Latest news with #Transactions
Miami Herald
27-05-2025
- Science
- Miami Herald
10-foot-tall sloths with ‘large' teeth roamed modern-day Kansas. Now bones found
At the end of the Pleistocene Epoch, 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago, a ground sloth that stood 8 to 10 feet tall went extinct. Now, bones belonging to one have been found in Kansas. A partial skull of the extinct sloth, known as Megalonyx jeffersonii, was found in Ellis County on the Great Plains, according to a study published May 26 in the peer-reviewed journal Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science. The partial skull was made up mostly of braincase, and it provided a 'better understanding of the distribution of this species in Kansas,' the study said. The ground sloth was 'a large, heavily built animal' with 'a large skull with blunt snout, massive jaw, well-developed chewing muscles, and large, blunt, peg-like teeth,' according to the Illinois State Museum. Unlike modern-day sloths that typically stay in trees, this sloth spent most of its time on the ground, walking on its flat feet and at times standing on its hind legs, the Illinois State Museum reported. They had 'very large claws on their forelimbs' and were 'covered with thick hair,' the museum said. The age of the partial skull was not able to be determined, but because of its presence in the Peoria Loess sediment deposit, it's believed to be from the late Wisconsian between 21,000 and 12,000 years before present. The research team included H. Gregory McDonald, Laura E. Wilson and Melissa Macias Ellis County is about a 170-mile drive northwest from Wichita.
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Porch Group Announces Retirement of Majority of 2026 Unsecured Convertible Notes
Reduces 2026 Debt Maturity to $29 Million SEATTLE, May 19, 2025--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Porch Group, Inc. ("Porch Group," "Porch" or "the Company") (NASDAQ: PRCH), a new kind of homeowners insurance company, today announced a delevering transaction with the privately negotiated repurchase of $144.3 million aggregate principal amount of its 0.75% Convertible Senior Notes due 2026 (the "2026 Notes") and the concurrent pricing of a private offering of $134.0 million aggregate principal amount of newly issued 9.00% Convertible Senior Unsecured Notes due 2030 of the Company (the "2030 Notes"). These refinancing transactions (the "Refinancing Transactions") are expected to close on May 27, 2025, subject to customary closing conditions. The 2030 Notes will be convertible into cash, shares of common stock of the Company ("common stock"), or a combination thereof, at Porch's election, at an initial conversion price representing an approximately 60% premium to the volume weighted average price (VWAP) of Porch's common stock for the three trading days immediately following May 19, 2025. The 2030 Notes are also redeemable at the option of the Company on or after November 20, 2026, if the last reported sale price of Porch's common stock has been at least 20% higher than the conversion price then in effect for at least 20 trading days (whether or not consecutive) during any 30 consecutive trading day period. If Porch is able to exercise this redemption option on November 20, 2026, only three full semi-annual interest payments will have been paid prior to such redemption. Following the closing of the Refinancing Transactions, Porch Group's outstanding debt will consist of the following: $29.4 million aggregate principal amount of the 0.75% Convertible Senior Unsecured Notes due 2026; $333.3 million aggregate principal amount of the 6.75% Convertible Senior Secured Notes due 2028 (which have a conversion price of approximately $25.00 per share); and $134.0 million aggregate principal amount of the 9.00% Convertible Senior Unsecured Notes due 2030. "This transaction delevers the balance sheet, reduces our 2026 debt maturity from $174 million to $29 million, while securing a path toward our leverage targets, and in a manner that is expected to minimize dilution to shareholders," said Shawn Tabak, Porch Group CFO. "The approximately $4 million net cash proceeds from the Refinancing Transactions along with balance sheet cash gives the Company the ability to pay off the remaining 2026 Notes in cash." The 2030 Notes will be senior unsecured obligations of the Company and will accrue interest at a rate of 9.00%, payable semi-annually in arrears on May 15 and November 15 of each year, beginning on November 15, 2025. The 2030 Notes will mature on May 15, 2030, unless earlier repurchased, redeemed or converted. Prior to the close of business on the business day immediately preceding February 15, 2030, the 2030 Notes will be convertible at the option of the holders only upon the satisfaction of certain conditions and during certain periods. Thereafter, until the close of business on the second scheduled trading day immediately preceding the maturity date, the 2030 Notes will be convertible at the option of the holders at any time regardless of these conditions. The 2030 Notes will be issued in a private placement under Section 4(a)(2) of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "Securities Act"), and, along with the shares of common stock issuable upon conversion of the 2030 Notes, will not be registered under the Securities Act or applicable state securities laws. Accordingly, the 2030 Notes and the shares of common stock issuable upon conversion of the 2030 Notes, if any, may not be offered, sold, pledged or otherwise transferred except to a qualified institutional buyer (within the meaning of Rule 144A under the Securities Act) or pursuant to an effective Securities Act registration statement or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements of the Securities Act and applicable state securities laws. Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC served as exclusive placement agent for the 2030 Notes. Sidley Austin llp acted as legal advisor to Porch Group. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy the 2030 Notes, the shares of common stock underlying the 2030 Notes or any other securities, and will not constitute an offer, solicitation or sale in any state or jurisdiction in which such an offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful. About Porch Group Porch Group, Inc. ("Porch") is a new kind of homeowners insurance company. Porch's strategy to win in homeowners insurance is to deploy leading vertical software solutions in select home-related industries, provide the best services for homebuyers including important moving services, leverage unique data for advantaged underwriting, and provide more protection for policyholders. Forward-Looking Statements Certain statements in this release may be considered "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the "safe harbor" provisions of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements generally relate to future events or Porch Group's future financial or operating performance. For example, statements regarding the expected closing of the Refinancing Transactions and the timing and use of net proceeds therefrom (including the repurchase of additional 2026 Notes), and other statements herein of management's beliefs, intentions or goals are forward-looking statements. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terminology such as "may," "should," "expect," "intend," "will," "estimate," "anticipate," "believe," "predict," "potential," "target," or "continue," or the negatives of these terms or variations of them or similar terminology. Such forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties, and other factors which could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based upon estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable by Porch and its management at the time they are made, are inherently uncertain. Factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations include, but are not limited to: risks related to the Refinancing Transactions, including the effect of the capital markets on the Refinancing Transactions and our ability to satisfy the closing conditions to the Refinancing Transactions, and other risks and uncertainties described in the "Risk Factors" section of Porch's most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2024 and subsequent reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"), all of which are available on the SEC's website at Nothing in this release should be regarded as a representation by any person that the forward-looking statements set forth herein will be achieved or that any of the contemplated results of such forward-looking statements will be achieved. You should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this release. Unless specifically indicated otherwise, the forward-looking statements in this release do not reflect the potential impact of any divestitures, mergers, acquisitions, or other business combinations that have not been completed as of the date of this release. Porch Group does not undertake any duty to update these forward-looking statements, whether as a result of changed circumstances, new information, future events or otherwise, except as may be required by law. View source version on Contacts Investor Relations Contact: IR@ Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Forbes
04-04-2025
- Health
- Forbes
The Prototype: Chatbots Struggle With Analogies
In this week's edition of The Prototype, we look at the ways chatbots struggle to think like humans, how nanoparticles might connect brains and computers, a better way to vaccinate for food poisoning and more. You can sign up to get The Prototype in your inbox here. One thing that humans are very good at is the ability to reason by analogy–the ability to look at a bunch of different situations or sets of facts and generalize from them. This kind of thinking is vital in a number of fields–especially science and the law. But as it turns out, large language models like ChatGPT aren't very good at this at all. That's according to a new paper published in Transactions on Machine Learning Research, which found that humans significantly outperformed GPT-3 and GPT-4 on analogical reasoning on different kinds of problems. The paper also suggests that even when such models appear to 'reason,' that performance is very sensitive to whether it's been trained on similar problems, whereas humans are able to make good generalizations even about subjects they're not familiar with. This is a similar outcome to another paper that came out in January, which found that while large language models can diagnose disease very well when presented with medical exam-style questions, they're not very good at all when it comes to diagnosing diseases from patient conversations. As many of the AI companies are starting to move beyond just large language models and into applications that utilize multiple types of AI, it'll be interesting to see whether their performance at abstraction is able to improve, or if they'll continue to be limited by the robustness of their training data. Stay tuned. Tetiana Aleksandrova, founder & CEO of Subsense Subsense For people who are paralyzed or have neurodegenerative diseases, brain-computer interfaces offer a way to regain some measure of their independence and improve their communication. But these interfaces also offer challenges. Some, like Elon Musk's Neuralink, require a chip to be implanted directly into the brain. And while non-invasive approaches are being developed, open questions remain about how refined they can be due to the difficulty in reading brain signals through the skull. Tetiana Aleksandrova thinks that her company, Subsense, may have an attractive compromise. It's developing a way to use nanoparticles made from gold and polymers that are injected into and bind to particular areas of the brain, making it possible to better monitor brain activity without surgery. The technology can also stimulate the brain, which has potential to treat a number of neurological diseases as well as improve coordination with prosthetic limbs. The company, which recently emerged from stealth with $17 million in seed funding, has already tested its technology on mice, demonstrating the ability to read brain signals and stimulate neural activity. The company plans to spend the next couple of years developing and scaling its technology. 