Jack Ma is retiring with a net worth of $38 billion. Here's his incredible rags-to-riches story9/12/2019
A new chapter is about to unfold in the incredible rags-to-riches story of China's richest man.
Alibaba cofounder Jack Ma will step down as the online marketplace's chairman on September 10, he announced September 9. The date is Ma's retirement is also his 55th birthday. Ma grew up poor in communist China, failed his university entrance exam twice, and was rejected from dozens of jobs, including one at KFC, before finding success with his third internet company, Alibaba
Jack Ma — born Ma Yun — was born on September 10, 1964, in Hangzhou, southeastern China. He has an older brother and a younger sister.
He and his siblings grew up at a time when communist China was increasingly isolated from the West, and his family didn't have much money when they were young. Ma was scrawny and often got into fights with classmates. "I was never afraid of opponents who were bigger than I," he recalls in "Alibaba," a book by Liu Shiying and Martha Avery.
As a kid, Ma liked collecting crickets and making them fight, and was able to distinguish the size and type of cricket just by the sound it made.
After President Nixon visited Hangzhou in 1972, Ma's hometown became a tourist mecca. As a teenager, Ma started waking up early to visit the city's main hotel, offering visitors tours of the city in exchange for English lessons. The nickname "Jack" was given to him by a tourist he befriended.
After high school, he applied to go to college — but failed the entrance exam twice. He finally passed on the third try, going on to attend Hangzhou Teachers Institute. He graduated in 1988 and started applying to as many jobs as he could.
He received more than a dozen rejections — including from KFC — before being hired as an English teacher. Ma was a natural with his students and loved his job — though he only made $12 a month at a local university. At the World Economic Forum in 2016, Jack Ma revealed he has been rejected from Harvard — 10 times.
Ma had no experience with computers or coding, but he was captivated by the internet when he used it for the first time during a trip to the US in 1995. He had recently started a translation business and made the trip to help a Chinese firm recover a payment. Ma's first online search was "beer," but he was surprised to find that no Chinese beers turned up in the results. It was then that he decided to found an internet company for China.
Though his first two ventures failed, four years later he gathered 17 of his friends in his apartment and convinced them to invest in his vision for an online marketplace he called "Alibaba." The site allowed exporters to post product listings that customers could buy directly. Soon, the service started to attract members from all over the world. By October 1999, the company had raised $5 million from Goldman Sachs and $20 million from SoftBank, a Japanese telecom company that also invests in technology companies. The team remained close-knit and scrappy. "We will make it because we are young and we never, never give up," Ma said to a gathering of employees.
He was known for maintaining a sense of fun at Alibaba. In the early 2000s, when the company decided to start Taobao, its eBay competitor, he had his team do handstands during breaks to keep their energy levels up.
When the company first became profitable, Ma gave each employee a can of Silly String to go wild with. In 2005, Yahoo invested $1 billion in Alibaba in exchange for about a 40% stake in the company. This was huge for Alibaba — at the time it was trying to beat eBay in China — and it would eventually be an enormous win for Yahoo too, netting it $10 billion in Alibaba's IPO alone.
In 2014, Ma told Bloomberg he knew Alibaba had made it big when another customer offered to pay his restaurant bill. The customer, Ma said in the interview, had left Ma a note that read: "I'm your customer of Alibaba group, I made a lot of money and I know you don't make any money. I'll pay the bill for you."
Ma stepped down from his post as CEO in 2013, staying on as executive chairman. Alibaba went public on September 19, 2014. "Today what we got is not money. What we got is the trust from the people," Ma told CNBC at the time.
The company's $150-billion IPO was the largest offering for a US-listed company in the history of the New York Stock Exchange. It also made Ma the richest person in China, with an estimated worth of $25 billion at the time. His net worth has now grown to $38.1 billion, according to Forbes.
Ma's fortune comes from his 7.8% stake in Alibaba and a nearly 50% stake in payment-processing service Alipay. Alibaba employees threw a big party at the company's Hangzhou headquarters to celebrate the IPO. One employee even took the party as the perfect opportunity to propose. Ma told employees at a press conference that he hopes they use their newfound wealth to become "a batch of genuinely noble people, a batch of people who are able to help others, and who are kind and happy."
