Swiss Firm Firmenich Creates 1st Ever Flavor by Artificial Intelligence

Firmenich, the world's largest privately owned perfume and taste company, is proud to announce it has created the first ever flavor by Artificial Intelligence (AI), a delicious lightly grilled beef taste for use in plant-based meat alternatives. A key milestone in Firmenich's digital transformation across its value chain, this breakthrough provides customers with uniquely tailored taste and nutrition solutions, with unprecedented speed-to-market. Leading the industry in augmented creativity, the Group is currently in advanced testing on several new AI-generated Flavors across its core tonalities.

"Firmenich is marrying the most fundamental elements of our DNA: ground-breaking innovation with the unique creativity of our Flavorists for enhanced formulation," said Firmenich's Chief Digital and Information Officer, Eric Saracchi. "AI enables us to explore new boundaries by empowering our Creators with a precise formula starting point, as well as additional suggestions for optimized ingredient combinations from which they can create bespoke tastes."

Firmenich Flavors President Emmanuel Butstraen added: "The Covid-19 crisis has changed the food innovation landscape as well as the consumer marketplace. We must understand and respond to these rapidly-evolving needs with more creativity at an even faster pace. Whether through offering moments of comfort and delight or addressing the larger shift towards healthier food & beverages." Butstraen continued, "The exciting addition of AI allows us to better leverage different raw materials and explore new creative leads. Taking into account specific product parameters such as 100% natural ingredients and regulatory requirements, the technology enhances our flavorists' capability to create superior taste solutions and accelerate our product development."

The world's first AI flavor was created in collaboration with Microsoft®, leveraging the entirety of Firmenich's broad raw material database. The resulting grilled beef flavor capitalizes on Firmenich's unique palette of ingredients and SmartProteins™ expertise in plant-based protein alternatives.

Firmenich is the world's largest privately-owned perfume and taste company, founded in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1895 and has been family-owned for 125 years. Firmenich is a leading business-to-business company operating primarily in the fragrance and taste market, specialized in the research, creation, manufacture and sale of perfumes, flavors and ingredients. Renowned for its world-class research and creativity, as well as its leadership in sustainability, Firmenich offers its customers superior innovation in formulation, a broad and high-quality palette of ingredients, and proprietary technologies including biotechnology, encapsulation, olfactory science and taste modulation. Firmenich had an annual turnover of 3.9 billion Swiss Francs at end June 2020. More information about Firmenich is available at www.firmenich.com

SOURCE Firmenich

Particle Physics Lab CERN to Build Massive 100 Km Super-Collider worth €21 Billion

CERN, a European research organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world, has decided to build a 100-kilometre circular super-collider to uncover the Higgs boson’s secrets.

On on 19 June, the CERN Council unanimously endorsed and approved an update to the European Strategy for Particle Physics that recommends further work on a huge 100 km collider - dubbed the Future Circular Collider (FCC), which would be built in an underground tunnel near CERN’s location in Geneva, Switzerland. It is to be noted however that the approval is not yet a final go-ahead.t2

A schematic map showing where the Future Circular Collider tunnel is proposed to be located (Image: CERN)

In particle physics, colliders are used as a research tool, as they accelerate particles to very high speed (kinetic energies) and let them collide with other particles. with this, physicistsacross the globe hope that it will help answer some of the fundamental open questions in physics, which concern the basic laws governing the interactions and forces among the elementary objects, the deep structure of space and time, and in particular the interrelation between quantum mechanics and general relativity.

The new collider, FCC, is expected to cost at least €21 billion (US$23.4 billion) and would be a follow-up to the lab’s much famous Large Hadron Collider, which is the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator, first started up in September 2008.

The goal of the FCC is to greatly push the energy and intensity frontiers of particle colliders, with the aim of reaching collision energies of 100 TeV, in the search for new physics.

The FCC Study, hosted by CERN, is an international collaboration of more than 150 universities, research institutes and industrial partners from all over the world.

The new machine would collide electrons with their antimatter partners, positrons, by the middle of the century. The design will enable physicists to study the properties of the Higgs boson and, later, to host an even more powerful machine that will collide protons and last well into the second half of the century.

As per the European Strategy for Particle Physics Update, the approved document strategize the FCC into two stages of development --

1) CERN would build an electron-positron collider with collision energies tuned to maximize the production of Higgs bosons and understand their properties in detail.

2) Later in the century, the first machine would be dismantled and replaced by a proton-proton smasher. That would reach collision energies of 100 teraelectronvolts (TeV), compared with the 16 TeV of the LHC, which also collides protons and is currently the most powerful accelerator in the world.

