Ownership interest: Baton Rouge engineering firm Forte and Tablada today announced that Brad Holleman and Jordan Pearson have acquired ownership interest in the company. Their ownership interest comes one year after the firm was acquired by Joey Coco and Chad Bacas. Holleman, senior vice president over the company’s survey and advanced measurements division, is a surveyor. Pearson, senior vice president over the company’s north Louisiana engineering division, is an engineer and leads the Shreveport/Bossier market.
Restarting study: After a 15-month COVID-19 stoppage, Pennington Biomedical Research Center is restarting a landmark National Institutes of Health effort to detail the exact molecular mechanisms that explain exercise’s health and anti-aging benefits. The study will collect blood, fat and muscle samples before, during and after exercise from around 2,600 volunteers at 11 clinical sites across the country.
Made to order: In a shift in the way it sells vehicles, Ford plans to do a bigger portion of its sales by having buyers order from the factory and wait, rather than pick from the selection available at the dealership, The Wall Street Journal reports. Company executives say efforts to shift more of Ford’s auto retailing operations to a so-called build-to-order model, where people custom-order online and take delivery at the dealership, would help cut inventory costs for the company and its dealers, and could become a trend in auto sales. Read the full story.
On the Delta front …
• The Louisiana Department of Health says 3,012 patients are in hospitals with COVID, with 441 of those patients are on ventilators, the most since the beginning of the pandemic. (WBRZ-TV)
• A Wall Street Journal analysis found that breakthrough COVID-19 cases are still relatively uncommon.
• The U.S. could start administering boosters of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines as early as mid-September. (Washington Post)
