Venture capital on a shoestring: Bioventures’ pioneering life sciences fund in South Africa

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Since 2000, R&D financing for global health has increased significantly, with innovative proposals for further increases. However, although venture capital (VC) funding has fostered life sciences businesses across the developed world, its application in the developing world and particularly in Africa is relatively new. Is VC feasible in the African context, to foster the development and application of local health innovation?</p> <p>As the most industrially advanced African nation, South Africa serves as a test case for life sciences venture funding. This paper analyzes Bioventures, the first VC company focused on life sciences investment in sub-Saharan Africa. The case study method was used to analyze the formation, operation, and investment support of Bioventures, and to suggest lessons for future health venture funds in Africa that aim to develop health-oriented innovations.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>The modest financial success of Bioventures in challenging circumstances has demonstrated a proof of concept that life sciences VC can work in the region. Beyond providing funds, support given to investees included board participation, contacts, and strategic services. Bioventures had to be proactive in finding and supporting good health R&D.</p> <p>Due to the fund’s small size, overhead and management expenses were tightly constrained. Bioventures was at times unable to make follow-on investments, being forced instead to give up equity to raise additional capital, and to sell health investments earlier than might have been optimal. With the benefit of hindsight, the CFO of Bioventures felt that partnering with a larger fund might benefit similar future funds. Being better linked to market intelligence and other entrepreneurial investors was also seen as an unmet need.</p> <p>Summary</p> <p>BioVentures has learned lessons about how the traditional VC model might evolve to tackle health challenges facing Africa, including how to raise funds and educate investors; how to select, value, and support investments; and how to understand the balance between financial and social returns. The experience of the fund suggests that future health funds targeting ailments of the poor might require investors that accept health benefits as part of their overall “return.” Learning from Bioventures may help develop health innovation funding for sub-Saharan African that has combined health, financial, and economic development impacts.</p

Venture funding for science-based African health innovation

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>While venture funding has been applied to biotechnology and health in high-income countries, it is still nascent in these fields in developing countries, and particularly in Africa. Yet the need for implementing innovative solutions to health challenges is greatest in Africa, with its enormous burden of communicable disease. Issues such as risk, investment opportunities, return on investment requirements, and quantifying health impact are critical in assessing venture capital’s potential for supporting health innovation. This paper uses lessons learned from five venture capital firms from Kenya, South Africa, China, India, and the US to suggest design principles for African health venture funds.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>The case study method was used to explore relevant funds, and lessons for the African context. The health venture funds in this study included publicly-owned organizations, corporations, social enterprises, and subsidiaries of foreign venture firms. The size and type of investments varied widely. The primary investor in four funds was the International Finance Corporation. Three of the funds aimed primarily for financial returns, one aimed primarily for social and health returns, and one had mixed aims. Lessons learned include the importance of measuring and supporting both social and financial returns; the need to engage both upstream capital such as government risk-funding and downstream capital from the private sector; and the existence of many challenges including difficulty of raising capital, low human resource capacity, regulatory barriers, and risky business environments. Based on these lessons, design principles for appropriate venture funding are suggested.</p> <p>Summary</p> <p>Based on the cases studied and relevant experiences elsewhere, there is a case for venture funding as one support mechanism for science-based African health innovation, with opportunities for risk-tolerant investors to make financial as well as social returns. Such funds should be structured to overcome the challenges identified, be sustainable in the long run, attract for-profit private sector funds, and have measurable and significant health impact. If this is done, the proposed venture approach may have complementary benefits to existing initiatives and encourage local scientific and economic development while tapping new sources of funding.</p

How changes in human activities during the lockdown impacted air quality parameters: A review

