UPDATE: EDDIE McGuire has the backing of the Collingwood board to remain president after accepting his apology for his explosive radio comments about Caroline Wilson.

La nouvelle saison sera déposée sur illico+ le 13 novembre.

Les White Stripes ont abandonné leur plainte sur les droits d'auteur contre le président des États-Unis nouvellement réélu, Donald Trump.

Joël McGuirk a dénoncé son retrait imprévu du dernier plateau de «Tout le monde en parle», lundi, au micro de Sophie Durocher, à QUB radio.

ONE of the world’s most spectacular clouds made a dramatic entrance for passengers on an Adelaide-bound jet.

The Arctic territory hopes that three new airports will pave the way for direct flights from the US and Europe.

LEGENDARY Ironman champion and long-serving swimming coach Barry Rodgers died yesterday aged 74 after battling cancer. He is remembered as “the embodiment of grit and determination”.

Une étude rapporte que la perturbation de l’équilibre du microbiote intestinal par le stress dérègle la fonction des cellules immunitaires.

Dans une étude, on rapporte qu’un médicament antidiabétique très utilisé retarde les effets négatifs du vieillissement sur les fonctions cognitives.

Selon une étude, l’activité physique régulière pourrait atténuer le risque de développer un cancer du pancréas, qui touche les personnes obèses.

En 2024, on estime que 3000 Canadiennes recevront un diagnostic de cancer de l’ovaire.

Une découverte biochimique intrigante pourrait permettre d’identifier rapidement les patients à haut risque.

Public Sector Enterprises Selection Board (PSEB) is seeking qualified candidates for the post of managing director at the Karnataka Antibiotics & Pharmaceuticals Limited (KAPL) in Bengaluru. The candidate will be

The Embassy of India in Iraq has extended an invitation to Indian businesses to participate in the "Medico Expo," officially known as the Erbil International Health Exhibition. This prestigious event, set to be the

The Directorate General of Trade Remedies (DGTR), under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, has issued a notice to all interested parties involved in the sunset review of the anti─dumping investigation

The Indian pharmaceutical industry is advocating for enhanced fire safety measures and improved insurance coverage for employees working in pharmaceutical facilities.

Asahi Kasei Medical has launched the Planova FG1, a next-generation virus removal filter featuring higher flux for the manufacture of biotherapeutics, in October 2024.

Humans and pigs could both serve as mixing vessels for a bird flu–seasonal flu hybrid, posing a risk of wider spread

Analysis of a strain of the virus circulating in Central Africa shows genetic mutations indicative of sustained human-to-human spread

Culture may play a role in how birds build collectively in the Kalahari Desert

“Going viral” appears to be more than just a catchphrase when it comes to the rampant spread of misinformation

This year won’t just be the hottest on record—it could be the first to surpass 1.5 degrees Celsius. The Paris climate accord aims to keep warming below that level when looking over multiple years

Is your kid in trouble? Blaming their friends is ill advised

Outside groups often offer their solutions for climate adaptation in Africa. But the best people to manage the climate crisis are the people in those communities themselves. For climate adaptation to succeed in Africa, let communities and local leaders show the way

Jonny Kim—a former Navy SEAL and ER doctor—is now a NASA astronaut who will soon launch to the International Space Station as flight engineer for the crew of Expedition 72/73

Autumn is here! Curl up with your favorite pumpkin-spiced blog and savor these acorns that we’ve squirrelled away for you:

• Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicines gives a peek inside its $43 billion gross-to-net bubble

• Optum Rx joins the private label biosimilar bandwagon

• Biosimilars boom for provider-administered drugs

• Fresh evidence of how copay accumulators hurt patients

Plus, words of wisdom from Cencora's soon-to-be-former CEO Steve Collis.

P.S. Join my more than 58,000 LinkedIn followers for daily links to neat stuff along with thoughtful and provocative commentary from the DCI community.

There’s still time to request an invite to the inaugural Drug Channels Leadership Forum. Attendance will be highly limited. We have already begun extending invitations, so apply now to be considered. Click here to view the full agenda.

Read more »

This week, I’m rerunning some popular posts while we put the finishing touches on DCI’s new 2024-25 Economic Report on Pharmaceutical Wholesalers and Specialty Distributors.

