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Category: finance – Page 140

Oldsmar’s Cryo-Cell buys Orlando cord blood bank for $14 million

OLDSMAR — Cryo-Cell International, the local company that was the first private cord bank to separate and store stem cells, has acquired a public cord blood bank company based in Orlando for $14 million.

Cryo-Cell announced the acquisition of CORD: USE on Monday. The sale propels Cyro-Cell into the public cord blood banking business. Cryo-Cell co-CEO David Portnoy said the purchase will raise revenues by about 20 percent.

Cryo-Cell was founded in 1989 and now holds the stem cells of more than 500,000 families from 87 countries, according to the company. CORD: USE has agreements with hospital across the country to receive donations from mothers of babies’ chord blood while also storing families stem cells.

Investing in Brain Health for All (December 4–6th)

Amazing how quickly things are changing in brain health and mental health — see the news about Interaxon, Akili, NeuraMetrix, Apple, Calm, Halo Neuroscience, Mindstrong Health, Calm, Novartis, Pear Therapeutics, in the last 6 months alone, and consider joining the discussion in December smile (link opens 2-minute video)

Imagine a videogame cleared by the FDA to treat ADHD, depression, or substance abuse — how will doctors prescribe it, patients access it, and insurers pay for it?

Imagine a free “annual brain check-up” — what may it look like, and how can it lead into personalized interventions to improve function and prevent/ delay/ treat cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s Disease?

Imagine being responsible for the health & wellness of a million people — how will you educate them to navigate most-likely-to-help interventions, such as breathing/ exercise/ meditation/ apps/ biofeedback/ tDCS to regulate stress?

Imagine investing $100 million in startups developing noninvasive, digital neurotechnologies — where, and how, will you find great opportunities to generate financial and social returns?

Continue reading “Investing in Brain Health for All (December 4–6th)” | >

The Marshall Islands replaces the US dollar with its own cryptocurrency

The Marshall Islands made its own cryptocurrency, doing away with the US dollar. The government has signed the change into law, making the “sovereign” its new official cryptocurrency, as spotted by CNBC Africa cryptocurrency trader host Ran Neuner on Twitter yesterday.

The bill was signed into effect on March 1st, but the news is making waves again this week. The Marshall Islands’ population is 53,066, so the change doesn’t affect many, but it is significant for citizens of the islands because banks and credit card companies will need to begin accepting it. With the recent change, US dollars are still likely to be accepted on the Marshall Islands — the sovereign will just be considered the nation’s official legal tender.

In February, top officials from the Marshall Islands confirmed that the Pacific republic would issue its own cryptocurrency to be circulated as legal tender. The digital coin also received approval from the country’s parliament. “As a country, we reserve the right to issue a currency in whatever form it is, whether in digital or fiat form,” said David Paul, minister-in-assistance to the president of the Marshall Islands, to Reuters at the time.

Advanced biofuels can be produced extremely efficiently

A chance to switch to renewable sources for heating, electricity and fuel, while also providing new opportunities for several industries to produce large numbers of renewable products. This is the verdict of researchers from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, who now, after 10 years of energy research into gasification of biomass, see an array of new technological achievements.

“The potential is huge! Using only the already existing Swedish energy plants, we could produce renewable fuels equivalent to 10 percent of the world’s , if such a conversion were fully implemented,” says Henrik Thunman, Professor of Energy Technology at Chalmers.

How to implement a switch from fossil-fuels to renewables is a tricky issue for many industries. For heavy industries, such as oil refineries, or the paper and pulp industry, it is especially urgent to start moving, because investment cycles are so long. At the same time, it is important to get the investment right because you may be forced to replace boilers or facilities in advance, which means major financial costs. Thanks to long-term strategic efforts, researchers at Sweden´s Chalmers University of Technology have now paved the way for radical changes, which could be applied to new installations, as well as be implemented at thousands of existing plants around the globe.

Large study to study impact on early brain development of financial assistance to low-income mothers

Important new study to track — “The team will start recruiting the first of 1,000 low-income mothers next week…Of that 1,000, roughly half will be randomly selected to receive an unconditional $333 a month, while the others will form a control group that will receive $20. The money, which is completely unconditional, will be loaded onto a pre-paid debit card every month for 40 months, on the date of the child’s birthday. The hypothesis is that this steady stream of payments will make a positive difference in the cognitive and emotional development of the children whose mothers receive it”

___ Does growing up poor harm brain development? (The Economist): “Plenty of evidence suggests that growing up poor, living through these kinds of scrapes, has a detrimental impact on child development. Children from rich families tend to have better language and memory skills than those from poor families. More.

Reason – Fight Aging! blog and Repair Biotechnologies

An interview on rejuvenation science, advocacy, and more with Reason from the blog Fight Aging!.

Most people interested in rejuvenation and life extension are familiar with Fight Aging!, one of the very first rejuvenation advocacy blogs dating back all the way to the early 2000s; if you’re one of them, then you certainly are familiar with Reason, the man behind FA!.

Over the years, Reason has been a patient yet relentless advocate, acting not only as an information provider for the public but also helping out innumerable organizations and companies in the field of rejuvenation biotechnology in financial and other ways. Back in the day when SRF didn’t exist yet, Reason was a volunteer for Methuselah Foundation; eventually, he helped fund companies such as Oisìn Biotechnologies, CellAge, and LysoCLEAR; and, earlier this month, Reason and Bill Cherman co-founded Repair Biotechnologies, a company focused on gene therapy for rejuvenation, as announced on FA!.

Bill Cherman is an investor in the rejuvenation community who, just like Reason, has contributed to development of many ventures in the field. He is a holder of a gold medal in the Brazilian Mathematics Olympiad, a BA in economics, and a candidate in the Master of Biotechnology Enterprise and Entrepreneurship program at Johns Hopkins. He founded Front Seat Capital, a venture capital firm looking to invest in startups with the potential to change the world.

Time to break open AI’s black box, and keep it open

At the same time, the data that feeds AI decisions needs to be carefully vetted and reviewed. For example, “a robotic process automation solution that automates a loan process so the bank can deliver the loan faster to a client would be great,” according to Aditya Bhasin, head of consumer and wealth management technology at Bank of America, also quoted in American Banker. “But using AI or robotic process automation as a shortcut to data integration might not make sense. For example, when BofA launched a digital mortgage, ‘we could have done a whole bunch of robotics to go and pull data from different places and prepopulate the mortgage application, [but] it probably would have been fraught with error,” he said.

Too many organizations are rushing into AI without considering the full implications of the people element, according to Bessant. “It is time that we re-balance the discussion from being driven by the creators and the sellers of artificial intelligence to being balanced with the user perspective,” she says. “The discussion has been dominated by the sellers. Flip on any one of the morning financial shows and what you see is advertisement after advertisement for large and small-scale technology firms that are pushing the notion of data and modeling and that AI will help. Generally, society seems sold that artificial intelligence is better than we are as humans. However, because we build it, it is a subset of who we are and our thinking and bias.”

There’s a lot of buzz, and a lot of money now pouring into AIt’s important that some of that attention and money goes into education and building awareness of the processes behind the processes.

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