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There Is a Lot of Fungus Amongst Us

There Is a Lot of Fungus Among Us

In a state-of-the-art laboratory in an industrial district on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, employees in protective suits move around two transparent boxes, taking care not to damage the tubes and sensors that keep the temperature and humidity constant. There are mushrooms in the boxes.

But not just any mushrooms. These are psychedelic – “magic” – mushrooms that start-up Numinus Wellness believes could one day be used to treat mental illnesses such as depression, substance abuse and anxiety.

Welcome to the shroom boom. While Numinus uses mushrooms to perform mind-altering therapies, other mushroom growers promise other benefits, like boosting the immune system or reducing inflammation. Mushrooms are appearing in all types of wellness products, pushing them mainstream, and making mushrooms a major force in the thriving multi-billion dollar wellness market.

It’s hard to throw a stone and not hit a mushroom these days.

With the Chaga mushroom, a best-selling coffee from Four Sigmatic is produced on Amazon, which promises immune support and stress relief. Mushroom supplements that claim to support the immune system, reduce inflammation, and improve mood can be found in health and wellness stores, but also at large retailers like Nordstrom and Urban Outfitters. Om Hot Chocolate says it will help you focus and reduce stress. For $ 96, beauty brand Mara sells a vitamin C serum that contains reishi mushrooms, which are said to reduce inflammation.

“As a food, mushrooms have a lot going for them in terms of their nutritional value,” said Joshua Lambert, co-director of the Center for Plant and Mushroom Food for Health at Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences. “But one of the things we’re investigating is the other compounds that fungi and other plants have that can have significant health benefits.”

The newest frontier for mushrooms might be the most interesting – and the most complicated. Last November, Oregon became the first state to legalize psilocybin, the main ingredient in “magic” mushrooms, for the treatment of certain mental illnesses in monitored settings. In March, New York mayoral candidate Andrew Yang said New York State should legalize psychedelic mushrooms, a stance he took as a Democratic presidential candidate in 2019.

Regulators in the US and Canada are taking small steps to allow the limited use of psychedelic mushrooms, which cause visual and auditory hallucinations a few hours after ingestion, to treat certain mental illnesses. Popular in the 1960s as part of the counterculture, magic mushrooms were made illegal in the US in the 1970s.

Investors take note. Atai Life Sciences, a German company developing psychedelic and non-psychedelic compounds for various mental illnesses, is backed by billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel and others. Plans were filed last week to raise $ 100 million for a public offering. Another psychedelic company, MindMed, has funding from Kevin O’Leary of Shark Tank.

Last year, more than 20 psychedelics-focused companies went public, and a dozen other existing public companies moved into the room, according to analysts at Vancouver-based investment bank Canaccord Genuity.

“There are currently 100 to 150 clinical trials in progress of psychedelic agents for the treatment of mental and behavioral disorders,” Canaccord Genuity analysts wrote in a March report, adding, “The industry has come a long way in the last year, but there is one . ” There is still a long way to go. “

Some investors are betting the psychedelic companies could follow in the footsteps of marijuana, which was legalized for recreational use in more than a dozen states, including New York, in March. However, some analysts and many companies themselves warn that the path for psychedelics will most likely be very different.

“Psychedelics are about medical care, medically recognized therapies. It won’t go the recreational route cannabis took, ”said Payton Nyquvest, who co-founded Numinus in 2018 and is its managing director. And while Numinus became the first publicly traded company in Canada to harvest the first legal batch of psilocybe mushrooms last year, its stock lagged below a dollar.

Mr. Nyquvest attributed the share price to the fact that “the sector has only recently grown in importance and investors are still trying to define how companies in this space should be valued”.

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April 23, 2021 at 1:31 p.m. ET

The current mushroom boom is surprising many long-term employees in the industry.

While Europeans and Asians loved the wild mushrooms that Joseph Salvo of Ponderosa Mushrooms harvested across Canada, it failed to arouse interest among consumers in the US or Canada.

Although mushrooms have long been popular in Italian noodle dishes, as a staple in Japanese soups, and as a sturdy substitute for meat, they have been a tough sell for US and Canadian consumers. That started to change about eight years ago when more chefs started using wild mushrooms in cooking shows and the like, said Mr Salvo. Then Costco started selling its fresh chanterelles in the stores in season.

Today, Mr. Salvo grows shiitake, king oysters and other mushrooms in the 28 temperature and air-conditioned rooms of Ponderosa Mushroom. He also grows shiitake mushrooms outdoors in the trunks of alder trees. The mushrooms are shipped to retailers around the world.

While many of Ponderosa’s mushrooms end up on plates, Mr Salvo said his mushrooms are also making their way to new, interesting areas like tea and even beer.

Five hours east of Vancouver in Vernon, BC, start-up Doseology Sciences also focuses on wellness. Doseology grows lion’s mane, shiitake, and cordyceps mushrooms in a series of climate-controlled shipping containers that smell like damp, cool ground. Psychedelic mushrooms are grown in a larger facility if the license is granted. This could happen later this year.

Various mushroom tinctures, serums, and powders are making their way into the wellness regimen, in part because after decades of using drugs to combat various diseases and conditions, consumers are increasingly focusing on diet and more natural ways to improve their health, said Dr. Lambert. from Penn State.

Frustration with traditional drugs that did little to treat his longstanding chronic pain and mental illness led Mr. Nyquvest of Numinus to take an interest in psychedelic compounds as a treatment.

He points to numerous studies on the benefits of psychedelic mushrooms, including a 2016 study by researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine that found psilocybin relieved anxiety and depression in people with a life-threatening diagnosis of cancer. A second, small, 24-part study conducted by Johns Hopkins researchers and published in JAMA Psychiatry found that those who received psilocybin-assisted therapy also showed improvement.

“The magnitude of the effect we saw was about four times greater than what clinical studies have shown for traditional antidepressants in the market,” said Alan Davis, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, in an announcement of the results of the study.

The Food and Drug Administration put at least two psychedelic mushroom compounds on the fast lane for approval to treat depression.

Last year Canada began allowing a limited number of people with terminal illnesses to use psychedelic mushrooms. Numinus is currently working on a psilocybin-assisted therapy study for patients with substance abuse disorders.

And while regulators in the US are taking a fresh look at psychedelic mushrooms, psilocybin is still a List 1 drug and should be reclassified by regulators.

