TV personality responded to rumours that she is exempt from some challenges

Screaming girls. Sudden riches. Your face on the cover of Smash Hits magazine. Life in a Nineties boyband sounds like a dream, but one survivor of the maelstrom likens it more to being in the military. Jessie Thompson goes behind the scenes of revealing new BBC documentary ‘Boybands Forever’

‘I’m not sure that I want to revisit that,’ original cast member said

Bob Singleton revealed he was threatened with ‘death and dismemberment’ as music director for ‘Barney & Friends’

The Irish actor, who won our hearts as Connell’s mum Lorraine in ‘Normal People’, is back as Bibi Garvey in Sharon Horgan’s pitch-black comic caper ‘Bad Sisters’. She tells Ellie Harrison about misogyny on certain sets, why authenticity casting can close doors, and why these days a part has to be really good for her to say yes

Sydney’s iconic City Gym in Darlinghurst is open for business after a $1.5 million renovation. The gym, which opened in 1978—the same year the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras ...

The post Sydney’s iconic City Gym gets $1.5 million makeover appeared first on Star Observer.

The rare type of cloud, whose name is Latin for "roughness," was first observed in 2006 by an amateur cloudspotter in Iowa.

A voyage in this kind of spacecraft — while still conceptual — would take multiple lifetimes, crossing unimaginable gulfs of interstellar space. The theoretical exercise puts aside technical problems, including the propulsion system, and focusses on the design of the habitat and society.

Generational curses impact family patterns and behaviors. Learn how to identify, break, and heal from ancestral trauma to free yourself and future generations.

Two congruent angles are simply pairs of angles with equal measures. You can find congruent angles examples in hundreds of everyday objects.

It has fundamentally transformed the United States, and it influenced this election cycle.

The Pennsylvania Senate race is over.

Nintendo is set to show off the Donkey Kong Country expansion of its Super Nintendo World theme park today (Monday, November 11) at 5PM ET, the company revealed in a post on X. That means the new Universal Studios Japan area might finally open soon, after being delayed from the previously announced launch window of Spring 2024. 

The new park attraction featuring Mario's barrel-throwing nemesis was first revealed in 2021. The centerpiece is a ride called Mine Cart Madness, named after the best level in the 1994 SNES game Donkey Kong Country. After being blasted out of a barrel cannon, you'll take a mine cart ride through the jungle that includes a "leap across a collapsed track" as Nintendo showed in a render earlier this year.  

The direct livestream appears to be focused on Donkey Kong world alone, and Nintendo specifically pointed out that "no game information will be featured" — so don't expect any news on the next-gen Switch 2 console either. 

Donkey Kong Country will expand the park size by up to 70 percent, Nintendo said when it was announced. Current attractions at the Japan park are the Mario Kart: Kuppa's Challenge rollercoaster and Yoshi Adventure. Nintendo recently announced that it would open a Super Nintendo World attraction at Universal Studios Orlando on May 22nd, 2025 with the same attractions as the park in Osaka. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/nintendo-will-show-off-donkey-kong-country-theme-park-expansion-at-live-event-today-130015655.html?src=rss

Carey Price aura vraisemblablement la faveur du comité qui est appelé à décider qui sera intronisé chaque année.

Un défenseur bélarusse au potentiel incalculable réalise bien malgré lui les défis quotidiens qui accompagnent son physique hors-norme.

Barsana, India (AFP) Nov 8, 2024
Venerated as incarnations of Hindu deities, India's sacred cows are also being touted as agents of energy transition by a government determined to promote biogas production to cut its dependence on coal. It is an understatement to say that Nakul Kumar Sardana is proud of his new plant at Barsana, in India's northern Uttar Pradesh state. Firstly, says the vice-president of a biomass joint

A pair of ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz are on the auction block nearly two decades after a thief stole the iconic shoes, convinced they were adorned with real jewels.

While buzzy social media moments, massive celebrity endorsements and viral memes were everywhere during the U.S. election campaign, those who study social media and pop culture say it's likely that smaller social media interactions had a larger impact on the outcome.

Beyoncé leads the 2025 Grammy Award nominations with 11, bringing her career total to 99 nominations. That makes her the most-nominated artist in Grammy history.

