Finding Genius Podcast

Patrick Gray, CEO of HashChain Technology, a global blockchain company focused on mining cryptocurrencies, was an early adopter in the space. Gray saw the potential of blockchain and cryptos early on and has rode the waves up and down in this turbulent industry. Part of this "ride" has led to the established mining operations HashChain Technology currently operates, as well as the acquisition of super companies focused more on growing their blockchain presence in the space, including recently acquiring NODE40. In this interview Gray explains his passion for the blockchain and crypto space and why he believes, there needs to be long-term, "ride or die" mentality for the old-timers, as well as a continued push to see new investors. Gray also lets us in on how HashChain will continue both the aggressive scaling of mining operations while continuing to diversify beyond being just a cryptocurrency mining company to a full-scale blockchain company.

Orvium is the first open source and decentralized framework powered by Blockchain for managing scholarly publications' life cycles and the associated data. Orvium improves the quality and effectiveness of scientific publishing while returning the benefits of science to the society.

Dr. Ryan Lowery, CEO of Ketogenic.com, delivers an informative overview of how a ketogenic diet and lifestyle can greatly enhance health. Dr. Lowery's passion is to bring the healthy benefits of a ketogenic lifestyle to everyone, on a global level. Lowery holds a masters in exercise and nutrition science and he has published over 100 papers, abstracts, and chapters on nutrition, physical training, diet, and general exercise. Along with partners, Dr. Jacob Wilson and Sam Beeler, Lowery founded the Applied Science and Performance Institute (ASPI), an advanced research and performance facility focused on bringing science and application together through innovation and study. In 2017, Lowery, along with partner Dr. Jacob Wilson, published, The Ketogenic Bible, which is now heading to print in multiple languages, to further Lowery's goal of achieving a global reach for his message. Ketosis is a metabolic state in which your body produces and utilizes ketones as its number one energy supply. A ketogenic lifestyle is based primarily on, essentially, what's going in our bodies. Ketones, specifically, are chemicals made by the liver. They are created when there isn't enough insulin in the body to turn glucose into energy, so the body uses fat instead. As the liver turns fat to ketones, it then sends them pumping through the bloodstream, which muscles and tissues utilize for powerful fuel. Lowery discusses his goal to show the science behind the diet and lifestyle, so that people understand this is not a fad but is backed by real science that can produce real results for better health. Lowery is seeing a shift, as people move to the ketogenic diet, but not everyone is experiencing full ketosis. He discusses how athletes have traditionally been utilizing 'sideline sugar' as a performance tool, but Lowery provides that their brains are actually starved for a true, pure energy source. The brain cannot use fatty acids for production of energy when levels of blood glucose are compromised, thus ketone bodies can be utilized to deliver an alternative, extremely viable source of energy to the brain. Lowery discusses how the body breaks down fat and the chemical science behind the process, and how we can use this to reconfigure our nutritional cycle in our carb-adapted world. He gives an overview on some simple measures anyone can do to get that 'full' feeling without loading up on calories, such as starting a meal with a healthy salad, and hydrating regularly, before and during the meal. And as carbohydrates raise insulin levels, a carb-heavy diet creates tiredness, a general lethargy, that depleted energy feeling. As Lowery describes, it's a vicious cycle that doesn't need to happen. The nutrition expert delivers an overview on exogenous ketones and the improvement the body can experience in insulin sensitivity and other areas, especially during intermittent fasting. By supplementing exogenous ketones, one can get their energy up, and extend fasting periods. He discusses the various chemical formulations and their individual benefits, from energy improvement to boosting sleep quality. Ultimately, as Lowery states, there is a big psychological aspect to beginning a ketogenic lifestyle, as we often feel like we're giving up so much. But Lowery suggests that the better way to look at it is to not dwell on the losses, but to look at all the things you can have on a ketogenic diet, and to remember the vast amount of benefits that the diet brings to good health.

Chris Weilemann, CTO of CloudSight (cloudsight.ai), provides a detailed overview of CloudSight's visual cognition and understanding API (application programming interface). CloudSight is a tech company based in Los Angeles that specializes in continuous real-time hybrid intelligence for visual understanding. They seek to create tailored solutions to a host of challenging problems by bringing together human and machine intelligence. They have developed image recognition API that provides actual understanding for digital media. Essentially, it's a means for processing media to deliver a visual understanding of that media. Weilemann discusses how their API goes beyond traditional classification and machine vision, as their analysis is many times what normal methods could produce, a fine-grain detail analysis of what is actually going on in imagery. And the uses for CloudSight's tech are varied, from catalog discovery and product discovery to fully understand an inventory, to digital media management to better grasp and understand the content of a large volume of media. The data expert explains how their system works, utilizing several microservices of AIs that work independently to gather data and learn from their own failures as they go, and by leveraging hybrid intelligence. Thus the combination of machine learning and human being input maximizes the end results in a successful manner. In any industry, from clothing and fashion, to sports, to manufacturing, CloudSight's team can build custom models to provide the data analysis needed to improve productivity overall. Analysis and tags are actually becoming so specific and full of detail that the results from CloudSight's image recognition AI are mind boggling and impressive. As their technology pushes forward, Weilemann expects to see new advances in speed regarding the microservices and how the API handles data and operates, and advances in what could be possible with the new technology. And he expects more detailed work to be viable with computer vision as the embedded technology increases at lightning speed in our tech-forward world.