The health emergency linked to the spread of COVID-19 has led to important reduction in industrial and logistics activities, as well as to a drastic changes in citizens' behaviors and habits. The restrictions on working activities, journeys and relationships imposed by the lockdown have had important consequences, including for environmental quality. This review aims to provide a structured and critical evaluation of the recent scientific bibliography that analyzed and described the impact of lockdown on human activities and on air quality. The results indicate an important effect of the lockdown during the first few months of 2020 on air pollution levels, compared to previous periods. The concentrations of particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide have decreased. Tropospheric ozone, on the other hand, has significantly increased. These results are important indicators that can become decision drivers for future policies and strategies in industrial and logistics activities (including the mobility sector) aimed at their environmental sustainability. The scenario imposed by COVID-19 has supported the understanding of the link between the reduction of polluting emissions and the state of air quality and will be able to support strategic choices for the future sustainable growth of the industrial and logistics sector

The effect of discrete vs. continuous-valued ratings on reputation and ranking systems

When users rate objects, a sophisticated algorithm that takes into account ability or reputation may produce a fairer or more accurate aggregation of ratings than the straightforward arithmetic average. Recently a number of authors have proposed different co-determination algorithms where estimates of user and object reputation are refined iteratively together, permitting accurate measures of both to be derived directly from the rating data. However, simulations demonstrating these methods' efficacy assumed a continuum of rating values, consistent with typical physical modelling practice, whereas in most actual rating systems only a limited range of discrete values (such as a 5-star system) is employed. We perform a comparative test of several co-determination algorithms with different scales of discrete ratings and show that this seemingly minor modification in fact has a significant impact on algorithms' performance. Paradoxically, where rating resolution is low, increased noise in users' ratings may even improve the overall performance of the system.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figure

A numerical modelling study to support design of an in-situ CO2 injection test facility using horizontal injection well in a shallow-depth coal seam

Previous projects on CO2 storage in coal often reported the challenges associated with coal swelling and swelling-induced loss of gas injectivity. Since coal seams are typically thin, commonly used vertical wells only intersect a target reservoir over a small contact area, placing constraints on CO2 injectivity in addition to those resulting from coal swelling. This leaves the storage reservoirs largely under-utilized and, therefore, questions the viability of this technology. To address the challenges/limitations of the current practice, a novel in-situ CO2 injection test is planned using horizontal injection wells in Mikolow, Poland. This paper presents the pre-operational simulation studies conducted to assist the design and operation of the in-situ test. An existing dual-porosity model that is built on a coupled thermo-hydro-chemical-mechanical (THCM) modelling framework is employed in this study. Sensitivity of the model parameters and validity of the model are tested. Several simulation scenarios are developed in reference to the selected test site for various horizontal well configurations and gas injection conditions. From the results and analyses, it is evident that by varying the coal-CO2 contact area via the length of the horizontal injection well, as well as the operating conditions including fixed pressure, and fixed rate injection scenarios, the targeted amount (between 1 to 10 tonnes) of CO2 can be injected into the seam without significant loss of permeability or injectivity, yielding sustained gas injection. Moreover, the spread of CO2 is predicted to be contained within the model domain suggesting no significant concern of spread exceeding the test area

Protocol for a cluster randomised controlled trial of LPG cookstoves compared to usual cooking practices to reduce perinatal mortality and morbidity in rural Bangladesh called Poriborton : the CHANge trial

Background: Household air pollution is a leading health risk for global morbidity and mortality and a major health risk in South Asia. However, there are no prospective investigations of the impact of household air pollution on perinatal morbidity and mortality. Our trial aims to assess the impact of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) for cooking to reduce household air pollution exposure on perinatal morbidity and mortality compared to usual cooking practices in Bangladesh. Hypothesis: In a community-based cluster randomised controlled trial of pregnant women cooking with LPG throughout pregnancy, perinatal mortality will be reduced by 35% compared with usual cooking practices in a rural community in Bangladesh. Methods: A two-arm community-based cluster randomised controlled trial will be conducted in the Sherpur district, Bangladesh. In the intervention arm, pregnant women receive an LPG cookstove and LPG in cylinders supplied throughout pregnancy until birth. In the control or usual practice arm, pregnant women continue their usual cooking practices, predominately traditional stoves with biomass fuel. Eligible women are pregnant women with a gestational age of 40–120 days, aged between 15 and 49 years, and permanent residents of the study area. The primary outcome is the difference in perinatal mortality between the LPG arm and the usual cooking arm. Secondary outcomes include (i) preterm birth and low birth weight, (ii) personal level exposure to household air pollution, (iii) satisfaction and acceptability of the LPG stove and stove use, and (iv) cost-effectiveness and cost-utility in reducing perinatal morbidity and mortality. We follow up all women and infants to 45 days after the birth. Personal exposure to household air pollution is assessed at three-time points in a sub-sample of the study population using the MicroPEM™. The total required sample size is 4944 pregnant women. Discussion: This trial will produce evidence of the effectiveness of reduced exposure to household air pollution through LPG cooking to reduce perinatal morbidity and mortality compared to usual cooking practices. This evidence will inform policies for the adoption of clean fuel in Bangladesh and other similar settings

