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120,000 'excess deaths' linked to NHS funding cuts | In the first study of its kind, the British Medical Journal has reported that 120,000 deaths have occurred as a result of underfunding in the NHS since 2010. From analyzing trends between 2009 and 2014, researchers estimate an extra 152,141 people could die between 2015 and 2020, amounting to nearly 100 extra deaths every day. In the fragile Brexit negotiations, and considering the £350m weekly pledge by the Leave campaign, funding will be the determinant of these figures. The funds needed to close what the researchers are calling the 'mortality gap' would be £6.3bn per year.
| http://blogs.bmj.com/bmjopen/2017/11/15/health-and-social-care-spending-cuts-linked-to-120000-excess-deaths-in-england/ | 2017-11-16 13:09:43.010000 | Over 60s and care home residents most at risk; changes in nurse numbers may be key
The squeeze on public finances since 2010 is linked to nearly 120,000 excess deaths in England, with the over 60s and care home residents bearing the brunt, reveals the first study of its kind, published in the online journal BMJ Open.
The critical factor in these figures may be changes in nurse numbers, say the researchers, who warn that there could be an additional toll of up to 100 deaths every day from now on in.
They estimate that an annual cash injection of £6.3 billion would be needed to close this ‘mortality gap.’
Between 2010 and 2014, the NHS in England has only had a real term annual increase in government funding of 1.3 per cent, despite rising patient demand and healthcare costs.
And real term spend on social care has fallen by 1.19 per cent every year during the same period, despite a significant projected increase in the numbers of over 85s–those most likely to need social care–from 1.6 million in 2015 to 1.8 million in 2020, say the researchers.
While this mismatch in supply and demand and the funding gaps facing services have been well quantified, the potential impact on population health remains unclear.
To try and address this, the researchers mined nationally available data on population deaths, life expectancy, and potential years of life lost. And they collected data on health and social care resources and finances from 2001 to 2014.
They then compared actual death rates for 2011 to 2014 with those that would be expected, based on trends before spending cuts came into play, and taking account of national and economic factors, such as unemployment rates and pensions.
They categorised their findings by age, place of death, and the local government area in which the death occurred, and used these to estimate future death rates up to 2020.
Finally, they looked at the health and social care funds that would be needed in addition to those already budgeted by the government as of 2016 to close any gaps in death rates.
Analysis of the data showed that between 2001 and 2010, deaths in England fell by an average of 0.77 per cent every year, but rose by an average of 0.87 per cent every year between 2011 and 2014.
The spending restraints were associated with 45,368 excess deaths between 2010 and 2014 compared with equivalent trends before 2010.
Most of these deaths were among the over 60s and care home residents. And every £10 drop in spend per head on social care was associated with five extra care home deaths per 100,000 of the population, the analysis showed.
These associations remained after further detailed analysis and taking account of global and national economic factors.
Changes in the numbers of hospital and community nurses were the most salient factors in the associations found between spend and care home deaths. From 2001 to 2010 nurse numbers rose by an average of 1.61% every year, but from 2010 to 2014 rose by just 0.07%–20 times lower than in the previous decade.
On the basis of the trends between 2009 and 2014, the researchers estimate that an extra 152,141 people could die between 2015 and 2020, equivalent to nearly 100 extra deaths every day.
The funds needed to close this ‘mortality gap’ would be £6.3 billion every year, or a total of £25.3 billion, they calculate.
This is an observational study, so no firm conclusions can be drawn about cause and effect, but the findings back up other research in the field, say the researchers.
The study has several policy implications, as it indicates that lower spend on health and social care is “associated with a substantial mortality gap,” they explain.
Universal coverage is undoubtedly important, they write, but it has to be properly financed if it is going to improve health. And the excess deaths among older people and care home residents make a strong case for targeted interventions, they add.
“This includes funding increases in social care, in addition to maintenance or rises in nursing numbers aligned with demand,” they conclude.
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Fujitsu unveils inter-blockchain cryptocurrency exchange solution | Fujitsu has unveiled a smart-contracts-based technology to handle cryptocurrency exchanges between multiple, separate blockchains. Called ConnectionChain, the technology connects blockchains so that a series of transactions can be executed automatically in a single smart contract. With task processing included and the ability to synchronise the timing of executions, the technology aims to fill a gap by providing transparency at the processing stage of transfers. Fujitsu has expressed an interest in extending it to other areas like contracts, and is looking to commercialise the tech in the 2018 fiscal year.
| http://www.fujitsu.com/global/about/resources/news/press-releases/2017/1115-01.html | 2017-11-16 12:59:31.210000 | NOTE: this is an archived page and the content is likely to be out of date.
Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. today announced that it has developed its "ConnectionChain," a security technology that can safely and easily execute exchanges and payments in different virtual currencies.
A great deal of attention has recently been focused on virtual currency exchange among individuals and companies using initial coin offerings (ICOs)(1) to raise capital from the sale of virtual currencies. Settlement between virtual currencies managed using blockchains, however, requires a reliable application to handle the currency exchange processing at the boundaries between the blockchains, and ensuring transparency in this process has been an ongoing issue.
Fujitsu Laboratories has now developed an extension of smart contract(2) technology which inter-connects multiple blockchains by recording the series of related transactions on each chain in a dedicated blockchain, or a "connection-type chain," to link to the currency exchange into a single transaction process that can be automatically executed. It has also developed a transaction control technology to synchronize execution timing of the transaction process on each chain. With these technologies, transparency of transactions can be guaranteed, because all transaction processes are recorded as a trail in the connecting blockchains, even when they cross multiple chains.
In a trial that used this technology in a simulated virtual currency exchange system, Fujitsu Laboratories confirmed that when the currency exchange process was executed that the entire transaction trail for the virtual currency exchange was recorded in the connecting blockchain. These technologies make it easy to support payments in a variety of regional currencies, and operators can also easily setup special exchange rates for promotional campaigns.
Fujitsu Laboratories will continue expanding this technology beyond currency exchange to areas such as high-trust data exchanges between companies and contract automation, while also continuing to conduct trials in a variety of fields, with the goal of commercialization in fiscal 2018 and beyond.
Development Background
Without a central authority, blockchain offers high usability and guaranteed reliability due to being resistant to modification. It is therefore expected to be widely used in a number of fields, including finance and distribution. For this reason, it is said that around 2020, numerous blockchains will be set up across a range of fields. In addition, as applications in the financial field, there are ICOs in which companies and individuals sell virtual currencies to raise capital, as well as the issuing of proprietary virtual currencies by financial institutions. As a result, the volume of virtual currency being issued is skyrocketing, and it is expected that demand will increase for solutions that can handle transfers between these sorts of virtual currencies or data exchanges managed by blockchains.
Issues
With services to exchange virtual currencies or other assets, existing smart contracts merely execute transactions or contracts automatically and operate only within the limited scope of a single blockchain.
There were two major issues when executing exchanges across multiple blockchains, as follows (figure 1).
1. The need to ensure transparency in the application located between the blockchains, which handles the processing for things like the exchange rate and handling fees.
2. The need to control transaction timing across multiple blockchains, and to deal with them as a single continuous series.
About the Newly Developed Technology
Now, Fujitsu Laboratories has developed connection-type chain security technology that can safely and easily execute payments between different virtual currencies (figure 2).
Details of the technologies are as follows.
1. Extended Smart contract technology
Fujitsu Laboratories has enhanced the capability of smart contracts, which automate contract processing and the handling of such tasks as placing orders and payments, to also be able to handle processes involving multiple blockchains.
This technology is enabled by adding new nodes to connect blockchains, forming ConnectionChain, a blockchain used for connecting blockchains. The block data containing the relevant transaction process is extracted from the two blockchains via this connection node, and each transaction process is connected. This enables the entire series of transactions, including task processing on the ConnectionChain, to be automatically executed as a single smart contract.
By inheriting capability of the blockchain on handling the linking and task processing, rather than trusting to an application, operators can ensure the transparency and confirm the accuracy of the processing.
2. Transaction control technology
Fujitsu Laboratories has developed technology to control the transfer of assets in response to transaction processes across all blockchains that make up a system, designing an asset depositing concept that can put asset-transfer on hold, which did not previously exist in blockchain transactions. This technology controls the timing of the transaction processing in each chain, first putting the asset on hold temporarily without confirming the transaction process on the asset-holder's side, then, after confirming the currency transfer from the recipient, confirming the transaction status for the asset-holder, and so on. This enables users to put the entire transaction process into a waiting state, which was difficult with existing blockchain technology, and then either confirm or cancel the transaction process based on the overall outcome.
Effects
In a trial that used this technology in a simulated virtual currency exchange system, Fujitsu Laboratories interconnected two blockchains using different architectures to a system for exchanging proprietary virtual currencies, and executed asset transfers by exchanging virtual currency. The results confirmed that the transaction records relating to an asset transfer, including the transaction IDs on each blockchain, the amount of assets transferred, and the results of those transactions, were recorded on ConnectionChain as a single transaction (figure 3, left). In addition, if a transaction across blockchains were to fail while in progress, for reasons such as an inability to pay or settle, Fujitsu Laboratories also confirmed that the ID and timestamp for the transaction process that returned the assets on hold to their original owner was recorded (figure 3, right).
