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This month, Houstonians have yet another good batch of online innovation events from Zoom panels to virtual conferences and you and your tech network need to know about them.

Here's a roundup of virtual events not to miss this month from workshops and webinars to summits and pitch parties.

Note: This post might be updated to add more events.

In Ioogo's free webinar, you will learn:

Plug and Play is pleased to co-host a signature Deep Dive with DCP Midstream. In this event, DCP Midstream and other industry leaders will review some decarbonization initiatives they have been leading along with industry opportunities in carbon capture, sequestration, and methane leak management. Leading startups with solutions in these areas will present.

The event is on Tuesday, April 6, at 9 am. It's free and can be accessed online. Click here to register.

The competition, entering its 21st year, gives collegiate entrepreneurs real-world experience to pitch their startups, enhance their business strategy and learn what it takes to launch a successful company. Hosted and organized by the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurshipwhich is Rice University's internationally-recognized initiative devoted to the support of entrepreneurshipand Rice Business. Over 20 years it has grown from nine teams competing for $10,000 in prize money in 2001, to 42 teams from around the world competing for more than $1.5 million in cash and prizes. For the first time in competition history, the 2021 event will showcase 54 student-led startups.

The competition takes place April 6 to 9. Two events are open to the public the elevator pitches on Tuesday, April 6, at 4 pm and the final round on on Friday, April 9, at 9 am. It's free and can be accessed live on YouTube. Click here to learnmore.

The product life cycle is complex. From gathering consumer data, to crafting a vision, and the many steps around execution, launch, and satisfaction, a career in product management requires leaders and teams to wear many hats. So, what does it take to be a great product manager? And what should you expect in a product role? Learn the ins and outs of this career with our panel of PMs, who will share their perspectives from a variety of backgrounds and industries at this event hosted by Liu Idea Lab For Innovation And Entrepreneurship (Lilie).

The event is on Wednesday, April 7, from noon to 1 pm. It's free and can be accessed online. Click here to register.

Join Greentown Lab's webinar to understand how prioritizing diversity and inclusion can build a stronger, happier, and more successful startup team. Co-hosted by Aleria Research, this online event is geared toward helping companies, regardless of size and maturity, build stronger, more diverse, and ultimately more successful teams.

The event is on Thursday, April 8, from 11 am to noon. It's free and can be accessed online. Click here to register.

Capital Factory welcomes you to our 3rd Annual Black In Tech Summit. Attendees can look forward to a keynote chat from a serial entrepreneur or investor, insightful discussion sessions, a startup showcase pitch competition, Epic Office Hours, and panels on relevant topics facing the tech ecosystem.

The event is on Tuesday, April 13, from noon to 2:30 pm. It's free and can be accessed online. Click here to register.

Celebrate The Ion's Aerospace Innovation Accelerator's Cohort 1, hear from thought leaders on the importance of the Accelerator and the Hub and how both contribute to economic resilience and workforce development, and meet the startups and MBEs selected to participate in the first cohort of the Aerospace Innovation Accelerator.

The event is on Wednesday, April 21, at 1:30 pm. It's free and can be accessed online. Click here to register.

Welcome Greentown Labs to Houston attendees will be able to meet startups that are a part of the program, hear from energy and civic leaders, catch the latest Greentown partners, and watch the building's ribbon cutting.

The event is on Thursday, April 22, at 2 pm. It's free and can be accessed online. Click here to register.

Support student startups in our annual pitch challenge with a chance to win cash prizes. Join Liu Idea Lab For Innovation And Entrepreneurship virtually for the H. Albert Napier Rice Launch Challenge Startup Competition. Rice-affiliated teams undergrads, grads, and MBAs - are competing for $65k in equity-free seed funding. Watch pitches, network with the Rice entrepreneurship community, and vote for your favorite idea. Attendance is open to Rice students, Rice alumni, and friends of Rice.

The event is on Thursday, April 22, at 6 pm. It's free and can be accessed online. Click here to register.

Today's energy companies are finding methane emissions/leaks big and small with an astounding range of technologies, Satellites, Fixed-wing Planes, Helicopters, Fixed Wing Drones, Quadcopters, Vehicles, and Handheld Devices/Sensors all drive emissions reductions, boost public relations, investor support and corporate ESG goals.

Which technologies and projects will add the most value and usher your energy operations into the next generation?

The event is on Thursday, April 29, at 10 am. It's free and can be accessed online. Click here to register.

Join General Assembly to explore sustainability and how business and tech impact the health of our planet. Hear from experts in clean energy, environmental entrepreneurship, corporate sustainability, and B Corporations who will share their insights into how the industry can impact the environment. In addition, walk away with actionable steps you can take to live and work more sustainably, network with other local professionals interested in ethical business practices, and gain insight into what actions different industries are really doing to be more sustainable.

