Does AI mean the end for breast radiologists? – AI in Healthcare

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1. Iffy AI acceptance. Chiwome and colleagues note that radiology has long been a technology-driven specialty. However, its not just radiologists who need to buy in to AIs role in their work.

There is a need to sensitize [referring physicians] about AI through different channels to make the adoption of AI smooth, the authors write. We also need consent from patients to use AI on image interpretation. Patients should be able to choose between AI and humans.

2. The commonness of insufficient training data. No matter how massive the inputs, image-based training datasets arent enough if the data isnt properly labeled for the training, the authors point out. Image labeling takes a lot of time and needs a lot of effort, and also, this process must be very robust, they write.

Also in this category of challenges is the inescapability of rare conditions. Not only are highly unusual findings too few and far between to train algorithms, Chiwome and co-authors write, but nonhuman modes of detection sometimes also mistake image noise and variations for pathologies.

Along those same lines, if image data used in training is from a different ethnic group, age group or different gender, it may give different results if given raw data from other diverse groups of people.

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Does AI mean the end for breast radiologists? - AI in Healthcare

These leaders are coming to Robotics + AI on March 3. Why arent you? – TechCrunch

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TechCrunch Sessions: Robotics + AI brings together a wide group of the ecosystems leading minds on March 3 at UC Berkeley. Over 1,000+ attendees are expected from all facets of the robotics and artificial intelligence space investors, students, engineers, C-levels, technologists and researchers. Weve compiled a small list of highlights of attendees companies and job titles attending this years event:

ATTENDEE HIGHLIGHTS

STUDENTS & RESEARCHERS FROM:

Did you know that TechCrunch provides a white-glove networking app at all our events called CrunchMatch? You can connect and match with people who meet your specific requirements, message them and connect right at the conference. How cool is that!?

Want to get in on networking with this caliber of people? Book your $345 General Admission ticket today and save $50 before prices go up at the door. But no one likes going to events alone. Why not bring the whole team? Groups of four or more save 15% on tickets when you book here.

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These leaders are coming to Robotics + AI on March 3. Why arent you? - TechCrunch

AI May Soon Replace Even the Most Elite Consultants – Harvard Business Review

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Executive Summary

Over the next few years, artificial intelligence is going to change the way we all gather information, make decisions and connect with stakeholders. Already, leaders are starting to use artificial intelligence to automate mundane tasks such as calendar maintenance and making phone calls. But AI can also help support decisions in key areas such as human resources, budgeting, marketing, capital allocation, and even corporate strategy long the bastion of bespoke consulting firms and major marketing agencies. According to recent research, the U.S. market for corporate advice alone is nearly $60 billion.Almost all that advice is high cost, human-based, and without the benefit of todays most advanced technologies. A great deal of what is paid for with consulting services is data analysis and presentation. They are very good at this, but AI may soon becomeeven better. Quant Consultants and Robo Advisers will soon offer faster, better, and more profound insights at a fraction of the cost and time of todays consulting firms and other specialized workers.

Amazons Alexa just got a new job. In addition to her other 15,000 skills like playing music and telling knock-knock jokes, she can now also answer economic questions for clients of the Swissglobal financial services company, UBS Group AG.

According to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), a new partnership between UBS Wealth Management and Amazon allows some of UBSs European wealth-management clients to ask Alexa certain financial and economic questions. Alexa will then answer their queries with the information provided by UBSs chief investment office without even having to pick up the phone or visit a website. And this is likely just Alexas first step into offering business services. Soon she will probably be booking appointments, analyzing markets, maybe evenbuying and selling stocks. While the financial services industry has already begun the shift from active management to passive management, artificial intelligence will move the market even further, to management by smart machines, as in the case of Blackrock, which is rolling computer-driven algorithms and models into more traditional actively-managed funds.

But the financial services industry is just the beginning. Over the next few years, artificial intelligence mayexponentially change the way we all gather information, make decisions, and connect with stakeholders. Hopefully this will be for the better and we will all benefit from timely, comprehensive, and bias-free insights (given research that human beings are prone to a variety of cognitive biases). It will be particularly interesting to see how artificial intelligence affects the decisions of corporate leaders men and women who make the many decisions that affect our everyday lives as customers, employees, partners, and investors.

Already, leaders are starting to use artificial intelligence to automate mundane tasks such as calendar maintenance and making phone calls. But AI can also help support more complex decisions in key areas such as human resources, budgeting, marketing, capital allocation and even corporate strategy long the bastion of bespoke consulting firms such as McKinsey, Bain, and BCG, and the major marketing agencies.

The shift to AI solutions will be a tough pill to swallow for the corporate consulting industry. According to recent research, the U.S. market for corporate advice alone is nearly $60 billion. Almost all that advice is high cost and human-based.

One might argue that corporate clients prefer speaking to their strategy consultants to get high priced, custom-tailored advice that is based on small teams doing expensive and time-consuming work. And we agree that consultants provide insightful advice and guidance. However, a great deal of what is paid for with consulting services is data analysis and presentation. Consultants gather, clean, process, and interpret data from disparate parts of organizations. They are very good at this, but AI is even better. For example, the processing power of four smart consultants with excel spreadsheets is miniscule in comparison to a single smart computer using AI running for an hour, based on continuous, non-stop machine learning.

In todays big data world, AI and machine learning applications already analyze massive amounts of structured and unstructured data and produce insights in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost of consultants in the financial markets. Moreover, machine learning algorithms are capable of building computer models that make sense of complex phenomena by detecting patterns and inferring rules from data a process that is very difficult for even the largest and smartest consulting teams. Perhaps sooner than we think, CEOs couldbe asking, Alexa, what is my product line profitability? or Which customers should I target, and how? rather than calling on elite consultants.

Another area in which leaders will soon be relying on AI is in managing their human capital. Despite the best efforts of many, mentorship, promotion, and compensation decisions are undeniably political. Study after study has shown that deep biases affect how groups like women and minorities are managed. For example, women in business are described in less positive terms than men and receive less helpful feedback. Minorities are less likely to be hired and are more likely to face bias from their managers. These inaccuracies and imbalances in the system only hurt organizations as leaders are less able to nurture the talent of their entire workforce and to appropriately recognize and reward performance. Artificial intelligence can help bring impartiality to these difficult decisions. For example, AI could determine if one group of employees is assessed, managed, or compensated differently. Just imagine: Alexa, does my organization have a gender pay gap? (Of course, AI can only be as unbiased as the data provided to the system.)

In addition, AI is already helping in the customer engagement and marketing arena. Its clear and well documented by the AI patent activities of the big five platforms Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft that they are using it to market and sell goods and services to us. But they are not alone. Recently, HBR documented how Harley-Davidson was using AI to determine what was working and what wasnt working across various marketing channels. They used this new skill to make resource allocation decisions to different marketing choices, thereby eliminating guesswork. It is only a matter of time until they and others ask, Alexa, where should I spend my marketing budget? to avoid the age-old adage, I know that half my marketing budget is effective, my only question is which half?

AI can also bring value to the budgeting and yearly capital allocation process. Even though markets change dramatically every year, products become obsolete and technology advances, and most businesses allocate their capital the same way year after year. Whether thats due to inertia, unconscious bias, or error, some business units rake in investments while others starve. Even when the management team has committed to a new digital initiative, it usually ends up with the scraps after the declining cash cows are fed. Artificial intelligence can help break through this budgeting black hole by tracking the return on investments by business unit, or by measuring how much is allocated to growing versus declining product lines. Business leaders may soon be asking, Alexa, what percentage of my budget is allocated differently from last year? and more complex questions.

Although many strategic leaders tout their keen intuition, hard work, and years of industry experience, much of this intuition is simply a deeper understanding of data that was historically difficult to gather and expensive to process. Not any longer. Artificial intelligence is rapidly closing this gap, and will soon be able to help human beings push past our processing capabilities and biases. These developments will change many jobs, for example, those of consultants, lawyers, and accountants, whose roles will evolve from analysis to judgement. Arguably, tomorrows elite consultants already sit on your wrist (Siri), on your kitchen counter (Alexa), or in your living room (Google Home).

The bottom line: corporate leaders, knowingly or not, are on the cusp of a major disruption in their sources of advice and information. Quant Consultants and Robo Advisers will offer faster, better, and more profound insights at a fraction of the cost and time of todays consulting firms and other specialized workers. It is likely only a matter of time until all leaders and management teams can askAlexa things like, Who is the biggest risk to me in our key market?, How should we allocate our capital to compete with Amazon? or How should I restructure my board?

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AI May Soon Replace Even the Most Elite Consultants - Harvard Business Review

Veritas Genetics Scoops Up an AI Company to Sort Out Its DNA – WIRED

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Genes carry the information that make you you . So it's fitting that, when sequenced and stored in a computer, your genome takes up gobs of memoryup to 150 gigabytes. Multiply that across all the people who have gotten sequenced, and you're looking at some serious storage issues. If that's not enough, mining those genomes for useful insight means comparing them all to each other, to medical histories, and to the millions of scientific papers about genetics .

Sorting all that out is a perfect task for artificial intelligence . And plenty of AI startups have bent their efforts in that direction. On August 3, sequencing company Veritas Genetics bought one of the most influential: seven-year old Curoverse. Veritas thinks AI will help interpret the genetic risk of certain diseases and scour the ever-growing databases of genomic, medical, and scientific research. In a step forward, the company also hopes to use things like natural language processing and deep learning to help customers query their genetic data on demand.

It's not totally surprising that Veritas bought up Curoverse. Both companies spun out of George Church's prolific Harvard lab . Several years ago, Church started something called the Personal Genomics Project, with the goal of sequencing 100,000 human genomesand linking each one to participants' health information. Veritas' founders helped lead the sequencing partstarting as a prenatal testing service and launching a $1,000 full genome product in 2015while Curoverse worked on academic strategies to store and sort through all the data.

