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Huawei fitting out 'demo' smart city in Weifang
 Huawei has announced the launch of a "demo city" in Weifang, China, to showcase its narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) smart city applications and OceanConnect IoT platform.

Announced during its annual Huawei Connect conference in Shanghai, Weifang will use Huawei's city-level IoT platform to access, manage, and collect data from sensory equipment spread across the city in real-time.

Huawei said it has already enabled smart lighting applications across Weifang, using it to monitor the status of street lamps, automatically adjust brightness, and detect faults, with the system designed to save 80 percent of traditional electricity usage and 90 percent of previous maintenance costs.

The Chinese networking giant has also integrated eight services with its NB-IoT network, including a remote-control system, Wi-Fi hotspots, video surveillance, environment monitoring, and statistics.

Huawei said its goal is to develop the "nervous system" of smart cities, with the company having deployed its smart city solutions throughout 40 countries in over 100 cities across the world.

"ICT advancement is accelerating the growth of the digital economy, which is a driving force of global economic development and transforming cities across many areas including governance, transport, living, social interactions, and employment, promoting the sustainable development of cities," said Huawei Enterprise Business Group GM of Global Smart City Solution Department Zheng Zhibin.

"The underlying connectivity in these smart cities will be critical to unlock the potential of the digital economy. Huawei is focused on improving connectivity capabilities within cities, and is creating the nervous system of better-connected cities through an IoT platform, achieving better awareness [and] connectivity among smart devices."

Huawei and the Government of Weifang City have also established the Huawei-Weifang IoT Innovation R&D Centre and the Huawei-Weifang Smart City IoT Industry Alliance.

China's Longgang District Government is similarly working with Huawei on developing a smart region, including through the government's own digital transformation to speed up approvals and other applications.

"The transformation also achieves integrated online and offline approval services, allowing Longgang citizens to submit applications or reports to the government through online business halls, mobile apps, WeChat, and other channels," Huawei said.

Huawei has this week also announced that it will partner with Accenture to establish a consolidated information management platform powered by the former's FusionCloud solution for Shanghai International Port Group (SIPG).

The Huawei-Accenture agreement will see Huawei provide its hyperconverged infrastructure FusionCube, OpenStack-based cloud operating system FusionSphere, integration server, software-defined storage, and network hardware; while Accenture will design and implement SIPG's new management platform.

SIPG, which works across port handling, stevedoring services, warehousing, logistics, and real estate development services, will use this to "streamline" its operations, as well as to implement new engineering, human resources, master data management, and business intelligence systems, Huawei said.

"The integration of Huawei's FusionCloud with OpenStack ensures the openness of the cloud platform. This will enable SIPG to establish and manage the private cloud, public cloud, and hybrid cloud, resulting in the provision of more innovative and valuable services," president of Huawei's IT Cloud Computing and Big Data Platform Product Line Matt Ma said.

Huawei is similarly leading the digital transformation of Hamad International Airport in Qatar in an effort to improve security, customer experience, and efficiency via the creation of prototypes and solutions for IoT and autonomous machines throughout the airport.

Huawei and SoftBank partner on 5G

Huawei has also announced partnering with Japanese carrier SoftBank to demonstrate 5G networking use cases for business customers.

The four use cases demonstrated by Huawei and SoftBank were real-time ultra high-definition (UHD) video transmission, immersive video, remote control of a robotic arm with ultra-low latency, and remote rendering by a GPU server.

The first demo involved a UHD camera capturing outdoor scenery of the Odaiba Tokyo Bay area, compressing the data, and then transmitting it through a 5G network with throughput of over 800Mbps to a UHD monitor. According to the companies, such technology could be used for telehealth and remote education.

The immersive video demonstration then captured scenery with a 180-degree camera with four lenses, broadcasting this footage in real-time to smartphones and tablets over 5G, which it said could be used for AR and VR.

In their third use case, Huawei and SoftBank played a game of air hockey using a remote-controlled robot arm -- technology which they said could eventually be used in factory automation, as it attained latency of under 2ms.

"A camera installed on top of the air hockey table detected the puck's position to calculate its trajectory. The calculated result was then forwarded to the robotic arm control server to control the robotic arm," they explained.

"In this demonstration, the robotic arm was able to strike back the puck shot by the human player on various trajectories."

Lastly, remote rendering by a GPU server saw the two use edge computing to execute HD computer games and HD computer-aided design (CADs) playable on tablets and smartphones.

"A GPU server located near a 5G base station performed rendering, and the image generated by the GPU server was sent to the tablet over the ultra-high throughput and ultra-low latency 5G network," they said.

"This technology can be applied to check the CAD data at a construction site with a tablet or to enjoy a HD game application on a smartphone."

SoftBank, which recently bought robotics company Boston Dynamics from Google parent Alphabet, is also working with Chinese telecommunications technology solutions provider ZTE to trial 5G over sub-6GHz spectrum at 4.5GHz across Tokyo.

ZTE and SoftBank have been collaborating on pre-5G technology research and development including Massive Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (Massive MIMO) technology and 5G New Radio (NR).

Output: Chinese tech giant Huawei is looking to demonstrate its narrowband internet of things (NB-IoT) capabilities by transforming Weifang into a "smart city". Huawei can already monitor and adjust the brightness of street lamps across the city, saving 80% of traditional energy expenditure. "Huawei is focused on improving connectivity capabilities within cities, and is creating the nervous system of better-connected cities through an IoT platform, achieving better awareness [and] connectivity among smart devices", said Zheng Zhibin, Huawei Enterprise Business Group GM of Global Smart City Solution Department.


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Future of gene therapy treatments burdened by vast medical costs
 The first gene therapy treatment in the United States was approved recently by the Food and Drug Administration, heralding a new era in medicine that is coming faster than most realize — and that perhaps few can afford.

The treatment, Kymriah, made by Novartis, is spectacularly effective against a rare form of leukemia, bringing remissions when all conventional options have failed. It will cost $475,000.

With gene therapy, scientists seek to treat or prevent disease by modifying cellular DNA. Many such treatments are in the wings: There are 34 in the final stages of testing necessary for F.D.A. approval, and another 470 in initial clinical trials, according to the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine, an advocacy group.

The therapies are aimed at extremely rare diseases with few patients; most are meant to cure with a single injection or procedure. But the costs, like that of Kymriah, are expected to be astronomical, alarming medical researchers and economists.

Output: The Food and Drug Administration recently approved the first commercially available gene therapy in the US, giving Novartis clearance to offer the leukemia treatment to patients for $475,000. The decision could clear the way for the introduction of immensely expensive gene therapy treatment options. The cost has led to criticism from doctors towards drug manufacturers, who maintain that the value of the drug should reflect the value of the treatment for the patient, as well as covering the cost of making such specific therapies.


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Graphene batteries may give wearables more functionality
 Imagine you’re hiking in the mountains when a blizzard hits. Despite your warm coat, your body temperature begins to drop. But fear not. Temperature sensors in the coat feel you getting colder, activating heating elements embedded in the fabric. Perfectly toasty, you continue your hike.

Sounds like a smart idea, right? Why is it not a reality? In a word, batteries. Battery technology has not advanced as quickly as wearable technology, meaning wearables—smartwatches, fitness trackers, clothing-embedded medical sensors—must either be equipped with bulky batteries or plugged in to charge at frequent intervals.

Now, researchers in the UK have a new development that could lead to a solution: a flexible, battery-like device made of graphene that can be printed directly on almost anything.

“You can print the batteries on a flexible substrate like textiles,” says Mohammad Nazmul Karim, a fellow at the National Graphene Institute at the University of Manchester. “And it can be charged very rapidly.”

The devices, recently described in the journal 2D Materials, are technically not batteries but supercapacitors, which store energy on their surfaces by static charge. They can be charged extremely quickly compared to batteries—in seconds, rather than minutes or hours—and don’t lose their energy storage capabilities over time, even after millions and millions of charges.

The supercapacitors developed by Karim and his team are made from graphene, a two-dimensional lattice of carbon only one atom thick. The researchers used a basic screen printing technique to print a flexible supercapacitor of graphene-oxide ink onto cotton fabric. The fabric can be worn, stretched and even thrown in the wash without destroying the supercapacitor’s charging capabilities.