Despite these hurdles, Mr. Nyquvest sees the potential for wider wellness uses of psychedelic mushrooms beyond what he calls “treating really severe indicators” of substance abuse and depression.

“Just as you go to the dentist to take care of your teeth, we need to think about taking care of the brain and mental wellbeing.”

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CDC recommends pregnant ladies get Covid vaccine after examine reveals it is secure

CDC recommends pregnant women get Covid vaccine after study shows it's safe

A health worker doses the Pfizer-BioNtech COVID-19 coronavirus vaccine to a pregnant woman on January 23, 2021 at Clalit Health Services in the Israeli Mediterranean coastal city of Tel Aviv.

Jack Guez | AFP | Getty Images

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend Covid-19 shots for pregnant women after preliminary data from the largest study of coronavirus vaccine use in expectant mothers showed that Pfizer and Moderna shocks were effective for both women and men are safe for their babies.

The researchers did not find “obvious safety signals” in any of the 35,691 women followed in the peer-reviewed study published Wednesday by the New England Journal of Medicine. The data used in the study were self-reported and the ages of the participants ranged from 16 to 54 years.

“No safety concerns for third trimester vaccinees or safety concerns for their babies were observed,” said CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky on Friday. “Therefore, CDC recommends pregnant people to receive Covid-19 vaccines.”

Researchers used the V-Safe Post-Vaccination Health Checker monitoring system, the V-Safe Pregnancy Register, and the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System to characterize the initial safety of mRNA Covid-19 vaccines in pregnant women.

Pregnant women were more likely to report injection site pain than those who weren’t, but fewer other side effects such as headache, myalgia, chills, and fever. Of the 827 participants who completed their pregnancies, the miscarriage rates were the same as before the pandemic.

The results are preliminary and only cover the first 11 weeks of the US vaccine rollout from December 14th to February 28th.

Pregnant women are more likely to be hospitalized and have a higher risk of death if they become infected with Covid-19. According to CDC data, vaccination is particularly important for this population group. Pharmaceutical companies have not included pregnant women in early efficacy and safety studies, but recent studies suggest that the vaccines are safe for them.

The researchers said “more longitudinal research, including tracking large numbers of women who were vaccinated earlier in pregnancy, is needed to inform mother, pregnancy and child results.”

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JPMorgan Apologizes for Its Function in Tremendous League

JPMorgan Apologizes for Its Role in Super League

JPMorgan Chase on Friday apologized for its role in funding a billion-dollar breakaway European football league, admitting in a statement that it “misjudged” how the project would be viewed by fans.

JPMorgan Chase had pledged around $ 4 billion to subscribe to the new league, but the American investment bank didn’t spend it or lose money: the league collapsed just 48 hours after it was announced after more than half of its 12 founding clubs switched their thoughts and announced that they would not attend.

Like the 12 clubs in the breakaway group, which included European giants such as Real Madrid and Barcelona, ​​Manchester United and Liverpool, Juventus and AC Milan, JPMorgan has been heavily criticized by fans and others only for their participation in the plan.

The Super League, conceived as a league of 20 teams and 15 permanent members, would have slashed the revenues of dozens of national leagues, jeopardized the finances and values ​​of the hundreds of European clubs that were left out, and the structures that were left out. have underpinned European football for a century – and passed billions on to some elite teams in the process.

In a company statement, rare for its regrets and self-criticism, JPMorgan admitted it had been a mistake to fund the proposal without considering its impact on others.

“We have clearly misjudged how this deal will be seen by the wider football community and how it could affect them in the future,” said a company spokesman. “We will learn from it.”

In an interview with Bloomberg TV, the bank’s co-president Daniel E. Pinto also tried to distance JPMorgan from the setback that is still causing turmoil in the clubs.

“We arranged a loan for a customer,” said Pinto. “It is not our job to decide how football works best in Europe and the UK.”

“We expected this to be emotional, we expected people to have different opinions,” added Pinto, “and that’s exactly what happens.”

Top debt finance executives had been involved with the group for months, trying to create the equivalent of a mortgage that would sign the start of the new contest that organizers were looking to pay off with one of the richest television deals in sports history.

Instead, the majority of the Super League’s members withdrew within 48 hours of its inception.

JPMorgan wasn’t the only powerful institution to apologize for its involvement. The majority of English teams, some of the most popular in world football, made humble statements for their decision to join the failed project. But it was the sight of billionaire Liverpool owner John W. Henry, a rare speaker who took personal responsibility for the fiasco that brought home how disastrous the company had been.

“I am sorry and I am solely responsible for the unnecessary negativity that has been generated in the past few days. I won’t forget that, ”said Henry in a video posted on the Liverpool website. In it he apologized not only to the fans of the club, but also to the players of the team, the manager of the club, Jürgen Klopp, and other executives of the team who were not consulted about the club’s decision.

Joel Glazer, the co-chair of the Manchester United billionaire, also made rare public comments. “Although the wounds are raw and I understand it will take time for the scars to heal, I am personally determined to restore the trust of our fans and learn from the message you have conveyed with such conviction,” wrote Glazer in a letter to fans admitted the club had made a mess.

“We got it wrong,” wrote Glazer, “and we want to show that we can fix things.”

No one associated with the project could avoid contamination from criticism, including the bank that funded it. JPMorgan executive director Jamie Dimon has been attacked on social media and in banking circles.

“How on earth did such a seasoned CEO who can connect so well with the real world, how on earth did you get this proposal where it got to?” A former Goldman Sachs economist, Jim O’Neill, told Bloomberg.

The criticism was particularly sharp for Dimon, who in recent years has endeavored to position the bank as a good social and corporate citizen.

JPMorgan was able to pull out of the business without suffering any financial loss, despite a huge loss of reputation, according to an executive familiar with the bank’s role in financing.

This may not apply to the teams that left after signing contracts that tied the 12 founding members to the outlier concept.

The Super League is actually not officially dead. Real Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus are still signed and continue their strategy.

One reason they might not have left could be financial. The contracts signed by the 12 founding members contained penalties worth millions of dollars. Real Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus, whose rising debts and fears of rising costs primarily drove them into the project, could remain in a position to evade tens of million dollar fines from their former partners for leaving from that.