'Our end goal is helping individuals to enhance their capabilities,' Aleksandrova told me. 'To basically hack your brain, but in a good way.' Developing vaccines against disease-causing bacteria in the gut, like salmonella, has long been challenging because the bacteria living there varies so much from person to person. But researchers at ETH Zurich may have a solution–they gave mice a vaccine against salmonella as well as a probiotic containing benign bacteria strains that compete for its resources. The scientists found that this combination helped fight disease both by triggering the immune system to attack salmonella and enabling the good bacteria to outcompete it. Next up is seeing if this approach works in people. Their findings were published this week in Science. On Monday, SpaceX launched its sixth private mission flying people into orbit, called Fram2. Funded by Chun Wang, a cryptocurrency entrepreneur, the four people on board are the first people to ever fly in an orbit over both the North and South Poles. The crew is also performing 22 different scientific experiments on behalf of institutions from eight different countries, including studying aurora in the atmosphere, growing mushrooms in microgravity and more. The spacecraft is planned to splash down off the California coast later today. Aetherflux, founded by former Robinhood cofounder Baiju Bhatt, announced that it has raised $50 million in a series A round led by Index Ventures and Interlagos to support its mission to develop satellite-based solar power. The company also stated that it's been approved for Department of Energy funding to develop a proof of concept for power transmission from orbit. I first spoke to Bhatt last year to discuss his solar power plans in-depth, and you can read that story here. I talked to billionaire Sean Parker about his plans for scaling up his non-profit institute devoted to cancer research, which has spent over $300 million on nearly 500 academic projects that have resulted in over 4,000 papers, 300 patents, dozens of clinical trials and 17 new biotech startups to capitalize on this research. In my other newsletter, InnovationRx, my colleague Amy Feldman and I looked at the Trump administration's massive health agency layoffs, Palantir's lawsuit against a YC-backed startup, Gather Health's new primary care model and more. SpaceX's valuation hit $350 billion in December, which Forbes estimates makes its president and COO Gwynne Shotwell a billionaire. Researchers at Washington State University developed a machine learning model that can help predict where new pandemics might emerge from interactions between people and animals. A new blood test for Alzheimer's disease helps doctors both diagnose the condition in patients and determine how far the dementia it causes has progressed. The International Space Station National Laboratory has launched a new startup accelerator program to aid entrepreneurs in developing new space businesses. Biotechnology company Oxitec has broken ground on a new facility in Brazil, which will breed mosquitos infected with Wolbachia bacteria, which reduces their ability to transmit diseases like dengue and Zika. Lithium-ion batteries are great for electronics but it's well-known that over time their capacity slowly degrades. This was thought to be mostly due to overcharging them, but as it turns out, the degradation actually accelerates if a battery is used for too long without recharging. So if you want to extend the battery life in your phone, don't let the level get too low before you plug it in again. The research findings were published in Advanced Energy Materials. I'm currently reading The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire by historian Chris Kempshall. It's presented as an in-universe text detailing the history of the titular empire over the course of the Star Wars movies and TV shows. It's an engrossing account that draws upon how Star Wars reflects the ways democracies can fall into authoritarianism in real history, and how that history can repeat itself. One particularly chilling quote in it: 'This is an important lesson for the galaxy moving forward: there will always be those who are prepared to accelerate the death of democracy if they believe power is being given to someone worthy.' If you're a Star Wars fan, it's well worth the read.
Yahoo
07-03-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
New Dany Heatley, Star Of The Month, Champs And Mar. 5 HUT Content
New Star of the Month, Sharpshooters, HUT Champs, Team of The Week, and Transactions cards were added to Hockey Ultimate Team earlier this week. The drop was highlighted by new 92 overall Brandon Hagel and 91 overall Alex DeBrincat and Andrei Vasilevskiy SOTM cards, 91 overall Roope Hintz TOTW, 91 Sharpshooters Dany Heatley, Milan Hjeduk, and Markus Naslund, and 91 Transactions Gustav Nyquist. All new cards are in the video above. 🚨Now live in #nhl25 ▪️CHAMPS 👑▪️STAR of the MONTH ⭐▪️TEAM of the WEEK 🏒 — EA SPORTS NHL (@EASPORTSNHL) March 5, 2025 Team of the Week breakdowns can be seen here. The HUT Champs prizes for finishing top 100 or winning 10 games are a 92 and 91 overall Jean Beliveau. For more NHL 25 news make sure you bookmark The Hockey News Gaming Site or follow our Google News Feed. For gaming discussion check out our forum.
