Daily Business Report-Oct. 24, 2019
Businesses from the area have been invited to attend this free educational event to empower small business owners with the tools and resources they need to build their businesses.
‘Boost with Facebook’ program coming
to Del Mar Fairgrounds Oct. 28-29
Facebook will bring its Boost with Facebook program to San Diego on Oct. 28-29 to highlight the importance of small businesses as the backbone of local communities and the economy. The event will be staged at the O’Brien Hall at the Del Mar Fairgrounds.
Businesses from the area have been invited to attend this free educational event to empower small business owners with the tools and resources they need to build their businesses.
A panel of San Diego area small businesses will be on hand to discuss how to use the platform to help support local veterans. With over 225,000 veterans residing in San Diego, it is imperative that the community is aware of all the veterans’ specific tools Facebook has to offer. Local businesses Veteran’s Rideshare Inc. and Saddles In Service will be on hand to discuss how they use digital tools to support their businesses and ultimately support veterans.
The event will also feature remarks from policymakers, Facebook executives and product experts.
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Illumina to lay off 58 employees
Illumina plans to lay off 58 employees, according to documents filed with the State of California Employment Development Department.
According to California’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) report, earlier this month the state received notice that Illumina will lay off 42 employees in San Diego and 16 employees in Foster City, effective Nov. 5.
The firm is headquartered in San Diego and uses its Foster City campus to further its presence in the Bay Area.
Illumina disclosed last month that it was undergoing an organizational restructuring, along with the January 2020 departure of Garret Hampton, senior vice president of clinical genomics. Whether the layoffs are related to the organizational restructuring is unclear. Illumina did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The layoffs follow a recent stretch of bad news for Illumina. In July, the company projected it would miss its second quarter revenue estimates by more than $50 million and lowered its full-year revenue guidance. Last month, the firm reported second quarter revenues of $838 million, short of the Wall Street estimate of $888 million, attributing the revenue shortfall to slowness in population genomics initiatives and weakness in the direct-to-consumer market.
And in May, Illumina-backed startup Helix reduced its workforce; Illumina later disclosed that it had deconsolidated its ties to Helix.
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Doctor at center of vaccine debate
charged by state medical board
Voice of San Diego Morning Report
The state medical board has charged a San Diego doctor with gross and repeated negligence, as well as failure to properly maintain records for writing a medical vaccine exemption under improper circumstances.
Voice of San Diego’s Will Huntsberry previously revealed how the doctor, Tara Zandvliet, had written dozens of vaccine exemptions for reasons that aren’t deemed legitimate by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatricians. Huntsberry found that Zandvliet had written nearly a third of all medical exemptions for San Diego Unified School District.
Zandvliet admits she has likely written 1,000 vaccine exemptions since 2015 in the charging documents, when a state law went into effect banning personal belief exemptions to vaccines, Huntsberry reports.
A new law, partially inspired by VOSD’s investigation, subjects doctors like her to more scrutiny. Starting in 2021, public health officials will have the power to review and overrule any exemption written by a physician who wrote more than five exemptions in a calendar year.
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Strong anti-vaping ads scheduled to air
California Department of Public Health officials are preparing to launch at least five anti-vaping ads aimed at dissuading young people from using any kind of vaping device by warning them of life-threatening lung disease.
The ads also seek to inform parents of warning signs, and drive people to a website, vapeoutbreak.org.
Gov. Gavin Newsom last month directed $20 million for the campaign.
Officials have not formally announced the campaign but have circulated the spots among anti-vaping advocates, including UC San Francisco Medical School professor Stanton Glantz, a longtime tobacco researcher. Glantz called the campaign “stunning.”
The latest count of the vaping-related disease: 136 Californians hospitalized. The exact cause remains unknown.
— Dan Morain, CALmatters
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UPS partners with CVS to develop drone
delivery service for prescription drugs
CNBC Holland, Frank
UPS has announced plans to work with CVS Health to develop a prescription drug delivery service using UPS drones. Earlier this month, UPS Flight Forward and its partner Matternet became the first drone delivery service to receive full certification from the FAA to operate a drone airline.
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Local transfer enrollments
on all-time increase at SDSU
The number of new transfer students attending San Diego State University has nearly doubled since 2011, with rapid growth among students from local community colleges.
