Lab-to-Table: While lab-grown meat has come a long way since the first Petri-dish burger, there’s miles to go until it’s ready for show time and even further to go until it’s mass produced and sold to the Whole Foods masses. Commercial clean-meat funding is available thanks to the likes of Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Cargill, and Tyson Foods. Academic funding for basic lab grown meat, on the other hand, is hard to come by. On February 6, the Good Food Institute, a think tank in Washington D.C. that promotes alternatives to meat announced the winners of their grant program. Fourteen projects split $3 million. https://go.nature.com/2t9Aq0F
Upfront and transparent: Johnson & Johnson said that it will begin providing prices for their prescription drugs in television commercials. They are the first pharmaceutical company to make the leap. The first drug announced will be the blood thinner, Xarelto. The advertisements will provide the pill’s list price plus typical-out-of-pocket costs. http://bit.ly/2tdle2l
Operation Cloudhopper: Reuters reports that cybersecurity experts are sounding the alarm in what has been labeled a potentially catastrophic attack. Chinese hackers working on behalf of Chinese intelligence agencies hacked into the network of Visma, a Norwegian software firm. Experts say that the incident was part of a larger campaign called Cloudhopper which is designed to steal technology from Western companies. https://reut.rs/2UNgXyl
More cases of measles worldwide: Outbreaks of measles are spreading around the world and Europe is experiencing a record number of illnesses, according to annual data released by the World Health Organization. Measles killed 72 children and adults in the European Region in 2018.a total of 82,596 people contracted the the disease in 47 out of 53 countries. 61% of those cases required hospitalization. Ironically, this has occurred at a time when a record number of children are being immunized against measles. http://bit.ly/2UHHq0q
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