Last week, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released the redacted version of administrative complaint against the three largest pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs). The FTC rightly calls out how the gross-to-net bubble can raise patients’ out-of-pocket costs, while also acknowledging how rebates can reduce a plan's (but not the patient’s) costs. Apparently, the FTC believes that PBMs’ customers are pretty dumb, because PBMs are able to prevent plans from “appreciating” such healthcare financing dynamics.

Section V.E. of the complaint (starting on page 23) focuses on the PBMs’ alleged unlawful conduct related to preferring high-list/high-rebate insulin products over versions with lower list prices. I thought it would therefore be fun to take the Wayback Machine to November 2021, when I wrote about this specific topic.

Below, you can review my commentary about the warped incentives behind Viatris’ dual-pricing strategy for its interchangeable biosimilar of Lantus. Much of the FTC’s description of the drug channel aligns with my commentary. But before you fist pump too hard for Ms. Khan’s FTC, you should pause to reflect on the agency’s legal theories in light of plans’ revealed preferences.

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The Food & Drug Administration (FDA) recently approved the first interchangeable biosimilar insulin product: the insulin glargine-yfgn injection from Viatris. Read the FDA’s press release.

Alas, I’m sad to report that the warped incentives baked into the U.S. drug channel will limit the impact of this impressive breakthrough.

Viatris is being forced to launch both a high-priced and a low-priced version of the biosimilar. However, only the high-list/high-rebate, branded version will be available on Express Scripts’ largest commercial formulary. Express Scripts will block both the branded reference product and the lower-priced, unbranded—but also interchangeable—version. Meanwhile, Prime Therapeutics will place both versions on its formularies, leaving the choice up to its plan sponsor clients.

Consequently, many commercial payers will adopt the more expensive product instead of the identical—but cheaper—version. As usual, patients will be the ultimate victims of our current drug pricing system.

Below, I explain the weird economics behind this decision, highlight the negative impact on patients, and speculate on what this all could mean for biosimilars’ future. Until plan sponsors break their addiction to rebates, today’s U.S. drug channel problems will remain.
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This week, I’m rerunning some popular posts while we put the finishing touches on DCI’s new 2024-25 Economic Report on Pharmaceutical Wholesalers and Specialty Distributors.

The article below highlights an underappreciated consequence of the Inflation Reduction Act’s inflation rebates for Medicare Part B drugs. Last night, I posted an updated analysis showing that the volatility in seniors' coinsurance rates continues. For the fourther quarter of 2024, coinsurance rates for 51 drugs increased, while rates for only 19 drugs decreased. What's more, rates for 17 drugs returned to their original 20% level. Click here to see our original post from May 2024.

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Contrary to what you may have heard, the Inflation Reduction Act’s (IRA) inflation rebates for Medicare Part B drugs do not always save money for seniors.

As we document below, a growing share of Part B drugs have inflation-adjusted coinsurance rates that have been increasing, not declining. In many cases, the coinsurance rate declines only briefly before rebounding back to the standard 20% rate. What’s more, these fluctuations have triggered huge jumps in patients’ out-of-pocket obligations for some drugs—even when a drug’s costs were falling.

Chalk off these coinsurance surprises to yet another unintended consequence of the IRA. Seniors who are expecting to see costs drop may find they are instead being taken for a rollercoaster ride.
Read more »

A new survey of plan sponsors sheds light on their satisfaction with transparency at large and small pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs).

As you will see, clients remain slightly more satisfied with the perceived transparency of smaller PBMs compared with the Big Three PBMs—CVS Caremark, Express Scripts, and Optum Rx.

However, plan sponsors are dissatisfied with transparency about how both large and small PBMs make money. Smaller PBMs have an edge, but it’s narrower than you might think.

Perhaps PBMs’ clients are unable or unwilling to negotiate better deals, write more effective contracts, and switch to more satisfying relationships. Or maybe they don’t mind the current system, despite the challenges for patients. Some argue that transparency could swoop down to solve this problem. Riddle me this: Should we watch what plan sponsors say, or what they do?

Read on to see what you think of my arguments below. Then, click here to share your thoughts with the Drug Channels community.
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Today’s guest post comes from Greg Skalicky, President, EVERSANA and Faruk Abdullah, President, Professional Services & Chief Business Officer, EVERSANA

Greg and Faruk walk through the marketplace pressures driving Direct-to-Patient commercialization models. They argue that a technology-enabled infrastructure,  combined with clinical and reimbursement support specialists, can improve  patients' access to new therapies, shorten the time to therapy, and enable better overall clinical outcomes.

Click here to learn more about EVERSANA’s Direct-to-Patient care model.

Read on for Greg and Faruk’s insights.
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Eeek! It's time for Drug Channels’ Halloween roundup of terrifying tales to share with your ghoulish fiends. This month’s tricks and treats:

• Spooky! Blue Shield of California frightens away the gross-to-net bubble with its Humira biosimilar strategy

• Vampiric! Prior authorization sinks its fangs into providers’ time

• Wicked! How the IRA will put a stake through specialty physician practices

• Eerie! Google’s monstrous AI podcasts leave me petrified

• Zoinks! Join the vampire hunters at Drug Channels Institute

Plus, Dr. Glaucomflecken tells us a frightening tale of copayments.

P.S. Stretch out your arms and join the ever-growing zombie horde who shamble after me on LinkedIn. You’ll find my ghostly rantings along with commentary from the undead hordes in the DCI community.
Read more »

The FDA doesn’t care about the First Amendment rights of the companies it regulates. It cares even less about the “free speech” rights of those companies’ sales and marketing representatives. And why should the agency care? One of FDA’s primary missions is to protect the public health and safety of the American people from illegal, adulterated and misbranded products. Doing so involves restraining food, drug, device and cosmetics companies from committing fraudulent and deceptive acts that are not protected by companies’ commercial free speech rights. Nonetheless, FDA Matters envisions opportunities for FDA and industry to broaden permissible product communications. The key is understanding history, not constitutional law.

Two former board chairs of the Coalition for Healthcare Communication (CHC) were named as the Medical Advertising Hall of Fame (MAHF) 2025 inductees – Sharon Callahan, former Chief Client Officer at Omnicom Health Group (OHG), and Nick Colucci, former Chairman and CEO of Publicis Health/COO of Publicis Groupe North America. The inductees will be honored […]

<p>On 19&nbsp;September 2024, the European Medicines Agency’s (EMA) Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP)&nbsp;adopted a positive opinion,&nbsp;recommending the granting of marketing authorization&nbsp;for&nbsp;two aflibercept biosimilars:&nbsp;&nbsp;Sandoz’s Afqlir and Samsung Bioepis’s Opuviz.&nbsp;These products are biosimilars of the reference product Eylea, developed by Regeneron and Bayer.</p>

<p> <b>23rd Regulatory Affairs Conference 202</b><b>5</b><br /> <b>27</b><b>‒</b><b>28 February 2025</b><br /> Hilton Amsterdam Airport Schiphol<br />Amsterdam, The Netherlands</p>

The government implied wholesalers had more personal protective equipment in stock than was the case during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Healthcare Distribution Association has said.

The latest information about the novel coronavirus identified in Wuhan, China, and advice on how pharmacists can help concerned patients and the public.

Novartis recently announced the acquisition of Mariana Oncology, an emerging biotech focused on advancing a radioligand therapeutics platform, for up to $1.75 billion in upfronts and future milestones. The capstone of its three short years of operations, this acquisition represents

The post Mariana Oncology’s Radiopharm Platform Acquired By Novartis appeared first on LifeSciVC.

On this date 349 years ago, Samuel Pepys relates in his famous diary a remarkable story about an upcoming medical experiment. As far as I can tell, this is the first written description of a paid research subject.

According to his account, the man (who he describes as “a little frantic”) was to be paid to undergo a blood transfusion from a sheep. It was hypothesized that the blood of this calm and docile animal would help to calm the man.

Some interesting things to note about this experiment:

• Equipoise. There is explicit disagreement about what effect the experimental treatment will have: according to Pepys, "some think it may have a good effect upon him as a frantic man by cooling his blood, others that it will not have any effect at all".
• Results published. An account of the experiment was published just two weeks later in the journal Philosophical Transactions. 
• Medical Privacy. In this subsequent write-up, the research subject is identified as Arthur Coga, a former Cambridge divinity student. According to at least one account, being publicly identified had a bad effect on Coga, as people who had heard of him allegedly succeeded in getting him to spend his stipend on drink (though no sources are provided to confirm this story).
• Patient Reported Outcome. Coga was apparently chosen because, although mentally ill, he was still considered educated enough to give an accurate description of the treatment effect. 

