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Kevin Costa, CSO and scientific co-founder at Novoheart (novoheart.com), a stem cell and biotechnology tissue engineering company, delivers a wealth of information on the study of heart problems and diseases via tissue experimentation. Costa is director of cardiovascular cell and tissue engineering at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. Costa received his training at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Additionally, he was a faculty member and associate professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia University. Through extensive work in biomedical engineering, with advanced study in cell and tissue biomechanics and cardiac tissue engineering, Costa developed one of the earliest engineered cardiac tissue systems. His work is funded through many prestigious grants from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Whitaker Foundation, and more.
Novoheart's primary goal is to innovate and impact drug discovery and the evolution of heart therapeutics with their proprietary bioengineered human heart constructs, to advance them further, into transplantable grafts for cell-based regenerative heart therapies with significantly improved safety as well as efficacy. By growing pieces of tissues that can emulate certain aspects of the human heart, Novoheart can perform laboratory testing to better understand how drugs and therapeutics might interact with a human heart. Costa explains how 90% of drugs ultimately fail and never make it to clinics to help patients, even after a decade of work with several billion dollars spent on research. He discusses how animal testing is perhaps the primary reason for drug failures in development, for animal testing is not exceptionally predictive of how a particular drug will work in a human body. And for fear of potentially extreme cardiac side effects, human testing is rarely if ever done; thus, Novoheart's testing on their laboratory-produced human tissues allows for more reliable testing that will be indicative of the actual human use of a drug.
The cell and tissue engineering expert discusses many of the areas Novoheart is innovating. One such area is Novoheart's trademarked MyHeart platform, which involves multiple assays that vary in complexity. He explains that heart disease and cardiac toxicity can arise in the electrical and contractile properties of the heart, thus Novoheart has designed engineered tissues to directly address problems and issues that pertain to both of the heart's major properties.
Novoheart has developed a proprietary method for differentiating human stem cells into the ventricular myocytes of the heart muscle cells that work with the large pumping ventricles of the heart. Their focus is on these types of cells as the ventricle area is where arrhythmias, cardiomyopathies, and contractile defects occur in human patients. Costa discusses the specifics of various branches of their work. He details how their methods allow them to gather detailed real information on contractility due to sensors that are integrated into their tissues, thus allowing them to measure twitch force and other variables that would be significant factors in assessing a real human heart's function and force, etc. And in regard to pump function, they devised a way to grow tissue around a silicone balloon to measure pressure and volume.
The biomedical engineering expert discusses the value of laboratory-based trials for testing drug effectiveness, as the lab environment allows for optimization and experimentation to hone a more ideal solution, whereas, in human drug trials, any failures will generally end the trial immediately. Costa gives an overview of some areas of testing that he is particularly excited about, such as methods they have developed to study assays created from diseased patient cells. Their process will allow them to study the efficacy of compounds on their tissues that show symptoms of the disease in order to find methods or treatments to end those symptoms, and then utilize that information to treat real patients. The work is complex, but Costa's team strives to develop and innovate various methods to study diseases that impact heart function and performance, and as their work advances he hopes to continue to discover new means to improve heart health.
As an author, George Howard has published two books on the music industry (Berklee Press), regularly contribute to Forbes, the NYT, and have authored hundreds of widely-read articles on marketing and strategy that have appeared in publications such as The Huffington Post, Time, The Music Business Journal, and others.
Music Audience Exchange (MAX) is reshaping the future landscape of music. Across billions of streams, video views, social shares, and live shows, there are massive, diverse communities of fans forming around more music and more artists than ever before. MAX has built a platform that deeply understands these audiences, and has created a model that gives brands the opportunity to enrich (not interrupt) the fan experience. The MAX Platform™ is built on proprietary data science that maps specific audience attributes to a database of 765 genres, 2.4 million artists, all 4 content types (audio, video, social, live), and a network of channels that reaches 98% of music fans in the places they're already going to for music.
GHS - Advise on the integration of technology, marketing, intellectual property with an emphasis on awareness and revenue. Capabilities include Strategic Advising, Integration of Traditional and New Media (social, mobile, location-based) marketing, Branding, Technology, Legal, M&A, Business Development, and Training.
