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Copyright: © Richard Jacobs
Zach Supalla, founder and CEO of Particle (particle.io), provides a detailed overview of how technology is improving the ways we can interact with and control our devices and products.
Supalla's company, Particle, is the dominant IoT platform on the market that simplifies building, connecting and managing internet-connected hardware products rolled out on a large scale. IoT, as it is typically referred to stands for 'the Internet of things' and is the comprehensive network of devices such as home appliances, vehicles, etc. that contain electronics, software, actuators, and of course connectivity which allows them to connect, interact directly, and exchange their data. Particle's innovation has truly taken business by the hand and is leading the industry toward a more connected world. And their numbers are astounding as Particle is used by more than 150,000 developers in over 100 countries and, impressively, by 50% of Fortune 500 companies.
Suppalla discusses the way his company works. Particle is the technology partner that provides the software and hardware to connect products to the internet, which allows for collection of data from the physical device and thus control it remotely. As mentioned, building an IoT product begins with getting a device online, Particle has simplified the process because all their hardware is specifically designed to get devices connected in minutes via Wi-Fi, cellular (2G/3G/LTE), or even mesh (MCL), a technology that allows a computer's user to easily connect to an advanced wireless mesh network that utilizes Wi-Fi or WiMax.
Suppalla talks about some of the companies that they have worked with that bring real world problems to the table, problems that Particle can help to manage. He discusses one particularly interesting company called Opti that provides a truly effective and incredibly efficient solution to address stormwater runoff and protect valuable water resources. Opti's stormwater management system is in place all over the world. Opti, as Suppalla explains, has a system that can 'connect' to a city's pumps and valves to dynamically move water, so as a storm is approaching the system can move water around as needed. Opti allows for reservoirs to be controlled, to prevent flooding.
Suppalla talks about some of the industrial uses of the technology such as controlling fans for crop protection during a frost. While these niche industries may seem like they are too small to be concerned with in terms of the technology, they are actually very big, and technology can provide many solutions to these niche industry real world problems.
Further, Suppalla talks about the importance of reliable connectivity. He gives examples of how important and critical messages can be missed when connectivity is lost, even if only for a few minutes, or even seconds. Discussing the IoT world, he states that there are many and various different problems that exist and Particle seeks to intercept problems, find solutions, and improve our lives through the use of technology.
Suppalla is a recognized authority on the Internet of Things and is a sought-after speaker for many technology events such as Web Summit, OSCON, Solid, GMIC, and Launch. Suppalla holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management and a master's in engineering management from the McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern.
Dr. Martin Scharf, Ph.D., FABSM, sub-investigator, research, and development consultant at Cleveland Sleep Research Center, delivers an overview of sleep research, and drugs for treatment of various illnesses including fibromyalgia.
Dr. Scharf has a passion for sleep, and don't we all! A good night's sleep is one of the best experiences you could hope for, and unfortunately… something that many of us don't get consistently. Dr. Scharf's passion for sleep goes beyond simply wanting a great night's sleep however, as he has devoted his life to the study of sleep and works tirelessly to treat people at his clinic to help them achieve better health through quality sleep. Dr. Scharf began his sleep research at UCLA, where he worked under the direction of Dr. Anthony Kales, a true pioneer in sleep medicine. Dr. Scharf continued his education and received a Ph.D. from the Pennsylvania State University in Hershey. Throughout his long career, Dr. Scharf has had a hand in the development and testing of almost every significant pharmaceutical used in treating disorders of sleep and wakefulness. He has published over 250 scientific papers. Additionally, Dr. Scharf was the creator and director of a freestanding sleep disorders clinic in the US (Tristate Sleep Disorders Center), the first of its kind.
Dr. Scharf discusses the many issues regarding fibromyalgia, its common symptoms and why the condition is misunderstood. Fibromyalgia syndrome may cause chronic widespread musculoskeletal pain that can often be associated with fatigue or other symptoms. The pain fibromyalgia sufferers feel often includes increased sensitivity in areas called tender points. Dr. Scharf provides details on the connection between fibromyalgia and the binding of Gamma. Gamma hydroxybutyrate, as it is called in its more formal name, abbreviated simply as GHB is a known chemical found in the brain as well as some other areas of the body. Gamma can also be made in a laboratory setting. It is used for depression, weight loss, and relief of several troublesome fibromyalgia symptoms such as pain, fatigue, and sleep problems. Dr. Scharf recounts his long extensive drug testing studies working with patients that led to a drug treatment for narcolepsy. But Dr. Scharf knew that GHB had further uses and he continued his studies. He recounts how he discovered that it increased deep stages of sleep and the release of growth hormone. Armed with this knowledge he began to look for medical conditions or disorders that would be a match and he made the connection to fibromyalgia. He talks about some of the amazing improvements that patients began to see in regard to better sleep and reduced or nearly eliminated pain.