Depending on your perspective, this may also be a very early account of the placebo effect, or a classic case of ignoring the patient’s experience. Because even though his report was positive, the clinicians remained skeptical. From the journal article:

The Man after this operation, as well as in it, found himself very well, and hath given in his own Narrative under his own hand, enlarging more upon the benefit, he thinks, he hath received by it, than we think fit to own as yet.

…and in fact, a subsequent diary entry from Pepys mentions meeting Coga, with similarly mixed impressions: “he finds himself much better since, and as a new man, but he is cracked a little in his head”.

The amount Coga was paid for his participation? Twenty shillings – at the time, that was exactly one Guinea.

[Image credit: Wellcome Images]

A person has tested positive in British Columbia, Canadian health officials said, though the results must be sent to another lab for confirmation.

The National Institutes of Health, the crown jewel of biomedical research in the U.S., could face big changes under the new Trump administration, some fueled by pandemic-era criticisms of the agency.

This article is part of our exclusive IEEE Journal Watch series in partnership with IEEE Xplore.

Sea turtles are remarkable creatures for a number of reasons, including the way they hear underwater—not through openings in the form of ears, but by detecting vibrations directly through the skin covering their auditory system. Inspired by this ability to detect sound through skin, researchers in China have created a heart-monitoring system, which initial tests in humans suggest may be a viable for monitoring heartbeats.

A key way in which doctors monitor heart health involves “listening” to the heartbeat, either using a stethoscope or more sophisticated technology, like echocardiograms. However, these approaches require a visit to a specialist, and so researchers have been keen to develop alternative, lower cost solutions that people can use at home, which could also allow for more frequent testing and monitoring.

Junbin Zang, a lecturer at the North University of China, and his colleagues specialize in creating heart-monitoring technologies. Their interest was piqued when they learned about the inner workings of the sea turtle’s auditory system, which is able to detect low-frequency signals, especially in the 300- to 400-hertz range.

“Heart sounds are also low-frequency signals, so the low-frequency characteristics of the sea turtle’s ear have provided us with great inspiration,” explains Zang.

At a glance, it looks like turtles don’t have ears. Their auditory system instead lies under a layer of skin and fat, through which it picks up vibrations. As with humans, a small bone in the ear vibrates as sounds hit it, and as it oscillates, those pulses are converted to electrical signals that are sent to the brain for processing and interpretation.

iStock

But sea turtles have a unique, slender T-shaped conduit that encapsulates their ear bones, restricting the movement of the similarly T-shaped ear bones to only vibrate in a perpendicular manner. This design provides their auditory system with high sensitivity to vibrations.

Zang and his colleagues set out to create a heart monitoring system with similar features. They created a T-shaped heart-sound sensor that imitates the ear bones of sea turtles using a tiny MEMS cantilever beam sensor. As sound hits the sensor, the vibrations cause deformations in its beam, and the fluctuations in the voltage resistance are then translated into electrical signals.

The researchers first tested the sensor’s ability to detect sound in lab tests, and then tested the sensor’s ability to monitor heartbeats in two human volunteers in their early 20s. The results, described in a study published 1 April in IEEE Sensors Journal, show that the sensor can effectively detect the two phases of a heartbeat.

“The sensor exhibits excellent vibration characteristics,” Zang says, noting that it has a higher vibration sensitivity compared to other accelerometers on the market.

However, the sensor currently picks up a significant amount of background noise, which Zang says his team plans to address in future work. Ultimately, they are interested in integrating this novel bioinspired sensor into devices they have previously created—including portable handheld and wearable versions, and a relatively larger version for use in hospitals—for the simultaneous detection of electrocardiogram and phonocardiogram signals.

This article appears in the July 2024 print issue as “Sea Turtles Inspire Heart-Monitor Design.”

A thimbleful of soil can contain a universe of microorganisms, up to 10 billion by some estimates. Now a group of researchers in Bath, United Kingdom, are building prototype technologies that harvest electrons exhaled by some micro-species.

The idea is to power up low-yield sensors and switches, and perhaps help farmers digitally optimize crop yields to meet increasing demand and more and more stressful growing conditions. There could be other tasks, too, that might make use of a plant-and-forget, low-yield power source—such as monitoring canals for illegal waste dumping.

The research started small, based out of the University of Bath, with field-testing in a Brazilian primary school classroom and a green pond near it—just before the onset of the pandemic.

