Forbes

This Week In Newsletters: Coastal Flooding Is Going To Be Faster Than Expected And Big Heathcare Systems Aren’t Containing Costs

In case you missed them, here’s what’s happening in the newsletters I co-write this week.

In this week’s InnovationRx, my colleague Katie Jennings looked at a new study finding that despite the promise that consolidation of primary care into larger health systems would contain costs, this largely hasn’t been the case. And outcomes only barely improved as well. Meanwhile, I took a look at the FDA’s exploration of changing its recommendation for Covid vaccinations.

In this week’s Current Climate, I took a look at a new climate model that suggests flooding in coastal regions due to sea level rise will be faster than expected. Why? Because the old models were based on radar measurements of coastlines. But the problem there is that radar measurements can be inaccurate when there’s lots of vegetation. New measurements taken with lidar found that lots of coastal regions are lower than previously thought, and when those measurements are plugged into climate models? Faster flooding is the result.

Meanwhile, my colleague Alan Ohnsman takes a look at a chemical additive to tires that’s polluting waterways. Why? Because as people are driving along, the tires wear, leaving dust on the roads. Rain sweeps that dust into rivers, where it’s toxic to several varieties of fish. This is a known problem, but so far regulators aren’t keen to act on it.

Dimension founders Zavian Dar, Adam Goulburn. and Nan Li

Latest Forbes Story: A $350 Million Fund Aimed At The Bio/Computer Intersection

Just published a new story at Forbes today about the launch of a new VC fund, Dimension, which aims to invest in early-stage companies at the intersection of computation and biology. The company already has a portfolio four companies strong and despite macroeconomic headwinds, managed to raise $50 million more than the $300 million it was initially looking for.

Read the whole thing here.

This Week’s Newsletters: Healthcare in 2023 And Virtuous Climate Tipping Points

Another week, another set of newsletters.

In this week’s InnovationRx newsletter, I wrap up my time at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference by looking ahead to what the year will bring in heatlhcare by chatting with a couple of analysts from Pitchbook and getting their thoughts on the conference. I also explored a new study in which researchers discovered antibodies that bind to SARS-CoV-2 in two different places. The upshot of this is that it paves the way for more durable antibody therapies and vaccines against Covid-19, giving humans a leg up against a virus that can mutate rapidly.

In this week’s Current Climate newsletter, I took a look at a new report that explores potential virtuous climate tipping points: areas of the economy that have the potential to rapidly accelerate the economy into being more sustainable. On the transportation side of the house, my colleague Alan Ohnsman takes a look at how trains can be made smarter (which leads to them being faster) and at how car companies are leaving money on the table by not building smaller, more utilitarian electric vehicles.

Newsletter Updates: JP Morgan Healthcare Highlights And Glass Onion’s Hydrogen Goof

Image Credit: Netflix

Another week means another two Forbes newsletters from yours truly.

I spent this week in San Francisco at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, one of the biggest industry conferences of the year. There I watched dozens of presentations and talked to more dozens of healthcare executives, investors and analysts. Next week you’ll see me start to publish some of the takeaways I took from that conference, but in this week’s edition of the InnovationRx Newsletter, I gave a brief overview of the conference and some of the news that came out of it.

In this week’s edition of the Current Climate newsletter, I took a look at some research out of McGill University that demonstrates that if natural gas power plants are going to be part of a transition to renewable energy (which seems likely) that doesn’t mean they can’t be improved. Using a combination of carbon capture and other mitigation and efficiency efforts, the researchers estimate that emissions from gas plants can be cut by over 70%.

Meanwhile, on the Transportation side of the newsletter, my colleague Alan Ohnsman explored some of the raspberries the new movie Glass Onion is getting from hydrogen energy experts. (There’s some mild spoilers if you haven’t seen the movie, so be careful.) Alan also looks at new customer survey data showing that Tesla’s brand image is tanking, in no small part due to CEO Elon Musk’s current chaotic reign as the new owner and CEO of Twitter.

Both newsletters feature all this analysis and more. Check them out!

The First Week Of The New Year In Newsletters

Artist’s conception of a solar powered satellite (Caltech)

It’s the first week of the new year, and with that means this week’s editions of my Forbes newsletters.

In this week’s edition of InnovationRx, the Forbes healthcare newsletter, I explored the bombshell Nature paper that claims that the rate of disruptive scientific progress is slowing down. Our feature story is by my colleague, Maggie McGrath, who profiled Kate Dilligan. Dilligan is the founder of Cooler Heads, which makes a cap that cools down the scalp of cancer patients getting chemotherapy. By cooling down the scalp, the caps restrict blood flow to hair follicles, which in turn helps keep the chemo out of hair and prevents it from falling out.

On the Covid side of things, I looked at research suggesting that Covid death rates are much higher than the official numbers worldwide and highlighted an explainer by my colleague Arianna Johnson about XBB.1.5, which is now the dominant variant of SARS-CoV-2 in the United States.

In this week’s edition of Current Climate, I took a look at CalTech’s launch of its demo satellite that aims to test the ability to collect solar power in space and beam it back to Earth (with a bonus reference to Isaac Asimov). Our feature story, by Forbes contributor Marianne Lehnis, takes a look at a new report from the International Energy Agency which found that governments around the world pumped half a trillion dollars of investment into renewable energy projects.

Meanwhile, on the transportation front, my colleague Alan Ohnsman looked at Tesla’s 2022, which may have been a record sales year for the company but those sales failed to meet the expectations of Wall Street analysts, which sent the stock plummeting this week.

Speaking of my colleague Alan Ohnsman, when he’s not reporting about the transportation industry, he’s also a singer in the rock band Combo Villains, and the band put out a new album this week, titled Get Up!. Go check it out on Bandcamp or your streaming service of choice.

Some end of the year video opining

Here’s a few new videos I did at Forbes chatting about some of the most interesting advances of the past few weeks.

On AI and ChatGPT:

And then about gene therapies and cures for disease:

And finally, about nuclear fusion and renewable energy: