San Jose, CA, May 22, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Codex Labs, a Silicon Valley bio-skintech company, and Paula Simpson, nutricosmetics formulator, author and microbiome expert, recently announced the addition of Paula to the Codex Labs medical advisory board.
“As we delve deeper into skin-gut-brain integrative wellness solutions, we are excited to find partners who are experts in functional and clinical nutrition, as well as formulation of accessible skin-gut-brain supporting supplements. Our goal is to expand our ingestibles from acne to other skin conditions, and clinically prove and publish their efficacy through research studies with our medical advisory board dermatologists,” said Dr. Barbara Paldus, Founder and CEO of Codex Labs.
“I’m thrilled to be a part of Codex Labs’ incredible team of medical, microbiome science & ethnobotany experts. With my integrated background, I hope to support Codex Labs in bringing forth unique and personalized formulations for healthy, balanced skin inside and out,” stated Paula Simpson, Author & Founder of Nutribloom Consulting. “Our skin doesn’t function in isolation; it has a codependent relationship with the gut and immune system. Via gut-skin axis, microbes are important contributors for healthy balanced skin. Nurturing it from the inside and out, can support and encourage those good bacteria to flourish and protect us from pathogens or stressors that have a negative effect on the health and appearance of our skin.”
About Codex Labs
Based in Silicon Valley and led by scientist Dr. Barb Paldus, Codex Labs is committed to creating highly effective, clinically proven, microbiome-supporting skin-gut-brain integrative solutions that contain potent, biotech-derived plant-based actives. Our products are focused on restoring/protecting the skin barrier, managing inflammation, and addressing skin conditions associated with aging, acne, eczema and psoriasis. Our free DermSCORE self-assessment app offers consumers a data-driven, derm-approved approach for managing acne. The brand has been heralded by dermatologists for creating a new breed of effective, vegan, cruelty-free and sustainable dermo-cosmetic solutions.
Amsterdam, the Netherlands and Nashville, TN, USA –Royal Philips (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHIA), a global leader in health technology, and Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC), home to the top-ranked adult and pediatric hospitals in the Southeastern U.S., today announced a collaboration that aims to reduce the health system’s carbon footprint while determining a blueprint to guide industry efforts. The project is with the radiology department, where efforts will focus on measuring and addressing energy consumption of VUMC’s diagnostic imaging devices including MR, CT, ultrasound and X-ray. The two organizations plan to publish their findings with the aim of promoting knowledge exchange and enabling others in the industry to enhance their environmental strategies.
The healthcare industry is responsible for an estimated 7.6% of U.S. and 4.4% of global emissions [1]; with its heavy energy, equipment, and supply usage, radiology is a significant contributor to the CO2 emissions responsible for climate change [2]. Philips will work with VUMC to collect a range of equipment lifecycle data, including radiology data and measurements of the equipment energy consumption, analyze operational workflow efficiency and interview VUMC staff and faculty to build computational models on which to run simulations. The teams will then summarize piloted interventions to test the reduction of the department’s carbon footprint.
“We consider climate care as healthcare. Taking steps to reduce the carbon footprint in healthcare isn’t just an opportunity, it’s also a responsibility. The future of radiology requires us to be cognizant, aware and proactive about addressing this issue which directly affects the communities we live in and the patients we treat,” said Reed Omary, MD, MS, Carol D. and Henry P. Pendergrass Professor and Chair of Radiology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. “We have a collective responsibility to help mitigate climate change, which is why we’ve entered into this collaboration. Working together will allow us to leverage Philips’ general healthcare and specific radiology expertise – as well as their own success in achieving CO2 net-zero operations – to make important reductions in our carbon footprint.”
In addition to financial costs for a given diagnosis, VUMC’s Department of Radiology and Radiological Sciences understands that there is also an additional carbon cost to make that diagnosis. Philips brings knowledge and a longstanding commitment to sustainability to the collaboration. Recently, Philips became the first health technology company to have its entire value-chain CO₂ emissions reduction targets approved by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) with strategic action plans in place. The company has reported solid progress in reducing CO2 emissions across its innovations and supply chain, and has operated globally carbon neutral since 2020. Philips builds on decades of experience reducing energy consumption, waste, and materials and substances usage by embedding its EcoDesign criteria and circular business models across product innovation and ways of working. Through digitalization and collaboration, the company actively seeks to expand access to care, while working closely with customers and partners to improve the environmental impact of in-use diagnostic imaging technology.
“Philips and VUMC share a common vision – that systemically addressing climate change is going to take commitment and collaboration across the industry. Philips’ 2023 Future Health Index found that nearly half of U.S. healthcare leaders are planning to overcome challenges to implementing sustainability initiatives by sharing best practices and learnings from peers,” said Jeff DiLullo, chief region leader, Philips North America. “We are optimistic that results from this partnership will not only assist Vanderbilt in its effort to understand and address carbon emissions in its own radiology department, but serve as a model for others seeking to decarbonize their operations.”
