Google’s former CEO gives $150 million to improve research standards in biology and artificial intelligence

Google's former CEO Eric Schmidt and his wife Wendy have given a whooping sum of $150 million to the research institute to establish an innovative "new era of biology" aimed at battling different diseases' variants by combining the right mixture of data and life sciences studies. It is said that the Massachusetts-based Broad institute MIT and Harvard will be using these funds to build an innovation center.

This innovation center will bring together academia and industry to merge the two disciplines to make people healthier and the world a better place. To date, these fields have developed in parallel. Their convergence will establish a new era of biology, which will yield a deep understanding of biological processes. Its ultimate aim and focus will be to improve human health through more powerful disease prevention, diagnosis, and treatment.

Experts have stated that this initiative will set a precedent for building many research centers that mix science and technology. The innovation center will be named after the Schmidts, and the research center will collaborate with experts from numerous fields at companies' ranging from Google, Microsoft, and AstraZeneca. It will also partner with learning institutions that include Oxford University and the Mayo Clinic.

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Society Isn’t Where It Needs To Be: Alphabet CFO

According to a report by PwC, the pandemic has had a severe impact on a decade's worth of work that has gone into helping women gain traction at the workplace in the U.S. and other rich countries.

While the pandemic has impacted many lives in a big way, the lives of women have been severely impacted as the crisis has added additional responsibilities to women. This is mainly due to the rise of WFH and remote schooling, which has added caretaking responsibilities on women. These responsibilities have brought about the exodus of legions of women from the global workforce.

For long, women have been tasked with caretaking responsibilities due to the longstanding societal structures. This has been a huge barrier for women to join the workforce traditionally. But things have changed in the last decade as the numbers of women at workplaces have significantly increased.

But the COVID-19 pandemic has thrown a curveball at this positive growth. "The most important point is society isn't where it needs to be," said Ruth Porat, CFO of Alphabet, in an interview. She was the CFO of Morgan Stanley prior to joining Google in 2015. "This is a broad societal issue."

But the gender disparity is apparent even in the private sector. Does Ruth do anything to help with this? "Where I'm most focused is: How do you break through those [headwinds] and accelerate the opportunities for women at all levels? And it clearly starts with the tone from the top," she said.

She explained that leaders must work together to put in place rigorous systems and processes to get better results for recruiting and higher equity for women at the workplace and at the corporate ladder's top echelons.

 

We’re Moving To An Open Cloud Platform With Amadeus: LeylaAkgez-Laakso, CIO Finavia

Finavia, the public limited company responsible for maintaining and developing Finland's airport network, has chosen Amadeus as its partner to modernize the company's technology infrastructure.

Finavia is currently in the final stages of the large development program at Helsinki Airport. For this, the company has been on the lookout for a technology partner who would help it modernize tech infrastructure, including check-in and boarding systems.

Amadeus Flow, an integrated cloud solution by Amadeus, is now all set to modernize all aspects of passenger handling, including software, hardware, and services. The cloud solution will help Finavia connect all the company-owned airports through a single link. In this partnership, Amadeus' Airport Pay solution will also be deployed from the cloud.

"We're moving to an open cloud platform with Amadeus and that means we can roll out new innovations far more easily, without lengthy certification cycles or onsite IT projects," says LeylaAkgez-Laakso, CIO Finavia. "We're now well placed to add innovations like contactless payments quickly and easily without the need for Finavia to become a systems integrator. Airports are digitally transforming and I believe COVID-19 marks a tipping point where our industry goes cloud."

The newly available cloud infrastructure will mean that Finavia, airlines and ground handling companies will be able to easily open, close or move check-in desks, boarding gates or services with agility in response to fluctuating passenger demand caused by COVID-19.

YannickBeunardeau, Vice President Airport IT, EMEA, Amadeus, said: "Airports need to be able to roll out new capabilities quickly and they need to be able to adapt services to changing requirements of passengers. By choosing to run its infrastructure from the cloud with Amadeus, Finavia is ready to innovate for many years to come."

 

 

US retailers shift their focus on natural refrigerant-based condensing units

US retailers in recent times are demanding natural refrigerant-based condensing unit technologies, according to the recent report. The North American Sustainable Refrigeration Council (NASRC) has surveyed 13 food retailers representing more than 17,000 US locations to characterize the retailer demand for natural refrigerant-based condensing units. The report says that the retailers mostly prefer CO2 and the propane-based condensing unit.

The report demonstrates the strong demand for natural refrigerant-based condensing unit technologies in the US, with 100 percent participating retailers indicating interest in these units. Retailers have suggested using CO2-based condensing units to serve medium temperature with the refrigerated display cases. This also includes other natural condensing units, which the retailers have preferred.

NASRC recognizes that the transitioning away from HFCs to natural refrigerants is expensive, and retailers require a cost-effective and modular technology option that allows them to migrate their refrigeration loads and displace the existing system over time. The load type and corresponding capacity ranges (MBTUs) and other mediums can also reduce the cost. The real challenge is how to accelerate missions' reduction in the 38,000 stores that currently exist in the USA.