The event is on Friday, April 30, at 11 am. It's free and can be accessed online. Click here to register.

Original post:
10+ can't-miss Houston business and innovation events online in April - InnovationMap

Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- The promised end of the pandemic draws closer with every shot in the arm. So in the first three months of 2021, traders raced to position themselves for a post-Covid world by girding for super-charged growth and higher inflation.This reflation trade put Treasuries on course for their worst quarter since 1980, with the global bond plunge sending yields surging to pre-pandemic levels. These sharp moves spooked investors, who were already turning away from pandemic favorites, like tech companies, into value stocks poised to benefit from economic reopening. Market fever dreams played out in cryptocurrencies and newfangled ways to take companies public. And even as the U.S. dollar proved its resilience, traditional haven currencies were battered.At the same time, recovery measures of new U.S. President Joe Biden helped to flood money markets and, if he has his way, this will soon be followed by trillions of dollars in additional infrastructure spending. All the while, the Federal Reserve shows little inclination to rein in long-end yields.Generally reflation has been the dominant driver of global price action, said Simon Harvey, senior market analyst at Monex Europe, who revised his dollar outlook this week. What wrong-footed most people coming into 2021 is just how aggressive the U.S. outperformance was going to be.Here are some of this quarters most notable moves:Treasuries RoutWith the size of U.S. stimulus putting the nation on course for a swift economic rebound from the pandemic, its no surprise that U.S. Treasuries led the global rates selloff. Theyre on track to record their worst quarter since 1980, according to Bloomberg Barclays indexes. By comparison, the retreat seen in Europe and Asia was in line with quarterly declines seen in 2019 and 2020, respectively.Treasuries extended losses this week, fueled by Bidens plans to accelerate the vaccine campaign and rebuild infrastructure. The divergence between U.S. and European markets was borne out in the spread between benchmark Treasuries and bunds, which widened more than 50 basis points. That about matched the move seen in the final quarter of 2016, and a bigger jump hasnt been seen since 1993.Read More: Bond Rout Reignites as U.S. Stimulus Bets Overshadow Quarter-EndDominant DollarThe climb in U.S. yields relative to major peers helped to drive a surge in the dollar that ran counter to many expectations for 2021 as the currency turned from a prime haven at the height of market turmoil in March 2020 into a bet on U.S. economic supremacy.Traditional havens of the currency world -- the Japanese yen and Swiss franc -- bore the brunt of the selling, with each suffering their worst quarter in years.The importance of pandemic recovery was evident across currency markets. In a change from last years Brexit wrangling, the outlook for the British pound was all about the U.K.s vaccine drive, which far outpaced the European Unions effort, setting the euro up for its worst quarter since 2015.Brazils currency, which fell more than 7%, was among the poorest performers over the period as the country struggled to contain its mounting Covid crisis. Turkey was one of the few emerging markets whose currency did even worse. While much of that is the result of a shock decision to fire the central bank chief, that move came after the monetary authority raised its benchmark in response to global rate and foreign-exchange pressures.Read More: Dollar Reigns Supreme With Rate Gaps Too Big to Be IgnoredStock RotationsBillions are on the move as investors rotate away from previously high-flying areas and toward pockets of the market that stand to benefit from a brightening economic outlook. In that environment, tech stocks -- 2020s undisputed winners -- have lagged, while smaller companies have outperformed. The Russell 2000 index of smaller firms outperformed the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 for the second-straight quarter, beating it by about 10 percentage points. Value stocks, too, stepped into the limelight, with the Russell 1000 value index beating its growth counterpart by roughly the same amount.We would expect that rotation to continue, said Adam Phillips, managing director of portfolio strategy at EP Wealth Advisors. Moving forward, its going to be more about the recovery plays, and thats not a story thats going away.But the rise in rates rattled more speculative corners of the market as investors started to question lofty valuations. Sentiment soured, for instance, on special purpose acquisition companies, a group that came to symbolize risky behavior in equities. An index tracking SPACs is down roughly 21% since its mid-February peak. Meme-stock mania also cooled: An index tracking companies including GameStop Corp. and Naked Brand Group Ltd. is down about 28% since its recent January high, data compiled by Bloomberg show.Youre seeing corrective phases in those previously hot areas, but its happening through a process of rotation, so the money is just going to other parts of the market, Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist at Charles Schwab, said by phone. There was so much hype and so much appreciation that, yes, I think its natural and healthy to see rollovers in those areas.Volatility EverywhereBut while benchmark stock indexes glide along, the subsurface churn has been extremely violent. A model from Bank of America that plots how much value is being created and destroyed each day in individual stocks shows that 2021 has generated more turbulence than virtually any other year. The volatility -- which is prevalent among small-cap stocks as well -- is just being masked because up-and-down moves in different companies over days and weeks have tended to offset each other.Read more: Blowups and Rotations Making This Market Just as Brutal as 2020Meanwhile, turbulence in the $21 trillion Treasury market has been on the rise. The ICE BofA MOVE Index, a gauge of U.S. bond volatility, has been grinding higher. The measure currently clocks in at 67, higher than its one-year average of 52 and well above Septembers low of 37.Commodities SupercycleRaw materials from copper to oil have started the year off strong, with investors flocking to commodities as a popular pandemic recovery trade and to hedge against inflation.The 23-member Bloomberg Commodity Spot Index in February reached the highest in almost eight years before easing this month, and still remains on track to notch a gain this quarter. JPMorgan Chase & Co. even went as far as to flag the start of a new commodities supercycle. An upcoming energy transition could constrain oil supplies, while at the same time boosting demand for metals required in renewables infrastructure, JPMorgan analysts said in a report last month.Bond SalesInvestors in credit benefited from a narrowing in spreads to pre-pandemic levels, but that did little to offset the negative impact from the broader rise in rates -- the Bloomberg Barclays U.S. Corporate Bond Indexs 5% drop has it on course for its worst quarterly return since 2008.Emerging-market bond spreads drifted wider, but the shift wasnt enough to throw bond sales off track. The gap between emerging-market hard currency debt and Treasuries rose seven basis points in the quarter, according to a JPMorgan Chase & Co. index, compared with a 335-basis point jump the same period last year.That said, cracks have recently started to show on issuance front. Indonesia shrank the size of a debt offering, Russia canceled a bond sale and South African debt saw lower demand than usual.Read More: The Sweet Spot Is Behind Us: Bond Rout Hits Deals Around WorldBitcoin BoomCryptocurrencies have had a marvelous 2021 so far. Bitcoin, the worlds largest digital asset, has doubled since the start of the year, gaining 104% in its second-best quarterly performance since June 2019. Much of its momentum has been driven by wider institutional acceptance, with more mainstream firms taking a greater interest in crypto assets. At the same time, applications for Bitcoin exchange-traded funds also trickled in, with Fidelity Investments the latest firm to join the list of crypto-ETF hopefuls.Meanwhile, fans, including Tesla Inc.s Elon Musk, have argued the coin can be a great store of value -- Bitcoin gained after the electric-vehicle maker said that it put more than $1 billion into the coin.Still, others worry its run up too far, too fast and could be losing its shine as speculation grows that retail investors are becoming less involved in the market. Bitcoin hit a record of $61,742 in mid-March and is roughly 4% off its highs.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.2021 Bloomberg L.P.