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We are able to vaccinate our method out of this epidemic if all adults get photographs, says physician

J&J asked Pfizer, Moderna to help study blood clots but they declined: WSJ

Daylight saving time in the United States could return to pre-Covid-19 normal if 75% to 80% of the US population are vaccinated, said Dr. Peter Hotez on Friday.

“We can vaccinate out of this epidemic if all adults and adolescents are vaccinated by summer. We can have an exceptional quality of life by returning to concerts and music events, as well as ball games, bars, restaurants, clubs and clubs.” all the things we like to do so we have to work towards them, “said Hotez.

Hotez, co-director of the vaccine development center at Texas Children’s Hospital, told CNBC’s The News with Shepard Smith that vaccine hesitation will prevent the US from getting 75% to 80% of the population vaccinated.

The demand for the Covid-19 vaccine has fallen in all states. Louisiana, for example, asked for fewer cans because the demand was so low. Polls show that more than 40% of Republicans do not plan to vaccinate, and Hotez advised health professionals to reach out to conservative groups to help protect the entire US population.

“About 40% to 45% of Republicans say they may not or may not take the vaccine, and when you add the numbers that’s about 10% of the adult population,” Hotez said. “There we have to work harder to reach conservative groups … that we have to fix.”

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Murdoch’s Decide to Run The New York Put up Bets On the Internet and Celebs

Murdoch’s Pick to Run The New York Post Bets On the Web and Celebs

Rupert Murdoch took a top editor from his cheeky and conservative London tabloid The Sun and hired him to run his bold and conservative New York tabloid, The New York Post.

Keith Poole, a 44-year-old Englishman who has redesigned The Sun’s website for the past few years, started as the Post’s editor-in-chief on March 22. Most employees have not heard from him since then, said two Post employees.

He had lunch with Emily Smith, longtime editor of The Post’s Gossip franchise, but had yet to make an all-hands video call to greet the employees who were working remotely or an email greeting two people said and spoke on condition of anonymity to uncover internal matters. For some employees, the only evidence of the new boss’s presence was the addition of his name to the main newsroom channel on Slack, the messaging app.

A spokeswoman for The Post said in an email that Mr. Poole would get to know the team in his own way: “Keith has met a number of Post employees in person, via video call and over the phone (as most of them work from there) home), and he’s had lunch with other coworkers, not just Emily. “

Mr. Poole effectively replaced Col Allan, an Australian tabloid specialist who retired in March after more than 40 years with Murdoch Papers.

Mr. Poole has more experience attracting online readers than his predecessor. Before joining The Sun as a digital editor in 2016, he helped make The Daily Mail’s U.S. website a must-have for fans of celebrity gossip.

“At The Sun, it’s all you focus on,” said Chris Spargo, a reporter who worked for both of Mr. Poole’s previous employers. Mr Poole also sees The Daily Mail as the Post’s main competitor, said several people with knowledge of the Post’s newsroom.

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April 23, 2021 at 1:31 p.m. ET

A former colleague said Mr. Poole did not fit the stereotype of the gruff, boisterous tabloid editor.

“Keith is charming and has that British joke,” said David Martosko, former US political editor at The Daily Mail who is now Senior Content Executive at Zenger News. “More people in our business should adopt his collaborative editing style.”

His responsibilities include not only the now profitable New York tabloid, which Mr. Murdoch took out of bankruptcy in the 1990s, but also the larger New York Post Group. These include the Post Digital Network, which consists of the newspaper’s website, a separate website for page 6, the entertainment website Decider.com, and the advertising agency Post Studios.

Mr. Poole, who studied at Loughborough University in England, came to New York after most postal workers had worked from home for more than a year. At least eight Post journalists have recently left, including White House correspondent Ebony Bowden and editor-in-chief Maggie Coughlan.

Recognition…New York Post

Mr. Poole, who refused to be interviewed, worked for The Daily Mail from 2003 to 2016, spending part of that time in New York as the chief editor of the US website DailyMail.com. Within two years of working for Mr. Murdoch at The Sun, he had made his website the UK’s largest online brand. Last year he was appointed deputy editor-in-chief.

In a 2018 interview, Mr Poole said he focused on five key areas: news, celebrity, football, money, and women’s lifestyle. While at The Sun, he met frequently with Robert Thomson, the executive director of Mr. Murdoch’s newspaper company News Corp, who was often in the London office before the pandemic, said three people with knowledge of the relationship.

Under Mr. Allan, The Post specialized in celebrity news and coverage in the city, but also championed former President Donald J. Trump and attacked his rivals. Under Mr. Poole, the newspaper continued to focus on celebs and liberal villains, the April 16 front page suggested. The left side showed Jennifer Lopez in a revealing costume under the heading “Inside J-Rod’s Breakup”. On the right a headline blew the Democrats: “PACK RATS. Backlash as Dems attempt to take over the Supreme Court. “

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U.S. ends beneficial pause on use

U.S. ends recommended pause on use

Licensed Professional Nurse Denise Saldana prepares a one-time dose of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine at a clinic aimed at members of the immigrant community on March 25, 2021 in Los Angeles, California.

Mario Tama | Getty Images

U.S. health officials lifted a recommended hiatus from using Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine and gave state and local authorities assistance in distributing the doses that are seen as critical to admitting life-saving shots to hard-to-reach communities bring.

The U.S. regulators’ announcement came after the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, known as ACIP, recommended continued use of the J&J vaccine on Friday, saying that the benefits of the shot had the Risk outweighed. The committee is an external body of experts that advises the CDC.

Advisory panel members did not recommend U.S. regulators limit the use of the J&J vaccine by age or gender, but suggested that the Food and Drug Administration consider adding a warning to women under the age of 50.

J & J’s Covid-19 vaccine, like the Pfizer and Moderna shots, received emergency approval from the FDA to begin distributing the doses in the United States. An EEA grants conditional clearance based on two months of safety data until another submission for full approval, which normally requires at least six months of data.

On April 13, the FDA and CDC urged states to temporarily discontinue use of J & J’s vaccine “out of caution” after it was reported that six women aged 18 to 48 years had a cerebral combination with low platelets Venous sinus thrombosis developed. CVST occurs when a blood clot forms in the venous sinuses of the brain. It can prevent blood from draining from the brain and can eventually lead to bleeding and other brain damage.