Supporters say the Supreme Court of Canada's so-called Jordan ruling in 2016 has sped up proceedings and strengthened Charter rights for prompt justice. But some victims say the time limits for trials work in criminals' favour and cases continue to collapse because those limits are breached. 

The prime minister has announced that a byelection will be held in the federal seat of Cloverdale-Langley City, in B.C.'s Lower Mainland, on Dec. 16.

Peytant has announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted marketing authorisation (clearance to market in the United States as a Class II device) for the AMStent Tracheobronchial Covered Stent System, a therapy platform.

The 3.2-million-year-old human ancestor known as Lucy rose to fame through an incredible combination of circumstances

As regular readers of Drug Channels know, U.S. distribution and dispensing channels for prescription drugs are undergoing significant evolution and consolidation as the changing economics of pharmaceuticals challenge conventional business models.

During this period of volatility, the core business model of the Big Three public pharmaceutical distribution companies—Cardinal Health, Cencora, and McKesson—remains intact. Put simply: Buy low, sell high, collect early, and pay late.

But as I explain below, wholesalers continue to position themselves as essential intermediaries by expanding their industry position and strengthening their economic fundamentals.

Read on for five key pricing, pharmacy, provider, and manufacturer trends that are driving the U.S. drug wholesaling industry.

For even more, check out DCI's new 2024-25 Economic Report on Pharmaceutical Wholesalers and Specialty Distributors, the fifteenth edition of our deep dive into wholesale distribution channels.Click here to download a free report overview (including key industry trends, the table of contents, and a list of exhibits)
Read more »

A new survey of plan sponsors sheds light on their satisfaction with transparency at large and small pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs).

As you will see, clients remain slightly more satisfied with the perceived transparency of smaller PBMs compared with the Big Three PBMs—CVS Caremark, Express Scripts, and Optum Rx.

However, plan sponsors are dissatisfied with transparency about how both large and small PBMs make money. Smaller PBMs have an edge, but it’s narrower than you might think.

Perhaps PBMs’ clients are unable or unwilling to negotiate better deals, write more effective contracts, and switch to more satisfying relationships. Or maybe they don’t mind the current system, despite the challenges for patients. Some argue that transparency could swoop down to solve this problem. Riddle me this: Should we watch what plan sponsors say, or what they do?

Read on to see what you think of my arguments below. Then, click here to share your thoughts with the Drug Channels community.
Read more »

Today’s guest post comes from Chris Dowd, Senior VP of Market Development at ConnectiveRx.

Chris examines three key trends that will affect patient support programs: the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), legal/regulatory battles over copay adjustment programs, and uncertainties following a national election. He then outlines three actions that should guide manufacturers' preparation.

To learn more, register for ConnectiveRx’s free webinar on December 11: The Perfect Storm? Patient Support Programming in 2025 and Beyond.

Read on for Chris’s insights.
Read more »

By Ankit Mahadevia, former CEO of Spero Therapeutics, as part of the From The Trenches feature of LifeSciVC Drug development is complex. So is running a business. Sometimes, the work of doing both can make your head spin. In my

The post Boiling It Down: Conveying Complexity For Decision-makers appeared first on LifeSciVC.

Are we looking at our enrollment data in the right way?

Session Details:

June 25, 1:45PM - 3:15PM

• Session Number: 241
• Room Number: 205B

1. Enrollment Analytics: Moving Beyond the Funnel
Paul Ivsin
VP, Consulting Director
CAHG Clinical Trials

2. Use of Analytics for Operational Planning
Diana Chung, MSc
Associate Director, Clinical Operations
Gilead
3. Using Enrollment Data to Communicate Effectively with Sites
Gretchen Goller, MA
Senior Director, Patient Access and Retention Services
PRA

More people are getting cancer in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, and surviving, thanks to rapid advancement in care. Many will have decades of life ahead of them, which means they face greater and more complex challenges in survivorship. Lourdes Monje is navigating these waters at age 29.

NPR's Leila Fadel talks with actor Patrick Dempsey about his efforts to raise money for cancer treatment and prevention.

The future of an innovative retinal implant and dozens of its users just got brighter, after Science, a bioelectronics startup run by Neuralink’s cofounder, Max Hodak, acquired Pixium’s technology at the last minute.