But more broadly, genomics and AI practically call out for one another. As a raw data format, a single person's genome takes up about 150 gigabytes. How!?! OK so, yes, storing a single base pair only takes up around two bits. Multiply that by roughly 3 billionthe total number of base pairs in your 23 chromosome pairsand you wind up with around 750 megabytes. But genetic sequencing isn't perfect. Mirza Cifric, Veritas Genetics cofounder and CEO, says his company reads each part of the genome at least 30 times in order to make sure their results are statistically significant. "And you gotta keep all that data, so you can refer back to it over time," says Cifric.

That's just storage. "Everything after that is going to specific areas and asking questions: Theres a variant at this location, a substitution of this base, a deletion here, or multiple copies of this same gene here, here, and here," says Cifric. Now, interpret all that. Oh, and do it across a thousand, hundred thousand, or million genomes. Querying all those genetic variations is how scientists get leads to find new drugs, or figure out how existing drugs work differently on different people.

But cross-referencing all those genomes is just the beginning. Curoverse, which was focusing on projects to store and sort genomic data, also has its work cut out for it in searching through the 6 millionand countingjargon-filled academic papers detailing gene behavior, including visual information found in charts, graphs, and illustrations.

That's pretty ambitious. Natural language processing is one of the stickiest problems in AI . "Look, I am a computer scientist, I love AI and machine learning, and no amount of coding makes sense to solve this," says Atul Butte , the director of UCSF's Institute of Computational Health Sciences. At his former job at Stanford University, Butte actually tried to do the same thinguse AI to dig through genetics research. He says in the end, it was way cheaper to hire people to read the papers and input the findings into his database manually.

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But hey, never say never, right? However they accomplish it, Veritas wants to move past what companies like 23andMe and Color offer: genetic risk based on single-variant diseases. Some of America's biggest dangers come from diseases like diabetes and heart disease, which are activated by interactions between multiple genesin addition to environmental factors like diet and exercise. With AI, Cifric believes Veritas will be able to not only dig up these various genetic contributors, but also assign each a statistical score showing how much it contributes to the overall risk.

Again, Butte hates to be a spoilsport, but ... there's all sorts of problems with doing predictive diagnostics with genetic data. He points to a 2013 study that used polygenic testing to predict heart disease using the Framingham Heart Study dataabout as good as you can get, when it comes to health data and heart disease. "They authors showed that yes, given polygenic risk score, and blood levels, and lipid levels, and family history, you can predict within 10 years if someone will develop heart disease," says Butte. "But doctors could do the same thing without using the genome!"

He says the problems come down to just how messy it is trying to square up all the different research on each gene alongside the environmental risks, and all the other compounding factors that come up when you try to peer into the future. "Its been the holy grail for a long time, structured genome reporting," says Butte. Even attempts to get researchers to write and report data in a standard, machine-readable way, have fallen flat. "You get into questions that never go away. One researcher defines autism different from another one, or high blood pressure, or any number of things," he says.

Butte isn't a total naysayer. He says partnerships like the one between Veritas and Curoverse are becoming more commonlike the data processing deal between genetic sequencing giant Illumina and IBM Watsonbecause there's a clear need for new computing methods in this area. "You want to get to a point where you are developing stuff that improves clinical care," he says.

Or how about directly to the owners of the genomes? Cifric hopes the merger will improve the consumer experience of using genetic data, even seamlessly integrating it into daily life. For instance, linking your genome and health records to your digital assistant. Alexa, should I eat this last piece of pizza? Maybe you should skip it, depending on your baseline genetic risk for cholesterol and latest blood test results. Diet isn't the only area where genomics could help improve your day to day life. Some people are more or less sensitive to over the counter drugs. A quick query might tell you whether you should take a little less Tylenol than is recommended.

Cifric thinks this acquisition could position Veritas as a global powerhouse of genomic data. "Apple recently announced that they had shipped 41 million iPhones in a quarter, right? I think in not too distant future, well be doing 41 million genomes in a quarter," he says. That might seem ambitious, given that the cost to consumers is nearly $1,000. But that cost is bound to come down. And artificial intelligence will make paying for the genome a matter of common sense.

This story has been updated to reflect that the company is named Veritas Genetics, not Veritas Genomics.

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Veritas Genetics Scoops Up an AI Company to Sort Out Its DNA - WIRED

South Korea winning the fight against coronavirus using big-data and AI – The Daily Star

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South Korea is fighting the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) by relying on its technological forte. The country has an advanced digital platform for big-data mining, along with artificial intelligence (AI) and Koreans are leading the technological front, with Samsung competing closely with Apple.Inc of USA.

Utilising big-data analysis, AI-powered advance warning systems, and intensive observation methodology, South Korea has already managed to bring the coronavirus situation in the country under control in a short time.

The government-run big-data platform stores information of all citizens and resident foreign nationals and integrates all government organisations, hospitals, financial services, mobile operators, and other services into it.

South Korea is using the analysis, information and references provided by this integrated data -- all different real-time responses and information produced by the platform are promptly conveyed to people with different AI-based applications.

Whenever someone is tested positive for COVID-19, all the people in the vicinity are provided with the infected person's travel details, activities, and commute maps for the previous two weeks through mobile notifications sent as a push system.

Government-run health services receive information on the person's contacts, making it easier to track those whom s/he had met during that time, and bring them under observation and medical tests. AI ensures prompt execution of all these steps. Hospitals, ambulance services, mobile test labs -- all rely on IT sector and technology to deliver prompt and efficient services.

South Korea also introduced drive-through coronavirus testing, in which a person drives his car inside a mobile testing lab, get his samples collected while sitting inside the vehicle, and gets test results within a few minutes. If found to be infected, they are immediately isolated and taken to specialised treatment facilities. Many such drive-through labs are operational, being run with 5G facilities provided by mobile operators.

Those driving on the road are notified of the nearest drive-through lab where they may undergo medical tests.

If any infected person lived or worked at a large building, temporary medical centres are set up there to provide medical tests to all residents.

AI data analysis informs government about possible clusters of the virus, or areas with most risk, thus enabling prompt medical services and mobilising awareness initiatives in those areas.

The government has implemented AI-based regulation and process design to ensure supply and distribution of masks and other preventive items. Each person has to use their ID cards to buy two masks at a time from nearby medicine-stores. Even though several weeks have passed since the outbreak began in the country, there was not any noticeable hike in the price of daily essentials such as rice, oil, baby-food, etc.

"The ease of availability of data has enabled South Korea to define or decide or take initiative on the relevant aspects. Many countries do not have such elaborate digital data platform or sufficient technological prowess and logistics," said a Bangladeshi expatriate living in Korea.

In an address to the nation, South Korean premier Chung Sye-kyun has stressed the need to stay alert without becoming panicked, mentioning that everyone is under risk of being infected.

Mentioning that the number of coronavirus patients are coming down in South Korea and the government has managed to bring the situation under control, the premier also announced that the government offices will be run digitally with the officials and staff working from home, as an added precaution.

The author is founder and CEO of Ticon System Ltd, and has been involved in South Korea's IT sector.

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South Korea winning the fight against coronavirus using big-data and AI - The Daily Star

Helm.ai raises $13M on its unsupervised learning approach to driverless car AI – TechCrunch

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Four years ago, mathematician Vlad Voroninski saw an opportunity to remove some of the bottlenecks in the development of autonomous vehicle technology thanks to breakthroughs in deep learning.

Now, Helm.ai, the startup he co-founded in 2016 with Tudor Achim, is coming out of stealth with an announcement that it has raised $13 million in a seed round that includes investment from A.Capital Ventures, Amplo, Binnacle Partners, Sound Ventures, Fontinalis Partners and SV Angel. More than a dozen angel investors also participated, including Berggruen Holdings founder Nicolas Berggruen, Quora co-founders Charlie Cheever and Adam DAngelo, professional NBA player Kevin Durant, Gen. David Petraeus, Matician co-founder and CEO Navneet Dalal, Quiet Capital managing partner Lee Linden and Robinhood co-founder Vladimir Tenev, among others.

Helm.ai will put the $13 million in seed funding toward advanced engineering and R&D and hiring more employees, as well as locking in and fulfilling deals with customers.

Helm.ai is focused solely on the software. It isnt building the compute platform or sensors that are also required in a self-driving vehicle. Instead, it is agnostic to those variables. In the most basic terms, Helm.ai is creating software that tries to understand sensor data as well as a human would, in order to be able to drive, Voroninski said.

That aim doesnt sound different from other companies. Its Helm.ais approach to software that is noteworthy. Autonomous vehicle developers often rely on a combination of simulation and on-road testing, along with reams of data sets that have been annotated by humans, to train and improve the so-called brain of the self-driving vehicle.

Helm.ai says it has developed software that can skip those steps, which expedites the timeline and reduces costs. The startup uses an unsupervised learning approach to develop software that can train neural networks without the need for large-scale fleet data, simulation or annotation.

Theres this very long tail end and an endless sea of corner cases to go through when developing AI software for autonomous vehicles, Voroninski explained. What really matters is the unit of efficiency of how much does it cost to solve any given corner case, and how quickly can you do it? And so thats the part that we really innovated on.

Voroninski first became interested in autonomous driving at UCLA, where he learned about the technology from his undergrad adviser who had participated in the DARPA Grand Challenge, a driverless car competition in the U.S. funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. And while Voroninski turned his attention to applied mathematics for the next decade earning a PhD in math at UC Berkeley and then joining the faculty in the MIT mathematics department he knew hed eventually come back to autonomous vehicles.

By 2016, Voroninski said breakthroughs in deep learning created opportunities to jump in. Voroninski left MIT and Sift Security, a cybersecurity startup later acquired by Netskope, to start Helm.ai with Achim in November 2016.

We identified some key challenges that we felt like werent being addressed with the traditional approaches, Voroninski said. We built some prototypes early on that made us believe that we can actually take this all the way.

Helm.ai is still a small team of about 15 people. Its business aim is to license its software for two use cases Level 2 (and a newer term called Level 2+) advanced driver assistance systems found in passenger vehicles and Level 4 autonomous vehicle fleets.