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Reify Health and SubjectWell Launch Partnership to Boost Patient Recruitment for Clinical Trials - Yahoo Finance

Semisopochnoi volcanoStratovolcano 1221 m / 4,006 ftUnited States, Aleutian Islands, 51.93N / 179.58ECurrent status: minor activity or eruption warning (3 out of 5) Semisopochnoi volcano eruptions:2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 1987Typical eruption style:unspecified

Fri, 2 Apr 2021, 08:00

FVAK21 at 07:48 UTC, 02/04/21 from PAWUVAAAK1VA ADVISORY

DTG: 20210402/0747Z

VAAC: ANCHORAGE

VOLCANO: SEMISOPOCHNOI 311060

PSN: N5156 E17935

AREA: ALEUTIAN ISLANDS

SUMMIT ELEV: 4006 FT [1221 M]

ADVISORY NR: 2021/001

INFO SOURCE: HIMAWARI/GOES/AVO

AVIATION COLOR CODE: ORANGE

ERUPTION DETAILS: ONGOING ERUPTION AS OF 20210402/0550Z.

OBS VA DTG: 02/0747Z

OBS VA CLD: SFC/FL100 N5422 W17556 - N5338 W17453 - N5138 E17952- N5207 E17913 - N5422 W17556 MOV ENE 35KT.

FCST VA CLD +6HR: 02/1347Z SFC/FL100 N5542 W17151 - N5542 W17148- N5426 W17032 - N5136 E17953 - N5205 E17908 - N5542 W17151.

FCST VA CLD +12HR: 02/1947Z SFC/FL100 N5557 W16602 - N5424W16643 - N5355 W17336 - N5137 W17959 - N5204 E17912 - N5512W17350 - N5557 W16602.

FCST VA CLD +18HR: 03/0147Z SFC/FL100 N5542 W16309 - N5423W16412 - N5409 W17205 - N5133 E17954 - N5204 E17907 - N5527W17053 - N5542 W16309 - N5542 W16309.

RMK: STG VA SIGNAL OBS IN SATELLITE IMAGERY EXTENDING NE OF THE VOLCANOSUMMIT.

