Category Archives: Life Extension

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Kate Linebaugh: There's a fight brewing in the cryptocurrency world over a digital coin worth about $30 billion, Dogecoin. On one side, there's an upstart newcomer.

Angel Versetti: My Name is Angel Versetti. I describe myself as an investopreneur of crypto, investopreneur meaning both an investor and entrepreneur in one.

Kate Linebaugh: On the other side are some of the original players who developed the currency.

Jens Weichers: My name is Jens Weichers. I've been on and off with the Dogecoin project since relatively close to the start.

Kate Linebaugh: What they're fighting over is the Dogecoin trademark. Both Angel and Jens each say they are the rightful steward of the currency that was created eight years ago as a joke. The winner of the fight gets the rights to one of crypto's most adored brands.Okay. So there are two groups, they're fighting over a joke currency, and this fight is taking place in the halls of trademark offices?

Caitlin Ostroff: Yeah, in the US Patent and Trademark Office, which I guess, if you're thinking of dramatic legal battles, is probably not the place you picture, especially for cryptocurrency. Dogecoin and the other kind of jokey cryptos that really did form in the beginning of the cryptocurrency boom, they're kind of having this coming-of-age moment where it's saying, "We may still have our jokey roots, but we now need to act like an actual organization."

Kate Linebaugh: Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Kate Linebaugh. It's Monday, September 20th.Coming up on the show, the dog fight over Dogecoin.Dogecoin was founded as a joke in 2013, and this year it's had a resurgence.

Speaker 5: If you think the cryptocurrency craze is a joke, at least one digital currency creator would agree with you.

Speaker 6: Dogecoin, that is the crypto invented as a joke.

Speaker 7: One lucky investor's share a Doge now valued at over $11 billion.

Speaker 6: Dogecoin's price spiked. It actually doubled last night. Please show me the real value of a crypto invented as a joke. Anything? Get out of here.

Speaker 5: Wow. Such value as Doge might say,

Kate Linebaugh: This was quite a change for Dogecoin, which was designed to be worthless.

Caitlin Ostroff: It was literally meant to be ridiculous. It was created in a handful of hours by taking another old cryptocurrency project's and they went, "How can we make this as ridiculous as possible?"

Kate Linebaugh: That's our colleague, Caitlin Ostroff. She's been following Dogecoin this year.

Caitlin Ostroff: They took the doge from the viral meme of the dog with bad spelling habits. They used Comic Sans font, which is the worst font, to put on the logo. The logo of Dogecoin is a Shiba Inu on this gold coin going, "Very currency. Wow. Such doge." If you're sitting there thinking you're going to make a serious cryptocurrency investment, it's not something that inspires this sense of this is a great cryptocurrency.

Kate Linebaugh: While it may not have been a serious investment, people thought it was a great joke and a passionate online community formed around Dogecoin.

Caitlin Ostroff: They love the joke, honestly. People love dogs and people love dog memes and, if you put that together with a cryptocurrency, everyone's like, "Oh yeah, we love doge. We're going to valley around this." And that community was very, very strong.

Kate Linebaugh: Fans created Dogecoin memes, fan art, even songs.(singing)The Dogecoin community did more than just goof around the internet. They also banded together to raise Dogecoin for charity. The fans came up with a motto for the currency using the letters of doge, D-O-G-E, do only good every day.

Caitlin Ostroff: And so in addition to just all of these doge memes that were going viral with the currency, they were also doing all of these charitable fundraising projects where people were saying, "Hey, let's raise Dogecoin," again, this joke, insane cryptocurrency, "and let's use it to actually fund charity," and anything else that they could find.

Kate Linebaugh: So the community started looking for causes to support while promoting Dogecoin. And they found them. They sent athletes to the Sochi Winter Olympics.

Speaker 8: Jamaica was able to send its bobsled team to the Olympics with the help of crowdsourcing and a digital currency called, what is it, Matt?

Matt: Dogecoin.

Speaker 8: Dogecoin.

Matt: Or doggy coin?

Kate Linebaugh: They sponsored a car in NASCAR featuring the doge meme.

Speaker 10: A 16 year old from Chicago noticed Josh Wise having a good run in an underfunded car early this season and got all his fellow shives on Reddit.com's NASCAR forum to chip in these Dogecoins, which is an-

Kate Linebaugh: They even raised money to build water wells in Kenya.

Speaker 11: The online campaign to raise money for Tana River revolved around a growing form of online currency known as the Dogecoin. 100% of the money raised will help sponsor the drilling of two wells providing access to water.

Kate Linebaugh: These kinds of projects required money and the community needed a way to handle the money they raised. So the original creators established the Dogecoin Foundation, a nonprofit in Colorado. Jens Weichers has been a board member of the foundation since its early days.

Jens Weichers: People started wanting to donate Dogecoin to charitable causes and interesting causes, but doing these things and especially if you were to actually take in donations and then forward them to a charity obviously creates liability, risks, creates governance questions, and other issues, and so the idea very early on was maybe we should incorporate this and maybe we should create an organization.

Kate Linebaugh: Aside from organizing these charitable efforts, Jens says the Dogecoin Foundation took on another big job, defending the community's right to use the doge meme itself. The image of the Shiba Inu dog had been licensed by a merchandiser. Jens says the foundation wanted Dogecoin fans to be able to use the meme without facing legal consequences.

