March 23, 2023
Feature
Bionic Hands
Florida Atlantic University engineering and computer science college researchers received $1.2 million from the National Science Foundation to improve the functioning of prosthetic hands. Current prosthetics allow only one grasp function to be controlled at a time.
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Published on 3/21/2023
School of Fish
Fort Lauderdale-based Guy Harvey Foundation has opened the Guy Harvey Academy of Arts & Science within Anna Maria Elementary School near Bradenton.
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Published on 3/21/2023
Educational upgrade: MBA programs in Florida
The esports industry — video games with multiple players that have spectators virtually or in person — had a market value of more than $1.3 billion in 2022 and is expected to reach $3.8 billion by 2027, according to Marketwatch.
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Published on 3/15/2023
Promoting Ownership
Small businesses are the “heartbeat” of South Florida's economy, and their soul is cultural diversity, says Brittany Morgan, economic resilience director at the Miami Foundation, which has chosen to promote asset ownership with a $20-million gift from Wells Fargo's Open For Business program.
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Published on 3/15/2023
The Futurist
By now, the usual reasons Wall Street types had for decamping to Florida during the pandemic are well-known: No income tax, an entrepreneurial spirit, welcoming policies and effusive politicians, high-growth potential and minimal regulation.
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Published on 3/15/2023
Insurance: Headwinds
While the Legislature addressed property insurance during special sessions last year, work remains as premiums continue to rise and insurers bail out. In the meantime, health care providers still struggle with rising costs, mental health coverage issues and staff shortages. Also on the agenda, there's opportunity for rare bipartisan agreement on two key issues: Resiliency and water.
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Published on 3/8/2023
Health Care: Lingering Effects
Three years after it began sweeping the country, COVID-19 continues to cast a pall over the state's health care policy arena.
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Published on 3/8/2023
2023 Florida Legislature Priorities
As Florida's population surges and the state posts a record surplus, there are common causes for Republican and Democratic legislators convening March 7: Defending against natural disasters and water shortages, upgrading infrastructure and providing for affordable housing and workforce needs.
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Published on 3/8/2023
Florida Icon: Jenson Van Emburgh
My injury happened during birth. I came out the wrong way. The doctor put too much pressure on my spinal cord and it severed. My parents were told that I had no sensation or motor function from my armpits down and that I would be in a wheelchair for life.
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Published on 3/7/2023
Wasting No Time
About 30% of a typical city's food waste comes from restaurants. Aneshai Smith wants to do something about that while helping restaurants thrive. Her Orlando-based startup, Go See The City, offers digital coupons for deep discounts on unsold food before restaurants close for the day.
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Published on 3/7/2023
Century-old French flavor company Monin finds its North American home in Clearwater
Olivier Monin was only a few years into his tenure heading his family's syrup and flavoring business when he sought a place to build its North American headquarters. Founded in 1912 in Bourges, France, the company had survived world wars, changing tastes and the challenges of international business, but was on the rocks when Olivier, its third-generation leader, took over.
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Published on 3/1/2023
On the Front Lines
In 2014, Michael Obod and his business partner, Yurii Lavrenov, were running a laser tag equipment company in Ukraine, when Russia invaded Crimea. Amid the crisis, a teacher at Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute, where Obod had studied, asked him to reserve some small production units to provide simulated combat/virtual reality training systems for the nation's soldiers.
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Published on 3/1/2023
Ripple Effect
Looking for a way to enhance reliability, both during regular operations to keep small problems from becoming big ones and also during emergencies when quickly finding sources of outages is important, FPL began working with Israeli company Percepto in 2018 on using drones to monitor infrastructure and on a nationwide FAA waiver to allow the utility to fly Percepto drones for surveillance and inspection at FPL sites.
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Published on 3/1/2023
Cellphone CSI
Cellebrite, an Israel-based digital intelligence company, works with law enforcement agencies to uncover data from cellphones and other digital devices — a practice now considered as routine as dusting for fingerprints in a crime scene.
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Published on 3/1/2023
Icelandic Influence
When the owners of the Iceland-based digital marketing agency Sahara were looking to expand into the United States a few years ago, Orlando quickly rose to the top of the list of possible locations.
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Published on 3/1/2023
Pulling Rank
While it's no surprise that Miami tops the list of the best U.S. cities for foreign businesses in the inaugural Investing in America ranking from the Financial Times and Nikkei, it may be surprising to learn that Jacksonville ranked No. 8, three spots higher than Tampa but a few notches below Orlando at No. 2.
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Published on 3/1/2023
Red Carpet for Foreign Companies
“Pursuing foreign direct investment is a very important strategy in our efforts to attract new industries and diversify our economy here in Northwest Florida. If you're just concentrating on U.S. companies, you are competing against every other city and county economic development agency. And while that competition is fine, and we will always continue to do that, when you open it up to a worldview perspective, it really allows us to attract additional foreign capital investment that creates good, high-paying jobs.”
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Published on 3/1/2023
A Piece of Uruguay in Florida
There are nearly 4,400 miles and 114 years separating the riverside wine estate that Jerónimo Cantón's family founded in Uruguay at the turn of the 20th century and the restaurant and gourmet food company he now manages in South Florida, but time and distance have a way of collapsing inside the doors of Narbona.
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Published on 3/1/2023
It takes a community
Maynard Evans High School wasn't always a troubled school. When it first opened in the 1950s in Pine Hills — then a bedroom community of Orlando for workers at Martin Marietta (now Lockheed Martin) — it was considered one of the best in Orange County. But by the mid-2000s, crime and poverty had risen in Pine Hills, and Evans was a shell of its former self. The school building was riddled with peeling paint, creeping mildew and other signs of decay. It had some of the worst dropout, suspension and graduation rates in Central Florida.
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Published on 3/1/2023
Drones to the Rescue
University of West Florida professor Hakki Erhan Sevil has developed a novel “swarm navigation” model for small drones to assist response teams in emergency situations.
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Published on 2/28/2023
Health Care House Calls
The Seminole County Fire Department is using paramedics to help fill health care gaps.
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Published on 2/28/2023
Power Walk
In the event of a power failure, only about half of Tampa's traffic lights are equipped with backup batteries that can keep the signals operating without a generator for about eight hours.
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Published on 2/28/2023
Virtually Recovered
Treatment for cardiac conditions doesn't end when a surgery or a procedure is complete. For most patients, rehabilitation is as important as the original intervention — yet nationwide, only a portion of the cardiac patients who need that service can access it.
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Published on 2/28/2023
Time and Money Saver
Over the past couple of decades, cardiac CT scans have become a workhorse for evaluating people with chest pain.
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Published on 2/28/2023
Last Resort
When patients undergo radiation treatments for cancer, oncologists take great care to spare the heart from radiation exposure because of the cardio-toxic effects it can have on the organ. But doctors at Orlando Health recently used targeted radiation therapy to treat a dangerous arrhythmia in one patient's heart.
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Published on 2/28/2023
