Walmart was late in actively addressing competition with Amazon in ecommerce. In its new efforts to meet Amazon’s challenge, the company announced that it has plans to open four new fulfillment centers.

These fulfillment centers are where online orders will be packed and shipped. They are the first of a new breed of logistics for Walmart. The technology-heavy investments they are making involve robotics, machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Walmart said they were working with Knapp, an international logistics provider, to replace their current 12-step manual process with a new 5 steps and doubling the number of orders a location can fulfill in a day. Instead of moving product with people, the new approach will have robots shuttle skiffs to stagers directly, eliminating the need for floor personnel to walk up to nine miles or more a day.

"These four next-generation [fulfillment centers] alone could provide 75% of the U.S. population with next- or two-day shipping on millions of items," David Guggina, Senior Vice President of Innovation and Automation at Walmart U.S., wrote in a blog post.

When the four new centers join the company’s existing 31 dedicated e-commerce fulfillment centers, Walmart believes it will be able to reach 95% of the U.S. population with next- or two-day shipping. And with its 4,700 physical stores, the company could offer same-day delivery to about 80% of the U.S.

Both Walmart and Amazon are focusing on their weaknesses as compared to each other. Walmart is spending billions on logistics and automation and Amazon is spending billions on new physical stores, particularly for groceries (where Walmart dominates.)

Walmart’s new fulfillment centers will be located in Joliet, Illinois; McCordsville, Indiana; Lancaster, Texas; and Greencastle, Pennsylvania—with each planning to hire over 1,000 new workers. 
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Amazon currently has 253 fulfillment centers, 110 sortation centers, and 467 delivery stations in North America, not to mention hundreds of thousands of drivers and over 100 Amazon Air cargo aircraft at the end of 2021.

One of the proven methods of fighting cancer tumors is by injecting the tumor with a stimulant that will recruit immune cells to destroy tumor cells. Usually, this is done by injecting directly into the tumor, but it can be challenging when the tumor is in a hard-to-reach location.

Stanford’s new research has developed a new synthetic molecule that combines a tumor-targeting agent with another molecule that triggers the immune system to attack the tumor. The immunotherapy can be administered intravenously and can target either a specific location or multiple tumors.

The research team has just completed testing on laboratory animals and they were able to induce complete tumor regression in half the test population infected with aggressive triple negative breast cancers with just one injection. They had similar results from a group of mice infected with pancreatic cancer.

“We essentially cured some animals with just a few injections,” said Jennifer Cochran, PhD, the Shriram Chair of the Department of Bioengineering. “It was pretty astonishing. When we looked within the tumors, we saw they went from a highly immunosuppressive microenvironment to one full of activated B and T cells — similar to what happens when the immune-stimulating molecule is injected directly into the tumor. So, we’re achieving intra-tumoral injection results but with an IV delivery.”

Building on Earlier Research. The work in this study builds on that done in 2018 by Ronald Levy, MD and Edit Saga-Barfi, PhD, both of Stanford School of Medicine. That study used the same immune-activating agent and a different one injected directly into the tumor site. The results of that trial were complete tumor eradication, elimination of distant metastases and also blocked recurrence in mammary tumors. The research group then launched a clinical trial in people with non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

“The surprising result of the new research was that the sculpting of the tumor microenvironment by this intravenously administered molecule was identical to that achieved by injecting immune stimulating agents directly into the tumor,” Levy said. “This is a big advantage because it’s no longer necessary to have an easily or safely injectable tumor site.”