“If you have a piece of fabric and you apply graphene on that fabric, it doesn’t only make it conductive, it also makes it stronger,” Karim says.

Graphene can be stretched up to 20 percent larger than its original size without breaking. This is one of the reasons it’s considered so promising for wearables, which need to move with the body.

The team’s initial goal is to use the graphene supercapacitors for medical sensors: wearable heart monitors, temperature sensors and EEG sensors to monitor sleep and other brain activities. This could happen in as little as two or three years, Karim estimates. Other uses—clothes the charge your cell phone, wearable computers, even the temperature-stabilizing jacket I described—would be significantly further down the road.

Wearable technology—everything from smartwatches to fitness trackers to wearable cameras to clothing-embedded medical sensors—is big business. A recent analysis by CCS Insight suggests the industry will be worth some $34 billion by 2020. But charging has been a constant problem for wearables developers. Nobody wants to take their wristband off to charge in the middle of the day. So the search for better batteries and alternative charging solutions has been going on for years. Many companies have banked on wireless charging as the wave of the future for wearables—you could simply walk into your kitchen, and have your device charged by a wireless charger on the wall while you cook dinner, without even taking it off. But the technology is still very much under development, and consumers have been slow to warm to the relatively slow and expensive wireless chargers on the market so far.

Karim cautions that graphene is no silver bullet either.

“There’s lots of hype around graphene, and we need to be careful,” he says.

One major challenge is making large quantities of high quality graphene. It’s cheap and easy to make lower quality graphene, which is fine for some applications. But the best quality of graphene is still expensive and laborious to produce, a problem researchers are working on.

“Maintaining the high quality of graphene in a scalable quantity is a huge challenge,” Karim says.

Another drawback to graphene is that it doesn’t conduct electricity as well as metals. So while graphene-based supercapacitors are strong and flexible, as well as relatively environmentally friendly, silver or copper supercapacitors are more conductive. Depending on the use, one or the other might be preferable.

So watch this space. In a decade or two, we might be describing the new, graphene supercapacitor-powered winter jacket, perfect for your next trip to the Himalayas.

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Output: New graphene supercapacitors, which can be printed onto clothes and provide an alternative power source to traditional batteries, could revolutionise the wearable technology industry. Researchers at the National Graphene Institute at the University of Manchester have developed a system which stores energy on the surface of the flexible graphene supercapacitor by static charge. It can be charged in a matter of seconds, rather than the minutes or hours required by batteries, and does not lose its storage capability despite repeated charging or washing of the material.


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Ripple Asia and DAYLI Group partner for international payments
 SBI Ripple Asia, the company fused of Japan’s SBI Holdings and global payment network Ripple announced today a signed partnership agreement with DAYLI Intelligence, a subsidiary of DAYLI Financial Group, to bring Ripple’s enterprise blockchain solutions for cross-border payments to the South Korean market.

DAYLI Intelligence provides blockchain solutions and AI-based technology infrastructure for financial institutions and will work with SBI Ripple Asia to enable instant cross-border payments between customers in Japan and South Korea, as well as other global markets.

Commenting on the partnership, Takashi Okita, CEO of SBI Ripple Asia, said:

“South Korea is one of the most active markets worldwide when it comes to blockchain innovation and trading of digital assets. With trade flows into and out of the country totaling $960 billion every year, we also see a high and growing demand for Ripple’s frictionless payments solution in the country.” “DAYLI Intelligence – a leading fintech firm – will help us to better serve our customers there.”

SBI Ripple Asia was formed in January 2016 with an engineering and sales force across Japan, China, Taiwan, Korea, and ASEAN countries to sell and install Ripple’s enterprise solutions for cross-border payments at banks across the region.

The company also currently manages a consortium of more than 60 Japanese banks who leverage Ripple’s enterprise blockchain technology for instant payments and settlement.

DAYLI, a leading Korean FinTech Player

Founded in 2015, DAYLI Financial Group is made up of specialized companies with specialized services and technologies in digital finance. One of those specialized services is based upon blockchain and cryptographic transactions such digital asset exchange and remittance services.

Clients:

Output: SBI Ripple Asia, a conglomerate of blockchain-based payment network Ripple and financial services group SBI Holdings, will join forces with DAYLI Intelligence, an AI and blockchain focused arm of DAYLI Financial Group. Together, the firms will offer blockchain-based cross-border payments between customers in Japan and South Korea, alongside a handful of other global markets.


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Pandora to offer free music trial to Dunkin' Donuts customers
 Music streaming service Pandora has teamed up with doughnut company Dunkin’ Donuts to offer free 90-day Pandora Premium trials to Dunkin’ fans.

Starting today (11 September), when someone signs up to DD Perks – Dunkin’s rewards program – with the code ‘Pandora’ they will be sent a 90-day trial code via email.

“We’re excited to offer DD fans enrolling in Perks this exclusive offer to try Pandora Premium free for 90 days upon enrolment,” said Nick Dunham, director of media at Dunkin’ Brands. “The partnership allows us to align with our customers every day, on-the-go rituals and behaviours on a mass scale.”

The campaign to promote the offer will involve an email to people not yet signed up to DD Perks, online ads and audio ads.

“We are thrilled to partner with an iconic brand like Dunkin’ Donuts to gift 90-day Pandora Premium trials,” said Steven Kritzman, SVP of sales at Pandora. “We are always looking for new ways to help our advertisers effectively reach and resonate with their target audiences through the power of music. This campaign will allow Dunkin’ Donuts to surprise and delight our listeners with the opportunity to try out Pandora’s new on-demand Premium service in exchange for taking action and signing up for the DD Perks Loyalty program. It’s a win-win.”

Output: Music streaming service provider Pandora is offering a free 90-day trial of its premium product to Dunkin' Donuts customers. Access codes to the service will be sent by email as part of the doughnut chain's DD Perks programme. “The partnership allows us to align with our customers' everyday, on-the-go rituals and behaviours on a mass scale," said Nick Dunham, director of media at Dunkin’ Brands.


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Sky Sports signs deal with EFL to livestream 80 games
 Sky Sports has signed a new deal with the English Football League in a transformative agreement defined by its objective livestream 80 games.

From the 2019/20 season until 2024, the broadcaster will air some 183 matches live annually across the Sky Bet Championship, Sky Bet League One, Sky Bet League Two, Carabao Cup and Checkatrade Trophy tournaments – this stands as a 26% increase on its current deal with the sports body.

However, Sky Sports will also livestream 80 midweek Championship fixtures throughout the season across “interactive and digital platforms”. A Sky Sports spokesman confirmed that the platforms where the games will be available are yet to be set in stone, although any strategy likely feature the red button service and website.

The games will likely only be available to subscribers although certain content could run on social media. Further to that, the games will also be available on the EFL's streaming service iFollow.

The desire to distribute matches across online and digital reflects the changing needs of the consumer, Adrian Pettett, chief executive of Cake, the Havas sport and entertainment agency, expands on this, he said: “This is a directional deal in terms of the way Sky is integrating streaming in to its offer. The broadcaster needs football, both in terms of breadth and depth. It has a Premier League vertical and this is about building its content for the Sky Football channel, which - as obvious as its sounds - needs a great deal of football. Streaming allows viewers to watch when and where they want.

“Amazon and other tech platforms are moving in to sport. This shows how serious Sky takes the issue of protecting its position as the leading football media brand.”

Sky Sports recently restructured its offering to reflect fan demand for select sports, Barney Francis, Sky Sports managing director, the deal would help build out its Football channel. “This is great news for EFL fans and our viewers, with more live games than ever before and more opportunities for fans to watch their teams live. With a new dedicated football channel, newly enhanced digital platforms, adding more games means Sky Sports is getting even better for football fans.”

Shaun Harvey, EFL chief executive, dubbed Sky Sports a “hugely important” partner and touted the financial security from securing a half decade deal.

He touted the benefits of live-streaming: “The new opportunity for EFL Clubs to live-stream their matches through a direct to consumer service in the UK is a revolutionary and exciting step forward for football broadcasting rights in the UK and we will monitor its progress closely to determine how this model can be considered for future EFL rights cycles.”

It appears to have been a competitive brokering process. He concluded: “I would like to thank all those who submitted bids.” One of those rivals was predictably BT Sport.

