Monday s Daily Pulse | 2/15/2021
Pandemic delays Florida redistricting, census data
Blaming coronavirus-related delays, the U.S. Census Bureau announced that data Florida lawmakers will use to redraw legislative and congressional boundaries won’t be delivered until September. The bureau had planned to start delivering census data to states on Friday and complete the rollout by March 31. Florida is expected to pick up at least two additional congressional seats with the new population count. More from the News Service of Florida and WJXT.
Fight over vacation rentals in Florida revs up again
A years-long effort to block local governments from regulating vacation rentals is on the move again, as House and Senate leaders revive a proposal to prevent cities and counties from inspecting and licensing properties offered on platforms such as Airbnb. In a 10-7 vote on Wednesday, the House Regulatory Reform Subcommittee gave an initial nod to the latest iteration of the proposal (HB 2
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Friday s Afternoon Update | 2/12/2021
Spring Break in a pandemic? Florida still expects a crowd
Spring Break, that booze-filled rite of passage for stir crazy college coeds, might be dead on arrival this year thanks to the coronavirus. But some wary Florida leaders aren’t counting on it. The thought of thousands of mask-free college students mingling on the sand the way they did last year just when the deadly pandemic was taking hold has some officials talking of curfews and maybe even beach closings to prevent another surge. More from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
Some jobless Floridians must resubmit unemployment paperwork to keep receiving benefits
A machine that revives non-beating donor hearts is enabling more transplants.
George Martin’s heart began failing in 2012, after he caught the swine flu. The 46-year-old Lockheed Martin engineer went on the heart transplant list in 2018 and came close to getting a heart twice only to learn in both instances the organs weren’t viable. Martin finally got his heart transplant at AdventHealth in Orlando last summer through a procedure known as “donation after circulatory death,” or DCD.
Until recently, hearts used for transplantation have been limited to those from donors who are brain dead but whose hearts were still beating at the moment of death. Transplanting hearts from patients who died of circulatory death, however, was considered too risky because of potential damage to the heart muscle from a lack of blood perfusion and oxygenation. But over the past five years, doctors in the United Kingdom and Australia have successfully been transplanting hearts following circulat
Honor Roll
The pandemic-fueled shift to online college learning proved a boon to Boca Raton-based Honorlock, an online test proctor founded by two Florida Atlantic University graduates.
Honorlock last year placed No. 236 on Inc.’s fast-grower list with 1,860% three-year growth. It raised $11.5 million in March as it plans to add to its 80 employees, further expand in the domestic market and develop the corporate and international market. Along with FAU and FIU, the company has UF and other Florida institutions as clients among several hundred nationally.
It’s led by CEO Michael Hemlepp, an investor who bought in along with Boca investor Dan Cane, who before co-founding Modernizing Medicine founded ed tech companies Blackboard and CourseInfo.