Daily Business Report: Tuesday, Nov. 30, 2021
Cal State blunder may mean loss of
3,000 new student housing beds
CalMatters
More than 3,000 California State University students could lose out on affordable housing because the system misread the fine print of a new state student housing program, according to an exclusive report from CalMatters’ Mikhail Zinshteyn.
And that’s not the only consequence: Had CSU interpreted the law correctly, it could have proposed adding up to 6,000 beds, rather than roughly 3,300. The blunder — which can’t be fixed unless state lawmakers intervene — comes amid a severe housing crunch that has pushed nearly 9,000 Cal State students onto a housing waitlist, forced hundreds of University of California students to live in hotels, and prompted Long Beach City College to allow students to sleep in their cars. It alxo comes as the state plans to increase enrollment by 15,000 students at UC and Cal State next year — further turbocharging the demand for housing.
TOP PHOTO: Student housing at Cal State San Marcos.
Is ‘shipageddon’ at U.S. ports going
to spoil your San Diego holiday?
It’s that time of year when twinkling holiday lights, visits with Santa and piles of wrapped gifts under the tree come to mind. Those cheery images, though, are increasingly overshadowed by unsettling news clips of idled ships loaded with cargo, threatening to spoil the holidays.
A perfect storm of soaring consumer demand, acute labor shortages and pandemic-driven factory slowdowns has fueled global supply chain snarls that have periodically thinned store shelves, led to far more “out of stock” responses to online shopping queries, and contributed to spot shortages of Starbucks Frappuccinos and branded coffee tumblers.
The reassuring news is that “shipageddon,” as one retail analyst calls it, is not likely to rob of us our holiday gift-giving largesse or dampen our food-centric celebrations.
Viasat’s mobility network now operational
and ready to serve airlines’ connectivity needs
In cooperation with China Satellite Communications, Co. Ltd. (China Satcom), Viasat Inc. announced the mobility network in China, which uses Viasat’s innovative in-flight connectivity (IFC) equipment working over the Ka-band ChinaSat-16 satellite system, is now operational to meet the IFC needs of domestic and international airlines operating into and out of Chinese airspace.
With the network deployment now complete, tested and operational, Viasat and China Satcom are well-positioned to meet the growing IFC demands in China—the second largest aviation market in the world, according to research from the International Air Transport Association.
Successful network deployment means the network is ready to launch IFC services for Chinese airlines and can, very soon, enable Viasat’s global airline customers to offer passengers a seamless roaming connectivity experience when flying into, over and out of China. The regional access in China to Viasat’s IFC service means airline customers can choose to offer streaming videos or music, browsing the internet, access to social media, messaging and other apps — just as they do in many other regions of the world.
General Atomics satellite prototype
upgraded for United States Space Force
General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems (GA-EMS) announced that the spacecraft it is designing for the United States Space Force (USSF) Space Systems Command Electro-Optical Infrared Weather System (EWS) satellite program has been up-scoped from a one year on orbit sensor demonstration to a three-to-five-year prototype spacecraft with residual operational capability.
The program is currently in the competitive phase. If GA-EMS is chosen to move into the next phase, the GA-EMS EWS spacecraft will have the capability to provide the Department of Defense with operational weather data support as a precursor to an innovative future weather capability.
Professor published on topic of
mindfulness, interracial interactions
Cal State San Marcos psychology professor Daniel Berry has written a manuscript on the intersection of mindfulness meditation and interracial social interactions that has been published in the academic journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.
The study, titled “Short-Term Training in Mindfulness Predicts Helping Behavior toward Racial Ingroup and Outgroup Members,” is the sixth peer-reviewed publication by Berry, but the first in Social Psychological and Personality Science. Berry began the research in 2014 when he was a doctoral student in general experimental psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University and completed data collection in 2017, just before he was hired as an assistant professor at CSUSM.
He runs the Social and Affective Psychophysiology (SAP) Lab, which studies how people respond to others in need and show kindness to one another. “This paper is special to me because it was part of my dissertation research toward my Ph.D.,” Berry said. “As director of the SAP Lab, I’ve worked to get this paper published since arriving at CSUSM.”