Cypherium is a highly scalable & permission-less hybrid blockchain platform based on proof-of-work and Byzantine fault tolerance consensus. The design goal of Cypherium focuses on achieving the apex of scalability, decentralization, and commercialization viability. Cypherium's unique consensus mechanism provides unprecedented transaction throughput and contract execution time through PBFT while leveraging an ASIC-resistant PoW system for decentralized node election. By providing fundamental building blocks for developers to create groundbreaking applications, and an intuitive interface for users to access these functionalities, Cypherium aims to provide a comprehensive foundation for the future of blockchain technology. For more information, visit https://www.cypherium.io

Dr. Alejandro "Alex" Chavez, MD, PhD, assistant professor of pathology and cell biology at Columbia University, provides a detailed overview of the advances in CRISPR/Cas9 technology. CRISPR/Cas9 is a genome protection system utilized by many microbes to prevent foreign DNA and nucleic acids from infiltrating their genomes and potentially causing damage. Gene editing (changing the sequence of DNA) is not a new development, but the CRISPR/Cas9 technology allows for greater efficiency with gene editing at a lowered cost. CRISPR stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, and the Cas9 essentially acts, as Dr. Chavez states, like a targeted missile. It works by taking small pieces of a genome and utilizing Cas9 to target or hunt down other copies of the sequence. As researchers learned more, the push to increase human gene editing, to target and attack specific genes reached an intense demand, for the potential for medical and scientific breakthroughs is immense. As Chavez explains, once Cas9 learns that a particular sequence belongs to a virus it will then seek it out, bind to it, and cut it, thus rendering it ineffectual. And as the defense effect takes hold, it strengthens other DNA in a system increasing resistance overall. Dr. Chavez discusses how the use of Cas9 has to be extremely specific, as Cas9 is so hard-working that it's essential that it be carefully planned so as to attack only the intended target. The cell biology expert provides an overview of restriction enzymes and the targeting and cutting of DNA. As he states, with CRIPSR, researchers can target literally anything they want, making it more efficient in research as a precision tool. Dr. Chavez explains the remarkable possibilities that CRISPR technology has created, as it can be utilized to turn single genes off, one by one, to see what happens, thus allowing for a systematic pattern of research. But as CRISPR is excellent at cutting genes off, there hasn't been an easy way to use CRISPR to turn genes on, so as the cell biology professor explains, their research features study in this area. He expresses the importance of seeing the gene in various ways, to have two different pictures of what the gene is doing. Chavez's lab built a tool that allows researchers to use CRISPR to turn genes on, which gives researchers a deeper look into the gene's actions and how it works. Chavez discusses Cas9 variants in terms of how they are utilized, their specificities, and how they cut DNA. He explains that while the variations are many, most researchers use Streptococcus pyogenes Cas9 (SpCas9) due to its overall efficiency, for as Chavez states, it's a jack of all trades. The genome researcher provides information on some future developments on the horizon, such as in vivo recorders that make physical copies of events within the genome, and the packaging of CRISPR for sterilization in medical procedures. Additionally, he explains how CRISPR specificity can allow more targeted cutting such that an exact area can be cut to specifically kill only the part of a bacterium that is harmful. With the advances in CRISPR, Chavez's lab is diving deeper into study of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, as well as others, to understand the biology of diseases.

CEO of Block66, Joe Markham, sits down to discuss how they are breathing life into the mortgage industry with a platform that utilizes Blockchain Technology to streamline the process and provide transparency through the lending process. The mortgage lending industry has faced its share of problems – from fraud, to lengthy application, approval and funding. Block66 aims to be the first platform offering a thoroughly scrutinized collection of borrowers, pulling applicants' financial and personal information such as pay stubs, tax documents and credit information directly from the source and uploading and storing it on the Blockchain. The idea is to make the entire process much more streamlined and it should lower the costs, as well as the risk to lenders. Each loan is featured as a pool of "proof of loan" (PoL) tokens that is then resold to investors, giving the lenders liquidity and allowing a credible and vetted group of investors to participate. Join us for an interesting look at the way Blockchain Technology is innovating the mortgage lending process.

At Paxful, you get the opportunity to not only contribute your skills to the development of our innovative service offerings, but also the chance be a part of a company that is truly disrupting finance for good. Paxful is the world's largest Peer-to-Peer Bitcoin Marketplace and a universal money translator. Powered by people and blockchain technology, not big banks, we offer support for a payment system that empowers merchants and e-commerce shoppers. This opens up a new market of 2 billion people who have no access to banking services but do have the ability to buy bitcoin via one of the 300+ payment methods enabled by Paxful.

Sweetbridge is a blockchain-based economic framework that transforms supply chain and logistics collaboration through a fast, fair and flexible value exchange that unleashes working capital for the benefit of all participants. The Sweetbridge economy is a trusted, transparent digital economy that co-exists with existing national economies. Sweetbridge's blockchain protocols harmonize the rules for market-access, property-rights protection, and compensation for individuals and companies, across existing national economies and boundaries. Thus, Sweetbridge enables both existing and new forms of global trade and settlement.

Changing self-care with B-wom, a digital coach for women's health. B-wom offers personalized, data-based care programs to address common female health issues, from incontinence to sexual pain and postpartum recovery. Plans include guided exercises, daily habits, and recommendations, tracking and motivation, all in mobile. Their vision is to give every woman in the world the access to better healthcare thanks to a better understanding of their bodies.