More funding for sustainable farm-based proteins, as George Eustice visits innovative farm

Speaking at the Devon County Show, Environment Secretary, George Eustice, will announce further funding for research projects that will help boost farmers’ businesses and help improve the environmental impact of farming.

The recent Food Strategy committed to spend £270 million on research and development in the Farming Innovation Programme up to 2029. This Programme is designed to bring together farmers, growers, businesses and researchers for collaborative, industry-led research and development that will drive up the productivity, profitability and resilience of England’s farming sectors, whilst helping to improve the environment.

The Environment Secretary will confirm that in July, £12.5m from the Farming Innovation Programme will be set aside for research and development focused on ‘sustainable farm-based proteins’, in partnership with UKRI this funding will be made available for farmers, growers, businesses and academics to collaborate on projects that seek to improve the efficiency and sustainability of farm-based protein production, including protein crops like beans and peas and traditional livestock production, in order to help boost domestic production of healthy and sustainable food.

This might be achieved through the development of new methane reducing feeds and supplements, or the breeding of new sustainable and resilient crops and livestock.

The Environment Secretary will also showcase an example of innovative technology that is helping farmers capture the methane from slurry stores and turn it into biomethane, creating an additional income stream for farmers. Bennamann in Truro, Cornwall has pioneered this innovative approach building on world-leading science to help livestock farms of any size to cover their manure slurry lagoons, capture the fugitive emissions they produce, establish energy independence and improve business profitability through lower bills and sales of high value biomethane.

Environment Secretary, George Eustice, said:

Improving farm profitability and tackling environmental challenges requires us to allow the natural cycle of life to operate fully. Rather than seeing farm wastes like slurry as a problem and a cost, we need to start recognising that they are actually a resource that could be monetised to boost farm incomes.

Cornwall has a long history of pioneering new technology and it is at the forefront of new approaches that could revolutionise the way we manage farm yard manure to create a new income stream for farmers and generate a green fuel that significantly reduces greenhouse gas emissions.

Bennamann is working with the Local Authority and six of its farms to turn waste methane into biomethane. The biogas results from the anaerobic digestion of manure stored in the slurry lagoon on each farm, which can then be processed into a sustainable, commercially viable product as compressed gas or liquid fuel. That fuel will be able to power lorries and tractors, heat households and businesses, provide hot water and even charge electric vehicles. The Council plans to run its road maintenance vehicle fleet on this greener source of fuel. There is even a New Holland methane tractor in production, with Bennamann able to supply the tractor’s fuel on farm at a fixed period discounted price from the waste on farm.

For a 150 head dairy farm, the system creates biomethane worth approximately £30,000 in additional income for the dairy farm and it removes about half of the methane generated by the herd, making a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

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Economy still not ready for big rate hikes ahead, Wells Fargo CEO says

Charles Scharf

Qilai Shen | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Wells Fargo CEO Charles Scharf said he is betting on “more significant rate hikes” as the Federal Reserve tries to rein in high inflation, and that the economy is not as prepared as it should be.

“I wouldn’t bet on a number, but I would bet on more significant rate hikes,” Scharf told CNBC’s Sara Eisen at the Aspen Ideas Festival on Wednesday, adding that he considers 50 and 75 basis point hikes to be “significant themselves.”

“Is it going to be more than that? Maybe, but it would require some change in the data to see something like that,” he said.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday at a European Central Bank forum that he would not allow inflation to take hold of the U.S. economy.

“The risk is that because of the multiplicity of shocks you start to transition to a higher inflation regime. Our job is literally to prevent that from happening, and we will prevent that from happening,” the central bank leader said. “We will not allow a transition from a low-inflation environment into a high-inflation environment.”

Those comments follow several rate hikes from the Fed in recent months, including a 75 basis point hike in June that was its largest since 1994.

Scharf said that he gives the Fed credit for being “very clear about how they’re going to think about what the right movements are going to be.”

“They’ve done as they started this what they said they were going to do, and they’ve been very clear that they intend for it to continue,” he said.

However, Scharf said that while the consumer and small businesses have been strong, the impact of rising rates has not been factored into the broader economy.

“We know rates are going up, it couldn’t be clearer,” he said. “We know that consumers and businesses, while strong today, are going to see deterioration, and we’re going to act surprised when it happens.”

Scharf said “that doesn’t mean the world is coming to an end,” but added that “we should do our best to recognize that and focus on what the solutions are.”