Further, the sleep research expert talks about his other studies and clinical trials that led to new developments and treatments. He recounts the moving stories of some of the patients that testified during FDA hearings regarding GHB. Many of those who testified stated that they never wanted to return to their life the way it was before treatment with the compound. He relates a wealth of information about the controversy surrounding the drug and why date rape concerns kept the drug from being welcomed into the legitimate medical industry for much longer than it should have been, given the fact that it showed profound and dramatic improvements in those who suffer from fibromyalgia.
Dr. Bruce Damer, scientist, designer, author, as well as founder and CEO of DigitalSpace (digitalspace.com), provides a thorough overview and analysis of the origin of life as well as his vast experimentation in the area of physics-based simulations for space research.
Dr. Damer is a distinguished computer scientist and active associate researcher in the Department of Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Dr. Damer's work with Prof. David Deamer led to the publishing of "Coupled Phases and Combinatorial Selection in Fluctuating Hydrothermal Pools: A Scenario to Guide Experimental Approaches to the Origin of Cellular Life" and, an article in the journal, Life, "A Field Trip to the Archaean in Search of Darwin's Warm Little Pond." Their collaborative research, work, and publishing has created a surge of new interest in the subject of life's origin and kept the scientific community buzzing.
Dr. Damer talks about the origin of life and his theories. He discusses Darwin's "warm little pond" theory, which Dr. Damer and Prof. Deamer have updated. As he explains, when you have a situation in which warm water is filling up an area, then draining, in a cyclical way, this creates an opportunity for life, an opportunity to make all sorts of biopolymers in a primordial soup as he refers to it. He discusses his research and experimentation that was able to create RNA, which is a necessary polymer of life.
Dr. Damer's company, DigitalSpace is an innovative international corporation with a focus on the creation of virtual worlds for industrial design engineering, education as well as public outreach. In fact, it was DigitalSpace that produced notable first rounds of internet-based 3D avatar applications. From virtual events and tradeshows to advanced learning spaces for K-12 and college, complex corporate information sharing spaces for efficiency, and of course virtual worlds for artists, DigitalSpace is innovating in multiple industries.
The science expert states that the barriers to creating lifeforms in a lab are time and the amount of experiments that would be necessary. He theorizes that life often tried to start then failed over historical time periods. He details random selection and mutation, and the power of a network. He describes in detail the network effect, and elaborates on progenotes, which are the last universal common ancestors, also called the last universal ancestor. Thus, as he theorizes our common ancestor was actually a network.
Dr. Damer recounts many and various experiments that he has been involved with in regard to life and its origin. He provides a detailed overview of experimentation that has occurred regarding 3D modeling and physics-based simulations for a wide range of space missions, and he talks about their upcoming work with cubesats, which are miniaturized satellites for space research.
Since the beginning of the 21st century, DigitalSpace has been an important player in key contracts with Adobe, NASA and other federal agencies, as well as prime contractors to produce a myriad of advanced virtual environments for space mission design and training, and so much more.
John O'Connor, founder of Gene Food (mygenefood.com), discusses the importance of diet and explains how our genetic composition is literally a road map that takes us to the diet destination our body prefers.
John O'Connor is very passionate about nutrition, genetics, and startups. O'Connor discusses the idea behind his company, Gene Food—which is bio-individuality. As he explains, people are unique individuals and as such respond in their own specific way to different inputs. He talks about the current debate in the public discourse on diets, specifically paleo and vegan diets. O'Connor states that we have genetic differences as individuals, and thus there is a code that we can discover that will inform us about which type of diet will perform best, based on our unique composition. O'Connor discusses his company's custom algorithm that can parse someone's genetic data and assign them to one of about 20 different foundational diet categories. As an individual tailors their diet and lifestyle to their specific genetic makeup, they have a greater chance to look their best and perform their best, not to mention feeling better than perhaps they ever have. The Gene Food custom nutrition plan utilizes raw data from popular genetic information providers such as 23andme and Ancestry.com to design a custom nutrition report tailored to one's particular genetics.
O'Connor discusses genetic variants and how diet plays an important role for everyone, specifically those who have increased risk for certain diseases, such as Alzheimer's and others. He discusses inflammatory response in regard to diet, and how certain diets affect those who are at increased risk for select diseases and conditions. He details the importance of being cautious about the types of fats that people consume, especially if they are genetically predisposed to have a higher risk of a type of disease. Many of these people should consider Omega 3s and polyunsaturated fats he concludes.
