Have you heard of HeLa cells before? No? I will ask this question then: What is the largest cause of  death in the world? Yes. It is cancer leading causes of death in the world. The economic situation affects us all as private individuals and within community sectors.

Cancer cells are very different than normal cells. Cancer cells can live forever placed in the tissue culture, while, on the other hand, normal cells die after about 50 generations. This proof of cancer cell immortality came from HeLa cells, a cultured cancer cell line from a cervical tumor that was isolated from a woman named Henrietta Lacks.

She was a black tobacco farmer from southern Virginia, who was diagnosed with cervical cancer when she was 31 and died eight months later. In her radium treatment to kill the tumor, Doctor George Gey, the head of tissue culture research at Johns Hopkins, took a piece of her tumor without asking her and sent it to some scientists. They had been trying to keep human cells alive in culture for decades, but they all eventually died. Henrietta’s were different; they multiplied uncontrollably, reproducing an entire generation every twenty-four hours and they never stopped.

Dr. Gey named the cells “HeLa cells”, in honour of the initial two letters of name of the patient, but announced that he had created the first immortal human cell line with her tissue sample, and spent the rest of his life exploiting them. However, it appeared that until the 1970s, Ms. Lack’s family had no knowledge that their mother/wife/sister’s cells were being used for research and commercial purposes until 24 years after her death. And consequently, the history of this issue has been raised in ethical dilemmas surrounding the use of the HeLa cells. What do you think? Were they commercialized? Or were they just used for important human research.

Left: Henrietta Lacks, Right: HeLa Cells multiplying numerously

Reference:

http://bioethicsbulletin.org/archive/focus-on-hela-cells/

Recently, I have read Yan Kai Ng’s blog post on 3D printing technology.

This century in which we are living in, may be referred as technology era. From smartphones and tablets to 3D technologies, our knowledge on technology has been drastically improved with age, and technologies became one of the necessities that we need in our lives. And now, it is the beginning era of 3D printing.

I found it very fascinating that 3D printing has recently progressed from just printing plastic to being able to print more complex structures and even organic materials. It is amazing how researchers came to the point where they can even “print” human organs and skin to increase recovery rates of wounded patients. This is like what I saw in science fiction books or movies, and it has become a real thing?

I have also read a post about 3D printing technology on TEDTalks the other day, and it is unbelievable how and what humans can do now with this printing technology, and how much economic potential the 3D prints have. Here are some revolutionary visions of 3D printed future from Bastian Schaefer:

1. Rocket parts. Currently, NASA is working on the largest rocket constructed project, which is taking humans to Mars by 2030. By creating a single seamless 3D printed piece has reduced chance for leakage. Using 3D printed technology also has cut down the cost of manufacturing by almost half.

2. Guns. In 2012, Marc Goodman talked about the effects of new technologies like 3D printing. He pondered those technologies would have on crime by proposing a scary scenario: cheap guns and bullets that can be printed by anyone. A year later, Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson has actually created and shot the first 3D printed handgun, and up until a several months ago, blueprints were available on his website.

3. Meat and leather. The US startup Modern Meadow has been working on creating meat and leather products without killing animals. By using stem-cell samples taken from a biopsy, the cell is cultured until it is multiplied.Then those hundreds of live cells are printed in a bioink form, and the cells form living tissue. This is just too ridiculous to me.

Besides these three 3D printing future I have mentioned, there are more fascinating situations such as 3D fashion, 3D house and 3D eatable food. So, if you are interested to see more, follow the link I attached! It is quite shocking but funny in some way.

References:

http://blog.ted.com/2013/07/29/a-3d-printed-future-10-surprising-things-we-could-see-printed-soon/

I have posted one of the business leaders I admire recently. This post, yes, is about the leader who has done the worst job in his area in my perspective. His name is Jon Cornize, (you might never heard of him before) the former chairman and chief executive officer of MF Global Holdings Ltd:

Jon Cornize lacks many qualities to be a good leader. Although, he has held several positions of leadership, he was never held in respect due to his distrustful behaviour. He had a clear goal for his career to pursue development in the company, but his leadership at MF Global failed.People lost faith in him due to frequent business lies and his investigation by the FBI. When leaders lie, whatever the circumstances, rationalization and excuses, and bad things always follow. His untruthful behaviours caused allegations of malfeasance for missing 633 million dollars of clients’ funds; his egocentrism hurt employees and shareholders.

Despite such concerns, Corzine obstinately persisted in his opinions on making bets on European sovereign debt. Above all, he was lacking responsibility as a leader. Instead of taking the blame, Corzine rather blamed predecessors for MF Global’s fall. He just tried hard to cover up his mistakes and did not try to learn from his mistake. Eventually, he drove the company to ruin with his excessive investment and caused huge losses of about 6.3 billion dollars, and was branded as one of the worst CEO in the United States.

