Bio blood GE Ventures theranos GE Ventures unveils new blood collection startup Drawbridge Health

Drawbridge Health wants to make it easier for doctor’s offices and clinics to collect small samples of your blood for testing on site with a handheld device.

The device uses proprietary technology to collect and stabilize just a few drops of blood for various tests like hormone levels, genetic testing, monitoring disease and other things patients normally have to get done at an outside lab like Quest Diagnostics or Lab Corp.

Instead, the device can stay in the clinic and the proprietary Drawbridge cartridge holding your blood would be shipped out to the third-party lab for results.

Of course, any blood diagnostics startup claiming to collect just a few drops of blood for testing on a small device is going to get compared to Theranos, which first promised to deliver results for hundreds of diseases on a single drop of blood. It’s an understatement to say things didn’t go so well for that startup and it seems it may now be running out of cash.

However, GE Ventures partner Risa Stack, who was instrumental in guiding the idea for Drawbridge says, unlike Theranos, Drawbridge only collects the blood. It doesn’t do the testing.

“Partners are going to run the tests on our stabilized samples. Our responsibility is to give them a quality sample,” Stack told TechCrunch.

GE Ventures started the company through an old school VC method of first coming up with the idea in house, with the promise of launching and funding the startup as it progresses.

The idea probably sounds fantastic to anyone who hates going to the doctor and then going out to a lab for blood work. The device also promises minimal discomfort for those who hate needles as it takes just a few drops from your upper arm. I’m told it feels like less than a pinch.

But first Drawbridge needs to get through a few hurdles. It’s early days for Drawbridge and it is just now exploring partnerships with clinics and doctor’s offices.

It will also need to go through FDA approval, which it has applied for as a medical device.

This summer GE Ventures hired on Lee McCracken to run the ship as CEO at Drawbridge and the startup intends on a commercial launch next year, pending that FDA approval.

Of course, there are other approaches to cutting out the blood collection middleman — both One Medical and Forward have in-house labs where patients can get blood work done.

There are also other blood prick diagnostics out in the medical field but, as McCracken points out, those, like Theranos, come with potential risk.

“The current sample testing process is inconvenient and challenging for patients and medical providers, alike,” McCracken said in a statement. “It requires clinical processing equipment, often a technician specifically trained to draw blood, plus a trip to the doctor’s office or hospital. By combining world class technology developed by GE Healthcare and a talented founding team to address an important market need, Drawbridge Health is well positioned to transform diagnostic testing for healthcare stakeholders, testing laboratories, patients and consumers.”

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Katie Couric in 2012: Lauer ‘pinches me on the ass a lot’

PageSix.com

OMG! Do lots of publicity. Have a big feature article few years ago on Grand Central. What do I do! Put a “balloon head” animation in place of Matt Lauer???

Five years before NBC axed Matt Lauer amid allegations of sexual misconduct, former “Today” show anchor Katie Couric addressed her longtime co-host’s most “annoying” habit.

During a June 2012 appearance on Bravo’s “Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen,” Couric, 60, revealed Lauer, 59, got touchy with her behind during the show’s “Plead the Fifth” segment.

“He pinches me on the ass a lot,” Couric said.

NBC announced Wednesday morning Lauer had been fired over sexual harassment allegations by an employee.

Matt Lauer allegedly sexually assaulted staffer during Olympics
“On Monday night, we received a detailed complaint from a colleague about inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace by Matt Lauer. It represented, after serious review, a clear violation of our company’s standards. As a result, we’ve decided to terminate his employment,” NBC Chairman Andy Lack said in a memo to staffers.

“While it is the first complaint about his behavior in the over twenty years he’s been at NBC News, we were also presented with reason to believe this may not have been an isolated incident,” he continued.

“Our highest priority is to create a workplace environment where everyone feels safe and protected, and to ensure that any actions that run counter to our core values are met with consequences, no matter who the offender.”

“This happened so quickly. She didn’t go to the media, she made a complaint to NBC’s human resources, and her evidence was so compelling that Matt was fired on Tuesday night.”

Couric anchored the “Today” show from April 1991 to May 2006. Lauer joined in January 1997.