The diet and nutrition expert provides and overview of SNPs which are single nucleotide polymorphisms, commonly pronounced as 'snips' in the scientific community. SNPs are the most typical type of genetic variation in people. Each individual SNP represents a difference in a specific single DNA building block, known as a nucleotide. Further, he delves into the many kinds of diets that they assign to their subscribers, and how their custom report provides a wealth of information on foods to avoid as well as foods to seek out, all based on one's internal genetics.
O'Connor talks about the vision he has for his company and his future plans to roll out more health coaching, as the appetite for it is great based on the extraordinary volume of questions they receive on their blog daily. And O'Connor discusses physical environments and their impact on how one might react to food, discussing histamine intolerance and more. Interestingly, even one's selection of their social drink of choice could make a difference based on their histamine intolerance. So whether you order a beer, a gin and tonic, or a glass of red wine, your genetic report can inform you about which one is okay, and which is not. O'Connor's team seeks to end dietary dysfunction and find ways for every individual to eat better, in line with their genetic makeup, and feel better overall.
Sleep medicine is a rapidly evolving field, and Joe Schulz, Dale Moseley, and Adam Moseley are right in the middle of it, working with cutting-edge technology to bring relief for patients suffering from a variety of sleep disorders. In 2005, Joe Schulz was working as a sleep technologist when he founded Delta Waves, a company that seeks to encourage a collaborative effort between doctors and researchers in the diagnosis and treatment of sleep apnea and 60 other sleep disorders.
Adam Moseley is a registered polysomnographic technologist who manages a portion of the sleep department at Delta Waves, running sleep studies in the lab six nights a week, collecting data from patients for the identification of different sleep disorders, and providing immediate intervention for those with low oxygen levels and apnea. From all of the data and patient feedback they've received, the team at Delta Waves has gained some major insights, one of which is that the two most common complaints from users of CPAP machines have to do with fit and comfortability. By working with the top two manufacturers of adaptive servo-ventilation (ASV), CPAP, and BiPAP machines, Delta Waves is able to offer patients access to equipment that's not even on the market yet, and they're seeing positive results: happier patients, better compliance.
Tune in for all the details and visit deltawaves.org to learn more.
Enrique Cubillo is an advocate of something you might see often, but not hear about in these terms: transport sports. He explains that transport sports recreate (like all other sports) but also serve transportation skill sets, like in-line skating, scooters, or cycling. But aside from an educator and advocate of these transport sports, Cubillo is the innovator of a set of movements referred to as "SpikeBoarding." What's that, you might ask?
"SpikeBoarding is everything that cross-country skiing has ever been, brought onto a skateboard," explains Cubillo. But beyond serving as a source of transportation and helping people in field games such as field hockey and football, Cubillo explains that by operating on strength, endurance, and balance, SpikeBoarding can address the increasingly common single sport use issues that are leading to injuries. Cubbilo is also the CEO of SUSOIX, which is a manufacturing company that teaches and produces equipment for SpikeBoarding. To learn more about this sport that's quickly gaining traction, tune in, visit spikeboarding.com, and check out their YouTube channel for some awesome videos.
Many people are unaware of how much their environment can impact their sleep; everything from light and temperature to the sounds in the room while sleeping can mean the difference between waking feeling refreshed and able to function at your best, and waking feeling sluggish, unmotivated, or depressed.
Daniel Gartenberg, PhD was practicing as a psychologist about 10 years ago when he shifted his focus toward wanting to change the structure of healthcare in a way that would address the issues that can arise with the one human behavior practiced more than any other: sleep. In his opinion, improving this behavior even just a little bit could have a massive impact on the health of society as a whole.
So what is he doing to achieve this? Gartenberg is the founder of Sonic Sleep Coach, a software platform that uses the best IoT devices available to manipulate sound, light, and temperature to deliver better results than medication can—and without all of the harmful side effects. In addition, the Sonic Sleep Coach app has the ability to collect an enormous amount of data in just a few nights in order to deliver people with customized recommendations about the root causes of their sleep problems and what they can do to address them. Ultimately, people are provided with personalized cognitive behavioral therapy assessments that go far beyond the treatment of mere symptoms.
The app is currently available for iOS and will soon be released on Android. Interested in checking it out for yourself? Tune in and visit sonicsleepcoach.com to learn more.
As a clinical health psychologist and assistant professor at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Department of Psychiatry, Aric Prather, Ph.D. focuses his work on understanding the underlying biological pathways through which sleep, stress, and other health behaviors affect our overall states of health. One of the main ways in which both sleep and stress can affect our health—as many people know—is by contributing to weight gain and obesity, and Dr. Prather works with the UCSF Center for Obesity Assessments, Study, and Treatment to better understand the specific mechanisms at play here.