Within hours of the warning from U.S. regulators, more than a dozen states, along with some national pharmacies, stopped vaccinating with J & J’s vaccine. Some sites replaced the J&J recordings for scheduled appointments with either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine.

The US government should lift the recommended hiatus shortly after the committee voted in favor.

Prior to Friday’s vote, the committee debated whether to recommend against J & J’s use of the vaccine or recommend it to U.S. regulators enforcing a warning label. The committee also considered limiting use of the vaccine based on age or other risk factors.

During the meeting, CDC official Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, there have been no reports of the condition of those who received the Pfizer BioNTech mRNA vaccine. There have been three reports of CVST in patients receiving the Moderna vaccine, he said, even though the patients did not have the low platelet levels seen in the J&J recipients.

Platelets help the body form blood clots to heal wounds. US health officials warned against a treatment such as blood-thinning heparin in patients with low platelets, which could make their condition worse.

Rare blood clots with low platelets occur in women aged 18 to 49 at the rate of 7 per 1 million vaccinations for the J&J shot and 0.9 per 1 million in women aged 50 and over. This is evident from a slide presented at the CDC panel meeting. CDC has confirmed a total of 15 cases of rare blood clots, including 12 women who developed blood clots in the brain. According to the presentation, three women died and seven remained in the hospital.

There are no confirmed cases in men, although officials have stated that they are looking at potential additional cases.

Dr. Michael Streiff, a hematologist at Johns Hopkins University Medical School, said the condition is very rare under normal circumstances. “I can tell you from my experience treating these patients that I’ve just never seen it before,” he told the committee during a presentation on Friday.

Earlier this week, J&J announced that it would restart its vaccine rollout in Europe after regulators there backed the single vaccine by recommending adding a warning to the label. The European Medicines Agency has examined all available evidence, including reports from the United States.

This is a developing story. Please try again.

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Biden’s Spending Plans May Begin to Deal with Inequality

Biden's Spending Plans Could Start to Tackle Inequality

The coronavirus pandemic has threatened to rapidly widen the yawning gaps between rich and poor, kick low-income service workers from their jobs, cost them incomes and limit their ability to build wealth. But by relying on large government spending to pull the economy off the sidelines, United States policymakers could limit this fallout.

The $ 1.9 trillion economic aid package signed last month and put into law by President Biden encompasses a wide range of programs that can help poor and middle-class Americans offset lost income and save money. This includes monthly payments to parents, facilities for renters and help with student loans.

Now the administration is rolling out additional plans that would go further, including a $ 2.3 trillion infrastructure package and approximately $ 1.5 trillion in spending and tax credits to support the workforce by investing in childcare , paid vacation, universal preschool garden, and free community college. The measures are specifically designed to help backward workers and color communities who have faced systemic racism and entrenched disadvantages – and they would be partially funded through taxes on the rich.

Forecasters predict that government spending – even the one passed so far – will fuel what may be the fastest annual economic growth of a generation this year and next as the country recovers and the economy reopens from the coronavirus pandemic. By starting the economy from the bottom and the middle, the response could ensure the pandemic recovery is fairer than it would be without a proactive government response, analysts said.

This is a big change since the 2007-2009 recession. Then Congress and the White House passed a $ 800 billion stimulus plan that many researchers believe was insufficient to fill the void the recession was causing of economic activity. Instead, lawmakers relied on the cheap monetary policy of the Federal Reserve to pull the United States economy on the sidelines. What followed was a halting rebound, marked by mounting wealth inequality as workers struggled to find work while the stock market rose.

“Monetary policy is a very aggregated policy tool – it’s a very important economic policy tool, but it is on a very aggregated level – while fiscal policy can be more targeted,” said Cecilia Rouse, who oversees the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers. In the pandemic crisis that disproportionately hurt women of all races and men of skin color, she said, “If we tailor relief to those most affected, we will fill racial and ethnic gaps.”

From day one, the pandemic set the stage for a K-shaped economy in which the rich worked from home without much income disruptions while the poorer struggled. Low-paying service workers were much more likely to lose jobs, and among racial groups, blacks experienced a much slower labor market upturn than their white counterparts. Globally, the downturn has likely lowered 50 million people who would otherwise have qualified as the middle class to lower income levels, based on a recent analysis by Pew Research.

However, data suggests that US policy responses – including relief bills passed under the Trump administration last year – helped alleviate the pain.

“The CARES Act on the American Rescue Plan has helped support more households than I imagined,” Charles Evans, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, told reporters this month during a phone call, referring to the passed pandemic – Aid packages in early 2020 and early 2021.

Prosperity has recovered almost across the board after the slump early last year, foreclosures have remained low and household consumption has been supported by repeated stimulus controls.

While the era was full of uncertainty and people slipped through the cracks, this downturn looks very different for poorer Americans than it did in the post-financial crisis. That recession ended in 2009, and America’s richest households recovered until 2012 before the crisis, while it took until 2017 for the poorest to do the same.

The government’s political response makes all the difference. In the 2010s, Republicans spearheaded deficit concerns and cut spending early, at a time when the economy was far from healed from its worst downturn since the Great Depression. Interest rates were already close to zero and did not represent a major economic upturn. As a result, the Fed made several rounds of large bond purchases to bolster the economy.

Fed policy has helped. However, low interest rates and huge bond purchases slowly propped up the economy, initially by raising the prices of financial assets that wealthy households are much more likely to own. When companies get access to cheap capital to expand and hire, the workers who secure these new jobs have more money to spend, and a happy cycle emerges.

By 2019, that prosperous loop was in gear and unemployment had dropped to half-century lows. Black and Spanish and less educated workers worked in greater numbers, and wages at the lower end of the income distribution had steadily increased.

Poverty was falling and there were reasons to hope that if this had continued, income inequality – the gap between the annual earnings of the poor and the rich – could soon decrease. Lower income inequality could theoretically lead to lower wealth inequality over time as households have the resources to save more evenly.

It took nearly a decade to get to, however, and when the 2020 pandemic broke out it almost certainly disrupted the trend. The data will be published with a delay.

As these different trends between labor and capital played out, the rich rebuilt their savings – which are heavily invested in stocks and companies – much faster. Eventually poorer households reap benefits over the years and people got jobs. The bottom half of America’s wealthy population was better off than before the crisis, but further behind the rich.

