Lifeboat Foundation

Even as dramatic social change has been imposed by COVID-19, the kinds of fraud attacks companies experience and the biometric authentication technologies they use to prevent them have remained basically the same. What has changed is that online volumes of traffic, transactions and authentications have reached levels they were expected to years in the future, BehavioSec VP of Products Jordan Blake told Biometric Update in an interview.

As a result, he says, “timelines are getting advanced.”

Demand is coming from new verticals, according to Blake, as numerous people begin using the online channel to interact with many organizations they never have dealt with that way before.

This is a guest post by Shahrokh Shahidzadeh, CEO at Acceptto

These past two months have been among the most extraordinary times any of us can remember. The COVID-19 (CV-19) impact is all around us, indiscriminately impacting all of our lives, our work, the economy and for sure we are on the onset of a new normal that we are learning how to deal with daily.

There are always two stages of dealing with a change of this magnitude. First, we react immediately, thinking about what we must do differently now. Soon, we will begin to think in the longer term, reacting to and planning for permanent changes that result from the CV-19 pandemic.

“We’ve wondered if it might be possible to simply rewind the aging clock without inducing pluripotency,” said Vittorio Sebastiano, assistant professor at Stanford University and senior author of the Nature Communications article. “Now we’ve found that tightly controlling the exposure to these proteins can promote rejuvenation in multiple human cell types, including stem cells. This has profound implications for regeneration and restoration of cell functionality of aged tissues.”

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., March 25, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — A study published in the respected Nature Communications journal highlights the promise of technology being developed by Turn Biotechnologies to treat age-related health conditions.

The study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine found that old human cells can be induced into a more youthful and vigorous state when they are exposed to a rejuvenating treatment that triggers the limited expression of a group of proteins known as Yamanaka factors, which are important to embryonic development.

Continue reading “Research Shows Promise of Technology Used by Turn Biotechnologies to Develop Therapies for Age-Related Diseases” »

The most comprehensive national study to date has found that convalescent plasma appears to be safe to use on COVID-19 patients, a promising development in the race to find a treatment for the deadly virus. But the study didn’t determine whether the treatment works.

A team of more than 5,000 doctors from over 2,000 hospitals and laboratories have been testing the experimental therapy, which involves transfusing the antibody-rich blood serum of recovered COVID-19 patients into people who are battling the illness.

The constantly intensifying battle against viruses and antibiotic-resistant “superbugs” isn’t only about finding stronger drugs against infection. The focus is moving to preventing infections in the first place.

That’s why large companies such as Carrefour and a Far East luxury hotel chain are looking at unique germ-vanquishing textiles invented by Jerusalem’s Argaman Technologies and manufactured inside its custom-built factory.

Carrefour Group, a French-based superstore chain with 12,000 retail stores in 30 countries, is testing Argaman’s CottonX — billed as the world’s first bio-inhibitive 100 percent cotton – in a line of uniforms dubbed “The Uniform that Cares.”

A senior Chinese government official confirmed Friday that authorities ordered laboratories to destroy samples of coronavirus in early January.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had accused Chinese officials of ordering the samples’ destruction as part of the regime’s cover-up of the coronavirus outbreak in its early stages.

Pompeo said on April 22 that China “censored those who tried to warn the world, it ordered a halt to testing of new samples, and it destroyed existing samples.” He offered more specificity on May 6, stating that China’s National Health Commission [NHC] ordered virus samples destroyed on Jan. 3.

CloudWalk has raised RMB 1.8 billion (US$254 million) in funding from a group of provincial and municipal funds in China to become the fourth most well-funded biometric facial recognition company in the country, according to a report in Chinese-language publication 36Kr covered by its English-language affiliate KrAsia.

CloudWalk intends to launch an IPO on Shanghai’s Star Market by the end of 2020, according to the report. The company has raised a total of RMB 2.8 billion ($400 million) so far.

CloudWalk provides facial recognition for numerous public agencies, including the Bank of China, Shanghai Pudong Airport, and China Mobile’s brick and mortar stores.

Defense Ministry-run Institute for Biological Research said to prepare further experiments before moving on to human trials, hopes to have finished product within a year.

“In one sense, universities have become victims of their own success at teaching online, but some academics are concerned that continued closures could hurt poorer students without access to computers or study space, while others mourn the loss of face-to-face connection while teaching.” Universities have become bloated cliques. Has Covid shown we don’t need mini-towns and fat fees? Poorer students might welcome online courses at 10% of the cost surely and shorter completion time, surely?

Governments are prioritising reopening schools and businesses over campuses. But some academics fear the impact on disadvantaged students – and on their teaching.