Daily Business Report-Oct. 20, 2020
Illustration via iStock
Pandemic drives first-time gun sales
CalMatters
About 110,000 Californians purchased guns during the first five months of the pandemic, 43 percent of whom did not previously own a firearm, according to a preprint of recent survey data from UC Davis researchers. The news comes amid a concerning uptick in gun violence and homicide rates in California citiesthat experts say is attributable in part to the pandemic, which has driven up anxiety and depression rates as the economy spirals downward.
- 76 percent of those who bought guns in response to the pandemic said they worried about lawlessness.
- 56 percent were concerned about the state’s release of inmatesto curb coronavirus outbreaks at state prisons.
- 49 percent were worried about “the government going too far.”
- 38 percent feared a “government collapse.”
- 31 percent were concerned about gun store closures.
Californians’ anxieties about unrest were echoed in another recent survey in which 82 percent said they feared many Americans won’t respect the outcome of the November election. The Los Angeles Police Department recently told officersthey may need to reschedule vacations during the week of the election.
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San Diego State University
student entrepreneur mows competition
Imagine traveling from Los Angeles to Tampa, Fla., on a riding lawn mower, moving only about five miles per hour. Now picture yourself making the journey with no money, no food and no gas. Tiffany Gil doesn’t have to imagine it — she’s done it. And now she’s about $40,000 richer for it.
Gil, a management and entrepreneurship senior at San Diego State University, plans to use a portion of her prize money to launch her sock company, which is one of the student-established businesses within the university’s ZIP Launchpad. The competition also served as an opportunity to test the socks, which she wore periodically throughout the race.
The race was set to begin over the summer while Gil was on break from her classes at SDSU. After she met her teammate, Katie Knight, on the set of “The Great Grass Race,” they were given their lawn mower, a trailer, and a list of rules for the competition that had contestants riding lawn mowers from coast-to-coast. Episodes of the web-based reality show are currently streaming on Menace Vision.
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California housing market
outperforms expectations
California’s home-buying season extended further into September as home sales climbed to their highest level in more than a decade, and the median home price set another high for the fourth straight month, the California Association of Realtors reported.
Closed escrow sales of existing, single-family detached homes in California totaled a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 489,590 units in September, according to information collected by C.A.R. from more than 90 local Realtor associations and MLSs statewide. The statewide annualized sales figure represents what would be the total number of homes sold during 2020 if sales maintained the September pace throughout the year. It is adjusted to account for seasonal factors that typically influence home sales.
September’s sales total climbed above the 400,000 level for the third straight month since the COVID-19 crisis depressed the housing market earlier this year and was the highest sales level recorded since February 2009. September sales rose 5.2 percent from 465,400 in August and were up 21.2 percent from a year ago, when 404,030 homes were sold on an annualized basis.
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General Atomics kicks off SeaGuardian
validation flights in Japan
General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. (GA-ASI), a leader in Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS), kicked off a series of validation flights on Oct. 15 for Japan Coast Guard in Hachinohe, Aomori Prefecture, Japan. GA-ASI is working with Asia Air Survey in Japan to conduct the flights.
The SeaGuardian flights will validate the wide-area maritime surveillance capabilities of RPAS for carrying out Japan Coast Guard’s missions, from search and rescue to maritime law enforcement. These flights follow successful “legacy” MQ-9 maritime patrol demonstrations in the Korea Strait in 2018 and the Aegean Sea in 2019. The Hachinohe operation features the MQ-9B configuration, capable of all-weather operations in civil national and international airspace.
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UC San Diego and UnitedHealth Group
team up to grow state’s mental health workforce
The University of California San Diego and UnitedHealth Group are announcing a new four-year, $4 million grant collaboration to expand the mental health workforce in California. Led by UC San Diego School of Medicine’s Department of Psychiatry and funded by UnitedHealth Group, the collaboration aims to diversify the pipeline of child and adolescent psychiatrists and encourage medical students to pursue careers in this field through the introduction of novel learning opportunities, individualized mentorship, scholarships, and financial education support for participating residents. Together, these initiatives will help create an inclusive, skilled workforce representing the changing social, racial and economic demography of California’s children, youth and families.
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Walker & Dunlop announce sale
of Valentina by Alta apartments
Walker & Dunlop, Inc. announced the sale of Valentina by Alta, a 110-unit newly constructed apartment community in the Little Italy neighborhood of San Diego. California. Completed in the summer of 2019, Valentina by Alta boasts over 15,000 square feet of amenity space. Community amenities include a pool and pool house, sky and bay terraces, a fitness center with yoga and spin studios, electric vehicle charging stations, surfboard and bike storage, as well as a weekly happy hour.
Walker & Dunlop’s property sales team of Hunter Combs, Greg Englerand Blake Rogersrepresented the seller, Wood Partners.
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University’s Mexico Violence Resource
Project goes beyond cartels to study drug war
The Mexico Violence Resource Project—a new initiative from the University of California San Diego’s Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies—was recently launched to provide policymakers and journalists analysis and information to better understand the complicated escalation of violence in Mexico. As part of the effort, the project is providing new insights of the chaos that erupted in Culiacán one year ago when Sinaloa cartel gunmen successfully thwarted the government’s attempt to arrest one of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán’s sons.
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Scientists identify sensor protein that underlies bladder control
A team co-led by scientists at Scripps Research has found that the main sensor protein enabling our sense of touch also underlies the feeling of having a full bladder and makes normal bladder function possible. The discovery, published Oct. 14 in Nature, marks a key advance in basic neurobiology and may also lead to better treatments for bladder control and urination problems, which are common especially among the elderly.
“We tend to take urination for granted, and it has been under-studied, yet it’s a huge burden when something goes wrong with this system,” says the study’s lead author Kara Marshall, Ph.D., a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Neuroscience at Scripps Research. “Now we’ve identified a crucial part of how urination normally works.”
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Illustration by Adriana Heldiz
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