Daily Business Report-Sept. 29, 2020
IQHQ’s Research and Development District is situated on more than eight acres – representing the largest urban commercial waterfront site along California’s coast. (Renderings courtesy of IQHQ Inc.)
Developer breaks ground to turn
San Diego waterfront into
center for life science work
IQHQ Inc., a life sciences real estate development company, has completed the acquisition of an iconic development site along San Diego’s waterfront for construction of the San Diego Research and Development District.
Entitled for new office, lab and support retail space, the RaDD is situated on more than eight acres and occupies three entire city blocks — representing the largest urban commercial waterfront site along California’s coast. With entitlements secured and key foundation permits already in-hand, IQHQ is breaking ground on the first phase of the project this week with completion of the initial phase anticipated in summer 2023.
“The Research and Development District is exciting on so many levels – not only does it represent our first acquisition in the San Diego region, which IQHQ is proud to call home, we also have an opportunity to create the first truly urban waterfront campus dedicated to the advancement of life sciences,” said Tracy A. Murphy, president of IQHQ. “Once complete, the RaDD will be a premier development that will spark and define the region’s commercial life science market in San Diego similar to that of the Seaport District in Boston.”
With an 82 percent increase in life science employees over the last decade, San Diego is the third largest life science market in the United States that is experiencing a growing demand for new Class A office and lab space. The RaDD will attract top tenants and talent that will be drawn to this premier work-live-play campus with remarkable access to transit, housing, dining and top amenities, according to the developer.
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Marines weigh closing MCRD San Diego
and Perris Island to open new coed boot camp
The Marine Corps is considering a plan in which it could close its two existing boot camp locations — Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego and Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island — and funnel all recruits to a new base where men and women would train together.
Marine entry-level training is a long way off from being able to meet a congressional mandate to make its East and West coast training bases both able to support gender-integrated training in the coming years, the Corps’ top general said.
But with a new law bearing down on the service to make both locations support coed training — within eight years at San Diego and five at Perris Island — the Marine Corps is exploring different options, Maj. Eric Flanagan, Berger’s spokesman told Military.com.
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Female Marine drill instructors headed
to all-male San Diego boot camp
Men stepping onto the famous yellow footprints at the Marine Corps‘ historically all-male recruit depot on the West Coast will soon be greeted by female drill instructors.
For the first time ever, the female drill instructors could begin training men at Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego, Commandant Gen. David Berger saaid. The move is part of a years-long congressional mandate the service is facing to make its entry-level training coed.
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Digital Force Technologies forms
partnership with DC Capital Partners
Digital Force Technologies (DFT) has formed a strategic partnership with DC Capital Partners, a private equity investment firm headquartered in Alexandria, Va. DFT will become a platform company in the DC Capital portfolio and will focus on broadening the company’s offerings to existing customers and expanding into adjacent markets.
DFT is an innovator in the design and development of hardware and software products used for force protection and tactical surveillance primarily for government customers.
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Cubic’s PIXIA wins contract from
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
Cubic Corporationannounced that PIXIA, which operates within its Cubic Mission and Performance Solutions business division, was awarded a contract from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) to provide its commercial software for data management and dissemination for use across the agency.
This award is the second option year of a five-year indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract, in which PIXIA will continue to deliver a solution for NGA to access, organize and share data within a cloud-based architecture.
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Magician Merlin presents unsolved math
problems in USD professor’s new book
A new book by Satyan Devadoss uses themes and characters from the mythical realm of Camelot to explore 16 of the world’s most interesting unsolved math problems. Readers of “Mage Merlin’s Unsolved Mathematical Mysteries” will share in the excitement of exploring math puzzles that even the wise magician Merlin, and the greatest mathematical minds since, couldn’t solve.
“This book offers two irresistible things to get people excited about math: a mythical setting and a hands-on journey into the unknown,” said Devadoss, co-author of the book and Fletcher Jones Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of San Diego. “Readers are invited to go math off-roading in places no one has gone before.”
The richly illustrated, story-driven volume uses characters from Camelot — King Arthur, Excalibur, the Round Table, the Holy Grail — as entry points into the puzzles, which are accessible to anyone with basic math skills.
“Mage Merlin’s Unsolved Mathematical Mysteries” by Satyan Devadoss and Matt Harvey is now available through MIT Press and can be ordered from bookstores everywhere.
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Scripps Institution of Oceanography
receives NOAA award to study clouds
Scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography have received an award from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to study low cloud “hot-spots,” one of the largest uncertainties in climate change models and predictions.
The project will be led by Scripps Oceanography climate scientists Nicholas Lutsko and Joel Norris as part of NOAA’s Modeling, Analysis, Predictions, and Projections (MAPP) Program.
NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research Climate Program Office (CPO) is supporting the Scripps-led MAPP project with around $410,000 in funding.
The Scripps team will focus on specific regions of the globe where the variability of clouds can tell us how sensitive Earth’s climate is to increased carbon dioxide concentrations. This “climate sensitivity” is generally defined as how much Earth’s global mean surface temperature would warm up if CO2 concentrations were doubled compared to pre-industrial levels.
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La Jolla Institute scientists track down
protein that may add to lung damage
Your lungs and airways need to be stretchy, sort of like balloons. Take a big breath, and they’ll open right up. Damaged lungs can’t open properly. Patients with asthma, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and systemic sclerosis suffer from fibrosis and tissue remodeling, where a build-up of tissue and immune cells, and proteins that form a glue-like substance, keep the airways from expanding. As fibrosis gets worse, taking a breath feels like blowing up a balloon filled with concrete.
In a new study, researchers at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) report that a protein called TL1A drives fibrosis in several mouse models, triggering tissue remodeling, and making it harder for lungs and airways to function normally.
“Our new study suggests that TL1A and its receptor on cells could be targets for therapeutics aimed at reducing fibrosis and tissue remodeling in patients with severe lung disease,” says LJI Professor Michael Croft, Ph.D., director of scientific affairs at LJI and senior author of the new study in The Journal of Immunology.
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Northrop Grumman set to launch 14th cargo
delivery to International Space Station
Northrop Grumman Corporationis set to launch the company’s 14th resupply mission to the International Space Station under NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services-2 contract. The NG-14 mission’s Cygnus spacecraft will launch aboard the company’s Antares rocket with nearly 8,000 pounds of scientific research, supplies and hardware for the astronauts aboard the station.
Liftoff of the Antares rocket is scheduled for Oct. 1 at 9:38 p.m. EDT from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport Pad 0A on Wallops Island, at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility. Live coverage of the Antares launch will be available on NASA Television at http://nasa.gov/ntv. Details about the mission and its unique cargo, as well as a map showing where you might see the launch, are available on Northrop Grumman’s website.