Output: A deal signed between Sky Sports and the English Football League (EFL) will see the broadcaster livestream 80 midweek games throughout the season across digital platforms, in addition to its main television coverage of matches. The exact platforms have yet to be finally decided, but are likely to include Sky's red button service and website. The focus on digital is being seen as a reaction to the increasing prevalence of Amazon and other tech platforms in sports coverage. The EFL welcomed the five-year deal and said that the potential for streaming matches was 'revolutionary'.


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ProctorU unveils AI for online exam proctoring
 Online Proctoring

ProctorU Intros AI-Based Online Proctoring

Online proctoring and identity management company ProctorU today launched ProctorU Auto, an automated online proctoring solution that uses artificial intelligence to flag suspicious test-taking behavior in real time.

Features of the product include:

Machine learning allows ProctorU Auto to adapt to student behavior, improving its analysis with each exam;

Facial recognition, eye movement tracking and auditory analysis identify suspicious behavior;

Incident reports and session activity data are generated at the end of an exam;

With real-time exam view, faculty can observe students taking exams as if they were in the classroom;

Multi-factor authentication — ID and photo capture, facial recognition and keystroke analysis — verifies student identities;

The platform is available on-demand with no scheduling required;

Integration with Blackboard and Canvas via LTI; and

Live support is available to students and faculty 24/7.

In addition, ProctorU Auto is available with two added service levels:

ProctorU Auto with Professional Review, which "provides trained and certified professional proctors to review flagged behaviors from the testing session and confirm breaches of academic integrity," and

ProctorU Auto with Live Launch and Professional Review, which "includes test-taker identification verified by a live proctor prior to the start of the testing session and then the same level of professional review for the recorded session," according to a company statement.

For more information, visit the ProctorU site.

Output: Proctoring firm ProctorU has released an AI-driven service that identifies suspicious online test-taking behaviour in real time. The software uses machine learning to adapt to students' behaviour, uses facial recognition and auditory analysis to identify when a student might be cheating, and offers multi-factor authentication to verify students' identities. Additionally, a live video stream enables examiners to observe students taking exams as if they were in the classroom.


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3D-printed device developed to diagnose sport-related concussions
 Sep 11, 2017 | By Benedict

Researchers at the University of Washington have developed a 3D printed deep learning device called “PupilScreen” that can determine whether a person requires medical attention for concussion or other traumatic brain injuries (TBIs).

Although diagnosed as a “minor” brain injury, concussions are an extremely serious topic in the world of sports and elsewhere. Even with protective headgear, athletes like American footballers and rugby players are extremely susceptible to concussion, a kind of injury that causes a temporary loss of brain function, headaches, and a general feeling of fogginess.

But those are just the short-term effects. What’s really under scrutiny these days is the long-term effects of concussion, especially the effects of multiple concussions over a period of time. Studies suggest that those who have suffered such injuries numerous times are more likely to develop clinical depression and even memory loss conditions like Alzheimer’s disease.

Preventing concussion is therefore incredibly important, and that’s why the development of high-level protective headgear for athletes—but also soldiers, workers, and other people at risk of brain trauma—is so crucial. (3D scanning has been used by helmet specialist Riddell on some of its recent models, while new 3D printed materials could also improve protective headgear.)

You can’t always prevent concussion, though, and the next best solution to the problem is being able to spot the signs of TBIs as soon as possible. Doctors and physiotherapists have the skills to do this, but most of us don’t.

That’s why PupilScreen, a new smartphone app and 3D printed device developed at the University of Washington, could be so useful.

“The vision we’re shooting for is having someone simply hold the phone up and use the flash,” explains researcher Alex Mariakakis. “We want every parent, coach, caregiver or emergency medical technician who is concerned about a brain injury to be able to use it on the spot without needing extra hardware.”

According to the researchers, PupilScreen uses a smartphone’s video camera and deep learning software to see how a person’s eyes are responding to light—a potential indicator of whether or not that person may have concussion.

Using the smartphone’s camera flash, PupilScreen can stimulate the eye, before recording an eight-second video of the pupil’s response. Neural networks then process the video footage, tracking the pupil diameter over the course of those eight seconds and delivering useful numbers—constriction velocity, magnitude of diameter change, etc.—that can be used for diagnosis.

That’s how the smartphone bit works, but the 3D printed attachment is also incredibly important. The simple box-like structure works to block out ambient light, enabling standardization and maximizing the effect of the camera flash. The 3D printed part also keeps the smartphone at a precise distance from the eye.

The researchers say the trickiest part of developing PupilScreen was training the software to distinguish between pupil and iris. Around 4,000 images of eyes had to be annotated by hand in order to “teach” the system which part was which. Now, however, the machine may be smarter than the people that built it, since a computer can quantify subtle changes in the pupillary light reflex that are imperceivable with our own eyes.

Early testing suggests that the 3D printed smartphone system is doing its job. A pilot study involving six patients with TBIs resulted in PupilScreen correctly differentiating healthy patients from injured ones every time. A bigger study involving coaches, emergency medical technicians, and doctors is planned for this fall.

A commercial version of PupilScreen could be available within two years, but the researchers still have some way to go before the device is ready. At present, the system is best at identifying serious TBIs, but struggles at identifying very mild concussion. However, the University of Washington team expects the upcoming fall trials to yield big improvements.

“Having an objective measure that a coach or parent or anyone on the sidelines of a game could use to screen for concussion would truly be a game-changer,” says Professor Shwetak Patel of the University of Washington. “Right now the best screening protocols we have are still subjective, and a player who really wants to get back on the field can find ways to game the system.”

PupilScreen could therefore be the first device to offer a conclusive diagnosis of concussion in non-medical environments.

“PupilScreen…[gives] us the first capability to measure an objective biomarker of concussion in the field,” says Dr Lynn McGrath of the university’s College of Medicine. “After further testing, we think this device will empower everyone from Little League coaches to NFL doctors to emergency department physicians to rapidly detect and triage head injury.”

The PupilScreen team is currently seeking further partners for its next round of testing, which will begin in October.

Posted in 3D Printing Application

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Output: University of Washington researchers have created a 3D-printed device that allows smartphones to accurately scan patients for signs of concussion or other traumatic brain injuries. The 3D-printed device, called PupilScreen, blocks out ambient light, allowing the accompanying app to scan a person's eye using a smartphone video camera and flash before analysing the footage. A pilot study showed early success, with the system able to correctly differentiate between patients with injuries and those without.


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NFL star to host 10-week Bleacher Report show for Facebook Watch
 Bleacher Report and Marshawn Lynch are coming to Facebook’s Watch.

Later in September, Bleacher Report will debut a 10-episode video series called “No Script,” in which Bleacher Report’s cameras will follow the Oakland Raiders running back as he interviews celebrity guests and tries activities such as riding military tanks and testing virtual reality. Produced for Facebook by Bleacher Report’s B/R Entertainment division and Lynch’s own Beast Mode Productions, the show will air weekly on Facebook’s Watch over 10 weeks this fall. Each episode of the midform show runs for 10 minutes or longer.

“No Script” is Bleacher Report’s first live-action video show. While the Turner-owned sports lifestyle publisher creates recurring video segments and formats such as college-commitment videos, this is the first time Bleacher Report has produced a full live-action video series with a consistent cast and crew working on the project from start to finish. Between Bleacher Report and Beast Mode Productions, Brown said as many as 20 people spent “a lot of time” on “No Script.”

Currently, this is the only show that Bleacher Report is producing for Facebook’s Watch, a new section on Facebook dedicated to professionally produced video shows. Facebook is willing to spend as much as $1 billion on original content through 2018, according to The Wall Street Journal, as the platform gets more serious about taking on YouTube. In the coming months, Facebook expects to offer hundreds of short- and long-form shows on Watch.

Bleacher Report retains the content rights to “No Script,” which means the publisher is free to distribute episodes on other platforms after a period of exclusivity on Facebook.

“Watch is not a proven product yet, but out of fairness to Facebook, we’re optimistic about it due to the level of investment they’re putting into this initiative,” said Rory Brown, president of Bleacher Report. “It does not hurt when there is a licensing fee attached to this as well, but Facebook has made this less of a blind guess and more something where we’re able to weigh the short-term, mid-term and long-term potential of the show.”