Reference:

http://topics.wsj.com/person/C/jon-corzine/6019

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/jon_s_corzine/

In response to Zeena Al Taher’s blog post on Lush and CSR:

It is quite surprising to see such company embracing corporate social responsibility in our competitive markets. The company Zeena posted, Lush, is a well-known eco-friendly and handmade products cosmetic company in North America. This company believes in buying and using ingredients that were not conducted tests on animals, and it makes handmade products using little or no preservative or packaging. As Zeena mentioned on her blog post, Lush is one of the leading activist company which has taken corporate social responsibility one step further. By embracing CSR, this company definitely has gained its brand name and positive recognitions from many customers. They have done a great job letting customers know about its values and concerns about environment. Instead of choosing creating shared value, which is for economic and societal benefits relative to cost, by choosing CSR, Lush has certainly found its own way to lead its future and be a role model company to many social-activist companies.

Hospitality and tourism industry are very fascinating industries. I once dreamed to be a hotel manager, and serve people with as much satisfaction and happiness I could give it to them. Now I see in a business perspective, I have found an admirable leader in hospitality industryㅡConrad Hilton.

Conrad Hilton, a founder of Hilton Hotel, is a dreamer and a committed leader. Jon Corzine, a former CEO of MF Global, is also a leader but infamous for his ego-centricism.

Born in a poor family as the eldest son, Conrad Hilton worked at a variety of occupations to help his family. He developed life experiences and learned to be patient. Admired leaders have a firm determination about themselves. Hilton had a dream and never gave up on his goal as an hotelier, seeking opportunities all the time. Though he started his dream as a bell boy at a hotel, and started his hotel business at the time of Great Depression, his strong ambition allowed him to achieve his dream, resulting in having Hilton hotels in 76 countries. Hilton also had a charismatic personality and great personal relationships.

Great leaders know how to think and act with optimism. They go for solutions, and find the silver linings in problems. They may change course, but they never give up. His great leadership skills have motivated many people especially those who dream of becoming hoteliers.

References:

http://www.infoplease.com/biography/var/conradhilton.html

http://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/conrad-hilton-165.php

South Korea is recorded the highest suicide rate in the OECD nations. And sadly, it is a common topic among Koreans that Korea’s suicidal rate ranks highest. Suicides are especially frequent near the bridges over the Han River in Seoul and the average death per day was around 45. Samsung Life Insurance came up with an idea of “Bridge of Life” campaign. This was a CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) campagin in partnership with Seoul City that tires to prevent future suicides. Their ultimate goals were to “create a campaign that stops suicide from emotional level [as oppose to technical ways such as installing more CCTV, making bridges less accessible to pedestrians]”.

They installed sensors on the guardrails, so that when people walk by, lights are turned on according to their movements. Along with that the lighted rails appears short messages like funny jokes and other phrases that would speak to the anxious minds of those attempting to end their lives.

[Photo1] SOS Phone Booth with buttons that call 911

[Photo2] An Art installation at the end of the bridge

As a result, the rate of suicide has actually gone down and not only that, but also the bridge has turned itself into a healing place as well as tourist attraction. So by doing this, Samsung Life Insurance indeed earned a great positive brand image and continuously remains as the most well-recognized and mostly well-known insurance company in Korea. (The video is attached. If you have not seen it before, I recommend you to see!)

References:

http://www.samsungvillage.com/blog/2013/06/bridge-of-life-reminds-you-of-the-good-of-life.html

In this technology-based generation, most of us use at least one social media services, such as Facebook, Instagram, Tumblrs or Twitter. As many people spend time communicating with people through these modern social networking, there are more competitions within the social networking markets and more threats from a younger generation of social outlets.

Among these rising social networking tools are such as Snapchat, WhatsApp, Line, Kakaotalk and Tumblr. Each of them has a different perspective on what social networking should be like ㅡ private messaging and creating contents with images and videos. Most of the services are going into the similar directions (with visual attempts) and most of the upstarts are not bringing in significant revenue. Consequently, many companies has been making changes to its service, mostly from feedback of competitors.

Twitter, for example, has stuck to its main vision of letting people share messages no more than 140 characters. It did not spend as much time on creating new products as they spend on engineering problems in its early days. However, recently the company has been making changes to its service, and some of them seem to be responses to the competitor’s. Twitter has broaden spaces for pictures instead of extending the limitation of characters. It is also introducing features that deliver information to uses automatically that people would like to follow. It is definitively in competitive advantage in a sense that it is “quick and immediate and short”, but it could present challenges down the road as the company to send its users relevant advertisements.