We’d only have 15 minutes of notice if a space storm were to hit

NY Post

Devastating space storms could strike Earth at any time – and we would only have 15 minutes of warning.

A direct hit from a space storm would wipe out power across the globe plunging the earth into complete darkness.

Chillingly, experts would only know about the cataclysmic phenomenon 15 minutes before it ploughs into us.

Space storms can come in a number of different forms but the most destructive is a coronal mass ejection (CME.)

These can send billions of tonnes of matter hurtling through space at more than seven million mph in a spectacular explosion.

They are caused by the sun shooting a giant cloud of magnetized plasma off into space and would cripple the earth by affecting technology, satellites and disrupting power supplies.

CMEs are often associated with solar flares – a giant explosion on the surface of the sun that sends energy and particles streaming off into space – but can occur independently.

Former SpaceX Intern Considers Elon Musk May Have Invented Bitcoin

cryptovest.com

For years, people have been looking for the man or woman behind the mysterious character who invented Bitcoin. Its first whitepaper was published by someone under the pseudonym, Satoshi Nakamoto.

Ever since the hunt began, several prominent people have entered the spotlight as the possible inventors of the famous coin, including Nick Szabo, the late Hal Finney, and Craig Steven Wright.

Now, a former intern at SpaceX—Sahil Gupta—wishes to throw Elon Musk’s name into the ring.

In his blog, he said that “the 2008 Bitcoin paper was written by someone with a deep understanding of economics and cryptography.”

Because Elon Musk has the same background, by Gupta’s logic, there’s a distinct possibility that he could be the mysterious inventor of the cryptocurrency.

The same could be said about any one of the hundreds of thousands of people who have degrees in economics and have dabbled in some advanced computer engineering, so Gupta went a little further:

“Experience aside, Elon is a self-taught polymath. He’s repeatedly innovated across fields by reading books on a subject and applying the knowledge. It’s how he built rockets, invented the Hyperloop (which he released to the world as a paper), and could have invented Bitcoin,” Gupta wrote.

Musk has not yet commented on this and may be unlikely to do so in the near future. As far as we know, he has made no similar claims in the past.

On the other hand, Craig Steven Wright has gone out of his way to take the Bitcoin throne, declaring himself to be the man behind the pseudonym in a mid-2016 interview.

Meanwhile, Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s co-founder, doesn’t believe it. He went as far as to ask Wright to “stop being a fraud, please.”

It’s unlikely that we’ll find out Nakamoto’s identity in the foreseeable future, but it is believed that he possesses around 1 million Bitcoin between all of his addresses.

This would make him a billionaire right now as the cryptocurrency eyes its $10,000 milestone.

Three more NYC ferries taken out of service for leaking

NY Post Com

We have gone after the NYC subway, Metro North and LIRR for a long time. The day we went after busses.

Three more of Mayor de Blasio’s ferries were taken out of service in the past 24 hours when alarms sounded because water was leaking into their bilges, the US Coast Guard said Monday.

The latest blow to the NYC Ferry service came just hours after The Post revealed on Sunday that three other boats in its fleet were already in dry dock for springing leaks and at least two others were repaired for the same problem.

Alarms went off on the Waves of Wonder and Sunset Crossing ferries late Sunday night and early Monday morning, according to USCG Chief Warrant Officer Allyson Conroy.

It was unclear if any passengers were on board at the time, Conroy said.

Ferry operator Hornblower told the Coast Guard it immediately took both boats out of service, along with a third vessel identified only by hull number H106, which Conroy said was sidelined “as a precaution.”

The three catamaran-style ferries were expected to arrive at the North River Shipyard in Nyack by Tuesday morning for inspection and/or repairs, Conroy added.

Marco Rubio Showcases Port Everglades’ Expansion

Sunshine States News

Last week, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., toured Port Everglades as that port continues its expansion efforts.

Currently Port Everglades is tackling various aspects of its expansion plans which its backers insist will create 7,000 jobs and support around 135,000 jobs across the state. The expansion includes adding five berths, tying rail to the port and widening and deepening the channel by 50 feet.

