It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Sunday, January 01, 2023
Acupuncture may aid irritable bowel syndrome with diarrhea
by Lori Solomon
Acupuncture is safe and feasible for patients with irritable bowel syndrome with diarrhea (IBS-D), according to a pilot study published online Dec. 29 in JAMA Network Open.
Ling-Yu Qi, from the Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, and colleagues randomly assigned 90 individuals with IBS-D to acupuncture (either specific acupoints [SA] or nonspecific acupoints [NSA]) or a sham acupuncture (NA) group with all groups receiving 12 30-minute sessions over four consecutive weeks.
The researchers observed substantial improvements in the response rate at week 4 for all groups (composite response rates of 46.7 percent in the SA group, 46.7 percent in the NSA group, and 26.7 percent in the NA group). However, the difference between the groups was not statistically significant. Adequate relief at week 4 was achieved by 64.3 percent in the SA group, 62.1 percent in the NSA group, and 55.2 percent in the NA group. Two patients (6.7 percent) in the SA group and three patients (10 percent) in the NSA or NA group reported adverse events.
"These findings suggest that acupuncture is feasible and safe; a larger, sufficiently powered trial is needed to accurately assess efficacy," the authors write.
More information: Ling-Yu Qi et al, Acupuncture for the Treatment of Diarrhea-Predominant Irritable Bowel Syndrome, JAMA Network Open (2022). DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.48817
Measles outbreak in Ohio infects 82 kids, most of them unvaccinated
by Cara Murez
Most of those impacted by the outbreak have been under the age of 5, state officials reported. Since details of the first measles cases were announced last month by Columbus Public Health, 32 children have been hospitalized.
The first four cases were in unvaccinated children with no travel history who were linked to a child care facility in Franklin County, Ohio.
Vaccination data wasn't available for four of the infected children, but all of the others were at least partially unvaccinated, having had no doses or just one dose of the two-shot measles-mumps-rubella vaccine (MMR).
"Measles isn't just a little rash," the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. "Measles can be dangerous, especially for babies and young children."
Columbus Public Health Commissioner Dr. Mysheika Roberts has urged parents to vaccinate their children, CBS News reported.
Public health officials recommend children receive their first MMR dose between 12 and 15 months old, and the second between ages 4 and 6.
About 90% of unvaccinated people exposed to measles will become infected, Columbus health officials warned. About 20% of those wind up hospitalized with the virus.
Measles symptoms include a high fever, cough, runny nose and watery eyes, about a week or two after an exposure, according to the CDC. These symptoms are typically followed by a rash about three to five days later.
The Ohio outbreak comprises most of the 2022 measles cases in the United States, CBS News reported, with numbers now greater than reported cases in 2020 and 2021 combined.
No children have died in this outbreak at this time, CBS News reported.
More information: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on measles.
An mRNA vaccine strategy under study to fight the flu—as a shot and intranasal spray
by Delthia Ricks , Medical Xpress
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain
Messenger RNA vaccine technology, once an arcane area of research, became household terminology because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and now scientists are working on an mRNA flu vaccine strategy that, at least in this study, involves a first dose administered as a shot but a booster administered as an mRNA nasal spray.
The vaccine is known as a self-amplifying mRNA vaccine that targets influenza's viral nucleoprotein. That structure in influenza A viruses is a highly conserved multi-functional protein and is a key target in vaccine and antiviral research because it is less likely to mutate compared with viral surface proteins.
The strategy devised by researchers, primarily at the University of Minnesota who are working with collaborators elsewhere in the United States, was to generate lung-resident memory T cells that are stably maintained in respiratory tissues.
So far, the research is underway in animal models but the hope is to craft a vaccine—and method of vaccine administration—that helps conquer one of humankind's most persistent foes: the flu.
Each year in the United States, an estimated 36,000 deaths and millions of hospitalizations are due to influenza-related illness. Globally, the World Health Organization estimates 250,000 to 500,000 flu deaths annually. And in the case of influenza pandemics, the viral infection causes even more catastrophic damage as was the case in 1918 when an estimated 500 million people, about one-third of the world's population, became infected with the virus and 50 million died.
The goal in the Minnesota-based research was an mRNA flu vaccine strategy that prompts resident memory T cells to fan out in the lungs and to be prepared in the event of infection.