This technology will make it easy for small businesses, such as small-scale online shops that might be operated by a single person, and which accept virtual currencies, to support new regional currencies, and it also enables the operator to freely define exchange rates, enabling initiatives such as preferential exchange campaigns for users who hold a particular virtual currency.
Future Plans
Fujitsu Laboratories aims to expand this technology beyond currency exchange to areas such as high-trust data exchanges between companies and contract automation, while also continuing to conduct trials in a variety of fields, especially in finance, with the goal of commercialization in fiscal 2018 and beyond. |
Foxconn proposes autonomous car lane to serve Wisconsin factory | Taiwanese company Foxconn has suggested to the Wisconsin Department of Transportation that some lanes on Interstate 94 could be reserved for autonomous vehicles. The route is set to be expanded from six lanes to eight in preparation for the increase in traffic after Foxconn's $10bn, 20 million sq ft Midwest facility opens. Although the company's proposal is one of several being considered, the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce has also suggested a similar self-driving lane be built between Foxconn's site and Milwaukee's Mitchell International Airport. | http://www.thedrive.com/tech/16062/foxconn-floats-the-idea-of-autonomous-vehicle-only-lanes-on-wisconsin-interstate | 2017-11-16 12:54:46.107000 | Foxconn, the Taiwanese company known for doing contract manufacturing for companies like Apple, brought up the idea of adding autonomous vehicle lanes to a stretch of Interstate 94 near its new Wisconsin factory in a meeting with regional officials, according to the Journal Sentinel.
The highway is already slated to be widened from six lanes to eight in anticipation of traffic from the factory, which will cover 20 million square feet and cost $10 billion to build. But Foxconn reportedly suggested that some lanes be reserved for autonomous vehicles only. Tim Sheehy, president of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce, suggested that driverless-vehicle lanes could connect the Foxconn factory with Milwaukee's Mitchell International Airport.
That doesn't mean the dedicated lanes are anywhere close to a done deal, though. A spokesperson for the Wisconsin Department of Transportation told the Journal Sentinel that the autonomous-driving proposal is just one of many "on the table." Implementing the plan would likely require significant legal wrangling...not to mention the acquisition of a fleet of autonomous vehicles.
Foxconn announced plans for an autonomous-vehicle development center in Michigan in August, so the company is definitely interested in the technology. Michigan has a fairly open attitude to self-driving cars, which isn't surprising, given the massive auto industry presence in the state. But it's unclear how Wisconsin will handle autonomous vehicles—or if officials are really willing to dedicate highway lanes to them. |
Foxconn proposes autonomous car lane to serve Wisconsin factory | Taiwanese company Foxconn has suggested to the Wisconsin Department of Transportation that some lanes on Interstate 94 could be reserved for autonomous vehicles. The route is set to be expanded from six lanes to eight in preparation for the increase in traffic after Foxconn's $10bn, 20 million sq ft Midwest facility opens. Although the company's proposal is one of several being considered, the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce has also suggested a similar self-driving lane be built between Foxconn's site and Milwaukee's Mitchell International Airport. | https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/14/foxconn-driverless-cars-wisconsin-highway/ | 2017-11-16 12:54:46.107000 | A US freeway may get self-driving car lanes thanks to Foxconn The I-94 highway connects to the Apple supplier's upcoming facility in the Midwest.
Wisconsin highway planners are studying the possibility of placing driverless vehicle lanes on I-94 to serve Foxconn's mega factory in Racine County. The Taiwanese company -- supplier to tech firms including Apple, Microsoft, and Nintendo -- reportedly made the suggestion at a meeting with regional officials, according to USA Today's Journal Sentinel.
Foxconn's $10 billion midwest facility will span 20 million square feet and could create up to 13,000 jobs. That's an awful lot of humans commuting back and forth from work, and that's before you take into account the goods getting hauled in. But, seeing as the I-94 highway is getting a bump from six to eight lanes anyway, regional officials figured they were prepared for the uptick in traffic. Foxconn, it seems, has other ideas in mind.
While companies like Uber and Waymo are trialing self-driving vehicles on roads across the US, there's also been talk of dedicated lanes for robocars (and trucks). Last year, VC firm Madrona Ventures floated the idea for replacing the I-5 freeway between Seattle and Vancouver with an "autonomous vehicle" corridor.
But, Foxconn's desire to yield regular car lanes to driverless vehicles could be a way off yet. A spokesman for the Wisconsin Department of Transportation told the Journal Sentinel that the proposal is just one of many "on the table." One possibility, according to Tim Sheehy (president of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce), is driverless lanes between the Foxconn plant and Milwaukee's Mitchell International Airport. |
International tech labour deterred from London firms due to Brexit | One in three tech companies in London has seen potential international hires fall through due to the UK's decision to leave the EU. Tech London Advocates said two thirds of businesses surveyed believed London's reputation has been damaged by the Brexit vote. Theresa May has announced plans to double the number of Tier 1 visas available, to draw talent in. Despite this, those surveyed still believed London is the best place in Europe for start ups, affirmed by announcements Facebook, Google, Amazon and Snapchat have that they plan expand in London since the Brexit vote.
| https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/brexit-latest-updates-workers-london-tech-firms-european-union-eu-withdrawal-a8058116.html | 2017-11-16 12:45:26.753000 | Sign up to our free Brexit and beyond email for the latest headlines on what Brexit is meaning for the UK Sign up to our Brexit email for the latest insight Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the
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A third of London’s tech companies have lost out on international hires due to Britain’s decision to leave the European Union last year, according to a new survey.
Industry body Tech London Advocates said almost two thirds of tech entrepreneurs believe Brexit has already damaged the capital’s international reputation as a leading tech hub.
Despite the findings, over half of the 5,400 tech founders surveyed believed London remains the best place in Europe to start a tech company.
The majority of London’s tech community also believes that future investment in the capital’s tech sector will come from North America rather than Europe.
“Entrepreneurs are defined by their ability to turn challenges into opportunities and the sentiment across London’s tech sector is increasingly one of determination, conviction and ambition”, said Russ Shaw, founder of Tech London Advocates.
“Slowing down access to European talent will make growing a tech company harder, but London is focused on strengthening its relationship with tech hubs across Europe and around the world that are already fuelling our investment pipeline.”
Prime Minister Theresa May said on Tuesday that the UK is to double the number of visas available to workers in tech and science after Brexit.
Tech giants including Facebook, Google and Amazon have all announced plans to open London offices since the Brexit vote, but have cited the challenge of attracting top talent. |
Bidalgo to become a Google Premier Partner for Mobile Advertising | As part of a plan to reportedly reach $250m in revenue this year, Bidalgo is joining the Premier Partner for Mobile Advertising programme in Google's Universal App Campaigns (UAC). Google's UAC helps marketers target ads based on their business goals across all Google properties, as well as third-party sites and apps in the Google Display Network. Bidalgo, which was founded in Tel Aviv, offers an advertising platform and has marketing partnerships with Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Pinterest. CEO Peli Beeri said in October the company had averaged $25m of revenues in each month for the past three months.
| https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/310250/ | 2017-11-16 12:34:59.133000 | by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, November 15, 2017
In a partnership announced Wednesday with Google, Bidalgo is joining the Premier Partner for Mobile Advertising program in Google's Universal App Campaigns to help app marketers "master" UAC, which helps marketers target ads based on business goals across Google Play, Google Search,
YouTube and the millions of third-party sites and apps in the Google Display Network.
Part of Bidalgo's plan may be to reach $250 million in revenue this year -- up from $86 million in 2016, according to one report. Peli Beeri, CEO of Bidalgo, told VentureBeat in October that the company has averaged $25 million in revenue each month for the past three months. With that type of run rate, the company could generate $300 million in revenue in the next 12 months as it becomes the go-to source for brands that are looking to buy mobile ads to promote apps and games.
Bidalgo, which got its start in Tel Aviv, Israel, touts that its automated advertising platform runs on artificial Intelligence. And that aside from Google, it has official marketing partnerships with Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Pinterest.
advertisement advertisement
Games developer Pixelberry Studios worked with Bidalgo on the UAC platform to become a top 25-grossing app in the U.S., to grow revenue across a diverse gaming portfolio, and drive effective app marketing with a focused team.
With three employees leading marketing efforts, Pixelberry reached specific goals by working with Bidalgo. Those goals include landing on the top 25-growing apps in the U.S., increasing scale by four times across UAC in six months, and achieving 250% higher return on ad spend with UAC for measurable actions compared with installations.