So far, the Florida East Coast Railway has completed its Intermodal Container Transfer Facility to expand rail operations. The five new berths and deepening and widening the channels are currently in the design stage.

Rubio toured the port on Wednesday and stressed the important role it plays in South Florida’s economy.

“Port Everglades is a hub of international trade and travel, and an economic powerhouse for South Florida,” Rubio said. “It was great to hear about the progress being made to ensure that the infrastructure at Port Everglades is able to continue to keep pace with the increasing size of modern transoceanic ships. I will continue to advocate for the modernization of Florida’s port infrastructure, including at Port Everglades which is linked to $28 billion in annual economic activity and more than 200,000 jobs.”

In the meantime, earlier this month, Port Everglades celebrated a new record for containerized cargo volumes with the port handling 1,076,893 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs ) in its 2017 fiscal year which closed at the end of September. That cargo total is up 4 percent from last year and is 1.5 percent higher than the record set in 2015.

Port Everglades also saw the total of cruise and ferry passengers increase to almost 3.9 million passengers, an increase of 1 percent in the closed fiscal year. The port also saw an increase of 1 percent in the amount of petroleum barrels move through it during that period

Steve Cernak, the chief executive and port director of Port Everglades, weighed in why the port was seeing increased traffic on several fronts.

“The volumes of refrigerated produce coming into Florida through Port Everglades from Central America is significant,” Cernak said. “It represents more than half of all perishable cargo that arrives in Florida by ocean.

“Apparel, tile and beverages also rank among our top commodities,” Cernak added. “Notably, we are seeing growth in machinery and automobile parts as the number of vehicles being shipped in and out of the port also increases.”

Even as operating revenue remains steady, the port impacts more than 220,000 jobs across the state. Broward County Mayor Barbara Sharief highlighted the important role the port played in the region’s economy earlier this month.

“Port Everglades is an economic generator for Broward County and Florida that delivers financial stability and jobs in our community,” Sharief said. “This record year is a positive indication of Broward’s commitment to the businesses that choose to locate here.”

THREE ADJOINING INDIAN STATES HAVE NOW SIGNED ON TO STUDY HIGH-SPEED ROUTES WITH HYPERLOOP ONE

Hyperloop One Blog

Envisioning a National Indian Hyperloop Network

Three Indian states think it’s time to include some bold thinking in transport planning: hyperloop. Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh, home to several of India’s largest economic centers including Mumbai, Bangaluru, and Visakhapatnam, are conducting studies with Hyperloop One to understand hyperloop’s feasibility and economic impact in the regions.

If hyperloop networks were established and linked among all three states, India could create a nationwide network that would enable travel within major cities in India in under two hours. This network could create the largest connected urban area in the world by linking nearly 75+ million people across the three states.

“Imagine the potential impact to people’s lives and commerce if travel between Mumbai, Bangaluru, Chennai, Visakhapatnam, and Amaravati could take place in under two hours. Hyperloop could change the face of India just as trains did during the Industrial Revolution,” said Nick Earle, SVP of Global Field Operations, Hyperloop One.

India has had a successful track-record of leapfrogging into new technologies. When mobile services were launched in the mid-1990s, the country moved directly to second generation (2G) technologies and rapidly rolled-out wireless, particularly in unconnected, rural communities. They continued this progression by embracing 4G over 3G. Now India now counts itself amongst the largest telecom markets in the world with more than billion subscribers and 80% mobile penetration. Wireless adoption has been a boon economically with the country realizing a 3.3 percent increase in GDP for every ten percent increase in mobile usage.

Hyperloop presents an opportunity for India to leapfrog again and address weaknesses in its transportation infrastructure. With speeds 2-3 times faster than high-speed rail, hyperloop can connect far-flung Indian cities as if they were metro stops, and offer energy-efficient, on-demand, and cost-effective transport at aircraft speeds.

The three states believe that hyperloop could improve global competitiveness, reduce congestion and emissions, and provide citizens with better social and economic mobility. While the studies underway would identify potential routes in each state, there are plenty of opportunities within each state where hyperloop could make a difference.