"Respiratory tract resident memory T cells, typically generated by local vaccination or infection, can accelerate control of pulmonary infections that evade neutralizing antibody," writes Dr. Marco Künzli of the Center for Immunology in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Minnesota.
"It is unknown," Künzli added, "whether mRNA vaccination establishes respiratory resident memory T cells."
As the lead author of the study, which was published in Science Immunology, Künzli and a large team of scientists, wanted to know if they could do just that—help establish respiratory resident memory T cells in the lungs of animal models via mRNA vaccine technology.
The strategy they devised for the research—which worked—involved an initial prime and boost with intramuscular vaccination followed by a secondary intranasal booster. This strategy efficiently promoted memory CD4 and CD8 T cells in lung tissue. Beyond the current research, the findings help highlight how mRNA vaccine technology can be adapted to protect the lungs from any respiratory infection, for example, such as RSV—respiratory syncytial virus—or beyond RSV, any other pathogen from a vast swath respiratory infectious agents.
While intramuscular prime and boost immunizations were sufficient to induce respiratory resident memory T cells in the animal models, an additional intranasal boost further expanded both circulating and lung resident memory T cells, the researchers found.
"We generated a self-amplifying mRNA vaccine encoding the influenza A virus nucleoprotein," Künzli continued, noting the nucleoprotein "is encapsulated in modified dendron–based nanoparticles."
"We report how routes of immunization in mice, including contralateral versus ipsilateral intramuscular boosts, or intravenous and intranasal routes, influenced influenza-specific cell-mediated and humoral immunity," Künzli asserted.
Scientists left no stone unturned in their research. After the multi-pronged administration strategy, they checked the respiratory resident memory T cells' functions in the mice through parabiosis, a surgical protocol commonly used in immunological studies involving the respiratory resident memory T cell subpopulation.
Initial analysis demonstrated that respiratory resident memory T cells insinuated themselves in lung tissue becoming long-term residents after the prime-boost intramuscular administration. The intranasal booster, which further increased the number of respiratory resident memory T cells, helped establish memory CD4 and CD8 T cells, circulating and residing in the lungs.
The new research, which shows potential for new ways to administer an mRNA to achieve an immunological goal, arrives following the success of mRNA vaccines against SARS-CoV-2.
Scientists are also moving ahead with research on mRNA vaccines for a large number of diverse medical disorders, including various forms of cancer, rare diseases, and yes, numerous infectious diseases. The new influenza research underscores that mRNA technology is not only robust but capable of being explored as a highly tailored weapon against the flu.
"The prospects are exciting for combating emerging pathogens, antigenically variable pathogens that might be addressed by megavalent vaccination, and perhaps non-infection conditions such as personalized tumor vaccines," Künzli noted.
More information: Marco Künzli et al, Route of self-amplifying mRNA vaccination modulates the establishment of pulmonary resident memory CD8 and CD4 T cells, Science Immunology (2022). DOI: 10.1126/sciimmunol.add3075
Venus may have Earth-like lithospheric thickness and heat flow
by Christopher Packham , Phys.org
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain
Poor old Venera 9, the Soviet Union's Venus lander, separated from its orbiter and made a hot, violent descent through the dense Venusian atmosphere on October 22, 1975, landing hard on a circular shield designed to crumple and absorb the impact. It only survived the intense surface conditions for 53 minutes, transmitting data regarding clouds, light irradiance, temperature and atmospheric chemistry, as well as the first image ever taken of the surface of another planet. And then it died. But its findings were significant because Venus and Earth are similar terrestrial planets believed to have formed through similar processes.
It's fair to say that while Earth and Venus are siblings, with comparable size and composition, they are vastly different in character, the Dennis and Randy Quaid of the inner solar system. (Venus is not Dennis in this analogy.) Earth harbors conditions amenable to life; by contrast, describing Venus as inhospitable is a hilarious understatement.
Venus's atmosphere, the densest and hottest of the four terrestrial planets, consists primarily of carbon dioxide with pressure at the surface about 92 times the sea level atmospheric pressure on Earth. The mean planetary temperature hovers around 464 degrees Celsius (867 degrees Fahrenheit). Pretty bad! And while it does not have a moon, even if it did, the dense clouds of sulfuric acid that shroud the entire planet would obstruct any idyllic nighttime views.