The markets and economy are far from oblivious to the situation and the risks. The stock market just finished its worst first half since 1970. Recent CNBC survey data from Main Street and corporate America does show widespread expectations of a recession. The most recent CNBC|Momentive Small Business Survey showed that the vast majority of small business owners expect a recession, and not one chief financial officer responding to the recent CNBC CFO Council Survey said they do not expect a recession.

Powell told Congress on June 22 that inflation has continued to run too hot and needs to come down. The Consumer Price Index in May increased 8.6% compared to the previous year, its highest level since 1981.

“Over coming months, we will be looking for compelling evidence that inflation is moving down, consistent with inflation returning to 2%,” Powell told Congress. “We anticipate that ongoing rate increases will be appropriate; the pace of those changes will continue to depend on the incoming data and the evolving outlook for the economy.”

“We’re going into this stronger than we’ve ever been,” Scharf said, “We’ve got the legislators, regulators, the Fed, who have extraordinary conviction, who have extraordinary tools, and that makes me feel pretty good about our ability to get through something.”

Disclosure: NBCUniversal News Group is the media partner of the Aspen Ideas Festival.

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Opelika Business Owner’s Success Story Recognized by SBA

PHOTO CONTRIBUTED TO THE OBSERVER

BY KENDYL HOLLINGSWORTH

KENDYLH@
OPELIKAOBSERVER.COM

OPELIKA —

One local businesswoman has proven that her trials won’t keep her down, and her success story has earned a spot on the radar of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA).

“It is truly an honor to have been selected by SBA to share my success story,” said Lisa Ditchkoff, owner of the Bottling Plant Event Center in downtown Opelika. “My business had tremendous struggles for the first six years and then again in 2020 and 2021 when COVID hit. Perseverance and determination helped us through.”

According to her published story, Ditchkoff’s dream of running her own event planning business and unique venue began to take shape in 2003 when she started a small event planning business from her home. A few years later, she saw Opelika’s old Coca-Cola bottling plant for sale and was struck with inspiration.

What began as a dream eventually evolved into the Bottling Plant Event Center, a versatile venue that now also boasts a wine shop and offers full-service, offsite catering.

But getting there wasn’t an easy task. Renovations for the bottling plant would be expensive, and in 2008, Americans were no strangers to economic adversity.

After facing rejection in her initial search for a loan, Ditchkoff was able to secure one through SBA.

“The U.S. Small Business Administration’s mission is help Americans start, grow, expand or recover their business from a disaster,” explained Megyn Rodriguez, an SBA outreach and marketing specialist who worked with Ditchkoff to share her story. “In Lisa’s case, she utilized one of our local resource partners, the Alabama Small Business Development Centers … to assist her in obtaining an SBA 504 loan, which ultimately helped her grow her business.”

In 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and so did another round of challenges for Ditchkoff and the event center. She managed to push through by diversifying her business and utilizing another SBA loan, the SBA COVID-19 EIDL, which seeks to help businesses recover from the economic impact of COVID.

From there, the Bottling Plant Event Center was able to recover and continue operating and growing.

Rodriguez said SBA does not endorse private businesses, but the organization does seek to highlight a few that have found success by taking advantage of their resources. In Ditchkoff’s case, she demonstrated perseverance and resiliency more than once.

“My whole goal has been to help others in regard to my business,” Ditchkoff said, whether that be by hosting nonprofits or bringing new customers to downtown Opelika.

“So often people give up on their goals and dreams of owning a business. But had they tried just one more time to secure funding or tried one more business expansion, it’s possible that would have changed the trajectory of everything for them. I just hope that the story helps someone out there.”

Read the full published story at /www.sba.gov/offices/district/al/birmingham/success-stories/story-persistence-and-resiliency-how-securing-sba-financing-helped-bottling-plant-event-center/.

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Mark Sutcliffe: Entrepreneur to run for mayor of Ottawa

Longtime Ottawa entrepreneur, broadcaster and author Mark Sutcliffe is running to become the next mayor of Ottawa.

Sutcliffe officially registered Wednesday.

“I am excited and grateful today as I officially register as a candidate to be the next mayor of Ottawa – the best city in Canada, and a place I’m proud to call my hometown,” Sutcliffe said in a news release announcing his candidacy. “Ottawa has always been considered a great place to live and work. But we are on the verge of some new and significant challenges. Our city is in an affordability crisis. Inflation is on the rise, and there is significant fear that a recession is just around the corner. We are facing a reliability crisis in our public transit system, and we need to improve our roads. On these issues and more, we need new leadership in Ottawa.”