The biggest day in the calendar for Alibaba is China's "Singles' Day" — a retaliation to Valentine's Day — which supposedly celebrates the country's singletons. In 2016, the site recorded nearly $20 billion in sales in 24 hours.
The IPO may have made Ma an extremely wealthy man, but he has made very few flashy purchases, and he still has some pretty modest hobbies. "I don't think he has changed much, he is still that old style," Xiao-Ping Chen, a friend of Ma, told USA Today. He likes reading and writing kung fu fiction, playing poker, meditating, and practicing tai chi.
His big splurge was a vineyard and a chateau in Bordeaux, France, in 2016.
In March 2013, Alibaba spent a reported $49.7 million on a Gulfstream G550, mostly for Ma's use. One of his greatest passions is the environment. According to Fortune, Ma developed an interest in environmentalism when a member of his wife's family became sick with an illness that Ma suspected was caused by pollution. He sits on the global board of The Nature Conservancy and spoke during a session of the Clinton Global Initiative in 2015. He has also, according to Fortune, been instrumental in funding a 27,000-acre nature reserve in China. Ma has largely kept his family life out of the spotlight. He married Zhang Ying, a teacher he met at school, after they graduated in the late 1980s. They have two children — a daughter and a son.
In 2017, Ma made headlines after meeting President Donald Trump. Despite Trump's protectionist attitude towards trade, Ma said China and the United States were not about to be drawn into a trade war. "Give Trump some time. He's open-minded," Ma told a panel at Davos in January.
Ma is something of a celebrity in China, and crowds of people show up to listen to him speak. The company also hosts annual talent shows, and Ma is a natural entertainer. At a company anniversary event, he dressed up as a punk rocker for a performance in front of 20,000 Alibaba employees.
Company lore has it that Ma came up with the name "Alibaba" while sitting in a San Francisco coffee shop. In "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves," a secret password unlocks a trove filled with unbelievable riches. Ma's company has, in a way, revealed the potential of small and mid-sized businesses across the globe.
Ma stepped down as Alibaba's chairman on, September 10, 2019, his 55th birthday. The company threw him a farewell party in an 80,000-seat stadium in Hangzhou. Ma picked Daniel Zhang, who has been the CEO of Alibaba since 2015, to replace him as chairman. According to CNN Business, Ma is now pivoting to full-time philanthropy.
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Airplane meals unfortunately have the reputation of being disgustingly bland.
However, by some magic (or the Malaysian food obsession), AirAsia’s in-flight meals have always been SO.GOOD. With its perfectly balanced chilli sambal and flavourful chicken rendang, the low-cost carrier’s ‘Pak Nasser’s Nasi Lemak’ is a firm favourite on any Malaysian’s list of top 10 nasi lemaks.
Naturally, it’s no surprise that everyone essentially lost their heads when AirAsia Group CEO Tony Fernandes mentioned that they were planning to open a fast food restaurant during a February 2019 interview with US talk show host Larry King.
Tony also mentioned that the upcoming restaurant will be called Santan and serve up their crazy popular in-flight meals. (THAT MEANS PAK NASSER’S NASI LEMAK!)He remained mum on further details, but yesterday Tony spilt more tea to his 1.3 million Twitter followers. Air Asia is opening their first Santan restaurant this December in Mid Valley Megamall!
While no further details on the menu has been confirmed, past evidence has shown that AirAsia certainly knows how to serve up a scrumptious meal.
When the Santan in-flight menu concept was launched in 2015, it was with the goal to provide passengers with a gourmet experience while flying. Tony himself proudly proclaimed, “our food is as good as restaurant food!”
Tony also revealed that franchises will be available soon. Here’s an opportunity for you, budding entrepreneurs!
ASEAN countries have collectively achieved remarkable economic growth, however, when it comes to fertility rates, the region has been drifting. The total fertility rate (TFR) of Southeast Asia has dropped from 5.5 in 1970 down to 2.11 in 2017. Half of the region is already facing a ‘baby bust’, where there are insufficient children to maintain the population size. And it is feared that the ongoing decline will have grim economic consequences.
At the Future of Work Conference in Singapore in April 2019, Singapore’s Minister for Manpower, Josephine Teo stated that more than half of the world’s population live in countries with a TFR that is below the replacement level of 2.1. Based on World Bank data, Brunei, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam are ASEAN countries which have a TFR below the replacement level.
