Month: October 2021

Global Telephony Provider WM provides an overview on what is behind the system that is entering into a potential sector-influencing role in many of the world’s largest markets.

NEW YORK and ST PETER PORT, Guernsey, Oct. 01, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — To supply the suite of services that Global Telephony Company Webtel.mobi (“WM”) provides, worldwide, would – if using conventional methodologies – require:

1. Global Accessibility: The build of multiple different Platforms to cater for the wide disparity of internet / Mobile Data / Hardware / Handsets worldwide.
2. Regulatory Compliance: The provision of many of its Facilities as stand-alone products in different Sectors –rather than integrated into one Telephony Platform.
3. Infrastructure: Hundreds of thousands of personnel and support & administrative personnel – and premises for them – worldwide.

To cater for all of the above, WM first researched and then planned the build and structuring of all end-requirements, then built its business and Delivery Platform to fit the end requirements.

A summary of the structure and flow of the WM System is as follows:

Global Accessibility
For internet-based products and services to be globally accessible and usable, the Online Delivery Platform has to be built, and function to cater for, the extremely wide disparity in the hardware, software, mobile data and internet capacity in all countries and several other factors. A summary of requirements, and what WM had to make its system available to, is as follows:

• Applications: Only Online Applications or “Web Applications” can be used. 50% of Mobile Phones in use worldwide are Pre-Smart phones, which cannot download Apps. If Apps are downloaded onto phones, the Company whose Apps they are – is legally deemed to be present in the country where the App is downloaded and used.
• Browsers: There are very many browsers in use – for Desktop / Laptop / Tablet, Smart Phones and Pre-Smart Phones. These include legacy (old) Browsers not in use in Developed Economy countries. Browsers also function differently on different makes and models of hardware and hardware resolutions. The Delivery Platform must function on all of them. There are thousands of combinations, and the Delivery Platform must be built to render and function on them all.
• Operating Systems: There are hundreds of differences in the operating systems of the various makes and models of Smart Phone, Pre-Smart Phone, Tablets, Laptops and Desktops. This is further compounded by the use of Low-Resolution Operating Systems in large parts of the world that are developing countries. Again, there are thousands of combinations, and the Delivery Platform must be built to render and function on them all.
• Bandwidth / Data Cost: In the majority of the world, access to internet does not exist outside of Mobile Data. In the Developing World, internet and Mobile Data is either extremely expensive or very slow – particularly for the 70% of the world population who are on Pre-Paid phone contracts. The Delivery Platform must be built to strip out all Rich Images and Dynamic content, and highly-compressed – otherwise, the product is too slow or too expensive in bandwidth / Mobile Data cost to be accessed or used.
• Pre-Smart Mobile Phones: The 50% of Pre-Smart Phones in use globally cannot download Apps, cannot properly function on Platforms / Sites using Javascript, and are limited in their User-Functions. The Delivery Platform must be built without Javascript and to be easily usable by limited functionality devices.
• Globally Intuitive Layout: The wide discrepancy in user “norms” in different parts of the world means what is considered normal or intuitive in one part of the world is considered strange or difficult in others. The layout must be simple and intuitive, presented in a clear and simple manner, conforming to a global median of norms of navigation.
• Color: Color is extremely important in multiple countries – signifying good, bad, lucky, unlucky, etc. All colors with negative connotations in any significant parts of the world must be avoided.

The above considerations and various others – and a decade of testing in multiple markets worldwide – have informed and guided the layout and functionality of WM’s Platform 2. Its current format renders it easily accessible and usable by all devices, on all browsers, with all software / hardware / handset combinations, in low-cost or high-cost and rapid or slow internet and mobile data countries, in market-sectors, in all countries, worldwide.

Regulatory Compliance

• WM is a Telephony Company with internet-initiated telephony. It is regulated as an Internet Telephony Service Provider. All its Services are telephony and Telephony-Support Services. The fact some of them are Dual Use is due only to its Complex Adaptive System and Complex System Hybrid (see next section).
• WM does not provide services to the public – only to Members. It is therefore a “Closed-Loop Members Only service” – not a public service.
• WM’s operation from Guernsey as a Third-Country location (not part of any Political or Economic Union of countries) and its accessibility via Web Application means wherever the Platform is accessed from, it is deemed to be being accessed in Guernsey, and all member Accounts and Transactions occur in Guernsey.
• The “Stored Credit” Members load into their WM Pre-Paid telephony Accounts is not a deposit / payment or part-payment. Stored Credit remains the property of the owner until it is used. Stored Credit loads therefore do not represent outward payments, deposits, or transfers to third parties.
• No Stored Credit of WM Members held in WM’s Regulated Bank Accounts ever moves – even in “Transfer” or “Payment” transactions. The Stored Credit (funds) remain completely static in WM’s Regulated Multicurrency bank Accounts (held with one of the world’s leading and largest Banking Groups), and the only alteration after “Transfers” or “Payments” is the alteration of each transacting Member’s Balance in their WM Accounts.
• Multiple other considerations – the above being some of them. Moreover, WM’s KYC and AML processes in respect of its Members are one of the most thorough and credible of such systems in the world.

