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It was a busy week for Colossal Biosciences: On Tuesday, it introduced the world to the first-ever woolly mice; by Wednesday, those mice were going viral; and on Saturday, they were the topic of a bit on Saturday Night Lives Weekend Update. The success of genetically engineering these little creatures represented a huge leap toward a bigger goal: bringing back the woolly mammoth. After spending 2.5 years editing mammoth genes, the team applied their work to mice rather than trying to create a creature that has been extinct for thousands of years. The genetic engineering of the mouse, while its a mouse, its a marvel of science in terms of where we are from an innovation perspective, Ben Lamm, cofounder and CEO of Colossal, said Sunday during a discussion at the Fast Company Grill at South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin. What many people misunderstood, Lamm said, was that successfully creating woolly mice was a validation step rather than a first step in the woolly mammoth de-extinction process. It shows that our precision editing, and the results of our precision editing, work and they worked the first time. More than just hairy mice The woolly mice have bigger implications for the Dallas-based company, even beyond its de-extinction and species preservation pipeline of projects. What the team has learned about epigenetics and genome engineering can also be used to combat diseases, added Joe Manganiello, the actor and producer who is an investor in Colossal. There are clues within genetic information as to eradicating all disease, and really all of the ills of man, Manganiello told the audience. Hes had a lifelong fascination with biology, genetics and the field of epigenetics because his great-grandmother survived the Armenian genocide. He said his lifes mission has been to learn about generational trauma and find a way to end it. The de-extinction work, Manganiello said, is just the tip of a giant iceberg, as Colossals research has so many broad-reaching implications that could improve humanity and our communion with nature. It would be unethical to not pursue this type of science, to not try to preserve and understand the ecosystems that are being destroyed and what needs to be replaced. But as both Manganiello and Lamm acknowledged, there are a lot of ethical considerations inherent to this burgeoning field of science. Theres a respect for different life forms because in the wrong hands this technology could create some weird stuff, they agreed. There’s a bit of a Manhattan Project to it as well, in that you want to make sure that it’s in the hands of people that are going to handle it ethically, Manganiello said, referencing the World War II program to develop the first atomic bombs. Mammoth implications The work Colossal is doing is often compared to a modern-day Jurassic Park, but there are benefits to de-extinction that may not be so obvious. Lamm said he initially reached out to George Church, the father of synthetic biology, about an idea for a different company, but that conversation quickly turned to the beginnings of Colossal. I just said, George, if you had one project with unlimited capital, what would you do? Lamm recalled. And he said, I’d work to bring back wooly mammoths, reintroduce them into the Arctic, help suppress carbon and methane in the ecosystem, and make technologies for human healthcare and also for conservation. As a tech entrepreneur, Lamm said he saw the opportunity to inspire people and make a pretty big impact. The work colossal is doing could help improve the pregnancy outcomes for in vitro fertilization (IVF), for example, while Lamm said officials from the tropical island of Mauritius are so excited about Colossals plans to revive the dodo bird from extinction, and estimate it could triple GDP for the tropical island country. And Lamm said that conservation partnerships are key to such rewilding efforts that will spawn better carbon sequestration, better methane suppression, and lead to more fauna and more flora. Colossal is not the silver bullet, Lamm added. We want to be one thread of a much larger tapestry of technologies that people can go use to actually bring back species or save other species. Finally, one of the halo effects of this research is inspiring the next generation of scientists, Lamm said. This is particularly important given projections that the planet will lose up to 50% of all biodiversity by 2050 and current technology doesnt work at commensurate speed. Were trying to do something insanely hard that no ones ever donethats like moon landing-level shitand were trying to do it in a couple years, Lamm said.