All the social networking markets, including Twitter, are always going to have international competition. And if all the companies aim for the same goal, there will be more of competition that leads to market inefficiency than it will to efficiency. Technologies will keep develop in the future, and those markets should keep feedback each other and try to meet with trends.

References:

About two weeks ago, there was a shutdown in the United States. The centre of this storm was from the Act President Obama tried to pass. This Act aims to make healthcare affordable to all people in the United State; this is known as “Obamacare”. Currently, the US medical expenses are steep. In order cover the medical expenses, people need the insurance, but insurance in turn is also expensive. The government provides Medicaid for people people below a certain income and for those over 65 years of age. However, those who do no meet the conditions for Medicare or Medicaid often cannot afford to buy individual health insurance. As a result, Obamacare makes having health insurance mandatory while making it affordable for everyone by making changes to certain tax rules.

In order to pass any Acts, the US House of Representatives and the US Senate must agree upon a budget following fiscal. This year however, the politicians were no able to agree on the budgetㅡwithout a budget, non-essential workers of the Government cannot be paid. The House of Representatives is largely controlled by Republicans and the US Senate is controlled by President Obama’s Democrats. And the Republican party, which was not pleased with the Act, continues its efforts to make changes to the Act.

This eventually led to the shutdown in US. It means the essential services such as social security payments and military services will continue to operate but employees of non-essential services will be asked to leave without payment. So how will this impact in the US economy? If employees are not paid, they will not have money to meet other obligations like rents and credit card payments, which will gradually cut US GDP off. Further, it will have some kind of impact to the world economy in terms of exports, but not much unless this draws into the long term. However, analysts do not believe that this incidence will go out into the long term.

References:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-24343698

http://news.yahoo.com/govt-shutdown-enters-2nd-week-no-end-sight-074025328–politics.html

Did you know that there is still child labours going on in the other side of the world?             And would you believe if there are still some people whose rights are violated because of your want for soccer ball?

Have you ever wondered who make soccer balls? The research found that there are workers stitching soccer balls in Pakistan, India, China and Thailand whose labour rights are violated.

As we know the soccer ball industry signed the “Atlanta Agreement”, which refers to the reports of violations of human rights in soccer ball production. However, the soccer ball industry including FIFA does not live up to their promises. The workers get wages below the legal minimum as it is rated low as US $0.35 per ball despite working 12-13 hours a day. What is worse, since making soccer balls take a long time workers can only produce maximum four balls each day. There are still gender discrimination against female home-based workers, who are paid the least amount of wages and face constant threat of losing the jobs due to pregnancy.

The soccer industry should keep up their promises to protect children’ and women’s rights from the unfair and unethical situations. It should keep outlining steps to improve working conditions, and keep consisting many organizations with campaigning about taking responsibility of the workers’ rights in their supply chain.

Companies should consider, before they produce a thing, if they are keeping promises as human-beings ㅡwhether they are being humane and ethical ㅡ before they take the profits from those unprotected workers. And we should be aware that there are still inhumane activities going on on the other side of the world, and try to help out to the extend we all can help or make the condition better.

References:

http://www.laborrights.org/stop-child-labor/foulball-campaign

http://www.ituc-csi.org/world-cup-soccer-balls?lang=en

What are ethics in business world? According to Investopedia, they are implemented in order to ensure that a certain required level of trust exists between consumers and various forms of market participants with businesses. Acting in an ethical way is very important in our daily lives and also in business because it is the way of building trust between persons. However, it is not easy to keep it all the times, and in fact, many well-known companies have been issued due to their business ethics.

Monsanto Company, a “sustainable agriculture company”, is the world’s largest seed company specializing in genetic manipulations and organisms. This company has spent numerous time modifying crops and conserving world’s’ natural resources. Their seeds have increased the quantity and availability of crops, and helped in world food production and revenues. However, Monsanto got its start making herbicide that would get more attention from public, and it did. For their first roundup herbicide, they said it is safe to humans that they labeled it as ‘biodegradable’. This would later be known as dioxin, a toxic chemical. Monsanto also has manufactured plastics, rubber goods, fuel additives, artificial caffeine by using dozens of toxic chemicals in the same environments where most of the world’s crops and seeds are produced.

Not only harming people in this way, but they also threaten farmers, especially those who try to start their businesses. Monsanto is a huge company and they have authority to often control the price of agricultural products, and what they actually do is by making their products very cheap they let consumers to buy more of their products over other companies’. But really, is Monsanto a ‘sustainable agricultural company’? How can we really trust this company for studying GMOs?

Reference:

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/business-ethics.asp

http://www.monsanto.com/whoweare/Pages/default.aspx

Monsanto: An evil company?