Expectations about future critical network capabilities and performance have risen significantly among stakeholders across business, societal and governmental spheres in the past couple of years, largely due to the solid performance of the digital infrastructure during the pandemic. At the same time, our industry has continued to invest in evolved 5G and 6G research for a trustworthy and universal open connectivity platform that accelerates digitalization for enhanced social, economic and environmental outcomes, in accordance with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Dissecting the success and strategies of Chinese internet firms as more of them venture overseas.

You could say last year was a good year for China’s internet titans. E-commerce behemoths Alibaba and JD.com notched a record US$139 billion in sales on Single’s Day, the world’s largest shopping event. Social media phenomenon TikTok, owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, was the world’s most downloaded app, overtaking previous favourite WhatsApp. Tencent, the biggest social networking and gaming company in China, reported a 16 percent year-on-year rise in revenue, to 560 billion yuan.

The type of wind turbine you’re used to seeing in stock photos of wind farms is called a horizontal axis wind turbine (or, HAWT). But there is another form of wind power, called a vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT), in which the blades rotate on an axis perpendicular to Earth’s surface. This type of turbine can work better in unstable wind conditions because they don’t need to be pointed into the wind, but still produce much less electricity and durability problems because of the force the wind exerts on them. That’s why you would only see VAWTs in small applications, like homes, and HAWTs in wind power farms.

Image: World Wide Wind

Good design is a concept defined by industrial designer Dieter Rams’s principles: It makes a product useful and understandable, is innovative, aesthetic, unobtrusive, honest, long-lasting, thorough to the last detail, environmentally friendly, and involves as little design as possible. Designers strive for good design.

Image: Poster design featuring the ten principles of good design by Dieter Rams. © Daniel Skrok and Interaction Design Foundation, CC BY-SA 3.0

Solar panels often get a bad rap for spoiling the appearance of homes and businesses. Yet, this may be about to change.

A research group has fabricated a highly transparent solar cell with a 2D atomic sheet. These near-invisible solar cells achieved an average visible transparency of 79%, meaning they can, in theory, be placed everywhere - building windows, the front panel of cars, and even human skin.

Image: An optical image of a highly-transparent solar cell fabricated with a 2D atomic sheet. (CREDIT: Toshiaki Kato)

The year was 1984. It was shortly before Steve Jobs left Apple and several years before Jobs would go on to conduct one of the biggest turnarounds in business history, bringing Apple from the brink of bankruptcy to become one of the most valuable companies in the world.

Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Steve_Jobs_Headshot_2010-CROP.jpg

Somehow, some way, the third quarter is nearly over. That means we’re gearing up for a wave of venture capital data that will start to drop in less than two weeks’ time. We’re itching to get our hands on the final numbers because the third quarter of 2022 is a pretty damn important data point.

The U.S. bioeconomy is booming. Valued at nearly one trillion dollars and predicted to grow globally to over $30 trillion over the next two decades, bioproducts now include everything from the food that we eat to the vaccines we put in our arms. Plant-based burgers, recyclable bioplastics, concrete, clothing, and microbes for mining minerals are just a few of the latest bio-based products coming to market.

Image: White House Inks Strategy to Grow Trillion Dollar[+] DALL-E X JOHN CUMBERS

It's no secret that starting a business is hard work. If you want to start a business, you should be prepared to work harder than you ever have before. But what if you're not sure where to begin? If you're in this boat, don't worry — you're not alone. Below are some tips that might come in handy in helping you begin your entrepreneurial journey or improve your business.

Investors think a great deal about a great number of things when considering an investment: How big is the market? How good is the founder-market fit? Is it venture-scale?

It’s natural for founders to live and breathe for their customers and product, but the dirty little secret of fundraising is that your investors are extraordinarily unlikely to care about your product. And they have a few legitimate reasons for being that way.

Proper customer research is vital to the success of your business. One of the two most frequent causes of startup failure is launching without conducting proper customer research. It is undeniable that proper customer development research requires time and money.

Of course, there are plenty of other ways to research the market. One can analyze information on the Internet, study articles or speak with friends or other entrepreneurs. However, these may not be enough. Regardless, the lack of proper qualitative research can lead to business mistakes.

Aliens beyond our solar system could be discovered within the next 25 years, a Swiss government scientist said.

Sasha Quanz, an astrophysicist at Switzerland’s federal technology institute ETH Zurich said that current technology such as the James Webb Space Telescope is not quite powerful enough to locate evidence of extraterrestrial life.

Image: Alein life waits to be discovered in exoplanets says government astrophysicist. Credit: MjolnirPants/cc4/wikipedia

Prostate cancer is a rapidly moving field when it comes to the treatments that are available. Prostate cancer experts at Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center work in an integrated genitourinary practice, which allows them the size and scope they need to drive the entire field forward. At Mayo Clinic, innovative prostate cancer treatments include theranostics, genomics, advanced drug therapies, nuclear medicine imaging, 3D imaging and modeling, and more.

Image: https://medprofvideos.mayoclinic.org

Dylan Field, the co-founder and CEO of San Francisco-based Figma, is on the cusp of an epic windfall after Adobe  (ticker: ADBE) announced plans to acquire his company for $20 billion this week. Field will stay on with Figma (which makes collaborative design tools), and he reportedly owns a a sizable stake in his company. Forbes estimated it at 10%, which means Field could be looking at a $2 billion payday from the deal. (Field declined to provide details of his ownership share with MarketWatch.)

Could the ocean become a source of renewable energy? The company Wave Swell Energy is hoping for exactly that with its UniWave 200. The structure, with a large concrete base, has an opening for waves to enter through a hollow central chamber. As water rises and falls within the chamber, air gets pushed through a turbine, which spins and in turn generates electricity.

Image: The UniWave200 generating electricity off the coast of King Island, Australia. Wave Swell Energy

Patent trolls are a major economic problem in the U.S., slowing growth and innovation, and costing companies time and money. Director of the USPTO, Kathi Vidal, also has an opportunity to take immediate action that will substantially improve how our patent system functions and advance U.S. innovation. It involves repealing a rule instituted by their predecessor that made it harder for firms being sued by patent trolls to take advantage of special expert judges.

Startup companies have traditionally looked for the most experienced venture capitalists they could find to get their businesses off the ground and support their growth. That’s not always the case anymore, according to a study by University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School Associate Professor Rich Mathews and his co-author Naveen Khanna of Michigan State University. They argue that startups straight out of the gate are often deciding to work with new venture capitalists rather than established ones.

The oceans’ contributions are well known – food, oxygen, transportation, recreation, heat absorption and more. Unfortunately, the oceans face severe challenges and the price tag to address them is jaw-dropping: according to one 2020 study, $174.5 billion is needed per year until 2030 to achieve the goals of the UN’s SDG 14, Life Below Water.

One of Maryland’s premiere medical networks just announced an eight-figure investment into the economic development of local and marginalized communities by way of notable funding entities.

The University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS) said in a Thursday statement that it will commit  $14 million to  11 community development financial institutions and privity equity firms throughout the state. The investment is intended to address racial, economic and environmental disparities in the communities the system serves.

Image: The University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore. (Photo by Flickr user Baltimore Heritage, used via a Creative Commons license)

The photovoltaic effect of ferroelectric crystals can be increased by a factor of 1,000 if three different materials are arranged periodically in a lattice. This has been revealed in a study by researchers at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU).

Image: Most solar cells are currently silicon based; however, their efficiency is limited. (CREDIT: Creative Commons)