The two companies worked to identify creative elements and design a large set of high-performing creative assets for the campaign. |
UK inflation remains at five-year high of 3% | The UK's inflation rate remained at 3% in October, a whole percentage point above the government's inflation target, according to a new report by the ONS. Wages are growing at a lesser rate of 2.2% and employment fell by 14,000 people. On the other end of the scale, output grew at its fastest rate in six years - however this follows a considerable dip in the period following the recession of 2007.
| https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/bulletins/consumerpriceinflation/october2017 | 2017-11-16 12:23:43.530000 | 2. Things you need to know about this release
An article sets out the impact of planned improvements to the CPIH and CPI, designed to improve the representativeness of price movements of volatile items (specifically fresh fruit and vegetables).
The National Statistics status of the Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers’ housing costs (CPIH) was reinstated on 31 July 2017. A letter (PDF, 160KB) from the Director General for Regulation to the National Statistician detailed the actions that were taken to meet the requirements as set out in the CPIH assessment report.
We have illustrated our future approach to measuring changing prices and costs faced by consumers and households using three “use cases”, along with how they relate to the measures that we currently publish and those that are under development. Specifically, they refer to the CPIH as our lead measure of inflation based on economic principles; the Household Costs Indices (HCIs, currently under development) as a set of measures to reflect the change in costs as experienced by households; and the Retail Prices Index (RPI) as a legacy measure that is required to meet existing user needs.
Consumer price inflation is the rate at which the prices of goods and services bought by households rise or fall. It is estimated by using price indices. One way to understand this is to think of a shopping basket containing all the goods and services bought by households. Movements in price indices represent the changing cost of this basket. Consumer price indices – a brief guide gives an overview of the indices and their uses.
The most common approach to measuring inflation is the 12-month inflation rate, which compares prices for the latest month with the same month a year ago. In any given month, the 12-month rate is determined by the balance between upward and downward price movements of the range of goods and services included in the index.
This release also examines how the various types of goods and services contribute to the change in the 12-month inflation rate between the latest two months. The size and direction of these contributions depends on how prices changed between both the latest two months this year and the same two months last year. For example, the price of a product could make an upward contribution to the change in the rate even if it fell, provided that it fell by less than it did between the same two months a year ago. Explaining the contribution to change in the 12-month rate covers this concept in more detail.
The CPIH is the most comprehensive measure of inflation. It extends the CPI to include a measure of the costs associated with owning, maintaining and living in one’s own home, known as owner occupiers’ housing costs (OOH), along with Council Tax. Both of these are significant expenses for many households and are not included in the CPI.
Aside from including OOH and Council Tax, CPIH is otherwise identical to CPI. This means that, aside from these two components, the factors contributing to the CPI rate are the same as those contributing to the CPIH. For example, if food is reported as increasing the CPIH rate, it is also acting to increase the CPI rate. The size of the contributions for components other than OOH and Council Tax are exaggerated in the CPI compared with the CPIH because they account for a larger proportion of the overall index.
The CPI is produced at the same level of detail as CPIH, in the accompanying dataset and time series dataset.
The Retail Prices Index (RPI) does not meet the required standard for designation as National Statistics. In recognition that it continues to be widely used in contracts, we continue to publish the RPI, its sub-components and RPIX. To view the all-items RPI and 12-month inflation rate and an at-a-glance comparison with other measures, please see the time series section of the inflation and price indices area of our website. The accompanying dataset and time series dataset provide more detailed information.
The figures in this publication use data collected on or around 10 October 2017. |
UK inflation remains at five-year high of 3% | The UK's inflation rate remained at 3% in October, a whole percentage point above the government's inflation target, according to a new report by the ONS. Wages are growing at a lesser rate of 2.2% and employment fell by 14,000 people. On the other end of the scale, output grew at its fastest rate in six years - however this follows a considerable dip in the period following the recession of 2007.
| http://uk.businessinsider.com/uk-brexit-economy-snapshot-2017-11 | 2017-11-16 12:23:43.530000 | It has been a week of troubling data for the British economy.
Inflation remained at a five-year high of 3%.
Employment fell by 14,000 people. Employment figures have been almost universally positive for the last two years.
Retail sales witnessed their first year-on-year slump for four years.
LONDON — On three consecutive days, the Office for National Statistics released vital data about the health of Britain.
And the picture that data painted was, in a word, worrying.
On Tuesday morning, the ONS showed that inflation remained at a five-year high of 3% in October. Sure, it didn't go up from the previous month, but it remains a whole percentage point above the government's official inflation target and analysts expect a further rise before the end of the year.
High inflation might be manageable for regular Brits if wages were keeping up. Unfortunately, they aren't. Wage numbers released on Wednesday showed nominal wages grew by 2.2% over the most recent data period. This effectively means that the amount Brits have to spend is falling. In a healthy economic climate, this should be the opposite.
Slowing consumer spending and overall household consumption are widely acknowledged to have been behind the slowdown in the wider British economy this year, which has pushed the UK to the bottom of the pile in terms of GDP growth in major economies.
The extent of the consumer slowdown was brought into further contrast by news on Thursday morning that retail sales shrunk during October compared to last year. As Ian Gilmartin, head of retail and wholesale at Barclays Corporate Banking pointed out, this is the "first dip in year-on-year quantity sold for several years." In fact, the last time there was a year-on-year drop like this was in September 2013.
Retail sales represent around one-third of consumer spending, and provide a good indication of how people are feeling about the state of their finances. As Pantheon Macroeconomics' Samuel Tombs explained, the most recent data "shows consumers’ cautious mindset."
"While today’s number has beat expectations, it comes after a clattering fall in September and does nothing to ease concerns that the High St is under severe pressure heading into the only time of year that it makes any money," Jeremy Cook, chief economist at WorldFirst said.
"The real wage picture is not supportive of consumption, neither is the consumer credit outlook. Therefore we remain very concerned for consumer focused businesses and their wider contribution to growth."
So, inflation is high, wages aren't growing quickly enough to keep up, and people are buying less in the shops. But what about employment — the jewel in the crown of Britain's economic recovery since the financial crisis?
After several years of falling, it finally looks as if a reversal might be coming in the British jobs market. Wednesday's jobs data may have showed another small fall — 59,000 fewer people out of work — but for the first time in a long while, the number of people in work fell as well, dropping by 14,000 between July and September.
"After two years of almost uninterrupted growth, employment has declined slightly on the quarter," senior ONS statistician Matt Hughes said.
This doesn't appear to be a blip, Tombs argued on Wednesday, saying that "the stagnation of job vacancies indicates that employment growth will remain weak over the coming months."
A glimpse of positivity?
To be fair, Wednesday also saw the announcement of an increase in the UK's average output per hour — a key measure of productivity. Output grew at its fastest rate since 2011, according to the ONS' flash estimate.
Productivity growth in the UK since the financial crisis has been virtually non-existent, leading Bank of England Governor Mark Carney in December 2016 to describe the last 10 years as "the first lost decade since the 1860s" when "Karl Marx was scribbling in the British Library."
Philip Wales, the ONS' head of productivity, urged caution on Wednesday's data, saying that "the medium-term picture continues to be one of productivity growing but at a much slower rate than seen before the financial crisis."
Later in the day, Ben Broadbent, the Bank of England's Deputy Governor for Monetary Policy also issued a warning on productivity, saying it is not "inconceivable" that Brexit could lead to a "sharp step down" in the UK's output growth, and comparing it to the financial crisis in terms of potential downside.
"We saw a sharp step down in productivity growth after the financial crisis. And I think there are things involved in Brexit that, once one digs below the macro-economic surface, could potentially do the same," Broadbent said, adding that the crisis led to a slowing of productivity growth for a "painfully long time."
So even the one glimmer of hope in the British economy is something of a false positive.
Growth will slow further
All of these negatives mean that overall GDP growth is also set to slow further, having already taken a leg lower since last summer.
UK growth will lag behind virtually every other major European nation for the next handful of years, according to estimates from the European Commission released last week.
The commission's figures suggest that by 2019, UK economic growth will have slowed to just 1.1%, slower than Italy, Spain and Greece.
Here's the chart:
European Commission
"The European Commission’s latest set of forecasts does not make for particularly pleasant reading for UK policymakers, showing as it does a continued slowdown in UK GDP growth," said Commerzbank’s top UK economist Peter Dixon.
Growth, the commission points out, has already slowed significantly in the UK in the last couple of years, falling from 2.3% in 2017, to just 1.8% in 2016. By the end of 2017, growth will likely be around 1.4%-1.5%. That will get even worse in 2018 and 2019, as continued uncertainties surrounding the shape of Brexit take hold.
"Given the ongoing negotiation on the terms of the UK withdrawal from the EU, projections for 2019 are based on a purely technical assumption of status quo in terms of trading relations between the EU27 and the UK. This is for forecasting purposes only and has no bearing on the talks underway in the context of the Article 50 process," the European Commission's forecasts note.
"Under this assumption, GDP growth is still expected to remain subdued at 1.1%. Lower consumer price inflation in 2019 is expected to support private consumption but this may be partially offset by a marginal increase in the household savings rate.
Let's be clear, there may be issues with the British economy that existed before Brexit. Productivity, for example, hasn't simply stopped growing because of the referendum.