While “No Script” is made for and funded by Facebook, the idea for the show came out of a desire to work with Lynch, who is one of the more popular pro athletes among Bleacher Report’s younger, mostly male audience, according to Brown. Videos and Facebook posts about Lynch regularly outperform other content Bleacher Report creates and shares, he added.

“No Script” comes at a time when Bleacher Report is investing in doing more entertainment-style content. The 12-person B/R Entertainment team that veteran TV and comedy writer Neil Punsalan (who serves as an executive producer on “No Script”) leads is spearheading the effort, with more than a dozen projects in production or development. Last week, Bleacher Report also moved into bigger offices in New York, in part to support the production of more entertainment-style content, Brown said.

It’s easy to envision a scenario where Bleacher Report works with all sorts of athletes on shows like “No Script” or even future episodes of “No Script” that center on different athletes. But that’s not how Bleacher Report plans to approach live-action and athlete-driven original programming, Brown said.

“One thing we’re not doing is trying to do shows with 50 different athletes,” Brown said. “It’s more valuable to have premium content versus throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks, which is what a lot of other publishers are doing. We’re definitely doing something with a handful of athletes, but we’re not going to run the Marshawn Lynch playbook with someone else.”

Image courtesy of Bleacher Report

Output: Facebook's streaming service, Facebook Watch, will exclusively run a 10-episode video series from sports media company Bleacher Report called No Script. The TV programme will follow Marshawn Lynch, an American football player, as he interviews celebrity guests and tries activities such as virtual reality. Facebook has funded the programme as part of efforts to take on YouTube. The social media company will offer hundreds more short and long-form shows on Watch within the next few months, it said.


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Rolls-Royce shows off autonomous naval vessel concept
 Rolls-Royce has revealed plans for a 60m long, 700 tonne autonomous naval vessel with a range of 3500 nautical miles. The vessel concept is said to be capable of operating at sea for over 100 days, performing a range of single role missions, for example, patrol & surveillance, mine detection or fleet screening.

At the heart of the vessel is a ‘power dense propulsion system’ combining both gas turbines and diesel engines with electric propulsion, energy storage and propulsors.

According to Benjamin Thorp, Rolls-Royce, general manager naval electrics, automation and control: “Rolls-Royce is seeing interest from major navies in autonomous, rather than remote controlled, ships. Such ships offer a way to deliver increased operational capability, reduce the risk to crew and cut both operating and build costs.

“Over the next 10 years or so, Rolls-Royce expects to see the introduction of medium sized unmanned platforms, particularly in leading navies, as the concept of mixed manned and unmanned fleets develops.”

The initial design features a full electric propulsion system which is claimed to require fewer auxiliary systems (lubrication, cooling system etc.) and offer better reliability levels than mechanical counterparts. It features two Rolls-Royce MTU 4000 Series gensets providing around 4MW electrical power to a 1.5MW propulsion drive. Rolls-Royce says that small gas turbines could offer an alternative to diesel engines, further improving the system’s reliability and reducing onboard maintenance. Permanent Magnet Azipull thrusters together with a bow mounted tunnel thruster will make the vessel more manoeuvrable.

To reduce fuel consumption and extend operational range, an additional 3000 kWh of energy storage will facilitate low speed loiter operations and the vessel will also be fitted with solar panels to generate power when the vessel is on standby.

The absence of crew increases the need for reliable power and propulsion systems. Rolls-Royce plans to cost-effectively blend advanced Intelligent Asset Management and system redundancy to avoid sacrificing the cost and volume savings achieved by removing the crew. A suite of autonomous support tools, developed by Rolls-Royce, such as Energy Management, Equipment Health Monitoring and predictive and remote maintenance, will ensure the availability of unmanned vessels.

Many of the technologies needed to make autonomous ships a reality already exist. Rolls-Royce has created what it believes to be the world’s first Intelligent Awareness System combining multiple sensors with Artificial Intelligence, to help commercial vessels operate more safely and efficiently. Significant analysis of potential cyber risks is also being undertaken to ensure end-to-end security.

Rolls-Royce says that autonomous technology presents an opportunity to automate certain parts of the ship’s operations, and the partial removal of sailors reduces operating costs and improves safety by limiting the number of people exposed to hazards.

Output: Rolls-Royce has unveiled designs for an autonomous naval vessel, which could sail for upwards of 100 days over 3,500 nautical miles. The vessel would be powered by gas and diesel engines, and driven by an electric propulsion system designed to run reliably for long periods of operation without maintenance. The concept also incorporates an additional 3,000 KWh of energy storage, and solar panels to generate power when on standby. The company says it expects mixed manned and unmanned naval fleets to develop over the next decade.


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'Nano-drills' developed that can kill cancer cells one by one
 Microscopic "molecular drills" could deliver drugs to, or destroy, diseased cells – potentially forging a new path to targeted cancer treatment.

Where is this data coming from? Start your free trial today Email Where is this data coming from? Start your free trial today Email

For cancer patients, aggressive treatment options like chemotherapy and radiation can come with severe side effects, including extreme nausea, compromised immune systems, and long-term organ damage. This is largely because some of the most common and effective cancer treatment regimens attack cancerous and non-cancerous cells indiscriminately.

Researchers have long sought alternative treatments capable of killing cancer cells while leaving healthy cells alone. Now, a team of scientists from Rice, Durham, and North Carolina State Universities may have uncovered one: A new innovation uses light to activate microscopic “nanomachines” that can drill into individual cancer cells. Once these nanomachines pierce a cell, they can release cancer-killing drugs or attack the cell membranes, inducing the cell to die by a process known as necrosis.

The research could represent a huge step forward for non-invasive cancer treatment, delivered in an extremely small package: The nanomachines are so tiny, you could park 50,000 of them end-to-end across the diameter of a human hair.

Research Briefing: Startups Curing Cancer We take a deep dive into recent advances in cancer therapy and see where VCs and big corporations like Google, IBM, Merck and Novartis are placing their bets. Email

Nanomachines themselves are a fairly new development. Just last year, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to the researchers who created the first nanomachines – essentially tiny electric drills a few thousand times thinner than the strand of a single hair and made out of molecules.

Drs. James Tour of Rice, Robert Pal of Durham, and Gufeng Wang of North Carolina State – who collectively led the new nanomachines research – all hail from the chemistry field as well. Their team based its work on the Nobel-winning designs, but at an even more microscopic scale.

The cancer-killing technology leverages nanomachines (or “motorized molecules”) and engineers them to selectively target cancerous cells based on a sensitivity to certain proteins of the compromised cells. Even before UV light is applied, the motorized molecules can adhere themselves to diseased cells through “adsorption.”

The nanomachines remain affixed to the surface of the diseased cells until the light activation makes the cell permeable. Once activated by ultraviolet light, the nanomachines burrow through cell linings using a system of rotors and stators.

The nanomachines can then drill through the cell membranes at a speed of up to 3 million times per second. (This high a speed is required to outpace “Brownian motion,” which is the erratic movement that takes place among microscopic particles suspended in fluid.)

From there, the cancer cells can be killed in one of two ways: The nanomachines can inject chemical agents to destroy it, or they can repeatedly pierce the cell to blast open tumorous membranes until the cell dies by necrosis.

In one test, it took just 60 seconds for a nanomachine to pierce the outer shell of a prostate cancer cell with dozens of tiny holes; overall, it took 1-3 minutes to destroy the cell by necrosis.

“Once developed, this approach could provide a potential step change in non-invasive cancer treatment and greatly improve survival rates and patient welfare globally,” says Dr. Robert Pal of Durham University.

The cancer-killing nanomachine research remains far from clinical application, but has so far been successful in lab tests on human and animal cells. (Further testing on microbes, small fish, mice, and rats would precede any human trials.)

The researchers’ ambition is to ultimately use light-activated nanomachines to target common cancer cells – such as those in breast tumors and skin melanomas – as well as cells that are more resistant to chemotherapy.

Much further down the road, nanomachines could potentially be utilized in other areas of healthcare and treatment; for example, some scientists say the technology could be used to heal or repair cells that don’t naturally heal or are difficult to repair (such as nerve cells or heart cells).