Helm.ai does have customers, some of which have gone beyond the pilot phase, Voroninski said, adding that he couldnt name them.

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Helm.ai raises $13M on its unsupervised learning approach to driverless car AI - TechCrunch

Elon Musk: AI Poses Bigger Threat to Humanity Than North Korea – Live Science

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Elon Musk speaks in front of employees during the delivery of the first Tesla vehicle Model 3 on July 28, 2017.

Simmering tensions between the United States and North Korea have many people concerned about the possibility of nuclear war, but Elon Musk says the North Korean government doesn't pose as much of a threat to humanity as the rise of artificial intelligence (AI).

The SpaceX and Tesla CEO tweeted on Aug. 11: "If you're not concerned about AI safety, you should be. Vastly more risk than North Korea." The tweet was accompanied by a photo that features a pensive woman and a tag line that reads, "In the end the machines will win."

Concerns about the possibility of nuclear missile strikes have escalated in recent weeks, particularly after President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un threatened each other with shows of force. The North Korean government even issued a statement saying it is "examining" plans for a missile strike near the U.S. territory of Guam.

But, Musk thinks humanity's most pressing concern could be closer to home.

The billionaire entrepreneur has been outspoken about the dangers of AI, and the need to take action before it's too late. In July, he spoke at the National Governors Association summer meeting and urged lawmakers to regulate AI now before it poses a grave threat to humanity.And in 2014, Musk said artificial intelligence is humanity's "biggest existential threat."

If you're not concerned about AI safety, you should be. Vastly more risk than North Korea. pic.twitter.com/2z0tiid0lc

Original article on Live Science.

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Elon Musk: AI Poses Bigger Threat to Humanity Than North Korea - Live Science

Ecosystem – Wikipedia

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Community of living organisms together with the nonliving components of their environment

An ecosystem (or ecological system) consists of all the organisms and the physical environment with which they interact.[2]:458 These biotic and abiotic components are linked together through nutrient cycles and energy flows. Energy enters the system through photosynthesis and is incorporated into plant tissue. By feeding on plants and on one another, animals play an important role in the movement of matter and energy through the system. They also influence the quantity of plant and microbial biomass present. By breaking down dead organic matter, decomposers release carbon back to the atmosphere and facilitate nutrient cycling by converting nutrients stored in dead biomass back to a form that can be readily used by plants and microbes.

Ecosystems are controlled by external and internal factors. External factors such as climate, parent material which forms the soil and topography, control the overall structure of an ecosystem but are not themselves influenced by the ecosystem. Internal factors are controlled, for example, by decomposition, root competition, shading, disturbance, succession, and the types of species present. While the resource inputs are generally controlled by external processes, the availability of these resources within the ecosystem is controlled by internal factors. Therefore, internal factors not only control ecosystem processes but are also controlled by them.

Ecosystems are dynamic entitiesthey are subject to periodic disturbances and are always in the process of recovering from some past disturbance. The tendency of an ecosystem to remain close to its equilibrium state, despite that disturbance, is termed its resistance. The capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change so as to retain essentially the same function, structure, identity, and feedbacks is termed its ecological resilience. Ecosystems can be studied through a variety of approachestheoretical studies, studies monitoring specific ecosystems over long periods of time, those that look at differences between ecosystems to elucidate how they work and direct manipulative experimentation. Biomes are general classes or categories of ecosystems. However, there is no clear distinction between biomes and ecosystems. Ecosystem classifications are specific kinds of ecological classifications that consider all four elements of the definition of ecosystems: a biotic component, an abiotic complex, the interactions between and within them, and the physical space they occupy.

Ecosystems provide a variety of goods and services upon which people depend. Ecosystem goods include the "tangible, material products" of ecosystem processes such as water, food, fuel, construction material, and medicinal plants. Ecosystem services, on the other hand, are generally "improvements in the condition or location of things of value". These include things like the maintenance of hydrological cycles, cleaning air and water, the maintenance of oxygen in the atmosphere, crop pollination and even things like beauty, inspiration and opportunities for research. Many ecosystems become degraded through human impacts, such as soil loss, air and water pollution, habitat fragmentation, water diversion, fire suppression, and introduced species and invasive species. These threats can lead to abrupt transformation of the ecosystem or to gradual disruption of biotic processes and degradation of abiotic conditions of the ecosystem. Once the original ecosystem has lost its defining features, it is considered "collapsed". Ecosystem restoration can contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

An ecosystem (or ecological system) consists of all the organisms and the abiotic pools (or physical environment) with which they interact.[3][4]:5[2]:458 The biotic and abiotic components are linked together through nutrient cycles and energy flows.[5]

"Ecosystem processes" are the transfers of energy and materials from one pool to another.[2]:458 Ecosystem processes are known to "take place at a wide range of scales". Therefore, the correct scale of study depends on the question asked.[4]:5

The term "ecosystem" was first used in 1935 in a publication by British ecologist Arthur Tansley. The term was coined by Arthur Roy Clapham, who came up with the word at Tansley's request.[6] Tansley devised the concept to draw attention to the importance of transfers of materials between organisms and their environment.[4]:9 He later refined the term, describing it as "The whole system, ... including not only the organism-complex, but also the whole complex of physical factors forming what we call the environment".[3] Tansley regarded ecosystems not simply as natural units, but as "mental isolates".[3] Tansley later defined the spatial extent of ecosystems using the term "ecotope".[7]

G. Evelyn Hutchinson, a limnologist who was a contemporary of Tansley's, combined Charles Elton's ideas about trophic ecology with those of Russian geochemist Vladimir Vernadsky. As a result, he suggested that mineral nutrient availability in a lake limited algal production. This would, in turn, limit the abundance of animals that feed on algae. Raymond Lindeman took these ideas further to suggest that the flow of energy through a lake was the primary driver of the ecosystem. Hutchinson's students, brothers Howard T. Odum and Eugene P. Odum, further developed a "systems approach" to the study of ecosystems. This allowed them to study the flow of energy and material through ecological systems.[4]:9

Ecosystems are controlled by both external and internal factors. External factors, also called state factors, control the overall structure of an ecosystem and the way things work within it, but are not themselves influenced by the ecosystem. On broad geographic scales, climate is the factor that "most strongly determines ecosystem processes and structure".[4]:14 Climate determines the biome in which the ecosystem is embedded. Rainfall patterns and seasonal temperatures influence photosynthesis and thereby determine the amount of energy available to the ecosystem.[8]:145

Parent material determines the nature of the soil in an ecosystem, and influences the supply of mineral nutrients. Topography also controls ecosystem processes by affecting things like microclimate, soil development and the movement of water through a system. For example, ecosystems can be quite different if situated in a small depression on the landscape, versus one present on an adjacent steep hillside.[9]:39[10]:66

Other external factors that play an important role in ecosystem functioning include time and potential biota, the organisms that are present in a region and could potentially occupy a particular site. Ecosystems in similar environments that are located in different parts of the world can end up doing things very differently simply because they have different pools of species present.[11]:321 The introduction of non-native species can cause substantial shifts in ecosystem function.[12]

Unlike external factors, internal factors in ecosystems not only control ecosystem processes but are also controlled by them.[4]:16 While the resource inputs are generally controlled by external processes like climate and parent material, the availability of these resources within the ecosystem is controlled by internal factors like decomposition, root competition or shading.[13] Other factors like disturbance, succession or the types of species present are also internal factors.

Primary production is the production of organic matter from inorganic carbon sources. This mainly occurs through photosynthesis. The energy incorporated through this process supports life on earth, while the carbon makes up much of the organic matter in living and dead biomass, soil carbon and fossil fuels. It also drives the carbon cycle, which influences global climate via the greenhouse effect.

Through the process of photosynthesis, plants capture energy from light and use it to combine carbon dioxide and water to produce carbohydrates and oxygen. The photosynthesis carried out by all the plants in an ecosystem is called the gross primary production (GPP).[8]:124 About half of the gross GPP is respired by plants in order to provide the energy that supports their growth and maintenance.[14]:157 The remainder, that portion of GPP that is not used up by respiration, is known as the net primary production (NPP).[14]:157 Total photosynthesis is limited by a range of environmental factors. These include the amount of light available, the amount of leaf area a plant has to capture light (shading by other plants is a major limitation of photosynthesis), the rate at which carbon dioxide can be supplied to the chloroplasts to support photosynthesis, the availability of water, and the availability of suitable temperatures for carrying out photosynthesis.[8]:155

Energy and carbon enter ecosystems through photosynthesis, are incorporated into living tissue, transferred to other organisms that feed on the living and dead plant matter, and eventually released through respiration.[14]:157 The carbon and energy incorporated into plant tissues (net primary production) is either consumed by animals while the plant is alive, or it remains uneaten when the plant tissue dies and becomes detritus. In terrestrial ecosystems, the vast majority of the net primary production ends up being broken down by decomposers. The remainder is consumed by animals while still alive and enters the plant-based trophic system. After plants and animals die, the organic matter contained in them enters the detritus-based trophic system.[15]

Ecosystem respiration is the sum of respiration by all living organisms (plants, animals, and decomposers) in the ecosystem.[16] Net ecosystem production is the difference between gross primary production (GPP) and ecosystem respiration.[17] In the absence of disturbance, net ecosystem production is equivalent to the net carbon accumulation in the ecosystem.

Energy can also be released from an ecosystem through disturbances such as wildfire or transferred to other ecosystems (e.g., from a forest to a stream to a lake) by erosion.