However, Brexit is pretty much the only game in town when it comes to the economy and companies' investment decisions, and it is now virtually impossible to deny the negative impact it is having on the economic fortunes of regular Brits and the wider nation. |
'Memory prosthesis' improves human memory for the first time | A professor from the University of Southern California has developed a device which can improve the human memory. Research associate professor of biomedical engineering Dong Song collected data from brain electrodes implanted in 20 volunteers during memory improvement tests. Song's device then analysed the patterns to find the best-performing areas of the brain, before stimulating them in the same way. This resulted in a 15% improvement in short-term memory, and working memory boosted by a quarter. The work could lead to a breakthrough for Alzheimer's and dementia sufferers. | https://www.newscientist.com/article/2153034-brain-implant-boosts-human-memory-by-mimicking-how-we-learn/ | 2017-11-16 12:21:30.110000 | It’s all starting to take shape Lea Paterson/Science Photo Library
A “memory prosthesis” brain implant has enhanced human memory for the first time. The device is comprised of electrodes implanted in the brain, and is designed to mimic the way we naturally process memories, and can boost performance on memory tests by up to 30 per cent. A similar approach may work for enhancing other brain skills, such as vision or movement, says the team behind the work.
“We are writing the neural code to enhance memory function,” says Dong Song of the University … |
No-deal Brexit risks €1.3tn of financial services contracts: MEP | Financial services contracts worth around €1.3tn ($1.5tn) that "are of huge importance for the financing of the EU economy" could become null and void in the event of a no-deal Brexit, according to Irish Fine Gael MEP Brian Hayes. The long-term contracts, mainly related to insurance and derivatives, were due to last well beyond the UK's proposed 2019 departure from the EU, and a no-deal scenario would mean "complete uncertainty about the value of the outstanding assets and how they would be redeemed", said Hayes.
| http://www.irishtimes.com/business/financial-services/1-3-trillion-of-financial-services-contracts-at-risk-from-brexit-1.3294163 | 2017-11-16 12:09:31.450000 | Up to €1.3 trillion worth of financial services contracts are at risk from the UK crashing out of the EU without a deal, Fine Gael MEP Brian Hayes has warned.
Mr Hayes said the EU’s regulatory framework enables financial services to be “passported” between the UK and all EU countries, but this framework will cease to apply after March 2019 when the UK leaves the EU.
“And if no arrangements are put in place to manage the fallout from the change in the regulatory relationship between the UK and the EU, then over €1.3 trillion worth of financial services contracts are at risk,” he said.
“These are agreed long-term contracts whose lifespan lasts well beyond Brexit. They relate mainly to insurance and derivatives and are of huge importance for the financing of the EU economy,” Mr Hayes said.
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“If we have a no-deal scenario, effectively a cliff edge, many of these financial services contracts will be null and void and there is complete uncertainty about the value of the outstanding assets and how they would be redeemed.”
The UK government wants a trade pact with the EU in financial services but EU negotiators are dismissive of the trade models being put forward by London, noting it is not possible to be half in and half out of the single market. |
Betterment allows users to donate shares to charity | US robo-adviser Betterment has begun to let investors donate to charity via its platform. Users can donate to participating charities in the form of shares of stock. Users define an amount they wish to donate and the robo-adviser transfers to the charity by re-allocating the stocks which have appreciated the most within a portfolio. UNICEF, the Wounded Warriors Family Support, Save the Children and The Breast Cancer Research Foundation are among participating organisations. The service is due to launch at the end of this month. | http://www.wealthmanagement.com/technology/free-paper-and-fees-betterment-users-can-now-donate-shares | 2017-11-16 11:42:56.707000 | Betterment users can now donate shares from their portfolios directly to charitable organizations with an account on the automated advice platform, a feature industry experts said is a another step toward the robo advisor offering more holistic services to investors.
The company announced the new feature Wednesday, along with a number of organizations already on board, including UNICEF, the Wounded Warriors Family Support, Save the Children and The Breast Cancer Research Foundation. Those charities and others will be able to receive donations in the form of shares of stock. More partnerships are expected to be announced in the future. The feature will launch Nov. 28 and also be available through Betterment for Advisors.
“We’re throwing technology at the problem like we usually do,” said Alex Benke, Betterment’s vice president of Advice and Investing.
Benke said the Charitable Giving feature has been on Betterment’s to-do list and now seemed as good a time as ever given the year’s market performance and interest from investors. There was some concern that charitable organizations would be hesitant to open an account with the robo advisor, but the benefits ultimately overcame any perceived risk, he said.
Through Betterment, 100 percent of share contributions make it to the organization. But donors and charities also enjoy respective benefits from using the feature.
Investors choose the amount they want to donate and Betterment funds that donation using shares from their portfolio that have appreciated in value the most. The strategy cancels out any capital gains taxes an investor would pay had they just sold the securities. In addition to reducing their tax liability, investors can also deduct the full appreciated value of the donation.
Kendra Thompson, the managing director and head of Accenture’s global wealth management practice, said robo advisors need to do more than asset allocation and move toward offering holistic advice to continue to attract new investors. Betterment’s Charitable Giving “broadens the value proposition” to investors, Thompson said.
Aside from a new source of potential donors, charities get a more efficient way to accept donated shares that is free of paper and fees. Charitable organizations don’t pay an administration fee for a Betterment account and are not charged for the management. Accounts with assets valued more than $1 million are changed 25 basis points, but the charities are encouraged to sell donated securities and withdraw funds before they reach that threshold, a Betterment spokesperson said.
The charities are also relieved of the operational burden to accept shares. Betterment handles the transaction from end-to-end and sends both the donor and the charity their required tax documents. ”[Charities] absolutely love that because they are able to spend more time doing what they do best as a charity and that’s focused on their actual cause and not record keeping,” Benke said.
Charitable giving is “perhaps the least automated wealth management function,” according to William Trout, a senior analyst at Celent whose research focuses on securities, wealth management and banking.
Investors have long donated shares to charitable organizations and many, especially the largest charities, are well equipped and experienced in accepting them. Those organizations still stand to benefit from partnering with Betterment but smaller charities without the resources or with little experience in accepting shares also have much to gain, said Chris Martinez, the managing director of Oakbrook Solutions, a consultant to wealth managers on systems, process and delivery.
Martinez, who was previously the managing director and chief information officer at Wilmington Trust, said Betterment’s new feature was, to his knowledge, unique and he could see it attracting broad interest. Younger generations are especially interested in what they are investing in and conscious of how efficiently they are giving to charity, he said.
But Martinez also said for Betterment’s new feature to really become widely used, it must continue to give investors good cause to use the robo advice platform in the first place.
Thompson shared a similar opinion—the Charitable Giving feature will not solely continue to draw assets away from traditional managers but that “richer experiences will drive people to the platform.”
Personal Capital, another robo advice platform, said its advisors can help its investors donate shares but it does not have an automated process like Betterment’s. The robo advice company Wealthfront could not be reached about its process for donating shares. |
Another Chinese city halts subway project over financing concerns | Another city in China's Inner Mongolia – Hohhot – has had to halt the building of subway projects worth billions of dollars because of financial issues. The stoppage followed a similar scenario in another Inner Mongolia city, Baotou, where a $4.5bn subway project has been stopped after local authorities said they couldn't afford it. Other cities, including Xianyang and Wuhan, have said they are not expecting to get approval by the central government for their subway plans because of the financial risks attached to borrowing for this type of scheme. Beijing recently increased scrutiny of local authority infrastructure financing.
| https://www.caixinglobal.com/2017-11-14/another-city-halts-subway-projects-amid-financing-concerns-101170019.html | 2017-11-16 11:31:51.747000 | Hohhot, capital of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, has canceled construction on its subway Lines 3 and 4. Work on subway Lines 1 and 2, scheduled for completion in 2020, won't be affected. Above, Hohhot Deputy Mayor Sun Jianhua discusses the design of the city's proposed subway on Aug. 20, 2015, in Hohhot. Photo: Visual China
Another city in northern China’s Inner Mongolia autonomous region has halted construction of subway projects worth billions of dollars, as the central government tightens scrutiny of local authorities’ infrastructure financing.
Separate sources from banks and regulatory bodies told Caixin that Hohhot, the capital city of Inner Mongolia, scrapped plans to build two subway lines and one expressway linking the city with Ordos, a mining city in southwest Inner Mongolia.
The abandoned construction in Hohhot followed similar moves in neighboring Baotou, also in Inner Mongolia. Caixin learned from sources close to the matter that the central government called off a 30 billion yuan ($4.5 billion) subway construction project in Baotou in August because of concerns over the drain on city coffers.
The cancellation of the Inner Mongolia subway projects is having a ripple effect in other cities. Several city governments, including those of Xianyang in Shaanxi province and Wuhan in Hubei province, said in statements that their subway plan are unlikely to win immediate approval under the central government’s crackdown on financial risks related to borrowing for such projects.