Leaders in Social Networks, the Delicious Case

Finding pertinent information is not limited to search engines. Online communities can amplify the influence of a small number of power users for the benefit of all other users. Users' information foraging in depth and breadth can be greatly enhanced by choosing suitable leaders. For instance in delicious.com, users subscribe to leaders' collection which lead to a deeper and wider reach not achievable with search engines. To consolidate such collective search, it is essential to utilize the leadership topology and identify influential users. Google's PageRank, as a successful search algorithm in the World Wide Web, turns out to be less effective in networks of people. We thus devise an adaptive and parameter-free algorithm, the LeaderRank, to quantify user influence. We show that LeaderRank outperforms PageRank in terms of ranking effectiveness, as well as robustness against manipulations and noisy data. These results suggest that leaders who are aware of their clout may reinforce the development of social networks, and thus the power of collective search

Operation of a novel hot electron vertical cavity surface emitting laser

The hot Electron Light Emission and Lasing in Semiconductor Heterostructures devices (HELLISH-1) is novel surface emitter consisting of a GaAs quantum well, within the depletion region, on the n side of Ga 1-xAlxAs p- n junction. It utilizes hot electron transport parallel to the layers and injection of hot electron hole pairs into the quantum well through a combination of mechanisms including tunnelling, thermionic emission and diffusion of 'lucky' carriers. Super Radiant HELLISH-1 is an advanced structure incorporating a lower distributed Bragg reflector (DBR). Combined with the finite reflectivity of the upper semiconductor-air interface reflectivity it defines a quasi- resonant cavity enabling emission output from the top surface with a higher spectral purity. The output power has increased by two orders of magnitude and reduced the full width at half maximum (FWHM) to 20 nm. An upper DBR added to the structure defines HELLISH-VCSEL which is currently the first operational hot electron surface emitting laser and lases at room temperature with a 1.5 nm FWHM. In this work we demonstrate and compare the operation of UB-HELLISH-1 and HELLISH-VCSEL using experimental and theoretical reflectivity spectra over an extensive temperature range. ©2003 Copyright SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering

Understanding fear of opportunism in global prize-based science contests: Evidence for gender and age differences

Global prize-based science contests have great potential for tapping into diverse knowledge on a global scale and overcoming important scientific challenges. A necessary step for knowledge to be utilized in these contests is for that knowledge to be disclosed. Knowledge disclosure, however, is paradoxical in nature: in order for the value of knowledge to be assessed, inventors must disclose their knowledge, but then the person who receives that knowledge does so at no cost and may use it opportunistically. This risk of potential opportunistic behavior in turn makes the inventor fearful of disclosing knowledge, and this is a major psychological barrier to knowledge disclosure. In this project, we investigated this fear of opportunism in global prize-based science contests by surveying 630 contest participants in the InnoCentive online platform for science contests. We found that participants in these science contests experience fear of opportunism to varying degrees, and that women and older participants have significantly less fear of disclosing their scientific knowledge. Our findings highlight the importance of taking differences in such fears into account when designing global prize-based contests so that the potential of the contests for reaching solutions to important and challenging problems can be used more effectively