Latest news with #Stanford
Fast Company
4 hours ago
- Business
- Fast Company
Africa's solar and EV revolution is here
In Sierra Leone, a motorcyclist pulls into a roadside station—not for gas, but to swap in a fully charged solar-powered battery. Across Nigeria, families flick on solar lanterns, children study after dark, midwives deliver babies, and televisions hum to life—all without ever connecting to a power grid. This is climate innovation where it matters most. No legacy infrastructure. No hand-wringing. Just necessity, invention, and momentum. Africa isn't waiting for the grid. It's building its own future—solar-first, mobile-ready, and designed for the realities of life off the map. On a continent where 600 million people —roughly half its population—have no or unreliable access to electricity, there's no choice. And no company has scaled that future like Built for places the grid forgot began in a Stanford classroom—the now-legendary 'Design for Extreme Affordability' course at the Stanford's design program. Its first product? A solar lamp created for rural Myanmar, durable enough to survive being trampled by a cow. It wasn't made for eco-conscious Americans. But that didn't stop a sample from landing in a Sirius Satellite Radio studio in 2007, where I was hosting The Lazy Environmentalist. At the time, it was novel: a low-cost solar gadget at a moment when green products were attention-grabbing but pricey. But the real story was only just beginning. The rocket ship that stayed off the radar While media attention drifted during the 2008 recession, went heads-down. Ned Tozun, then newly married and fresh out of Stanford, moved to Shenzhen to work directly with Chinese manufacturers. His cofounder, Sam Goldman, relocated to India to launch sales. Together, they were building a venture-backed rocket ship for impact—designing for durability, scaling a global supply chain, and figuring out how to finance solar for families without access to banks. Seventeen years later, is an 'overnight success.' It now powers over 30 million homes across Africa and has reached around 200 million people in 72 countries. With operations in Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, and India, the company employs 1,200 staff and 15,000 local sales agents to reach last-mile customers in rural communities. A grid of their own products are designed to deliver a grid-like lifestyle, without the grid. The product line includes solar panel kits, batteries, ultra-efficient appliances, and even televisions. Children can study after dark. Families no longer rely on hazardous kerosene. Local economies run longer and safer. Critically, isn't just a hardware company. It's also a fintech platform, having extended $638 million in loans to underbanked customers. Its pay-as-you-go financing model has unlocked solar access for millions of low-income households. The numbers tell the story: 91 million school-aged children reached with solar lighting 32 million households powered 40 million tons of CO₂ emissions offset By 2030, their goal is clear: Transform one billion lives. New backing, bigger stage In June, was tapped as a key participant in Nigeria's $750 million DARES program, a World Bank–funded initiative to bring solar power to millions of the country's citizens. The timing couldn't be more relevant. At a moment when clean energy funding for the developing world is at the center of climate negotiations—yet rich nations continue to stall— is already moving. Access to low-cost Chinese solar panels has made the economics viable. And Africa's entrepreneurial climate is meeting the challenge with urgency and creativity. Between 2015 and 2024, Africa's installed solar power capacity jumped from 2.1 gigawatts to 15.4 gigawatts. That's more than 7x growth in a decade. Electric mobility, without the grid Household power isn't the only thing going off-grid. Mobility is, too. Take MAX, a Nigeria-based electric vehicle company that produces rugged e-motorcycles specifically for the African market. Priced around $2,000 and bundled with lease-to-own financing, MAX's bikes are built for affordability, reliability, and rugged conditions. The company operates battery-swap stations along key commercial routes in Lagos, Nigeria's financial and commercial hub, to keep drivers on the move. Last year, MAX partnered with Energicity, a venture-backed startup building solar-powered minigrids across West Africa. The result: a fully solar, zero-carbon mobility system—locally designed, locally powered, and built without ever touching a legacy utility. The rollout began in Sierra Leone, where MAX riders now recharge their vehicles using Energicity's solar stations. The vision is bold: Let clean energy flow through every part of the economy, from household lighting to logistics. The future isn't waiting Africa's energy future won't resemble Europe's or America's. Instead, it's turning its infrastructure liabilities into an advantage. By solving for affordability, decentralization, and local resilience, companies like MAX, and Energicity are proving that clean energy innovation can thrive anywhere. It often starts where the need is greatest.
Arab News
7 hours ago
- Health
- Arab News
Book Review: ‘When Breath Becomes Air'
Published a year after the author's death aged 37 in 2015, 'When Breath Becomes Air' is an autobiography about the life and struggle with terminal lung cancer of Dr. Paul Kalanithi. In the book, Kalanithi, an American neurosurgeon at Stanford University, talks about his own journey from being a physician providing treatment to his patients to becoming a patient himself facing premature mortality. The narrative moves from talking about how Kalanithi saved lives to confronting the end of his own, reflecting on what makes life worth living in the face of death. Despite his diagnosis, Kalanithi continued working as a physician and even became a father, explaining to his readers how he embraced life fully until the very end. Unfortunately, the book had to be completed by his wife after his passing, and serves as a moving meditation on legacy, purpose, and the human experience. Among the book's strengths are its authenticity and depth of emotions, touching on everything from the day-to-day experiences of physicians to Kalanithi's own love of literature — originally, he had studied English at university. A fitting tribute, then, that his own work would go on to become a New York Times' bestseller. Neurosurgery, though, was in his words an 'unforgiving call to perfection' which not even his diagnosis could check. 'Before my cancer was diagnosed, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn't know when,' he wrote. 'After the diagnosis, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn't know when.' The book garnered praise upon publication, winning the Goodreads Choice Award for Memoir and Autobiography in 2016. Its run on the NYT's bestseller list lasted an impressive 68 weeks. Writing in the Guardian, Alice O'Keefe suggested: 'The power of this book lies in its eloquent insistence that we are all confronting our mortality every day, whether we know it or not. The real question we face, Kalanithi writes, is not how long, but rather how, we will live — and the answer does not appear in any medical textbook.'
ABC News
8 hours ago
- Health
- ABC News
Genetically modified bacteria tested in humans stayed in guts of some people
A study in the US trialling genetically modified gut bacteria in humans has had a potential escapee, after the microbe mutated. The team of researchers at Stanford University undertook early clinical trials of a strain of a common gut bacterium, which they genetically engineered to help prevent kidney stones. But the results of the trial, published today in Science, were mixed. While the therapy was mostly successful in healthy volunteers, it didn't treat the underlying cause of kidney stones in people who suffered from the condition. The bacterium also overstayed its welcome in two healthy volunteers, despite the scientists' best efforts to remove it. Weston Whitaker, a Stanford University microbiologist who led the study, said all the protocols were followed, and "there were no specific reasons to worry about the health of individuals where the bacterium persisted". "Many aspects of the technology worked surprisingly well, and we've clearly identified parts needing further development," Dr Whitaker said. "I think we showed that there is promise in continuing this approach." Sam Forster, a microbiologist at the Hudson Institute of Medical Research who was not involved with the research, said the findings showed both the hazards and potential of the technology. "There are risks associated with these approaches but it's also an amazingly powerful technology and these types of studies provide a key fundamental understanding," Dr Forster said. The researchers genetically modified a strain of bacterium called Phocaeicola vulgatus to carry the genes they were looking for. "We chose Phocaeicola vulgatus because it is one of the most prevalent and abundant bacteria in the gut," Dr Whitaker said. The team engineered the bacterium to have two new abilities: breaking up a compound called oxalate, which can cause kidney stones, and eating a compound called porphyran, which is found in seaweed. Humans and most other gut bacteria can't process porphyran, so this gave the modified microbe a reliable source of food — as long as the trial participants consumed a porphyran supplement. It also provided a handy way to get rid of bacteria once the experiment was over: trial participants could just stop taking porphyran. Or at least that was the theory. After testing the modified microbe on mice and rats, the researchers ran two human trials — one with 39 healthy volunteers, and another with 20 volunteers who had a condition called enteric hyperoxaluria, where the body absorbs too much oxalate, causing frequent kidney stones. The trial participants were either given a pill full of the bacterium or a placebo to swallow. The researchers found the modified microbe could safely colonise healthy participants' guts, and reduce their oxalate levels. And for most participants, the bacteria vanished after they stopped taking their porphyran doses. But it lingered in four healthy people even when they'd dropped the seaweed supplements. These study participants were treated with antibiotics, which successfully removed the modified microbe in two people — but it stayed put in the other two. While this is a novel situation, Dr Whitaker said there was no reason to be concerned. "The genes, bacteria, and activities we introduced are commonly found in a healthy gut, so we considered this a relatively safe initial application," he said. Engineered bacteria that stuck around in the gut in the healthy participants were successful because they mutated to eat foods other than porphyran. So