In Hohhot, the canceled subway Lines 3 and 4, involving a total investment of 27 billion yuan, were to be part of an urban subway network project approved by the State Council in April 2014. Hohhot planned to build 54.9 kilometers (34.1 miles) of subway lines to serve the city’s 3 million people with investment totaling 95 billion yuan by 2023.
Construction of subway Lines 1 and 2, which began in 2015 and scheduled to be completed by 2020, will not be affected, according to a source from Inner Mongolia Communications Investment Co., a government-backed infrastructure contractor.
Hohhot also halted a 26.4 billion yuan plan to build a 181-kilometer expressway to Ordos, as approved by the regional government in July.
While new city-rail projects have been encouraged in China since 2015 to boost economic growth, the construction halts in Inner Mongolia reflect tightening scrutiny by the central government as part of efforts to contain local-government borrowing risks, sources told Caixin. The central government noticed the heavy spending plans in Baotou and Hohhot in August and told the cities to halt the projects and use the money to support business development and people’s livelihood instead, sources told Caixin.
The sources from Inner Mongolia Communications Investment said regional and city governments have since issued policies to reassess local infrastructure investment projects and related financing plans.
Contact reporter Han Wei ([email protected]) |
Bitcoin cheats death as hash rate slumps in shift to rival coin | Bitcoin came close to collapse when computers used to process its transactions switched to servicing a separate crypto-currency called bitcoin cash. Ironically, bitcoin was saved when miners returned after their earlier desertion inflated the price -- and reduced the profitability -- of the rival coin. The turn of events brought the leading cryptocurrency close to a "chain death spiral", which happens when there isn't enough computer processing power to maintain transactions. Buffers built into the system to adjust for such changes work too slowly to repair a sudden plunge in this so-called hash rate.
| https://qz.com/1127817/bitcoin-cash-bch-price-could-lead-to-bitcoin-death-spiral/ | 2017-11-16 11:29:41.470000 | Bitcoin’s price fell over the weekend—while the price of an offshoot, bitcoin cash, soared. The rally in bitcoin cash was so bullish that it even briefly surpassed another cryptocurrency, ethereum, in total market value, at $29.9 billion.
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While the bitcoin and bitcoin cash price action is exciting, investors in either would do well to pay attention to another critical metric: the amount of computational power committed to mining each digital coin, also known as the hash rate. A steep and prolonged drop in bitcoin’s hash rate could set off a much-feared “chain death spiral” that could render the bitcoin network useless. Bitcoin showed signs of its potential for triggering this dynamic over the weekend, when its hash rate fell by 50%.
How does a death spiral work? The bitcoin network currently adds a new bundle of transactions, known as a “block,” roughly every 10 minutes. The exact time is determined by how long it takes for a bitcoin miner to process a block of transactions. This, in turn, is set by something called the “difficulty” on the bitcoin network. Difficulty automatically adjusts itself to match the hash rate so that transactions won’t take too long.
But bitcoin’s difficulty only adjusts every 2,016 blocks, or roughly every two weeks. So if the hash rate suddenly plummets, the difficulty could be rendered too high for the amount of processing power on the network. This in turn could mean severe delays in completing bitcoin transactions. As transactions start getting delayed, the network’s utility is reduced and investors could start dumping bitcoins, causing the price to drop. Miners, in turn, could start mining other coins because a lower bitcoin price means mining is less profitable.
And so the cycle would continue, with investors and miners abandoning bitcoin, causing greater delays in transaction times, and preventing a difficulty adjustment from happening quickly enough to break the cycle. “Transactions get backlogged to a point where the coin becomes basically useless,” says Peter Kim, who co-founded a developer tool called Nitrous and is now working on an app for the cryptocurrency markets.
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Think the death-spiral scenario sounds far-fetched? It came close to happening over the weekend. Bitcoin’s hash rate fell by 50% over two days as miners switched their machines from bitcoin to bitcoin cash, because it was more profitable to do so. The drop in the hash rate meant that the average time taken to complete a bitcoin transaction doubled from 10 minutes to 20 minutes or more, according to bitcoin analyst Jimmy Song. This coincided with a more than 20% crash in bitcoin’s price. “Bitcoin cash was up to 100% more profitable to mine because of the price run-up,” Song says.
Ironically, bitcoin was saved by bitcoin cash’s own difficulty increases. The algorithm governing difficulty adjustments on bitcoin cash caused a surge in the difficulty, making the coin less profitable to mine. The bitcoin cash people didn’t want volatile hash rates in their cryptocurrency, so they changed the protocol’s difficulty adjustment rules on Nov. 13. By this time, many miners had already switched their hash power back to bitcoin.
According to the hash rate monitor at Fork.lol, bitcoin’s hash rate has recovered to about 20 percentage points from where it was before it crashed. Bitcoin’s hash rate is once again well above that of bitcoin cash. A death spiral was averted.
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Bitcoin watchers don’t expect to see the last of this sort of volatility in hash rate. “When it’s more profitable to mine [bitcoin cash], miners will go there. When it’s more profitable to mine [bitcoin], like right now, miners will go there,” Song said.
Which means the threat of a death spiral for either digital currency can’t ever be written off.
Correction: An earlier version of this article said a bitcoin-cash hard fork led to miners switching their hash rate to bitcoin; in fact it was bitcoin cash’s difficulty adjustment that caused a surge in difficulty, causing miners to switch. |
TalkTalk TalkTalk outlines how it intends to step up investment in growth | UK telecomms company TalkTalk plans to capitalise on the strong demand for its fixed, low-price plans and step up its investment in growth during the second half of the fiscal year, according to CEO Tristia Harrison. Her comments came after the company posted a loss of £75m ($99m) for H1 to September and took a £31m restructuring hit. The company's shares fell 17% to 178¼p.
| https://www.express.co.uk/finance/city/880238/TalkTalk-investment-low-profits-customers-TV-broadband-deals-Tristia-Harrison | 2017-11-16 11:28:55.470000 | TalkTalk will 'step up investment' in the second half after adding 46,000 customers
The FTSE 250 telecoms company said it would step up investment in the second half after adding 46,000 customers in the six months to September 30, compared with a loss of 29,000 last time.
It had already prioritised growth over earnings in a shake-up spearheaded by founder and chairman Sir Charles Dunstone earlier this year which saw Dido Harding replaced as chief executive by Tristia Harrison.
Its broadband base grew for the third straight quarter as the number of customers on fixed low-price plans reached 1.6 million, more than half of its overall customer base and up from one million in March.
The rate at which customers leave for rivals, the so-called customer churn, was reduced from 1.5 per cent to 1.3 per cent. |
Researchers turn to young poplars for speedy biofuel | Researchers at the University of Washington are investigating whether younger poplar trees could be a more viable source of biofuel than older ones. Currently trees are harvested after between 10 and 20 years, but the scientists have experimented with a model that allows them to harvest after only two or three years. The trees are planted closer together and cut to allow new growth to sprout from the same root system, a method known as 'coppicing'. The team then uses the entire tree to make bio oil, without the need to separate the leaves from the branches.
| http://www.washington.edu/news/2017/11/15/are-petite-poplars-the-future-of-biofuels-uw-studies-say-yes/ | 2017-11-16 11:21:46.587000 | Are petite poplars the future of biofuels? UW studies say yes
Michelle Ma UW News
In the quest to produce affordable biofuels, poplar trees are one of the Pacific Northwest’s best bets — the trees are abundant, fast-growing, adaptable to many terrains and their wood can be transformed into substances used in biofuel and high-value chemicals that we rely on in our daily lives.
But even as researchers test poplars’ potential to morph into everything from ethanol to chemicals in cosmetics and detergents, a commercial-scale processing plant for poplars has yet to be achieved. This is mainly because production costs still are not competitive with the current price of oil.
A University of Washington team is trying to make poplar a viable competitor by testing the production of younger poplar trees that could be harvested more frequently — after only two or three years — instead of the usual 10- to 20-year cycle. These trees, essentially juveniles compared with fully grown adults, are planted closer together and cut in such a way that more branches sprout up from the stump after each harvest, using the same root systems for up to 20 years. This method is called “coppicing,” and the trees are known as poplar coppice.
This video shows the speed with which young poplar can be harvested. Video provided by Rick Stonex/GreenWood Resources, Inc.
The team is the first to try converting the entire young tree — including leaves, bark and stems — into bio oil, a biologically derived oil product, and ethanol using two separate processes. Their results, published this summer in two papers — one in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering and the other in Biotechnology for Biofuels — point to a promising future for using poplar coppice for biofuel.
“Our research proved that poplar coppice can be a good option to meet the cheap, high-volume criteria of biofuel feedstock,” said lead author Chang Dou on both papers, a doctoral student in the UW’s Bioresource Science and Engineering program. “Our findings are significant for the future biofuel industry, and the ultimate goal is to make poplar coppice biofuel a step closer to the pump.”
Poplar woodchips from older trees have been the focus of most research, mainly because wood parts contain the highest concentration of sugar, which is important for making ethanol and chemicals. Earlier studies show that poplar woodchips are a viable biofuel source, but costs still don’t pencil out, especially since trees are cut just once every 10-plus years. Additionally, other tree parts go to waste when only the trunk is used, making the process more inefficient and wasteful.