Pixium Vision, whose Prima system to tackle vision loss is implanted in 47 people across Europe and the United States, was in danger of disappearing completely until Science stepped in to buy the French company’s assets in April, for an undisclosed amount.

Pixium has been developing Prima for a decade, building on work by Daniel Palanker, a professor of ophthalmology at Stanford University. The 2-by-2-millimeter square implant is surgically implanted under the retina, where it turns infrared data from camera-equipped glasses into pulses of electricity. These replace signals generated by photoreceptor rods and cones, which are damaged in people suffering from age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

Early feasibility studies in the E.U. and the United States suggested Prima was safe and potentially effective, but Pixium ran out of money last November before the final results of a larger, multiyear pivotal trial in Europe.

“It’s very important to us to avoid another debacle like Argus II.”

With the financial and legal clock ticking down, the trial data finally arrived in March this year. “And the results from that were just pretty stunning,” says Max Hodak, Science’s founder and CEO, in his first interview since the acquisition.

Although neither Pixium nor Science has yet released the full dataset, Hodak shared with IEEE Spectrum videos of three people using Prima, each of them previously unable to read or recognize faces due to AMD. The videos show them slowly but fluently reading a hardback book, filling in a crossword puzzle, and playing cards.

“This is legit ‘form vision’ that I don’t think any device has ever done,” says Hodak. Form vision is the ability to recognize visual elements as parts of a larger object. “It’s this type of data that convinced us. And from there we were like, this should get to patients.”

As well as buying the Prima technology, Hodak says that Science will hire the majority of Pixium’s 35 engineering and regulatory staff, in a push to get the technology approved in Europe as quickly as possible.

The Prima implant receives visual data and is powered by near-infrared signals beamed from special spectacles.Pixium

Another priority is supporting existing Prima patients, says Lloyd Diamond, Pixium’s outgoing CEO. “It’s very important to us to avoid another debacle like Argus II,” he says, referring to another retinal implant whose manufacturer went out of business in 2022, leaving users literally in the dark.

Diamond is excited to be working with Science, which is based in Silicon Valley with a chip foundry in North Carolina. “They have a very deep workforce in software development, in electronic development, and in biologic research,” he says. “And there are probably only a few foundries in the world that could manufacture an implant such as ours. Being able to internalize part of that process is a very big advantage.”

Hodak hopes that a first-generation Prima product could quickly be upgraded with a wide-angle camera and the latest electronics. “We think that there’s one straight shrink, where we’ll move to smaller pixels and get higher visual acuity,” he says. “After that, we’ll probably move to a 3D electrode design, where we’ll be able to get closer to single-cell resolution.” That could deliver even sharper artificial vision.

In parallel, Science will continue Pixium’s discussions with the FDA in the United States about advancing a clinical trial there.

The success of Prima is critical, says Hodak, who started Science in 2021 after leaving Neuralink, a brain-computer interface company he cofounded with Elon Musk. “Elon can do whatever he wants for as long as he wants, but we need something that can finance future development,” he says. “Prima is big enough in terms of impact to patients and society that it is capable of helping us finance the rest of our ambitions.”

These include a next-generation Prima device, which Hodak says he is already talking about with Palanker, and a second visual prosthesis, currently called the Science Eye. This will tackle retinitis pigmentosa, a condition affecting peripheral vision—the same condition targeted by Second Sight’s ill-fated Argus II device.

“The Argus II just didn’t work that well,” says Hodak. “In the end, it was a pure bridge to nowhere.” Like the Argus II and Prima, the Science Eye relies on camera glasses and an implant, but with the addition of optogenetic therapy. This uses a genetically engineered virus to deliver a gene to specific optic nerve cells in the retina, making them light-sensitive at a particular wavelength. A tiny implanted display with a resolution sharper than an iPhone screen then enables fine control over the newly sensitized cells.

That system is still undergoing animal trials, but Hodak is almost ready to pull the trigger on its first human clinical studies, likely in Australia and New Zealand.

“In the long term, I think precision optogenetics will be more powerful than Prima’s electrical stimulation,” he says. “But we’re agnostic about which approach works to restore vision.”

One thing he does believe vehemently, unlike Musk, is that the retina is the best place to put an implant. Neuralink and Cortigent (the successor company of Second Sight) are both working on prosthetics that target the brain’s visual cortex.