At the beginning of 2007, the bottom half of the wealth distribution held 2.1 percent of the national wealth, compared with 29.7 percent for the top 1 percent. At the start of 2020, the bottom half had 1.8 percent while the top 1 percent had 31 percent.

Researchers debate whether monetary policy actually worsens wealth inequalities in the long run – especially since there’s the hairy question of what would have happened if the Fed hadn’t acted – but monetary policy generally agrees that its policies follow a pre-existing trend can never stop – worse wealth inequality.

By giving a more targeted push from the start of the recovery, fiscal policy can do this. Or at least it can prevent the wealth gaps from deepening so much.

Monetary policy “naturally deteriorated,” said Joseph Stiglitz, Colombian economist and Nobel Prize winner. “Fiscal policy can work from the bottom up.”

This is what the Biden administration plays on. Along with packages from December and April last year, the latest package from Congress will bring the economic relief Congress approved during the pandemic to more than $ 5 trillion. That dwarfs the amount spent on the latest recovery.

The legislation is a mosaic of tax credits, economic reviews and small business support that could give families at the lower end of the income and savings distribution more money in the bank and, if its provisions work as advertised, a better chance of getting back to work early in the recovery .

There is no guarantee that Mr Biden’s broader economic proposals totaling roughly $ 4 trillion will clear a tightly divided Congress. Republicans defied his plans and this week made a counterproposal on infrastructure that is a fraction of the size of what Mr Biden wants to spend. A non-partisan group of house moderators is pushing the president to finance infrastructure spending through an increased gas tax or something similar, which affects the poor more than the rich.

Still, the president’s new proposals could have long-term implications by aiming to retool workers’ skills and strengthen color communities in hopes of making the economy more equitable. The president will outline his so-called American workforce-centered family plan before his first address to a joint congressional session next week.

While details are not yet finalized, programs like the Universal Preschool Garden, expanded childcare subsidies, and a national paid vacation program would be paid for in part through tax increases for investors and wealthy Americans. This could also affect the distribution of wealth, transferring savings from the rich to the poor.

The plan, which must win support in a Congress where Democrats have little wiggle room, would raise the highest marginal tax rate from 37 percent to 39.6 percent and raise taxes on capital gains – the proceeds of the sale of an asset like one Share – for people who earn more than $ 1 million, from 20 percent to 39.6 percent. If you factor in a tax related to Obamacare, the taxes they pay on profits would rise over 43 percent.

The new policies will not necessarily reduce wealth inequality, which has been on an unstoppable upward trend for decades, but it could prevent poorer households from falling as far behind as they would otherwise have.

It is a gamble to bet on fiscal policy to get the economy going again. If the economy overheats, as some prominent economists have warned, the Fed may need to hike rates quickly to cool the situation off. In the past, rapid adjustments have led to recessions that repeatedly drive vulnerable groups away from their jobs.

But government officials have repeatedly said that the bigger risk is undercutting it, and that millions are on the edge of the job market to fight their way through another tepid rebound. And they say the spending clauses in both the bailout and infrastructure could help resolve longstanding divisions along racial and gender lines.

“We see investing in racial justice and equity in general as a good policy, a period and an integral part of everything we do,” said Catherine Lhamon, deputy director of the Home Affairs Council, in an interview.

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MIT researchers say you are no safer from Covid indoors at 6 toes or 60 toes in new research

MIT researchers say you're no safer from Covid indoors at 6 feet or 60 feet in new study

Customers dine at Picos Restaurant, which was threatened after the announcement of its continued need for masks as the state of Texas prepares to lift its mask mandate and shut down business during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic in Houston, Texas to fully expand again. March 9, 2021.

Callaghan O’Hare | Reuters

The risk of being exposed to Covid-19 indoors is just as high at 60 feet as it is at 6 feet – even when wearing a mask. So, according to a new study by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who are questioning the social distancing guidelines adopted around the world.

MIT Professors Martin Z. Bazant, who teaches chemical engineering and applied mathematics, and John WM Bush, who teaches applied mathematics, developed a method of calculating the risk of exposure to Covid-19 indoors that takes into account a variety of issues that have an impact could be transmission, including time spent inside, air filtration and circulation, immunization, variant strains, mask use, and even respiratory activity such as breathing, eating, speaking, or singing.

Bazant and Bush question the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s long-standing Covid-19 guidelines and the World Health Organization in a peer-reviewed study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United States earlier this week has been.

“We don’t think the 6-foot rule is of much use, especially when people are wearing masks,” Bazant said in an interview. “It really has no physical foundation as the air a person breathes while wearing a mask tends to rise and fall elsewhere in the room, leaving you more exposed to the average background than a person in the distance.”

The important variable that the CDC and WHO have overlooked is the amount of time they spend indoors, Bazant said. The longer someone is in the house with an infected person, the greater the chance of transmission, he said.

Opening windows or installing new fans to keep the air moving could be just as effective or more effective than spending large sums of money on a new filtration system, he said.

Bazant also says the guidelines for enforcing indoor occupancy limits are flawed. He said that 20 people gathered for 1 minute is probably fine, but not over several hours, he said.

“Our analysis also shows that many rooms that have actually been closed do not have to be closed. Often the room is big enough, the ventilation is good enough, the time people spend together is so big rooms can be even at full capacity safely operated, and the scientific support for reduced capacity in these rooms really isn’t very good, “Bazant said. “I think if you enter the numbers, even now, for many types of rooms, you will find that no occupancy restrictions are required.”

Six feet of social distancing rules accidentally leading to closed businesses and schools are “just not sensible,” according to Bazant.

“That emphasis on distancing was really misplaced from the start. The CDC or the WHO never really provided a justification for it. They just said that this is what you have to do, and the only justification I know of is based on coughing and sneezing studies that look at the largest particles that could settle on the floor, and even if it’s very approximate, you can certainly have large droplets of greater or shorter range, “said Bazant.

“The distancing doesn’t help you that much and also gives you a false sense of security because you’re just as safe at 6 feet as you are at 60 feet when you’re inside. Everyone in this room is about the same risk actually,” he noted.

Droplets laced with pathogens move through the air indoors when people are talking, breathing, or eating. Airborne transmission is now known to play a huge role in the spread of Covid-19 compared to the earlier months of the pandemic when hand washing was seen as the top recommendation to avoid transmission.