He also spends his time in the lab conducting research alongside other scientists to identify markers of cellular aging, better understand the role of senescent cells in aging, study a longevity hormone that seems to be related to inflammation and oxidative damage, and determine how stress and/or lack of sleep can increase susceptibility to infectious disease. Ultimately, the goal is to collect data that might augment our understanding of how sleep, stress, and other behaviors contribute to our health.
Dr. Prather touches on a variety of fascinating topics, including the possible relationship between genetic changes and acute stressors, the potential heritability of stress behaviors, long-term impacts of early life trauma, and the surprising consistency of their findings in sleep research.
Tune in for all the details, learn more about Dr. Prather's work on the UCSF website, and follow him on Twitter.
In late 2011, Justin Wilford and his wife's life changed forever in an instant: their son Max was diagnosed at age four with an unclassified brain tumor leading to hydrocephalus and the need for emergency brain surgery, followed by over a month in the hospital, followed by out-patient chemotherapy. "We were shifting between utter despair and asking how we could improve his quality of life right now and for the long-term outcome," says Wilford. Having recently completed his Ph.D. in Geography, Wilford utilized every connection he had in academia, reaching out to as many researchers and doctors as he could in the hopes of figuring out what he could do to give his son the best chance of high-quality life.
Throughout the process, Wilford and his wife met tons of parents who were in similar situations with the same concerns, but without the resources that they had. They wanted to provide other families with the resources and education that would allow their kids to thrive as much as possible—and it is from this desire that MaxLove Project was founded.
MaxLove Project is based on seven general actions denoted by the acronym "B.E.S.U.P.E.R.", each of which is incorporated in their mission—whether in the form of culinary programs in hospitals, fun exercises lead by physical therapists and trainers, or mindfulness and meditation classes for parents. Wilford joins the podcast to discuss each and every one of them, along with details from his personal journey, what they're working on now, and an update on how Max is doing.
Tune in and visit maxloveproject.org to get involved.
Rebecca Jarvis, Chief Business, Technology & Economics Correspondent for ABC News provides interesting details on her long career in journalism and specifically the amazing story of disgraced entrepreneur, Elizabeth Holmes and her company, Theranos.
Jarvis is a seasoned journalist. In addition to her prominent work with ABC News, she serves as host and managing editor of the popular podcast No Limits with Rebecca Jarvis, as well as host and managing editor of Real Biz with Rebecca Jarvis. Her extensive work for ABC News includes critically acclaimed shows such as World News Tonight with David Muir, Nightline, 20/20, This Week with George Stephanopoulos, and Good Morning America. Throughout her impressive career she has regularly interviewed innovators and visionaries such as Warren Buffett; Sheryl Sandberg; Richard Branson; Diane von Furstenberg; and GM's first woman CEO, Mary Barra, just to name a few. From presidential elections to the Great Recession, the Madoff scandal and the crash of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, if it's important business news, Jarvis has covered it.
Jarvis discusses the riveting story of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos. Jarvis' work on The Dropout, a documentary podcast by ABC Radio & ABC News Nightline that covers the story of the aforementioned Holmes, has received critical praise. The Dropout explores the ambition and fame that went awry for the world's youngest self-made woman billionaire. It seeks to unravel the story of Holmes and get to the bottom of how a woman at the top of her game, who was often referred to as 'the next Steve Jobs,' could lose everything and face severe criminal charges. Theranos was a health technology corporation that experienced a meteoric rise in the medical technology industry with what was then heralded as breakthrough technology—a means to perform blood tests with extremely smaller amounts of blood than had been historically possible. However, if it sounds too good to be true it often is, as Holmes was later exposed for making false claims about the company and the tech, and was indicted on wire fraud and conspiracy charges. Jarvis explains how she became intrigued by not only the technology Theranos was proposing but also the scores of big-dollar investors who jumped on board early stage to back the so-called groundbreaking technology. Jarvis comments at length about how amazing it is that time after time so many truly smart people can be fooled by swindlers like Bernie Madoff, Elizabeth Holmes, and others like them. She describes it as "affinity fraud" in that people tend to trust those whom their friends and associates have already placed trust in. Jarvis goes on to say that Holmes was truly a brilliant woman to accomplish all that she did in high school, college, and beyond and that everyone who knew her was aware of her incredible aptitude in many areas. Unfortunately, she took a very wrong turn.
Further, Jarvis talks in general about business and investments. She explains that sometimes it is necessary to fight one's own nature, and she cites examples of how some people have lost greater by quickly pulling their money out of the market when there is a slight shift. The lesson, she states, in terms of business and investment, is to always ask questions and get answers, and those who do often get it right.
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