Jens Weichers: And we basically then approached them, talked to them, talked things through with them, and ultimately came to an agreement that they wouldn't in any way harm the community, wouldn't sue someone from the community or sue someone for producing merchandise from the community. And so we handled that and handled that through the foundation as well then after it was founded.

Kate Linebaugh: But while the foundation was doing some critical work for the Dogecoin world, there was one key thing that it didn't do. The foundation didn't trademark the Dogecoin name.

Jens Weichers: No, we ultimately didn't because there was some disagreement within the developers also is this really necessary? Isn't this overkill? Won't this be unnecessary in a year when all this dies down and everything becomes much quieter? And ultimately we thought, yeah, probably and left it at that.

Caitlin Ostroff: What a trademark does is it basically just gives you exclusive rights to your brand name and so if you see other people then go use that same brand name on a similar product or service, you can say I'm requiring you to change that because I think people could be confused as to your brand versus mine. So it gives you that kind of brand protection. They give you the right to tell other fake brands or confusing products that pop up, you can say, "Hey, we own the trademark to this. We have the exclusive right to use Dogecoin as a cryptocurrency and because of that you legally have to change your name. You have to change your website. You need to change what you're doing immediately because it's in violation of our rights."

Kate Linebaugh: As Jens and his friends predicted, the popularity of Dogecoin started dropping in 2016. And without as many people making memes or buying the currency, the Dogecoin Foundation found itself having less and less to do.

Jens Weichers: There wasn't really a need to have an organization that had five people on a board that would meet every couple of weeks that would actively do much work. It was just not viable also in terms of just having full-time jobs and then doing that on the side was just not something that was really viable for all of us. And so it essentially went dormant.

Kate Linebaugh: And then Dogecoin got a jolt after one man started tweeting about it, calling himself the Dogefather and sharing photos of his own Shiba Inu puppy.

Speaker 12: Dogecoin, the underdog crypto that has gained in popularity thanks to Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Doge has climbed more than 1100% so far this year.

Kate Linebaugh: With Dogecoin surging, the fight over its trademark really began. That's after the break.Late last year, Angel Versetti started eyeing Dogecoin. He's the owner of a company called Moon Rabbit, which promises to use crypto technology to help people live longer.

Angel Versetti: The big vision around it is to seek solutions that could help unlock the basically life-extension technologies, everything under the umbrella of longevity. Crypto and Web 3, they offer a perfect tool to collaborate in a decentralized and trustless manner.

Kate Linebaugh: When did you first become interested in Dogecoin?

Angel Versetti: I used to play with it a while ago, maybe seven or eight years. So this was just a fun thing to play with. So I mined on my rig together with some other coins I did back then basically this was just to enjoy. There was nothing serious in it. And most recently I paid attention to it last year with the COVID lockdown and this is when I started looking at Dogecoin as something with a potential.

Kate Linebaugh: As meme stocks, like GameStop and AMC, shot up in value earlier this year, Angel thought Dogecoin also had the potential to go to the moon.

Angel Versetti: The code had been abandoned for many years. Nobody worked on this project. The only thing that was really there is just a funny picture of a funny dog and Elon Musk occasionally tweeting that I'm the CEO of this coin, but he also did it with a big bit of irony, and this was a perfect recipe for those crazy guys. Okay, let's do with Dogecoin what we did with GameStop.

Kate Linebaugh: Angel and his company Moon Rabbit came up with a challenge, making Dogecoin a top five crypto coin by market cap. They sent videos to celebrities, including Elon Musk, urging them to promote the currency.

Angel Versetti: The mission was simple. We wanted to write a letter basically on behalf of the dog, no matter how silly that sounds, it did work. So the idea was that Doge as a sad dog would write a letter to Elon Musk.

Speaker 13: Dear Elon, I have always wanted to visit the moon but never had a chance to.

Angel Versetti: Saying that I also want to go to the moon and you launch spaceships, so please launch me to the moon as well.

Speaker 13: Please, please, let the prophecy come true and send me to the moon this lunar meme year. Yours much barkfully, Doge.

Angel Versetti: And this is what we did. So it was almost a joke, same as Dogecoin itself. Dogecoin was a joke and we made a joke mission for the joke coin. We never thought it would become real as it did.

Kate Linebaugh: Whether because of Moon Rabbit's videos or not, Elon Musk actually did promise to send a Dogecoin wallet to the moon, literally to the moon, on a SpaceX rocket, but Moon Rabbit didn't stop there. It started its own Dogecoin foundation, which Angel says aims to update the code, to make transactions faster, and make mining the coin less energy intensive. Moon Rabbit also took that step that Jens and his foundation never took. It applied for the Dogecoin trademark.Who are you to decide what's right for Dogecoin?

Angel Versetti: Oh, well, I'm not trying to decide. I'm just trying to take things into my hands. Ultimately I absolutely have no power to force people to choose it, so from that perspective, I surely don't think I know it best. Something is better than nothing. Basically we came to an abandoned project, there was nobody taking care of it or creating some sort of technical upgrades or anything else.

Kate Linebaugh: Right, so your argument is that the original Dogecoin Foundation was a bad steward for Dogecoin.

Angel Versetti: I can't say good or bad. It simply was not there. The foundation itself had been defunct. So there was no team, there was no legal structure. Nobody took care of the project.

Kate Linebaugh: After Moon Rabbit applied for the trademark, the original foundation reunited last month, bringing back many of the original members, including Jens. And now they're disputing Moon Rabbit's trademark claim.And what's your argument for why you should have the Dogecoin trademark when you had a chance to get it before, but didn't do it?