Protecting your holiday packages from ‘porch pirates’

OMG where you live is Always a problem. Nobody can find you (like me) or EVERYBODY can find you.

I live in a little house in the middle of a courtyard. It is isolated, but that is fine. UPS and FedEx are a problem. I do not buy all that much online so only a small problem.

A solution that is used in France is a “RELAIS”. A relay address. A small store that you can send packages to. Go to store, show drivers license, passport, or in France a National ID; pick up your package and go. Don’t drive. NO National ID (I am a worker here, not an “EXPAT). Just show passport.

Alec Wyand: An alternative route through the mountains

daily camera com

Who hasn’t been driving down Interstate 70 mumbling “damn tourists” under their breath at least one time?

Let us not forget about the people who are commuting I-70 out of necessity. Thousands of working people make the daily trek across one of America’s most closed highways for business rather than play. According to the Denver Post, I-70 closed every 2.4 days on average in 2016. The Colorado Department of Transportation has attempted to resolve matters. However, how much has this actually helped? Traffic still proves to be a nightmare both east and westbound on the interstate.

The amount of traffic also poses environmental concerns. One gallon of gasoline burns close to 9,000 grams of CO2. The annual average daily traffic in I-70 last year ranged from 22,000 all the way up to 69,000 around Evergreen and Idaho Springs. From the point of intersection of I-70 and I-470 to Vail is 87 miles. Not including semi-trucks, most cars will get around 20 miles per gallon on average during mountain driving. That means a little over four gallons, which translates to about 36,000 grams of CO2 emitted per car. Without traffic, CO2 emissions could range from 792,000,000 to 2,484,000,000 grams per day. That doesn’t factor in the amount of gasoline burned while waiting in traffic, nor does it factor in diesel burnt from semi-trucks.

On top of the environmental factors comes terms of safety. Between snow storms, rock slides and even stray animals, I-70 poses very dangerous conditions. Car accidents are not uncommon and many are fatal. Additionally, when closures happen, there is nowhere to turn. I-70 west of Denver has no alternative routes once you are in the mountains. Though there are a few frontage roads, they can be extremely difficult to access in miles of stopped traffic. More importantly, it makes it even more difficult for emergency vehicles to arrive on scene.

With the efforts of CDOT being minimally effective, there has to be something done that no one has thought of yet.

The answer is the new Hyperloop One.

This innovative mode of transportation uses depressurized tubes with magnets along rails to propel a human-carrying pod capable of reaching speeds up to 760 mph. Each pod can carry 28 to 40 passengers at a time while making it from Denver to Vail in around nine minutes. This also boasts a whopping 164,000 passengers a day with hyperloop pods leaving as frequently as every 40 seconds. Not only would this take care of the traffic on I-70, but it offers the first alternative route through the mountains.

Still, there are two major problems with the Hyperloop One.

The first problem is the hefty price tag of the construction. The second problem is the path on which the hyperloop construction would take and the leveling of trees and land. The first difficult part can be addressed with crowdsourcing. Because of the tourist population in Colorado, particularly from the ski industry, more people will be willing to donate from across America and even the world to see the project happen. Also, CDOT only receives about 5 percent of state taxes. However, with the huge increases of tax money generated from recreational marijuana each year, money theoretically could be put aside to help fund the project. As for the environmental impact, all construction requires destruction or morphing of Earth in some sort. The rideshare component of the hyperloop will take thousands of cars off the road and provide a much more sustainable source of transportation.

Rather than sitting in traffic angry at the world, give the people what they need. Stop polluting the air with unnecessary solo drives to and from work. Stop polluting the air while you’re making a solo trip to the mountains to ski first chair because none of your friends could get out of bed at 5 a.m. Give Coloradans an alternative way to make it through the mountains while reducing contributions to climate change.

Alec Wyand is a business student at the University of Colorado

How Lower Manhattan ‘reinvented’ itself after 9/11

NYPost.com

No part of town has more to give thanks for this holiday weekend than Lower Manhattan — a once-fading district that’s now home to more than 60,000 residents, new stores and restaurants, cutting-edge media and tech companies, and a family-friendly, 24/7 vibe for the first time since the New York Stock Exchange opened on Wall Street in 1792.