While some countries in the region have a rapidly growing youth population in the short term, the size of their working-age population will decline over time. In 2015, the total population of ASEAN aged 65 and above was 7.7 percent. This figure is set to double to 15.5 percent by 2035. An ageing population will increase the pressure on support systems for the elderly.
Singapore has the lowest TFR in ASEAN with 1.21 births per woman, and although several efforts have been taken by the government to increase the fertility rate, the country still saw a decrease in the number of births in 2017 by four percent.
Declining factors A 2019 report by The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), titled ‘The disappearing workforce’ highlighted the need for ASEAN countries to think about fertility rates before it’s too late. As ASEAN member states transition to aged societies, a large portion of their spending will go to healthcare and infrastructure costs for the elderly, while the working-age population that drives the region’s economic growth decreases.
The EIU found that the factors driving the fall in fertility levels include rapid urbanisation and migration from rural areas to the city, which contributes to the higher costs of raising children and the lack of affordable housing for family building. Another factor is the shift of focus from ‘quantity’ to ‘quality’, where a greater emphasis is placed on raising fewer children with a better quality of life as opposed to having as many children as possible. Dr Le Hoang, Head of Tam Anh IVF Center in Vietnam said that “raising children with a good quality of life has become a challenge for parents; far from the usual concerns about providing basic needs and resources for their children.”
This observation was concurred by Professor Zainul Rashid Mohd. Razi from the National University of Malaysia’s (Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia) Specialist Centre who said that “most people emphasize on quality and not quantity to ensure that their child grows up in a stable environment with a good education.”
Declining fertility rates may also be due to a cultural shift where women are increasingly gaining access to higher education and pursuing economic opportunities and consequently delaying marriage and motherhood. Pervasive gender inequality also exerts a dampening effect on efforts to raise the birth rate. Workplace demands of long-hours at work and extensive workloads will create problems for dual-earner couples unless they have the benefit of co-living with a parent or in-laws to care for their children. Lacking such support discourages women in full-time jobs to have more children. Having men to help in child-rearing and sharing the housework can reduce gender inequality which can then increase fertility rates in the region. Family-friendly policies There is a need for the region to address the issue of a low TFR and foster a supportive environment for childbirth and child-raising. The EIU recommends four principles around which governments can build effective policies. The first is to extend family-friendly policies that give greater flexibility for parents to both, work and raise a family. The second is to invest in raising population awareness on family planning and fertility preservation.
The third is to improve access to infertility treatments, such as assisted reproductive technology (ART). Infertility may not be perceived as a sufficiently urgent problem, but making ART affordable by providing subsidies has often found to increase the number of births. And the fourth recommendation is the need to ensure affordable housing to encourage family building.
Efforts could also be made to decrease the cost of child-rearing without disincentivising work for women, such as a provision for workplace childcare. On the financial side, tax relief, cash incentives and subsidies are undoubtedly welcome by most parents. ASEAN states are in the process of becoming ageing societies. A demographic makeup of ageing generations who are less productive will place a burden on the healthcare systems of all these countries while a shrinking workforce can also result in institutional, economic and social issues. Governments need to act fast and prioritise how they can make the country as family-friendly as possible. Parenthood should be supported and celebrated, and families need to know their governments are on their side.
Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad last night warned about the danger of unemployement and pointed out the need for Malaysia to refocus its attention on entrepreneurship to move forward.
He said some countries had lost an entire generation due to unemployment.
"A nation with large numbers of unemployed educated youth is a sure recipe for disaster and can cause social disunity. "In addition, economic pressures can also mount when the unemployed continue to depend on the employed for their daily sustenance," he said at the Binary University's 35th Anniversary Gala Dinner here.
Also present were his wife, Tun Dr Siti Hasmah Mohd Ali, Entrepreneur Development Minister Datuk Seri Mohd Redzuan Yusof and Binary University founder chairman Tan Sri Professor Joseph Andaikalam.
Dr Mahathir also said often, the unemployed person would resort to taking jobs that did not commensurate with their educational qualification and this could lead to frustration and lack of job satisfaction. "Therefore, the foresight of future education approach is vital to manoeuvre Malaysia to be a developed country, underpinned by a world class education system." As such, the way forward is to produce a nation of job creators rather than job seekers, he added.
