The virus apparently emerged in Wuhan, China. How does a virus that starts in one place spread around the world?

The short answer is that we live in a global economy that includes frequent domestic and international travel, and viruses often hitch rides with us.

Viruses, like other pathogens, don’t produce symptoms as soon as they come into contact with humans. First, they go through an incubation period, or a period of time when the virus multiplies to a threshold necessary to produce symptoms in its host.

Image: https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

I am observing what may be the future of work in a San Francisco skyscraper, watching as a transparent, legless man in a T-shirt hovers above a leather couch.

The man is Jacob Loewenstein, the head of business at Spatial, a software company that enables meetings via holograms, which are 3-dimensional images. Though he is in New York, a hologram of him appears a few feet in front of me in San Francisco, his face and slightly tousled hair a 3D likeness of the photo I later look up on LinkedIn, his blue t-shirt a sign that he is as casually dressed as any tech worker.

The history of mathematics is in some ways a study of the human mind and how it has understood the world. That’s because mathematical thought is based on concepts such as number, form, and change, which, although abstract, are fundamentally linked to physical objects and the way we think about them.

College is traditionally viewed as a time for students to focus on classwork and completing their degree before starting their careers in earnest. But a growing number of students are working during college, whether out of financial necessity, to jump-start their professional lives, or to give them a sense of purpose.

As more cases of coronavirus are confirmed across the US in almost every state, more and more businesses and schools are making the decision to require people to study or work from home. 

Universities like Harvard and Princeton are moving to virtual classes in the upcoming weeks and companies like Amazon in Seattle are telling employees to work from home.  

Executive Director of the Universities at Shady Grove, Stewart L. Edelstein, Ph.D., joins BioTalk to discuss his career, USG, and its role in the BioHealth Capital Region

Dr. Stewart Edelstein joined the Universities at Shady Grove (USG) as Executive Director in 2002 and in 2007 was named to the dual title of Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs for the University System of Maryland (USM).

USG is a regional campus of USM that offers both undergraduate and graduate degree programs from nine partner universities. During Dr. Edelstein’s tenure, USG expanded its number of participating universities, as well as the breadth and depth of its academic programs, and enrollment has grown significantly, to more than 3,000 students. The campus’s capacity for future enrollment growth has doubled with the recent opening of a new Biomedical Sciences and Engineering Education Facility, which is expanding degree and certification offerings in healthcare, engineering, biosciences, computer science and other areas.

In 2008, in the middle of the most recent economic recession, prominent Silicon Valley venture capital firm Sequoia Capital advised its portfolio companies about how bad things were, in a presentation called “R.I.P. Good Times.” Now the firm is sounding the alarm again, telling founders and CEOs of its portfolio companies to prepare for worsening conditions.

The rise of the rest is no threat to the best, according to an annual survey about Silicon Valley's lead over competing tech hubs

Last year, 57 percent of tech leaders in an annual survey said it was likely that the center of innovation would shift away from the Valley in the next four years.

But that dropped to 37 percent in this year's KPMG Tech Hub survey of 810 technology industry leaders in 12 countries.

Procter & Gamble Co. has given $1 million to help endow the Minority Business Accelerator of the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber.

The Cincinnati-based maker of consumer goods such as Bevel Body Wash (NYSE: PG) has partnered with the chamber’s Minority Business Accelerator since its inception in 2003.

P&G spends about $2.5 billion annually with diverse-owned U.S. suppliers, and about $500 million of that is with suppliers based in Greater Cincinnati.

Image: Procter & Gamble is based in Cincinnati. - BUSINESS COURIER

I am due to speak at the SaaStr conference next week: Wednesday, March 11th at 10:45 AM. I had originally signed up to talk about the “VC Market Trends” overall but it seemed inauthentic to speak about VC funding without addressing the virus in the room. So I wrote a brand new deck outlining some Upfront views on what we may see in the funding markets ahead. This is a message we have been delivering to our portfolio privately so we figured it made sense to make it more public broadly in case its of any help to others.

The new coronavirus is not an equal-opportunity killer: Being elderly and having other illnesses, for instance, greatly increases the risk of dying from the disease the virus causes, Covid-19. It’s also possible being male could put you at increased risk.

For both medical and public health reasons, researchers want to figure out who’s most at risk of being infected and who’s most at risk of developing severe or even lethal illness. With that kind of information, clinicians would know whom to treat more aggressively, government officials would have a better idea of steps to take, and everyone would know whether they need to take special, additional precautions.

As companies scramble to protect employees from the spreading coronavirus with travel restrictions and remote work arrangements, there’s a distinct possibility that in-person meetings with teams, customers, or suppliers may be canceled for days — or potentially weeks.

Under the best of circumstances, as soon as one or two attendees “dial in” to any meeting, productivity starts to suffer.  There’s a long list of reasons. Attendees often interpret virtual meetings as a license to multi-task. Meeting organizers tend to be less careful with the purpose and design of the conversation. And it’s not uncommon for one or two attendees to dominate the discussion while others sit back and “tune out.”

Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, captures the world's attention with simple wisdom that stretches far beyond wealth and investment.

The billionaire's hiring advice, for example, should be common sense for any organization choosing which leaders it will hire and promote to higher ranks. But, truth be told, Buffett's advice is not common practice in the age of narcissism.

The coronavirus epidemic is rapidly escalating in the United States. In addition to social distancing measures, such as canceling public events and working from home, we need a health system strategy premised on testing, telehealth, and treatment that achieves the twin objectives of curbing transmission and optimizing care for the influx of patients expected in the coming weeks.

March 9, 2020Today’s heterogenous market landscape, defined by growing emerging markets and stagnant but significant mature markets, requires from consumer goods companies a more tailored approach to strategy and operating model than in past decades. The risks of not doing so in our increasingly granular, heterogeneous, uncertain and dynamic world span missed opportunities and talent loss to market irrelevance.

February 24, 2020Management wisdom teaches us that structure must follow strategy. As a result, companies over decades have first designed their strategy and subsequently taken the operating model and organizational choices that best support it.

Yet, in a world becoming more granular, heterogeneous, uncertain and dynamic across markets and regions, the strategic choices companies make have also become more fluid and more contextual to each specific market.

Since she learned of the coronavirus outbreak, Amy Ho’s daily routine has gotten a bit more complicated. Coming home now involves sanitizing her shoes, washing her hands with soap and water, taking off her medical mask and changing her clothes.

As of Sunday, 1,707 Americans had been tested for the novel coronavirus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. South Korea, by contrast, has tested more than 189,000 people. The two countries announced their first coronavirus cases on the same day.

In the US, test-kit shortages have hampered health authorities' ability to get a clear sense of how many Americans are infected. Compared with many other countries affected by the coronavirus, in fact, the US has done the fewest COVID-19 tests per capita.

Something truly special happens when industries collide: education meets entertainment, tech meets music, fashion meets film. When brands in different industries partner to provide an upgraded user experience, a refreshing excitement surrounds the synergies that re-imagine how we work, shop and play.

Image: alan cheung, founder AKINGS WILL DELEHANTY, FORBES8

If the “Next Big Thing” is out there, it’s unlikely to be overlooked in a Mississippi that spent the last decade building ways to get good ideas to market.

Mississippi enterprises focused on commercializing knowledge and innovation are venturing into a new decade with improved prospects that the chief development executive for Innovate Mississippi attributes to a maturing ecosystem of partnerships, especially public-private ones.