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The outdated practice of Quarterly Earnings Guidance — By Sakis Kotsantonis | LinkedIn

“We found that guidance policy had no effect on valuation whatsoever. As for the claim that it reduces volatility, we found that the opposite is true, companies offering annual range EPS guidance over the same period experienced lower volatility around earnings reporting periods when compared with those that issued quarterly guidance.”

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If We Let China or Russia Win the Artificial Intelligence Race, We’re ‘SOL’ – Mark Cuban

Billionaire tech entrepreneur Mark Cuban has seen a ton of change since he first got in the technology business in 1982, but he argues that artificial intelligence (AI) is going to “change everything, 180 degrees.”

He warns that if the U.S. allows other countries to take the lead in AI, then it’ll be “SOL,” an acronym that employs profanity to communicate urgency.

“All these things have happened that have changed how we do business, changed how we lived our lives, changed everything, right, the internet. But what we’re going to see with artificial intelligence dwarfs all of that,” Cuban said in an interview with hedge fund manager J. Kyle Bass of Hayman Capital on RealVision Television, a subscription financial video service.

Transhumanism And The Future Of Humanity: 7 Ways The World Will Change By 2030

Innovation Group looked at three fundamental pillars of humanity and how they will evolve over the coming 10–15 years: our bodies, our thought, and our behavior. After identifying the driving forces that will transform these fundamental pillars, we extracted key themes emerging from their convergence. Ultimately our goal was to determine the ways in which the changing nature of humanity and transhumanism would affect individuals, society, businesses, and government.

A few of the trends that emerged from this study include the following seven trends. We hope they will spark discussion and innovation at your organizations.


Companies today are strategizing about future investments and technologies such as artificial intelligence, the internet of things, or growth around new business models. While many of these trends will make for solid investments for the next 5–10 years, fewer companies are considering the revolutionary convergence of disparate trends pulled from technology, behavioral and societal changes, and medical advances to understand how they will converge to transform society. This transformation will be messy, complex, and sometimes scary, but signals already point to a future of humanity that will blur our identities into “transhumanism.”

Walmart is ‘secretly’ testing self-driving floor scrubbers, signaling that more robots are coming

Planning to try and automate the entire store.


Walmart (WMT) has been quietly testing out autonomous floor scrubbers during the overnight shifts in five store locations near the company’s headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas.

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A spokesperson for Walmart told FOX Business that the move, which was first reported by LinkedIn, is a “very small proof of concept pilot that we are running” and that the company still has a lot more to learn about how this technology “might work best in our different retail locations.”

Al Gore — Fiduciary Duty in the 21st century—Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI)

“Former Vice President and Chairman of Generation Investment Management, Al Gore, introduces PRI, UNEP FI and The Generation Foundation’s Fiduciary duty in the 21st century programme. The project finds that, far from being a barrier, there are positive duties to integrate environmental, social and governance factors in investment processes.”

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Fifty years since the first United Nations Conference on the Exploration and Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (1968 — 2018): UNISPACE+50 — United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA)

“UNISPACE+50 will celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the first United Nations Conference on the Exploration and Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. It will also be an opportunity for the international community to gather and consider the future course of global space cooperation for the benefit of humankind.

From 20 to 21 June 2018 the international community will gather in Vienna for UNISPACE+50, a special segment of the 61 st session of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS).”

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Liz Parrish in keynote interview at The Business of Longevity Conference in Hong Kong

Our CEO, Liz Parrish was invited at this event for a keynote interview with Charles Goddard, the editorial director for The Economist Asia Pacific Intelligence Unit. They discussed the complexity of regulations, the extraordinarily long time it takes for drug development from bench to bedside, the current funding environment surrounding biotech, and the pace of medical innovations. During the keynote, Liz emphasized that BioViva’s main aim is to make advanced gene and cell therapies available to all patients in need. To further this cause BioViva supports innovative and adaptive clinical trials, new models for preclinical testing, and accelerating the time to develop advanced gene and cell therapy. Finally, Liz highlighted the importance of testing gene and cell therapy in humans as quickly as possible, because animal models are not accurate.

Transforming cities with technology

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By 2050, two thirds of the world’s population will live in cities. Urbanisation is happening faster than at any time in human history.

Globally, 900 million people are living in slums. Cities can’t add housing fast enough. Today, an estimated one billion vehicles are already bringing urban areas to a standstill. Cities consume three-quarters of the world’s energy each year and are responsible for around 50% of greenhouse gas emissions.

These are challenges our cities have been facing for decades.

But now some city leaders, businesses, and even citizens, are taking new approaches to tackling these old problems. They’re transforming their cities with technology.

In Seoul, the use of data is seen as the key to tackling some of the big challenges of city life — like moving its people around. City workers here use sophisticated technology to understand and transform how the city — and its metro — can be run. The subway system transports 7 million people every day. It’s widely regarded as one of the best in the world. And the entire network from wheels to workers is driven by data.

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