A giant meatball made from flesh cultivated using the DNA of an extinct woolly mammoth was unveiled on Tuesday at Nemo, a science museum in the Netherlands.The meatball was created by Australian cultured meat company Vow which - promising this was not an April Fools' joke - said it wanted to get people talking about cultured meat, calling it a more sustainable alternative for real meat.https://twitter.com/AFP/status/1641642101602668545?s=20"We wanted to create something that was totally different from anything you can get now," Vow founder Tim Noakesmith told Reuters, adding that an additional reason for choosing mammoth is that scientists believe that the animal's extinction was caused by climate change.The meatball was made of sheep cells inserted with a singular mammoth gene called myoglobin."When it comes to meat, myoglobin is responsible for the aroma, the colour and the taste", James Ryall, Vow's Chief Scientific Officer explained.Since the mammoth's DNA sequence obtained by Vow had a few gaps, African elephant DNA was inserted to complete it."Much like they do in the movie Jurassic Park", Ryall said, stressing the biggest difference is that they were not creating actual animals.While creating cultured meat usually means using blood of a dead calf, Vow used an alternative, meaning no animals were killed in the making of the mammoth meatball.The meatball, which has the aroma of crocodile meat, is currently not for consumption."Its protein is literally 4,000 years old. We haven't seen it in a very long time. That means we want to put it through rigorous tests, something that we would do with any product we bring to the market," Noakesmith said.Vow hopes to put cultured meat on the map in the European Union, a market where such meat as food is not regulated yet.
LEARN MOREChina's Huawei Technologies said it was "out of crisis mode" as it posted a small increase in annual revenue, adding it was making headway with replacing components affected by sanctions thanks to the billions it is spending on research. The tech conglomerate's revenue climbed 0.9%, in line with a company forecast, suggesting it has reached some level of stability after successive rounds of U.S. export controls since 2019 hammered its once mighty smartphone business. But it posted net profit of 35.6 billion yuan ($5.18 billion), down some two-thirds from 2021 when profit was helped by the sale of its Honor mid-range smartphone business. The decline was, however, still severe even when compared with 2020 - a drop of 44%. Top executives of the major supplier of equipment used in 5G telecommunications networks spoke at a news conference about how they had been pushed to "a fatal impasse" and "fought their way out" after Washington restricted its supply of chips and chip-design tools from U.S. companies. "2022 is the year that we pulled ourselves out of crisis mode. We're back to business as normal," said Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou, daughter of the company's founder. The U.S. has said Huawei represents a security risk, which it denies. Tension with the U.S. saw Meng detained for three years in Canada over alleged efforts to cover up attempts by Huawei-linked companies to sell equipment to Iran in breach of U.S. sanctions. Charges against Meng were dismissed and she returned to China in 2021. Huawei rotates its chairperson every six months and Meng is set to take up the position on Saturday.INDUSTRY SUPPORT R&D spending over the year rose 13.2% to 161.5 billion yuan ($23.50 billion), equivalent to a quarter of company revenue. Such spending helped Huawei with replacing components in its products that were hit by U.S. trade sanctions, Meng said. Founder Ren Zhengfei told a university in February they had replaced more than 13,000 parts. Chairman Eric Xu said they saw areas such as green development as opportunities and were investing in 5.5th and 6th generation technology, with the hope that they may be able to start rolling out 5.5G products by 2025. Xu, asked about recent comments about breakthroughs in electronic design automation (EDA) tools for chips produced at and above 14-nanometre technology, said the company had achieved that with its partners and that meant that Huawei could use its own EDA tools to design chips. Like Huawei, China's semiconductor industry has been the target of U.S. export controls measures and the company will render support to industry efforts to become more self-reliant, he said, without providing details. Revenue for 2022 came in at 642.3 billion yuan. While that represented mild growth over 2021, it was still far below the record 891.3 billion yuan logged in 2019 when it was the top Android smartphone vendor globally. Revenue from the enterprise division soared 30%, that of its telecommunications business inched up 0.9% while sales for its consumer electronic business tumbled 11.9%. Huawei's asset-to-liability ratio was 58.9% and it had a net cash balance of 176.3 billion yuan.
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