“There’s a lot that you can do in cortex, but vision is not one of them,” says Hodak. He thinks the visual cortex is too complex, too distributed, and too difficult to access surgically to be useful.

“As long as the optic nerve is intact, the retina is the ideal place to think about restoring vision to the brain,” he says. “This is all a question of effect size. If someone has been in darkness for a decade, with no light, no perception, and you can give them any type of visual stimulus, they’re going to be into it. The Pixium patients can intuitively read, and that was really what convinced us that this was worth picking up and pursuing.”

Did that rock move, or is it a squirrel crossing the road? Tracking objects that look a lot like their surroundings is a big problem for many autonomous vision systems. AI algorithms can solve this camouflage problem, but they take time and computing power. A new camera designed by researchers in South Korea provides a faster solution. The camera takes inspiration from the eyes of a cat, using two modifications that let it distinguish objects from their background, even at night.

“In the future … a variety of intelligent robots will require the development of vision systems that are best suited for their specific visual tasks,” says Young Min Song, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology and one of the camera’s designers. Song’s recent research has been focused on using the “perfectly adapted” eyes of animals to enhance camera hardware, allowing for specialized cameras for different jobs. For example, fish eyes have wider fields of view as a consequence of their curved retinas. Cats may be common and easy to overlook, he says, but their eyes actually offer a lot of inspiration.

This particular camera copied two adaptations from cats’ eyes: their vertical pupils and a reflective structure behind their retinas. Combined, these allowed the camera to be 10 percent more accurate at distinguishing camouflaged objects from their backgrounds and 52 percent more efficient at absorbing incoming light.

Using a vertical pupil to narrow focus

While conventional cameras can clearly see the foreground and background of an image, the slitted pupils of a cat focus directly on a target, preventing it from blending in with its surroundings. Kim et al./Science Advances

In conventional camera systems, when there is adequate light, the aperture—the camera’s version of a pupil—is small and circular. This structure allows for a large depth of field (the distance between the closest and farthest objects in focus), clearly seeing both the foreground and the background. By contrast, cat eyes narrow to a vertical pupil during the day. This shifts the focus to a target, distinguishing it more clearly from the background.

The researchers 3D printed a vertical slit to use as an aperture for their camera. They tested the vertical slit using seven computer vision algorithms designed to track moving objects. The vertical slit increased contrast between a target object and its background, even if they were visually similar. It beat the conventional camera on five of the seven tests. For the two tests it performed worse than the conventional camera, the accuracies of the two cameras were within 10 percent of each other.

Using a reflector to gather additional light

Cats can see more clearly at night than conventional cameras due to reflectors in their eyes that bring extra light to their retinas.Kim et al./Science Advances

Cat eyes have an in-built reflector, called a tapetum lucidum, which sits behind the retina. It reflects light that passes through the retina back at it, so it can process both the incoming light and reflected light, giving felines superior night vision. You can see this biological adaptation yourself by looking at a cat’s eyes at night: they will glow.

The researchers created an artificial version of this biological structure by placing a silver reflector under each photodiode in the camera. Photodiodes without a reflector generated current when more than 1.39 watts per square meter of light fell on them, while photodiodes with a reflector activated with 0.007 W/m² of light. That means the photodiode could generate an image with about 1/200th the light.

Each photodiode was placed above a reflector and joined by metal electrodes to create a curved image sensor.Kim et al./Science Advances

To decrease visual aberrations (imperfections in the way the lens of the camera focuses light), Song and his team opted to create a curved image sensor, like the back of the human eye. In such a setup, a standard image sensor chip won’t work, because it’s rigid and flat. Instead it often relies on many individual photodiodes arranged on a curved substrate. A common problem with such curved sensors is that they require ultrathin silicon photodiodes, which inherently absorb less light than a standard imager’s pixels. But reflectors behind each photodiode in the artificial cat’s eye compensated for this, enabling the researchers to create a curved imager without sacrificing light absorption.

Together, vertical slits and reflectors led to a camera that could see more clearly in the dark and isn’t fooled by camouflage. “Applying these two characteristics to autonomous vehicles or intelligent robots could naturally improve their ability to see objects more clearly at night and to identify specific targets more accurately,” says Song. He foresees this camera being used for self-driving cars or drones in complex urban environments.