Jens Weichers: Honestly, because you don't have to register a trademark. It certainly helps you to do so, but when you've established a brand and have been using that someone else can't just register that and then come to you and say, "You can't use this any longer," if they very, very expressly obviously started using that and registered that in bad faith, because you had been using that and it became famous through your use of that.

Kate Linebaugh: Their argument is you guys went to sleep. Your foundation went dormant, you weren't taking care of the coin, and it was sort of fair game, kind of like squatter's rights, if you will.

Jens Weichers: That's not how trademark works. That's not how the open-source movement works. And it's just puzzling how someone can say we are Dogecoin when they never spoke with the development team of Dogecoin that was still working on Dogecoin, when they never engaged with the code, when they never engaged with the people behind it. So it's just a puzzling argument.

Kate Linebaugh: So from your reporting, Caitlin, does the original Dogecoin Foundation's argument hold water?

Caitlin Ostroff: Ultimately, it's going to be up to the actual trademark lawyers and the regulators to figure out like who actually has claim to the Dogecoin name. The original Dogecoin Foundation did reach out to another similarly named project and say, "We think you need to change your name because it's imposing on our brand." And it lent to the idea that they're already kind of acting like they have that trademark designation because they think that their historic use of Dogecoin should grant them it.

Kate Linebaugh: So they're starting to flex their muscles. They got the band back together and they're like-

Caitlin Ostroff: They're showing their teeth, yeah.

Kate Linebaugh: Oh, sorry. They got their pack back together and now they're showing their teeth.

Caitlin Ostroff: Yes. They got their pack back together and they're showing their teeth.

Kate Linebaugh: And, as cryptocurrency markets mature, turn into businesses, is there still room for a joke currency?

Caitlin Ostroff: That's kind of the question. If Dogecoin can't be a joke anymore, it's kind of like what can. It had kind of like this really fun backstory and people identified with it. And now you have the question of is it still a joke crypto? Can it be both a joke cryptocurrency and a mainstream cryptocurrency project?

Kate Linebaugh: Suddenly I feel sad. Suddenly it feels like the joke's over and we all have to grow up.

Caitlin Ostroff: I mean, that's how part of the community feels and honestly, it's partly how I feel covering it because I've really enjoyed the fact that you have this completely nonsensical cryptocurrency, because so much of what I write about is serious. I've kind of enjoyed Dogecoin for that and now it feels like it's kind of joining those ranks.

Kate Linebaugh: That's all for today, Monday, September 20th. The Journal is a co-production of Gimlet and the Wall Street Journal. If you like our show, follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We're out every weekday afternoon. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.

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The Dogfight Over Dogecoin - The Journal. - WSJ Podcasts - The Wall Street Journal

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Creating a safe and secure world, together - Naval News

Since the very first time Ipowered up a big computer server in 2004 working for HP (now HPE), I was blown away (literally) by the deafening wall of hot air that blew in my face. In that nave moment, I wondered why all the engineering effort and discussion around me was focused on how to get rid of this waste product.

Ironically, it turned out more energy was spent on mitigating waste heat and the associated overhead than consumed by the load itself. But what really bothered me was everyones infatuation with treating this energy like garbage that we must figure out how to get rid of. After all, this was an energy source!

Fast forward to 2014 when I established the power electronics consulting firm PowerRox and was able to focus my attentionmore on areas of interest. (Side note for those out there considering independent consulting: if you cannot enjoy the consulting work unpaid more than what you do otherwise, this may not be the path for you.) At this time I got to dive head first into the world of energy harvesting (EH) and learn that we can capture and reuse every manner of energy afforded to us by the physical world.

This research quickly gave way to giving talks to try and educate folks on the topic as well help bring the supporting technologies (and eventually, ensuing ecosystem) closer to the mainstream. In particular was a hot, new topic about the Internet of Things (IoT) and the millions or even billions (now I will even argue 1 T) doohickeys that sat at the sweet spot for EH because of their [typically] very low power consumption.

After a couple years and couple dozen talks (mostly in and around the Silicon Valley area), it became apparent there were two major misperceptions about this emerging technology space: First,EH was an academic lab experiment not fit for production (particularly high-volume) applications. Second,EH produced negligible power for doing real stuff.

While neither of these misperceptions were very astute (even at that time), they were, nonetheless, very common opinions of the key stakeholders needed to embrace and adopt EH technologies to enable successful deployments. For one, there existed a production ecosystem at that time for many key components (such as EH-optimized power management ICs or PMICs), including multiple, top-tier semiconductor companies, thathadalready been around for more than 10 years way back then! The technical readiness levels (TRL) and manufacturing readiness levels (MRL) for EH tech arenot the focus of this article, however. Now well focus on the second concern: negligible power.

One of the most pragmatic and eye-opening concepts (regardless of its simplicity) to internalize in the world of EH is that it is not an all-or-nothing kind of solution. In other words, one should not assume EH solutions have no value in their system if they cannot practically design an EH-based energy source that is equivalent to the energy source it is intended to supplant, whether that be a battery or some offline (i.e. plugged into the wall) source.

There are many applications in which supplemental power has a whole lot of value. Start with the quintessential example of all things in the battery-powered world, the smartphone in your pocket. You may not keep your phone perpetually topped off today by adding a PV solar panel to harvest light energy (indoor or outdoor) or a thermoelectric generator to take advantage of the temperature differential between your body and the ambient air, but what if you could extend battery life by 20 percent? Might this be the difference between making it to the end of the day without plugging in? Energy storage technology does not come close to following Moores Law. Battery capacity (energy density) only doubles roughly every decade. Even though Apple or Samsung may release the latest and greatest like annual clockwork, your battery is not advancing at that rate.