In this respect, Dr Mahathir emphasised on the importance entrepreneurship to create jobs and join the ranks of developed nations.
"Entrepreneurs are the lifeblood of a nation and can help a country scale great heights, and thus Malaysia needs to become a nation of entrepreneurs. "Entrepreneurs can help Malaysia escape the middle income trap through their innovative ideas and by venturing into unchartered territories. Entrepreneurs are also expected to contribute to the creation of one million jobs in Malaysia by 2030." he said. A nation without an emphasis on entrepreneurship, the prime minister warned would not be able to move ahead and join the ranks of developed nations.
Thus, he stressed on the need for Malaysia to refocus its attention on entrepreneurship.
Later, the prime minister presented the Usahawan Muda Binary awards and the Entrepreneur Icons of Malaysia Awards. For the Entrepreneur Icons of Malaysia Awards, the recipients include Syed Group founder and chairman Datuk Syed Jamarul Khan; MB Longji Group chairman and founder Datuk Ng Kek Kiong; Triplenine Goldworld Gallery managing director Zaharatul Norimayati Zainal Mustpha; Everest Group founder and managing director Datuk Seri Dr M. Andy and Al-Ikhsan Sports Sdn Bhd founder Ali Hassan Mohd Hassan. The Usahawan Muda Binary award recipients were Budi Restaurant founder Nurmala Moehamad Izat Emir, Petrochem Safety (M) Sdn Bhd owner Suresh Atmalingam and Xeno Entertainment founder Prashan Chitty.
KUCHING: A Sabah-based political activist has warned Putrajaya of the possibility that it could lose its economic clout over East Malaysian states once the Indonesian capital is relocated to Kalimantan.
Zainnal Ajamain said if the federal government did not play it right, an economic shift would occur in Sabah and Sarawak that would benefit East Kalimantan more than Putrajaya.
“And once the economic shift is in motion, a political shift will follow,” he added. He said there was a great possibility that Sabah and Sarawak would opt for barter trading with Indonesia to fight monopolies on certain goods in the two states, which he blamed on Putrajaya.
He gave the example of the rice trade under Padiberas Nasional Berhad (Bernas), which he said had been raking in billions of ringgit with its monopoly in Sabah.
He acknowledged that the Pakatan Harapan government had been trying to break the monopoly but said these these were dubious efforts, adding that Bernas and Putrajaya were engaged in a turf war and would eventually decide on how the spoils would be divided. Indonesia’s president, Joko Widodo, has said that his government could move the country’s capital to Kalimantan as early as in 2024.
Both the Sabah and Sarawak chief ministers have welcomed the move, saying it would greatly benefit both states.
Sabah Chief Minister Shafie Apdal described Indonesia as an “economic powerhouse” and said the move could have a “major economic impact” on the two states. Zainnal said Sabah’s dependence on Putrajaya for certain imported goods had resulted in the state’s inability to fight for its rights.
“Dependency creates control,” he said. “For example, if the federal government were to stop the import of rice into Sabah, the people would starve within two months.”
He said this was why it was highly possible that Sabah and Sarawak would start barter trading with Indonesia since barter trade falls under the purview of the two states.
PETALING JAYA: KidZania Kuala Lumpur has launched the Touch ‘n Go eWallet Innovation Hub and Touch ‘n Go Z-Wallet app - the first of its kind among its KidZania franchise.
“The app enables kids to check their balance online. This is a milestone for us as a role- playing indoor theme park in line with our motto of ‘Learn Life Today’.
“Helping kids understand financial aspects of earning a living is a key component of what we do here,” said Mayor of KidZania Kuala Lumpur, Shahrul Nizar Ahmad.
With the app, kids now can trade in the KidZos (KidZania currency) using their own mobile phones, and for those without one; there will be on-loan-phones available for use. TNG Digital hopes that it can help shift Malaysians' mind-set towards embracing cashless future with more accessible, seamless and safer cashless transactions.
Transaction can also be done just by tapping at the contactless payment terminals located throughout the venue.