In aquatic systems, the proportion of plant biomass that gets consumed by herbivores is much higher than in terrestrial systems.[15] In trophic systems, photosynthetic organisms are the primary producers. The organisms that consume their tissues are called primary consumers or secondary producersherbivores. Organisms which feed on microbes (bacteria and fungi) are termed microbivores. Animals that feed on primary consumerscarnivoresare secondary consumers. Each of these constitutes a trophic level.[15]

The sequence of consumptionfrom plant to herbivore, to carnivoreforms a food chain. Real systems are much more complex than thisorganisms will generally feed on more than one form of food, and may feed at more than one trophic level. Carnivores may capture some prey that is part of a plant-based trophic system and others that are part of a detritus-based trophic system (a bird that feeds both on herbivorous grasshoppers and earthworms, which consume detritus). Real systems, with all these complexities, form food webs rather than food chains.[15]

The carbon and nutrients in dead organic matter are broken down by a group of processes known as decomposition. This releases nutrients that can then be re-used for plant and microbial production and returns carbon dioxide to the atmosphere (or water) where it can be used for photosynthesis. In the absence of decomposition, the dead organic matter would accumulate in an ecosystem, and nutrients and atmospheric carbon dioxide would be depleted.[18]:183

Decomposition processes can be separated into three categoriesleaching, fragmentation and chemical alteration of dead material. As water moves through dead organic matter, it dissolves and carries with it the water-soluble components. These are then taken up by organisms in the soil, react with mineral soil, or are transported beyond the confines of the ecosystem (and are considered lost to it).[19]:271280 Newly shed leaves and newly dead animals have high concentrations of water-soluble components and include sugars, amino acids and mineral nutrients. Leaching is more important in wet environments and less important in dry ones.[10]:6977

Fragmentation processes break organic material into smaller pieces, exposing new surfaces for colonization by microbes. Freshly shed leaf litter may be inaccessible due to an outer layer of cuticle or bark, and cell contents are protected by a cell wall. Newly dead animals may be covered by an exoskeleton. Fragmentation processes, which break through these protective layers, accelerate the rate of microbial decomposition.[18]:184 Animals fragment detritus as they hunt for food, as does passage through the gut. Freeze-thaw cycles and cycles of wetting and drying also fragment dead material.[18]:186

The chemical alteration of the dead organic matter is primarily achieved through bacterial and fungal action. Fungal hyphae produce enzymes that can break through the tough outer structures surrounding dead plant material. They also produce enzymes that break down lignin, which allows them access to both cell contents and the nitrogen in the lignin. Fungi can transfer carbon and nitrogen through their hyphal networks and thus, unlike bacteria, are not dependent solely on locally available resources.[18]:186

Decomposition rates vary among ecosystems.[20] The rate of decomposition is governed by three sets of factorsthe physical environment (temperature, moisture, and soil properties), the quantity and quality of the dead material available to decomposers, and the nature of the microbial community itself.[18]:194 Temperature controls the rate of microbial respiration; the higher the temperature, the faster the microbial decomposition occurs. Temperature also affects soil moisture, which affects decomposition. Freeze-thaw cycles also affect decompositionfreezing temperatures kill soil microorganisms, which allows leaching to play a more important role in moving nutrients around. This can be especially important as the soil thaws in the spring, creating a pulse of nutrients that become available.[19]:280

Decomposition rates are low under very wet or very dry conditions. Decomposition rates are highest in wet, moist conditions with adequate levels of oxygen. Wet soils tend to become deficient in oxygen (this is especially true in wetlands), which slows microbial growth. In dry soils, decomposition slows as well, but bacteria continue to grow (albeit at a slower rate) even after soils become too dry to support plant growth.[18]:200

Ecosystems are dynamic entities. They are subject to periodic disturbances and are always in the process of recovering from past disturbances.[21]:347 When a perturbation occurs, an ecosystem responds by moving away from its initial state. The tendency of an ecosystem to remain close to its equilibrium state, despite that disturbance, is termed its resistance. The capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change so as to retain essentially the same function, structure, identity, and feedbacks is termed its ecological resilience.[22][23] Resilience thinking also includes humanity as an integral part of the biosphere where we are dependent on ecosystem services for our survival and must build and maintain their natural capacities to withstand shocks and disturbances.[24] Time plays a central role over a wide range, for example, in the slow development of soil from bare rock and the faster recovery of a community from disturbance.[14]:67

Disturbance also plays an important role in ecological processes. F. Stuart Chapin and coauthors define disturbance as "a relatively discrete event in time that removes plant biomass".[21]:346 This can range from herbivore outbreaks, treefalls, fires, hurricanes, floods, glacial advances, to volcanic eruptions. Such disturbances can cause large changes in plant, animal and microbe populations, as well as soil organic matter content. Disturbance is followed by succession, a "directional change in ecosystem structure and functioning resulting from biotically driven changes in resource supply."[2]:470

The frequency and severity of disturbance determine the way it affects ecosystem function. A major disturbance like a volcanic eruption or glacial advance and retreat leave behind soils that lack plants, animals or organic matter. Ecosystems that experience such disturbances undergo primary succession. A less severe disturbance like forest fires, hurricanes or cultivation result in secondary succession and a faster recovery.[21]:348 More severe and more frequent disturbance result in longer recovery times.

From one year to another, ecosystems experience variation in their biotic and abiotic environments. A drought, a colder than usual winter, and a pest outbreak all are short-term variability in environmental conditions. Animal populations vary from year to year, building up during resource-rich periods and crashing as they overshoot their food supply. Longer-term changes also shape ecosystem processes. For example, the forests of eastern North America still show legacies of cultivation which ceased in 1850 when large areas were reverted to forests.[21]:340 Another example is the methane production in eastern Siberian lakes that is controlled by organic matter which accumulated during the Pleistocene.[25]

Ecosystems continually exchange energy and carbon with the wider environment. Mineral nutrients, on the other hand, are mostly cycled back and forth between plants, animals, microbes and the soil. Most nitrogen enters ecosystems through biological nitrogen fixation, is deposited through precipitation, dust, gases or is applied as fertilizer.[19]:266 Most terrestrial ecosystems are nitrogen-limited in the short term making nitrogen cycling an important control on ecosystem production.[19]:289 Over the long term, phosphorus availability can also be critical.[26]

Macronutrients which are required by all plants in large quantities include the primary nutrients (which are most limiting as they are used in largest amounts): Nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium.[27]:231 Secondary major nutrients (less often limiting) include: Calcium, magnesium, sulfur. Micronutrients required by all plants in small quantities include boron, chloride, copper, iron, manganese, molybdenum, zinc. Finally, there are also beneficial nutrients which may be required by certain plants or by plants under specific environmental conditions: aluminum, cobalt, iodine, nickel, selenium, silicon, sodium, vanadium.[27]:231

Until modern times, nitrogen fixation was the major source of nitrogen for ecosystems. Nitrogen-fixing bacteria either live symbiotically with plants or live freely in the soil. The energetic cost is high for plants that support nitrogen-fixing symbiontsas much as 25% of gross primary production when measured in controlled conditions. Many members of the legume plant family support nitrogen-fixing symbionts. Some cyanobacteria are also capable of nitrogen fixation. These are phototrophs, which carry out photosynthesis. Like other nitrogen-fixing bacteria, they can either be free-living or have symbiotic relationships with plants.[21]:360 Other sources of nitrogen include acid deposition produced through the combustion of fossil fuels, ammonia gas which evaporates from agricultural fields which have had fertilizers applied to them, and dust.[19]:270 Anthropogenic nitrogen inputs account for about 80% of all nitrogen fluxes in ecosystems.[19]:270

When plant tissues are shed or are eaten, the nitrogen in those tissues becomes available to animals and microbes. Microbial decomposition releases nitrogen compounds from dead organic matter in the soil, where plants, fungi, and bacteria compete for it. Some soil bacteria use organic nitrogen-containing compounds as a source of carbon, and release ammonium ions into the soil. This process is known as nitrogen mineralization. Others convert ammonium to nitrite and nitrate ions, a process known as nitrification. Nitric oxide and nitrous oxide are also produced during nitrification.[19]:277 Under nitrogen-rich and oxygen-poor conditions, nitrates and nitrites are converted to nitrogen gas, a process known as denitrification.[19]:281

Mycorrhizal fungi which are symbiotic with plant roots, use carbohydrates supplied by the plants and in return transfer phosphorus and nitrogen compounds back to the plant roots.[28][29] This is an important pathway of organic nitrogen transfer from dead organic matter to plants. This mechanism may contribute to more than 70 Tg of annually assimilated plant nitrogen, thereby playing a critical role in global nutrient cycling and ecosystem function.[29]

Phosphorus enters ecosystems through weathering. As ecosystems age this supply diminishes, making phosphorus-limitation more common in older landscapes (especially in the tropics).[19]:287290 Calcium and sulfur are also produced by weathering, but acid deposition is an important source of sulfur in many ecosystems. Although magnesium and manganese are produced by weathering, exchanges between soil organic matter and living cells account for a significant portion of ecosystem fluxes. Potassium is primarily cycled between living cells and soil organic matter.[19]:291

Biodiversity plays an important role in ecosystem functioning.[31]:449453 Ecosystem processes are driven by the species in an ecosystem, the nature of the individual species, and the relative abundance of organisms among these species. Ecosystem processes are the net effect of the actions of individual organisms as they interact with their environment. Ecological theory suggests that in order to coexist, species must have some level of limiting similaritythey must be different from one another in some fundamental way, otherwise, one species would competitively exclude the other.[32] Despite this, the cumulative effect of additional species in an ecosystem is not linear: additional species may enhance nitrogen retention, for example. However, beyond some level of species richness,[11]:331 additional species may have little additive effect unless they differ substantially from species already present.[11]:324 This is the case for example for exotic species.[11]:321

The addition (or loss) of species that are ecologically similar to those already present in an ecosystem tends to only have a small effect on ecosystem function. Ecologically distinct species, on the other hand, have a much larger effect. Similarly, dominant species have a large effect on ecosystem function, while rare species tend to have a small effect. Keystone species tend to have an effect on ecosystem function that is disproportionate to their abundance in an ecosystem.[11]:324

An ecosystem engineer is any organism that creates, significantly modifies, maintains or destroys a habitat.[33]

Ecosystem ecology is the "study of the interactions between organisms and their environment as an integrated system".[2]:458 The size of ecosystems can range up to ten orders of magnitude, from the surface layers of rocks to the surface of the planet.[4]:6

The Hubbard Brook Ecosystem Study started in 1963 to study the White Mountains in New Hampshire. It was the first successful attempt to study an entire watershed as an ecosystem. The study used stream chemistry as a means of monitoring ecosystem properties, and developed a detailed biogeochemical model of the ecosystem.[34] Long-term research at the site led to the discovery of acid rain in North America in 1972. Researchers documented the depletion of soil cations (especially calcium) over the next several decades.[35]

Ecosystems can be studied through a variety of approachestheoretical studies, studies monitoring specific ecosystems over long periods of time, those that look at differences between ecosystems to elucidate how they work and direct manipulative experimentation.[36] Studies can be carried out at a variety of scales, ranging from whole-ecosystem studies to studying microcosms or mesocosms (simplified representations of ecosystems).[37] American ecologist Stephen R. Carpenter has argued that microcosm experiments can be "irrelevant and diversionary" if they are not carried out in conjunction with field studies done at the ecosystem scale. In such cases, microcosm experiments may fail to accurately predict ecosystem-level dynamics.[38]

Biomes are general classes or categories of ecosystems.[4]:14 However, there is no clear distinction between biomes and ecosystems.[39] Biomes are always defined at a very general level. Ecosystems can be described at levels that range from very general (in which case the names are sometimes the same as those of biomes) to very specific, such as "wet coastal needle-leafed forests".