Another trait Venus shares with Earth, however, is that it sheds interior heat into space. Geologists know that plate tectonics drive interior heat loss on Earth, radiating heat at the sites where plates pull apart, but little is known about the interior dynamics of Venus.
Now, researchers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, have conducted an analysis of data gathered by the Magellan spacecraft in the 1990s to calculate the thickness of the crust on Venus. Their results indicate that despite their vastly different personalities, Earth and Venus have comparable heat flow and similar lithospheric thickness; this places constraints on Venus' evolution and interior dynamics. The results are published in Nature Geoscience.
Earth has mobile tectonic plates that slide around, crash into each other and separate, facilitating efficient heat loss. Previous models suggested that Venus had either a "stagnant lid" lithospheric situation—basically an immobile, cold lithosphere covering the entire planet—or an "episodic lid," in which an unstable stagnant lid occasionally bursts into tectonic activity. But more recent models and data analysis don't support these proposals. Instead, the JPL researchers suggest a "squishy-lid" model with active lithospheric flexure.
The researchers computed the thickness of the lithosphere by measuring the flex within surface formations called coronae, quasi-circular features formed through geologic and volcanic activity. Using Magellan altimetry data, they determined the average thickness of the lithosphere from 75 locations within 65 coronae: 11±7 kilometers; from this figure, they calculate an average heat flow from Venus higher than Earth's average, but similar to the values measured at actively extending tectonic areas.
The authors write, "Our analysis identifies likely areas of active extension and suggests that Venus has Earth-like lithospheric thickness and global heat flow ranges. Together with the planet's geologic history, our findings support a squishy-lid convective regime that relies on plumes, intrusive magmatism and delamination to increase heat flow."
This is interesting because plume-induced subduction is believed by many researchers to be the origin of Earth's plate tectonics, and Venus could thus be analogous to Earth during the Archaean Eon 4 to 2.5 billion years ago. During the Archaeon, Earth's heat flow was about three times as high as today, and though covered by water, the planet was much hotter.
Overall, the authors present the squishy-lid model as a good fit with other observations, featuring limited surface mobility, intrusive magmatism, lithospheric delamination (in which a material fractures into layers) and formation of the coronae via uplifting and downwelling. And it comprises another mode of planetary geodynamics that differs interestingly from Earth's.
Another application of these findings: The determination of exoplanetary habitability would rely on information about heat flow on worlds orbiting other stars. But closer to home, if the group's "squishy lid" proposal can be confirmed by any of this decade's upcoming Venus observation missions, it will likely lead to a reappraisal of ideas surrounding Venus surface features as well as the evolution of the planet's mantle, and could even have implications for the early formation of the solar system.
More information: Suzanne E. Smrekar et al, Earth-like lithospheric thickness and heat flow on Venus consistent with active rifting, Nature Geoscience (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41561-022-01068-0
Open banking is coming to New Zealand—here's what they can learn from countries already doing it
by Abhishek Mukherjee, Paresha Sinha and Paul David Richard Griffiths, The Conversation
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain
Traditional banks in New Zealand have long served as gatekeepers of customers' data. This is about to change with the arrival of what's called "open banking," set to arrive in New Zealand by 2024.
In essence,open bankingis where a traditional bank makes client andtransaction dataavailable to another financial service provider. This provider then uses the information to find the best deal for customers.
As the country prepares for this new way to do banking, we can learn a great deal from the experiences of Europe and the United Kingdom—particularly in relation to concerns over governance and the security of data.
The benefits of open banking
Open banking is gaining global recognition as it helps integrate new financial service providers into the financial ecosystem, making it more sustainable, efficient, agile and innovative.
For someone with several accounts across different banks, open banking will allow them to check all their transactions in a single interface through account aggregator applications. The customer will then be able quickly move funds between their accounts.
With the help of artificial intelligence, the same application can help customers organize their finances by suggesting financial products with better rates and conditions.
As far as small- and medium-sized entrepreneurs are concerned, open banking enables them to control their cash flow better, reconcile payments and manage inventories. Open banking also allows business owners to integrate their financial information with their accounting service provider.