These droplets from the warm exhalation mix with body heat and air currents in the area and rise and travel across the room, no matter how socially distant a person is. According to the study, people seem to be more exposed to this “background air” than distant droplets.

For example, if someone infected with Covid-19 wears a mask and sings loudly in an enclosed room, a person sitting on the other side of the room is no better protected than someone just three feet from the infected person sitting person. Because of this, the time you spend in the confined area is more important than the distance from the infected person.

Masks generally prevent transmission by blocking larger droplets. Therefore, larger droplets don’t make up the majority of Covid infections as most people wear masks. The majority of people who transmit Covid do not cough or sneeze, they are asymptomatic.

Masks also prevent transmission indoors by blocking direct clouds of air. The best way to see this is when someone is exhaling smoke. Continuous exposure to direct infectious air plumes would result in a higher risk of transmission, although exposure to direct air plumes usually does not last long.

Even with masks on, such as when smoking, those in the vicinity are severely affected by the second-hand smoke that moves and lingers around the enclosed area. The same logic applies to infectious droplets in the air, according to the study. Indoors and when masked, factors besides distance can be more important to avoid transmission.

As for outdoor social distancing, Bazant says it makes almost no sense and that doing it with your masks on is “kind of crazy”.

“When you look at the flow of air outside, the infected air is swept away and is very unlikely to cause transmission. There are very few recorded cases of outdoor transmission.” he said. “Crowded outdoor spaces could be a problem, but if people keep a reasonable distance of about 3 feet outside, I feel pretty comfortable with it even without masks.”

According to Bazant, this could possibly explain why states like Texas or Florida, where companies reopened with no capacity constraints, had no transmission spikes.

For variant strains that are 60% more transmissible, increasing ventilation by 60%, reducing the time spent indoors, or limiting the number of people indoors could offset this risk.

Bazant also said a big question will be when to remove masks and that the study’s guidelines can help quantify the risks involved. He also noted that measuring carbon dioxide in a room can also help quantify how much infected air there is, and therefore the risk of transmission.

“We need scientific information that is conveyed to the public in a way that is not only frightening but actually based on analysis,” said Bazant. After three rounds of intense peer reviews, he said it was the most review he had ever been through and he hoped it will influence policy now that it is released.

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Housing Market in Frenzy Like No Different Since 2008 Disaster: Reside Updates

Homes typically sold in 18 days in March, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Ted Shaffrey/Associated Press

The median sale price of an existing home in the United States was $329,100 in March, up 17.2 percent from a year earlier, when a 3 to 5 percent annual increase is considered healthy, according to a report from the National Association of Realtors, a trade group.

Nationwide, housing inventory was at 1.07 million units at the end of March, just above its record low of 1.03 million the prior month and down 28.2 percent from a year earlier, the group said on Thursday.

Sales of new single-family houses soared the highest level since 2006 in March, the Census Bureau reported on Friday, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.021 million, up 21 percent from February. The typical new home sold for $330,800, down from its recent peak of $365,300 in December.

Existing homes typically sold in 18 days, a record speed. Normally, 60 days is typical, Lawrence Yun, the group’s chief economist, told Stefanos Chen of The New York Times.

When the housing market peaks will depend largely on where you live and how the pandemic continues to reorder buyer priorities, but it will hinge on two trends: rising mortgage rates and incredibly tight inventory in some markets, which will likely keep demand strong through the rest of 2021, even as price growth moderates, several analysts said.

In Manhattan, where commercial real estate was battered and home buyers fanned outward to surrounding suburbs in search of affordability and more space, the sales market fell off at the beginning of the pandemic but appears to have turned the corner.

“The rate at which homes are selling nationally is not sustainable, but in New York, the uptick is just getting started,” said Nancy Wu, an economist for StreetEasy, a listing website.

In the week ending April 11, there were 783 new signed contracts citywide, the highest since the company began tracking weekly pending sales in 2019, when the peak was 491 contracts, she said.

Technical glitches marred the beginning of the first day of submitting applications for the grant program.Credit…Zack Wittman for The New York Times

Music club operators, theater owners and others in the live-event market have been waiting nearly four months for a $16 billion federal grant fund for their industry to start taking applications. Their hopes were briefly raised two weeks ago, when the program’s application website opened — then dashed as a technical malfunction prevented the site from accepting any applications.

Now, the Small Business Administration, the agency that runs the program, plans to try again on Saturday.

The agency’s announcement late Thursday night of its timing for restarting the program was immediately met with a deluge of criticism. “People have weekend plans, need child care, have to pay overtime for weekends. This is SO inconsiderate,” one typical reply tweet said.

Because the money will be awarded on a first-come, first-serve basis — and is widely expected to run out fast — many applicants feel pressured to submit their paperwork as soon as the application system opens.

That will be a particular obstacle for Jewish business owners who observe the Sabbath, which prohibits them from using electronics on Saturdays before sundown. “I’m in shock,” said Dani Zoldan, the owner of Stand Up NY, a comedy club in Manhattan. “There are many Sabbath observers in the performing arts industry. How did they not think through this decision before making this announcement?”

Mr. Zoldan, who is Jewish, hopes the agency will reconsider its decision. He said he would wait until after sunset to submit his application. “It’s been a mess on so many levels. I feel like they’re torturing us,” he said.

The Small Business Administration has not yet said what time on Saturday it plans to open its application portal. The agency said it would provide further details on Friday.

Preparations for the Academy Awards last year, when viewership was down 20 percent from 2019. It is expected to be even lower this year.Credit…Josh Haner/The New York Times

ABC has sold out its advertising inventory for the pandemic-delayed Academy Awards on Sunday, with companies like Google, General Motors, Rolex and Verizon spending an estimated $2 million for each 30-second spot, according to media buyers — only a slight decline from last year’s pricing even though the television audience is expected to be sharply smaller.

Rita Ferro, president of Disney Advertising Sales, which sells ads on Disney-owned ABC, announced the sellout. She declined to comment on pricing or say how much revenue Disney will generate from the telecast. Last year, the Oscars pulled in about $129 million across 56 ads, according to Kantar Media, a research firm. (A red-carpet preshow attracted $16.3 million across 42 ads.)