“We had no idea what the surroundings would be. We just packed the equipment we needed and went,” says Jakub Dziegielowski, a University of Bath, U.K. chemical engineering Ph.D. student. “And the pond was right by the school—it was definitely polluted, very green, with living creatures in it, and definitely not something I’d feel comfortable drinking from. So it got the job done.”

The experiments they did along with kids from the school and Brazilian researchers that summer of 2019 were aimed at running water purifiers. It did so. However, it also wasn’t very efficient, compared to, say, a solar panel.

So work has moved on in the Bath labs: in the next weeks, Dziegielowski will both turn 29 and graduate with his doctorate. And he, along with two other University of Bath advisors and colleagues recently launched a spinoff company—it’s called Bactery—to perfect a prototype for a network of soil microbial fuel cells for use in agriculture.

A microbial fuel cell is a kind of power plant that converts chemical energy stored in organic molecules into electrical energy, using microbes as a catalyst. It’s more often used to refer to liquid-based systems, Dziegielowski says. Organics from wastewater serve as the energy source, and the liquid stream mixes past the electrodes.

A soil microbial fuel cell, however, has one of its electrodes—the anode, which absorbs electrons—in the dirt. The other electrode, the cathode, is exposed to air. Batteries work because ions move through an electrolyte between electrodes to complete a circuit. In this case, the soil itself acts as the electrolyte—as well as source of the catalytic microbes, and as the source of the fuel.

The Bath, U.K.-based startup Bactery has developed a set up fuel cells powered by microbes in the soil—with, in the prototype pictured here, graphite mats as electrodes. University of Bath

Fields full of Watts

In a primary school in the fishing village of Icapuí on Brazil’s semi-arid northeastern coast, the group made use of basic components: graphite felt mats acting as electrodes, and nylon pegs to maintain spacing and alignment between them. (Bactery is now developing new kinds of casing.)

By setting up the cells in a parallel matrix, the Icapuí setup could generate 38 milliwatts per square meter. In work since, the Bath group’s been able to reach 200 milliwatts per square meter.

Electroactive bacteria—also called exoelectrogens or electricigens—take in soluble iron or acids or sugar and exhale electrons. There are dozens of species of microbes that can do this, including bacteria belonging to genera such as Geobacter and Shewanella. There are many others.

But 200 milliwatts per square meter is not a lot of juice: enough to charge a mobile phone, maybe, or keep an LED nightlight going—or, perhaps, serve as a power source for sensors or irrigation switches. “As in so many things, it comes down to the economics,” says Bruce Logan, an environmental engineer at Penn State who wrote a 2007 book, Microbial Fuel Cells.

A decade ago Palo Alto engineers launched the MudWatt, a self-contained kit that could light a small LED. It’s mostly marketed as a school science project. But even now, some 760 million people do not have reliable access to electricity. “In remote areas, soil microbial fuel cells with higher conversion and power management efficiencies would fare better than batteries,” says Sheela Berchmans, a retired chief scientist of the Central Electrochemical Research Institute in Tamil Nadu, India.

Korneel Rabaey, professor in the department of biotechnology at the University of Ghent, in Belgium, says electrochemical micro-power sources—a category that now includes the Bactery battery—is gaining buzz in resource recovery, for uses such as extracting pollutants from wastewater, with electricity as a byproduct. “You can think of many applications that don’t require a lot of power,” he says, “But where sensors are important.”

UPDATE 31 OCTOBER 2024: No. 1 no longer. The would-have-been groundbreaking study published in Nature Communications by Amit Goyal et al. claiming the world’s highest-performing high-temperature superconducting wires yet has been retracted by the authors.

The journal’s editorial statement that now accompanies the paper says that after publication, an error in the calculation of the reported performance was identified. All of the study’s authors agreed with the retraction.

The researchers were first alerted to the issue by Evgeny Talantsev at the Mikheev Institute of Metal Physics in Ekaterinburg, Russia, and Jeffery Tallon at the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. In a 2015 study, the two researchers had suggested upper limits for thin-film superconductors, and Tallon notes follow-up papers showed these limits held for more than 100 known superconductors. “The Goyal paper claimed current densities 2.5 times higher, so it was immediately obvious to us that there was a problem here,” he says.

