All posts tagged: emerging

17-year-old Eric Zhu’s startup was built in a high school bathroom — now it’s raised .3M and is emerging from stealth

17-year-old Eric Zhu’s startup was built in a high school bathroom — now it’s raised $2.3M and is emerging from stealth

Published by skeptic

Eric Zhu started building Aviato, an analytical platform for private market data, in a very typical place for an entrepreneur: the bathroom in his Carmel, Indiana, high school. Now the 17-year-old’s startup is emerging from stealth with $2.3 million in venture funding. Aviato tracks funding rounds and headcount, similar to competitors like Crunchbase and PitchBook, as well as data points like company credit card revenue data, employee vesting schedules, and where top engineers are currently working, in addition to other metrics. If that sounds a little like what SignalFire built for its internal database, that’s intentional. Zhu said Aviato’s goal is to build a platform that resembles what SignalFire has built internally; in fact, he said that his startup has worked closely with the firm’s founder, Walter Kortschak, to build out its product. Zhu told TechCrunch that he credits his early interest in venture capital and startups from being in the right place at the right time during the boring days of the pandemic, learning about the space from Discord group chats he joined in 2020, …

Apple: pay attention to emerging markets, not falling China sales

Apple: pay attention to emerging markets, not falling China sales

Published by skeptic

Apple’s chief financial officer Luca Maestri challenged investor worries over an 8% drop in China revenue, by noting that sales in other emerging markets are growing. “When we start looking at places like India, like Saudi, like Mexico, Turkey, Brazil…and Indonesia, the numbers are getting large, and we’re very happy because these are markets where our market share is [currenttly] low,” Maestri said Thursday during Apple’s second-quarter earnings call. Revenue declined to $16.37 billion in China during the second quarter “The populations are large and growing, and our products are really making a lot of progress within those markets,” continued Maestri. “The level of excitement for the brand is very high.” One thing Maestri said there is verifiable: the populations in emerging markets are, in fact, large and growing. But Apple’s growth in those regions isn’t as rosy a picture as the executive attempted to paint, according to available data. Net sales in the Americas — which would include places like Brazil and Mexico — were down slightly year-over-year from $37.8 billion to $37.3 billion, …

What are the concerns surrounding the newly emerging bovine H5N1 influenza virus?

What are the concerns surrounding the newly emerging bovine H5N1 influenza virus?

Published by skeptic

The confirmed presence of bird flu in American dairy cattle in a March 25 report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) — and a case in Texas where a human working with cattle was infected — has put Canadian public health experts on high alert. But, what is bird flu and what do we know about influenza in both poultry and cattle? Bird flu, also called avian flu, refers to infection caused by the avian influenza Type A viruses. In the wild, influenza viruses generally spread among migratory waterfowls, such as ducks and geese. Within avian species, domestic poultry are highly susceptible to infection with Type A avian influenza viruses, including H5N1. Canada itself is amid an H5N1 avian influenza virus outbreak, with over 11 million domestic poultry estimated to be affected and culled to date. In fact, a major concern for the Canadian poultry supply chain is the incurred financial loss from culling birds. This virus is highly contagious among domestic poultry and can spread through an entire flock within a matter of …

#1ReasonToBe: Women speak to making games in emerging regions | The DeanBeat

#1ReasonToBe: Women speak to making games in emerging regions | The DeanBeat

Published by skeptic

Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the gaming industry’s top leaders? Learn more about GamesBeat Summit sponsorship opportunities here.  The #1ReasonToBe panel has had a strong legacy at the Game Developers Conference. It has been dormant for a while, but the session returned at this year’s GDC. This year, it featured six women from different parts of the gaming world. They talked about why they’re game developers and how that came to pass at the recent online-only GDC. The panelists included Laia Bee (CEO of Pincer Games and president of the Uruguayan Game Developers Association); Indrani Ganguly (studio head and game designer at Duronto Games); Isabel Vásquez  (video game producer/ CEO at Pink Bear Games); Alexandra Marzuqa Giacaman (software developer / musician and sound designer at AyHungry and Micromoon Bugs); Aevee Bee  (narrative designer at Future Club); and Bahiyya Khan (game designer, writer and filmmaker, independent). I’ve always enjoyed this panel about empowered women from emerging markets telling their stories about their passion for games. This is a panel that is rich in the history of GDC …

Emerging COVID-19 variants identified with AI

Emerging COVID-19 variants identified with AI

Published by skeptic

Scientists at the Universities of Manchester and Oxford have developed an AI framework that can track new COVID-19 variants. The AI framework combines dimension reduction techniques and a new explainable clustering algorithm, called CLASSIX, developed by The University of Manchester. The framework detects new COVID-19 variants, enabling the quick identification of viral genomes that might present a risk in the future. The study has the potential to support traditional methods of tracking viral evolution, such as phylogenetic analysis. Currently, this requires extensive manual curation. Enabling a proactive response Roberto Cahuantzi, a researcher at The University of Manchester and the first and corresponding author of the paper, said: “Since the emergence of COVID-19, we have seen multiple waves of new variants, heightened transmissibility, evasion of immune responses, and increased severity of illness. “Scientists are now intensifying efforts to pinpoint these worrying new variants, such as alpha, delta and omicron, at the earliest stages of their emergence. “If we can find a way to do this quickly and efficiently, it will enable us to be more proactive …

The Decimal Point Is 150 Years Older Than We Thought, Emerging in Renaissance Italy

The Decimal Point Is 150 Years Older Than We Thought, Emerging in Renaissance Italy