Wpromote is The Challenger Agency and they specialize in digital marketing and customer acquisition. Their team of 300+ digital marketers breathe in marketing and exhale ROI. They are energetic, dynamic, and passionate, and enjoy sharing this passion with everyone. Wpromote focuses on delivering the best digital marketing campaigns possible so that our clients sleep soundly at night and our employees are proud of what they have accomplished!
Ashish Malik, CEO of Bee Vectoring Technology (BVT) (beevt.com), delivers a fascinating insider analysis of the current state of crop protection via bees. Mr. Malik is the former VP of global marketing for biologics at Bayer CropScience where he worked on the portfolio of biological assets and strategies to advance integrated crop solutions. Before his tenure at Bayer, Mr. Malik was SVP of global marketing at the California-based AgraQuest, an international supplier of advanced biological pest management solutions founded upon natural microorganisms. Mr. Malik received his MBA, specializing in finance and marketing, from Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business and his bachelor's in engineering from Swarthmore College.
With a passion for safe, healthy foods, Mr. Malik sought to bring his interests to a larger audience with Bee Vectoring Technology. BVT is a top technology company that utilizes commercially-reared bees to establish sustainable, efficient, and effectual crop control. Highly focused on agricultural innovation as well as targeted pest and disease management solutions, BVT seeks to advance global crop production while decreasing the use of chemicals.
Farmers seek to expand their productivity per acre of land, but consumers are demanding fewer chemicals in the process. Thus, pollinators that help to create a higher yield with a more organic footprint are in demand. As Malik states, his company uses bees to pollinate, to deliver a safe, biological product to the flowering crops. And it is this biological product that then protects the crop from disease and pests ongoing. BVT's system thus reduces the chemical input, eliminates water waste, and often increases efficiency.
The crop pollination expert explains that BVT is continually studying the ratios for success, such as how many hives per acre are necessary to deliver the right amount of biological product to maximize yield, and protection. Additionally, efficiency is also connected to temperature, as bees tend to be more productive in warmer temps. And as fruit quality and health can be improved through BVT's methods, use of their system can increase revenue per acre, as well as fruit shelf life.
BVT utilizes bumblebees to implement their pollination solutions. Working with commercial bee-rearing companies, BVT's product is composed of a tray that carries the microbe that can be inserted into the commercial beehive delivered to the farmer. And with honey bees, the tray would be positioned outside the beehive. Honey bee keepers who work with the BVT system are given an opportunity to increase their revenue per hive.
Malik discusses the various strategies for positioning the hives and how placement can increase productivity. But workers, tractors and farm equipment, etc. must be considered regarding placement, as the bees should not be disturbed in order for them to be able to work efficiently. And he explains how the bees systematically cover an area, as the first wave of bees will deplete the nectar in the closest flowering crops, and then the second wave will go further or deeper. Therefore, consideration of placement is always important, and refinement of the entire process is critical as well to achieve the best results. Malik states that crop protection, and agricultural inputs (products permitted for use within organic farming) are a $50 billion dollar industry, so clearly, efficient, more organic pollination is here to stay.
Dr. Lisa Amini is the director of IBM Research Cambridge, which includes the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab. Watson is a complex question-answering computer system that is capable of providing answers to questions that are directed in natural language; it was developed in IBM's DeepQA project. Dr. Amini has extensive experience in deep information extraction, representation, and reasoning as it pertains to knowledge, semantic analysis, and decision science. Her past work includes the development of strategies for utilizing science and technology in intelligent urban and environmental systems, specifically centered on sustainability issues, resource management, transportation, and data.
Dr. Amini discusses how the Watson products focus on specific products that can be benefited by machine learning, natural language processing, computer vision, and image analysis. Beyond the interesting gaming aspect that gained Watson much public attention, Amini explains that the AI's uses for business applications are quite diverse and multitudinous. She gives an insightful overview of the current AI algorithms that exist in the market and how they perform extremely well utilizing large volumes of data, training on that data, learning from patterns and responses, and image recognition, etc. As the AI expert details, the AI often needs volumes of data in order to make assessments or recognition of an image, and the innovation will come from pushing the AI to make inferences without the need for voluminous data. For as human knowledge comes from multiple sources and signals such as reading documents, recognition, talking to other informed individuals, etc., their learning is more broadly focused. And this multi-modal learning is essentially where Dr. Amini and her team are seeking to make improvements with AI technology.