About Royal Philips
Royal Philips (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHIA) is a leading health technology company focused on improving people’s health and well-being through meaningful innovation. Philips’ patient- and people-centric innovation leverages advanced technology and deep clinical and consumer insights to deliver personal health solutions for consumers and professional health solutions for healthcare providers and their patients in the hospital and the home. Headquartered in the Netherlands, the company is a leader in diagnostic imaging, ultrasound, image-guided therapy, monitoring and enterprise informatics, as well as in personal health. Philips generated 2022 sales of EUR 17.8 billion and employs approximately 74,000 employees with sales and services in more than 100 countries. News about Philips can be found at www.philips.com/newscenter.
About Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) is the largest comprehensive research, teaching and patient care health system in the Mid-South region, with the highest ranked adult and children’s hospitals in the Southeast by U.S. News & World Report. Based in Nashville, Tennessee, VUMC sees over 3 million patient visits per year in over 200 ambulatory locations, performs 88,000 surgical operations and discharges 80,000 inpatients from its main-campus adult, children’s, psychiatric and rehabilitation hospitals and three regional community hospitals. The Medical Center is the largest non-governmental employer of Middle Tennesseans, with nearly 40,000 staff, including more than 3,000 physicians, advanced practice nurses and scientists appointed to the Vanderbilt University faculty. For more information and the latest news follow VUMC on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and in the VUMC Reporter.
Novel JEL Technology for Periocular Administration
COSTA MESA, Calif., May 22, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — AiViva Biopharma Inc., a clinical-stage biotechnology company, announced that it has begun a Phase 1 trial and completed dosing the first cohort of patients diagnosed with wet age-related macular degeneration (wAMD), and/or diabetic macular edema (DME).
“We are very excited to have initiated this U.S. trial,” said Diane Tang-Liu, PhD, CEO, President & Co-Founder of AiViva Biopharma. “AIV007 is a broad spectrum tyrosine kinase inhibitor, targeting the convergence of fibrosis, angiogenesis, and inflammation. We believe AIV007 coupled with our proprietary JEL technology and administered periocularly, will address the root causes of many ocular diseases.”
This Phase 1 trial is a multicenter, open-label, dose-escalation safety clinical trial. Up to 24 subjects will receive a single periocular injection and will undergo monthly evaluation for up to 6 months to assess safety, tolerability, and efficacy measured by best corrected visual acuity (BCVA).
About Age-Related Macular Degeneration and Diabetic Macular Edema AMD is a progressive retinal disease that is the leading cause of blindness in adults over the age of 60, affecting up to 15 million U.S. people. AMD affects the macular, center portion of the retina, that is responsible for central vision and color perception. In patients with wet AMD vision loss is caused by abnormal blood vessels leaking fluid and blood into and beneath the retina.
Diabetic macular edema is manifested as retinal thickening and swelling caused by accumulation of intraretinal fluid usually due to blood sugar levels being consistently high. If untreated, chronic macular edema can lead to irreversible damage of the macula and permanent vision loss.
About AiViva Biopharma, Inc.
AiViva is a clinical stage biotech company led by a team of seasoned industry experts with proven track record in drug development and commercialization. AiViva has developed innovative approaches to address high unmet medical needs through focal therapies that target diseases of neovascularization, abnormal cell proliferation, and fibrosis. Core competencies include development of novel drugs using proprietary technologies, including JEL, in specialty therapeutic areas of ophthalmology, dermatology, urology and oncology. Please visit www.aiviva.com to learn more.
The United States signed a defense cooperation agreement on Monday with Papua New Guinea, and announced other security and humanitarian support, in a deepening of its relationship with the most populous Pacific island country.
Papua New Guinea’s capital Port Moresby also hosted India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a summit with leaders of 14 Pacific island countries, underscoring the increased geopolitical competition in the vast ocean region where China’s diplomatic relations have burgeoned.
The defense agreement is “mutually beneficial,” Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape said at the signing ceremony.
“In the context of Papua New Guinea it secures our national interest,” he said, predicting it would help the country, one of the poorest in the region, to develop a “robust economy.”
Responding to domestic criticism of the defense agreement, Marape said, “this signing in no way, shape and form encroaches into our sovereignty.”
U.S. President Joe Biden had planned to stop over in Papua New Guinea on Monday before attending a meeting in Sydney with the leaders of Australia, Japan and India. He canceled the trip to focus on high-stakes Federal debt-limit negotiations, in an apparent setback for U.S. efforts to exert influence in the Pacific.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who traveled to Port Moresby in the president’s place, said he carried an invitation from Biden to Pacific leaders to visit Washington in the fall. As part of efforts to counter Beijing’s influence in the Pacific, Biden hosted a meeting of Pacific island leaders in September last year in Washington.