Nanomachines will also have applications well beyond medicine. For example, molecular machines could be used to create “smart materials” that can store energy or expand and contract like muscles: In first-generation tests, 3D printing and nanomachines created smart materials capable of lifting a dime weighing 2.268g. The coin, which was 15 times the weight of the smart material that lifted it, was raised 1.6 millimeters; that scale is equivalent to a human being lifting a car. This futuristic scenario could have potentially broad implications for heavy industry and manufacturing.

To learn more about the molecular motor research discussed in this piece, check out the video below.

The original research ‘Molecular machines open cell membranes’ was published in the scientific journal Nature. Full information is available here.

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Output: Microscopic "nano-drills" that can target and destroy individual cancer cells have been developed by US scientists. Researchers from Rice, Durham and North Carolina state universities used light to activate "nanomachines" that can drill into individual cells. Once the nanomachines pierce a cell, they release cancer-killing drugs or attack cell membranes, leading to the cell dying off through necrosis. The development could prove a major step forward for non-invasive cancer treatment.


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Vine-monitoring robot trials well in Portuguese vineyard
 Imbibe Live unites the entire drinks industry to grow their businesses. Whether you’re sourcing and buying, or producing and selling, we invite you to share new products, stories and build lasting relationships. Be where the future of the UK industry is determined.

Output: A robot designed to monitor vines has been hailed a success following trials in Portugal's Douro Valley. The VineScout is being developed by Spanish universities in conjunction with port and Douro wine producer Symington Family Estates, using technology from French and British companies. The EU is funding €1.7m ($2.04m) of the €2m project, which is aimed at both improving viticulture and addressing labour shortage issues.


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Rootstock to release smart contracts platform after SegWit2x
 Rootstock (RSK) CEO Diego Gutierrez has confirmed it will finally launch “between mid-November and mid-December” after the possible SegWit2x hard fork.

In a Twitter exchange Monday, Gutierrez said the timing of the initial release was deliberate to avoid complications from a hard fork occurring afterwards.

RSK is an open source smart contracts platform pegged to Bitcoin, the first such implementation for the network which will see significantly more capacity and faster payments.

When asked what stage the project’s technology was at, Gutierrez added the only reason for “waiting” was the SegWit2x hard fork issue.

“...On our side, all the tech is in place, and the reason why we're waiting is because of the potential fork which might happen after mid (November),” he wrote.

Well on our side all the tech is in place and the reason why we're waiting is because of the potential fork which might happen after mid Nov — Diego Gutierrez-Z (@dieguito) September 11, 2017

On the subject of which chain RSK would support if a hard fork did occur, Gutierrez said that any willing to integrate smart contracts, but that “limited resources” meant the chain with most transactions would get “priority.”

China setback

SegWit2x has taken a back seat in the Bitcoin industry debate this month as regulatory upheaval in China becomes a decisive factor regulating price and volatility.

Community consensus has recently drifted towards discrediting the forking proposal, which came out of Barry Silbert’s so-called New York Agreement (NYA) in May.

The advent of Bitcoin Cash, Blockstream CEO Adam Back said as an example, made SegWit2x seem “moot.”

yes! tho some may argue segwit2x helped activate segwit not just 148 and 91 initiatives. anyway given BCH segwit2x seems moot. https://t.co/R0Ta59HMkR — Adam Back (@adam3us) September 11, 2017

Catallaxy co-founder Francis Pouliot yesterday meanwhile added to the opinion that such hard forks were ultimately malicious acts, echoing Chain engineer Oleg Andreev last month, who described them as “FUD projects.”

Output: Rootstock will launch its open-source smart contract platform between mid-November and mid-December after the possible hard fork caused by the introduction of SegWit2x rules on block size. The technology is in place to launch, however, the hard fork could cause complications, CEO Diego Gutierrez said. In the case of a hard fork, Rootstock will support the blockchain that hosts the most transactions, he added.


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Apple tests cardiac diagnosis potential of Apple Watch
 Apple is working with partners to test whether its smartwatch can be used to detect common heart conditions, an effort that would make its device a "must have" for millions of people worldwide.

The company is partnering up with a group of clinicians at Stanford, as well as telemedicine vendor American Well, to test whether Apple Watch's heart rate sensor can detect abnormal heart rhythms in a cohort of patients, according to two people familiar. The people requested anonymity as these plans have not yet been made public.

Apple confirmed the test and Stanford's participation at its event on Tuesday, where it unveiled a new version of the Apple Watch with wireless connectivity.

Arrhythmias, or abnormal heart rhythms, aren't always problematic. But in some people, a condition known as atrial fibrillation can show no external symptoms while carrying a risk of blood clots, strokes and other complications.

For that reason, an Apple Watch could be a useful screening tool for high-risk patients -- if its heart rate monitor proves to be sufficiently sensitive and accurate.

"Atrial fibrillation is a common rhythm disorder and knowing someone has it is medically useful because those people might need specific treatments," said Bob Wachter, chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California San Francisco.

American Well declined to comment on its involvement with Apple. But the company's CEO Roy Schoenberg did say that telemedicine companies are working closely with wearable makers. If a problem is detected, he said, "the best route forward is to put a health care professional out in front."

Companies like American Well already provide apps for the iPhone so that anyone with an Internet connection can reach a doctor in a matter of minutes.

Apple Watch has also been used in studies to screen for heart rhythm abnormalities. A start-up called Cardiogram released the results of its research in May, in partnership with clinicians at UCSF.

Greg Marcus, a cardiac electrophysiologist at UCSF who was involved with the Cardiogram study, said Apple benefits from the real-time access to raw data from its heart rate sensor. "That's potentially more powerful," he said, than the signals that third-party developers can access through Apple Watch.

The clinical study is slated to kick off later this year, one of the people said.

Apple's Tim Cook hinted at the company's interest in heart health applications in an interview with Fortune published on Monday.

"We started working on the Apple Watch several years ago," he said, and one goal was "performing some measurements of your health that people were not measuring, at least continually. Like your heart. Very few people wore heart monitors. We're extremely interested in this area. And yes it is a business opportunity."

Cook went on to describe the medical health activity market as the "largest or second largest component" of the economy.

In June, CNBC reported that Apple hired Sumbul Desai, a rising star on Stanford's digital health team who was working on projects related to Apple Watch. CNBC also reported that month that Apple has been in talks with developers, hospitals and other industry groups about bringing clinical data, such as detailed lab results and allergy lists, to its devices.

Apple declined to comment. Stanford did not return a request for comment.

Related video: Apple and Aetna hold secret meetings to bring the Apple Watch to Aetna customers

Output: Apple is reported to be working with researchers at Stanford University on clinical applications for the heart rate monitor on its Apple Watch. The tests will examine whether the watch can be used to detect abnormal cardiac activity, or arrhythmia, and potentially serious conditions such as atrial fibrillation, which carries the risk of blood clots, strokes and other complications. Tech company American Well, which specialises in connecting patients with doctors via secure video, is also thought to be involved with the trial.


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New listings for August down 6% on last year across the UK
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New listings were down last month by almost 6% on August the year before, and down 13.1% on a monthly basis.

Analysis of new listings on website Home has shown that in 100 UK towns and cities, supply dropped on a monthly basis in two thirds of places.

The biggest falls were in Coventry (down 33%), Winchester (31%), Salford (28.5%) and Oxford (25.6%).

In London, supply was down 22.3%, with the highest monthly fall in Richmond at 42%.

The analysis was done by HouseSimple, whose CEO Alex Gosling said: “Few people will be concerned by the drop-off in new listings between July and August.

“More of a concern is the 5.9% drop-off when comparing last month with the corresponding month in 2016. Supply continues to be a major issue.

“The property market needs a strong September after a subdued period since the general election.”

The Land Registry has said that transactions in the second quarter of this year fell 12% on an annual basis across England and Wales. In the 12 months to the end of the quarter, there were 844,380 transactions – the lowest since the same period in 2009/10.

Output: New property listings in the UK in August fell nearly 6% compared to August 2016, according to new figures from the website Home. Transactions in the second quarter of 2017 fell by 12% on an annual basis across England and Wales, and totals for the year have fallen to the lowest since 2009/10, with just 844,380. The figure for August showed a 13.1% fall from July, with Coventry, Winchester and Salford recording the sharpest falls. London listings were down by 22.3%. The figures have raised fresh concerns about housing supply.


