Daily Archives: August 6, 2017

Investors bet big on AI for health diagnostics – VentureBeat

Posted: August 6, 2017 at 3:10 am

Were seeing a new wave of venture investments in healthtech companies especially those with strong artifical intelligence and machine learning components. Led by some of the worlds largest biopharma companies and tech-focused venture capitalists, these investments are backing efforts to speed drug discovery, improve tests and treatments, and further medical research. For now, most of the investment is focused in the diagnostics/tools (Dx/Tools) sector.A Silicon Valley Bank analysis last month found that 44 venture-backed deals raised $2.2 billion between 2015 and the first half of 2017 for Dx/Tools companies that use AI/ML as part of their underlying technology.

The investors are increasingly diverse:

For our analysis, SVB segmented Dx/Tools into three subsectors: Dx Tests (yes/no test results), Dx/Tools Analytics (actionable data analytics to help direct treatment), and R&D Tools (research equipment and services for biopharma and academia). These deals include multi-$100 million financings for three companies: GRAIL, Guardant Health, and Human Longevity.

Tech-focused and healthcare investors view investments in this new subsector through different lenses.

Tech investors tend to see their AI/ML investments in Dx/Tools as a vehicle for tackling big data in the healthcare arena. When that complex problem is solved, they expect the market will be huge as will the exit opportunities. Thus, tech investors are making early-stage bets. For example, they are banding together in AI/ML platform companies like Atomwise, Cofactor Genomics, Color Genomics, Gingko Bioworks, and Neurotrack.

Healthcare investors typically consider regulatory pathway, reimbursement, revenue ramp, and the acquirer landscape as they evaluate investments. While these investors see much promise in AI/ML technologies, so far they have largely remained on the sidelines. AI/ML represents a new paradigm in healthcare company formation, and these early-stage companies are just beginning to address approval and commercialization, and thus are often considered too early for healthcare investors.

Looking ahead, collaboration among tech and healthcare investors seems natural: It would create an enhanced team to take advantage of technology expertise and experience in healthcare market approval and adoption. To date, there have been limited collaborations, such as Guardant Health.

Valuation remains one of the sticking points. Anecdotally, there are numerous examples of healthcare investors being outbid by tech investors. But as early-stage companies mature, we expect to see more activity by traditional healthcare venture investors.

At this stage, there are several key questions that have yet to be answered:

There will be some big wins in this space, but the next financing rounds will serve as a key indicator of investor confidence. Well likely see an investor mix led by new tech investors and biopharma corporate venture arms. And we also expect large tech companies to invest as they continue to expand their healthcare footprint. Again, how big a role healthcare venture investors will play is uncertain.

On the acquisition side, big biopharma will continue to target AI/ML companies. And large tech companies looking to make further inroads into healthcare (such as Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Dell) will not likely pass up opportunities to take a stake in this emerging healthcare sector.

As machine learning and artificial intelligence are rapidly commercialized for healthcare applications, we expect healthcare investing to shift paradigms, leading to new waves of investors and opportunities for promising companies.

Jonathan Norris is Managing Director at Silicon Valley Bank.

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The latest challenge to Google’s AI dominance comes from an unlikely place — Firefox – CNBC

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Mozilla, the company behind the Firefox internet browser, has begun testing a feature that lets you enter a search query using your voice instead of typing it in. The move could help Mozilla's efforts to make Firefox more competitive with Google Chrome.

If you're using Firefox in English on Mac, Windows or Linux, you can turn on the experimental "Voice Fill" feature and then use it on Google, Yahoo and DuckDuckGo. Support for other websites will come later.

Alphabet's Google offers speech recognition on its search engine when accessed through Chrome on desktop -- it became available in 2013 -- and Yahoo, Microsoft's Bing and Google all let you run search queries with your voice on mobile devices. But searching with your voice on Google while using Firefox on the desktop, for example, has historically been impossible. Now Mozilla wants to make its desktop browser more competitive.