NXT ADVISORY: WILL BE ISSUED BY 20210402/1347Z

JAM APR 2021 AAWU

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Semisopochnoi Volcano Volcanic Ash Advisory: ONGOING ERUPTION AS OF 20210402/0550Z. to 10000 ft (3000 m) - VolcanoDiscovery

Enlarge / The Free Software Foundation might be happy to have RMS back on its board, but much of the Free Software world feels otherwise. Last week, Richard M. Stallmanfather of the GNU Public Licensethat underpins Linux and a significant part of the user-facing software that initially accompanied the Linux kernelreturned to the board of the Free Software Foundationafter a two-year hiatus due to his own highly controversial remarksabout his perception of Jeffrey Epstein's victims as "[appearing to be] entirely willing."

As a result of RMS' reinstatement, Red Hatthe Raleigh, North Carolina-based open source software giant that produces Red Hat Enterprise Linuxhas publicly withdrawn funding and support from the Free Software Foundation:

Red Hat was appalled to learn that [Stallman] had rejoined the FSF board of directors. As a result, we are immediately suspending all Red Hat funding of the FSF and any FSF-hosted events.

Red Hat's relatively brief statement goes on to acknowledge an FSF statement on board governance that appeared on the same day:

But Red Hat says the statement gives it "no reason to believe that [the statement] signals any meaningful commitment to positive change."

This sentiment seems to be widely shared by many, including at least one FSF board memberKat WalshwhoopposedRMS' reinstatement and resignedher board position on the same day as the board's statement and Red Hat's withdrawal.

Immediately following Walsh's resignation, the FSF announcedthe creation of a new board seat, to be filled with someone from FSF union staff; on Sunday, it filled this new seat with senior system administrator Ian Kelling.

FSF President Geoffrey Knauth describes the new seat:

The board and voting members look forward to having the participation of the staff via this designated seat in our future deliberations. This is an important step in the FSF's effort to recognize and support new leadership, to connect that leadership to the community, to improve transparency and accountability, and to build trust. There is still considerable work to be done, and that work will continue.

Knauth, who began serving in his current role as FSF president in August 2020, declared that it's only a temporary gig:

I commit myself to resign as an FSF officer, director, and voting member as soon as there is a clear path for new leadership assuring continuity of the FSFs mission and compliance with fiduciary requirements.

The elephant in the room that the FSF's remaining board members seem determined to ignore is the continued presence of Stallman himselfwho, along with the rest of the FSF board, will soon need to undergo its new "transparent, formal process for identifying [members] who are wise, capable, and committed to the FSF's mission."

It's probably worth re-examining the FSF's stated mission to understand its choice to reinstate Stallman, who has been widely panned as far too controversial to make an effective software evangelist.

The Free Software Foundation is working to secure freedom for computer users by promoting the development and use of free (as in freedom) software and documentationparticularly the GNU operating systemand by campaigning against threats to computer user freedom like Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) and software patents.

Although this statement leads with "promoting development and use of [free software]," it immediately veers off into the Stallman-esque weeds with an implicit declaration that the GNU toolkit is an entire "operating system." From there, it moves into "campaigning against" perceived enemies of software freedom rather than campaigning for that freedom itself.

The next section, "Our Core Work," moves on from promotion entirely, which we'll summarize here with one bullet point per paragraph:

We suspect that closely examining the FSF's own mission statementsas opposed to simply assuming its missionanswers many of the questions about RMS' return. The FSF describes itself as an organization far more concerned with maintaining a part of history it holds dearand attacking its perceived enemies, whether real or notthan with discovery, outreach, and mentorship to new faces in free software.

Read more:
Red Hat withdraws from the Free Software Foundation after Stallmans return - Ars Technica

The aftermath of Richard Stallman rejoining the Free Software Foundation (FSF) continues as a long-time donor and contributor suspends its funding to the foundation. Red Hat announced that it will suspend any Red Hat funding to the FSF and any FSF-related event. Red Hat contributors have also announced they plan to stop participating in FSF-led or backed events.

The company announced that it was appalled to learn that Stallman had rejoined the foundations board of directors.

While the FSF says it is taking steps to adopt a transparent and formal process to identifying board candidates and appointing new members, Red Hat doesnt believe this signals any meaningful commitment to positive change.

RELATED CONTENT: The free software community calls for the removal of entire FSF board

In 2019, we called on the FSF board to use the opportunity created by Stallmans departure to transition to a more diverse, inclusive board membership. The FSF took only limited steps in this direction. Richard Stallmans return has reopened wounds we had hoped would slowly heal after his departure. We believe that in order to regain the confidence of the broader free software community, the FSF should make fundamental and lasting changes to its governance, the company stated.

If the FSF can change and once again go back to being an effective and trusted organization, Red Hat will reconsider its funding.

Continued here:
Red Hat suspends funding to the Free Software Foundation - SDTimes.com