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Outsourced property viewing industry gathering pace
 Post navigation

The outsourced viewings industry looks to have established itself beyond doubt.

One provider, Access2View, has announced its 50,000th accompanied viewing in just under five years.

Ed Mead’s high-profile Viewber, now one year old, has already notched up 6,500 viewings.

Jim Johnston, managing director of Access2View, said: “We’re proud to have hit this milestone. We’re an independent business with no outside investment. We’re completely focused on quality of service and have reinvested all our profits into creating a system that integrates with our customers’ IT platforms.

“Based on the last few months, we expect to hit 100,000 viewings by the end of next year.”

He said customers include letting agents, traditional estate agents, housing associations and landlords, as well as online agents.

Mead said that in the first three months of Viewber going live, there were just 50 viewings undertaken for a handful of clients.

The businesss now has over 500 customers, including lettings, sales and auction businesses, plus property and asset managers.

There are now over 2,200 ‘Viewbers’, with the number growing at around 20 a day.

Highlights of the last year include a request for 188 block viewings in one go; the 30 minutes that was the shortest time between a requested and actual viewing; and the 5.45am request for a viewing at 8.30am the same day, which was duly carried out.

Mead said: “I always knew this service was part of the future and increasingly useful to busy agents and other industry players who face squeezed margins and increased competition.

“Agents, buyers and tenants can now expect service on demand, which is often late, at short notice or at weekends.

“Viewber can help support a business, freeing up teams to spend more time putting deals together and less out on the road.

“It has been a phenomenal year and it’s hard to believe we’ve achieved so much in such a short space of time.”

Below, the two co-founders of Viewber, Marcus de Ferranti, left, and Ed Mead

Output: Outsourced property viewing providers are on the rise, with the UK industry having rapidly established itself. Leicester-based Access2View recently announced its 50,000th accompanied viewing in just under five years and expects to reach 100,000 viewings by the end of 2018. Meanwhile, Viewber has already reported 6,500 viewings and more than 500 customers in its first year. Ed Mead, co-founder of Viewber, said such services were increasingly useful to agents and other industry players who faced increased competition and squeezed margins.


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Cryptocurrency/fiat ATMs to go into service in Argentina
 La comunidad blockchain de Argentina y de toda Latinoamérica tiene un gran motivo de celebración. A partir del mes de octubre, en el territorio argentino se instalarán 250 cajeros automáticos que permitirán realizar operaciones tanto con dinero fiat, como con criptoactivos.

El sistema bidireccional se refiere a que estos cajeros pueden dar y recibir billetes de curso legal en Argentina, como también dar y recibir criptoactivos. Sebastián Ponceliz, CEO y fundador de Odyssey Group, la empresa que está desarrollando esta iniciativa, declaró a CriptoNoticias que realizarán operaciones con las principales criptomonedas del mercado: desde el momento de su instalación comenzarán a operar con Bitcoin, Ethereum y Litecoin y se irán añadiendo más criptomonedas según su relevancia.

Asimismo, indicó: “Nuestra empresa transfiere tecnología por fuera de los Estados Unidos. La plataforma Octagon, permite comunicar con el puerto transaccional de cada país y de esa manera, administrar los ATM bidireccionales. Octagon, permite al usuario de los ATM, obtener efectivo, intercambiar criptomonedas, obtener microcréditos, realizar transferencias de dinero y muchas otras funciones más a través de carteras electrónicas”.

Con respecto a la plataforma Octagon, Ponceliz indicó que se trata de una plataforma de administración transaccional con un nodo de distribución de criptomonedas integrado, lo que permitirá llevar a cabo dichas funciones. “Octagon es la primera plataforma mundial integradora de soluciones fintech, criptomonedas y efectivo, de contacto directo con el ser humano, facilitando el movimiento de divisas, el comercio y la reducción de los costos transaccionales”, apuntó.

Surge a partir de comprender que está cambiando el orden monetario mundial. Existe lo que yo denomino, una convergencia monetaria que hace que utilicemos diferentes tipos de medios de pago y monedas de cambio (efectivo, crypto, e-wallets, puntos de fidelidad, etc) y el punto de contacto humano para eso, es un ATM que pueda transaccionar multiples monedas, convirtiendo dinero digital en fisico y a la inversa. Octagon es la primera plataforma mundial integradora de soluciones fintech, criptomonedas y efectivo, de contacto directo con el ser humano, facilitando el movimiento de divisas, el comercio y la reducción de los costos transaccionales. Sebastian Ponceliz

CEO

También, manifestó que las primeras 250 máquinas serán instaladas en las provincias de Buenos Aires, Córdoba y Jujuy. Ponceliz indicó que también proyectarán hacia toda Latinoamérica y también en Europa y Asia.

Por lo que se refiere a las alianzas con instituciones, Ponceliz dijo que están trabajando de cerca con los bancos centrales de Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Colombia y México. En relación con la regulación en territorio argentino, Ponceliz agregó que desde el mes de mayo del presente año, la legislación argentina cambió, permitiendo a empresarios particulares poder llevar a cabo operaciones de instalación de cajeros automáticos por fuera del sistema bancario tradicional, siendo ellos, Octagon, en conjunto con el Banco Central, los promotores de ese cambio.

Esta iniciativa de Odyssey Group, según su CEO y fundador, responde al cambio que las criptomonedas están generando en el orden monetario mundial. Según el sitio web de la compañía, buscan ser un factor de disrupción tecnológico y un proveedor de servicios de alta eficiencia de cajeros automáticos, máquinas expendedoras y de seguridad informática e Internet de las Cosas. La empresa tiene diversas oficinas, en México, Florida, Nueva York, Perú, Chile, Uruguay y Argentina y es un importante agente del sector.

Ya son varios los países en donde se han instalado cajeros automáticos para criptoactivos como Bitcoin, Litecoin y Ethereum, siendo los dos primeros los que llevan la batuta en este sentido. Entre los países en donde hay cajeros para criptoactivos se pueden mencionar Kosovo (para Bitcoin), Colombia (para Bitcoin, Ethereum y Litecoin), Canadá (para Ethereum, Litecoin y Bitcoin), República Dominicana (para Bitcoin), República Checa (para Bitcoin), Estados Unidos (para Bitcoin), Israel (para Bitcoin), España (para Bitcoin), entre otros.

Cabe destacar que Argentina ha sido sede de numerosos eventos vinculados a las plataformas blockchain y los criptoactivos, como por ejemplo, eventos educativos como el BitcoinDay Argentina, celebrado en julio pasado, y “Bitcoin y Blockchain, un mundo de oportunidades”, que se llevó a cabo el pasado 4 de agosto en la provincia de Buenos Aires, por parte de la ONG Bitcoin Argentina. Sin duda alguna, el país suramericano se perfila como un ambiente bastante amigable hacia los criptoactivos.

Corrección: Este artículo fue modificado para aclarar que Argentina no posee la primicia en la adopción de cajeros bidireccionales con criptoactivos a nivel mundial.

Output: Fintech company Odyssey will introduce 250 automated teller machines (ATMs) in Argentina which are able to issue and receive cryptocurrencies alongside fiat transactions. Upon installation, the ATMs will use Odyssey's Octagon platform to process bitcoin, ethereum and litecoin. Odyssey plans to launch its bi-directional crypto ATMs across Latin America, Europe and Asia, said CEO Sebastian Ponceliz.


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California Assembly passes drug price transparency bill
 The California State Assembly on Monday overwhelmingly approved Senate Bill 17, controversial legislation that could soon become the nation’s most comprehensive law aimed at shining a light on prescription drug prices.

The 66-9 vote easily overcame the 41 votes needed to pass, though an earlier vote late Monday afternoon had come up short at 31-6. At that point, the bill was put on call and the voting roll was kept open for less than an hour until the final vote was called.

SB 17, authored by Sen. Ed Hernandez, D-West Covina and co-authored by Assemblyman David Chiu, D-San Francisco, aims to make drug prices for both public and private health plans more transparent.

It would enable health insurers to negotiate lower prices for drugs or, in many cases, replace those drugs with cheaper alternatives, according to its supporters.

“Public anger at rising drug prices has been growing for some time, and Californians expect their government to do something about it,” said Hernandez in a statement afterwards.