Sister Cities Project seeks to raise
$1 million to fund innovative impact work
The Sister Cities Project today kicked off its “Fund the Change” fundraising campaign during Giving Tuesday. For a new organization just a year and a half old, the $1 million goal is extremely aggressive. Sister Cities Project leadership sees it as necessary to make a statement about its commitment, going into the new year with the funding it needs to ramp up its impact work in the fight for racial and economic equity in America.
On Giving Tuesday Sister Cities Project hopes to raise 10 percent of it’s total fundraising goal and the remainder by the 1st of the year. The $1 million will be invested in a scalable ecosystem that creates economic equity for communities of color. The ecosystem framework is similar to a social franchise model that can be replicated across the U.S.
San Diego’s Lengo Therapeutics
to be acquired by Blueprint Medicines Corp.
Blueprint Medicines Corporation announced that the company has entered into a definitive agreement under which it will acquire San Diego-based Lengo Therapeutics, a privately held precision oncology company, for $250 million in cash plus up to $215 million in additional potential payments based on the achievement of certain regulatory approval and sales-based milestones.
The acquisition includes Lengo Therapeutics’ lead compound LNG-451, a potential best-in-class oral precision therapy in development for the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer in patients.
Lengo Therapeutics anticipates it will submit an investigational new drug application for LNG-451 to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in December 2021.
Novarad partners with CureMetrix to
advance AI-driven mammography
Novarad, a leader in the development of medical imaging software, announced a partnership with San Diego-based CureMetrix Inc., a pioneering health care technology company that delivers artificial intelligence (AI)-driven solutions for radiology. Novarad’s imaging tools, integrated with the CureMetrix AI-driven women’s health suite of tools for mammography, will be distributed nationally in the U.S. Novarad will be the exclusive PACS distributor of CureMetrix AI for small and midsized imaging centers and hospitals.
The potential impact of the CureMetrix AI innovations in radiology have been featured in both the Journal of the American College of Radiology (JACR) and in the Journal of Digital Imaging (JDI).
Cubic Corp. awarded contract
amendment from Canadian government
Cubic Corporation announced that its Cubic Mission and Performance Solutions (CMPS) business division was awarded a two-year contract amendment from Public Service and Procurement Canada (PSPC), on behalf of Canada’s Department of National Defence. The amendment provides that CMPS will continue providing live simulation support to the Canadian Army, extending its Contractor Conducted Logistics Support contract through October 2023.
The two-year contract extension provides continuing logistics assistance to the Canadian Weapon Effects Simulation (CWES) program, supporting CWES live training at four Canadian Forces Bases: Gagetown, New Brunswick; Valcartier, Quebec; Petawawa, Ontario; and Wainwright Alberta, as well as other deployed locations.
Can ancient botanical therapies help treat COVID-19?
A novel study is assessing whether medicinal mushrooms and Chinese herbs provide therapeutic benefit in treating acute COVID-19 infection. MACH-19 (Mushrooms and Chinese Herbs for COVID-19) — a multi-center study led by University of California San Diego School of Medicine and UCLA — is among the first to evaluate these specific integrative medicine approaches using the gold standard of Western medicine: the randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial.
Three trials are currently recruiting for between 66 and 80 patients who have tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 and who are quarantined at home with mild to moderate symptoms. Two are Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved Phase 1 clinical safety trials for investigational compounds to treat acute COVID-19.
Chemists develop new method for transforming
simple, cheap chemicals into complex ones
Chemists at Scripps Research have solved a long-standing problem in synthetic chemistry by devising a set of reactions for transforming simple, cheap, and ubiquitous organic compounds called aliphatic acids—a very broad family that ranges from detergents to vegetable oils—into much more complex and valuable compounds.
The new reactions, described in a paper in Science, should have a broad utility for molecule-building, making chemists’ tasks easier—and potentially making chemical products cheaper and easier to develop—across multiple industries. This includes the pharmaceutical industry, which is already beginning to use the new reactions for discovering new drugs.
“These reactions are going to be general tools for making complex molecules, and because they use simple molecular oxygen to drive their catalytic cycles they can potentially be applied to large-scale manufacturing,” says Jin-Quan Yu, professor of chemistry at Scripps Research, who led the study.