However, if poplar were planted close together like an agriculture crop, and whole trees were harvested on a much quicker cycle, it could make sense from a cost perspective and offer a short return on investment — and be more attractive for farmers.
Alternative fuels must make economic sense, the researchers stress, for biofuels to make a dent in the petroleum-driven market.
“We have the environmental incentives to produce fuels and chemicals from renewable resources, but right now, they aren’t enough to compete with low oil prices. That’s the problem,” said Renata Bura, a UW associate professor in the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences and the senior author.
Bura’s research is part of the Advanced Hardwood Biofuels Northwest project funded by U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture. The project, directed by UW professor Rick Gustafson, is a consortium of universities and industries led by the UW whose goal is to lay the foundation for a Pacific Northwest biofuels and bio-based industry based on poplar feedstock. For this study, trees in Jefferson, Oregon — one of the four study sites — were planted in rows close together in spring of 2012 and harvested less than two years later before the leaves had fallen.
The UW team first tested whether entire young poplar trees could be converted into sugar by a process that uses high temperature, pressure and enzymes to break down the wood materials into sugar. From there, it is possible to make ethanol, acetic acid, lactic acid and other valuable chemicals by fermenting the sugar.
After processing the trees, the researchers found that leaves are poor performers and lowered the overall sugar output, not just because leaves are naturally low in sugar, but they also contain other chemicals that impede the sugar-releasing process. When scaled up to a commercial operation, leaves should be removed and may be used for other purposes, such as feed for animals.
They also tested whole poplar trees from the same plot in another conversion process that uses much higher heat — upwards of 500 degrees Celsius — to transform the tree materials directly to bio oil in a process called “pyrolysis.” Research is underway to convert this dark brown oil to a transportation fuel that resembles gasoline or diesel.
In the experiment, the researchers found that including leaves didn’t make a big difference to the quality of the resulting bio oil. When scaled up, producers could ultimately save time and money by not separating leaves from branches to achieve similar quality oil.
Future poplar production plants could leverage both methods, weighing factors like the current cost of materials or the dollar value of the products being made to determine which method makes more financial sense, Dou explained.
The young poplars used in the study have similar properties to shoots that would sprout from a stump in a true coppicing operation. Using that cutting method, it is possible to harvest trees every two years for up to 20 years without the added effort and cost of pulling up roots, preparing the soil and planting new trees that is required in usual planting regimes.
Ultimately, the researchers say that coppice poplar is likely the best balance of cost and reliability for Pacific Northwest growers to produce biofuel.
“Currently, we are looking at how we can grow poplar for monetized ecosystem services,” Bura said. “In the future, we envision a bio-based industry that will provide multiple environmental benefits, will invigorate rural communities and will serve as a bridge to a fully developed biofuels industry.”
Other co-authors on the papers are Fernando Resende, a UW assistant professor of environmental and forest sciences; Devin Chandler, a UW graduate student in the Bioresource Science and Engineering program; Wilian Marcondes, a UW exchange student from the University of São Paulo-Brazil; and Jessica Djaja, a UW undergraduate student.
The research was funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
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For more information, contact Bura at [email protected] and Dou at [email protected].
Grant information:
Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Competitive Grant No. 2011-68005-30407 |
China starts work on wind tunnel to test hypersonic aircraft | China is constructing the world's fastest wind tunnel, which will simulate hypersonic flight at speeds of up to 12km per second. At such a speed an aircraft could fly from China to the US in 14 minutes. The project is expected to be in operation by 2020 as China pushes forward its hypersonic weapon development programme. The US tested an unmanned hypersonic flight in 2011 but it lasted only minutes before crashing into the Pacific, while China recently conducted seven successful test flights. "China and the US have started a hypersonic race," said Professor Wu Dafang.
| https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/15/china-builds-worlds-fastest-wind-tunnel-to-test-weapons-that-could-strike-us-within-14-minutes.html | 2017-11-16 11:17:40.733000 | A J-10 jet fighter performs during the International Army Games on August 13, 2017 in Changchun, Jilin Province of China.
China is building the world's fastest wind tunnel to simulate hypersonic flight at speeds of up to 12 kilometres per second.
A hypersonic vehicle flying at this speed from China could reach the west coast of the United States in less than 14 minutes.
Zhao Wei, a senior scientist working on the project, said researchers aimed to have the facility up and running by around 2020 to meet the pressing demand of China's hypersonic weapon development programme.
"It will boost the engineering application of hypersonic technology, mostly in military sectors, by duplicating the environment of extreme hypersonic flights, so problems can be discovered and solved on the ground," said Zhao, a deputy director of the State Key Laboratory of High Temperature Gas Dynamics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.
The ground tests will significantly reduce the risk of failure when test flights of hypersonic aircraft start.
The world's most powerful wind tunnel at present is America's LENX-X facility in Buffalo, New York state, which operates at speeds of up to 10 kilometres per second – 30 times the speed of sound.
Hypersonic aircraft are defined as vehicles that travel of speeds of Mach 5, five times the speed of sound, or above.
The US military tested HTV-2, a Mach 20 unmanned aircraft in 2011 but the hypersonic flight lasted only a few minutes before the vehicle crashed in to the Pacific Ocean.
In March China conducted seven successful test flights of its hypersonic glider WU-14, also known as the DF-ZF, at speeds of between Mach 5 and Mach 10.
Other countries including Russia, India and Australia have also tested some early prototypes of the aircraft, which could be used to deliver missiles including nuclear weapons.
"China and the US have started a hypersonic race," said Wu Dafang, professor at the school of aeronautic science and engineering at Beihang University in Beijing who received a national technology award for the invention of a new heat shield used on hypersonic vehicles in 2013.
Wu has worked on the development of hypersonic cruise missiles, a near space vehicle, high-speed drones and other possible weapons for the People's Liberation Army.
He said there were a number of hypersonic wind tunnels in mainland China which had helped ensure the high success rate of its hypersonic weapon tests.
The new wind tunnel will be "one of the most powerful and advanced ground test facilities for hypersonic vehicles in the world", said Wu, who was not involved in the project.
"This is definitely good news for us. I look forward to its completion," he added.
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In the new tunnel there will be a test chamber with room for relatively large aircraft models with a wing span of almost three metres.
To generate an airflow at extremely high speeds, the researchers will detonate several tubes containing a mixture of oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen gases for a series of explosions that could discharge one gigawatt of power within a split second, according to Zhao.
This is more than half of the total power generation capacity of the Daya Bay nuclear power plant in Guangdong.
The shock waves, channelled into the test chamber through a metallic tunnel, will envelope the prototype vehicle and increase the temperature over its body to 8,000 Kelvins, or 7,727 degrees Celsius, Zhao said.
That is nearly 50 per cent hotter than the surface of the Sun. |
Scientists use microbiome to develop biofuel enzymes | Scientists from the Department of Energy’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), based at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, have used microbiomes to create stable new enzymes which could be used in the production of biofuels and bioproducts. According to a report in the journal Nature Microbiology, the team cultivated microbes in communities, as would occur in the wild, yielding cellulases that had "remarkably robust carbohydrate-protein complexes", and managed to maintain the microbial community for more than three years.
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-017-0052-z | 2017-11-16 11:01:18.033000 | Sample collection and enrichment of thermophilic consortia
The sample collection and enrichment procedures have been described previously15. Briefly, compost samples were collected from Jepson Prairie (JP) Organics, located in Vacaville, CA, in 2008. The compost-derived microbial consortium was initially grown aerobically with unpretreated switchgrass and then switched to grow on microcrystalline cellulose (1% wt/vol; Sigma) as the sole carbon source in liquid M9 medium augmented with vitamins. The enrichments were grown at 60 °C and 200 r.p.m. under aerobic conditions in an aerial rotary shaker and serially passed every 14 days with 4% vol/vol inoculum, referred to as passages. Cultivation of the 50 ml culture after passage 80 was scaled at the Advanced Biofuels Process Demonstration Unit, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. A 500 ml culture was inoculated with a 2.5% vol/vol sample from the 50 ml culture and incubated at 60 °C for 14 days at 150 r.p.m. on a rotary shaker. This culture was inoculated into a 19 l bioreactor (Bioengineering USA) to a total volume of 15 l. The 15 l culture was grown at 60 °C, 150 r.p.m. and 0.26 volume gas (sterile air) per volume liquid per minute (VVM) for 14 days. A 400 l bioreactor (ABEC) was inoculated with 7.5 l of culture from the 19 l bioreactor to a volume of 300 l and incubated for 14 days at 60 °C, 150 r.p.m. agitation and 0.25 VVM air sparging. After 14 days, the final fermentation broth was centrifuged using an Alfa Laval Disc Stack centrifuge at 9,000g at 100 l h–1 with 30 min cell discharge interval and 125 kPa back pressure. The clarified broth was collected in the 300 l holding tank bioreactor and the pelleted biomass collected and stored at –80 °C. The supernatant was concentrated through a tangential flow filtration system with a 10 kDa Biomax filter membrane (EMD Millipore). The transmembrane pressure was set at 13 p.s.i. with feed pressure of 30 p.s.i. The concentrated supernatant was freeze-dried under vacuum for 24 h using a lyophilizer (Labconco) and the resulting powder was stored at –20 °C. CMCase and xylanase activities were measured daily for the 15 l and 300 l bioreactor cultivations by removal of samples each day from the bioreactors and the supernatant assayed as described below.