The Voice Fill feature comes a few weeks after Mozilla announced the Common Voice Project that allows people to "donate" recordings of them saying various things in order to build up "an open-source voice recognition engine" that anyone will be able to use. Mozilla will use recordings from Voice Fill and the Common Voice Project in order to make the speech recognition more accurate, speech engineer Andre Natal told CNBC in an interview.

Mozilla's latest efforts follow Facebook's push into speech recognition. And speech technology has become hotter thanks to the rise of "smart" speakers like the Amazon Alexa, the Google Home, and the Apple HomePod. Harman Kardon is now building a speaker that will let people interact with Microsoft's Cortana assistant.

But these big technology companies have collected considerable amounts of proprietary voice data. So while they zig, Mozilla will zag. Mozilla will release to the public its voice snippets from the Common Voice Project later this year. The speech recognition models will be free for others to use as well, and eventually there will be a service for developers to weave into their own apps, Natal said.

"There's no option for both users and developers to use -- something that is both concerned about your privacy and also affordable," Natal said.

That said, Mozilla is following along with the rest of the tech crowd in the sense that the underlying system -- a fork of the Kaldi open-source software -- employs artificial neural networks, a decades-old but currently trendy architecture for training machines to do things like recognize the words that people say.

Mozilla initially explored incorporating speech recognition into the assistant for its Firefox OS for phones, but in 2016 it shifted the OS focus to connected devices, and earlier this year Mozilla closed up the connected devices group altogether.

Today Mozilla has five people working on speech research and a total of about 30 people working on speech technology overall, Natal said. Eventually the team wants to make the technology work in languages other than English.

Mozilla introduced the browser that became Firefox back in 2002. Over the years the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation has received financial support from Google and Yahoo. Mozilla CEO Chris Beard is currently focused on trying to get people to care about the company again, as CNET's Stephen Shankland reported this week. Recent moves include the launch of the Firefox Focus mobile browser and the acquisition of read-it-later app Pocket.

But while Firefox could have roughly 300 million monthly active users, Chrome has more than 1 billion.

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The latest challenge to Google's AI dominance comes from an unlikely place -- Firefox - CNBC

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Artificial Intelligence News & Articles – IEEE Spectrum

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Her AI-enabled "Eyeagnosis" system uses a smartphone app and a 3D-printed lens to diagnose diabetic retinopathy 3Aug

Georgia Tech's robot can step in with ethical advice when a relationship gets complicated 27Jul

Neural nets and robotic harnesses can aid patients after spinal cord injury, stroke 19Jul

Videos of Barack Obama made from existing audio, video of him 12Jul

To respond to a plague of drones, airports and other venues deploy AI systems to track and identifyintruders 28Jun

A dataset of 6.7 million robust point clouds and grasps can train your neural network to reliably pick up objects 27Jun

A GPU-based neural network was the only way to handle a garage full of Lego 23Jun

It may be more than youd like 23Jun

Intel says its new Olympics sponsorship is about changing the experience for the digital generation 21Jun

The preliminary work for simulating the human brain is already under way 21Jun

Nearly 400 teams have already signed up to create an AI with true generalized intelligence 21Jun

Georgia Tech's Shimon has analyzed thousands of songs and millions of music clips and can now compose completely original music 14Jun

Affectivas Rana El-Kaliouby says our devices need to get a lot more emotionally intelligent 13Jun

At the intersection of two challenging computational and technological problems may lie the key to better understanding and manipulating quantum randomness 13Jun

If machine learning systems can be taught using simulated data from Grand Theft Auto V instead of data annotated by humans, we could get to reliable vehicle autonomy much faster 8Jun

DeepMind's training data set of 300,000 YouTube clips finds AI struggles to recognize actions such as eating doughnuts or face-planting 8Jun

Adversarial grasping helps robots learn better ways of picking up and holding onto objects 5Jun

Reverse engineering 1 cubic millimeter of brain tissue could lead to better artificial neural networks 30May