Learning from the European experience
But as we embark on this brave new world, what can we learn from the experiences of those countries that have already introduced open banking? Helpfully, there are two recent reports from the UK and Europe that illustrate some of the benefits and pitfalls of the process.
Open banking emerged in July 2013 as part of the European Commission's revised Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2) proposal. Open banking is now a global initiative where the UK and continental Europe are seen as global leaders. In Europe alone, there are at least 410 third-party providers.
In May 2022, the UK's Competition and Markets Authority published the results of an investigation into their open banking experience.
The authority's investigation raised concerns over corporate governance failures, the late delivery of accounts, management of conflicts, procurement, value for money, and it identified the need for human resource improvements.
The issues mainly related to governance failures at the Open Banking Implementation Entity (OBIE).
The OBIE was charged with overseeing the implementation and the performance of open banking by the nine largest banks in the UK. This governance structure led to too much power being vested in a single trustee, with insufficient checks and balances on their decisions. In addition, there were failings in the risk management system and internal controls.
The UK government has recognized the problem and is in the process of reinforcing OBIE's governance structure.
Recently, the European Commission held public consultation on its 2013 directive and the commission's work on open banking. Most of the respondents were concerned about sharing financial data due to a lack of trust—stemming from concerns over privacy, data protection and digital security. There was a general sense of not being able to control how their data was used.
Some 84% of people responding to the public consultation believed there were security and privacy risks in giving service providers access to their data.
Moreover, 57% of respondents believed financial service providers that hold their data only sometimes ask for consent before sharing that data with other financial or third-party service providers.
The need for clear regulation
The European and UK experience highlights the issues related to the implementation of open banking and public perception. The New Zealand government should carefully consider the governance and data security issues raised by the two reports.
It is crucial to develop an effective board oversight and risk management strategy. A consent management tool should be introduced to build trust and transparency. There should also be a high-level system in which all data holders and users are adequately monitored and supervised.
Implementing open banking in New Zealand should result in a shift of power from traditional banks towards a vigorous financial technology sector. It should also create opportunity for traditional banks to innovate and become much more responsive to customer needs.
If we get it right, open banking will ultimately mean New Zealanders are better served by their financial system.
Demand for hydrogen in the United States is projected to increase severalfold by 2050 as its production becomes more cost competitive. Although hydrogen is one of the most abundant elements on Earth, molecular hydrogen is not naturally found in nature and needs to be produced from a feedstock such as water, biomass, or fossil fuels, and all these processes require energy input.
The ability to analyze economic performance of the various hydrogen production pathways is critical as industries seek to transition to renewable energy. This ability—techno-economic analysis—estimates capital costs, operating costs, and revenue based on technical and financial variables. Results help identify barriers to the success of the technologies, primary cost drivers, and remaining research and development challenges.
The new Hydrogen Analysis Lite Production (H2A-Lite) model provides a high-level techno-economic view of select hydrogen production technologies. Created by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), the model is part of a suite of hydrogen analysis tools that are actively being developed.
"The H2A model is rigorous, with process information about each of the production technologies that helps you actually calculate nuanced production scenarios," said Michael (Misho) Penev, senior analyst for infrastructure and energy storage analysis at NREL, currently on detail to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). "In the Lite model, we are focusing on making that framework more accessible to a wider set of audiences."
Current hydrogen production pathways include thermochemical, electrolytic, direct solar water splitting, and biological processes. These technologies are in various stages of maturity, and research efforts are underway to reduce costs and minimize environmental impacts from many of these production pathways.
Credit: National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Simplifying hydrogen production analysis
H2A-Lite was developed as an extension of the Hydrogen Analysis (H2A) production models and case studies. The H2A production model is the official DOE tool for performing in-depth techno-economic analysis of hydrogen production pathways and is used for publishing official DOE case studies in which NREL is a key collaborator.
Unlike H2A, however, H2A-Lite offers a high-level techno-economic analysis with only a minimal number of inputs. This might look like entering only a hydrogen production technology of choice and adapting technology default values to specific scales or regional energy prices. H2A-Lite takes these minimal inputs to produce estimates about scale, capital, and operations, as well as greenhouse gas and criteria pollutant emissions characteristics. Price projections for energy and feedstock are based on current data published in the latest Annual Energy Outlook from the Energy Information Administration.