“Simply put we are committed to growing all aspects of our relationship,” Blinken said at the defense agreement signing ceremony.
The pact, he said, would be transparent to the public and make it easier for the two countries’ defense forces to train together and improve the capacity of Papua New Guinea’s military to respond to natural disasters.
China, over several decades, has become a substantial source of trade, infrastructure and aid for developing Pacific island countries as it seeks to isolate Taiwan diplomatically and build its own set of global institutions.
Last year, China signed a security pact with the Solomon Islands, alarming the U.S. and its allies such as Australia. The Solomons and Kiribati switched their diplomatic recognition to Beijing from Taiwan in 2019.
Modi, in his speech to Pacific leaders, did not specifically mention China but said his country was committed to a “free and open Indo Pacific,” the U.S. terminology for a vast region spanning the Indian and Pacific oceans.
Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown, speaking at a U.S.-Pacific island leaders meeting, said there was a “level of disappointment” in Biden’s cancellation. He also said he welcomed the fall invitation.
‘Intrusion’ into PNG affairs
The defense cooperation agreement between Papua New Guinea and the U.S. has been criticized by some analysts and groups such as the PNG Trade Union Congress as being overly accommodative to Washington’s interests. Australia’s Sky TV reported on what it said was a leaked draft version of the agreement last week.
“It is the processes our government followed and the motivation behind fast tracking the processes with zero public consultation and parliament debate [that] opens up public debate to all sorts of conclusions,” said Anton Sekum, acting general secretary of the Trade Union Congress, in a statement on Monday.
“Any agreement that will have elements of intrusion into our sovereignty and may put the country in harm’s way must not be done without all citizens’ consent,” he said.
Elias Wohengu, secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs, who was Papua New Guinea’s chief negotiator in the defense cooperation talks, said there was no factual basis to rumors that U.S. military personnel who broke Papua New Guinea’s laws would enjoy immunity from prosecution.
Speculation it would preclude defense agreements with other countries and required changes to Papua New Guinea’s laws was also incorrect, he said.
“There is no immunity in this agreement for any foreign personnel that will be present in Papua New Guinea,” Wohengu told a press conference on the weekend.
“If a crime is committed, punishment will be carried out. So anyone who goes out spreading rumors that we will be providing immunity to offenders is wrong,” he said.
The State Department said the text of the defense cooperation agreement would be made public when it comes into force.
Papua New Guinea’s Ministry of Defense said it would hold a question and answer session for civil society groups and journalists at its headquarters on Tuesday.
Papua New Guinea and the U.S. also signed a shiprider agreement that provides the basis for personnel from the Pacific island country to work on U.S. coast guard and naval vessels, and vice versa, in targeting economic and security weaknesses such as illegal fishing.
Among other support announced by the State Department, the U.S. government will supply $12.4 million of equipment to Papua New Guinea’s defense force.
It includes $5.4 million of body armor, provided earlier this month, such as ballistic helmets and flak vests with armor plates. Some $7 million will be provided for military dress uniforms for Papua New Guinea’s 50th independence events in 2025.
The U.S. is also exploring warehousing of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief supplies in Papua New Guinea.
Coastal vegetation and estuaries are collectively a greenhouse gas sink for carbon dioxide, but methane and nitrous oxide emissions counteract some of the uptake, new research showed Monday.
The international researchers looked into estuaries – tidal systems/deltas, lagoons and fjords – and surrounding coastal vegetation, including mangroves, salt marshes and underwater seagrasses.
Such coastal ecosystems release or absorb carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O). The researchers found the net effects of these ecosystems in offsetting greenhouse gas (GHG), said the report published Monday evening in the journal Nature Climate Change.
According to the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the key GHG emitted by human activities globally in 2019 includes 75% CO2, 18% CH4, and 4% N2O.
“Understanding how and where greenhouse gases are released and absorbed in coastal ecosystems is an important first step for implementing effective climate mitigation strategies,” said lead researcher Judith Rosentreter, a senior research fellow at Southern Cross University in Australia.
“For example, protecting and restoring mangrove and salt marsh habitats is a promising strategy to strengthen the CO2 uptake by these coastal wetlands.”
A photo of a restored mangrove forest in Koh Chang, Thailand, Oct. 22, 2022. Credit: Subel Rai Bhandari/RFA
The researchers looked into a dataset of observations on 738 coastal sites from studies published between 1975 and the end of 2020 to quantify CO2, methane, and N2O fluxes in estuaries and coastal vegetation in 10 world regions, including East and Southeast Asia.