The FDA needs computer experts with industry experience to help oversee AI-driven health apps and wearables software 29May

The prototype chip learns a style of music, then composes its own tunes 23May

Crashing into objects has taught this drone to fly autonomously, by learning what not to do 10May

Silicon Valley startup Verdigris cloud-based analysis can tell whether youre using a Chromebook or a Mac, or whether a motor is running fine or starting to fail 3May

An artificial intelligence program correctly identifies 355 more patients who developed cardiovascular disease 1May

MITs WiGait wall sensor can unobtrusively monitor people for many health conditions based on their walking patterns 1May

Facebook's Yael Maguire talks about millimeter wave networks, Aquila, and flying tethered antennas at the F8 developer conference 19Apr

Machine learning uses data from smartphones and wearables to identify signs of relationship conflicts 18Apr

Machine-learning algorithms that readily pick up cultural biases may pose ethical problems 13Apr

AI and robots have to work in a way that is beneficial to people beyond reaching functional goals and addressing technical problems 29Mar

Understanding when they don't understand will help make robots more useful 15Mar

Palo Alto startup twoXAR partners with Santen Pharmaceutical to identify new glaucoma drugs; efforts on rare skin disease, liver cancer, atherosclerosis, and diabetic nephropathy also under way 13Mar

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Artificial Intelligence News & Articles - IEEE Spectrum

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How Facebook’s AI Bots Learned Their Own Language and How to Lie – Newsweek

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Facebook has been working on artificial intelligence that claims to be great at negotiating, makes up its own language and learns to lie.

OMG! Facebook must be building an AI Trump! Art of the deal. Biggest crowd ever. Cofveve. Beep-beep!

This AI experiment comes out of a lab called Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research. It recently announced breakthrough chatbot software that can ruthlessly negotiate with other software or directly with humans. Research like that usually gets about as much media attention as a high school math bee, but the FAIR project points toward a bunch of intriguing near-term possibilities for AI while raising some creepy concernslike whether it will be kosher for a bot to pretend it is human once bots get so good you cant tell whether theyre code or carbon.

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AI researchers around the world have been working on many of the complex aspects of negotiation because it is so important to technologys future. One of the long-held dreams for AI, for example, is that well all have personal bot-agents we can send out into the internet to do stuff for us, like make travel reservations or find a good plumber. Nobody wants a passive agent that pays retail. You want a deal. Which means you want a badass bot.

There are so many people working on negotiating AI bots that they even have their own Olympicsthe Eighth International Automated Negotiating Agents Competition gets underway in mid-August in Melbourne, Australia. One of the goals is to encourage design of practical negotiation agents that can proficiently negotiate against unknown opponents in a variety of circumstances. One of the leagues in the competition is a Diplomacy Strategy Game. AI programmers are anticipating the day when our bot wrangles with Kim Jong Uns bot over the fate of the planet while Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is out cruising D.C. on his Harley.

Artifical Intelligence is no longer a futuristic concept. Bots can already debate, negotiateand lielike humans. Isaac Lawrence/AFP/Getty

As the Facebook researchers point out, todays bots can manage short exchanges with humans and simple tasks like booking a restaurant, but they arent able to have a nuanced give-and-take that arrives at an agreed-upon outcome. To do that, AI bots have to do what we do: make a mental model of the opponent, anticipate reactions, read between the lines, communicate in fluent human language and even throw in a few bluffs. Facebooks AI had to figure out how to do those things on its own: The researchers wrote machine-learning software, then let it practice on both humans and other bots, constantly improving its methods.

This is where things got a little weird. First of all, most of the humans in the practice sessions didnt know they were chatting with bots. So the day of identity confusion between bots and people is already here. And then the bots started getting better deals as often as the human negotiators. To do that, the bots learned to lie. This behavior was not programmed by the researchers, Facebook wrote in a blog post, but was discovered by the bot as a method for trying to achieve its goals. Such a trait could get ugly, unless future bots are programmed with a moral compass.

