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Blood-clotting drug derived from pigs can now be made synthetically - New Scientist (No paywall)
The big disadvantage of heparin is that, unlike most drugs, it isn’t a single, small molecule, but a diverse mixture of large chains of sugars. “Heparin doesn’t have a specific size and it doesn’t have a specific structure,” says Dordick. Complex sugars are hard to manufacture, which is why heparin is derived from pigs.
Ideally, animal-derived drugs would be sourced from small herds kept in isolation to prevent viral infections. But because so many pig intestines have to be processed to extract the 100 tonnes of heparin used worldwide each year, the only way to get enough intestines is to take them from normal pig farms, with most heparin coming from China as it is the largest pork producer.
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Six Principles for Successful Multiparty Negotiations
COP28 in Dubai was a key milestone in global climate talks, convening nearly 200 countries for the first assessment since the Paris Agreement. Highlighting the urgency for action – with 2023 as the hottest year on record – it emphasised the need for united efforts amid complex negotiation challenges.
The conference began with a landmark agreement on a loss-and-damages fund, but faced challenges over the controversial fossil fuel phase-out debate. On 13 December 2023, a historic consensus was reached on moving away from fossil fuels, demonstrating the power of united effort and negotiation in advancing climate objectives.
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March 25, 2024's full moon portends April 8th's solar eclipse
Conditions are favorable just twice a year: when the new moon passes through the Earth-Sun plane.
Because the Moon and Sun are each just ½° wide, solar eclipses are only possible when “nodes” align.
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What today's hunter-gatherers can teach us about modern life
What do you imagine life was like for hunter-gatherers throughout human history? You might guess that daily life for them was a constant struggle between eating and being eaten in a world where surviving was a full-time job.
But anthropological research suggests that probably wasn’t the case. When the anthropologist James Suzman went to the Kalahari Desert to study the Ju/’hoansi hunter-gathers, for example, he found that they worked only 15 hours per week, and that much of that time was spent on activities that many people in the modern West consider leisure, like hiking and fishing.
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Don't buy the hype on new "breakthrough" Alzheimer's treatments
The quest to find effective treatments for Alzheimer’s disease has historically been a lost cause — a field littered with failed drugs and dashed hopes. According to a recent systematic review, between 2003 and 2022, researchers tested 100 compounds against the devastating cognitive disease in phase II and III trials. Only two drugs made it through the rigorous gambit of pharmaceutical science. Their beneficial effects were too small to make a meaningful difference to patients.
Then, like beacons of light in the dark, two drugs emerged over the past two years from phase III clinical trials as the first “disease-modifying” treatments for Alzheimer’s disease. Biogen’s lecanemab burst onto the scene first, with data suggesting that it slowed cognitive decline by 27%. Eli Lilly’s donanemab followed with more impressive results, slowing decline by 35%. Scientists and journalists used words like “breakthrough” and “revolutionary” to describe the findings. Both drugs were given to older adults in the very early stages of Alzheimer’s, in trials lasting 18 months.
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Does dream inception work?
Will Dowd lost his ability to read over a decade ago. He has a condition called binocular vision disorder, which makes it difficult to coordinate his eyes. Words drift across the page, getting tangled up in one another, and the pain of trying to extract meaning from the resulting quagmire gives him debilitating migraines. Dowd had been an obsessive, devoted reader—a poet and MIT-trained science writer who lived mostly in the world of paper and ink—so the condition left him feeling exiled from himself.
The act of dreaming was the only other time Dowd felt the readerly combination of total absorption and flight, and so he wondered: Could there be a connection between the two? Could reading be a kind of lucid dream? He recalled hearing about a device called the Dormio, a targeted dream inception device developed at the MIT Media Lab, and wondered if it could help him simulate the reading experience. A grant from the Woodberry Poetry Room at Harvard University enabled him to test this theory out on himself over the 2022-2023 academic year. The resulting project is called Dreamfall.
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How to Incorporate Gifts Into your Sales Strategy
As a seasoned entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience in the gifting industry (I guess I can call myself a professional gifter by now), I've witnessed the transformative power of meaningful gestures in enabling lasting connections. Throughout my journey, I've explored the intricate dynamics between intention, emotion, and the pivotal role of thoughtful actions within the fabric of business and personal relationships. This exploration led to a revelation: Gifting can be a potent sales tool, challenging conventional strategies with proven effectiveness.
Research indicates that receiving a gift can elicit feelings of gratitude. These emotions activate areas in the brain linked to both reward processing and social cognition. This creates a positive feedback loop, strengthening social bonds and promoting additional behaviors such as reciprocating a gesture of goodwill.
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Daniella Pierson Shares the 4 Essential Lessons That Helped Her Become a Multimillionaire
Today, Daniella Pierson is seen as an undisputably successful entrepreneur: At 28, she not only leads New York City-based media company The Newsette (a 2022 Inc. 5000 honoree), but also serves as the co-founder of Wondermind, a NYC-based mental health startup launched alongside singer and actress Selena Gomez and fellow entrepreneur Mandy Teefey. In 2022, Forbes recognized her as "one of the wealthiest women of color in the U.S."
But in college, Pierson considered herself to be the last person anyone would ever invest in. "My teachers literally said, 'You should probably not become an entrepreneur, and your little newsletter thing is never going to work,'" she says.
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How CPGs Can Innovate Like Startups
The large CPG clients we work with at Mission Field often look to nascent brands with a mix of curiosity, amazement, wonder, and jealousy. Because startups are able to innovate quickly, they are proving to be fierce competitors to our clients--some of the largest and most iconic food and beverage brands in the industry.Â
Big CPGs have powerful teams, systems, and capital to back innovations, so what gives startups the advantage? And what can big CPGs do to capture some of that magic? Here are some answers: the rise of co-manufacturing, communication democratization, increased venture capital funding, direct-to-consumer sales, and a power shift toward retailers. Â
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Why Humility Is so Important to Startup Success, According to This Accelerator Hub
Embarc Collective, a Tampa-based nonprofit accelerator network for technology startups, is celebrating five-year anniversaries for 96 percent of its startup community. CEO Lakshmi Shenoy founded the organization in 2018, but officially launched in 2019, with an initial cohort of 25 businesses in need of incubating and business development services. Â
While small businesses grew at record-breaking rates last year-25 percent more businesses launched during the first half of 2023 than they did in 2022, according to a Yelp report--barely 50 percent of startups make it to a fifth year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
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Tuesday 19th March 2024
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