All WM’s regulatory requirements and structures have been researched by multiple independent firms of Attorneys, Global Specialist Consultancies, Banks, Regulatory Agencies, and other entities, in one of the most thorough due diligence processes ever carried out on a corporate entity in corporate history. WM is compliant with all Regulatory Requirements applicable to it – which is why it has already operated for nearly 10 years in its Platform 1 phase without any incident.

Infrastructure
WM operates as a Decentralized Company, with software and human capital infrastructures located in 15 countries worldwide. A summary of WM’s infrastructure is as follows:

Outsourcing:
Non-essential and non-core infrastructure requirements are outsourced – although WM retains joint oversight over them. The outsourced facilities are primarily hardware-related. Several hundred people work in the entities where the decentralized WM outsourced infrastructure is located, but they are not a WM cost-centre. There are multiple replacements for each outsourced entity at all times, with immediate switchover capacity – so not rendering WM vulnerable to an external entity.

WM In-House Outsourcing (VSMPs and Agent):
WM expands internationally by means of an Affiliate Program (the Virtual Specialized Mobile Provider or VSMP Program), and an Independent Agent Program. VSMPs are Affiliates of WM given to existing companies / organizations / other entities. All personnel of the existing companies / organizations / other entities that have VSMPs – and all their premises and equipment – is used to run their Affiliated WM business. The same applies for Independent Agents. The cumulative de-facto total of personnel and premises that already exist as WM VSMPs make WM one of the most substantial global companies in terms of de-facto personnel, equipment, and premises – but none of this is a cost-centre for WM.

Artificial Intelligence Complex Adaptive System:
This is the key to WM as an entity. To provide its all-encompassing services globally – and for any entity in the world to provide such services and facilities in this manner – the use of Artificial Intelligence is required. Without this, it is simply not possible to provide such services in such a manner – and it would require hundreds of thousands of personnel to even attempt to do so. WM built an Artificial Intelligence System, which is a Complex Adaptive System. It also integrates elements of an Inanimate Complex System (software, systems, processes and components) and an Animate Complex System (human beings – for the VSMP + Independent Agent + Attorneys and Notaries for the KYC + AML processes). The Animate Part of the System functions within the “TEL.mobi Group Global Alliance”. The perfection of its Artificial Intelligence component is what has taken the time to perfect the WM System, and is the Primary Factor in all that WM does – and can do. To understand more about the WM’s Artificial Intelligence component – referred to as “HAL” within WM – it is easiest if the concepts, requirements, and results of a “Complex Adaptive System” and a “Complex System” are researched online. The Complex Adaptive System and two additional Complex System components are what endow WM’s Facilities with the properties of “Emergence”, enabling them to be dual-use products whereby they simultaneously provide Telephony-Support functionality and their secondary functionality in and to other markets.

Resources:

Media Contact:
Nick Lambert: wm@thoburns.com

Information on the TEL. mobi Group Global Alliance:
https://webtel.mobi/pc/info/tmg-global-alliance/

Video on WM’s Regulatory Compliance:
https://youtu.be/u522lVsGIJI

Video on The Capacities of the WM System:
https://youtu.be/XYBrCikUhn8

Research Reports on the Capacities of the WM System:
https://tinyurl.com/TUVresearch

WM’s urls:
https://webtel.mobi/pc (Tablets / Laptops / Desktops)
https://webtel.mobi (Smart Phones)
https://webtel.mobi/wap (Pre-Smart Mobile Phones)

Overview Information on Complex Adaptive Systems:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_adaptive_system

Overview Information on Complex Systems:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_system

Overview Information on the Properties of Emergence:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/89237c42-9613-4826-85b5-cde76bb49300

The photo is also available at Newscom, www.newscom.com, and via AP PhotoExpress.

POI applauds Periscope by McKinsey for depth of analytics, machine learning, and more

NEW YORK and LONDON, Oct. 01, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — McKinsey & Company today announced that Periscope by McKinsey, a suite of marketing and sales analytics solutions that helps companies achieve sustainable revenue growth, has received four Best-in-Class distinctions from the Promotion Optimization Institute (POI).

The recognition appears in the POI 2021 Enterprise Planning Vendor Panorama report. It is the sixth year in a row that Periscope by McKinsey has been top-rated in this key annual industry report. The report evaluates how leading vendors help their manufacturing and retail partners understand how technology and services can help them improve promotional outcomes to drive profitable growth.