The bots ran afoul of their Facebook overlords when they started to make up their own language to do things faster, not unlike the way football players have shorthand names for certain plays instead of taking the time in the huddle to describe where everyone should run. Its not unusual for bots to make up a lingo that humans cant comprehend, though it does stir worries that these things might gossip about us behind our back. Facebook altered the code to make the bots stick to plain English. Our interest was having bots who could talk to people, one of the researchers explained.

The bots ran afoul of their Facebook overlords when they started to make up their own language to do things faster. Dado Ruvic/Reuters

Outside of Facebook, other researchers have been working to help bots comprehend human emotions, another important factor in negotiations. If youre trying to sell a house, you want to model whether the prospective buyer has become emotionally attached to the place so you can crank up the price. Rosalind Picard of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has been one of the leaders in this kind of research, which she calls affective computing. She even started a company, Affectiva, thats training AI software in emotions by tracking peoples facial expressions and physiological responses. It has been used to help advertisers know how people are reacting to their commercials. One Russian company, Tselina Data Lab, has been working on emotion-reading software that can detect when humans are lying, potentially giving bot negotiators an even bigger advantage. Imagine a bot that knows when youre lying, but youll never know when it is lying.

While many applications of negotiating botslike those personal-assistant AI agentssound helpful, some seem like nightmares. For instance, a handful of companies are working on debt-collection bots. Describing his companys product, Ohad Samet, CEO of debt-collection AI maker TrueAccord, told American Banker , People in debt are scared, theyre angry, but sometimes they need to be told, Look, this is the debt and this is the situation, we need to solve this. Sometimes being too empathetic is not in the consumers best interest. It sounds like his bots are going to negotiate by saying, Pay up, plus 25 percent compounded daily, or we make you part of a concrete bridge strut.

Put all of these negotiation-bot attributes together and you get a potential monster: a bot that can cut deals with no empathy for people, says whatever it takes to get what it wants, hacks language so no one is sure what its communicating and cant be distinguished from a human being. If were not careful, a bot like that could rule the world.

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This AI Start-up Will help You Ape Celeb Fashion Trends – Entrepreneur

Posted: at 3:10 am

You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media.

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Ever wanted to dress up like a celebrity? Or maybe you wanted to own attire, which you recently saw someone wearing but didnt know where to get it from? Artificial Intelligence is the technology you need. This tool identifies your clothes and finds the place where you can buy it from.

Gurgaon-based start-up Staqu Technologies Pvt. Ltd is redefining image search through AI. Launched in 2015 by Co-founders Anurag Saini, Chaitan Rexwal, Pankaj Sharma and Atul Rai, the start-up utilizes state-of-the-art deep learning technologies to provide precise, reverse image search solutions.

The search engine is designed to retrieve exact matches from the indicated database for an input image. Various algorithms like content, color, shape and texture are extracted and fused together to provide visual search solutions for various e-commerce businesses in the field of fashion, housing, medicine etc.

In a chat with Entrepreneur India, Atul Rai, also the CEO of Staqu explained how AI is making fashion images searches simpler.

Over 70 per cent of the content of e-commerce sites is images. Very few companies like Google, Microsoft and Facebook are using AI in images. Every company, be it an original equipment manufacturer (mobile companies) or e-commerce, is generating certain kind of data. We are trying to extract information from that image data and decode it for different purposes, Rai said.

AI Image Search

Rai said most people dont find a product similar to what they have seen on TV or found someone wearing it, in the market. Using this technology, one can actually spot the same outfit online at a different price.

Lets take the example of the e-commerce space. Suppose you want to buy an attire which an actress owns, its difficult for you to get the same as human brain cant describe the design in words. This is where the role of image data comes into play. You can take a picture of the dress you want and find out a similar dress based on the pixel information instead of text information, he stressed.