Additional revenue comes from “integrations” and other sponsorships. For the first time, for instance, ABC will have a sponsor for closed-captioning (Google). The upshot: ABC’s revenue for the telecast is estimated to have declined only 3 to 5 percent from last year — a tiny drop compared with the expected 50 to 60 percent decline in viewing.

The ceremony is “one of those big cultural moments,” Andrew McKechnie, Verizon’s chief creative officer, said of the company’s decision to buy ad space. “The broadcast this year will be a bit different,” he acknowledged, “but the event will still be an impactful one and an important one for us to show up in.”

Last year, about 23.6 million people watched “Parasite” win the Academy Award for best picture, according to Nielsen data. That was a 20 percent drop from the previous year and a record low. On Sunday, nine million to 12 million people are expected to tune in.

Audiences have been turning away from awards telecasts for years, but ratings have nose-dived during the pandemic. Without live audiences, the shows have been drained of their energy. Big studios have also postponed major movies, leaving this year’s awards scene to downbeat art films.

ABC does not guarantee an audience size to Oscar advertisers, thus removing any potential for so-called make-goods — additional commercial time at a later date — if ratings tumble.

ABC has been able to keep ad rates high in part because of the fragmentation of television viewing. Oscars night is a shadow of its former self — it attracted 57 million viewers in 1998 — but still pulls in one of the largest audiences on broadcast television, certainly for a nonsports telecast. New advertisers this year include Apartments.com and Freshpet dog and cat food. Expedia and Adidas have bought commercial time to introduce new campaigns.

“We’re very pleased with where we are,” Ms. Ferro said, citing “the quantity, the caliber and the diversity of the advertisers in the show.”

Soccer fans protested on Tuesday after the formation of a so-called Super League was announced.Credit…Adrian Dennis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

JPMorgan Chase apologized on Friday for its role in arranging billions of dollars in financing for a breakaway European soccer league, admitting in a statement that it had “misjudged” how the project would be viewed by fans.

JPMorgan Chase had pledged about $4 billion to underwrite the new league, but the American investment bank did not end up issuing it or losing any money: The league collapsed only 48 hours after it was announced, after more than half of its 12 founding clubs changed their minds and announced they would not take part, Tariq Panja and and Andrew Das for The New York Times.

Like the 12 clubs involved in the breakaway group — which included European giants like Real Madrid and Barcelona, Manchester United and Liverpool, Juventus and A.C. Milan — JPMorgan had come under intense criticism from fans and others merely for participating in the plan.

Designed as a 20-team league with 15 permanent members, the Super League would have severely cut in to the revenues of dozens of national leagues, imperiled the finances and values of the hundreds of European clubs who were left out, and upended the structures that have underpinned European soccer for a century — all while funneling billions to a few elite teams.

In a corporate statement rare for its contrition and self-criticism, JPMorgan admitted it had been a mistake to finance the proposal without considering its effects on others.

“We clearly misjudged how this deal would be viewed by the wider football community and how it might impact them in the future,” a company spokesman said. “We will learn from this.”

But in an interview with Bloomberg TV, the bank’s co-president, Daniel E. Pinto, also sought to distance JPMorgan from the blowback that is still buffeting the clubs.

“We arranged a loan for a client,” Pinto said. “It’s not our place to decide what is the optimal way for football to operate in Europe and the U.K.”

“Companies are reading the writing on the wall,” said Thomas DiNapoli, New York State’s comptroller and trustee for the state’s public pension fund. Credit…Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times

The riot at the Capitol in January prompted a reckoning on corporate political donations that will be a prominent feature of proxy season, with many shareholder proposals demanding greater disclosure of company spending. And shareholders already seem to be meeting with more success than in previous years, the DealBook newsletter reports.

“Companies are reading the writing on the wall,” said Thomas P. DiNapoli, New York State’s comptroller and trustee for the state’s public pension fund. “Political and social polarization are bad for their business, and they need to decide if political donations are worth the risk.”

“Time will tell if their increased attention to these issues is lip service or if it represents a sincere change in corporate culture,” Mr. DiNapoli said. “At a minimum, investors need disclosure of this spending.”

New York’s public pension fund is the third-largest in the United States, and since 2010, it has filed more than 155 shareholder proposals on political spending, winning more than 40 adoptions or agreements, including from Bank of America, Delta Air Lines and PepsiCo. Three of five resolutions it has advanced this year have already been withdrawn, with the companies agreeing to make changes without putting them to a vote. That’s a 60 percent hit rate, and companies that wouldn’t engage before are now at least responsive, a spokesman for the fund said.

The fund got CMS Energy, a Michigan public utility, to agree to be more transparent about political spending, DealBook is first to report; First Energy, an Ohio utility, and the multinational brewer Molson Coors also agreed to more disclosure.

“Companies are now expected to have core values — almost personalities,” said Bruce Freed, the president of the Center for Political Accountability, a nonprofit organization that teams up with shareholders on proposals. Recent agreements, like the ones brokered by Mr. DiNapoli, are a “strong indication” that corporations are feeling “real pressure,” he said. Nine of 30 companies (including those noted above) have agreed this year to provide more disclosure on political donations. Last year, eight of 40 companies facing similar proposals agreed to act instead of putting the question to shareholders in a vote.

The Capitol riot “raised the stakes,” Mr. Freed said, and the pressure on companies has not relented since.

By: Ella Koeze·Data delayed at least 15 minutes·Source: FactSet

U.S. stocks climbed on Friday, rebounding from a drop on Thursday that had followed reports that the Biden administration was considering nearly doubling capital gains taxes and other taxes on the rich to fund child care and education projects.

Friday’s gains came as investors heard more good news about the American economy, with readings on the manufacturing and services sectors showing growth, and home sales data indicating that sales are at their highest level since 2006.

Most European stock indexes were lower. The Stoxx Europe 600 index was down 0.2 percent even as data showed an improvement in manufacturing and services industries across the eurozone.

The S&P 500 climbed 1 percent, recouping its drop from Thursday. The Nasdaq composite climbed more than 1 percent.

  • Bitcoin slid nearly 9 percent on Friday, continuing its drop from a record hit earlier this month. The cryptocurrency topped out above $63,000 per coin in mid-April, and was trading at around $49,800 on Friday morning — a drop of more than 20 percent.

  • Coinbase, the cryptocurrency exchange, was down as much as 2 percent in early trading before it rebounded to climb about 2 percent on Friday.