The ability to execute mutually profitable trade promotions is one of the main challenges facing retailers and manufacturers. Periscope by McKinsey’s highly analytical offering embeds McKinsey & Company intellectual property and a broad array of services in the promotion cycle. Periscope offers six core solutions: marketing, customer experience, category, pricing B2C, pricing B2B, and sales solutions. Each combines ongoing data management, insights, software tools, client service, and capability-enhancing support. Collectively, those elements keep delivering client impact by weaving Periscope’s IP into their clients’ everyday ways of working.

Periscope was named Best in Class in four functional areas:

• Financial Orientation & Simulation
• Collaboration External
• Artificial Intelligence (AI)
• Revenue Growth Management

Periscope was cited in the POI report for:

• Its depth of analytics to support both modern as well as traditional trade (the latter is largely overlooked by many vendors).
• Leveraging machine learning for pattern recognition in post-event analytics to provide more insight than can be yielded by arithmetic calculations.
• Its advanced capabilities, such as cross elasticities, which many TPO vendors do not have.
• Making it much easier to track forecasts and actual against plan at various levels of the hierarchy. This, in addition to the mean absolute percentage error, net percent error, and weighted net percent error, forms the basis of highly accurate reporting.

According to the report, Periscope is differentiated by:

“It’s level of automation and depth of the end-to-end offering of software and services. POI also sees Periscope as being a leader in pattern recognition through machine learning to help in answering the questions that people don’t think to ask. Also, its focus on data management and enrichment to ensure a more favorable output. Finally, the story boards for presenting the insights to customers or internally are compelling because they are dynamic and make collaboration easier than building PowerPoints from scratch.”

Zachary John, Partner, McKinsey & Company
“For retailers and CPGs, it’s been a market-defining year as we witnessed multiple years of e-commerce adoption in just a matter of months, thereby reshaping consumer behavior in short order. Meeting the needs of today’s new consumers requires a new muscle – scalable predictive analytics – to drive precision pricing and promotions.

“That’s why we continue to invest in transformative strategies and client-informed innovations across our suite of tech-enabled solutions to help our clients anticipate and respond to their customers’ needs. Our data-rich analytical suite enables companies to automate and optimize pricing, promotions, and assortment using pattern recognition through machine learning. This means they can rapidly make intelligent decisions to increase revenue, improve customer acquisition, and shape their value perception.”

The POI 2021 Enterprise Planning Vendor Panorama report can be accessed here.

About Periscope® by McKinsey
Founded in 2007, and now a part of the McKinsey Marketing & Sales Practice, the Periscope® by McKinsey platform combines world-leading intellectual property, prescriptive analytics, and cloud-based tools with expert support and training. It’s a unique combination that drives revenue growth, both now and into the future. The platform offers a suite of Marketing & Sales solutions that accelerate and sustain commercial transformation for businesses. Periscope leverages its world-leading IP (largely from McKinsey but also other partners) and best-in-class technology to enable transparency into big data, create actionable insights and new ways of working that drive lasting performance improvement, and typically sustain a 2–7% increase in return on sales (ROS). With a truly global reach, the portfolio of solutions is comprised of: Insight Solutions, Marketing Solutions, Customer Experience Solutions, Category Solutions, Pricing Solutions, Performance Solutions, and Sales Solutions. These are complemented by ongoing client service and custom capability-building programs.

To learn more about how Periscope’s solutions and experts are helping businesses continually drive better performance, visit www.mckinsey.com/periscope

To access the full POI 2021 Enterprise Planning Vendor Panorama report, please contact Joanie Malin jmalin@p-o-i.org, or visit the POI website https://poinstitute.com/

About Marketing & Sales, McKinsey & Company
The mission of the McKinsey Marketing & Sales Practice is to help leaders of both consumer and business-to-business clients create Growth that Matters through meaningful transformations and marketing-driven profit. The practice helps its clients set their strategic direction, develop their marketing and sales capabilities, and connect their organization to realize the full potential of today’s omnichannel opportunities. Clients benefit from McKinsey’s experience in core areas of marketing such as branding, customer insights, marketing ROI, digital marketing, CLM pricing, and sales and channel management.

For further information please contact:
Media Contacts
US : DiGennaro Communications : MaryLiz Ghanem McKinsey-DiGennaro@digennaro-usa.com / 917-518-8422
UK : 3THINKRS : Ruth Jones / Becca Ross mckinsey@3thinkrs.com / 0208 0872843

CHICAGO, Sept. 30, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Amlan International, a global leader in natural, mineral-based feed additives for poultry and swine production, continues to bolster its operations in Indonesia with the addition of Betty Yuriko as country manager. With 27 years of experience in the poultry and swine industry, Betty joins the Indonesia team to lead company growth and distribution strategy.