Rais start-up is selling the technology to e-commerce companies and mobile phone brands to integrate the same within the mobile phone camera.

We have joined hands with a company that has launched cell phones called Karbonn Fashion Eye and Aura Note2 which use our image search feature. We are also working with smartphone brands like Intex and Panasonic, he added.

How Staqu Knows a Particular Brand

Elaborating the role of AI in Staqu , Rai stressed that image search was not the only segment in which they are working right now. The start-up is offering various services like visual search, automated meta-tag generation, visual recommendation, real time video processing etc.

If you go to Flipkart and look for any dress of a particular brand, the brand name is a text which has to be there. For that, a lot of companies are putting human curators, and it is turning out to be very costly affair. As for every product you have to put some tags for the ease of searching them. This is where AI services are required, where you just have to upload the image and start generating relevant tags for that particular product," he said.

Rai concluded by sharing a useful advice to aspiring entrepreneurs, who are looking to lead the race in the artificial intelligence segment. To start something in AI one should have skill and experience because you need to have the knowledge of understanding the type of technology that can solve a specific issue," he said.

A self confessed Bollywood Lover, Travel junkie and Food Evangelist.I like travelling and I believe it is very important to take ones mind off the daily monotony .

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Immortality calling: Who’ll be next Dolphins, Heat, Marlins or Panthers star in Hall of Fame? – Miami Herald (blog)

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CBS Miami
Immortality calling: Who'll be next Dolphins, Heat, Marlins or Panthers star in Hall of Fame?
Miami Herald (blog)
Dolphins great Jason Taylor on Saturday became the 26th man immortalized as a Hall of Famer after having worn the uniform of, or coached, the Miami Dolphins, Heat, Marlins or Panthers. Taylor sailed in with the fifth-greatest percentage of his career ...
Orange, Teal And Now Gold: Jason Taylor A Step Closer To Football ImmortalityCBS Miami

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Immortality calling: Who'll be next Dolphins, Heat, Marlins or Panthers star in Hall of Fame? - Miami Herald (blog)

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CLINICAL EFFICACY OF DIETARY MANIPULATION AS COMPLEMENTARY AND ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE … – UroToday

Posted: at 3:08 am

(Objectives) We examined the clinical efficacy of dietary manipulation (DM) for female patients with interstitial cystitis (IC) in stable condition who were followed in our hospital. (Patients and methods) This study included 20 female patients with IC in rather stable condition who were followed at our hospital. In cooperation with the nutrition control team, we created a basic IC diet menu for 1 month (total daily calories, 1,500 kcal; protein, 65 g; fat, 40 g; carbohydrate, 220 g; water, 1,000 ml; salt, 7 g). Data regarding daily food intake and food-related symptoms were collected by detailed interview of each patient conducted by the doctors, nurses, and nutritionists at our hospital. In accordance with the abovementioned nutrition control, we set meal menu to control IC symptoms and advised the patients to reduce the intake of specific food items to the maximum possible extent.The following food items were removed from or restricted in the diet of patients: tomatoes, tomato products, soy, tofu product (seasoning was acceptable), spices (pepper, curry powder, mustard, horseradish, etc.), excessive potassium, citrus, high-acidity-inducing substances (caffeine, carbonate, and citric acid), etc. We evaluated the following factors to determine the efficacy of this diet menu 3 months after the start of the intervention: O'Leary-Sant symptom index (OSSI), O'Leary-Sant problem index (OSPI), urgency visual analogue scale (UVAS) score, (0, no urgency; 10, severe urgency), bladder or pelvic pain VAS (PVAS) score, (0, no pain; 10, worst possible pain), and numerical patient-reported quality of life (QOL) index (0, highly satisfied; 6, highly dissatisfied). (Results) OSSI and OSPI improved from 11.7 to 10.1 (p<0.0001), and from 10.7 to 8.8 (p=0.01), respectively. The UVAS score significantly reduced from 6.4 to 4.8, and the PVAS score significantly improved from 6.5 to 4.8 (p<0.0001). The patient-reported QOL index significantly improved from 5.1 to 3.9 (p<0.0001). (Conclusion) Although repeated notes were taken and patients who were followed up for a long term were consulted on the meal, as appropriate, at the time of visit, DM was found to alleviate the symptoms of IC. DM as a systematic treatment modality for IC should be attempted more aggressively because of its non-invasiveness, without alterations to the other IC treatments.