This comes amid a major change at Ottawa  city council, with Mayor Jim Watson and several current city councillors not seeking re-election.

Sutcliffe has been a prominent figure in the Ottawa business community. He founded the Ottawa Business Journal in 1995, spent many years as a radio host on Newstalk 580 CFRA and 1310 News, hosted TV programa on CPAC and Rogers TV, wrote for the Ottawa Citizen, and served on the boards of numerous organizations in Ottawa. He currently hosts the Digging Deep podcast.

In his platform online, Sutcliffe says, if elected, he would “adequately [fund] our police, fire, and paramedic services and being tough on the causes of crime … restore confidence in our public transit system, improve our roads…” and “[keep] taxes, recreation fees, and other costs as low as possible.”

He tells CTV News that affordability is a key issue.

“I keep hearing from people that they’re worried about their future,” Sutcliffe said. “I think affordability is huge. People are worried about the rising price of gas, and food, and so many other things and, as a city, we can’t pile onto that by raising taxes by a huge number and add to the affordability crisis, so we have to keep taxes as low as possible.”

He also says he wants to take a new look at the LRT.

“I think people are losing confidence in our public transit system. There’s just been one revelation after another at this inquiry that’s been happening,” he said. “I think the city needs fresh leadership, a fresh pair of eyes to look at this issue, to fix light rail, to get the trains running properly, and to fight for the funding to bring light rail to Kanata and Barrhaven.”

Sutcliffe will be on the ballot alongside eight other candidates: Brandon Bay, Bob Chiarelli, Bernard Couchman, Graham MacDonald, Mike Maguire, Catherine McKenney, Ade Olumide, and Param Singh for the Oct. 24 election. Maguire also registered to run Wednesday.

Chiarelli, a former mayor of Ottawa, said on Twitter that he welcomes any entrant into the mayor’s race and looks forward to “a positive campaign to the benefit of our citizens.”

The job of Mayor is an important one that requires experience and commitment. I welcome any and all into the mayor’s race. The challenges ahead of us require a seasoned candidate who has done this before and knows how to meet the challenges head-on. 1/2

— Bob Chiarelli (@Bob_Chiarelli) June 29, 2022

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Which Is Better for Your Team? – Forbes Advisor

Project Management

Both Notion and Asana offer what most teams are looking for in a modern project management tool. You can set up projects in the form of a database and define as many properties as you need for tasks like assignees, reviewers, external links, dates and other pertinent information.

View projects as tables, Kanban boards, calendars or timelines to get the information you need about a project’s progress. Notion also includes a gallery view, which lets you see each row of a database as a card, like a bulletin board.

Both apps integrate directly with dozens of other workspace apps, as well as indirectly with hundreds more through Zapier and IFTTT, so you can link all the work your team is doing in one place and automate common steps.

Communicate with team members in both apps on tasks by tagging them with an @ mention in threaded comments. Team members can personalize their notification preferences to get an email when they’re mentioned or just follow updates within the platform.

Data Management

Both Notion and Asana use the same databases for data management that you use for project management. You can create as many separate projects or databases as you need to keep information organized, and you can set up unlimited customized and filtered views to visualize data and create dashboards.

Information Infrastructure

Notion uniquely merges document creation and management with project and data management through pages. You don’t have to link out to third-party documentation in your database. Use Notion to both create and organize documents associated with projects and databases.

You can organize pages in a hierarchy like web pages and search for one to link within another while you’re writing with only an @ mention.

Asana integrates with creative suites, including Google Drive and Microsoft Office 365, so you can link to external documents easily to keep information organized within your Asana databases. This is a simple solution if you’re already using the third-party apps and don’t want to migrate, but it’s much less seamless than Notion’s all-in-one experience.

Creative Collaboration

Both Asana and Notion facilitate some creative collaboration through their project management features—you can communicate with team members about projects through comments on tasks.

Only Notion’s pages let you keep even more collaboration right in the same tool. Use them like you would Google Docs or Microsoft Word to create written assets or documentation and invite team members to collaborate. You’ll see real-time edits and presence as team members work on pages, and you can add comments to suggest changes or ask questions by linking to anchor text within a page.

However, Notion’s word processing features are limited compared with the most popular third-party tools. It doesn’t offer an in-app spell checker, word counter or the ability to track changes, although you can see a version history and restore older versions of a page.

File Storage

Neither Notion nor Asana offers files storage as robust as options like Google Drive, OneDrive or Dropbox. But both offer unlimited file uploads, and the ability to organize files using their complex databases could be attractive for some teams.