Biomes vary due to global variations in climate. Biomes are often defined by their structure: at a general level, for example, tropical forests, temperate grasslands, and arctic tundra.[4]:14 There can be any degree of subcategories among ecosystem types that comprise a biome, e.g., needle-leafed boreal forests or wet tropical forests. Although ecosystems are most commonly categorized by their structure and geography, there are also other ways to categorize and classify ecosystems such as by their level of human impact (see anthropogenic biome), or by their integration with social processes or technological processes or their novelty (e.g. novel ecosystem). Each of these taxonomies of ecosystems tends to emphasize different structural or functional properties.[40] None of these is the best classification.

Ecosystem classifications are specific kinds of ecological classifications that consider all four elements of the definition of ecosystems: a biotic component, an abiotic complex, the interactions between and within them, and the physical space they occupy.[40] Different approaches to ecological classifications have been developed in terrestrial, freshwater and marine disciplines.

The following articles are examples of ecosystems for particular regions, zones or conditions:

Human activities are important in almost all ecosystems. Although humans exist and operate within ecosystems, their cumulative effects are large enough to influence external factors like climate.[4]:14

Ecosystems provide a variety of goods and services upon which people depend.[41] Ecosystem goods include the "tangible, material products" of ecosystem processes such as water, food, fuel, construction material, and medicinal plants.[42][43] They also include less tangible items like tourism and recreation, and genes from wild plants and animals that can be used to improve domestic species.[41]

Ecosystem services, on the other hand, are generally "improvements in the condition or location of things of value".[43] These include things like the maintenance of hydrological cycles, cleaning air and water, the maintenance of oxygen in the atmosphere, crop pollination and even things like beauty, inspiration and opportunities for research.[41] While material from the ecosystem had traditionally been recognized as being the basis for things of economic value, ecosystem services tend to be taken for granted.[43]

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment is an international synthesis by over 1000 of the world's leading biological scientists that analyzes the state of the Earth's ecosystems and provides summaries and guidelines for decision-makers. The report identified four major categories of ecosystem services: provisioning, regulating, cultural and supporting services.[44] It concludes that human activity is having a significant and escalating impact on the biodiversity of the world ecosystems, reducing both their resilience and biocapacity. The report refers to natural systems as humanity's "life-support system", providing essential ecosystem services. The assessment measures 24 ecosystem services and concludes that only four have shown improvement over the last 50 years, 15 are in serious decline, and five are in a precarious condition.[44]:619

The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) is an intergovernmental organization established to improve the interface between science and policy on issues of biodiversity and ecosystem services.[45] It is intended to serve a similar role to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.[46] The conceptual framework of the IPBES includes six primary interlinked elements: nature, natures benefits to people, anthropogenic assets, institutions and governance systems and other indirect drivers of change, direct drivers of change, and good quality of life.[47]

Ecosystem services are limited and also threatened by human activities.[48] To help inform decision-makers, many ecosystem services are being assigned economic values, often based on the cost of replacement with anthropogenic alternatives. The ongoing challenge of prescribing economic value to nature, for example through biodiversity banking, is prompting transdisciplinary shifts in how we recognize and manage the environment, social responsibility, business opportunities, and our future as a species.[48]

As human population and per capita consumption grow, so do the resource demands imposed on ecosystems and the effects of the human ecological footprint. Natural resources are vulnerable and limited. The environmental impacts of anthropogenic actions are becoming more apparent. Problems for all ecosystems include: environmental pollution, climate change and biodiversity loss. For terrestrial ecosystems further threats include air pollution, soil degradation, and deforestation. For aquatic ecosystems threats also include unsustainable exploitation of marine resources (for example overfishing), marine pollution, microplastics pollution, the effects of climate change on oceans (e.g. warming and acidification), and building on coastal areas.[50]

Many ecosystems become degraded through human impacts, such as soil loss, air and water pollution, habitat fragmentation, water diversion, fire suppression, and introduced species and invasive species.[51]:437

These threats can lead to abrupt transformation of the ecosystem or to gradual disruption of biotic processes and degradation of abiotic conditions of the ecosystem. Once the original ecosystem has lost its defining features, it is considered collapsed (see also IUCN Red List of Ecosystems).[52] Ecosystem collapse could be reversible and in this way differs from species extinction.[53] Quantitative assessments of the risk of collapse are used as measures of conservation status and trends.

When natural resource management is applied to whole ecosystems, rather than single species, it is termed ecosystem management.[54] Although definitions of ecosystem management abound, there is a common set of principles which underlie these definitions: A fundamental principle is the long-term sustainability of the production of goods and services by the ecosystem;[51] "intergenerational sustainability [is] a precondition for management, not an afterthought".[41] While ecosystem management can be used as part of a plan for wilderness conservation, it can also be used in intensively managed ecosystems[41] (see, for example, agroecosystem and close to nature forestry).

Ecosystem restoration will contribute to all 17 Sustainable Development Goals, in particular to SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), SDG 14 (Life below water) and SDG 15 (Life on Land).[55][56] Paragraph 27 of the Ministerial Declaration of the High-Level Political Forum on the SDGs held in July 2018 sets out commitments made to achieve sustainable management of all types of forests, halt deforestation, restore degraded forests, and substantially increase afforestation and reforestation globally by 2020.[57]

Integrated conservation and development projects (ICDPs) aim to address conservation and human livelihood (sustainable development) concerns in developing countries together, rather than separately as was often done in the past.[51]:445

Ecosystems in specific regions of the world:

Ecosystems grouped by condition:

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Team at Atlantic Data Forensics Joins Surefire Cyber, Adding Forensic Expertise and 15-Year Track Record to Newly Launched Incident Response Firm – PR…

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Digital forensics experts bring experience with thousands of investigations and incident response cases

ELKRIDGE, Md., June 28, 2022 /PRNewswire/ --Surefire Cyber today announced the hiring of the team at Atlantic Data Forensics, a highly-capable forensics firm with deep expertise helping clients and law firms. Since its founding by Brian Dykstra in 2007, Atlantic Data Forensics has provided expert digital forensic services in support of cyber incident response, criminal and civil litigation, and expert witness testimony.

Surefire Cyber's CEO and Founder Billy Gouveia stated, "Brian and the team at Atlantic Data Forensics bolster our ability to help cyber insurers, brokers, law firms, and the organizations they support to better manage cyber events such as ransomware, email compromise, and other cybercrimes. They provide highly sought and specialized expertise as well as a strong track record of helping clients with thousands of responses and investigations over the past 15 years."

Brian Dykstra, Founder of Atlantic Data Forensics and now Surefire Cyber's Director of Forensics, comments that, "Atlantic Data Forensics is pleased to take our years helping large enterprises and law firms with high-quality incident response and expert digital forensics into the cyber insurance ecosystem. I'm very excited about combining our capabilities and experience with Surefire Cyber's strong connections throughout the cyber insurance eco-system."

Surefire Cyber launched earlier this year with support from Forgepoint Capital, the world's most active early-stage venture capital firm focused on cybersecurity. Surefire Cyber is a purpose-built response firm that leverages a proven team and a tech-enabled platform to improve transparency, accelerate decision making, reduce business interruption, and guide organizations from recovery through to long term resilience.

To learn more, please visit http://www.surefirecyber.com.

About Surefire Cyber

Surefire Cyber delivers swift, strong response to cyber incidents such as ransomware, email compromise, malware, data theft, and other threats with end-to-end response capabilities. Surefire Cyber was founded to provide clients confidence by helping them prepare, respond, and recover from cyber incidentsand to fortify their cyber resilience after an incident. To learn more, please visit: http://www.surefirecyber.com or follow us on LinkedIn.

Media ContactBilly Gouveia for Surefire Cyber[emailprotected]

SOURCE Surefire Cyber

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Team at Atlantic Data Forensics Joins Surefire Cyber, Adding Forensic Expertise and 15-Year Track Record to Newly Launched Incident Response Firm - PR...

Explained: Why telecom companies are eying the 5G band of 3.5K-3.6K MHz – Business Standard

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Telcos say that currently the eco system for equipment in this band (between 3600-3630 MHz) is not available globally and it will take at least three to four quarters for its commercial deployment

Topics 5G|5G spectrum|5G in India

Telecom companies are preparing to grab the position of the top rank bidder in each local service area in the upcoming auctions in order to be assigned the best unencumbered spectrum in the 3.5 GHz 5G band which will give them a substantial advantage over their rivals.

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First Published: Tue, June 28 2022. 01:04 IST

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Cantourage UK brings Together Pharma’s Uganda-grown medical cannabis to the United Kingdom – PR Newswire

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Cantourage UK, a subsidiary of Berlin-based European medical cannabis leader Cantourage, has successfully imported the dried flower products from Germany. Cantourage UK will offer Together Pharma's high-THC, non-irradiated medical cannabis flowers to patients immediately through Cantourage Clinic.