Nihon Hinyokika Gakkai zasshi. The japanese journal of urology. 2016 Jan [Epub]

Hitoshi Oh-Oka

Department of Urology, National Hospital Organization, Kobe Medical Center.

PubMed http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28740049

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CLINICAL EFFICACY OF DIETARY MANIPULATION AS COMPLEMENTARY AND ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE ... - UroToday

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Like Your Doctor? You’re Part of a Huge Club | Business Markets … – Madison.com

Posted: at 3:08 am

Physicians might be more appreciated than they think. A Pew Research Center survey found that63% of American adults had seen a healthcare provider in the previous year for an illness or medical condition. Of those, 87% thought that the provider listened carefully to their symptoms and concerns.

Nearly as many patients (84%) felt their doctor "really cared about their health and well-being." Four our of five Americans thought they received all the information they needed from their healthcare provider.

Those findings indicate that around 217 million American adults had positive experiences with their physicians. If you like you're doctor, you're part of a huge club. And if you're a doctor, congratulations -- it's highly likely that your patients think you're doing a good job.

Image source: Getty Images.

What makes the Pew survey results especially interesting is how they show patients have a very different perspective than physicians have.

A survey published in theArchives of Internal Medicineback in 2012 reported that physicians in the U.S. experience burnout more than any other profession. In 2015, a Medscape survey found that, despite making large salaries, nearly half of all U.S. doctors said they had experienced "loss of enthusiasm for work, feelings of cynicism, and a low sense of personal accomplishment." The findings from the Pew survey suggest that this burnout isn't having too great of a negative impact on physicians' relationships with their patients.

The top reason for frustration for physicians in the Medscape survey was "too many bureaucratic tasks." This probably is a reason why 23% of patients in the Pew survey reported that they "felt rushed by their healthcare provider." Still, though, many more patients didn't feel rushed than did.

Although most Americans appear to like their doctors, many are also taking other approaches for treatment of illnesses. The Pew survey found that nearly half of all Americans have tried alternative medicine outside of conventional medical care. Alternative medicine includesacupuncture, chiropractic, energy therapies, herbal dietary supplements, and other therapies that physicians typically wouldn't use for treatment. It should be noted, however, that only 20% of Americans used alternative medicine instead of traditional medical treatment, with others using alternative medicine in addition to traditional medical treatment.

Younger Americans appear to be more likely to try alternative treatments. The Pew survey found that 51% of U.S. adults between the ages of 18 and 29 had used alternative treatments, while only 38% of adults age 65 or over had done so.

Image source: Getty Images.

Americans are also likely to do their own research on medical conditions. Just 30% of respondents in the Pew survey rely solely on what their doctor tells them. Roughly 36% do some research of their own to learn more about the treatment recommended by their healthcare providers. Another 21% check for other treatment options. Around 9% of Americans research potential side effects.

With so many Americans having positive experiences with their healthcare providers, you might expect they'd think overall health in the country was improving. But they don't.

The Pew Research Center survey found that 48% of American adults think that the health of children is worse than it was 20 years ago, with 20% thinking it's about the same. Only 31% think the health of U.S. children has gotten better over the last two decades.

Around 42% of the survey respondents felt that the health of U.S. adults was worse than it was 20 years ago. Roughly 24% thought adult health was about the same as two decades ago, with 33% viewing the health of adult Americans as better than it was in the past.

Why such pessimism? A couple of other findings in the Pew survey could point to the answer. Nearly all (95%) of Americans said that getting enough physical exercise was important to improving health. However, a whopping 79% of Americans think they should be exercising more.