Sequencing, assembly and binning of metagenomics reads
DNA purification from samples extracted from the 15 l and 300 l bioreactors was performed as previously described13. Illumina sequencing (250 bp × 2) of the metagenomic samples was carried out by the Joint Genome Institute (JGI) and performed as previously described40. The sequencing reads of the DNA samples recovered from the 15 l bioreactor (days 1–14 were trimmed using Trimmomatics (with parameter ILLUMINACLIP:TruSeq3-PE.fa:2:30:10 LEADING:3 TRAILING:3 SLIDINGWINDOW:4:15 MINLEN:36)41 and co-assembled using IDBA-UD42 with the --pre-correction parameter. The 300 l samples (days 4, 5, 7, 10, 12 and 14) were also co-assembled, using the same settings as the 15 l samples. The co-assembled samples for the 15 l and 300 l bioreactor experiments were then binned using MaxBin 2.043 with default parameters, yielding population genomes. The completeness and contamination ratios of these population genomes were assessed using CheckM44. Genomes with >10% of contamination rates were re-binned using MaxBin 2.0 by setting the input contig to the genome file and the input abundance to the extracted abundance files during the whole metagenome binning. The output bins were re-examined using CheckM and the produced bins with higher completeness were chosen to replace the original genome, while the other bins with higher levels of contaminants were discarded. The most likely taxonomic ranks of the recovered genomes were predicted by searching the predicted proteins against the NCBI non-redundant (NR) database, collecting and processing the hits using the least common ancestor (LCA) algorithm proposed by MEGAN445 and assigning the most probable taxonomic rank to the recovered genomes according to the LCA results. GH genes present in the recovered population genomes were identified by using Prodigal46 and then annotated using dbCAN47.
DNA was isolated from a 50 ml aerobic shake flask culture with a bacterial consortium that was adapted from green waste compost obtained from Newby Island Sanitary Landfill in Milpitas, CA, by growth on crystalline cellulose. The enzymatic activities and microbial community membership of this consortium have been described previously13. Metagenomic sequencing was performed by the JGI as described above, and the sequenced reads were assembled as previously described40. Population genomes were recovered by automated binning with Maxbin43 and checked for completeness and contamination with CheckM44.
16S and 23S rRNA gene analysis
A partial 16S rRNA gene (706 bp) was recovered from the ‘Ca. R. cellulovorans’ metagenomic bin. This fragment was used to identify a nearly full-length 16S rRNA gene (1,597 bp; 99.7% identical JGI gene ID Ga0074251_1085371) that was recovered from the initial assembled metagenome (JGI taxon ID 3300005442) obtained for this consortium when it had been adapted to switchgrass40. This observation indicated that ‘Ca. R. cellulovorans’ was present in the consortium when it was adapted to switchgrass, before transferring the consortium to grow on microcrystalline cellulose. Sequences from three clones (GenBank accessions KC978751, KC978760 and KC978763) were >99% identical to portions of the full-length rRNA ‘Ca. R. cellulovorans’ sequence. These clones were recovered from DNA samples isolated from a time series (14 days) of an adaptation of compost from Newby Island Landfill (Milipitas, CA, USA) to grow with microcrystalline cellulose as the sole carbon source at 60 °C13. As described above, a partial genome was recovered from this cultivation that was >99% identical at the amino acid level to the ‘Ca. R. cellulovorans’. A partial 23S rRNA gene (1,444 bp) was recovered from the ‘Ca. R. cellulovorans’ metagenomic bin. The 16S and 23S rRNA gene sequences were aligned using MUSCLE48 trimmed using Gblocks49, and the phylogenetic tree was constructed using MEGA550 with the Tamura–Nei model. Bootstrap values were calculated with 1,000 replicates.
Reconstruction of ‘Ca. R. cellulovorans’ GH gene cluster
Six small contigs were identified in the ‘Ca. R. cellulovorans’ population genome, which contained partial genes containing a catalytic domain (GH9, GH48, GH6/5, 2×GH10, AA10) linked to at least one CBM3. The clustering of these genes was confirmed by PCR amplification of DNA isolated from the cellulolytic consortium. PCR primers (Supplementary Table 8) were designed using the CLC Main Workbench (Qiagen) and PCR products were cloned into pJET1.2/blunt Cloning Vector (Fermentas) and sequenced with an ABI system according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Assembly of gene sequences into a gene cluster and annotation of genes was performed with the CLC Main Workbench and checked for chimerae using the Bellerophon algorithm51.
Phylogenetic analysis
Alignments of protein sequences were performed using the CLUSTALW multiple alignment accessory application in the CLC Main Workbench (Qiagen). In brief, phylogenetic trees were constructed using the CLC Main Workbench applying the maximum likelihood method based on the Whelan and Goldman protein substitution model52. Bootstrap values were calculated with 1,000 replicates.
To build the concatenated protein tree, genes were first searched against the PFAM profiles53 using HMMER354. Genes with PFAM annotations that appear once and only once across all involved genomes were aligned separately using MUSCLE48. After the alignments were concatenated and trimmed using Gblocks49, the concatenated maximum-likelihood protein tree was constructed using MEGA550 with the JTT (Jones, Taylor, Thorton) model. Bootstrap values were estimated with 1,000 replicates.
Protein purification
Lyophilized supernatant (170 mg) obtained from the 300 l cultivation was dissolved in 5 ml H 2 O and passed through a 0.2 µm filter. The supernatant was desalted by dialysis against the buffer (20 mM Tris, pH 8.0) for 24 h with three buffer changes, followed by a 30 ml NaCl gradient fractionation (0–2 M NaCl) using a 5 ml HiTrap Q HP column on an ÄKTA Protein Purification System (GE Healthcare).
Cellulases in the supernatant from the 300 l cultivation were also enriched by binding to phosphoric acid swollen cellulose (PASC), an adaptation of a procedure previously described for cellulosome purification from Clostridium thermocellum 26. Briefly, 250 mg of lyophilized PASC produced from Avicel PH-105 was added to 500 mg of supernatant dissolved in 10 ml H 2 O and mixed at room temperature with a magnetic stir bar for 30 min. After a binding step at 4 °C for 2 h, the amorphous cellulose was centrifuged for 10 min at 3,000g and rigorously washed for 6 cycles with 25 ml reaction buffer (25 mM 2-(N-morpholino)ethanesulfonic acid (MES), pH 6.0). Washed PASC was resuspended in 10 ml reaction buffer and transferred into dialysis membranes (SnakeSkin and Slide-A-Lyzer; Fisher Scientific) with a 3.5–10 kDa cutoff and dialysed at 60 °C against 4 l reaction buffer at 55–60 °C for up to 48 h with three buffer exchanges per day to prevent possible product inhibition. Dialysis membranes used in this study consisted of regenerated cellulose and were destabilized by cellulases of the substrate, and thus needed to be exchanged every 24 h to prevent membrane rupture. The reaction was considered complete after no visible changes to the substrate were observable. By centrifugation for 20 min at 3,000g the enrichment was split into residual biomass (in the pellet) and the affinity digestion protein fraction (in the supernatant, AD).
Measurement of protein concentration and GH activity
Protein concentrations were determined using the bicinchoninic (BCA) assay (Pierce BCA Protein Assay Kit, Thermo Scientific) method using a 96-well plate (200 μl reaction volume) with bovine serum albumin as the standard. CMCase and xylanase activity assays were conducted as described previously55. Enzyme activity units (U) were defined as µmol of sugar liberated per min. Enzyme activity units for supernatant preparations were calculated as U per ml of supernatant volume. CMC activity units of purified heterologously expressed proteins were reported as U per mg, representing specific activity measurements.
Soluble substrates (p-nitrophenyl (pNP)-labelled) with cellobiohydrolase (pNPC), β-d-dglucosidase (pNPG), β-D-xylosidase (pNPX) and α-l-arabinofuranosidase (pNPA) activities were used to determine enzyme activities on their respective substituents56. The p-nitrophenyl substrate (90 μl) was incubated with 10 μl of diluted enzyme, incubated for 30 min, and quenched with 50 μl of 2% cold sodium bicarbonate. The absorbance of released p-nitrophenyl was measured at 410 nm. Activities using p-nitrophenyl substrates were calculated as U ml−1.