Meanwhile, TNG Digital's newly-appointed chief executive officer Ignatius Ong also said: “Children in today’s world live in a technology-first environment, with some owning and proficient with smartphones at a very young age.
“The younger generation can also act as cashless ambassadors, educating parents who may be resistant to hop onto the cashless bandwagon and through the partnership with KidZania, we are empowering them to learn about technology as well as financial education in a safe and controlled environment,” said Ong.
Visitors can use the speedy entrance via the #terusgo lane at the ticketing counter and enjoy 35 per cent off tickets price at KidZania Kuala Lumpur with the Touch ‘n Go eWallet. They also can enjoy 10 per cent off merchandise when they make purchase using their Touch ‘n Go eWallet.
(Bloomberg) -- Time to tell your smug New York friends that they’ve made the wrong life choice: The world’s most liveable cities are generally less global capital, more regional second city, a new ranking shows.
Vienna took the No. 1 spot in the Economist Intelligence Unit’s liveability ranking for the second year running, confirming that life is officially better on the banks of the Danube than it is by the Yarra River in Melbourne, which took second place.
Australia and Canada dominate the top 10 with three cities each, while Osaka, Tokyo and Copenhagen complete the list. Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide are judged to offer the Antipodes’ best quality of life, while Calgary, Vancouver and Toronto are North America’s top locations.
“Overall, our index remains dominated by medium-sized cities in wealthy countries,” the report notes, pointing to high-quality education, well-funded public healthcare and functional transport systems. These cities—with populations that number anywhere from 300,000 to 1 million—hit the sweet spot between overcrowded and underdeveloped.
“The upsides of these cities tend to be fully realized. You get a good collection of cultural activities, you get good access to healthcare and education,” said EIU’s regional director for Asia, Duncan Innes-Ker. “But you don’t get a lot of downsides that tend to come with big cities, things like traffic congestion, crime problems and general wear and tear.”
Financial hubs London (No. 48) and New York (No. 58) lagged behind other domestic rivals. Hong Kong and Singapore fared better—but not much, charting at No. 38 and No. 40 respectively. Hong Kong’s ranking overlooked for now the recent political unrest, but the disruption will likely show up next year. “I think it’s probably safe to say that Hong Kong’s rating will suffer quite significantly,” Innes-Ker said.
To assess living conditions, the index examines the quality of healthcare, education, infrastructure, stability and culture. Each city is graded on more than 30 factors, which are then compiled into a weighted score of between 1 and 100.
At 99.1, Vienna’s 2019 liveability score is almost perfect. Melburnians and others shouldn’t feel too put out though: The scores among the top 20 cities vary by less than five points. No U.S. city made it higher than No. 22, with Honolulu ranked as the nation’s top performer. Across the board, the report points to improved quality of living, thanks to strengthened stability, as well as better education and healthcare systems—especially in emerging markets.
But climate change puts these gains at risk, the report said, noting that cities such as New Delhi and Cairo have slipped down the rankings as a result of worsening pollution. Sitting right at the bottom of the list are Dhaka, Lagos and Damascus, with the war-torn Syrian capital retaining the last position for the past seven years.
VLADIVOSTOK, Russia: Russia has shown interest in setting up an aerospace university in Malaysia.
Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said Malaysia was an education hub in Southeast Asia and welcomed Russia to invest in the country’s education sector.
“We are very interested in aerospace and engineering. I am confident that the proposal by Russia to set up an aerospace university would not only boost investment but also promote transfer of technology in the sector.
“I believe that we are also able to gain knowledge and experience from Russia in the sector,” he said at the Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) Russia 2019, here, yesterday. The session was attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Mongolian President Khalttmaagiin Battulga.
Malaysia currently has 150,000 foreign students.
Dr Mahathir said the Vladivostok region, which he was visiting for the first time, had the potential to attract Malaysian investments, especially in the tourism sector. EEF was conceived by Putin in 2015 to develop the far east of Russia. Dr Mahathir said Malaysia’s location made it suitable for Russian investors to explore opportunities in Southeast Asia. Earlier, the prime minister attended separate meetings with Putin and Modi on the sidelines of EEF.
During his meeting with Putin, both leaders agreed to explore investment opportunities in both countries.