Notion offers unlimited file uploads for all free and paid accounts. Individual file size is limited to 5MB for free accounts. Technically file size is unlimited for paid accounts, but users have experienced failed uploads with extremely large files. Notion reps have recommended limited file size to 2GB to 3GB.

Asana offers unlimited file uploads with all free and paid accounts, with an individual file size limit of 100MB across the board.

Automation

Asana offers superior native automation functionality, although Notion has native automation in the works with its 2021 acquisition of integration software Automate.io.

In Asana, you can set custom rules to automate common steps in your project management processes—like routing tasks to the correct projects, assigning steps to the right team members, adding or tagging team members at necessary steps in the process and notifying team members when work is ready for their input.

Both platforms integrate with Zapier and IFTTT to connect with hundreds of apps and automate common processes in your workflow—like moving files from one platform to another, sharing information with stakeholders and creating tasks based on events happening around the business.

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Space Florida, Israel Innovation Authority Announce Ninth-Round Winners of Innovation Partner Funding

Space Florida, Israel Innovation Authority Announce Ninth-Round Winners of Innovation Partner Funding

Press Release
From: Space Florida

Posted: Tuesday, June 28, 2022

Space Florida, the aerospace and spaceport development authority for the State of Florida, and the Israel Innovation Authority, an independent, publicly-funded agency created to address the needs of the local and international innovation ecosystems, are pleased to announce the ninth-round winners of industrial research and development funding tied to the Space Florida-Israel Innovation Partnership Program.

In October 2013, Florida and Israel established a $2 million recurring joint fund to support research, development, and commercialization of aerospace and technology projects that benefit both Israel and Florida. For this Call for Projects, 11 qualified joint proposals were submitted by teams of for-profit companies in Florida and Israel. Five teams have been selected for this ninth round of awards.

“Congratulations to all winners selected in our latest Call for Projects for the Florida-Israel Innovation Partnership,” said Lt. Governor Jeanette Nuñez. “This partnership between Florida and Israel is key for our aerospace industries. This collaboration helps to ensure a bright future and I look forward to seeing the results from this year’s winning companies.”

“As we approach a decade of partnership with the Israel Innovation Authority, we are proud of the development of innovative, world-changing technologies that our grants continue to enable,” said Space Florida President and CEO Frank DiBello. “Space Florida congratulates the winners of the ninth call for projects.”

The winners are as follows:

KBR Wyle Services (Titusville, Florida) & Purammon (Israel): will collaborate to develop a new class of wastewater management system that is based on electrochemistry rather than current chemical/biological technologies. This new system will be designed to reliably operate in Zero-G environments and under other spaceflight conditions and restraints.

LightPath Technologies (Orlando, Florida) & QuantLR (Israel): will join forces to develop a ground-to-satellite, ground-to-air, and satellite-to-satellite free space optical communication channels, which will be used for generation of quantum encryption keys, in a highly secure way. It is intended that this project can then be further developed for use in high-rate data transmission, optical communication both between satellite and ground station, as well as satellite-to-satellite communications.

Redwire Space (Jacksonville, Florida) & StemRad (Israel): In a joint project entitled “Recycling of On-Orbit Plastic Waste into Personal Radiation Protection using Additive Manufacturing,” the companies will partner for the development of personal radiation shielding through on-orbit additive manufacturing. Previous work included printing radiation protection vest inserts on-orbit and developing technology to optimize printing of polyethylene.

Censy’s Technologies (Daytona Beach, Florida) & MobiliComm (Israel): The goal of this partnership will be to improve the state of the art for remote systems communications for extended Beyond Visual Line Of Sight & Unmanned Aerial Systems or (BVLOS UAS) operations and make it a cost-effective solution. Novel construction of advanced technologies will enable a highly integrated multi-redundant simultaneous communications system, providing increased reliability and quality of service for command and control.

ETA Space (Rockledge, Florida) & Helios-Project (Israel): This project will leverage each other’s expertise in cryogenic and chemical engineering, to develop an integrated Lunar oxygen production and liquefaction plant. The key deliverable of the project is a detailed design of a 10 metric ton per month pilot plant. The design goal is intended to test the integration of these two systems on a relevant scale for the Lunar surface.

Each company will receive their respective funding awards from Space Florida and the Israel Innovation Authority.

Additionally, Space Florida and the Israel Innovation Authority would like to thank Enterprise Florida’s Israel Office for its collaboration and partnership in this Call for Projects.