The AI innovator discusses how her team is using advanced information theory techniques to understand how information flows within networks. By studying how models are trained regarding the neural network, researchers can build more scalable models that may provide better output. She explains that one valuable element of natural language processing is the analyzation of text, to understand the importance of relationships in order to bring that information to the user in a more qualitative manner.
Dr. Amini speaks about the questions that arise in human understanding, and how it is important to know 'what causes what' in terms of gathering a broader grasp of information. She discusses her hopes to see advances in machine learning applied to areas that would enable us to learn representations of causal structure and causal information, as well as in areas of security in order to provide more robust solutions. From healthcare to security and everything in between, Dr. Amini sees great potential for AI advances that will improve the ways we receive, use, and implement information.
Dispatch Labs is building a revolutionary business-ready blockchain protocol: an advanced platform that facilitates the upload and control of programmable files (artifacts). It gives dApp developers a new freedom to pursue big ideas unencumbered by data limitations. It's a foundational technology that will set blockchain on the path to fulfilling its promise as a world-changing movement.
"There's a lot to be discovered if you let evolution run its course and be creative," says Risto Miikkulainen, CTO of Sentient and professor of computer science at the University of Texas. As the author of over 380 articles covering research topics in neuroevolution and neural network models of language processing and vision, Miikkulainen is an expert in his field.
Among many topics, he joins the conversation today to discuss the distinction between neuroevolution and standard neural networks, the novel solutions and unanticipated discoveries that result from evolutionary optimization, the application of neuroevolution to robotics, and Sentient Ascent--a website optimization system built by the team at Sentient, whose job is to optimize the design of websites in order to increase the level of user engagement.
Tune in for all the details.
Grant Geiger is the CEO and co-founder of EIR Healthcare, a company that centers its work at the intersection between the technology and infrastructure spaces in healthcare. One of its most recent projects is MedModular, a patient room focused on updating the technological and structural aspects of the inpatient experience. EIR Healthcare's MedModular rooms can be built within 30 days and delivered directly to a facility for installation or insertion into the existing infrastructure.
Featuring static LED screens, pre-treated materials that prevent the growth of bacteria, mold and hospital-acquired infections, lighting that's tied to the circadian rhythm, and sound-dampening panels, these rooms have already shown to improve patient experience and ultimately shorten hospital stays.
"Technology is changing faster than you can open up a facility or building…and the infrastructure and needs to support a hospital are completely different than they are for commercial buildings," says Geiger. This is precisely where EIR Healthcare is stepping in to provide solutions and keep up with the technology and healthcare demands of today's world.
Tune in and visit www.eirhealthcare.com to learn more.
Tara Shimer discovered the ketogenic diet about three years ago and was immediately astounded by the level of scientific and medical credibility it had already garnered. Aside from reduced inflammation, sustained energy, and quicker muscle recovery, Shimer says that "The main benefit is the cognitive function, I feel like my brain fires on all cylinders...that was the hook for me." Since then, Shimer has used the passion she gained by experiencing the transformative effects of the ketogenic diet to become the founder and CEO of the Keto Baking Company.
The Keto Baking Company currently offers one product line called Gra-POW!, which is low-carb, high-fat, and low-protein cookie granola that comes in four different flavors: snickerdoodle, peanut butter and jelly thumbprint, peanut butter cut, and salted caramel brownie. But with such a low carb count, where does the sweetness come from? Shimer explains how and why the use of erythritol as a sweetener is superior to sucralose and other sweeteners.
Tune in to learn what's on the horizon for the Keto Baking Company, check out their products at www.ketobakingco.com, or reach out to Tara tara@ketobakingco.com.
Russell Korus, Founder and CEO at EZ Exchange joins host Juliet Lemar on Future Tech Podcast.
EZ Exchange is building a path to mass adoption of cryptocurrency. Their platform is built by veteran stock market developers, stock market security experts and customer experience practitioners to make buying, selling and trading digital currency easy and safe. Around the clock phone, chat and email support helps to remove the barriers of entry for new users, while experienced traders enjoy advanced functionality. Their talented team has extensive experience and includes some of the foremost experts in blockchain and cryptocurrency development in the world.
For more on EZ Exchange, visit www.ezexchange.com
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