Perhaps you are thinking that is well and good for really low power systems, but EH may still be negligible (or better put, not financially-justified) for higher power systems. Here is a good opportunity to say that any large system can be broken down into smaller, lower-power pieces. EH may not power a server in the data center, but it could provide the supplemental, auxiliary power a big system may need to maintain a heartbeat in a sleep mode and monitor for wake signals.

Today, that tiny auxiliary power rail is adding a great deal of cost, space, and inefficiency to a much larger power supply optimized to deliver kilowatts of power. What about a drone or unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)? Might those extra few minutes of flight time be a difference-maker in your application?

The best approach here is to think long and hard about your application and what the true, system budgetary power requirements are. In general, system power budgets are already heavily overestimated due to many layers of margin that tend to be added to an already flawed, sum-of-maxima approach to simply adding absolute max power draw values from the datasheets of key system loads.

Energy storage is the true hero in this story that does not receive nearly enough attention. Your EH solution need only provide a fraction of peak system power requirements, even intermittently, with a well-designed storage solution for addressing the peaks while keeping the overall infrastructure sized to something closer to the (much lower) steady-state average.

A recentEUpublication from the EnABLES EU power IoT projectgives good insight into real-life examples as shown in the figure below.

EH sweet spot for IoT edge devices / battery life extension impact. (Source: courtesy of EnABLES)

In the Power Sources Manufacturers Association (PSMA) Energy Harvesting Committee (EHC), we recognized these gaps and took an iterative approach to collecting these compartmentalized constituents of an emerging technology area. We assembled them in a meaningful way that not only connects these critical stakeholders but provides the appropriate environments/mediums to allow the ecosystem to flourish and penetrate the mainstream.

The EHC is composed of many members of both IEEE Power Electronics Society (PELS) and PSMA organizations so it is ideally-suited to tackle these multidimensional challenges.

Another major, recent achievement of the PSMA EHC is the recent release of a white paper addressing Energy Harvesting for a Green Internet of Things as compiled by an expert team of many of the worlds leading experts in their respective fields. This effort was led by Thomas Becker of Thobecore and Michalis Kiziroglou of Imperial College London.

For more information or to download this white paper, please visit the PSMA EHCs websiteor reach out to the author of this article.

Brian Zahnstecher is a senior member of IEEE, Chair of IEEE SFBAC Power Electronics Society (PELS), Chair of IEEE PELS Technical Committee 7 (TC7)si and sits on the Power Sources Manufacturers Association (PSMA) Board of Directors. He is also co-founder & Co-chair of PSMA Reliability Committee, Co-chair of PSMA Energy Harvesting Committee, and is Principal of PowerRox. He Co-chairs IEEE Future Directions (formerly 5G) Initiative webinar series and is the founding Co-chair of IEEE 5G Roadmap Energy Efficiency Working Group and has lectured on this topic at major industry conferences. He previously held positions in power electronics with Emerson Network Power, Cisco, and Hewlett-Packard with nearly 20 years of industry experience. He holds Masters and Bachelors degrees from Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Editors Note: Sensors Converge features a pre-conference symposium, Energy Harvesting Enters the Mainstream to Power the IoT on Tuesday (Sept. 21) at 9 am PDT ). A one hour tutorial, The Path to 1T Sensors Before 2025: An Exploratory Workshop focused on Energy Consumption happens on Wednesday Sept. 22 at 2:45 pm PDT. The program is free online and in-person in San Jose with advance registration.

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Energy harvesting is not an all-or-nothing proposition - FierceElectronics

WASHINGTON The U.S. and U.K. will aid Australias ambitions for a nuclear-powered submarine fleet as part of a new trilateral security partnership that leaders of the three counties are set to announce Wednesday.

While the new defense technology-sharing pact is yet another step by Western allies to counter Chinas strength, it will also upend Australias largest-ever defense contract, a AUS$90 billion deal to build submarines designed by the French company Naval Group, the Australia-based ABC News was first to report.

Its the first time the U.S. has shared its nuclear propulsion technology with an ally since the U.S.-U.K. Mutual Defence Agreement of 1958, after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik. U.S. officials said the sensitive nuclear propulsion technology was unlikely to be shared again soon.

This is a fundamental decision that decisively binds Australia to the United States and Great Britain for generations, said a Biden administration official previewing the announcement to reporters. This is the biggest strategic step Australias taken in generations.

Though U.S. officials never mentioned China, the official cast the alliance called AUKUS as part of a large effort to sustain the fabric of deterrence across the Indo-Pacific. Australias new subs would be stealthier, speedier, more survivable and able to be deployed for longer.

This allows Australia to play at a much higher level, and to augment American capabilities that will be similar, the official said.

The new agreement will spur an 18-month program aimed at determining how to best meet Australias demand for nuclear-powered submarines, a UK defense official told Defense News.

The UK has built and operated world-class nuclear powered submarines for over 60 years, reads a Sept. 15 British government statement. We will therefore bring deep expertise and experience to the project through, for example, the work carried out by Rolls Royce near Derby and BAE Systems in Barrow.

Previously, Australia planned to replace six existing Collins-class boats with 12 conventional attack-class subs that were based on the French Barracuda-class nuclear attack boat.

