Pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and partner BioNTech will seek emergency government approval for their coronavirus vaccine on Friday, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said, paving the way for millions of doses to be distributed within 24 hours.
“We will ship millions of doses of vaccine within 24 hours of FDA approval. So my message is hope and help are on the way,” Azar said Thursday as he announced the pending emergency use application during a White House coronavirus task force briefing.
Pfizer’s German partner BioNTech had said this week that it would seek the emergency approval for the vaccine, which showed 94.5 percent efficacy in clinical trials.
Ira Pastor, ideaXme life sciences ambassador interviews Dr. Jiangying Zhou, DARPA program manager in the Defense Sciences Office, USA.
Ira Pastor comments:
On this episode of ideaXme, we meet once more with the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), but unlike the past few shows where we been spent time with thought leaders from the Biologic Technology Office (BTO), today we’re going to be focused on the Defense Sciences Office (DSO) which identifies and pursues high-risk, high-payoff research initiatives across a broad spectrum of science and engineering disciplines and transforms them into important, new game-changing technologies for U.S. national security. Current DSO themes include frontiers in math, computation and design, limits of sensing and sensors, complex social systems, and anticipating surprise.
Dr. Jiangying Zhou became a DARPA program manager in the Defense Sciences Office in November 2018, having served as a program manager in the Strategic Technology Office (STO) since January 2018. Her areas of research include machine learning, artificial intelligence, data analytics, and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) exploitation technologies.
Mennonite pastors in Belize and in other nations are also pushing back against worldwide lock-down regulations in an effort to be allowed to continue to worship…
The Mennonite pastor said, “The calling of God is higher than the calling of this government.” He said his church will meet again next Sunday, with permission or not.
The quiet shift in strategy, which brings the Vision Fund’s approach closer to that of a traditional venture capital investor, may ease concerns over big, bold bets going sour, a factor that has left a major gap between SoftBank’s market capitalization and the sum of its investments.
TOKYO — SoftBank Group’s Vision Fund is turning to a new strategy as a global pandemic and government stimulus distort tech valuations: Invest smaller in hopes for bigger returns.
After raising nearly $100 billion and investing $85 billion in high-profile companies like Uber Technologies, WeWork and ByteDance over three years, the Vision Fund is now focusing on making smaller bets in early-stage startups.
Among the investments it has led are $100 million in Zhangmen, a Chinese online education startup; $150 million in Unacademy, an Indian peer; and $100 million in Biofourmis, a U.S. startup that tracks health data using wearable devices. In total, it has approved 19 investments worth $3.5 billion for “Vision Fund 2” — a vehicle currently funded entirely by SoftBank.
Solar power stations in space that beam ‘emission-free electricity’ down to Earth could soon be a reality thanks to a UK government funded project.
Above the Earth there are no clouds and no day or night that could obstruct the sun’s ray – making a space solar station a constant zero carbon power source.
The UK government commissioned new research into the concept of space-based solar power (SBSP) stations as a way to meet the Earth’s growing energy needs.
“I mean, I suspect we could have an army of 120,000, of which 30,000 might be robots, who knows?” Carter said, although he stressed he was not setting any particular target in terms of future numbers.
Investment in robot warfare was to be at the heart of the planned integrated five-year defence review, whose future was thrown into doubt after the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, postponed the cross-government spending review to which it had been linked last month.
Carter said negotiations with Downing Street and the Treasury about salvaging the multi-year defence funding settlement were “going on in a very constructive way” – as he lobbied in public for a long-term financial deal.
The November 3rd, 2020 Science and Enterprise post, “Venture Rounds, IPOs, Mergers Vanish in Election Week” at https://sciencebusiness.technewslit.com/?p=40235#:~:text=3%20Nov.,2020.&text=According%20to%20technology%20investment%20research,so%20far%20this%20entire%20week.
India has decided to fly the three Rafale fighter jets from France directly to India, which are scheduled to arrive on November 4, according to Indian government sources. The Indian Air Force will now have eight of the 36 Rafale jets in operation.
This revolution has already started, with wealthy citizens building their own space programs and entrepreneurs building spacecraft on relatively tiny budgets.
This time it must be about people, not governments. Rather than a centrally controlled quasi-military government race to space by two superpowers, we must enable the people themselves to go where they want to go, to do there what they want. If governments decide to return to the Moon — as seems to be the case — it must be to build villages, not bases, and to do it as rapidly as possible, as it needs to be an immediate challenge, not a distant dream. And if some want to go to Mars or mine asteroids, they need to be seen as part of a new frontier community. Thus, with both public and private players doing what they do best where they want to do it, we can make it happen far faster than many might believe.
After all, wherever we go between here and Mars, the challenge this time is not as daunting as going from the Earth to the Moon was in 1961, when we went from knowing almost nothing about space to walking on the Moon in eight years. Since then we have 50 years of experience operating in space. And while we foundered for many years in the waters just off shore in Earth orbit, we’ve learned a lot, developed a vast tool kit and honed our ability to get there, keep people alive and get them back. Opening the new worlds of space is not a technological challenge, so much as it is psychological. It is a matter of decision.
The Frontier offers us new ways of living, new ways to save our world and new ways to work together. It is an anathema to the ideologies of ignorance and hate espoused by those who attack us, as it literally rises above such wars. Even as we roll up our sleeves to defeat those who would push us back into the dark ages we can be creating the age of light. We can look at our children and tell them they need not be afraid. Instead we can share with them a new dream of people working together to achieve something incredible.