  • The bill for Britain’s pandemic response is starting to become clear: In the 12 months through March, government borrowing was 303.1 billion pounds (about $421 billion), up from £57 billion the previous year, according to an estimate by the Office for National Statistics. It’s the most since records began in 1947. And at 14.5 percent of G.D.P., it’s the highest since the end of World War II.

  • As tax receipts fell, the government spent hundreds of billions of pounds on emergency support programs, including furlough. But the borrowing estimate is still smaller than previously forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility, an independent fiscal watchdog.

  • Retail sales in Britain rose 4.9 percent in March, far outpacing economists’ forecasts for a 2 percent increase, separate data showed, while the manufacturing and services industry also picked up further in April.

A bitcoin ATM in an Istanbul shopping mall. Many Turks have turned to cryptocurrencies as a hedge against inflation.Credit…Chris Mcgrath/Getty Images

A cryptocurrency exchange in Turkey suspended operations this week amid accusations of fraud, freezing an estimated $2 billion in investors’ money, and authorities said they were seeking the company’s founder.

Turkish authorities raided offices in Istanbul associated with Thodex, a cryptocurrency trading platform, on Friday morning and arrested more than 60 people, the private news agency Demiroren reported.

Thodex’s 27-year-old founder, Faruk Fatih Ozer, left Turkey for Albania on Tuesday, Turkish authorities said, who added that they were seeking his extradition.

The cryptocurrency firm has nearly 400,000 active users whose accounts were nominally worth a total of $2 billion, according to Oguz Evren Kilic, a lawyer in Ankara who is representing Thodex investors. If their money has gone missing, the losses would add another element of instability to Turkey’s already shaky economy.

Living standards in Turkey suffer from double-digit inflation and a wobbly currency. Though cryptocurrencies are inherently risky, many Turks have turned to them as a way to protect their savings as the Turkish lira lost more than one-quarter of its value against the dollar in the last year.

Last week, Turkey’s central bank banned the use of cryptocurrencies for purchases, citing the “significant risks” involved.

Thodex had promoted itself with ads that featured female Turkish celebrities dressed in bright red outfits and draped over a highly polished black automobile.

“For sure the economic situation has an affect on this,” Mr. Kilic, the lawyer, said in an interview. “In such times of crisis, people want to diminish the loss of value of the assets they have.”

The sagging lira has raised the cost of imported goods and fueled inflation, leading to a steady erosion in living standards. In March, the annual rate of inflation was 16 percent, according to official figures, which many economists say understate the true rate.

In a statement on Thodex’s website, Mr. Ozer, the firm’s founder, insisted he had left the country merely to consult with foreign investors and would return. He said the accusations were a “smear campaign” and blamed the shutdown of the trading platform on a cyberattack.

Thodex “has not victimized anyone,” he said, adding that only about 30,000 accounts “have a suspicious situation.”

Mr. Kilic noted that none of Thodex’s customers could gain access to their accounts. “If you cannot access the account, then you are a victim,” he said.

On Twitter, people reacted to a statement from Thodex with crying face emojis. “There are people who trust and invest everything in you,” one user wrote.

Volkswagen’s new electric ID.4. The company is investing $80 billion to develop E.V.s.Credit…Bryan Derballa for The New York Times

As many as 100 new electric vehicle models are coming to showrooms by 2025 as automakers insist we’re “this close” to an E.V. tipping point.

But outside of Tesla, the American record for sales of an electric vehicles is the mere 30,200 Leafs that Nissan sold in 2014. A single gasoline sport utility vehicle, the Toyota RAV4, finds well over 400,000 annual buyers, compared with roughly 250,000 sales last year for all E.V.s combined — 200,000 of which were Teslas, Lawrence Ulrich reports for The New York Times.

Globally, Volkswagen is poised to pass Tesla as the world’s biggest electric vehicle seller as early as next year, according to Deutsche Bank, with Europe and China its key markets. In the United States, where the brand remains an underdog, VW and other legacy automakers are concentrating fire on the sales fortress of compact S.U.V.s.

The latest electric-S.U.V. hopefuls to reach showrooms are the VW ID.4, Ford Mustang Mach-E and Volvo XC40 Recharge. The Nissan Ariya, BMW iX and Cadillac Lyriq are set to arrive between late 2021 and next March.

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Offshore wind agency to work with researchers and sort out blade waste

Offshore wind firm to work with researchers and tackle blade waste

This file photo taken on July 31, 2018 shows workers checking the quality of newly manufactured wind turbine blades at a factory in China.

AFP | Getty Images

A collaboration between science and industry is expected to focus on recycling fiberglass products, which could ultimately help reduce waste from wind turbine blades.

In an announcement on Thursday, the University of Strathclyde, based in Glasgow, Scotland, said it had signed a memorandum of understanding with Aker Offshore Wind and Aker Horizons.

Among other things, the trio will work together to scale and commercialize a laboratory-developed process that involves recycling fiberglass-reinforced polymer composites used in wind turbine blades.

According to the university, the system focuses on the “heat recovery and post-treatment of glass fibers” from glass fiber-reinforced polymer composite scrap with the end result “glass fibers of almost virgin quality”. The idea is that with this system the composite waste can be reused.

“This is a challenge not just for the wind power industry, but for all industries that rely on GRP materials to manufacture and manufacture them,” said Liu Yang, head of the Advanced Composites Group at the University of Strathclyde, in a statement.

“Maintaining and redistributing the energy contained in the fibers is critical to moving towards a circular economy,” he added.

What to do with wind turbine blades when they are no longer needed is an industry headache. This is because the composite blades can prove difficult to recycle, which means many end up in landfill at the end of their lifespan.

As the number of wind turbines on the planet increases, the problem becomes even greater. According to Strathclyde, blade waste could reach 400,000 tons per year by 2030.

In recent years, a number of companies in the industry have tried to find solutions to the problem.

For example, last December, GE Renewable Energy and Veolia North America signed a “multi-year contract” to recycle blades removed from onshore wind turbines in the US.

In an announcement at the time, GE Renewable Energy said the blades would be crushed at a Veolia North America facility in Missouri before being “used as a substitute for coal, sand and clay in cement factories in the United States.”

In January 2020, the Danish wind energy giant Vestas announced that it wanted to produce zero-waste wind turbines by 2040.