Upon request, Goyal and his colleagues “very kindly agreed to release their raw data and did so quickly,” Tallon says. He and Talantsev discovered a mistake in the conversion of magnetization units.

“Most people who had been in the game for a long time would be fully conversant with the units conversion because the instruments all deliver magnetic data in [centimeter-gram-second] gaussian units, so they always have to be converted to [the International System of Units],” Tallon says. “It has always been a little tricky, but students are asked to take great care and check their numbers against other reports to see if they agree.”

In a statement, Goyal notes he and his colleagues “intend to continue to push the field forward” by continuing to explore ways to enhance wire performance using nanostructural modifications. —Charles Q. Choi

Original article from 17 August, 2024 follows:

Superconductors have for decades spurred dreams of extraordinary technological breakthroughs, but many practical applications for them have remained out of reach. Now a new study reveals what may be the world’s highest-performing high-temperature superconducting wires yet, ones that carry 50 percent as much current as the previous record-holder. Scientists add this advance was achieved without increased costs or complexity to how superconducting wires are currently made.

Superconductors conduct electricity with zero resistance. Classic superconductors work only at super-cold temperatures below 30 degrees Kelvin. In contrast, high-temperature superconductors can operate at temperatures above 77 K, which means they can be cooled to superconductivity using comparatively inexpensive and less burdensome cryogenics built around liquid nitrogen coolant.

Regular electrical conductors all resist electron flow to some degree, resulting in wasted energy. The fact that superconductors conduct electricity without dissipating energy has long lead to dreams of significantly more efficient power grids. In addition, the way in which rivers of electric currents course through them means superconductors can serve as powerful electromagnets, for applications such as maglev trains, better MRI scanners for medicine, doubling the amount of power generated from wind turbines, and nuclear fusion power plants.

“Today, companies around the world are fabricating kilometer-long, high-temperature superconductor wires,” says Amit Goyal, SUNY Distinguished Professor and SUNY Empire Innovation Professor at the University of Buffalo in New York.

However, many large-scale applications for superconductors may stay fantasies until researchers can find a way to fabricate high-temperature superconducting wires in a more cost-effective manner.

In the new research, scientists have created wires that have set new records for the amount of current they can carry at temperatures ranging from 5 K to 77 K. Moreover, fabrication of the new wires requires processes no more complex or costly than those currently used to make high-temperature superconducting wires.

“The performance we have reported in 0.2-micron-thick wires is similar to wires almost 10 times thicker,” Goyal says.

At 4.2 K, the new wires carried 190 million amps per square centimeter without any externally applied magnetic field. This is some 50 percent better than results reported in 2022 and a full 100 percent better than ones detailed in 2021, Goyal and his colleagues note. At 20 K and under an externally applied magnetic field of 20 tesla—the kind of conditions envisioned for fusion applications—the new wires may carry about 9.3 million amps per square centimeter, roughly 5 times greater than present-day commercial high-temperature superconductor wires, they add.

Another factor key to the success of commercial high-temperature superconductor wires is pinning force—the ability to keep magnetic vortices pinned in place within the superconductors that could otherwise interfere with electron flow. (So in that sense higher pinning force values are better here—more conducive to the range of applications expected for such high-capacity, high-temperature superconductors.) The new wires showed record-setting pinning forces of more than 6.4 trillion newtons at 4.3 K under a 7 tesla magnetic field. This is more than twice as much as results previously reported in 2022.

The new wires are based on rare-earth barium copper oxide (REBCO). The wires use nanometer-sized columns of insulating, non-superconducting barium zirconate at nanometer-scale spacings within the superconductor that can help pin down magnetic vortices, allowing for higher supercurrents.

The researchers made these gains after a few years spent optimizing deposition processes, Goyal says. “We feel that high-temperature superconductor wire performance can still be significantly improved,” he adds. “We have several paths to get to better performance and will continue to explore these routes.”

Based on these results, high-temperature superconductor wire manufacturers “will hopefully further optimize their deposition conditions to improve the performance of their wires,” Goyal says. “Some companies may be able to do this in a short time.”

The hope is that superconductor companies will be able to significantly improve performance without too many changes to present-day manufacturing processes. “If high-temperature superconductor wire manufacturers can even just double the performance of commercial high-temperature superconductor wires while keeping capital equipment costs the same, it could make a transformative impact to the large-scale applications of superconductors,” Goyal says.