“Drug companies threw everything they had at this bill, but the Assembly stood up for consumers. The reason Big Pharma hates this bill so much is that it’s going to work.”

The bill is strongly opposed by the pharmaceutical industry, which deployed legions of lobbyists and paid for full-page newspaper ads leading up to the Legislature’s final votes on the measure, partially out of fear that SB 17 could become a national model and the first major step toward price controls.

On Monday night, Priscilla VanderVeer, spokeswoman for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said in a statement that “SB 17 can’t deliver on its empty promises.

“It won’t help Californians access needed medicine or make their costs at the pharmacy counter any lower,” she said. “It won’t even paint a complete picture of prescription drug spending since it only calls for information on list

prices rather than the final cost after discounts and rebates.”

SB 17 would require pharmaceutical companies to notify health insurers and government health plans like Medi-Cal at least 60 days before scheduled prescription drug price hikes that would exceed 16 percent over a two-year period. It would also force drug companies to explain the reasons behind those increases.

“After two years of setbacks, I’m thrilled to see SB 17 pass the Assembly,” said Chiu in a statement. “We’re one step closer to lifting the veil on soaring drug prices and identifying meaningful strategies to ensure access to life-saving treatments.”

The bill passed the Senate 28-10 in May, but has since been amended and will need to return to the Senate for a full vote sometime this week. If it passes there, it will be forwarded to Gov. Jerry Brown, who will decide if it will become law.

Output: The California State Assembly on Monday overwhelmingly approved Senate Bill 17, controversial legislation that could soon become the nation’s most comprehensive law aimed at shining a light on prescription drug prices.


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What Does It Cost to Create a Cancer Drug? Less Than You’d Think
 What does it really cost to bring a drug to market?

The question is central to the debate over rising health care costs and appropriate drug pricing. President Trump campaigned on promises to lower the costs of drugs.

But numbers have been hard to come by. For years, the standard figure has been supplied by researchers at the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development: $2.7 billion each, in 2017 dollars.

Yet a new study looking at 10 cancer medications, among the most expensive of new drugs, has arrived at a much lower figure: a median cost of $757 million per drug. (Half cost less, and half more.)

Following approval, the 10 drugs together brought in $67 billion, the researchers also concluded — a more than sevenfold return on investment. Nine out of 10 companies made money, but revenues varied enormously. One drug had not yet earned back its development costs.

Output: What does it really cost to bring a drug to market? The question is central to the debate over rising health care costs and appropriate drug pricing. President Trump campaigned on promises to lower the costs of drugs.


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UC cancer collaboration seeks combined clout
 UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center is among five University of California sites participating in a new collaborative effort that aims to increase access to clinical trials, share research data and hone preventive efforts across the state.

The proposal would formalize and deepen connections between the UC’s National Cancer Institute designated centers, said Dr. Scott Lippman, Moores director,

Taken together, the UC centers care for more than 16 percent of Californians diagnosed with a disease projected to kill nearly 60,000 Californians this year, according to the American Cancer Society.

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While that number is daunting, there is more hope these days than there has been perhaps at any time since President Richard Nixon declared war on cancer in 1971. In recent years, breakthroughs in immunotherapies — drugs that activate or piggyback on components of the body’s immune system — have brought significant increases in survivability and seen to generate new headline-worthy advances every single week.

Lippman said the pace of innovation in cancer therapy is so fast, that the best care available is often obtained by joining a trial run by a drug company headed for market. Becoming the home of one of these trials is not easy even if your operation is among the 69 government-designated centers in the nation, he said.

“There is tremendous competition for getting these trials. They’re investigational, in a certain sense, but they’re also the best cancer therapy that a person can get,” Lippman said.

While the collaboration announced in San Francisco Monday morning is about much more than clinical trial access, Lippman said that the added clout that can be gained by joining together will likely have the most immediately-visible impact for diagnosed patients.

In fact, he noted, it already has. The five centers have already built collaborative efforts around head and neck cancers and blood cancers that have brought trials systemwide that might not have appeared if only one cancer center was involved, he siad.

Dr. Ezra Cohen, a Moores head and neck specialist, was due to present an abstract of results of a promising trial at the European Society for Medical Oncology on Monday. That trial uses the immunotherapy drug Durvalumab, made by global medicine giant AstraZeneca, in conjunction with another drug called a STAT3 inhibitor.

Though the trial is still ongoing, early results are exciting, Cohen said in an email from Barcelona.

“We would expect to see a response rate of 10 percent to 15 percent with Durvalumab alone with few complete responses. We are seeing a doubling to tripling of the response rate with the addition of a STAT3 inhibitor,” Cohen said.

Getting that trial, Cohen and Lippman said, had a lot to do with the existing cross-collaboration between head and neck oncologists at various UC cancer centers. All had agreed to abide by the recommendations of Moores scientific review committee and institutional review board which must approve all clinical trials before they can proceed.

The ability to go through just one approval and have access to as many as five major cancer centers, Lippman said, definitely helped secure a trial in a competitive environment.

“We think this is obviously a major advantage,” Lippman said.

Dr. Alan Ashworth, president of the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, agreed that the AstraZeneca trial is a good example of “one-off” collaborations that have occurred between different UC cancer centers in the past. The executive, who will direct the collaborative in its first year, said formalizing the relationship will hopefully make such joint effort the rule rather than the exception.

“What we want to happen down the road is that, when one center is considering applying for a trial it’s the standard practice to say ‘Hey guys, we’re setting this trial up, which of you guys is in?’” Ashworth said.

But he added that the collaboration is about much more than connecting more efficiently for trials.

Cancer research is increasingly moving away from categorizing cancers based on where they occur in the body. The new defining characteristic at the center of research is the disease’s specific genetic signature.

But spotting genetic mutations is the relatively easy part. Once those differences are delineated, researchers must use sophisticated data analysis tools to determine which are driving the disease and present an actionable target that can be exploited by a drug.

This analysis is aided by what computer scientists call “big data”: By looking across the clinical and genetic information of thousands of patients, cleverly designed computer algorithms can pick up on patterns that would not be apparent by looking at one patient at a time.

Here, Ashworth said, collaborating more closely, and sharing data sets, can help researchers make the next wave of discoveries more quickly.

“We’re not big enough on our own, sometimes, for this kind of work, but together we’re going to see the big picture of cancer in ways we never have before,” Ashworth said.

He said that there is also room for collaboration on cancer prevention programs whether it’s finding the best way to get people to stop smoking or to get those over age 50 to undergo the routine colonoscopies that are proven to reduce the chances of colon cancer.

Looking across institutions at what is effective in one place versus another, he said, should enable new insights about what truly motivates and what just gets ignored.

“We can now start to use the data from our electronic medical records to look at similarities and difference in outcomes and treatment and also around cost,” Ashworth said.

In addition to Moores, the organizations that make up the consortium are: UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, the UC Irvine Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center and the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Health Playlist × On Now Video: Leaders urge public to help extinguish hepatitis outbreak On Now San Diego starts cleansing sidewalks, streets to combat hepatitis A On Now Video: Scripps to shutter its hospice service On Now Video: Scripps La Jolla hospitals nab top local spot in annual hospital rankings On Now Video: Does a parent's Alzheimer's doom their children? On Now EpiPen recall expands On Now Kids can add years to your life

paul.sisson@sduniontribune.com

(619) 293-1850

Twitter: @paulsisson

Output: UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center is among five University of California sites participating in a new collaborative effort that aims to increase access to clinical trials, share research data and hone preventive efforts across the state.


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Congress Rejects Trump Proposals to Cut Health Research Funds
 In identical language, the House and Senate bills explicitly prohibit the Trump administration from changing the formula used for decades to calculate and pay indirect costs.

“The administration’s proposal would radically change the nature of the federal government’s relationship with the research community, abandoning the government’s long-established responsibility for underwriting much of the nation’s research infrastructure, and jeopardizing biomedical research nationwide,” the Senate Appropriations Committee said in a report on its bill. The proposed cuts, it said, could not be made “without throwing research programs across the country into disarray.”

Just to make sure the message got through to the administration, Congress included the same prohibition in a stopgap spending bill that provides money to run the government through Dec. 8. President Trump on Friday signed the bill, which also suspends the debt limit and includes aid for victims of Hurricane Harvey and other disasters.