The Australian Financial Review newspaper reported on Wednesday that the government is set to announce a life-extension program for the Collins-class fleet for the time being.

President Joe Biden is expected to announce the new partnership alongside U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Months in the making, it comes ahead of the first in-person meeting next week of the Quad which includes the U.S., Japan, India and Australia.

Beyond undersea technologies, AUKUS is intended to spur cooperation across new and emerging areas, like cyber security, artificial intelligence and quantum technologies all with an eye toward trilateral interoperability. U.S. officials said Australia does not intend to pursue nuclear weapons and that its committed to its nonproliferation regime.

I think youll see much more dedicated effort to pursue integration of security and defense related technologies and industrial bases and supply chains, the U.S. official said. This will be a sustained effort over many years to see how we can marry and merge some of our independent and individual capabilities.

For the U.K., AUKUS is yet another flex in the Pacific. Last month in the Philippine Sea, the HMS Queen Elizabeth traded F-35B Lightning II stealth fighters with a U.S. amphibious assault ship at sea, another first for the U.K. aircraft carrier on its first operational deployment. The British carrier hosted 18 F-35Bs 10 from a U.S. Marine Corps squadron.

Sebastian Sprenger in Washington contributed to this report.

Joe Gould is the Congress reporter for Defense News.

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New pact with the US and UK is set to sink Australia's historic submarine buy from France - DefenseNews.com

We made through the summer and now you're starting to feel the cooler temps and you're not sweating as much but that doesn't mean that we're going hibernating just yet.

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Step Up and Scale Down is an innovative eight-week program taking place every Friday from Oct. 1 through Nov. 19 from 9:00 to 11:00 a.m. through Texas A&M Agri-Life Extension designed to guide participants toward weight management and chronic disease management through the use of nutrition tips, prevention, exercise and delicious food demonstrations. For more information about our Health and Wellness series, visit https://bit.ly/GRCHealthandWellness.Participants are encouraged to pre-register; space is limited per class.

FALL FAMILY FUN TRAIL

The 20th Annual Fall Family Fun Trail will take place on Thursday, Oct. 28 from 4:00 to 7:00 p.m.This free event is designed for children ages two through 12 and will include: Games, Vendors, Photos with Shorty, Candy, Costume Contest, and Food Trucks.

Costumes are encouraged for everyone attending. Organizations and local businesses will be set up on the walking trails around Woldert pond with fun games and candy for the kids. Pre-registration is required to attend.

For more information about any of these events or about the Glass Recreation Center, visit TylerParksandRec.com, the Tyler Parks and Rec Facebook page, or call Glass Recreation Center at (903) 595-7271.

Thrilling Fair Rides

The Glass Bathrooms In Downtown Sulphur Springs

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Five Fun Fall Things At Tyler's Glass Recreation Center - knue.com

Suzhou, China - CStone Pharmaceuticals ('CStone', HKEX: 2616), a leading biopharmaceutical company focused on the research, development, and commercialization of innovative immuno-oncology therapies and precision medicines, announced that the investigational new drug (IND) application of multi-specific antibody CS2006/NM21-1480 has been approved by the National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) of China. CS2006/NM21-1480 represents a leading class of next-generation anti-PD-1/PD-L1 cancer immunotherapies and a new backbone molecule for combinations.

CS2006/NM21-1480 is a monovalent, tri-specific antibody-based molecule targeting PD-L1, 4-1BB, and human serum albumin (HSA).CS2006/NM21-1480 is designed to bind to the immune co-stimulation receptor 4-1BB and conditionally activate T cells only when engaging the checkpoint receptor ligand PD-L1 on the surface of tumor cells, potentially preventing the liver toxicities observed with previous anti-4-1BB agonistic antibodies. As a potential best-in-class drug, CS2006/NM21-1480 could be used as monotherapy or in combination with multiple treatments. The upcoming clinical study is designed to evaluate the safety, pharmacokinetics, and anti-tumor efficacy of CS2006/NM21-1480 in Chinese patients with various advanced solid tumors.

Compared to other PD-L1/4-1BB bispecific antibody candidates, CS2006/NM21-1480's unique monovalent structure and ultra-high-affinity PD-L1-binding is designed to fully exploit the synergistic potential of tumor-localized modulation of PD-L1 and 4-1BB, to provide broader and more sustained treatment response and at the meantime, to avoid systemic toxicities. Furthermore, half-life extension via the HSA-binding motif enables convenient dosing schedules for patients. CS2006/NM21-1480 is anticipated to be effective against tumors with a wide range of PD-L1 expression levels and may overcome primary and/or acquired resistance to anti-PD-1/PD-L1 therapies.

Dr. Archie Tse, Chief Scientific Officer of CStone, said, 'We are very glad that the IND application of CS2006/NM21-1480 in China has been approved by the NMPA, with the clinical trial starting soon, it marks a significant milestone in CStone's Pipeline 2.0 strategy which focused on assets with first-in-class or best-in-class potential. Since April 2020, the first-in-human study of CS2006/NM21-1480 has been well underway in the US. Moving forward, we will step up our efforts to drive the research and development of CS2006/NM21-1480, and other pipeline assets to provide potentially more effective treatments for Chinese and global patients.'