Song’s lab is continuing to work on using biological solutions to solve artificial vision problems. Currently, they are developing devices that mimic how brains process images, hoping to one day combine them with their biologically-inspired cameras. The goal, says Song, is to “mimic the neural systems of nature.”

Song and his colleague’s work was published this week in the journal Science Advances.

This article appears in the November 2024 print issue.

Emteq Labs wants eyewear to be the next frontier of wearable health technology.

The Brighton, England-based company introduced today its emotion-sensing eyewear, Sense. The glasses contain nine optical sensors distributed across the rims that detect subtle changes in facial expression with more than 93 percent accuracy when paired with Emteq’s current software. “If your face moves, we can capture it,” says Steen Strand, whose appointment as Emteq’s new CEO was also announced today. With that detailed data, “you can really start to decode all kinds of things.” The continuous data could help people uncover patterns in their behavior and mood, similar to an activity or sleep tracker.

Emteq is now aiming to take its tech out of laboratory settings with real-world applications. The company is currently producing a small number of Sense glasses, and they’ll be available to commercial partners in December.

The announcement comes just weeks after Meta and Snap each unveiled augmented reality glasses that remain in development. These glasses are “far from ready,” says Strand, who led the augmented reality eyewear division while working at Snap from 2018 to 2022. “In the meantime, we can serve up lightweight eyewear that we believe can deliver some really cool health benefits.”

Fly Vision Vectors

While current augmented reality (AR) headsets have large battery packs to power the devices, glasses require a lightweight design. “Every little bit of power, every bit of weight, becomes critically important,” says Strand. The current version of Sense weighs 62 grams, slightly heavier than the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, which weigh in at about 50 grams.

Because of the weight constraints, Emteq couldn’t use the power-hungry cameras typically used in headsets. With cameras, motion is detected by looking at how pixels change between consecutive images. The method is effective, but captures a lot of redundant information and uses more power. The eyewear’s engineers instead opted for optical sensors that efficiently capture vectors when points on the face move due to the underlying muscles. These sensors were inspired by the efficiency of fly vision. “Flies are incredibly efficient at measuring motion,” says Emteq founder and CSO Charles Nduka. “That’s why you can’t swat the bloody things. They have a very high sample rate internally.”

Sense glasses can capture data as often as 6,000 times per second. The vector-based approach also adds a third dimension to a typical camera’s 2D view of pixels in a single plane.

These sensors look for activation of facial muscles, and the area around the eyes is an ideal spot. While it’s easy to suppress or force a smile, the upper half of our face tends to have more involuntary responses, explains Nduka, who also works as a plastic surgeon in the United Kingdom. However, the glasses can also collect information about the mouth by monitoring the cheek muscles that control jaw movements, conveniently located near the lower rim of a pair of glasses. The data collected is then transmitted from the glasses to pass through Emteq’s algorithms in order to translate the vector data into usable information.

In addition to interpreting facial expressions, Sense can be used to track food intake, an application discovered by accident when one of Emteq’s developers was wearing the glasses while eating breakfast. By monitoring jaw movement, the glasses detect when a user chews and how quickly they eat. Meanwhile, a downward-facing camera takes a photo to log the food, and uses a large language model to determine what’s in the photo, effectively making food logging a passive activity. Currently, Emteq is using an instance of OpenAI’s GPT-4 large language model to accomplish this, but the company has plans to create their own algorithm in the future. Other applications, including monitoring physical activity and posture, are also in development.

One Platform, Many Uses

Nduka believes Emteq’s glasses represent a “fundamental technology,” similar to how the accelerometer is used for a host of applications in smartphones, including managing screen orientation, tracking activity, and even revealing infrastructure damage.

Similarly, Emteq has chosen to develop the technology as a general facial data platform for a range of uses. “If we went deep on just one, it means that all the other opportunities that can be helped—especially some of those rarer use cases—they’d all be delayed,” says Nduka. For example, Nduka is passionate about developing a tool to help those with facial paralysis. But a specialized device for those patients would have high unit costs and be unaffordable for the target user. Allowing more companies to use Emteq’s intellectual property and algorithms will bring down cost.