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E-Commerce
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday the Trump administration had finished its six-week purge of programs of the six-decade-old U.S. Agency for International Development and he would move the 18% of aid and development programs that survived under the State Department. Rubio made the announcement in a post on X, in one of his relatively few public comments on what has been a historic shift away from U.S. foreign aid and development, executed by Trump political appointees at State and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency teams. Rubio in the post thanked DOGE and our hardworking staff who worked very long hours to achieve this overdue and historic reform in foreign aid. President Donald Trump on Jan. 20 issued an executive order directing a freeze of foreign assistance funding and a review of all of the tens of billions of dollars of U.S. aid and development work abroad. Trump charged that much of foreign assistance was wasteful and advanced a liberal agenda. Rubio’s social media post Monday said that review was now officially ending,” with some 5,200 of USAID’s 6,200 programs eliminated. Those programs spent tens of billions of dollars in ways that did not serve, (and in some cases even harmed), the core national interests of the United States, Rubio wrote. In consultation with Congress, we intend for the remaining 18% of programs we are keeping … to be administered more effectively under the State Department, he said. Democratic lawmakers and others call the shutdown of congressionally funded programs illegal, saying such a move requires Congress’ approval. USAID supporters said the sweep of the cuts made it difficult to tell what U.S. efforts abroad the Trump administration actually supports. The patterns that are emerging is the administration does not support democracy programs, they dont support civil society … they dont support NGO programs, or health or emergency response, said Andrew Natsios, the USAID administrator for Republican former President George W. Bush. So whats left? Natsios asked. A group of former U.S. diplomats, national security figures and others condemned what it said was an opaque, partisan and rushed review process and urged Congress to intervene. The facts show that life-saving programs were severely cut, putting millions of people in allied countries at risk of starvation, disease and death, while giving Russia, China and other adversaries opportunities to gain influence abroad as the U.S. retreats, the group, the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition, said. The Trump administration gave almost no details on which aid and development efforts abroad it spared as it mass-emailed contract terminations to aid groups and other USAID partners by the thousands within days earlier this month. The rapid pace, and the steps skipped in ending contracts, left USAID supporters challenging whether any actual program-by-program reviews had taken place. Aid groups say even some life-saving programs that Rubio and others had promised to spare are in limbo or terminated, such as those providing emergency nutritional support for starving children and drinking water for sprawling camps for families uprooted by war in Sudan. Republicans broadly have made clear they want foreign assistance that would promote a far narrower interpretation of U.S. national interests going forward. The State Department in one of multiple lawsuits it is battling over its rapid shutdown of USAID had said earlier this month it was killing more than 90% of USAID programs. Rubio gave no explanation for why his number was lower. The dismantling of USAID that followed Trump’s order upended decades of policy that humanitarian and development aid abroad advanced U.S. national security by stabilizing regions and economies, strengthening alliances and building goodwill. In the weeks after Trump’s order, one of his appointees and transition team members, Pete Marocco, and Musk pulled USAID staff around the world off the job through forced leaves and firings, shut down USAID payments overnight and terminated aid and development contracts by the thousands. Contractors and staffers running efforts ranging from epidemic control to famine prevention to job and democracy training stopped work. Aid groups and other USAID partners laid off tens of thousands of their workers in the U.S. and abroad. Lawsuits say the sudden shutdown of USAID has stiffed aid groups and businesses that had contracts with it totaling billions of dollars. The shutdown has left many USAID staffers and contractors and their families still overseas, many of them awaiting back payments and travel expenses to return home. In Washington, the sometimes contradictory orders issued by the three men Rubio, Musk and Marocco overseeing the USAID cuts have left many uncertain who was calling the shots, and fueled talk of power struggles. Musk and Rubio on Monday, as Trump had last week, insisted relations between the two of them were smooth. Good working with you, Musk tweeted in response to Rubio’s announcement. Tough, but necessary, Musk wrote of Rubio’s announcement on the cuts. Ellen Knickmeyer, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
If youve ever been personally victimized by one too many bad jokes from a boss while standing around the water cooler, youre not the only oneand now theres research to substantiate that a boss whos trying too hard to be funny is no laughing matter. The finding that poor attempts at humor from a higher-up might actually affect job satisfaction, and not in a good way, comes from a new study published in the Academy of Management Journal and conducted by a team of researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and the London School of Economics and Political Science. Over the course of several different sessions, the researchers found that leaders who went overboard on puns and jokes drained their employees emotional energy, leading to reduced job satisfaction. The results are clear: When it comes to keeping up rapport at the office, its probably best to drop the Michael Scott act. Pretending to find your boss funny is draining In an initial study, researchers took to the field in Southern China. They paired up 88 managers and employees for a week-long period, during which one group of managers was told to improve general leader-follower interactions, while the other group was instructed to use humor in their interactions with employees, according to an article in the Harvard Business Review. At the end of the week, employees in the latter group reported elevated rates of surface acting”basically, pretending to find their boss funny in order to keep up morale. This additional emotional labor caused these employees to experience elevated levels of exhaustion, and in turn, dissatisfaction with their jobs. Authenticity matters A second study, conducted in the lab, found that there are further variables which can heighten or lessen the negative funny manager effect. This study followed 212 participants at a U.S. business school, who were told they would be part of a series of focus groups at a campus bookstore and then divided into high humor and low humor manager groups. This time, the researchers experimented with two different kinds of leaders, one who wore formal attire and took a more authoritative tone, and another who dressed casually and introduced himself with his first name. Once again, participants in all of the high humor groups were more exhausted and less satisfied. However, their negative feelings were magnified when paired with the more authoritative boss. The moderator had a lot of puns . . . I pretended to laugh to be nice, one participant in the authoritative group recalled. According to the researchers, this difference is attributable to the perceived power difference between the boss and their employees. The wider that gap grows, the more likely it is that excessive jokes will leave a bad taste in everyones mouth. Bosses, keep the puns to a minimum, even if they’re good For managers, these findings demonstrate that humor works best when its coming from an authentic place, rather than being used as a pre-calculated tool to encourage camaraderie. And even in the case of spontaneous humor, it might be best to think twice before you fire off the third pun in a row. Our findings challenge the assumption that leader humor is always a good thing, the researchers write for HBR. When used too frequentlyespecially when followers hold high power distance valuesit can backfire. [. . .] Instead, our results suggest that leaders should focus on fewer, higher-impact humor expressions. Less, in this case, might truly be more.
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E-Commerce
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