Indonesia has the world’s fourth-largest population, with demand for animal protein rapidly increasing. With decades of animal health experience, Betty will play a vital role in helping producers incorporate Amlan’s novel mineral-based feed additive technology to ensure long-term customer value and profitability. With the recent issuance of a patent in Indonesia to protect the novel mineral-based formulation used in Amlan’s natural feed additives – Varium^® for poultry and NeoPrime^® for swine – producers in the country now have natural alternatives to antibiotic growth promoters that optimize animal health while ensuring economical production. With her expertise, Betty will lead an engaged and customer-focused team in delivering these products to the market.

“We are extremely excited to welcome Betty to the Amlan team,” says Fred Kao, Vice President of Global Sales, Amlan International. “Indonesian producers are looking for new, alternative solutions to maintain their animals’ health. With her decades of experience, Betty will be a great asset in providing our natural, mineral-based solutions to meet that demand.”

Prior to joining Amlan, Betty spent her whole career in the animal health industry. She recently worked as a senior technical manager for a well-known animal health company, where she drove relationships with distributors, breeders, commercial farms and many others. She also worked to provide expert technical support for the sales teams and assisted in marketing efforts for a variety of feed additives. Betty holds a degree in veterinary medicine from Institut Pertanian Bogor.

“The poultry industry in Indonesia needs high-quality natural feed additives to help them meet their production goals,” says Daniel Jaffee, President & CEO, Oil-Dri Corporation of America. “With Betty joining our talented team of industry professionals, we know she will only help strengthen our operations and be a valuable asset in introducing our mineral-based feed additives to the global market.”

Company Information
Amlan is the animal health business of Oil-Dri Corporation of America, leading global manufacturer and marketer of sorbent minerals. Oil-Dri leverages over 80 years of expertise in mineral science to selectively mine and process their unique mineral for consumer and business-to-business markets. Oil-Dri Corporation of America doing business as “Amlan International” is a publicly traded stock on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: ODC). Amlan International sells feed additives across the world. Product availability may vary by country, associated claims do not constitute medical claims and may differ based on government requirements.

Reagan Culbertson
Media Contact
press@amlan.com

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/56a0ae8a-2eff-4c5e-a855-7ab404376fed

SAN JOSE, Calif., Sept. 30, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Zoom Video Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: ZM) today announced that Zoom and Five9 have mutually terminated the merger agreement executed by the parties on July 16, 2021.

At Five9’s special meeting of stockholders held on September 30, 2021, Five9 did not obtain the requisite stockholder support for the merger agreement. As a result, Zoom and Five9 each had the ability to terminate the merger agreement.

“While we were excited about the benefits this transaction would bring to both Zoom and Five9 stakeholders, including the long-term potential for both sets of shareholders, financial discipline is foundational to our strategy,” said Eric S. Yuan, Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Zoom. “The contact center market remains a strategic priority for Zoom, and we are confident in our ability to capture its growth potential. At Zoomtopia, we announced the Zoom Video Engagement Center, our cloud-based contact center solution, which will launch in early 2022. Video Engagement Center will be a flexible, easy-to-use solution that connects businesses and their customers. We are building this new solution with the same scalability and trusted architecture that has made Zoom the platform of choice for businesses around the world. We also plan to maintain our valued existing contact center partnerships with companies like Five9, Genesys, NICE inContact, Talkdesk, and Twilio. We remain focused on driving long-term value creation for Zoom shareholders and delivering happiness to our customers through our broad-based communications platform including unified communications, developer, and events solutions.”

About Zoom
Zoom is for you. We help you express ideas, connect to others, and build toward a future limited only by your imagination. Our frictionless communications platform is the only one that started with video as its foundation, and we have set the standard for innovation ever since. That is why we are an intuitive, scalable, and secure choice for individuals, small businesses, and large enterprises alike. Founded in 2011, Zoom is publicly traded (NASDAQ: ZM) and headquartered in San Jose, California. Visit zoom.com and follow @zoom.

Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains express and implied “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements regarding Zoom’s strategic priorities, market opportunity, product launches, the expected benefits of new products, growth strategy, partnerships and expected benefits from the same, and business aspirations to support organizations and people on multiple fronts as they look to reimagine work, communications and collaboration. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terms such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intend,” “may,” “might,” “plan,” “project,” “will,” “would,” “should,” “could,” “can,” “predict,” “potential,” “target,” “explore,” “continue,” or the negative of these terms, and similar expressions intended to identify forward-looking statements. By their nature, these statements are subject to numerous uncertainties and risks, including factors beyond our control, that could cause actual results, performance or achievement to differ materially and adversely from those anticipated or implied in the statements, including: declines in new customers and hosts, renewals or upgrades, difficulties in evaluating our prospects and future results of operations given our limited operating history, competition from other providers of communications platforms, continued uncertainty regarding the extent and duration of the impact of COVID-19 and the responses of government and private industry thereto, including the potential effect on our user growth rate once the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic tapers, particularly as a vaccine becomes widely available, and users return to work or school or are otherwise no longer subject to shelter-in-place mandates, as well as the impact of COVID-19 on the overall economic environment, any or all of which will have an impact on demand for remote work solutions for businesses as well as overall distributed, face-to-face interactions and collaboration using Zoom, delays or outages in services from our co-located data centers, and failures in internet infrastructure or interference with broadband access which could cause current or potential users to believe that our systems are unreliable. Additional risks and uncertainties that could cause actual outcomes and results to differ materially from those contemplated by the forward-looking statements are included under the caption “Risk Factors” and elsewhere in our most recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”), including our quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended July 31, 2021. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date the statements are made and are based on information available to Zoom at the time those statements are made and/or management’s good faith belief as of that time with respect to future events. Zoom assumes no obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date they were made, except as required by law.

Press Relations
Colleen Rodriguez
Global Public Relations Lead for Zoom
press@zoom.us

Investor Relations
Tom McCallum
Head of Investor Relations for Zoom
investors@zoom.us

Mapping How Mutated Proteins Interact Reveals Previously Unseen Cancer Targets

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 30, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Researchers at UC San Francisco and UC San Diego have mapped out how hundreds of mutations involved in two types of cancer affect the activity of proteins that are the ultimate actors behind the disease. The work points the way to identifying new precision treatments that may skirt side effects common with much current chemotherapy.

The effort, dubbed Cancer Cell Mapping Initiative (CCMI), is led by Nevan Krogan, PhD, director of UCSF’s Quantitative Biosciences Institute and Trey Ideker, PhD, professor at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and Moores Cancer Center, who are also co-senior authors on a set of three related studies that describe the map. The papers appear September 30 in Science (Swaney et al.; Kim et al.; Zheng et al.).

“This is an entirely new way to do cancer research,” said Nevan Krogan. Krogan noted that targeted treatments based simply on DNA sequencing of tumors haven’t been as effective as hoped. “We realized we need another way to look at cancer that takes it a step beyond DNA.”

“The bottom line is that we’re elevating the conversation about cancer from individual genes to whole protein complexes,” Ideker said. “For years different groups have been discovering more and more gene mutations that are involved in cancers. But now we’re able to explain these mutations at the next level — by looking at how the different gene mutations in different patients actually have the same downstream effects on the same protein machines. This is the first map of cancer from the protein complex lens.”

Looking Beyond Gene Mutations to the Protein Disruptions They Cause

The team looked at proteins, which carry out the vast majority of functions in the body—and which take on a collection of forms that far outnumber our genes, providing a much more expansive view of the activity underlying cancer.

DNA contains the instructions for building proteins, which then interact with other proteins, almost always in large groups called complexes. These protein complexes regulate an activity or turn a function on or off. If the underlying DNA has a mutation, the resulting protein complexes will as well.

These gene mutations can affect how well the resulting protein complexes do their jobs. For example, a particular interaction between two proteins might be crucial to repairing damaged DNA. If the mutated version of one of those proteins is shaped differently than normal, it may not interact correctly with the other protein, and the DNA might not get repaired, leading to cancer.

Mapping Protein Mutations

There is a subset of genes that are commonly mutated in cancer, Krogan said, and each of these genes can be mutated in hundreds of different ways. In addition, the function of a particular protein may be different in different types of cells, so a mutation in a breast cancer cell might have different effects on protein complexes than that same mutation’s effect in a cell in the throat.

CCMI’s goal was to map the constellation of protein complexes formed by approximately 60 proteins commonly involved in either breast cancer and cancers of the head and neck, and to see what each looked like in healthy cells. Alongside that effort, they created maps of how protein complexes are affected by hundreds of different gene mutations in two cancerous cell lines.

Doing so presented a formidable computational challenge. But the CCMI collaboration allowed the team to use advanced and novel data analyses to reveal not only whether the mutation affected interactions between proteins, but to what extent.

“That kind of detail shows us how well an existing drug might work, or explains why it doesn’t,” Ideker said.

The most powerful aspect of these extensive protein interaction maps is that they can shed the same light on many other conditions, Krogan said. For example, the team is also at work on similar studies of protein interactions in psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders, as well as infectious disease.

Collaboration is Key

Krogan and Ideker see the CCMI collaboration as the real source of strength behind the approach.

“We’re not only making connections between different genes and proteins but between different people and different disciplines,” Krogan said. “Those collaborations have built up an infrastructure that allows them to integrate an array of types of information and push the boundaries of what’s possible in applying data science to complex diseases.”