Specifically, the recent growth in local transfer student enrollments at SDSU is credited to two main priorities: the university has enhanced support for transfer students, and both the university and the California State University system have dedicated financial support to improve enrollments at the local level.
Most recently, the CSU Office of the Chancellor provided enrollment growth funding at a 2.2 percent increase. SDSU opted to invest those funds in support for transfer students – with a priority for students attending local community colleges.
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Scientists identify what may be
key mechanism of opioid addiction
Scientists at Scripps Research have discovered a molecular process in brain cells that may be a major driver of drug addiction, and thus may become a target for future addiction treatments.
The scientists, who published their discovery on Oct. 22 in Cell Reports, used an advanced imaging technique to visualize brain cell activity during exposure to an opioid, in a part of the brain known to be centrally important for addiction. They found that key brain-cell changes that occur with addiction and help sustain addiction behavior are accompanied by—and plausibly driven by—particular changes in a signaling system involving a messenger molecule called cyclic AMP (cAMP).
“Our findings suggest the possibility, which we now want to test, that an intervention to reverse these cAMP changes could reduce symptoms of addiction, such as drug cravings and withdrawal dysphoria,” says the study’s senior author, Kirill Martemyanov, professor and co-chair of the Department of Neuroscience at Scripps Research.
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Judge Larry Burns and Attorney David Casey Jr.
to receive Distinguished Alumni Awards from USD
Larry A. Burns, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, and CaseyGerry Managing Partner David S. Casey Jr., are 2019 Distinguished Alumni Award honorees announced by the the University of San Diego (USD) School of Law and the Law Alumni Association Board of Directors.
Both honorees will be recognized at the annual Distinguished Alumni Awards Luncheon Friday, Nov. 15 beginning at 11:30 a.m. at the Holiday Inn San Diego Bayside.
Sponsored by USD School of Law’s Alumni Association Board of Directors, the Distinguished Alumni Award is the school’s highest honor bestowed upon alumni. The accolade is presented to law school alumni who have distinguished themselves in the legal field or other chosen profession at an exemplary level and embody the high ethical standards and commitment to community service that USD School of Law seeks to instill in its graduates. Each spring, a nominating committee considers candidates for the award and a recipient or recipients are selected by the committee and then approved by the Law Alumni Association Board of Directors. Since its inception in 1977, 81 law school alumni have received the Distinguished Alumni Award.
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Salk scientists receive $12.9 million
from NIH BRAIN Initiative
Salk Institute scientists Nicola Allen, Eiman Azim, Margarita Behrens, and Joseph Ecker have been named recipients in the 2019 round of grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to better understand the brain.
The grants, totaling $12.9 million, are awarded through the BRAIN Initiative as part of its mission “to deepen understanding of the inner workings of the human mind and to improve how we treat, prevent, and cure disorders of the brain.” The BRAIN awards further that mission by supporting scientific teams to advance neurotechnologies and provide a deeper understanding of the link between brain function and behavior.
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Bank of America names Alpha Project and
Kitchens for Good as $200,000 awardees
Alpha Project and Kitchens for Good have been named as the 2019 Bank of America Neighborhood Builders awardees for San Diego.The nonprofits were selected for their work to end homelessness and c reate workforce training and opportunities.
The largest corporate philanthropic investment in nonprofit leadership in the country, Bank of America Neighborhood Builders award provides a $200,000 grant for each honoree, a year of leadership training for the executive director and an emerging leader at the organization, a network of peer organizations across the U.S., and the opportunity to access capital to expand their impact.
“The affordable housing and job training programs offered by Alpha Project and Kitchens for Good are making an enormous impact addressing homelessness, workforce development, and food insecurity. These are critical issues for our community,” said Rick Bregman, San Diego market president, Bank of America. “We are proud to partner and invest in these fine organizations. They are rooted in giving people the tools, resources and respect they need to help rebuild their lives and advance sustainable personal and financial growth.”
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UC San Diego named 6th best public
university by U.S. News and World Report
The University of California San Diego has been named the nation’s sixth best public university, according to U.S. News and World Report’s Best Global Universities. The new list is based on research, global and regional reputation, international collaboration, as well as the number of highly cited papers and doctorates awarded. Overall, UC San Diego was ranked the 19th best university in the world.
The U.S. News and World Report rankings evaluated 1,500 universities across more than 60 countries.