CS2006/NM21-1480 was discovered and engineered by Numab Therapeutics ('Numab'), CStone's partner, using its proprietary ?cap technology and MATCH platform. CStone and Numab signed an exclusive regional licensing agreement for the development and commercialization of the drug candidate. Pursuant to the terms of the licensing agreement, CStone will fund the research and development of CS2006/NM21-1480 up to completion of an initial Phase Ib clinical trial. In exchange, CStone obtains exclusive rights from Numab to develop and commercialize CS2006/NM21-1480 in Greater China (including Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan), South Korea and Singapore. Numab retains all CS2006/NM21-1480 rights for the rest of the world. Upon completion of CStone's funding period, no further financial obligations will be owed by either party.

About CStone

CStone Pharmaceuticals (HKEX: 2616) is a biopharmaceutical company focused on researching, developing, and commercializing innovative immuno-oncology and precision medicines to address the unmet medical needs of cancer patients in China and worldwide. Established in 2015, CStone has assembled a world-class management team with extensive experience in innovative drug development, clinical research, and commercialization. The company has built an oncology-focused pipeline of 15 drug candidates with a strategic emphasis on immuno-oncology combination therapies. Currently, CStone has received three drug approvals in Greater China, including two in Mainland China and one in Taiwan. CStone's vision is to become globally recognized as a world-renowned biopharmaceutical company by bringing innovative oncology therapies to cancer patients worldwide.

For more information about CStone, please visit: http://www.cstonepharma.com.

Forward-looking statement

The forward-looking statements made in this article only relate to events or information as of the date when the statements are made in this article. Except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to update or publicly revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, after the date on which the statements are made or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. You should read this article completely and with the understanding that our actual future results or performance may be materially different from what we expect. All statements in this article are made on the date of publication of this article and may change due to future developments.

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CStone Pharmaceuticals : received China NMPA IND approval for CS2006/NM21-1480, a PD-L1/4-1BB/HSA multi-specific antibody-based molecule, marking...

Last week, ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr foreshadowed an announcementthat would outline a plan for the coming weeks.

Canberrans, more than a month into a lockdown due to the circulating Delta variant, anticipated some news of a light at the end of the tunnel.

With new daily casesstill being reported and, among them, people who were infectious in the community, there wasperhaps a hidden resignation that the territory's lockdown would not be lifted on Friday as flagged.

But there was hope that the sacrifices and efforts of Canberrans would be rewarded in some way.

Instead, yesterday's announcement turned the territory's original seven-day "short, sharp" responseinto a nine-week lockdown.

ABC News: Ian Cutmore

After confirming the territory had recorded 22 new cases of COVID-19, Mr Barr went on to announce that Canberra's lockdown would be extended by four weeks until October 15.

There was some minor easing of restrictions outdoor social and recreational sport with up to fivepeople can recommence from Saturday, while small businesses thatare currently permitted to operate a click-and-collect or delivery service will be able to have up to fivepeople in the business at any one time.

In-person house inspections will also start back up, limited to just household members and one real estate agent.

But it was bad news for parents who had hoped for a return to face-to-face learning for the start of term four. Instead, came the news that for most students remote learning would continue for at least the first four weeks of next term.

It's a deep blow for families who suffered through a disrupted 2020 and are now looking down the barrel of home learning for much of the remainder of this year. And a deeper blow for those students who struggle to cope without the social interaction with their peers.

It was also a blow for Canberrans more broadly,who had hoped their compliance would mean they could come out of lockdown where New South Wales and Victoria had not.

What Mr Barr had earmarked as a "plan" for the territory's lockdown waslimited in its scope, dubbed a "roadmap to nowhere" by the Canberra Liberals.

Unlike the leaders of NSW and Victoria, the Chief Ministerdid not give an indication of what might change when the ACT reachedthe milestone of70 per cent fully vaccinated.

But Mr Barr has always been reluctant to hang much on that 70 per cent figure he has reminded ACT residents time and time again thatthe Delta variant would still be destructive at that point.

Instead, he has said the number to aim for was "80 per cent and beyond".

With just over 50 per cent of Canberra's population vaccinated, there isstilla way to go.

Mr Barr has also repeatedly warned that Canberrans should expect to endure a "tough spring",but also that he expectedthe territory to enjoy an economic reprieve in the summer when freedoms would be much greater.

With the lockdown now extended until mid-October, the gap in knowledge for the ACT is November, and what that month will look like.

ABC News: Ian Cutmore

The ACT's plateauing case numbers had offered up hope that maybe, just maybe, the ACT would be able to achieve the elusive goal of zero active COVID-19 cases in the territory.

But the government's announcement on Tuesdayimplied that hope was fading.

"We'd all like zero,but I think increasingly, with the examples in New South Wales and Victoria, that aiming for zeroinfectious in the community is a really good first start," Chief Health Officer Kerryn Coleman said.

"I would provide caution that this may be the start of what we may be working towards, that we will be seeing a steady level of cases continuing to move forward."

Mr Barr confirmed that the latestcase numbers withat least 13 people spendingsome time in the community while infectious "hadnot been a good day on that performance objective".

Fronting up to daily press conferences for over a month, Mr Barr has been true to his word.

He told ACT residents it would be tough, and it will be.

Yesterday, in lieu of painting Canberrans a picture of what life after lockdown would look like, Mr Barr confirmed that the only light at the end of the tunnelcontinuedto be through increasing the vaccination rate.

"This next month is a period of uncertainty and the next few weeks will be challenging," Mr Barr said.

"What we are certain of though is that a highly vaccinated Canberra is a safer Canberra. This is the safest path forward that will lead to a safer Christmas, a safer summer holiday period, and a safer 2022.