H2A-Lite's built-in assumptions about comprehensive aspects of hydrogen production technologies can be fully customized. The first section of the model enables selection of production and supply chain technologies and manipulation of key cost and performance parameters to examine projected costs and emissions impact. Another section allows users to provide annual data points for hydrogen feedstock cost, use, and equipment utilization. The last section provides a summary of the annual projected income statements, cash flow statements, and balance sheets of the selected hydrogen production technology.
Both H2A-Lite and H2FAST are based on prior NREL models that have been used by thousands of stakeholders around the world. Taken together, NREL's tools can support a broad range of techno-economic analysis capabilities related to hydrogen production systems and the integration of renewable energy sources. From evaluating the environmental impacts of land and water usage for hydrogen production to the impacts of building a hydrogen plant, NREL's tools can provide high-level material performance guidance and identify research gaps that will help solve some of the key challenges of the transition to renewable energy.
A pair of researchers at Lawrence Berkely National Laboratory used a commonly known, naturally occurring phenomenon to build a new kind of environmentally safe refrigerator.
In their paper published in the journal Science, Drew Lilley and Ravi Prasher describe how expanding on the idea of using salt to melt road ice to design and build a new kind of refrigerator. Emmanuel Defay, with the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology, has published a Perspective piece in the same journal issue outlining the work done by the pair in California.
For many years, people around the world have used salt to melt road ice to make travel easier. Though technically, the salt does not melt the ice, its dark color attracts heat, allowing the ice below it to melt, which than allows the salt to mix with the water. And it does not refreeze because the salt dramatically lowers the freezing point of the water.
It was on this part of the process that the researchers focused. They noted that a similar process could result in cooling a material simply by mixing it with sodium iodide (NaI) salt due to the phase transition. The second material in this case was an ethylene carbonate (EC) solvent. They further noted that repeatedly cooling a material should also cool the environment in which it is contained. And to make that happen, all they had to do was remove the salt, and then add it again.
The researchers call their process "ionocaloric" refrigeration, and built such a refrigerator to prove that it was viable. They started with a box and then added a mixing device to mix their two ingredients and another device that performed electrodialysis to remove the salt. Then tested the resulting device to determine if it would keep the temperature inside the box at a steady cool temperature, and if so, if it was more or less efficient than other refrigeration devices.
Their testing showed that their refrigerator was able to maintain a cool temperature and that it was approximately as efficient as refrigerators now on the market. The big advantage of the approach is that it does not emit any hydrofluorocarbons or other pollutants. They acknowledge that it does have one drawback—it takes quite a while for the mixed solution to cool.
More information: Drew Lilley et al, Ionocaloric refrigeration cycle, Science (2022). DOI: 10.1126/science.ade1696
Every cloud has a silver lining. So whether or not the sun sets on cryptocurrencies, its underlying technology, blockchain, has a bright future beyond just coins.
Sam Bankman-Fried was the darling of the cryptocurrency world, then he became its black sheep. In November of this year, the cryptocurrency company he founded, Futures Exchange (known widely as FTX), collapsed in a spectacular way.
The exchange, a digital platform where users can buy and sell cryptocurrencies, filed for bankruptcy after allegedly mishandling customer funds. Bankman-Fried had previously been well-liked by investors and media, which applauded his generous donations to charity and for calling out unethical practices in the industry. The bankruptcy destroyed that image. The collapse also came on the heels of a massive crash of cryptocurrency prices, and the failure of several big players in the industry.
Behind this crash and claims of fraud, companies remain surprisingly optimistic about the potential of blockchain.
One of those is Motoblockchain, a small start-up from Malaga, Spain. They created a system where all the relevant information about a motorcycle (its parts, usage and repairs) can be stored on a blockchain. Everyone, from mechanics to riders wanting to buy a second-hand bike, can access the records in this system to verify the origin and history of a motorcycle.
'Having a trustworthy way to show the provenance of a product, or its parts, is really important in a lot of industries,' said João Fernandes, analyst at the Portuguese investment fund Bright Pixel Capital, which supported Motoblockchain through the EU-funded project BlockStart. 'It's also something blockchain excels at. It gives an extra layer of credibility to information in an ecosystem.'