Next Steps. Before any human testing can occur, much more research needs to be done. The level of optimism is high in the research team because the tumor-targeting portion of the PIP-CpG molecule (PIP) appears to recognize proteins called interns. Because these are found at high levels on the surface of many cancer types, there is a possibility for an off-the-shelf treatment for patients with a variety of cancer types.
Cochran and her team have coupled the PIP-CpG molecule with probes that can be visualized with near-infrared imaging or positron emission tomography. This gives them the tool to track the location of hard-to-see cancers.
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“These integrin-targeting molecules act like guided missiles,” Cochran said. “They can deliver toxic drugs or imaging agents. Now we’re using them to deliver a signal that riles up the immune cells to fight the tumor.” That signal, CpG, mimics a pattern of DNA common in bacteria and viruses but rarely found in vertebrates.
“After more than 10 years of work on PIP, it is rewarding to experience this convergence of expertise from laboratories around Stanford, which allowed us to develop a highly promising new cancer treatment strategy,” Cochran said.

This is your annual WAKE-UP CALL! All those CDs and DVDs you’ve burned over the last decade to back up all those precious pictures, music and movies may experience bit rot. That’s right. They may be damaged by scratches or temperature and humidity variations. Most commercial CDs and DVDs will survive better than your own custom discs, but they all are prone to have problems after sitting for a long period.

Before you finish this article, please go over to YouTube, and watch EposVox’s video on how to recover data from your optical discs. It’s a 12-minute investment that will provide you with an incredible amount of information on how to keep from losing all those precious pictures, movies and even music you’ve stored on optical media.

I would recommend getting two USB optical drives from different manufacturers. That way, if one drive doesn’t read a given disc, you can try the other and see if there is any difference. If you have a tower and can install an optical drive in a bay, that would be even faster for most operations. 

Next, invest in a good piece of bulk file copy software. Here are two products that work with both Mac and Windows.

TeraCopy. It’s one of the best-known bulk copy software products on the market today. It works to copy files between computer systems and multiple media sources, regardless of the operating system. If the software encounters an error while copying files, it will try again to recover the file. If the recovery doesn’t work, it will skip the file and go to the next file and then provide a log of files with problems at the end of the job. It’s available for Windows and Macintosh.

UltraCopier. This open source software works across platforms, including Windows, Mac and Linux. This software can handle any file copy process, regardless of the size and destination. Ultracopier is faster than your default system tools for copying files. Plus, it provides advanced features, which include start/resume copy processes, searches through the copy list, and speed limits.
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Finally, after you’ve copied all your super valuables to your computer and extra external disk drive, you should include all of it in your overall backup program. That means you have an extra copy on a separate device locally and a copy on a safe cloud storage solution.

The single most important factor in surviving a battlefield injury is the combat medic. The medic is first on the scene and can administer help within the Golden Hour or even Golden Ten Minutes. Quick, effective medical procedures can be the difference between life and death.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has selected Raytheon BBN to lead a team to develop an augmented reality device that will provide the combat medic with a virtual assistant. The system will use a set of AR goggles, which will provide visual information on 50 different medical procedures.

Medics are highly trained in the most common battlefield injuries, but they aren’t doctors or surgeons and often have no experience in little-used procedures which may be needed at a moment’s notice. This is why DARPA is working on its Medical Assistance, Guidance, Instruction and Correction (MAGIC) system. 

MAGIC uses a pair of augmented reality goggles equipped with audio and video sensors and special artificial intelligence software that can act as an assistant to monitor the situation and advise the medic on how to proceed.

Raytheon will use machine learning technology to ‘teach’ the system both medical skills and situation assessment skills. The initial prototype will study 2,500 stereo videos and almost 50 million images. The machine learning process will review the historical data and synthesize useful concepts and solutions from that data.

When the AI software is ready, MAGIC should be able to provide spoken suggestions to medics or project visual overlays on the scene to guide their hands through needed medical procedures. The system will also provide events timing from engagement to final hand-off to field hospital personnel. MAGIC will also provide dosage guidance for in-field medications.

A first prototype is expected in about 18 months.
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"The combat medical environment is challenging and chaotic," said Raytheon BBN scientist Brian VanVoorst. "Our goal for the Raytheon BBN MAGIC AI tool is to help support personnel to provide guidance as needed without disrupting their concentration."