Unlike last year, when Canberrans were delivereda detailed set of steps out of lockdown, this time they only have the prospect of a summer in which they can hopefully gather withloved ones.

It is this lack of clarity that will make the spring miserable for some, for Canberrans have shown they are happy to forgo a great deal if they know what the future holds.

The reaction on social media to yesterday's announcement was one charged with emotion manyare angry for that very reason.

So far, the ACT government has relied on the celebrated goodwill of its people.

The question is, will it stand the test of another lockdown extension?

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The ACT's four-week lockdown extension could test the goodwill of Canberrans - ABC News

A new electric solar car project with a living extension and expandable solar panels is giving us a glimpse into what the future might hold for RV/van life.

Solar Team Eindhoven, a group of engineering students from theTechnical University of Eindhoven(Netherlands), is probably the most famous team that has competed in theWorld Solar Challenge, a competition to create super-efficient solar cars.

The people behind Lightyear came up from that team, and now they are trying to use the knowledge acquired through the creation of the original Stella and Stella Lux solar carsto bring to market a road-legal solar car.

Now the latest Solar Team Eindhoven has unveiled a new project called Stella Vita:

Stella Vita is a Self-sustaining House On Wheels. This means that the mobile house is self-sufficient in terms of energy. Through solar panels on the roof, it is independent of charging stations. The vehicle generates enough solar energy to drive, shower, watch TV, charge your laptop, and make coffee.

Like the previous Stella vehicles, theres a focus on efficiency and solar integration, but the new version is also a deployable mobile home.

When stationary, the roof can be raised to create an extension and deployable solar panels come out the sides.

The bigger surface enables for more solar power to charge the vehicle and power some appliances:

The solar house on wheels has a roof that slides up when stationary. This makes it easy to stand inside to cook, sleep or work. In addition, extra solar panels fold out when the roof is raised, doubling the solar surface to as much as 17.5 square metres. For daily use, a comfortable interior has been designed that is as light and efficient as possible. By using energy efficiently, Stella Vita can travel up to 730 km on a sunny day.

The team plans to take the prototype Stella Vita on a monthlong road trip from Eindhoven to the southernmost tip of Spain while only using energy from the sun.

Now obviously, like the previous student solar cars, the vehicle is not equipped with all the necessary safety features to be road legal.

But its still an interesting testbed for some technology that I could see become common in electric vehicles used for traveling and living, like electric RVs and vans the main one being the expandable solar system.

We know that solar on moving vehicles is not ideal, but a deployable system for when stationary is something that could be very valuable.

This solution looks pretty cool. What do you think? Let us know in the comment section below.

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Electric car with extension and expandable solar offers a glimpse of future RV life - Electrek.co

The Canadian oil and gas industry recovery gained steam in Newfoundland Wednesday with a commitment to restart a mothballed Grand Banks production platform and the revival of an expansion for a second North Atlantic site.

Cenovus Energy Inc., Murphy Oil Corp. and Suncor Energy Inc. are planning an ownership overhaul to begin a 10-year asset life extension project for the dormant Terra Nova field. The field is around 250 kilometers (155 miles) offshore St. Johns.

The agreement also makes an ownership change in the neighboring White Rose field. The shuffle spreads partner risk to improve the outlook for rescuing a C$3.2 billion ($2.6 billion) addition called West White Rose that the Covid-19 pandemic interrupted.

The Terra Nova rebirth provides a superior value proposition for our shareholders compared with the alternative of abandoning and decommissioning, said Cenovus President Alex Pourbaix. While we are still evaluating whether to proceed with West White Rose, the capital risk in our portfolio will be reduced if we decide to move forward.

Suncor President Mark Little acknowledged deep collaboration and support from the provincial and federal governments, which has been crucial to helping us reach this important milestone.

The help, justified by the governments as job support for a province notoriously lacking in well paid employment, includes a grant of up to C$205 million ($164 million), plus a forecast C$300 million ($240 million) in future royalty reductions.

At Terra Nova, Suncor ownership increased by 10% to 48%. The share held by Cenovus, acquired with its takeover of Husky Energy Inc., jumped to 34% from 13%. Murphy raised its stake to 18% from 10%.

At White Rose, Cenovus cut its ownership of the original field to 60% from 72.5% and to 56.38% from 68.87% iin the planned new wells. Suncor picked up the shares dropped by Cenovus.

Asset prices paid for ownership rights that changed hands in the Canadian offshore oil overhaul were not disclosed. The deal eliminated the original minority partners in 19-year-old Terra Nova, which were Chevron Corp., Equinor ASA, ExxonMobil and Mosbacher Operating Ltd.

The restructured Terra Nova consortium predicted production would resume in 2023 at an initial rate of 29,000 b/dy, after maintenance in Newfoundland and a refit in Spain for the fields floating production, storage and offloading vessel.

Operational problems shut down 19-year-old Terra Nova in December 2019. The oil price slump inflicted soon afterwards by the coronavirus stalled repairs. At its height a decade ago, the field flowed 100,000-110,000 b/d.

Depleting wells tapped by the 16-year-old White Rose platform were down to about 14,500 b/d this summer, 88% below the fields youthful peak of 120,000 b/d.

The only other Canadian offshore oilfields, which are Hibernia and Hebron that are also on the Grand Banks, produced a combined total of about 270,400 b/d this summer, according to the Canada-Newfoundland Offshore Petroleum Board.