Perhaps the main message from the Pew survey is that most Americans could have the following conversation with their primary physician: "I like you a lot, doc, even though I'm not as healthy as I should be. It's not you... it's me."

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Linval Joseph’s Hard Work Pays Off with Vikings Contract Extension – Vikings.com

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MANKATO, Minn. Another day, another round of dollars committed to a significant Vikings defender.

Minnesota announced on Saturday that Linval Joseph signed a multi-year contract extension (the team does not release financial details of contracts).

Joseph is the third Vikings defender who is following a Pro Bowl season to sign an extension with the team in an 11-day span.

The first player to do so was defensive end Everson Griffen on July 26, when he and other veterans reported to Verizon Vikings Training Camp. Cornerback Xavier Rhodes inked his contract extension on July 30 to start this week, and Josephs signing helps punctuate a week that will culminate with a night practice at Blakeslee Stadium.

Joseph made a quick swipe of a pen around 4:30 p.m. (CT), leaving him enough time to prepare for the under-the-lights session.

It feels really good. I was really calm about the situation, Joseph said. Im just glad to be a Viking for life. I want to thank the organization, the Ownership, thank God and thank my agent Bill Johnson. Im ready to go. I want to help this team win the Super Bowl.

Joseph, who will turn 29 in October, was one of the first free agents the Vikings signed after Head Coach Mike Zimmer was hired in 2014.

He brought four years of experience with the New York Giants (46 starts in 53 regular-season games) and a ring from Super Bowl XLVI to the table.

Joseph has eaten up space in the middle of the field since and been critical to the Vikings defense. He has started all 44 regular-season games and the one postseason game hes played with Minnesota. Joseph recently discussed the one ultimate goal that the Vikings have and his belief in the team to play for a Super Bowl.

It would mean everything to me, Joseph said. When I signed my first contract, it was to come and help these guys and show these guys the way. To win a Super Bowl with the same guys Ive been with for four years would be awesome.

The former high school weightlifting champ is coming off his strongest season yet. Joseph recorded 100 tackles (coaches tally), including 48 solo, 4.0 sacks and 7.0 tackles for loss. He also recorded career bests of 36 quarterback hurries and three forced fumbles on his way to his first selection to the Pro Bowl.

Zimmer was asked about the way that Joseph was quietly handling the business aspect of the game and on the field while preparing for his fourth season in Purple. Zimmer pointed to the fact that Joseph values team accomplishments over individual stats

Hes a great person, wants to be really good, Zimmer said. Probably works as hard as anyone on the football team in the offseason. I think he cares an awful lot about the guys around him. [Defensive line coach] Andre Patterson does a good job preaching all that. But hopefully all of our guys on defense feel the same way. Its not about individual statistics, its about us collectively doing our job. Linval is the best one [nose tackle] Ive ever been around.

Zimmer said Josephs combination of strength, size and athleticism make him unlike any other nose tackle hes ever coached.

Most of the guys are thicker and shorter than he is, but he's the best athlete that I can think of, that I've been involved with at that spot, Zimmer said. When I first went to Dallas, Russell Maryland, who was the first pick of the draft was there, but he was more of a quick, fast guy as opposed to a bigpowerful guy.

Defensive coordinator George Edwards said Friday that Joseph is an exceptional player.

Hes not only got the bulk to play the position, the block awareness, balance, contact balance, and all those things but just the attitude that he brings to it every day, Edwards said.

You look at college football right now, you dont see a lot of nose guards because theres a lot of spread, Edwards added. Having a guy like that in the middle of your defense that brings that type of work ethic and pride to what hes trying to get accomplished is definitely a plus. I think Coach (Zimmer) has said it and Ill say it, hes one of the best Ive ever been around. I mean hes really a dominant force in there, does it exactly how you try to get it taught every day, and the consistency he brings to practice and takes the game, thats a big plus for us.