The goal would be to search for new particles or forces of nature and to extend or replace the current standard model of particle physics. Much of the technology that the final machine will require has yet to be developed, and will be the subject of intensive study in coming decades.

Via ~ Nature.com

Swiss-based Cryptocurrency Platform MoonX to Launch India Operations Next Month

Geneva, Switzerland-based MoonX, a decentralized ownership crypto exchange, is all set to launch decentralised non-profit trading platform for cryptocurrencies in India, by the end of November this year.

MoonX platform allows members to collectively participate and contribute and in turn rewarded with Moon Money, equivalent to shares and voting rights within the company. One can be a part of MoonX family by just trading on the platform once.

MoonX claims to be a true socially scalable product that benefits the entire crypto market due to the fact that unlike traditional for-profit, centralised crypto exchanges that make money from the end users, Moonx platform is instead a decentralized and "Not-for-Profit" cryptocurrency exchange with zero commission fees for users and its community members.

Besides setting up its development centres in Bengaluru, London and Beijing, MoonX is also planning to start office in Kerala, which has lot of NRIs working in West Asia who the startup quantify to be interested in becoming members of the platform.

Founded in 2017, by Dr. Nithin Palavalli and Tony Lee, MoonX MoonX has raised $29 million funding for its operations. Its investors include BCH Angel Fund, IDG, BITMAIN, and Fission Capital. Other investors include NGC (Neo Global Capital), Node Capital, DHVC, Pre Angel, Linear VC, Du Capital, and 20 more.

According to Nithin Palavalli, founding CEO of MoonX, the exchange will charge one of the lowest brokerages and offers nanosecond response time of 10 million transactions a second, which is better than most other exchanges in operation.

In its future plan, MoonX family is up to build a highly secure, useful, and easy-to-use product based on private blockchain and will include easy cryptocurrency payments integration and even a digital arbitration system.

To recall, an another cryptocurrency-based startup Pundi X, which is based out of Indonesia, is also preparing to launch point-of-sale network in India so that people in the country can buy and invest in cryptocurrencies not just only online but offline as well.

Source - Economic Times, PR Newswire

IntelleGrow Launches India’s First SME Debt Pool Program in Collaboration with Symbiotics, Geneva

IntelleGrow, a leading venture debt financing arm of Intellecap Group, launches India’s first SME Debt Pool Program in collaboration with Geneva-based leading global investment company Symbiotics to bring international financing to small corporates and medium enterprises (SME) in the country through innovative financing structure. This collaboration is aimed at supporting social enterprises in India which find it difficult to raise sufficient debt facilities to meet their funding needs. Under this arrangement, the first structured finance transaction has been closed with financing of a pool of seven SMEs amounting to approximately INR 320 million (USD 5.3 million). This launch is a part of IntelleGrow’s thrust in fostering innovative financing to SMEs in collaboration with international partners like Symbiotics. It also adds to Symbiotics’ growing expertise in the area of emerging market impact bonds.

The transaction saw multiple Indian SMEs from diverse impact sectors grouped together to raise funds on European capital markets via a single bond securitization issuance. IntelleGrow acted as the sole India-based origination partner which facilitated assessment, underwriting and monitoring of the pool drawn from its portfolio of enterprises to whom it has lent earlier. SMEs have received INR 320 million debt financing with fixed interest payments without any forex risk. This innovative instrument is very useful for capital starved Impact SMEs often known as “missing middle” as they are largely under-banked. This funding is especially helpful in funding both the working capital needs and also the capacities of growing SMEs. This pool includes a Milk processing company which has a presence in more than 1,000 villages in North India and aims to increase its milk procurement capacity from more and more farmers. It also included an SME engaged in collection of waste paper in an organised manner and facilitating its recycling. Another engaged SME is enhancing access of oncology curatives while yet another SME in this pool is developing warehousing infrastructure for agri-produce. These diverse enterprises are enhancing livelihood opportunities besides contributing to social development.

Speaking on this association, Nitin Agrawal, Deputy CEO of IntelleGrow said, “We are keen to grow this collaboration with Symbiotics and help in facilitating more such SMEs from our portfolio with innovative structured financing options meant to bring patient debt funding to Indian SMEs.”

This pool program enables impact investors to invest in a group of impact-driven Indian SMEs, which don’t have to pledge hard collaterals as security unlike existing market accesses. This comes in the backdrop of thrust from Make in India campaign besides the Start-up India and Stand-up India also creating an ecosystem projected to further improve the GDP contribution and employment generation by early-stage enterprises and start-ups in India. IntelleGrow and Symbiotics are planning to put forward similar structures in the near future.

Image Source: ShutterStock