This trust is one of the many advantages that blockchain technology might offer the European economy. It is keeping start-ups like Motoblockchain hopeful about blockchain despite the spectacular boom and bust cycles of crypto. Stimulating their growth, and convincing European companies to use the technology, might be crucial for the long-term success of blockchain.
'The impact of blockchain will only be fully fulfilled if we convince SMEs to use it,' said Fernandes. 'Over 90% of the economy is composed of these businesses. And plenty of those companies can really benefit from using blockchain-based technologies.'
No intermediary
Blockchain allows cryptocurrencies to digitally register transactions without one party controlling the currency. In contrast to regular databases, which are generally controlled by one party, it's decentralised.
What's most important is that blockchain technology (distributed ledgers) can be used to record anything of value without an intermediary—not only financial transactions.
This is a concept with applications far beyond cryptocurrency. For example, it is useful to track the history of a motorcycle, as Motoblockchain does. The motorcycle might pass through dozens of inspections, visits to the mechanic and sales throughout its lifetime. A range of actors, such as users, motorcycle companies and repair shops, need to pass along this information. Which is hard using centralised systems. A motorcycle company might not want to use a centralised tracking system owned by one of its competing motorcycle manufacturers. A decentralised, neutral blockchain offers an alternative here.
'Blockchain shines when there are multiple different stakeholders that need to access the same system and share information in a decentralised way,' said Robert Richter who coordinated the EU-funded Blockpool project at the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management. 'It creates a system where you don't need an intermediary.'
In this way blockchain might underlie some of the software regular people rely on in the future, without knowing it.
'Look at the internet,' said Richter. 'Today everyone uses it without understanding how it works. But in the past, it was something new that had to be developed. The same thing is happening now with blockchain.'
For that to happen, start-ups will need to develop blockchain applications that make the complex technology accessible for regular companies, like SMEs. A problem that BlockStart and Blockpool worked on for several years. Both projects set up programmes that selected interesting blockchain start-ups, gave them funding and mentoring, and linked them to possible clients. On top of that, they educated existing companies about the potential of blockchain.
'We found that one of the key hindering effects to the success of blockchain is that business executives don't have enough knowledge about the potential of the technology,' said Richter. 'Which is why educating SMEs, and other companies, is so important.'
BlockStart supported 60 start-ups, linked them up with 67 SMEs, and also gave €20 000 to the start-up finalists. Blockpool did something similar, 25 start-ups went through their programme, during which they each received up to €30 000 in equity-free investment.
One of the SME's that participated in BlockStart is AlBicchiere, an Italian company that offers a "Nespresso for wine" device to customers. The company wanted to be able to chart the journey of their wine, from the grape grower to the customer, and a blockchain system was built by Datarella, one of BlockStart's start-ups, for this purpose.
Crypto winter
Surviving crypto winter won't be easy. Most of these start-ups now need to deal with a technology market that is in upheaval. Even regular technology companies are in trouble, with large players such as Meta, Amazon and Spotify announcing mass layoffs. This might put a damper on the growth of the start-ups supported by BlockStart and Blockpool.
'The current crypto winter will, I believe, delay the implementation of blockchain,' said Fernandes. 'Some projects will have a tougher time raising investment, and finding customers.'
But for the wider blockchain and cryptocurrency space, this crash might be a blessing in disguise, according to Richter and Fernandes. For instance, it could weed out the weaker companies, in favour of the ones with the biggest potential.
'There are some blockchain projects and cryptocurrencies out there that don't really serve a purpose,' said Richter. 'That's always the first question I ask: does it have a use-case?'
Fernandes agrees. 'The blockchain space was too crowded before. Now, only the best projects will survive. The survivors of this winter will be the first movers of the future. In five to 10 years they will become the winners.'
Research in this article was funded by the EU. This article was originally published in Horizon, the EU Research and Innovation Magazine.
Why is a Swedish billionaire buying up California's video gaming empire?
by Jaweed Kaleem, Los Angeles Times
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain
Like so many on-screen action heroes, she was elbowed aside when newer stars appeared and started grabbing more viewers with bigger weapons, better special effects and more elaborate adventures.
That's when Lars Wingefors spied an opportunity and swooped in.