when the porphyran was removed, the gut bug just began eating something else. The microbe also mutated to become less effective at degrading oxalate in some participants in the kidney stone group. Bacteria are able to swap genes with each other, which gives them an extremely quick way to evolve new characteristics. According to Dr Whitaker, the team knew it was possible the modified microbe could mutate but were "surprised it occurred" in the way it did, because it had been much less of an issue with lab studies or healthy volunteers. Dr Forster said this was a known issue of working with bacteria. "These bacteria exchange DNA all the time. And most of those exchanges are just as likely to be beneficial for us as detrimental to us." "[DNA exchange] is not a characteristic of this strain or this technology, it's a characteristic of bacteria." While this clinical trial was terminated by the team, both Dr Whitaker and Dr Forster were excited by the prospects this could provide in the future. The Stanford team has now designed a new bacterial strain that has three essential genes, which he said would provide a "triple safeguard" against mutation. The team is yet to test this new strain in patients, but when the researchers tested the bacteria in the lab, it was unable to bypass the protection provided by the addition of the genes. Dr Forster said the paper highlighted how bacteria could be used to treat inflammatory gut disorders, and even gut cancers. "In some cases there will already be species that can [be used as a therapy], and so there would be advantages to putting those natural species back in," he said. "But in some cases … genetically modifying them provides a much more efficient way of providing that therapy." "This paper is is a key step in that process."
India.com
10 hours ago
- Health
- India.com
Silent Tsunami: The Return Of A Killer Germ That No Drug Can Stop
New Delhi: In the world of medicine, some enemies disappear quietly. Others evolve, hide in plain sight and return stronger. Typhoid fever is one of them. Once tamed by antibiotics, this ancient killer is back with a vengeance. It does not knock. It does not wait. And this time, the drugs do not work. In hospitals across the United Kingdom (England, Wales and Northern Ireland), a pattern has begun to emerge. Not a fluke. Not a seasonal spike. But a steady and quiet surge. The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has reported 702 confirmed cases of typhoid and its cousin, paratyphoid fever, in 2024 alone. That is an 8% jump from the year before. It is the highest count ever seen. The source is not homegrown. This is not an outbreak tied to any one British city. Most of the infections were picked up abroad. Travellers are bringing it back, unwittingly, after visiting regions where the disease still thrives in water and food. But now there is a new twist – the old treatments no longer work. Typhoid is morphing into something scientists fear – a resistant and borderless predator. Much of the threat today comes from Pakistan, where doctors are facing a terrifying challenge. The typhoid strain spreading there is no longer afraid of our antibiotics. Not even the newest ones. This strain, now called extensively drug-resistant Typhi or XDR Typhi, does not respond to the usual weapons – ampicillin, chloramphenicol, trimethoprim, fluoroquinolones or even cephalosporins. These used to be life-savers. Now they barely scratch the surface. A team of researchers led by Stanford's Dr. Jason Andrews studied nearly 3,500 bacterial samples collected from Nepal, Bangladesh, India and Pakistan between 2014 and 2019. What they saw was eye-opening. The number of drug-defiant typhoid strains is growing fast. They are replacing treatable ones. And they are not staying local. The study revealed something more chilling – these mutated bacteria are on the move. Since 1990, scientists have tracked nearly 200 instances of international spread. Southeast Asia. East Africa. Southern Africa. And now, Western countries. Yes, even in the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada, typhoid superbugs are starting to show up. Every plane ticket. Every border crossing. Every contaminated sip or bite. The bacteria need only one chance. Globally, typhoid and paratyphoid infect around 13 million people every year. Over 1.3 lakh people lose their lives, most of them children in Asia and Africa. Despite its scale, typhoid rarely makes headlines. But that silence is dangerous. Especially now. The only treatment left is oral antibiotics. But their power is fading. Over three decades, the bacteria have gradually built resistance. They have learned. Adapted. And now, they are spreading those learnings across borders. The UKHSA data is just one part of the puzzle. Researchers say there are large blind spots, particularly in regions like sub-Saharan Africa and Oceania. We simply do not have enough bacterial samples from these places. Even in better-monitored countries, the samples usually come from just a handful of sites. That is like trying to map a wildfire by staring at a single tree. That lack of information means something troubling – we may be underestimating the scale of resistance and how fast it is travelling. The bacteria's genes and the mutations that make it immune are quietly crossing oceans. And we are not watching closely enough. Dr. Andrews calls this a 'real cause for concern'. He is not exaggerating. The way these strains have spread shows that typhoid control is a global emergency. Surveillance needs to expand. So do new treatment strategies. And vaccines need to reach where the outbreak begins, not where it ends. We live in an age of mobility. People, goods and germs travel faster than ever.