“We’re in the perfect position to take advantage of this revolution on every level. I couldn’t be more excited than I am right now. We can do such damage to cancer.”

Funding: This research was supported by grants from the National Cancer Institute (U54 CA209891, U54 CA209988, 5F30CA236404-02) and the National institutes of Health (F32 CA239336, R50 CA243885, S10 OD026929) as well as other public and philanthropic sources.

About QBI: The Quantitative Biosciences Institute (QBI) fosters collaborations across the biomedical and the physical sciences, seeking quantitative methods to address pressing problems in biology and biomedicine. Motivated by problems of human disease, QBI is committed to investigating fundamental biological mechanisms, because ultimately solutions to many diseases have been revealed by unexpected discoveries in the basic sciences.

Follow QBI
qbi.ucsf.edu | Facebook.com/qbiucsf | Twitter.com/qbi_ucsf | YouTube.com/qbitvucsf

About UCSF: The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is exclusively focused on the health sciences and is dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. UCSF Health, which serves as UCSF’s primary academic medical center, includes top-ranked specialty hospitals and other clinical programs, and has affiliations throughout the Bay Area. UCSF School of Medicine also has a regional campus in Fresno. Learn more at ucsf.edu or see our Fact Sheet.

Follow UCSF
ucsf.edu | Facebook.com/ucsf | Twitter.com/ucsf | YouTube.com/ucsf

Media contacts:

Gina Nguyen, 646-326-8936
GinaT.Nguyen@ucsf.edu | @QBI_UCSF

Robin Marks, 415-663-6768
Robin.Marks@ucsf.edu | @UCSF

Heather Buschman, 858-249-0456
hbuschman@health.ucsd.edu | @UCSDMedSchool

A video accompanying this announcement is available at: https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/ff38e633-ed60-481f-8b22-a0f73929a7a9

INVNT GROUP Develops and Builds Three Immersive Brand Experiences

New York, NY, Sept. 30, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — [INVNT GROUP] and PepsiCo have strategically partnered to design and build three one-of-a-kind, interactive, and educational pavilions opening October 1^st , 2021. Each pavilion is designed around core sub-themes of Mobility, Sustainability, and Opportunity.

PepsiCo’s global brands including Aquafina®, Gatorade®, Pepsi® and Lay’s® headline the landmark pavilions; designed with the power of connectivity and sustainable futures in mind. 

Each pavilion has taken acute dedication, creativity, and labor – logging 6,032 hours for the Aquafina The Drop pavilion, 5,815 hours for the Gatorade The Bolt pavilion, and 5,943 hours for the Pepsi & Lay’s The Plus pavilion. Through advanced modular methodologies, INVNT GROUP in partnership with it’s on the ground fabrication partner in Dubai, Bespoke Modular Systems, has designed and engineered the pavilions with eco-conscious materials and considerations.

Scott Cullather, President & CEO, INVNT GROUP notes, “We’ve been working collaboratively with PepsiCo since 2006 on many of their largest activations and brand engagements across the portfolio. We are thrilled to continue that partnership through our purposeful work. The entire world will be present at this magnificent event, and we look forward to entertaining, educating, inspiring, and delighting.”

Jamal Wick, Managing Director, Bespoke Modular Systems added, “We are thrilled to support INVNT GROUP in bringing to life their designs for these iconic pavilions and can’t wait for the world to experience them firsthand this October.”

Aquafina: The Drop

The glistening Aquafina pavilion features 41,000 strategically placed recyclable aluminum cans on its exterior, creating a striking yet fluid water-drop structure. Visitors will be transported through The Drop pavilion as if within a water drop, while engaging with eye-opening statistics and ways to eradicate water inequity experienced by so many, globally.

It also delivers a high-tech experience with “Aquatar”: the 3D water encyclopedia that shares facts on the human body’s relationship to water. Aquatar was created with Unreal Engine, the world’s most open and advanced real-time 3D creation tool for cutting-edge content, interactive experiences, and immersive virtual worlds. Upon engaging, guests are transformed into water and water particles are displayed on a larger-than-life curved projection wall – all in real time.

Gatorade: The Bolt

Gatorade delves into to the science of physical performance and active lifestyles. The Bolt pavilion features multiple educational and shareable moments, starting with a retrospective of the Gatorade legacy and its relationship to some of the greatest athletes and sports moments of all time.

Visitors will get a look at the Gatorade Sports Science Institute (GSSI Lab), which boasts years of research focused on performance of the human body and its unending capabilities. Gatorade approaches personal hydration through innovation, with the GX™ Sweat Patch. Created to sync with your mobile device, the patch tracks performance vitals through perspiration, and offers bespoke recommendations for powering active lifestyles.

The Bolt pavilion also features an experiential moment where visitors can put their agility to the test against other visitors, through the Gatorade React Board.

