinese companies is spreading, which can bring about a serious financial crisis in China. For example, China’s big business conglomerate, Baoneng Group, has experienced increasing strain on its capital chain. Currently, it has defaulted on at least nine items of trusts, involving a total of about $3.1 billion US dollars. Moreover, it has seen a rising risk factor for its subsidiaries, with frequent news about equity pledges, property freezes, and legal proceedings.
There’s no question about it: climate technology is in again.
Over the past several quarters, entrepreneurial activity and investment interest in climate tech have skyrocketed. New funds devoted specifically to climate have launched at an astonishing rate in 2021: from blue-chip venture capital firms like Union Square Ventures, from large private equity players like TPG and General Atlantic, from a whole new breed of climate-specific VCs like Lowercarbon Capital. Scarcely a day goes by now without a climate tech startup announcing a major new funding round. A whopping $49 billion of venture capital funding will pour into climate tech in 2021.
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink aptly captured the current ebullience when he declared last week that “the next 1,000 unicorns” will be in climate tech.
Across all sectors, organizations are grappling with rapid transformation. On top of that, there are enormous global shifts and challenges to contend with, such as climate change, and shifting political and economic power. To put it bluntly, our world is changing fast. And organizations must learn to adapt accordingly.
These eight major trends provide a snapshot of how business operations are evolving to suit our rapidly changing world.
It takes seven months to get to Mars in an efficiently engineered spaceship, covering the distance of 480 million kilometers. On this journey, a crew would have to survive in a confined space with no opportunity to experience nature or interact with new people. It is easy to imagine how this much isolation could have a severe impact on the crew’s well-being and productivity.
The challenges long-duration space travelers experience are not foreign to regular folk, although to … See more.
The transport sector accounts for 47% of New Zealand’s carbon dioxide emissions. It will be a focus for decarbonisation to meet the country’s new climate pledge to cut emissions by half by 2030.
