Day: December 18, 2023

AI may be coming to a grocery store near you.

Grocery delivery company Instacart is teaming up with retailers across the country to deploy its brand-new smart shopping carts.

The carts allow shoppers to scan their items directly in the cart, weigh produce and keep track of the total cost in real time. Customers are also able to use their loyalty accounts on the carts, giving them access to promotions and savings while they shop.

“The vast majority of shoppers are shopping on a budget,” David McIntosh, Instacart’s vice president and general manager of connected stores, told FOX Business. “Nobody wants to get to the checkout lane and have to put items back because you go over budget.”

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And shoppers agree. They tell FOX Business that overwhelmingly their favorite feature of the carts is seeing the running total of the items in their cart.

“When you’re on a budget you can see where you are at any given point. If you can continue, or if you need to switch items out,” said Keisha Branch, a customer at Fairway Market in New York City, one of the participating supermarkets.

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The carts are powered by Caper AI, which Instacart acquired in 2021 for $350 million. McIntosh said that the carts use AI technology to power their advanced recognition, scanning and weighing items.

The goal is increased personalization. One day, the company envisions the carts recognizing shopping habits and recommending products or recipes based on one’s preferences or dietary restrictions.

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“We can really start to take the magic of the online experience and bring it to the store,” McIntosh said.

Instacart isn’t alone in its development and rollout of the smart shopping cart, either.

Brick-and-mortar grocery stores, which still boast a dominant market share in the industry, are facing greater competition from delivery and online businesses. In response, companies are looking to integrate digital elements into the shopping experience.

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Amazon is developing its Dash Cart, which allows customers to log in and skip the checkout process. Albertsons is working with Seattle-based Veeve to deploy its smart carts in select stores, saying it reduces time spent in stores by 24 minutes.

Israel-based Shopic and Shufersal supermarket chains are deploying more than 2,000 smart-cart clip-on attachments in their stores. Rochester, New York-based Wegmans is testing them as well.

Instacart’s Caper Carts are available or will be available in the coming months in select Kroger, Schnucks, Sobeys, ShopRite, Fairway Market, Bristol and Geissler’s stores.

“Customers shouldn’t have to choose between shopping in-store and online,” said McIntosh. “It should be one single unified mode that works really well together.” 

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Now, there’s 28 days until the Iowa Caucus vote on January 15. Less than a month! The latest poll from CBS news/You-Gov shows Former President Trump with 58% of likely Iowa Republican Caucus-goers.

That puts him 36 points ahead of Governor DeSantis who is at 22% and 45 points ahead of Former Governor Nikki Haley who scores 13%. The Real Clear Politics polling average shows Mr. Trump +32% in Iowa, conforming to the CBS poll. Now, as I’ve said a million times, polls are not votes, but a good poll is a good snapshot of voter-thinking and clearly Iowans are thinking Trump. 

As I have opined before, one reason Mr. Trump is doing so well, is he’s campaigning on issues. Lately, in campaign rallies in New Hampshire and Nevada, Mr. Trump is focused on the economy, maintaining his tax cuts, tough on inflation, tough on trade, tough on the border, “drill, baby, drill,” and while overall inflation has come down. 

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Trump notes that food costs are up 20%, transportation and airfares up almost 30%, energy including electricity still up 25%, even Christmas trees up 10%, plus, he’s tough on law and order, including the collapse of the Democratic run cities. 

Quick note on Mr. Trump’s vision for cities: In Nevada he said, “Those tents and graffiti will be removed. Slum areas will be demolished and rebuilt to the highest level of architectural elegance.” This is from a former master builder himself and Mr. Trump has also said how he wants to restore Washington, D.C., which has become as bad as any of the bad cities across the country. The former president wants to restore Washington to its former grandeur. That’s a great vision. 

Here is a montage of his recent statements: 

DONALD TRUMP: DURHAM, NH/SATURDAY “Not one thing has gotten better under Crooked Joe Biden. Under the Trump Administration, you were better off, your family was better off. I will never let the Trump tax cuts be taken away from you, and with your vote in this election, we will cut your taxes even further.”

RENO, NV/SUNDAY: “On my first day back in the White House, I will terminate every open borders policy of the Biden administration”

CORALVILLE, IA/WEDNESDAY “I’ll end Joe Biden’s war on American energy and we will drill, baby, drill.” 

Meanwhile, a recent Fox News Poll regarding the Biden‘s illegal immigration and open border problem: 79% want to increase border agents. 67% want to deport illegal immigrants. 54% want to build the wall. 

Closing Joe Biden’s open borders will be the last issue of the old year. At this point I do not believe it will be resolved. Joe Biden’s left-wing will never buy a Trump tough border solution that includes the wall, “Remain in Mexico,” a new Title 42 and thousands of new border agents. 