Pepsi & Lay’s: The Plus

Bringing two of the world’s biggest brands under one roof, visitors can crunch and fizz through The Plus pavilion. Designed to engage all the senses through a kaleidoscope of bold flavors and rich colors, the pavilion creates a moment of joy and discovery.

Lay’s immersive pods allow visitors to bask in the renewing power of the spring season. Visitors can step into a striking cherry blossom display that is enhanced by scents of some of the most inventive Lay’s flavors from around the world.

Pepsi Black draws visitors into a multi-media world activated by cutting edge technology. Unity, the world’s leading platform for creating and operating interactive, real-time 3D (RT3D) content, powers interactive stations like the Pepsi Black “Pledge Wall” – a giant 5m x 4m LED curved wall where guests can enter a pledge and send their pledge into the fizzing world of Pepsi. The wall will hold all visitor’s pledges over the 6 months duration of the global conference. The number of pledges will keep accumulating and eventually the activation will cycle through thousands of pledges.

“PepsiCo will bring its unique sense of fun, ensuring that every guest makes the most of this iconic world gathering. The Bolt, The Drop, and The Plus are perfectly aligned with subthemes of Opportunity, Mobility and Sustainability and will showcase how PepsiCo will lead the world towards a fun and sustainable future,” said PepsiCo’s AMESA Chief Marketing Officer, Mustafa Shamseldin.

The pavilions will be open from 1 October 2021 through March 2022.

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ABOUT INVNT GROUP

[INVNT GROUP] was established with a vision to provide consistent, meaningful, well-articulated BrandStory across all platforms. With offices in New York, Dubai, London, Singapore, San Francisco, Sydney, Stockholm, Detroit, and Washington D.C.; headed up by President and CEO, Scott Cullather, [INVNT GROUP], THE GLOBAL BRANDSTORY PROJECT™ represents a growing portfolio of complementary disciplines designed to help forward-thinking organizations everywhere, impact the audiences that matter, anywhere. The GROUP consists of modern brand strategy firm, Folk Hero; creative-led culture consultancy, Meaning; branded content studio and content marketing agency, HEVĒ; collegiate events and experiences, INVNT Higher Ed, and INVNT, the founding live brandstory telling agency. For more information about [INVNT GROUP], visit: www.invntgroup.com.

ABOUT PEPSICO

PepsiCo products are enjoyed by consumers more than one billion times a day in more than 200 countries and territories around the world. PepsiCo generated more than US$70 billion in net revenue in 2020, driven by a complementary food and beverage portfolio that includes Frito-Lay, Gatorade, Pepsi-Cola, Quaker, and Tropicana. PepsiCo’s product portfolio includes a wide range of enjoyable foods and beverages, including 23 brands that generate more than US$1 billion each in estimated annual retail sales.

Guiding PepsiCo is the vision to Be the Global Leader in Convenient Foods and Beverages by Winning with Purpose. “Winning with Purpose” reflects our ambition to win sustainably in the marketplace and embed purpose into all aspects of the business.  For more information, visit www.pepsico.com.

ABOUT BESPOKE MODULAR SOLUTIONS

Bespoke Modular Solutions (BMS) provides a new level of modular and prefabricated turnkey solutions to innovational real estate developers, hoteliers, and private residential projects to name a few. We offer a complete end-to-end solution, from a team of international experts that understand the region’s cultural and geographical sensitivities. Our designers and engineers have worked for the most renowned European companies in modular construction and in hotel operations.

Our company values live by building a better future for our next generation and children. We therefore are proud to say that we are pioneers in the region in off-site construction in an eco- friendly environment, with sustainable materials and in a time reduced manner. For more information, visit: www.bespoke-modular-solutions.com.

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Jhonathan Mendez de Leon
[INVNT GROUP]®
3478192089
jmendezdeleon@invnt.com

PICKERING, Ontario, Sept. 30, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — TJP Labs Inc. (“TJP Labs”), one of North America’s leading full-service contract manufacturers of next-generation nicotine products, announced today that it has, through a wholly owned subsidiary, acquired certain assets of North American Ingredients Inc. (“NAI”), including NAI’s Drug Establishment and cGMP compliant facility. The newly acquired facility is located in Scarborough, Ontario.

The acquisition is in line with TJP Labs’ plan to secure its modern oral nicotine pouch export capabilities and further augment its globally recognized expertise in full-service contract manufacturing in the next-generation nicotine space.

Speaking on the achievement, David Richmond-Peck, CEO of TJP Labs, said:

“We at TJP are incredibly excited at the possibilities this new ownership brings, and I am thrilled to integrate this exciting new team. The acquisition propels our vision to become a global leader in modern oral nicotine pouch manufacturing. In addition, it strengthens our portfolio and further reinforces our export capabilities for modern oral nicotine pouches to service high-volume brands in international markets. TJP Labs is internationally recognized for producing high-quality products. With our intent to achieve a global leadership position within modern oral nicotine, we have found a partner that shares our vision and empowers our global growth momentum.”