See the article here:

Cenovus, Murphy and Suncor Look to Revive Production Offshore Newfoundland - Natural Gas Intelligence

IMMORTALITY could be soon a scientific possibility - but it could only be avaliable for the world's super-rich.

Billionaires, tyrants and celebs are ploughing their immense wealth into incredible anti-aging technology and bizarre treatments that could one day allow humans to live forever.

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Kim Jong-un, Vladimir Putin, Steven Seagal, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and other tech execs and entrepreneurs are linked to projects that aim to delay the causes of aging and even reverse the human biological clock.

Some experts have speculated that humans could achieve immortality by 2050.

Life-extending treatments can range from replacing blood or taking regenerative medicines.

But more other more outlandish ideas include being able to replace entire body parts with artificial mechanisms or potentially even downloading your mind into an immortal robot body.

Incredible advances in medicine and science have meant that our life expectancy has doubled in the last 200 years - with the UK's going from around 40 in the 1800s to now being about 80.

So with humans constantly living longer and living better later in life, who knows how old we could one day become?

Exclusive

Probably the strangest, but potentially groundbreaking method has involved rich people injecting blood from teenagers to stop the aging process.

More than 100 people have taken part in a clinical trial at a San Francisco startup offering blood transfusions for older patients.

The procedure costs 6,200 and sees the patient whose average age is about 60 injected with two and a half litres of plasma taken from (presumably clean-living) young people.

This is the liquid element of blood that remains after other cells have been removed.

Jesse Karmazin, a Stanford-trained scientist who founded the US clinic, told The Sunday Times initial results had been encouraging.

Mr Karmazin said: "It could help improve things such as appearance or diabetes or heart function or memory. These are all the aspects of ageing that have a common cause.

"Im not really in the camp of saying this will provide immortality but I think it comes pretty close, essentially."

"No one wants to live forever at 95 years old, but if you could rejuvenate the body to 29 or 30, you might want to do that," Dr Pearson said.

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Meanwhile, North Korea is reported to have had an interest in trying to ensure their glorious leaders - Kim Jong-un, Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung - live forever.

Kim Il-sung is claimed have set up a "Longevity Center" that he ordered to help him live to 100.

Treatments included blood transfusions from young people who were fed with nutritious food before hand to ensure the "Eternal President" stayed eternal, reported CNN.

Esteemed futurologist Dr Ian Pearson told The Sun he believed humans are very close to achieving everlasting life as long as you can make it to the year 2050.

He reveals that one way to extend life would be to use biotechnologies and medicine to keep renewing the body, and rejuvenating it.

No one wants to live forever at 95 years old, but if you could rejuvenate the body to 29 or 30, you might want to do that, Dr Pearson said.

One way, he said, was genetic engineering that prevents (or reverses) the aging of cells.

Another method, you could replace vital body organs with new parts.

Many scientists around the world are working on creating human organs in labs or by using 3D printers loaded with living cells, which could one day make human organ donors redundant.

But Dr Pearson thinks it's much more likely that we'll extend our lives in a different way: robots.

He said: "A long time before we get to fix our bodies and rejuvenate it every time we feel like, we'll be able to link our minds to the machine world so well, we'll effectively be living in the cloud.

If your biological self dies, you can upload into a new unit... Literally

Billionaire Elon Musks company Neuralink is already working towards a brain-machine interface that would fundamentally integrate us with our technology.

The Tesla boss believes such technology could eventually allow humans to develop a copy of themselves which will live even after their body dies.

He told CNBC: "If your biological self dies, you can upload into a new unit. Literally."

Meanwhile, fellow tech billionaire Jeff Bezos is backing research into ways to stop aging is being backed by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, according to a new report.

TAltos Labs is a Silicon Valley firm that's been offering scientists big salaries to do some anti-aging research and biological reprogramming.

According to a report by MIT Technology Review, Bezos is one of the company's big investors.

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Russian-Israeli billionaire Yuri Milner is also said to be financially backing the anti-aging company.

Nobel Prize-winning scientist Shinya Yamanaka will be joining the firm's advisory board.

Yamanaka won a Nobel Prize for research into reversing the age of cells.

The groundbreaking scientist told MIT Technology Review: "Although there are many hurdles to overcome, there is huge potential."

Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin has been linked to a Russian factory that is working on anti-aging pills.

The 68-year-old leader, who is famed for his poker face resulting from his excessive use of Botox, has revisited the Biocad plant in St Petersburg.

Here he reviewed the development of youth pills that would increase life to 130 years in just 20 or 30 years.

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Last year the Russian strongman won a vote that could pave the way for him to rule until the end of life.

This came after Putins pal, actor Steven Seagal, pleaded with him to back support of the "Russia 2045" which aims to make Russia the centre of immortality and artificial body research.

In an open letter to the leader, Seagal said: "I am appealing to you, hoping that we may have the opportunity for a mutually beneficial enterprise making the world a better place

"It seems as though now you are placing more emphasis on life expectancy and life extension issues.

"I can see that you are actively working hard on coming up with solutions that lead Russia into the future confidently."

The movement is the project of multi-millionaire media mogul Dmitry Itskov focusing on combining brain emulation and robotics to create forms of cyborgs.

This is a robotic copy of a human body with a brain-computer interface that will carry your head once your first body dies.

Another alternative that is being proposed is a "completely non-biological" body and brain onto which your consciousness can be uploaded.

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Inside super-richs quest to LIVE FOREVER with injected blood from teenagers, lab grown organs, & robot b... - The US Sun