Together Pharma is the only cultivator of medical cannabis in Uganda. Its Ugandan farm extends over some approx. 30,000 sqm Greenhouses and has a full production capacity of more than 15 tonnes annually, including a range of innovative cultivars which will be introduced into the UK's medical cannabis market over the next few months.

As of today, Cantourage has signed contracts with over 20 leading cultivators from 13 different countries. Together Pharma is the first company to launch products grown in Africa via Cantourage's Fast Track Access Platform.

Niall Ivers, COO at Cantourage UK: "We're delighted to be extending our successful partnership with Together Pharma into the UK. Together Pharma is a market leader in the Israeli domestic market with extensive knowledge and international experience in delivering high-quality, great-value medicines to patients. We're confident the introduction of these first two varieties will assist in building a sustainable eco-system for UK patients."

Nir Sosinsky, Managing Director of Together Pharma, added: "Our extended partnership with Cantourage UK is extremely exciting for Together Pharma and a new stage in the expansion of our global reach. It strengthens our position in the UK and Europe, while at the same time underpinning our commitment to Uganda's cannabis industry, which holds great future potential for the country. The United Kingdom is an extremely important market for us. We are glad that our medical-grade cannabis flowers are being made available through Cantourage UK and Cantourage Clinic, allowing for a reliable supply to the benefit of patients across the country."

About Cantourage

Cantourage GmbH is a leading European medical cannabis company. The Berlin-based company was founded in 2019 by industry pioneers Dr Florian Holzapfel, Norman Ruchholtz and Patrick Hoffmann.

With its unique Fast Track Access platform, Cantourage enables producers from across the world to become part of the rapidly growing European medical cannabis market. Cantourage focuses on long-term collaborations and strategic partnerships: each partner along the value chain can focus on what they do best from growers to logistics, manufacturers to pharmacies and wholesalers. All with one clear goal in mind: to provide patients in Europe with an unprecedented selection of the highest quality cannabis medicines at affordable prices. Cantourage offers products in all relevant market segments: dried flowers, extracts, Dronabinol and pharma-grade Cannabidiol.

Cantourage UK was formed in January 2021 as a joint venture between Cantourage GmbH and NICE Partners, a London-based cannabis company, founded in 2019 by Benjy Cuby, Gabriel Newman, Joshua Cuby and Niall Ivers. The company specialises in developing strategic alliances, business development and compliance in the European cannabis market. Cantourage UK imports medical cannabis products from Germany into the UK and Channel Islands, supplying a broad range of products to patients throughout the country.

About Together Pharma Holdings Inc.

Together Pharma is a public company traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE). The company has a subsidiary Globus Pharma Ltd., which holds the franchise, (both directly and through subsidiaries), to grow, produce, and distribute medical cannabis products.

The company operates 2 farms of the world's most advanced agricultural cultivation systems, one in Israel and the second in Uganda, which allow the control and supervision of cannabis plants using the latest technologies, developing them into quality plants suitable for supervised medical use according to the strict IMC-GAP and GACP standards. The company has also a pharmaceutical factory, which meet all the required strict conditions for manufacturing medical products according to the IMC-GMP standard.

Photo- https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1847608/Together_Pharma.jpgPhoto- https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1847606/CAN_UK_team.jpgPhoto- https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1847607/Nir_Sosinsky.jpgLogo- https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1807078/Cantourage_Logo.jpg

SOURCE Cantourage UK

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Layer Three Ventures Announces $30M Web3 Crypto Fund and Accelerator – FinTech Futures

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Layer Three Ventures, a sustainable and ethical web3 investment fund and accelerator launched this month targeting $30M for its first fund. This new Web3 venture fund takes a customized approach to sourcing, supporting, launching, and funding the next generation of successful Web3 startups.

Founder, Taylor Ryan

SAN FRANCISCO, June 27, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) With strategic and eco-system partners Near Nordic, Klint, and Growth Secrets, the pre-seed fund aims to support utility-focused decentralized applications (Dapps) across a variety of industries.

What is Web3?Web3 refers to blockchain technology and its fundamentals as they relate to decentralization and token-based economics.

The Layer Three Ventures Accelerator ProgramFunding for Layer Three Ventures is allocated towards running two 12-week accelerator programs, supporting staff, and investing in 10 startups per cohort.

The Layer Three Ventures Accelerator Program includes:

After finalizing the limited partners this summer, the first accelerator cohort is expected to be completed in late in December of 2022.

Theres a largely underserved market. Prior to the recent crash, Layer 1 blockchains accounted for 78% of all blockchain revenue. This suggests that the majority of investment and revenue is still speculative in nature, says Taylor Ryan, Founder of Layer Three Ventures.

The infrastructure exists. Its like having roads but nobody has built the cars yet. The startups that get it right will become the next generation of unicorns, Ryan notes in an interview.

The Web3 Market:While many investors are waiting to see how the market performs, the early movers are hard at work to get ahead while they can. TheGreed and Fear Index, measures a multi-factoral sentiment of the market such as volatility, market volume, social media, etc. The last few weeks have seen some of the highest scores in the market, which is labeled as Extreme Fear.

Were counting on the fact that when the market bounces back, well have the early-mover advantage, says Ryan.

Many of the most recognizable names in venture capital are allocating funds for future investment.Andreessen Horowitz recently announced a $4.5B Crypto Fund, its fourth. Meanwhile, the crypto market has seen significant volatility since May after thehistoric crash of Luna.

Connect with Layer Three Ventures:If you are an investor and interested in participating in the first funding round of Layer Three Ventures, there are still limited partner tickets available starting at $1M. Startups are encouraged to apply now as there are only 10 spots allocated to startups in the accelerator.

Layer Three Ventures is building up an impressive rolodex of investors, advisors, and talented founders with ambitious web3 projects across the globe.

Go toLayerThreeVentures.com or send an email to[emailprotected] to get in touch or learn more.

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Image 1: Founder, Taylor Ryan

Taylor Ryan Founder of Layer Three Ventures

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Layer Three Ventures Announces $30M Web3 Crypto Fund and Accelerator - FinTech Futures

Heading back to nature this summer? Tread lightly, say outdoor experts – CBC.ca

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Conservation groups have been doing a lot of work lately to give people virtual access to important ecological areas in the Maritimes, but if that's given you the itch to go in person this summer, there are special precautions to take, according to two people who make a living promoting outdoor adventures.

"These are not the places we want to start going bushwhacking," said Jan-Sebastian LaPierre, of Dartmouth-based marketing company A For Adventure.

You probably should not go with a big group, said LaPierre, and you should try to "exercise the lightest touch possible."

The public can visit many ecologically sensitive areas, he said, if there's the right infrastructure, such as boardwalks and trails.

LaPierre's business partner Chris Surette said he's noticed a trend lately of conservation groups creating interactive maps and videos to try to get people to know and love wetlands and rare habitats.

The Nature Trust of New Brunswick has done lots of mapping, he said.

One "cool" example is the Meduxnekeag Valley Nature Preserve.

The Meduxnekeag is a tributary of the St. John River, he noted, and the preserve includes over 1,000 acres of rare Appalachian hardwood forest.

More than 180 species of trees, plants, lichen and mosses live there, according to the Nature Trust including 43 rare species and many found nowhere else in Atlantic Canada.

"These forests have been nearly eradicated from their natural range in Carleton and Victoria counties," says the group's website.

Thanks to trails and light infrastructure more than 3,000 students a year can visit the preserve, he said. They have fun identifying plants using the iNaturalist app or geocaching and also learn something in the process.

Ultimately it's teaching them about nature, said Surette, and creating a culture of understandingthe importance of conservation.

The St. Mary's River Association in Nova Scotia just started an online map project as well, said LaPierre.

The Canadian Heritage River nominee is well known for salmon fishing, he said, but is home to many other species and has beautiful "rolling hills" along its banks.

It hastaken decades to shore up some of the properties, he said, on a mix of private and public land, but there are now many access points for those wanting to travel by boat, bike or on foot.

"They've done a remarkable job," said LaPierre, "to make something that's hopefully going to last for generations and generations."

Surette and LaPierre have been personally involved in a couple of other mapping projects, in collaboration with the Canadian Wildlife Service.

One of them features Big Glace Bay Beach, which is surrounded by the community of Glace Bay, Nova Scotia.

It's "very, very important," nesting grounds for piping plovers, said LaPierre, as well as a host of other shore birds that pass through.

All ecosystems are fragile, said LaPierre, including the ones that we're closest to.

"It's easy to get excited about waterfalls and lush valleys," he said, "whereas the ones we visit more often probably most need our help."

Another of the mapping projects they worked on looks at Shepody Hills south of Moncton on the Fundy shore.

They created the above video in collaboration with naturalist, poet and author Harry Thurston.

Shepody Hills had a lot of human habitation for a long time, said LaPierre, and has now returned to a more natural state.

Another important natural area is nestled next to the community of Kentville, said Surette, in Nova Scotia's fertile Annapolis Valley.

Ducks Unlimited is piloting an interactive map project there of Miner's Marsh.

It used to be farmland, said Surette, but it was wet "all the time." The Miner family worked out a deal to transfer the land and have it restored to its natural state and protected.

It opened as a nature preserve in 2010, said Surette, and is "absolutely thriving."

Hundreds of people visit daily, he said, using its walking and biking trails.

When you zoom out on the Ducks Unlimitedinteractive map, you can see how much water it holds, right next to the town.

The most sensitive areas are "usually the unsexy ones," said Surette.

Peat wetlands and salt marshes "don't get a whole lot of love," he said.

They're seen as "mosquito ridden" places that are "boggy and kind of stinky."

But they are "unsung heroes" of the natural world.

They prevent flooding, hold and purify water, are "really great" at capturing carbon and provide "amazing infrastructure" for plants and animals.

"We're trying to keep those systems intact," said LaPierre.

"The leave-no-trace principles absolutely matter here."