About TJP Labs Inc. 
TJP Labs is a leading North American full-service, global contract manufacturer of premium quality next-generation nicotine products, specializing in the manufacture of bulk liquids and in modern oral nicotine pouches. Our products are manufactured and packaged in our full cGMP/HACCP compliant, ISO 9001:2015 certified state-of-the-art facilities.

Contacts

David Richmond-Peck ‒ business@tjplabs.com

Website: www.tjplabs.com

The new alliance will provide exceptional value to renters and landlords across Canada

TORONTO, Sept. 30, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Rentals.ca Network, Inc. has announced its launch, which includes six Canadian rental marketplaces offering the most traffic and leads for landlords to list their properties and providing the most listings for renters to find their next home in Canada.

The Rentals.ca Network consists of Rentals.ca, Rentfaster.ca, Louer.ca, Rentboard.ca, RentCanada.com and TorontoRentals.com.

The network features map-based search, neighbourhood scores and commute times, 3D virtual tours, floor plans, open house dates, and artificial intelligence to detect fraudulent listings.

“We are passionate about offering renters an exceptional experience through intuitive design on mobile, tablet, desktop and voice devices,” said Matt Danison, CEO of Rentals.ca. “With an understanding of the next generation of renters, we are focusing on interval searching, where renters might only have five minutes to scan our rental inventory while waiting in line, commuting on the subway, or during a lunch break.”

More efficiencies are on the horizon as technologies are integrated, and best practices and key features are applied to all marketplaces. The Rentals.ca Network has already achieved synergies by merging sales, human resources and billing, which provide cost savings across the network.

The Rentals.ca Network is a game-changer for renters and landlords.

For the renter, the new network will provide more quality listings, intuitive design, and a safer search experience which will make it easier for renters to find their next home.

For the landlord, the new network will drive more quality leads, save time in posting and editing listings on multiple websites, and offer exceptional customer service.

“By consolidating under the new rental network, we will be able to provide a better experience for both landlords and renters,” said Mark Hawkins, president of Rentfaster.ca. “We will be able to deliver better technology, a seamless experience and better data, which will allow Canadians to find a home and rent a home — faster.”

Although the network works with major REITs and property managers across Canada, most of the property listings comes from small landlords posting their apartments, condos, townhouses, detached homes and basements for rent directly to one of the six market-leading brands.

BY THE NUMBERS

• In August, the network received 26 million page views, 4.3 million sessions and 2.3 million users.  
• In the last 12 months, the network has generated 50 million sessions, with 24 million users resulting in 5.4 million leads generated for landlords across Canada.
• The network ranks in the top three positions on Google for 53,980 keywords.
• The network has installed 17,500 branded “for rent signs” for landlords in 18 cities across Canada.
• Since 2019, 110,000 small mom and pop landlords have listed properties with one of the six rental marketplaces resulting in over 240,000 listed properties through our easy-to-use e-commerce experiences.

Rentals.ca Network has the most data on vacant units in Canada. This will allow the company to better predict trends, and help clients make better decisions in developing new rental housing.

Rentals.ca Network is a trusted source for media outlets for news, data and information on rental rates, trends and insights in Canada producing the monthly National Rent Report, the Toronto GTA Rent Report and the annual Canadian Rental Market Predictions Report. The reports are created in collaboration with long-time housing data analyst Ben Myers, president of Bullpen Research & Consulting.

In August, among the 165 stories and media mentions of Rentals.ca, were rental news pieces done by The Globe and Mail, Global News, Global News Radio, The Canadian Press, CBC, CTV, Toronto Star, The Daily Hive — Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, Vancouver Is Awesome, Narcity, the Winnipeg Free-Press and The Hamilton Spectator.

“Rentals.ca Network pledges to stay on top of the latest news, trends, insights and data to help keep media outlets and their audiences well-tuned to the rental heartbeat of Canada,” said Paul Danison, content director of Rentals.ca Network. Danison has over 40 years of experience as a reporter/editor/journalist.

Funding for the Rentals.ca Network, Inc. is made possible by Rentsync, formerly known as Landlord Web Solutions, a St. Catharines and Toronto-based firm. Rentsync is a leader in rental housing marketing, advertising and software solutions in North America.

“This transaction creates opportunities to pool resources and provide a more sophisticated set of tools for renters and landlords in Canada,” said Steve Cowan, CEO of Rentsync. “We are tremendously excited about the opportunities ahead.”

Rentals.ca Network offices are in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Calgary and St. Catharines.

Information: Paul Danison at paul@rentals.ca

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