Published by José

His­to­ri­ans have long thought that the dec­i­mal point first came into use in 1593, when the Ger­man math­e­mati­cian Christo­pher Clav­ius wrote an astron­o­my text called Astro­labi­um. It turns out, how­ev­er, that the his­to­ry of the dec­i­mal point stretch­es back anoth­er 150 years–to the work of the Venet­ian mer­chant Gio­van­ni Bian­chi­ni. In his text Tab­u­lae pri­mi mobilis, writ­ten dur­ing the 1440s, Bian­chi­ni used the dec­i­mal point to cal­cu­late the coor­di­nates of plan­ets. In so doing, he invent­ed a sys­tem of dec­i­mal frac­tions, which, in turn, made the cal­cu­la­tions under­pin­ning mod­ern sci­ence more effi­cient and less com­plex, notes Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can. Glen Van Brum­me­len, a his­to­ri­an of math­e­mat­ics, recent­ly recount­ed to NPR how he dis­cov­ered Bian­chini’s inno­va­tion: I was work­ing on the man­u­script of this astronomer, Gio­van­ni Bian­chi­ni. I saw the dots inside of a table — in a numer­i­cal table. And when he explained his cal­cu­la­tions, it became clear that what he was doing was exact­ly the same thing as we do with the dec­i­mal point. And I’m afraid I got rather excit­ed at that point. I …

China Emerging as One of the Key Foreign Investors in Indonesia’s New Capital City

China Emerging as One of the Key Foreign Investors in Indonesia’s New Capital City

Published by skeptic

JAKARTA —  Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta, is overcrowded, polluted, prone to earthquakes and often described as the world’s fastest sinking city, due to groundwater extraction and climate change. All that, plus the government’s interest in distributing opportunity and wealth more equitably among the nation’s 1,700 islands, contributed to President Joko Widodo’s announcement in August 2019 of plans to move the capital from the island of Java to the island of Borneo and create a smart, “sustainable forest city” — Nusantara. In this NASA Earth Observatory satellite image taken in April 2022, a view of the construction site of the future Indonesian capital city Nusantara on the island of Borneo. Since then, Indonesian authorities have envisioned foreign investors bankrolling Nusantara, a $32 billion project. Now, months before the first phase is scheduled to be unveiled on August 17, Chinese entities are emerging as one of the biggest blocks of investors in what is widely seen as Widodo’s legacy project, where work began in August 2022. Singapore has shown the most interest, followed by Japan. Malaysia and China …

The uncharted world of emerging pathogens

The uncharted world of emerging pathogens

Published by skeptic

This article was originally featured on Undark. It all started when Christopher Mason’s 3-year-old daughter licked a subway pole. Like any parent, he was horrified, but also keenly curious: What types of microbes might be clinging to a metal pipe gripped by countless commuters every day? Mason, a geneticist at Weill Cornell Medicine, soon became obsessed with that question. His toddler’s gross interlude inspired him to embark on a journey to unveil the world of bacteria, fungi, and viruses co-mingling with more than 8 million people in New York City’s urban jungle. In 2013, he launched a project that began dispatching a small army of students shouldering backpacks crammed with latex gloves, vials, and sterile Q-tips. They sampled turnstiles, benches, and kiosks at every open metro stop in the city. It was an expedition into a largely unexplored terrain, like Mars or a deep-sea canyon, brimming with lifeforms both familiar and unknown. The swabbers were sampling what’s called environmental DNA, or eDNA, representing the assortment of cells that all humans, animals, and microorganisms naturally shed as they go …

White House says ‘no evidence’ Russia planning to use emerging satellite weapon

White House says ‘no evidence’ Russia planning to use emerging satellite weapon

Published by skeptic

President Biden said Friday that there is “no evidence” that Russia has decided to use its emerging satellite weapon, just days after worries about a “serious national security threat” circulated in Washington. The White House confirmed that U.S. intelligence officials have information that indicates Russia has gained a satellite weapon capability but it is not yet operational. In remarks to reporters Friday about the deal of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s death, Biden said “there is no evidence that they have made a decision to go forward with doing anything in space either.” “So, what we found out: There was a capacity to launch a system into space that could theoretically do something that was damaging. Hadn’t happened yet,” Biden said, adding that he hopes it won’t happen. The news of Russia’s capability broke earlier this week after House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner (R-Ohio) released a cryptic call for Biden to declassify information about the security threat and allow for public discussion about U.S. response. Turner’s message caused fear, but leaders like ranking member …

13 emerging faith leaders who made their mark in 2023

13 emerging faith leaders who made their mark in 2023

Published by Sam

(RNS) — The events of 2023 catapulted a variety of people of faith into the public eye. Religion News Service selected 13 who made their mark this year, speaking out on a range of contentious issues and challenging the nation to live up to its values. Some railed against embedding Christian teachings in Texas public schools or took on a hunger strike in support of legislation that would add caste as a protected class. Others came on the scene in response to the Oct. 7 Hamas incursion in Israel and still more to Israel’s retaliation in the Gaza Strip. Some broke glass ceilings — one became the first Muslim woman to sit on the federal bench, another the first drag queen to top a Christian music chart. Here are 13 emerging leaders, beginning with a pair who came to be known by their first name. (Inclusion on this list does not equal endorsement or agreement from RNS.) The Justins Former Rep. Justin Jones, D-Nashville, from left, Rep. Gloria Johnson, D-Knoxville, and former Rep. Justin Pearson, …