Earlier this year, the little-known Swedish billionaire bought the rights to British archaeologist Lara Croft and the vehicle that turned her into a household name. After debuting 26 years ago, "Tomb Raider" went on to become one of the best-selling video game franchises of all time, spawning lucrative spinoffs and movies starring Angelina Jolie and Alicia Vikander, before faltering as bigger games and mobile apps appeared and gaming moved away from its core teenage male audience to young girls, college students and families.
Wingefors' company, Embracer, purchased "Tomb Raider" from San Mateo, California-based Crystal Dynamics, along with the rights to dozens of other game titles and development studios belonging to its parent company in May for $300 million—spare change in the $220-billion worldwide gaming industry. The goal? To buy relatively cheap, remake, relaunch and profit big.
In a matter of years, Embracer has snapped up hundreds of game companies, publishers and intellectual property rights from Los Angeles to Mumbai, allowing Wingefors, its co-founder and chief executive, to quietly build Europe's biggest gaming group. Today, Embracer is a $5.7-billion publicly traded company headquartered here in Karlstad, Sweden—Wingefors' sleepy hometown of 65,000 people, about 160 miles west of Stockholm—and owns more video game studios than any other corporation in the world.
A growing number of them are in California, where modern gaming was born in the Bay Area with Atari and "Pong" in the 1970s before Japan took over the gaming console world with Nintendo, Sega and PlayStation. In the last two decades, the power centers of gaming have become more international, and some of the biggest game makers are once again on the U.S. West Coast.
They include Xbox maker Microsoft in Redmond, Wash., and Activision Blizzard, the creators of the current bestselling game series "Call of Duty," in Santa Monica. In February, Super Nintendo World, an immersive theme park based on the Mario Bros. franchise, will open at Universal Studios Hollywood.
For Wingefors and the programmers across the world who dream of having the next hit game, the Golden State is a prime destination.
"A lot of what is happening in the world originates in California. Gaming is not an exception to this," says Wingefors, 45. "We're in this space now that we call transmedia—games that are relevant to Hollywood, movies that can become games. That's where we want to be and how important this state is.
"We want a lot of games and to make them the best," Wingefors adds. "So we make acquisitions."
He buys games that are either little-known or past their prime but have dedicated followings, such as "Tomb Raider," "Legacy of Kain," "Duke Nukem" and a handful of "SpongeBob SquarePants" titles, which haven't seen new releases for years. This month, Amazon Games announced a deal to publish the next "Tomb Raider."
Embracer-owned studios are also upgrading properties such as "Goat Simulator," a PC and console game whose concept is exactly as it sounds—simulating the life of a goat, albeit one in the city with the task of creating as much havoc and destruction as possible.
In the last year, Wingefors has set his sights beyond games, purchasing the rights to the "Lord of the Rings" franchise from the Bay Area group that manages derivatives of J.R.R. Tolkien's literary works, acquiring a French company that's among the world's largest board and card game makers and buying the Oregon-based publisher of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "Hellboy" and "Sin City" comics.
"They're no Microsoft or Sony. But it seems like they are just trying to get their hands on everything," says John Hardie, a longtime game collector and co-founder of the National Videogame Museum in Frisco, Texas.
Or as the tech-oriented website the Verge put it: "Embracer Group, the company forging one IP portfolio to rule them all."
The strategy has sparked both criticism and confusion in the gaming world. Some gamers accuse Embracer of sacrificing artistry, while others find the company's approach scattershot and incoherent.
"If you look at them from afar, you might wonder what the company is doing," said Simon Rojder, a programmer who is the founder of Mirage, a game studio in Karlstad that Embracer absorbed in 2016. "What he [Wingefors] does is find people who know what they are doing and then leaves them alone.
"This company is called the big dragon monster of gaming because they soak up everything. But they give you space to do your work. We feel quite independent, even if on paper we are not."
Today, Embracer oversees 237 games being developed across 132 studios on every continent except Africa and Antarctica. More than 15,000 employees work for Embracer or a company under its umbrella.
In California, Embracer has a foothold in San Francisco, where it owns a studio that developed the free game "Star Trek Online." Irvine is home to a recently acquired karaoke company, Singtrix, while SpringboardVR, a company focused on arcade development, is in Los Angeles. In Agoura Hills, Embracer runs global marketing for Vertigo Games, a Dutch games studio and virtual reality group. It also has a distribution contract with Exploding Kittens, an L.A. game studio named after the card game, which shot up in popularity after launching on Kickstarter seven years ago.