The Republican solution to the problem is “catch and deport.” The Democrats want “catch and release.” Note that the Fox Poll shows 67% want to deport illegal immigrants. That is a policy Mr. Trump favors. He likens it to the Eisenhower Plan when President Ike had a team of strong generals who deported illegal immigrants already in the U.S. I don’t know if the Iowa poll will turn into Iowa votes, but I do know that former President Trump is on message and in touch with the great majority of Americans. That’s my riff. 

This article is adapted from Larry Kudlow’s opening commentary on the December 18, 2023, edition of “Kudlow.”

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Anixa Biosciences CEO Dr. Amit Kumar told FOX Business that the company is working on a “game-changing vaccine” that could prevent the recurrence of the most aggressive form of breast cancer.

It’s already being tested on women who were diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer. Kumar believes that the potentially life-saving vaccine could hit the market within the next five years. 

The vaccine was developed at Cleveland Clinic by the late Dr. Vincent Tuohy — who died earlier this year. Before his death, Tuohy and his team worked on the development of this vaccine for two decades, Kumar said.

“Various other types of cancer vaccines have been attempted and nothing has been successful,” Kumar told FOX Business. “The reason we believe that they failed is because of the mechanism of action that’s been utilized to try and destroy cancer cells.” 

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For the first time, Kumar believes the team may have made a breakthrough with a vaccine — administered in a series of three shots — that might be able to help more than just breast cancer patients. Eventually, he believes this vaccine could have the power to eliminate various forms of cancer.

After years of animal testing, the team received approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to begin human testing in 2021. In October 2021, Jennifer Davis was the first woman to undergo the series of shots.

“A lot of people, physicians, doctors, scientists, nurses, people like myself and others are going to be working on this before this vaccine is approved,” Kumar said. “But the people who should really get the credit are people like Jenny and all the patients who let us as scientists try the vaccine out.” 

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The mother of three was first diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer in the fall of 2018. She was only 41 years old. 

It was a harrowing reality and within a few weeks, she was assigned a team of doctors and nurses at Cleveland Clinic and started an aggressive chemotherapy treatment. She underwent four rounds of a “brutal chemotherapy drug” and was supposed to endure 12 more rounds of another chemotherapy drug afterward. 

However, she was forced to stop the second treatment short after suffering from neuropathy, a condition that left her unable to even button her own shirt. If she kept doing the chemotherapy, she could have ended up in a wheelchair for the rest of her life, Davis’ doctor warned. 

“In my mind, I thought the chemotherapy was what was going to save my life. So it was very difficult for me to finally stop,” she said. 

In 2019, she underwent a double mastectomy followed by 26 rounds of radiation.

According to the American Society of Clinical Oncology, as many as 50% of patients diagnosed with early-stage triple-negative breast cancer experience a recurrence. 

“How triple-negative works is once you’re done with standard of care, then that’s it. There’s no pill or anything that I could take that would ensure that this would not come back,” Davis said.

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If it does come back, it tends to be much more aggressive and metastatic, meaning it’s moved to other parts of the body, Kumar added.

Davis was one of 16 people who were part of the trial, which is still ongoing. Data released last week revealed that all women had an immune response. 

“That means that that vaccine taught my body to identify these cancer cells and destroy them before they become a tumor,” Davis — sporting a tremendous smile — said. 

Kumar said the team of scientists plans to test a few more women as part of their phase one trial. Starting in 2024, they will initiate a double-blind study with hundreds of women, which will be split into two groups. Both groups will have the standard of care, but one group will get a series of placebo shots.

“The ratio of recurrences within those two groups will tell us how good this vaccine is, even if we can prevent half those recurrences. It’s still a game changer,” Kumar said.

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Right now, the team is only testing the shots on women who have triple-negative breast cancer because of the high recurrence rate of the type of the disease. 

The goal, though, is to eventually test this vaccine on women with other types of breast cancer, Kumar said. Eventually, the team of scientists will test to see if this vaccine can address the prevention of cancer in women who’ve never had the disease. 

Davis and Kumar, both of whom have daughters, have expressed how critical it is to have a vaccine like this for their children.

Kumar said that if the team is successful in this vaccine, “there’s no reason why we couldn’t develop similar vaccines for other types of cancers,” he said. 

Meanwhile, researchers from the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle published findings in the journal JAMA Oncology last year that said an experimental vaccine against breast cancer safely generated a strong immune response to a key tumor protein. The findings, published in November 2022, might be able to treat different types of breast cancer, according to the university. 

The “results should be considered preliminary, but the findings are promising enough that the vaccine will now be evaluated in a larger, randomized clinical trial,” lead author Dr. Mary “Nora” L. Disis, said in a statement when the findings were published. 

The vaccine has been licensed to Korean biopharmaceutical company Aston Sci. The company has initiated a randomized Phase II study in human growth receptor 2, or HER2, low breast cancer. The study is open and actively enrolling at multiple sites.

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