Putin also agreed to share Russia’s experience and expertise in the fields of engineering, naval and aerospace technology. Dr Mahathir said Malaysia was interested in gaining access to Russian technology, including space technology. Putin in his reply referred to Malaysia as its leading partner in Asia. In his meeting with Modi, it was learnt that both leaders had touched on various bilateral issues, including on controversial Muslim preacher and scholar Dr Zakir Naik, although no details were made available to the media.
The preacher from India, who is a permanent resident in Malaysia, is wanted by the Indian authorities since 2016 for alleged money laundering.
Foreign Minister Datuk Saifuddin Abdullah in June said Malaysia would not extradite Zakir to his home country despite receiving an extradition application from India to face money-laundering charges. The 53-year-old preacher maintained his innocence on terrorism charges made against him in India.
Magnetically controlled device could deliver clot-reducing therapies in response to stroke or other brain blockages.
MIT engineers have developed a magnetically steerable, thread-like robot that can actively glide through narrow, winding pathways, such as the labrynthine vasculature of the brain.
In the future, this robotic thread may be paired with existing endovascular technologies, enabling doctors to remotely guide the robot through a patient’s brain vessels to quickly treat blockages and lesions, such as those that occur in aneurysms and stroke. “Stroke is the number five cause of death and a leading cause of disability in the United States. If acute stroke can be treated within the first 90 minutes or so, patients’ survival rates could increase significantly,” says Xuanhe Zhao, associate professor of mechanical engineering and of civil and environmental engineering at MIT. “If we could design a device to reverse blood vessel blockage within this ‘golden hour,’ we could potentially avoid permanent brain damage. That’s our hope.”
Zhao and his team, including lead author Yoonho Kim, a graduate student in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, describe their soft robotic design today in the journal Science Robotics. The paper’s other co-authors are MIT graduate student German Alberto Parada and visiting student Shengduo Liu.
In a tight spot To clear blood clots in the brain, doctors often perform an endovascular procedure, a minimally invasive surgery in which a surgeon inserts a thin wire through a patient’s main artery, usually in the leg or groin. Guided by a fluoroscope that simultaneously images the blood vessels using X-rays, the surgeon then manually rotates the wire up into the damaged brain vessel. A catheter can then be threaded up along the wire to deliver drugs or clot-retrieval devices to the affected region. Kim says the procedure can be physically taxing, requiring surgeons, who must be specifically trained in the task, to endure repeated radiation exposure from fluoroscopy.
“It’s a demanding skill, and there are simply not enough surgeons for the patients, especially in suburban or rural areas,” Kim says.
The medical guidewires used in such procedures are passive, meaning they must be manipulated manually, and are typically made from a core of metallic alloys, coated in polymer, a material that Kim says could potentially generate friction and damage vessel linings if the wire were to get temporarily stuck in a particularly tight space. The team realized that developments in their lab could help improve such endovascular procedures, both in the design of the guidewire and in reducing doctors’ exposure to any associated radiation.
Threading a needle
Over the past few years, the team has built up expertise in both hydrogels — biocompatible materials made mostly of water — and 3-D-printed magnetically-actuated materials that can be designed to crawl, jump, and even catch a ball, simply by following the direction of a magnet. In this new paper, the researchers combined their work in hydrogels and in magnetic actuation, to produce a magnetically steerable, hydrogel-coated robotic thread, or guidewire, which they were able to make thin enough to magnetically guide through a life-size silicone replica of the brain’s blood vessels. The core of the robotic thread is made from nickel-titanium alloy, or “nitinol,” a material that is both bendy and springy. Unlike a clothes hanger, which would retain its shape when bent, a nitinol wire would return to its original shape, giving it more flexibility in winding through tight, tortuous vessels. The team coated the wire’s core in a rubbery paste, or ink, which they embedded throughout with magnetic particles. Finally, they used a chemical process they developed previously, to coat and bond the magnetic covering with hydrogel — a material that does not affect the responsiveness of the underlying magnetic particles and yet provides the wire with a smooth, friction-free, biocompatible surface.
They demonstrated the robotic thread’s precision and activation by using a large magnet, much like the strings of a marionette, to steer the thread through an obstacle course of small rings, reminiscent of a thread working its way through the eye of a needle.