Continued here:

Heading back to nature this summer? Tread lightly, say outdoor experts - CBC.ca

Jute Bags Market is expected to grow by USD 3.83 Billion during 2027, progressing at a CAGR of 8.90% During the Forecast Period – Digital Journal

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TheJute Bags Marketwas valued at US$ 2.3 Bn. in 2021. Jute Bags Market size is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 8.90% over the forecast period.

According to a new report published by Maximize Market Research titledJute Bags Marketby Product Type, Price, End-Use, and Region: Industry Overview and Forecast, the Jute Bags Market size is expected to reach USD 3.83 billion by 2027 at a CAGR of 8.90 percent. The report provides clients with a thorough understanding of the Markets PORTER and PESTLE scenarios. The research is based on a thorough examination of the socioeconomic impact of the COVID 19 pandemic and the resulting worldwide economic crisis.

Jute is made from the strip and stem of jute fiber, a natural fiber. Jute bags are commonly used to store and carry a range of items in food, agriculture, domestic, and other industries. The jute bags are long-lasting and may be reused for storing and transporting things after usage. Major retailers avoid using plastic bagscreating a market potential for the jute bag sector. Overall, the market for jute bags seems to be rapidly developing in the forecasted period owing to the increasing use of jute bags in the food, chemical, and domestic sectors as well as the product customization offered by jute bag manufacturers.

To get Sample Copy ofJute Bags Market, Click here:@https://www.maximizemarketresearch.com/request-sample/146633

Jute Bags MarketDynamics:

Jute bags are frequently used as a substitute for plastic carry bags. This is of great use in shopping malls and other urban settings where Jute Bags are aggressively replacing their plastic-based equivalents to transport groceries, books, and other products utilized by city people. As a result of the improved lifestyle and rise in disposable money, the Jute Bags Market is growing. Jute bags are also utilized by college students and other consumer groups as college bags, haversacks, purses, and sling bags.

Jute bag demand is increasing due to their low cost and increasing use in textiles and homewares. Growing sustainability concerns about the usage of plastic as well as the governments attitude to the health eco-system are driving theJute Bags Market. Manufacturers of jute bags and shopping bags are looking to growing countries such as India, where jute is becoming more popular in the agriculture and fashion industries. In addition, as the use of plastic bags is prohibited, prominent firms in Europe are offering new products.

Furthermore, the benefits of jute bags such as biodegradability, cheap cost, and high strength, have contributed to the growth of the jute bag market.

Jute Bags MarketInsights:

The Asia Pacific region dominates the Jute Bags market. This is because the area is the worlds largest producer of jute. India is the worlds biggest producer of jute bags which are used in a variety of sectors such as agriculture, retail, and so on. Jute bags are also employed throughout the nation as traditional handicraft products. This is followed by China and Bangladesh, which are trying to boost their production capacity due to the products low production cost.

The Europe area has seen an increase in demand for the Jute Bags Market which may be due to increased environmental consciousness and activism as well as acceptance of jute bags.

Jute Bags MarketKey Players:

To get a detailed report summary and research scope of theJute Bags Market, click here:@https://www.maximizemarketresearch.com/market-report/jute-bags-market/146633/

Jute Bags MarketSegmentation:

By Product Type:

By End-use:

By Price:

About Maximize Market Research:

Maximize Market Research, a global market research company with a dedicated team of specialists and data has conducted thorough research on theJute Bags Market. For companies in the chemical, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, electronics, and communications, internet of things, food and beverage, aerospace and defense, and other manufacturing sectors, Maximize Market Research offers syndicated and custom B2B and B2C business and market research on 12,000 high-growth emerging technologies, opportunities, and threats. Maximize Market Research is well-positioned to assess and forecast market size while also taking the competitive landscape of the sectors into account.

Contact Maximize Market Research:

3rd Floor, Navale IT Park, Phase 2

Pune Banglore Highway, Narhe,

Pune, Maharashtra 411041, India

[emailprotected]

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Jute Bags Market is expected to grow by USD 3.83 Billion during 2027, progressing at a CAGR of 8.90% During the Forecast Period - Digital Journal

Introducing the Truckstop.com Partner Marketplace: A Comprehensive Transportation and Logistics Ecosystem – Benzinga

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BOISE, Idaho, June 28, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- In recognition of National Logistics Day and National Insurance Day taking place today, Truckstop.com announced the launch of the Truckstop.com Partner Marketplace. The comprehensive transportation and logistics marketplace provides a trusted ecosystem of products, solutions, and integrations that is designed to help partners, carriers, brokers and shippers keep their businesses moving forward.

The Truckstop.com Partner Marketplace is comprised of both industry and technology partners in several business categories including financial services, insurance providers, TMS (Transportation Management System) integrations, fuel card providers and more.

"Truckstop.com has a rich history of building strong relationships which span technology and industry partners. For more than 27 years we have established ourselves as the most trusted solutions provider for carriers, brokers and shippers," said Craig Varljen, vice president partnerships and alliances, Truckstop.com. "The Truckstop.com Partner Marketplace is a new ecosystem of partner driven solutions that add value to the entire freight and logistics industry. This creates synergies at the center of the entire transportation market."

Truckstop.com has proven to be a trusted service and industry partner since its inception, with the new Partner Marketplace providing a convenient rolodex of other reputable businesses in the industry benefiting carriers, brokers and shippers.

"A unique aspect of the freight transportation industry is that it's collegial in nature," said Bruno Stanziale, chief executive officer and chairman of GoToro. "Nobody exemplifies this united purpose more than Truckstop.com and by joining their partner marketplace we are able to better serve this community together."

Initial marketplace offerings and partnerships include, but are not limited to, the following:

Partners can choose from three listing tiers each designed to provide a curated benefits package. This can include an array of benefits ranging from a partner listing in the Partner Marketplace portal to mutual enablement and co-marketing activities.

Mobile users will be able to access the Truckstop.com Partner Marketplace from the Truckstop Go mobile app.

For more information about the Truckstop.com Partner Marketplace or how to become a partner, please visit https://marketplace.truckstop.com.

About Truckstop.comTruckstop.com is a trusted partner for carriers, brokers, and shippers empowering the freight community through a platform of innovative solutions for the entire freight lifecycle to increase efficiency, automate processes, and accelerate growth. As one of the industry's largest neutral freight marketplaces, Truckstop.com provides the customer service as well as scale of quality loads and trucks to give customers of all sizes, whether on the road or in the office, the transparency and freedom to build lasting relationships and grow their businesses. To learn how Truckstop.com is helping move the freight community forward, visit https://truckstop.com.

SOURCE Truckstop Group LLC

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Introducing the Truckstop.com Partner Marketplace: A Comprehensive Transportation and Logistics Ecosystem - Benzinga

Limitless X Anticipates Strong Sales and Earnings in the Current Fiscal Year – GuruFocus.com

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Company provides net revenue guidance in the range of $40 million for fiscal year 2022

LOS ANGELES, June 27, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Limitless X Inc., (OTCQB: BLAB) ("the Company"), a creative and empowering lifestyle agency, today announced that it anticipates strong preliminary sales and earnings in the current fiscal year 2022. Limitless X recently acquired public company Bio Lab Naturals, bringing together a strong management team within the health and wellness industry. The new management will be led by Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Jas Mathur, a successful entrepreneur, investor, and venture capitalist. Mr. Mathur has strong expertise is in ecommerce and product development and has created multiple brands in the marketing, health and wellness spaces generating hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue each year. Mr. Mathur has invested approximately $5.1 million into Limitless X and has converted the loan into preferred stock to remove debt from the Company, leaving the Company with zero debt on its balance sheet. Additionally Mr. Mathur will be taking a nominal cash salary for his duties as Chairman and CEO of the Company.

As part of the Company's growth strategy, Limitless plans to generate organic growth while also seeking to target industry relevant companies for acquisitions to further expand its product line and operational footprint domestically and eventually internationally.

Limitless X's Chief Financial Officer, Benjamin Chung, with significant public company experience and formerly a partner at BDO and with prior experience at PwC and Ernst & Young, has reported that the Company anticipates net revenues in the range of $40 million for fiscal year 2022 with a strong product gross profits. The Company maintains a positive outlook for future and continued earnings.

About Jas Mathur Jas Mathuris an investor and entrepreneur who has developed multiple brands in the marketing, health and wellness spaces generating tens to hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue each year. The digital marketing and branding firm he founded, Limitless, has launched numerous industry-leading products in the dietary and CBD supplement sectors. He is a trendsetter with more than 7 million Instagram followers and frequently collaborates with leaders in the sports and entertainment industries.

Jas' passion is helping accelerate the achievement of people's health, wellness and business goals, inspired by his personal transformation story of losing over 250lbs in his twenties. Now a sought-after expert in developing fitness and training programs, he's helped many high-profile figures embark on their own health journeys and seeks to do the same for today's youth. Suitably, he recently partnered with Dr. Oz's nonprofit, Healthcorps, to jumpstart health and wellness programs targeted at teens and young adults.

As Jas transformed his life and body, he applied his newfound passion for health and wellness to launch Limitless. Prospective services he is blueprinting for the company include personality development, life coaching and educational platforms, in addition to the brand portfolio.

About Limitless X Limitless X is a creative and empowering lifestyle agency specializing in the full spectrum of digital advertising and marketing. The Company has global eco-system with three verticals and a series of unique product and service-oriented businesses within each, focused on the Health & Wellness, Beauty & Skincare, and CBD Industry.

Media Contact: [emailprotected]

Investor Relations Contact: 800-736-2030 [emailprotected]

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/limitless-x-anticipates-strong-sales-and-earnings-in-the-current-fiscal-year-301575197.html

SOURCE Limitless X

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Limitless X Anticipates Strong Sales and Earnings in the Current Fiscal Year - GuruFocus.com

SEC will be strengthened to reposition Nigeria’s capital market, says Finance Minister | The ICIR – ICIR

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THE Federal Government has said it would strengthen the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to reposition the Nigerias capital market to be at par with its peers globally.

The Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, made the commitment today in Abuja when she received the Revised Nigerian Capital Market Master Plan (2021-2025).

The plan was submitted to the minister by the Capital Market Master Plan Implementation Council, led by the Director-General of SEC, Lamido Yuguda, and other top officials of the Commission.

The minister said the review of the capital market masterplan underscored the fact that capital market growth resonates with the current administrations unwavering commitment to deepening and re-positioning the countrys financial markets as a key anchor to achieving a private sector-led development of the economy as encapsulated in the National Development Plans objectives.

She said that under her watch, the finance ministry had supported efforts at implementing the masterplan since inception, adding that the plan represented the collective aspirations of the capital market community.

The aspirations, she said, were focused on driving initiatives geared towards growing and deepening the market.

She said the initiatives were being implemented with the ultimate goal of accelerating the emergence of Nigeria as a top 20 global economy by the year 2025.

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Ahmed commended the implementation committee and other stakeholders in the implementation journey, especially in the areas of dematerialization of share certificates, e-dividend mandate, facilitation of access to alternative investments like Sukuk and Specialized Funds, review of CAMA and ongoing review of the ISA, demutualization of the Nigeria Stock Exchange, enhancing the commodities eco-system and design of a National Savings Strategy, among others.

The finance minister said, Our capital market is growing and evolving. To sustain this growth and eventually transform to a world class capital market, transparency and investor confidence is key.

Investor confidence will accelerate the growth of our market and increase both domestic and foreign investor participation. To this end, we will continue to support and strengthen the regulator to effectively do its job of regulating and developing the capital market.

I see the capital market as an important driver of our economic growth objectives and we will continue to support efforts to position our market where it deserves to be a capital market that will broaden access to economic prosperity by enabling the emergence of financially responsible citizens, accelerate wealth creation and wealth distribution, provide capital to small and medium scale enterprises, and catalyze housing finance.

Yuguda said at the event that during the implementation of the 10-year Nigeria Capital Market Master Plan (2015-2025), the Commission established the Commodities Trading Ecosystem, and the West African Securities Regulators Association (WASRA) to encourage integration of capital markets in West Africa.

He added the masterplan document recommended a periodic review of the assumptions, goals and objectives of the plan to align it better with current realities and innovations in the global financial system.

The main objective of reviewing the masterplan is to produce an updated version of the document primarily to engage stakeholders on the current level of market development and opportunities for further capital growth; review and update the assumptions and vision of the CMMP and develop targets for the various thematic areas of the CMMP.

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The SEC Director-General said the comprehensive review of the masterplan had been completed and a revised capital market masterplan produced.

He said, The revised plan has incorporated the views and aspirations of stakeholders in our market, as well as incorporated best practices globally to produce a well-articulated strategic plan for the next four years.

The revised capital market masterplan is designed to chart the strategic position and future direction of the capital markets, while providing both the SEC and market participants clarity on the vision of the capital market and the road map required to facilitate a conducive business environment to encourage innovation, investment, growth and expansion of economic and employment opportunities in our country.

Our vision is to be Africas most modern, efficient, and internationally competitive market that catalyses Nigerias economic growth and development. We believe the Plan provides a solid roadmap for achieving this vision as we collaborate with all our stakeholders under your continued support and proven leadership.

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SEC will be strengthened to reposition Nigeria's capital market, says Finance Minister | The ICIR - ICIR

Broadband Stakeholder Group Replaced by UK Digital Connectivity Forum – ISPreview.co.uk

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The Broadband Stakeholder Group (BSG), which is a think-tank that advises the UK Government on various related areas of telecommunications policy, is no more and has been replaced by the Digital Connectivity Forum (DCF). The new group touts a redefined mission and vision that has been crafted with industry stakeholders.

The BSG, which was housed by techUK a trade body for the UKs technology sector, has in the past acted as a neutral forum for related organisations (e.g. broadband ISPs, regulators and mobile operators) to help shape future policy, regulatory and commercial issues (e.g. they helped shape the UK Open Internet Code of Practice and the new Gigabit broadband focus).

The new DCF intends to build on what the BSG was doing before, albeit alongside a refreshed identity, vision and mission to actively address the transformed connectivity value chain. The new vision will be focused on ensuring that the UK has an economy and society empowered by seamless digital connectivity, which some may view as an veiled reference toward more network convergence.

The groups new mission is also to be the primary advisory body on the provision of seamless connectivity, which shouldnt be too difficult, as were not sure if anybody else even holds that role today. Theres also talk of creating a distinct technology neutral work programme (i.e. its clearly not a fibre-only club), concentrating on content demand and network design.

Stephanie Liston, Chair of the Digital Connectivity Forum, said:

The last two decades have seen a dramatic transformation in the UKs digital eco-system. Consumers and businesses today enjoy a huge number of internet-enabled services delivered over a variety of networks. Working with industry, government and others we are today launching the Digital Connectivity Forum with an expanded and ambitious agenda to meet the challenges and exploit the opportunities of the next 20 years.

Personally speaking, Im not a huge fan of the move toward convergence. Indeed, people like myself much prefer our mobile, phone, TV and fixed broadband services to be entirely separate, so that we can benefit from greater choice and flexibility when moving between providers. Some may of course prefer the simplicity of a single package, which is understandable.

On the other hand, its plausible for the seamless connectivity benefits of convergence to still exist across different suppliers and networks (very complex), which is perhaps something that the DCF might be able to facilitate through new agreements. But at this stage well have to wait for some of the DCFs first work output before being able to tell just how far they might be able to take all this, or even if this is actually what they mean.

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Broadband Stakeholder Group Replaced by UK Digital Connectivity Forum - ISPreview.co.uk

ICAB and BIDA signs MoU on DVS – The Business Standard

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The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Bangladesh (ICAB) and the Bangladesh Investment Development Authority (BIDA) of the Prime Minister's Office have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) at a ceremony held at latter's premises on Tuesday, 28 June 2022.

Under this MoU BIDA will get access to use documents verification system (DVS) for verifying the authenticity of audited financial statements of different entities, reads a press release.

Md. Shahadat Hossain FCA, President, ICAB and Mohsina Yasmin, Executive Member (International Investment Promotion), BIDA have signed the MoU from their respective sides.

Md. Sirazul Islam, Executive Chairman, Bangladesh Investment Development Authority (BIDA), Prime Minister's Office, GoB graced the occasion present as the chief guest. ICAB Vice President Fouzia Haque FCA, BIDA Director General Shah Mohammad Mahboob, and Executive Member Mohsina Yasmin also spoke on the occasion.

ICAB Vice President NKA Mobin FCA, Council Members, Md. Moniruzzaman FCA, Sabbir Ahmed FCA, Chief Executive Officer Shubhashish Bose, Chief Operating Officer Mahbub Ahmed Siddique FCA, among others were present in the occasion.

DVS has already become quite acceptable to the business community and other regulatory bodies. ICAB has similar arrangement with National Board of Revenue (NBR), Financial Reporting Council (FRC), Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission (BSEC), NGOs Affairs Bureau and Registrar of Joint Stock Companies and Firms (RJSC).

ICAB has developed the Document Verification System (DVS) to authenticate the audited financial statements of different entities.

DVS will make the accounting system more acceptable and reliable. ICAB introduced this software data base document verification system (DVS) from 1 December 2020 to curb malpractice of producing multiple financial statements and to establish transparency and accountability in the financial statements of different entities.

Highlighting the purposes of launching of document verification system(DVS), ICAB Council Member Mohammed Forkan Uddin FCA said, foreign investors see first the audited financial statements of a company before making a decision for cross boarder investment, National Board of Revenue (NBR) needs audited financial statements for revenue assessment, and the Banks require it for sanctioning loan.

ICAB's Document Verification System (DVS) will ensure the authenticity of this audited financial statements which will ultimately reduce the number of loan defaulters and bring confidence for foreign investment, he added and said, it will also enhance the revenue and thereby change the financial eco-system of the country.

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ICAB and BIDA signs MoU on DVS - The Business Standard

Novartis hunting for sickle cell cure with Precision deal – BioPharma Dive

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Dive Brief:

Sickle cell and beta thalassemia, both rare, life-threatening diseases caused by mistakes in DNA, are top targets for biotech and pharma companies working in the genetic medicine field. Several of those efforts have advanced to, or will soon reach, the Food and Drug Administration.

Earlier this month, advisers to the agency recommended approval for a cell-based gene therapy designed by Bluebird bio to treat beta thalassemia. Partners Vertex and CRISPR Therapeutics, meanwhile, plan to later this year submit for approval a CRISPR gene editing treatment that can treat both conditions.

Novartis is already working on a similar treatment through a partnership with the CRISPR biotech Intellia Therapeutics. Early clinical testing of their therapy began in 2020. The Swiss drugmaker also won approval in 2019 for a drug designed to limit the blood vessel blockages that cause severe pain crises in sickle cell patients.

Still, Novartis is exploring other approaches, recently joining forces with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and, on Tuesday, partnering with Precision.

Precision specializes in a type of gene editing technology it calls ARCUS. While the technology shares a similar concept to the better-known CRISPR, it uses a different type of nuclease, or DNA-cutting enzyme. Under the deal with Novartis, Precision will build a custom ARCUS nuclease for use in sickle cell and beta thalassemia. Once thats developed, Novartis will handle R&D, manufacturing and, if research succeeds, commercialization.

In announcing the deal, the companies acknowledged the competition, but noted how their work will focus on a treatment that can be used inside the body, or in vivo.

The in vivo gene editing approach that we are pursuing for sickle cell disease could have a number of significant advantages over other ex vivo gene therapies currently in development, said Derek Jantz, Precisions chief scientific officer, in a statement. Perhaps most importantly, it could open the door to treating patients in geographies where stem cell transplant is not a realistic option.

For Precision, the cash infusion from Novartis will also help extend its operating runway into the second quarter of 2024. Also on Tuesday, the biotech announced it would raise a further $50 million through the sale of nearly 36 million shares.

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Novartis hunting for sickle cell cure with Precision deal - BioPharma Dive