In this buckshot approach, the general target for Sense’s potential use cases is health applications. “If you look at the history of wearables, health has been the primary driver,” says Strand. The same may be true for eyewear, and he says there’s potential for diet and emotional data to be “the next pillar of health” after sleep and physical activity.

How the data is delivered is still to be determined. In some applications, it could be used to provide real-time feedback—for instance, vibrating to remind the user to slow down eating. Or, it could be used by health professionals only to collect a week’s worth of at-home data for patients with mental health conditions, which Nduka notes largely lack objective measures. (As a medical device for treatment of diagnosed conditions, Sense would have to go through a more intensive regulatory process.) While some users are hungry for more data, others may require a “much more gentle, qualitative approach,” says Strand. Emteq plans to work with expert providers to appropriately package information for users.

Interpreting the data must be done with care, says Vivian Genaro Motti, an associate professor at George Mason University who leads the Human-Centric Design Lab. What expressions mean may vary based on cultural and demographic factors, and “we need to take into account that people sometimes respond to emotions in different ways,” Motti says. With little regulation of wearable devices, she says it’s also important to ensure privacy and protect user data. But Motti raises these concerns because there is a promising potential for the device. “If this is widespread, it’s important that we think carefully about the implications.”

Privacy is also a concern to Edward Savonov, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Alabama, who developed a similar device for dietary tracking in his lab. Having a camera mounted on Emteq’s glasses could pose issues, both for the privacy of those around a user and a user’s own personal information. Many people eat in front of their computer or cell phone, so sensitive data may be in view.

For technology like Sense to be adopted, Sazonov says questions about usability and privacy concerns must first be answered. “Eyewear-based technology has potential for a great future—if we get it right.”

Over the past year, COVID-19 has taken a grave toll in lives as well as on medical and health care systems worldwide. The pandemic has laid bare the importance of public health readiness and the myriad consequences when such a crisis strikes an unprepared population.

SINGAPORE - When an online retailer began selling his products on e-commerce platform Qoo10 in August 2023, he did not bat an eyelid when it took 30 to 45 days for the platform to disburse his first payout, compared with about three to seven days for other e-commerce sites he was using. But nearly a year later in July, payments owed to his business by Qoo10 had ballooned to about $1.6 million, as the platform’s payment delays exceeded two months and disbursements began trickling in, in smaller amounts. The Singaporean, who wanted to be known only as Mr T and did not wish to divulge what he sold, pulled the plug on his Qoo10 shop this year in the middle of July, and filed a civil claim with the courts. He obtained a default judgment in October for Qoo10 to pay him what he is owed, after the e-commerce site failed to serve a notice of intention to contest or not contest the claim. Mr T, who added that he had borrowed nearly $1 million from banks, friends and relatives to pay his suppliers, said: “I am not holding out hope that I will get much, or any, of my money back from Qoo10... By this point, I just want closure because it’s been so stressful.”

The estranged DMK M.P. spoke about party's corrupt image & predicted its downfall; criticised ‘freebies'; praised Rahul Gandhi; was ‘very downbeat' about United Progressive Alliance's electoral prospects

While the BJP-led NDA won resoundingly in the 2019 Lok Sabha election, it has lost power in five major State assemblies since December 2018.

The Pakistani Taliban on Monday claimed responsibility for the January 30 mosque attack in Peshawar which left 100 people dead and over 220 injured

Dec 14, 2023

The Belfer Center's National Security Fellows (NSFs), as part of the Defense, Emerging Technology, and Strategy (DETS) program, developed and taught the "For the Common Defense" study group throughout the Fall 2023 semester. Each “Common Defense” seminar is an in-depth exploration of a national security or defense-related subject taught by senior defense officials. Over the course of eight seminars, this study group examined key foreign policy topics, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and great power competition.

 

Sep 2, 2015

"The seed industry in sub-Saharan Africa is informal in nature, with approximately 80% of farmers saving and replanting seeds from year to year. This gives them security of access. But improved varieties — including high-yielding and hybrid crops — will increase productivity and income. To get these seeds into the hands of farmers, a better marketing and distribution system is needed. Local small and medium-sized seed enterprises have a comparative advantage in reaching this underserved market due to their size and market reach."