The researchers also tested the thread in a life-size silicone replica of the brain’s major blood vessels, including clots and aneurysms, modeled after the CT scans of an actual patient’s brain. The team filled the silicone vessels with a liquid simulating the viscosity of blood, then manually manipulated a large magnet around the model to steer the robot through the vessels’ winding, narrow paths. Kim says the robotic thread can be functionalized, meaning that features can be added — for example, to deliver clot-reducing drugs or break up blockages with laser light. To demonstrate the latter, the team replaced the thread’s nitinol core with an optical fiber and found that they could magnetically steer the robot and activate the laser once the robot reached a target region. When the researchers ran comparisons between the robotic thread coated versus uncoated with hydrogel, they found that the hydrogel gave the thread a much-needed, slippery advantage, allowing it to glide through tighter spaces without getting stuck. In an endovascular surgery, this property would be key to preventing friction and injury to vessel linings as the thread works its way through.
“One of the challenges in surgery has been to be able to navigate through complicated blood vessels in the brain, which has a very small diameter, where commercial catheters can’t reach,” says Kyujin Cho, professor of mechanical engineering at Seoul National University. “This research has shown potential to overcome this challenge and enable surgical procedures in the brain without open surgery.”
And just how can this new robotic thread keep surgeons radiation-free? Kim says that a magnetically steerable guidewire does away with the necessity for surgeons to physically push a wire through a patient’s blood vessels. This means that doctors also wouldn’t have to be in close proximity to a patient, and more importantly, the radiation-generating fluoroscope. In the near future, he envisions endovascular surgeries that incorporate existing magnetic technologies, such as pairs of large magnets, the directions of which doctors can manipulate from just outside the operating room, away from the fluoroscope imaging the patient’s brain, or even in an entirely different location. “Existing platforms could apply magnetic field and do the fluoroscopy procedure at the same time to the patient, and the doctor could be in the other room, or even in a different city, controlling the magnetic field with a joystick,” Kim says. “Our hope is to leverage existing technologies to test our robotic thread in vivo in the next step.” This research was funded, in part, by the Office of Naval Research, the MIT Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies, and the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Last-mile delivery—the process of moving items from warehouses or stores to consumers’ homes—is a challenge for retailers. It’s expensive, error-prone and not responsive enough to effectively accommodate on-demand delivery of items purchased online. To address these problems, online retailers and others are turning to robots.
While some retailers are testing full-sized, self-driving cars, a fresh breed of vehicles is emerging: the delivery robot. New, purpose-built delivery robots are small, relatively lightweight and made to operate at low speeds. They’re designed to make deliveries without drivers, often in places off-limits to cars, such as sidewalks.
Delivery robots have the potential to boost the speed and efficiency of retail deliveries and significantly reduce costs, says Robert Doyle, vice president for the Robotic Industries Association (RIA), a trade association serving the robotics industry.
One estimate, from investment management firm ARK Investment Management LLC, suggests robots could reduce the cost of last-mile delivery to 6 cents per mile compared with about $1.60 per mile for a delivery made by a human. Because they are agile and adaptable, robots could be the best choice for some deliveries, especially in crowded urban areas or on college campuses.
“If you have a lot of these delivery robots rolling around, you can deliver a lot of things faster than with a UPS truck with one person in it,” he says.
Kroger Co. has been among the pioneers in robotic delivery of online orders. Since December, the grocer has used autonomous vehicles developed by Nuro Inc. to deliver ecommerce grocery orders to customers in Scottsdale, Arizona, and it plans to expand the service to two stores in Houston, Texas, later in the year. Nuro’s robots operate on public roads at speeds of less than 25 miles per hour.
Kroger employees load online orders into the compartments of the Nuro robot, which then drives to a customer’s home. When the order arrives, the customer receives a notification from the Kroger mobile app that the self-driving robot is outside. The customer then uses a PIN to open the appropriate compartments and retrieve their order. Kroger charges a $5.95 flat delivery fee with no minimum order.
Nuro also announced plans to launch a pizza-delivery test with Domino’s Pizza Inc. in June. The restaurant will use delivery robots to deliver to select customers who place orders online in Houston, a Domino’s spokeswoman says. If the test proves successful, it plans to add additional locations. Domino’s has not determined how many stores will use Nuro robots. It also has not announced when the testing will start or how it will select customers for robotic delivery, she says.
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