Embracer's rapid expansion comes as tech, gaming and moviemaking collide in a content race to grab the attention and dollars of any consumer they can. Fueled in part by a boom during pandemic-era lockdowns, the gaming industry's price tag now rivals those of Hollywood and music.
"People used to treat gaming as something teen boys did alone in their rooms and nobody else really cared about, and that was accurate for a very long time," Hardie says. "But the reality today is nowhere close to that, so every company out there is trying to get a piece of the action."
Until Embracer's sudden rise, Europe played only a bit role in the global world of gaming, which routinely pits American game-makers against those in Asia—namely China and Japan, home to Tencent and Sony, respectively. Wingefors is scrambling to carve out room for Sweden, a nation of only 10.5 million people that nonetheless has produced hit games and gaming personalities. If you've heard of "Minecraft" or "Candy Crush Saga," you've encountered games created by Swedes.
"Hopefully, one day, this city of Karlstad can be kind of a gaming city," says Wingefors, who, with his crisp suits, slicked-back brown hair and penchant for talking about synergies, intellectual property and return on investment, sounds more like a financier than a gamer.
That's because that's what he is.
Raised by divorced parents outside this woodsy city, which is home to several major paper companies, he hawked mail-order comics as a teenager to make spending money. He built up a collection of 50,000 comics before selling them in order to start flipping used video games, mainly old Nintendo cartridges, and dropped out of high school to run a business that he called Nordic Games. It was a seven-shop retail chain in Sweden in the late 1990s, which he sold for more than $7 million.
In the early 2000s, he launched Game Outlet Europe, which bought excess gaming cartridges and CDs and resold them internationally, and financed the development of "We Sing," a karaoke game for Nintendo Wii. It was a hit, topping Christmas gaming charts in 2009. Within years, Wingefors was investing in international gaming studios, hoping to repeat the win with other games through a company that became Embracer.
For Wingefors, who owns a 21% stake in Embracer, it's business, rather than a passion for games, that drives him.
"I grew up playing Commodore 64. I liked games like any other young person growing up in Sweden. But for me it's been more about the people, the industry, the business that gets me excited," he said.
The thirst for a good deal and profits has brought controversy.
Over the summer, Embracer accepted a $1-billion investment from the Saudi Arabian government, a move that critics decried because of the oil-rich kingdom's dismal record on human rights and free speech. Asked about the 8.1% stake of Embracer that the Arab nation owns through its investment arm, Wingefors said only that he understood there were "different views" on the matter and that his corporation would strive for "inclusion, humanity, freedom and openness."
In another move that has puzzled observers, Wingefors has hired a team to collect every video game ever made for every platform throughout history. The Embracer Games Archive, announced in May, houses 60,000 games in a 16,000-square-foot industrial warehouse on the outskirts of Karlstad. So far, it has spent $2 million amassing its collection.
Four archivists unload pallets of plastic-sealed games purchased in bulk from auctions and log them into a growing database. David Bostrom, a Swedish YouTuber famed for streaming videos of himself playing from his retro game room in the city of Orebro, runs the operation.
On any given day, his team could be unpacking the Japanese-language catalog for the Famicom—the precursor to the Nintendo system that has made Mario and Luigi as famous as Mickey Mouse for generations since the 1980s—or dusting off old copies of "Final Fantasy," the 3D role-playing game that sold millions of CDs in the 1990s for PlayStation systems.
"We are trying to create a kind of history or heritage museum," says Bostrom. "Embracer has so many games and studios but far from everything out there, so we want to give a picture of the complete story of gaming."
Archives and museums are usually open to researchers or the public. For now, Embracer's is private.
Some have criticized the effort as simply another way for Embracer to collect intellectual property. If he can't outright own the rights to games, critics say, Wingefors can at least own the last remaining copies of them.
Not surprisingly, Wingefors sees it differently.
"Legacy is part of the DNA of gaming companies, of gaming altogether, because this industry is about stories," he says. "So whether we are bringing a title back to the market or growing an archive, it is our duty to be part of that legacy."