They showed that the CO2-equivalent (CO2e) uptake by coastal vegetation is decreased by 23–27% due to estuarine CO2e outgassing, while total coastal CH4 and N2O emissions decrease the coastal CO2 sink by 9–20%.
Rosentreter said coastal wetlands, such as mangrove forests, coastal salt marshes, and seagrasses, release at least three times more CH4 than all estuaries worldwide.
Coastal wetlands, known as “blue carbon” wetlands, absorb CO2 and some N2O, making them a net sink for greenhouse gases when all three are considered.
Coastal regions worldwide have unique characteristics, such as climate, hydrology, and abundance, which influence the emission or absorption of GHGs.
The researchers said that minimizing human impact, such as reducing inputs of nutrients, organic matter, and wastewater into coastal waterways, can lower the release of CH4 and N2O into the atmosphere.
“In our new study, we show that when we consider all three greenhouse gases (CO2 + CH4 + N2O), eight out of the 10 world regions are a coastal net greenhouse gas sink,” Rosentreter said.
Coastal areas in Russia and Europe perform worst
The archipelagic region of Southeast Asia was the most robust coastal GHG sink due to its extensive and productive tropical mangrove forests and seagrass meadows, which take up large amounts of CO2, the research said.
Compared with other regions, Southeast Asia also has relatively few estuaries along its coasts, many of which are a source of CO2, CH4, and N2O, the report said.
North American salt marshes, mangroves, and seagrasses take up CO2, but not as much as Greenland’s fjords, responsible for most of the 40% of global CO2 uptake attributed to the glacier-formed inlet.
In East and South Asia, coastal vegetation CO2 sinks are reduced mainly by estuarine GHG emissions, making them moderate sinks.
“East Asia is contributing 34% of global salt marsh CH4 emissions despite its relatively small marsh coverage,” Rosentreter told Radio Free Asia.
Europe and Russia release more coastal GHG than they can take up from the atmosphere, due to sizable estuarine surface area and fewer wetlands, like mangroves, due to a colder climate that would otherwise take up large amounts of CO2.
The coastal GHG budget as CO2-equivalent fluxes (in teragrams of CO2-equivalent per year) in 10 regions around the world: Southeast Asia (9), North America (1), Africa (4) are strong coastal GHG sinks. South America (2), Australasia (10), and West Asia (6) are moderate coastal GHG sinks. East Asia (7) and South Asia (8) are weak coastal GHG sinks, and Europe (3) and Russia (5) are weak coastal GHG sources. Credit: Judith Rosentreter, via Nature Climate Change.
Since the beginning of the industrial era, around the 1800s, atmospheric concentrations of CO2, methane, and N2O have increased by 47%, 156%, and 23%, respectively, and continue to grow at alarming rates due to anthropogenic activities, those caused or influenced by people, driving global warming,
In March, the IPCC said greenhouse gases released by fossil fuels and other human activity had “unequivocally caused global warming,” and the increase in average surface temperature was already contributing to climate and weather extremes around the globe, such as heatwaves and droughts and the intensity of rains and tropical cyclones.
The average temperature between 2011-2020 was 1.1 degrees Centigrade higher than 1850-1900. Last week, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said there is a 66% likelihood that the annual average global temperature, which has not crossed the 1.5 C threshold set by the Paris climate agreement, will be more than 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels for at least one year.
The future role of coastal ecosystems as a sink or source of GHGs in each world region will depend on adopting best practices to reduce CH4 and N2O emissions while strengthening CO2 uptake, Monday’s report concluded.
Jailed student activist and author Wai Moe Naing has been sentenced to another 20 years in prison, the Monywa People’s Strike Steering Committee told RFA Monday.
He received the maximum sentence for treason and rebellion under Section 122 of the Penal Code.
Friday’s decision by the court in Monywa Prison in northern Sagaing region takes his total sentence to 52 years.
The 28-year-old has already been found guilty of crimes including robbery; rioting; carrying a weapon; incitement to mutiny; and unlawful assembly.
The junta has also accused him of killing two policemen in an industrial zone under Section 302 of the Penal Code and plans to hand down a verdict on the case at a later date.
A friend, who wished to remain anonymous, said Wai Moe Naing has denied all the charges made against him.
Monywa People’s Strike Steering Committee protested his innocence, condemning what it called unjust accusations and orders against political prisoners.
Wai Moe Naing founded Monywa University Student Union and served as its first president. He is also an author of short stories, magazine articles and blogs.
After the military coup in February 2021, he led anti-regime strikes in Monywa.
On April 15, 2021, he was riding in a column of motorcycles with other protesting students when junta troops and police ran him down in cars, beat him and arrested him.
He has been held in Monywa prison since his arrest.
Sources close to Wai Moe Naing, who didn’t want to be named for safety reasons, said he was healthy and has been allowed to receive parcels.
Technology for Periocular Administration