The scientists detailed their findings on 7 August in the journal Nature Communications.

This story was updated on 19 August 2024 to correct Amit Goyal’s title and affiliation.

The teachings of Mahatma Gandhi were arguably India’s greatest contribution to the 20th century. Raghunath Anant Mashelkar has borrowed some of that wisdom to devise a frugal new form of innovation he calls “Gandhian engineering.” Coming from humble beginnings, Mashelkar is driven to ensure that the benefits of science and technology are shared more equally. He sums up his philosophy with the epigram “more from less for more.” This engineer has led India’s preeminent R&D organization, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, and he has advised successive governments.

What was the inspiration for Gandhian engineering?

Raghunath Anant Mashelkar: There are two quotes of Gandhi’s that were influential. The first was, “The world has enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed.” He was saying that when resources are exhaustible, you should get more from less. He also said the benefits of science must reach all, even the poor. If you put them together, it becomes “more from less for more.”

My own life experience inspired me, too. I was born to a very poor family, and my father died when I was six. My mother was illiterate and brought me to Mumbai in search of a job. Two meals a day was a challenge, and I walked barefoot until I was 12 and studied under streetlights. So it also came from my personal experience of suffering because of a lack of resources.

How does Gandhian engineering differ from existing models of innovation?

Mashelkar: Conventional engineering is market or curiosity driven, but Gandhian engineering is application and impact driven. We look at the end user and what we want to achieve for the betterment of humanity.

Most engineering is about getting more from more. Take an iPhone: They keep creating better models and charging higher prices. For the poor it is less from less: Conventional engineering looks at removing features as the only way to reduce costs.

In Gandhian engineering, the idea is not to create affordable [second-rate] products, but to make high technology work for the poor. So we reinvent the product from the ground up. While the standard approach aims for premium price and high margins, Gandhian engineering will always look at affordable price, but high volumes.

The Jaipur foot is a light, durable, and affordable prosthetic.Gurinder Osan/AP

What is your favorite example of Gandhian engineering?

Mashelkar: My favorite is the Jaipur foot. Normally, a sophisticated prosthetic foot costs a few thousand dollars, but the Jaipur foot does it for [US] $20. And it’s very good technology; there is a video of a person wearing a Jaipur foot climbing a tree, and you can see the flexibility is like a normal foot. Then he runs one kilometer in 4 minutes, 30 seconds.

What is required for Gandhian engineering to become more widespread?

Mashelkar: In our young people, we see innovation and we see passion, but compassion is the key. We also need more soft funding [grants or zero-interest loans], because venture capital companies often turn out to be “vulture capital” in a way, because they want immediate returns.

We need a shift in the mindset of businesses—they can make money not just from premium products for those at the top of the pyramid, but also products with affordable excellence designed for large numbers of people.

This article appears in the November 2024 print issue as “The Gandhi Inspired Inventor.”

As a leader who has committed much of his career to improving healthcare — an industry that holds millions of people’s lives in its hands — I took from this terrifying incident a new guiding principle. Healthcare needs to pursue a zero-failure rate.

The post What My Daughter’s Harrowing Alaska Airlines Flight Taught Me About Healthcare appeared first on MedCity News.

Pharmaceutical and biotech companies breathed a sigh of relief Monday when the Federal Circuit unanimously ruled in a precedential opinion that the mere sale of manufacturing services to create embodiments of a patented product is not a “commercial sale” of the invention that triggers the on-sale bar of 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) (pre-AIA).[1]  The en banc opinion...… Continue Reading

This paper provides a high-level tour of five modern approaches to model building that are available in recent releases of SAS/STAT.

HONG KONG — China's National Health Commission (NHC) published its first set of guidelines to standardise the diagnosis and treatment of obesity, with more than half of China's adults already overweight and obese, and the rate expected to keep rising.  The guidelines, made public on October 17, come as China experiences an upward morbidity trend of its overweight and obese population. The rate of overweight or obese people could reach 65.3 per cent by 2030, the NHC said.   "Obesity has become a major public health issue in China, ranking as the sixth leading risk factor for death and disability in the country," the guidelines said. China is facing a twin challenge that feeds its weight problem: In a modernising economy underpinned by technological innovation, more jobs have become static or desk-bound, while a prolonged slowdown in growth is forcing people to adopt cheaper, unhealthy diets.