Recombinetics utitlizó TALENs para eliminar los molestos cuernos del ganado y afirmó que sus animales eran 100 % bovinos. Pero un análisis de la FDA reveló que su genoma contiene genes bacterianos, algo que los sitúa en la categorÃa de organismo modificado genéticamente e impide su consumo
Source: MIT
Nicholas Negroponte reconoce que recomendó al director del centro, Joichi Ito, que aceptara su dinero antes de saber que dirigÃa una red de sexual, y admite que volverÃa hacerlo. Su afirmación sorprendió a los miembros del centro, algunos de los cuales le gritaron para que se callara
Source: MIT
Flat has raised one of Mexico’s largest pre-seed rounds to take the Opendoor real estate marketplace model across the Rio Grande.Â
The company snagged a $4.5 million pre-seed round to expand its business helping homeowners quickly sell their properties in Mexico. The round was led by ALLVP, an active early-stage fund in Mexico. California-based Liquid 2 Ventures (for which Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Montana is a GP), NextBillion and a few angels supported the round, as well.Â
At the time of writing, Flat’s raise is the largest pre-seed funding round for a Mexican startup aside from the scooter company, Grin, which was backed by Y Combinator and later went on to raise a $45 million Series A and consolidate with Brazil’s bike-sharing startup, Yellow.Â
While this ‘i-buying’ business model was initially pioneered by Opendoor in the U.S., the same need to efficiently sell property exists for consumers in other growing markets around the world. That’s why co-founders Victor Noguera and Bernardo Cordero founded Flat.Â
Bucking a trend that has seen many new Latin American founders hailing from Stanford University, Cordero and Noguera met at the University of California, Berkeley — just across the bay.
The founders estimate the total value of the 40 million homes in Mexico to be a $1.6 trillion total addressable market. They equate the value of homes sold per year to $25 billion. Let’s not forget the elephant in the room — SoftBank is undoubtedly eyeing Mexico with its $5 billion LatAm commitment.Â
Flat says it’s solving a few problems in the local home-buying market in Mexico. Firstly, anyone interested in selling their property lacks information about how much their home is actually worth. In the U.S., sellers can reference Zillow — but no such centralized database of real estate pricing information for the market of Mexico exists.Â
Then there’s the operational piece of transferring ownership of the property, which Flat says can take up to eight months and is a notarized process — making the overall experience incredibly illiquid.Â
Flat’s actual product is a marketplace focused on helping the seller sell quickly. Flat visits your home, takes measurements, documents how many bathrooms and bedrooms exist in the property and determines how much your home is worth. From there, they manage renovations and transfer ownership of the property. The seller is paid within 72 hours.Â
International expansion has been difficult for many startups operating in Latin America as every country has its own regulatory barriers. That’s why when it comes to growth, Flat says it’s more focused on growing out their product within other verticals of property management to only serve a Mexican market, rather than expand to other Spanish-language countries in the LatAm region.
Source: TechCrunch
Novameat, a Spanish startup looking to accelerate the development of alternative proteins across the meat aisle, has gotten a boost in the form of new investment capital from the leading foodtech investment firm, New Crop Capital.
Founded by biomedical engineering expert Giuseppe Scionti, Novameat builds on Scionti’s decade of research as an assistant professor in bioengineering at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, the University College of London, Chalmers University and Polytechnic University of Milan.
The company first came to fame with the production of the world’s first 3D-printed plant-based beefsteak in 2018 and will use the new funds from New Crop Capital to further develop its platform for accelerating the development of meats like steak, chicken breasts and other fibrous textured meat replacements.
The company has developed a new scaffolding technology that mimics the texture, appearance, nutritional and sensorial properties of fibrous meats like beefsteaks, chicken breasts and fish filets.
Scionti sees the technology as the next step in the development of plant-based and lab-cultured alternatives to traditional proteins. While many clean meat and plant-based food companies have managed to take ground meat replacements to market with similar taste and textural qualities to the real thing, steaks and cuts of muscle meat have proven harder to replicate.
Novameat potentially solves that problem.
“While I was researching on regenerating animal tissues through bioprinting technologies for biomedical and veterinary applications, I discovered a way to bio-hack the structure of the native 3D matrix of a variety of plant-based proteins to achieve a meaty texture,� said Scionti, in a statement.
The core of Novameat’s technology is a customized printer that enables companies to create the kinds of fibrous tissues needed to make a steak. “We are providing the equipment, the machinery, under a licensing agreement to these companies,” says Scionti. “Plant-based meat manufacturers have access to something that creates the texture and taste of a steak.”
Traditional extrusion technologies are not capable of using the ingredients from Beyond Meat or Impossible Foods to print a steak, but Novameat’s founder argues that his technology can.
The technology was promising enough to attract the attention of New Crop Capital, arguably one of the most seasoned investors in the expanding market of meat replacement. The venture firm’s portfolio includes Memphis Meat, Beyond Meat, Kite Hill, Geltor, Good Dot, Aleph Farms, Supermeat, Mosa Meat, New Wave and Zero Egg.
“We think the global food supply chain is broken and we are focused on fixing one of those challenges, which is animal protein,” says New Crop Capital’s Dan Altschuler Malek. “We see that there is an opportunity to shift consumer behavior to reduce their consumption of animal protein products to products that are at the price point that people will pay.”
Novameat can help reduce costs, Malek thinks, because it speeds up the time to create meat substitutes.
Scionti says the company’s micro-extrusion technology enables companies to get a three-dimensional structure without having to go through an incubation period that can take a significant amount of time and increase costs.
“Novameat’s bioprinting-based technology provides a flexible and tunable method of producing plant-based meat, with the utility to create different textures from a wide variety of ingredients, all within a single piece of meat,� he said. “Low and high-moisture extruders are the primary method currently used to restructure plant proteins to create the texture of meat. While extrusion works well for some applications, this method may not be ideal for mimicking all types of animal meat. Alternative technologies like Novameat’s give plant-based meat manufacturers a wider array of tools to mimic all types of meat and seafood,� said Good Food Institute Director of Science and Technology David Welch, in a statement.
Source: TechCrunch
Canadians call the abandonment of coasts and floodplains a “strategic retreat.� American politicians call it literally anything else they can.
Source: Wired
The 15-year-old’s match against Naomi Osaka will be remembered as a turning point.
Source: Wired
One of the latest updates for the Dev Channel of Microsoft’s new web browser is widely introducing features that further separate it out from regular version of Chrome.
Source: Digital trends
Opinion: As President, I would issue a robot tax for corporations displacing humans, and create a federal agency to oversee automation.
Source: Wired
Changing your Mac’s default apps is quick and easy to do. Whether you want to change your web browser or pick a new email app, you’ll be up and running in just a few clicks.
Source: Digital trends
Follow the eight steps described in this video and you too can start solving Rubik’s cubes faster … and faster … and faster.
Source: Wired