Tom Price, the secretary of health and human services, had argued for the proposed cuts, saying they would not harm research. “About 30 percent of the grant money that goes out is used for indirect expenses, which, as you know, means that that money goes for something other than the research that’s being done,” Mr. Price told the House Appropriations Committee in March.

But he won few converts.

“Indirect costs are very real costs,” said Dr. Landon S. King, the executive vice dean of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and “there is not another source to pay for them.”

Output: Back in March, when President Trump released the first draft of his budget proposal for the coming fiscal year, he asked lawmakers for deep cuts to one of their favorite institutions, the National Institutes of Health — part of a broad reordering of priorities, away from science and social spending, toward defense and border security.


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Feeling Older? Here’s How to Embrace It
 The realization that you are getting older can come in waves.

You watch movies and point to the actors, saying: “She’s dead. Oh, he’s dead, too.”

Your parents move to a retirement community they call God’s waiting room.

You hear more snap, crackle and pop in your joints than in your breakfast cereal.

In society, youthfulness is glorified and getting older is cast as something to avoid, but as your age increases, your quality of life does not necessarily have to decrease, experts said.

Here’s what you should know:

What is ‘old’?

Most people wouldn’t say that a 38-year-old qualifies, but once you pass the median age of 37.8, you may statistically be considered “old,” said Tom Ludwig, emeritus professor of psychology at Hope College in Holland, Mich.

Output: The realization that you are getting older can come in waves. You watch movies and point to the actors, saying: “She’s dead. Oh, he’s dead, too.” Your parents move to a retirement community they call God’s waiting room. You hear more snap, crackle and pop in your joints than in your breakfast cereal.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
US researchers create biofuel from potato waste
 Researchers evaluated the effects of temperature, pH and aeration rates in biofilm reactors, and the optimal conditions were found to be 95 degrees Fahrenheit and a pH of 5.8 with no aeration. After 72 hours, the researchers achieved the maximum ethanol concentration of 37.93 grams per liter. The yield was 0.41 grams or ethanol per gram of starch.

"These results are promising, because the co-culture biofilm reactor provided similar ethanol production — 37.93 grams per leader — compared to the conventional ethanol production — 37.05 grams per liter — which required pre-treatment with added commercial enzymes at a higher temperature," Demirci explained. "Therefore, eliminating the externally added enzyme and energy costs will certainly reduce the cost of bioethanol production."

Researchers also evaluated biofilm formation of co-culture on the plastic composite supports using a scanning electron microscope, said researcher Gulten Izmirlioglu, a doctoral student in agricultural and biological engineering when the study was conducted. "Scanning electron microscope images revealed that when mold and yeast are allowed to form a biofilm, hyphae (filaments) of the mold provide surface area for the yeasts' attachment," she said. "That's a good thing."

The research findings, which demonstrated that plastic composite supports can be used for simultaneous saccharification and fermentation processes in biofilm reactors with co-cultures when producing ethanol, were published in Fuel. Izmirlioglu believes the results are significant for industry.

"Overall, bioethanol production from starchy industrial wastes can be improved with application of biofilm reactors, while the production cost is reduced with integrations of the simultaneous saccharification and fermentation process and co-culturing," she said.

More efficient bioethanol production is needed to meet the demand for renewable energy and reduce the negative environmental impacts of petroleum fuel, Demirci noted. To make ethanol production cost-competitive, inexpensive, and easily available, feedstocks such as potato mash are needed, as well as improved processing technologies with higher productivities.

"This research is of great interest to Keystone Potato Products in Hegins, Pennsylvania, a subsidiary of Sterman Masser Inc.," said Demirci. "The company is paying attention to this project, hoping this novel approach may help it add more value to its waste potato mash. Industrial food wastes are potentially a great substrate in production of value-added products to reduce the cost, while managing the waste economically and environmentally."

Also contributing to the research was John Cantolina in the Microscopy and Cytometry Facility at the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, Penn State.

The Turkish Ministry of Education, by providing a scholarship to Izmirlioglu and the Pennsylvania Agricultural Experiment Station supported this work.

Output: Researchers at Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences have developed a method of converting potato waste into the biofuel ethanol, which is more cost effective than current methods and achieves a slightly greater yield. Using potato waste from Pennsylvania crisp factories, the team triggered the simultaneous processes of saccharification and fermentation, while mould and yeast were added as catalysts to the bioreactor.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
US researchers create biofuel from potato waste
 In Pennsylvania, with more than two-dozen companies in Pennsylvania manufacturing potato chips, it is no wonder that researchers in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences have developed a novel approach to more efficiently convert potato waste into ethanol. This process may lead to reduced production costs for biofuel in the future and add extra value for chip makers.

Using potato mash made from the peelings and potato residuals from a Pennsylvania food-processor, researchers triggered simultaneous saccharification — the process of breaking down the complex carbohydrate starch into simple sugars — and fermentation — the process in which sugars are converted to ethanol by yeasts or other microorganisms in bioreactors.

The bioreactor had plastic composite supports to encourage and enhance biofilm formation and to increase the microbial population. Biofilms are a natural way of immobilizing microbial cells on a solid support material. In a biofilm environment, microbial cells are abundant and more resistant to environmental stress causing higher productivities. In this application, these benefits were especially important because mold enzyme activity required higher temperature and the yeast had to tolerate this.

Output: Researchers at Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences have developed a method of converting potato waste into the biofuel ethanol, which is more cost effective than current methods and achieves a slightly greater yield. Using potato waste from Pennsylvania crisp factories, the team triggered the simultaneous processes of saccharification and fermentation, while mould and yeast were added as catalysts to the bioreactor.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Zillow buys construction listings start-up New Home Feed
 SEATTLE, Sept. 8, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Zillow Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: Z and ZG), which houses a portfolio of the largest and most vibrant real estate and home-related brands on mobile and the web, today announced it has acquired New Home Feed, a streamlined listing management technology that allows builders to input, manage and syndicate their listings across the web.

"As the leader in new construction data management and a tool many of our builder customers currently use, New Home Feed felt like a natural extension of our current services," said Tony Small, group vice president of emerging marketplaces at Zillow Group. "By incorporating New Home Feed's tool set into our offering, it will be easier for partners to send their listings to Zillow Group and will improve the quality and accuracy of our new construction listings. This acquisition is another step toward our ultimate goal for new construction at Zillow Group, which is to help builders market their homes to consumers with a great return-on-investment."

"We are excited to be joining Zillow Group," said Rick Phillips, general manager of New Home Feed. "Many of our customers already use Zillow and Trulia to market their new construction homes. New Home Feed allows them to easily input, manage, and syndicate listings, and view intuitive reports in one dashboard. We are thrilled to start working with the Zillow Group team to integrate our technology directly with the platform to meet the rapidly growing needs of the new home industry."

Zillow Group will discuss the acquisition further at the Zillow Group New Construction Forum, September 14, 2017, in Austin, Texas.

About Zillow Group

Zillow Group (NASDAQ:Z) (NASDAQ:ZG) houses a portfolio of the largest real estate and home-related brands on mobile and the web. The company's brands focus on all stages of the home lifecycle: renting, buying, selling and financing. Zillow Group is committed to empowering consumers with unparalleled data, inspiration and knowledge around homes, and connecting them with the right local professionals to help. The Zillow Group portfolio of consumer brands includes real estate and rental marketplaces Zillow®, Trulia®, StreetEasy®, HotPads®, Naked Apartments® and RealEstate.com. In addition, Zillow Group develops a comprehensive suite of marketing software and technology solutions to help real estate, rental and mortgage professionals maximize business opportunities and connect with millions of consumers. The company operates a number of business brands for real estate, rental and mortgage professionals, including Mortech®, dotloop® and Bridge Interactive™. The company is headquartered in Seattle.

(ZFIN)

SOURCE Zillow Group

Output: Zillow has acquired construction listings management start-up New Home Feed. Seattle-based Zillow, which controls a range of online real estate and home-related brands including Trulia and StreetEasy, said New Home Feed's expertise are a "natural extension" of its digital services. The purchase marks a step towards Zillow's goal of helping builders market their homes to consumers, said Tony Small, Zillow group vice president of emerging marketplaces.