But a “part of town” is not the same as a human being, and those who lost loved ones on 9/11 surely have less to celebrate. The discomfiting realization rattled me at a new exhibition at the Skyscraper Museum in Battery Park City, “Millennium: Lower Manhattan in the 1990s.” (39 Battery Place, noon-6 p.m. Wednesday-Sunday, through April.)

The show’s program calls today’s Downtown “a model of a 21st Century environment of living, work, and play.” Yet, just 20 years ago, the neighborhood seemed to be on its last legs. Photos, models, architectural drawings and news accounts recall how the district was reeling from after-shocks of the 1987 Black Monday stock market crash. Banks fled to Midtown, leaving older skyscrapers dark. A handful of residents lived amidst long shadows of office towers empty after 5 p.m. and on weekends. “Once-grand banking halls and storefronts” stood “hauntingly silent,” the show reminds us.

The Wall Street area of the 1990s was “ripe for reinvention,” the “Millennium” exhibition tells us. But nobody in government or business knew how to do that. Not until Sept. 11, 2001 was “Downtown’s identity . . . cataclysmically recast as Ground Zero, and a new era truly begun.”

Translation: it took the slaughter of 2,606 innocent people and the destruction of 14 million square feet of offices to bring forth, not patchwork change, but a sweeping reconception. Downtown today otherwise would resemble the same struggling place it was before the attack.

To accept that heart-wrenching truth brings up morally charged questions that “Millennium” delicately avoids tackling head-on.

The exhibition gloomily evokes Downtown’s moribund state in the ’90s. The rise of the Twin Towers in the early 1970s was supposed to arrest the district’s decline. But it was a false prophecy — they were filled mainly with state offices for a time, and when commercial tenants finally came from obsolete nearby buildings, they sucked even more life out of the neighborhood around them.

We’re reminded of misguided efforts to bring back lost glory. There were proposals for a towering, new NYSE building even when digital advances were reducing the need for trading floors, and for a gargantuan, 400-foot-tall Guggenheim Museum in the East River. A 1995 New York Times article, “Bringing Downtown Back Up,” chronicled fitful efforts to convert useless office buildings to apartments.

Some incremental improvement was noticeable by 2000. An influx of dot-com tenants helped to cut office vacancies from 28 percent to 15 percent. There were glimmers of hope, too, in proposals for what the exhibition calls “intriguing, often provocative projects.” Fanciful notions including a redesigned South Street Seaport “planted the seeds” for future resurgence.

Yet the message didn’t reach the street. When I reviewed defunct restaurant Bayard’s at Hanover Square in early 2000, I wrote of the “weirdly deserted” after-dark Financial District: “Make sure you know how to get there, or face roaming the … loneliest streetscape this side of film noir.”

These nights, you might have more company than you want — folks eating at nearby Stone Street’s dozen-odd cafes, stroller moms and tourists searching for Broadway’s “Charging Bull” statue.

For all the good will of the ’90s, today’s Downtown — as the show calls it — couldn’t and wouldn’t exist had 9/11 not catalyzed a floodtide of $24 billion in direct federal aid plus state tax benefits — and an emotional commitment by people willing to move there.

Companies like Conde Nast, GroupM and Spotify, anchors of the new Downtown office economy, would not have moved there without new skyscrapers that replaced the prematurely obsolescent Twin Towers.

It was easy in the years following 9/11 to lament what seemed snail’s-pace progress in rebuilding “Ground Zero” and nearby projects. But 16 years are not so much time in New York City, where it took nearly 100 years to open a short spur of the Second Avenue Subway.

We can take heart in our contentious, ultimately heroic response to 9/11 — and to the major damage caused later by the 2008 Wall Street crash and 2012’s Superstorm Sandy.

But — although we may recoil from the notion — little or none of it could have happened without a satanic stroke of destruction to re-set the stage. Let’s give thanks for what we built in evil’s aftermath, but never lose sight of the evil itself. Remember it next time you’re sipping wine at Downtown’s gleaming new restaurants while the Memorial waters outside pour into the abyss.