The next joint call for applications is expected to be released in September 2022. Florida-based companies interested in more information can visit www.spaceflorida.gov, while Israel-based companies can visit https://ift.tt/J6Pv95U.

About Space Florida: Space Florida was created to strengthen Florida’s position as the global leader in aerospace research, investment, exploration and commerce. As Florida’s aerospace and spaceport development authority, we are committed to attracting and expanding the next generation of space industry businesses. With its highly trained workforce, proven infrastructure and unparalleled record of achievement, Florida is the ideal location for aerospace businesses to thrive – and Space Florida is the perfect partner to help them succeed. www.spaceflorida.gov

About the Israel Innovation Authority: The Israel Innovation Authority, an independent publicly funded agency, was thus created to provide a variety of practical tools and funding platforms aimed at effectively addressing the dynamic and changing needs of the local and international innovation ecosystems. This includes early-stage entrepreneurs, mature companies developing new products or manufacturing processes, academic groups seeking to transfer their ideas to the market, global corporations interested in collaborating with Israeli technology, Israeli companies seeking new markets abroad and traditional factories and plants seeking to incorporate innovative and advanced manufacturing into their businesses.

// end //

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Penn Medicine receives $9 million to advance research on imaging technology that illuminates tumors

Building on Penn Medicine’s years of research and use of imaging technology that illuminates tumor tissue-; helping clinicians more easily detect and remove it-; the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania has received a five-year, $9 million research grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to push the field forward, particularly for lung cancer patients.

This technology, intraoperative molecular imaging (IMI), is based on fluorescent beacon molecules that target and bind themselves to tumor cells, essentially making them glow-;and allowing doctors to more easily distinguish cancer from healthy tissue. Penn researchers with the Center for Precision Surgery in the Abramson Cancer Center, along with colleagues at other institutions, will use the research grant to study and improve IMI technology for non-small-cell lung cancers (NSCLC). Often related to smoking, NSCLCs are the most common form of lung cancer; they are diagnosed in more than 200,000 people in the United States every year and can be life threatening.

This funding gives us a tremendous opportunity to further evaluate this important technology and with the goal being to improve outcomes for patients. We aim to develop this technology even further and to study it in additional clinical trials to help improve surgical identification and removal of tumors.”

Sunil Singhal MD, grant principal investigator, the William Maul Measey Professor in Surgical Research and Chief of Thoracic Surgery, and director of the Center for Precision Surgery in the Abramson Cancer Center

Singhal has helped pioneer the research and development of IMI use in lung cancer surgery. Among other achievements, he led the first large, multi-institutional randomized clinical trial of the technology for lung cancer-;the results of which are due to be reported May 17, 2022. To date, studies have shown that IMI can significantly improve surgeons’ ability to remove tumors, while sparing other healthy tissue.

The fluorescent beacon molecules used in IMI are normally infused into the patient hours or days before surgery. They bind to cell-surface receptors, such as folate receptors, which are particularly abundant on cancer cells. The light the beacons emit is typically in the near-infared range, allowing for visualization detection of tumor cells up to about two centimeters below the tissue surface, depending on the tissue type. Tissue tagged with these fluorescing beacons can be imaged in real-time, during surgery, with relatively inexpensive and portable equipment. Data from additional clinical trials have shown it also has the potential to help doctors detect tumors-;for example, following a positive or ambiguous X-ray finding-;during non-surgical inspections of patients’ lungs via bronchoscopy, when doctors use a scope to investigate the passages in a person’s lungs.

The new grant-funded research project aims to develop improved beacon molecules for NSCLC and imaging equipment to go with it, then test them in clinical trials. Collaborating researchers include Purdue University’s Philip Low, PhD, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry, who will help develop new beacon molecules; the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s Shuming Nie, PhD, a professor of bioengineering, and Viktor Gruev, PhD, a professor of electrical and computer engineering, who will develop sensitive near-infrared cameras. Johnson & Johnson’s Bruce Rosengard, MD, will also help develop miniaturized chips for bronchoscopic detection of the light emitted from the tumor-homing beacons. The clinical trials of the new technology will be conducted at Penn Medicine, led by Singhal and Edward Delikatny, PhD, a professor of Radiology and Director of Translational Research at the Center for Precision Surgery.

“Complete resection is the best outcome for patients, and the goal in this program is to improve the chances of achieving that without unnecessary tissue removal,” said Ronald DeMatteo MD, the John Rhea Barton Professor of Surgery and Chair of the Department of Surgery at Penn.

Source:

University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine

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