Fox News
10 hours ago
- Politics
- Fox News
Fox News ‘Antisemitism Exposed' Newsletter: DNC boss says Mamdani's hateful phrase welcome in 'big tent'
Fox News' "Antisemitism Exposed" newsletter brings you stories on the rising anti-Jewish prejudice across the U.S. and the world. IN TODAY'S NEWSLETTER: - Democrats' 'big tent' just fine with Mamdani's 'globalize the intifada' mantra- Stanford scientist says antisemites drove him out of lab after Oct. 7- Ivy League prof leaves school over unwillingness to deal with anti-Israel hate TOP STORY: 'Globalize the Intifada' is just one opinion in the big tent that is the Democratic Party, according to DNC Chairman Ken Martin. He dismissed concerns over New York Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani's unwillingness to explicitly condemn the slogan, adding in an interview with PBS that the key to developing a winning coalition is through welcoming people with whom you disagree. Mamdani has garnered backlash for refusing to condemn the phrase, which has become a rallying cry for anti-Israel protesters. VIDEO: Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt argues the National Education Association, the largest teachers union in the U.S., has been 'overtaken' by activists. WATCH HERE: HATRED IN THE LAB: An Israeli scientist claims his work at Stanford was sabotaged, he was falsely accused of sexual harassment and ultimately fired, all because he is Jewish. Shay Laps joined Stanford University months after the Oct. 7 massacre in Israel, with the hope of furthering his award-winning research into peptides and proteins under the mentorship of more experienced scientific minds, according to his federal lawsuit against the school. DROPPING OUT: An Israeli professor has left Columbia University, fed up with the Ivy League school's unwillingness to deal with anti-Israel protests on campus. Shai Davidai said he doesn't trust the school's leadership, including Acting President Claire Shipman, to make the school safe for Jewish students and faculty. ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK: Jewish leaders and advocates predict a mass exodus from New York if 33-year-old socialist Zohran Mamdani is elected mayor. The winner of the Democratic primary has participated in anti-Israel protests and refused to condemn the phrase "Globalize the intifada" or recognize Israel as a Jewish state. GUEST EDITORIAL: Anat Alon-Beck , Mark Goldfeder , Erielle Davidson explain how Ireland's proposed boycott of Israeli businesses could create a dangerous legal trap for American investors. Under U.S. law, it is illegal for American companies to participate in or support foreign-government-backed boycotts of Israel, and many states have laws against even indirect support of the BDS movement. If Ireland were seeking to chase American capital out of the country, it could not have devised a better way to do so, they write. QUOTE OF THE WEEK: "If Zohran Mamdani is elected, expect a Jewish exodus out of New York City." - Yuval David, an actor, filmmaker and Jewish activist. - Looking for more on this topic? Find more antisemitism coverage from Fox News here. - Did someone forward you this email? Subscribe to additional newsletters from Fox News here. - Want live updates? Get the Fox News app here