After seeing other core teammates sign recent contract extensions and knowing the kudos he has received from Vikings coaches, Joseph said he trusted that his opportunity would follow.

I feel like hard work pays off, Joseph said. It was going around the league, everybody saying Im the best, this and that. I was like, Well, its time for everything to come out the right way, and it turned out the right way. Im excited to be here. Im excited to have all the respect I have now, and I just want us to win games.

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From the Extension: Florida is a hotbed for the cattle industry – Daily Commercial

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The word cowboy often evokes images of the Old West, but cattle in America could be more accurately associated with the Old East.

Ponce de Leon, of fountain of youth fame, first introduced cattle to the new world in Florida in 1521. These first Florida cattle were small statured with sharp horns and had a knack for eking out a living in an inhospitable environment. Despite the heat, biting insects, swampy terrain and lack of nutritious forage, the scrappy Spanish cattle not only survived but also thrived, paving the way for economic development and growth in the state.

Nearly 500 years after the first cattle set hoof in Florida, the beef industry continues to play an important role in the economy and culture of our state.

Modern Florida is considered a cow-calf state, with the majority of ranchers caring for brood cows on pasture and raising calves to sell at the market. Weaned calves are typically sent west to grow and mature on rich pasture for several months prior to being moved to the feed yard where they are finished on a grain-based diet. Florida is home to an estimated one million cows (mature females), bulls (mature, intact males), and heifers (young females who have not yet had a calf) that produce approximately 800,000 calves per year. The total value of cattle in Florida is estimated in excess of $1 billion and the Florida beef industry has an economic impact of $900 million annually.

Many Central Florida residents would be surprised to know that the largest cow-calf operation in the U.S. is a short drive from the hustle and bustle of the theme parks, and five of the 10 largest cow-calf ranches in the country are in Florida.

When it comes to purchasing and consuming beef, consumers have more choices now than ever. There are 60 unique retail cuts of beef available, each with its own best use, taste profile and degree of tenderness. In the mood to grill? Theres a cut for that. Do you want to set it and forget it in the crockpot? Theres a cut for that, as well.

Consumers also have options as to how their beef was raised and fed. You may have seen beef labeled as grass finished in the butchers case and wondered what that means and how it differs from conventional beef. All beef cattle live the majority of their lives on pasture. Grass-finished beef remain on pasture until processing, while conventional beef cattle are fed grain during the last several months of their life. Grass finished beef tends to be leaner with less intramuscular fat (marbling) and a slightly different taste profile.

Regardless of the cut of beef or how the cattle were fed, consumers should feel confident that their beef is safe, wholesome and nutritious. Each 3-ounce serving of lean beef provides approximately 25 grams of protein, nearly half of the daily recommendation. Beef is also an excellent source of zinc, iron, selenium, and B vitamins, such as riboflavin, B12 and niacin.

Beef cattle in Florida do more than stimulate our economy and nourish our citizens, they also serve to protect green spaces from further development. Cattle ranchers are considered one of the original stewards of the environment, with ranches often being cared for by multiple generations of Floridians. More than 4.5 million acres in Florida are currently used to graze cattle. These green spaces help to filter water, recharge our precious aquifer and serve as a habitat for numerous species of birds, reptiles, insects and mammals. As Florida continues to grow and develop, these habitats will become even more critical to the survival of native wildlife and may play a role in protecting vulnerable species from extinction.

Next time you are out and about, I encourage you to notice and appreciate the pastoral beauty of our local ranches, just one of the many ways that agriculture helps to make and keep Lake County a wonderful place to call home.

For information on the beef industry, agriculture in general or making healthy diet choices, contact the local UF/IFAS Extension Office in Tavares.

Megan Mann is a livestock agent at the UF/IFAS Lake County Extension Center. Email her at horsygrl@ufl.edu.

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From the Extension: Florida is a hotbed for the cattle industry - Daily Commercial

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