Saccharification of cellulose substrates
Saccharifications were performed in the presence of 2% (wt/vol) Avicel (Sigma) and PASC. Each mixture was prepared in 50 mM MES, pH 6.0 with 10 mg protein per g glucan in biomass to a final volume of 625 µl in a 2 ml screw-cap vial. Saccharifications were carried out at 70 °C in a shaker for 72 h, with 50 µl samples taken every 24 h. All hydrolysates were collected via centrifugation at 21,000g for 5 min and 0.45 μm filtered to remove large biomass particles prior to sugar analysis. After filtration, samples were kept frozen at −20 °C and thawed before analysis. Glucose concentrations were measured on an Agilent 1200 Series HPLC system equipped with an Aminex HPX-87H column (Bio-Rad) and refractive index detector. Samples were run with an isocratic 4 mM sulfuric acid mobile phase. Sugar concentrations were determined using standards containing cellotriose, cellobiose, glucose, xylose and arabinose.
PAGE and zymograms
SDS–PAGE was performed with 8–16% Protean TGX protein gradient gels (Bio-Rad) with the Tris-glycine-SDS buffer57. Blue Native (BN)–PAGE58 was performed with 3–12% NativePAGE Bis-Tris protein gradient gels (Thermo Scientific) in presence of 0.02% Coomassie Blue G-250. For subunit analysis of native complexes, individual lanes from the BN–PAGE were excised, incubated in 2% SDS and 160 mM dithiothreitol (DTT), and denatured at 95 °C for 10 min, unless otherwise indictated (Fig. 3e). Proteins were separated with 8% polyacrylamide gels, which were hand cast. Protein bands were stained with SimplyBlue SafeStain Coomassie Blue dye (Thermo Scientific) according to the manufacturer’s instructions.
Protein bands with activity on CMC and xylan were visualized using modification of the zymogram technique, as described previously15. Gels were incubated in 2% wt/vol CMC or 2% wt/vol birchwood xylan solutions followed by incubation at 60 °C for up to 2 h in reaction buffer (25 mM MES, pH 6.0). In-gel enzymatic activities were visualized by incubating gels with a 0.5% Congo Red solution for 15 min and subsequent multiple washing steps with 20% NaCl.
Glycosylation analysis
Protein glycosylations were visualized in-gel by the periodic acidic Schiff stain27 using a Pierce Glycoprotein Staining Kit (Thermo Scientific) according to the manufacturer’s instructions.
N-glycan analysis was performed as described previously59. However, no N-linked glycans were detected. Total glycosyl compositional analysis was performed by combined gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) of the per-O-trimethylsilyl (TMS) derivatives of the monosaccharide methyl glycosides produced from the sample by acidic methanolysis60. O-linked glycans were released by β-elimination and permethylated59. The permethylated O-linked glycans were analysed by matrix assisted laser desorption/ionization-time of flight (MALDI–TOF) and electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry (ESI MS/MS)61 and gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) for linkage analysis62.
Proteinase K digestion
The E. coli-expressed CelA and CelC and the AD fraction were digested at 50 °C for 60 min in reaction buffer (20 mM Tris-HCl, 400 mM NaCl and 0.3% SDS, 5 mM EDTA containing 75 µg of respective enzyme and 3.75 µg proteinase K). After heat inactivation of proteinase K at 95 °C, the reaction mixture was analysed by SDS–PAGE (8–16% gradient).
Proteomic analysis
Proteins were digested from SDS–PAGE gels as previously described63. Samples were analysed on an Agilent 6550 iFunnel QTOF mass spectrometer coupled to an Agilent 1290 UHPLC system, as described in ref. 64. Briefly, peptides were loaded onto an Ascentis Express Peptide ES-C18 column (10 cm length × 2.1 mm internal diameter, 2.7 µm particle size; Sigma Aldrich) operating at 60 °C and at a flow rate of 400 µl min–1. A 13.5 min chromatography method with the following gradient was used: the initial starting condition (95% Buffer A (0.1% formic acid) and 5% Buffer B (99.9% acetonitrile, 0.1% formic acid)) was held for 1 min. Buffer B was then increased to 35% in 5.5 min, followed by an increase to 80% B in 1 min, where it was held at 600 µl min–1 for 3.5 min. Buffer B was decreased to 5% over 0.5 min, where it was held for 2 min at 400 µl min–1 to re-equilibrate the column with the starting conditions. Peptides were introduced into the mass spectrometer from the UHPLC by using a Dual Agilent Jet Stream Electrospray Ionization source operating in positive-ion mode. The source parameters used include a gas temperature of 250 °C, drying gas at 14 l min–1, nebulizer at 35 p.s.i.g, sheath gas temp of 250 °C, sheath gas flow of 11 l min–1), V Cap of 5,000 V, fragmentor V of 180 V and OCT(octopole) 1 RF (radio frequency) V pp of 750 V. The data were acquired with Agilent MassHunter Workstation Software, LC/MS Data Acquisition B.06.01 (Build 6.01.6157). The resultant data files were searched against a data set containing reconstructed population genomes from the 300 l bioreactor, with common contaminants appended, with Mascot version 2.3.02 (Matrix Science), then filtered and refined using Scaffold version 4.6.1 (Proteome Software).
Heterologous protein expression
Constructs for the CelABC genes were obtained both by PCR amplification from metagenomic DNA with specific primers (Supplementary Table 8) and synthesis of codon-optimized versions for expression in E. coli (Gen9). Genes were cloned into the modified bacterial expression vector pET39b(+) vector with a T7/lac promoter and a TEV-cleavable C-terminal 6xHis tag but lacking the DsbA secretion sequence (Novagen) using Gibson assembly65. All reagents were purchased from New England Biolabs. The desired genes without their signal sequences and the expression vector were PCR-amplified, DpnI-digested and incubated with 1× Gibson assembly Master Mix for 15 min at 50 °C. The product was then transformed into chemically competent E. coli DH10α cells for storage and for heterologous protein expression into chemically competent E. coli BL21 (DE3). Starter cultures (50 ml) of E. coli BL21 (DE3) harbouring plasmids were grown overnight in LB medium containing 25 μg ml–1 kanamycin at 37 °C and shaken at 200 r.p.m. in rotary shakers. Expression was performed in Terrific broth with 2% glycerol, 25 μg ml–1 kanamycin and 2 mM MgSO 4 . Starter cultures were used to inoculate 1 l of expression medium in a 2 l baffled Erlenmeyer flask and incubated at 18 °C while shaking (200 r.p.m.), and induced with 500 µM isopropyl β-d-thiogalactopyranoside (IPTG). Following induction, cultures were again incubated at 18 °C. At 22 h, cultures were centrifuged at 15,500g for 30 min. Cell pellets were resuspended in 25 ml lysis buffer (50 mM NaPO 4 , 300 mM NaCl, 5 mM imidazole; pH 7.4) and homogenized with an EmulsiFlex-C3 instrument (Avestein). After incubation at 60 °C for 30 min, lysates were collected via centrifugation at 75,000g for 30 min and 0.45 μm filtered to remove large particles before purification. Polyhistidine-tagged proteins were purified on Cobalt-NTA resin (Thermo Scientific). To cleave the 6xHis Tag, 1 g purified protein was incubated with 50 mg His-tagged TEV-protease and simultaneously dialysed against 4 l reaction buffer (50 mM NaPO 4 , 300 mM NaCl; pH 7.4) for 24 h and three reaction buffer exchanges. After a second purification step via Cobalt-NTA resin, the flow-through fractions contained the purified and untagged proteins. Proteins were stored at 4 °C until ready for use. The proteins were >90% pure as visualized by SDS–PAGE (Fig. 4c).
Life Sciences Reporting Summary
Further information on experimental design and reagents is available in the Life Sciences Reporting Summary.
Data availability
Metagenomic sequencing data can be accessed at the JGI IMG website (http://img.jgi.doe.gov/) or the JGI Genome Portal (http://genome.jgi.doe.gov/), and the specific IMG genome IDs are listed in Supplementary Table 12. The draft genome sequence for ‘Candidatus Reconcilbacillus cellulovorans’ has been deposited at GenBank (MOXJ00000000). The gene sequences and plasmid constructs for the ‘Ca. Reconcilbacillus’ cellulases CelA (JPUB_007824), CelB (JPUB_007826) and CelC (JPUB_007828) are available from the public version of the JBEI Registry (https://public-registry.jbei.org) and are physically available from the authors and/or Addgene (http://www.addgene.org) upon request. |
Scientists use microbiome to develop biofuel enzymes | Scientists from the Department of Energy’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), based at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, have used microbiomes to create stable new enzymes which could be used in the production of biofuels and bioproducts. According to a report in the journal Nature Microbiology, the team cultivated microbes in communities, as would occur in the wild, yielding cellulases that had "remarkably robust carbohydrate-protein complexes", and managed to maintain the microbial community for more than three years.
| http://biofuels-news.com/display_news/13133/remarkably_stable_biofuel_enzymes_obtained_from_microbial_community/ | 2017-11-16 11:01:18.033000 | Newly published research has demonstrated the importance of microbial communities as a source of stable enzymes that could be used to convert plants to biofuels.
The research was carried out by scientists from the Department of Energy’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) based at Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory. The findings have been published in the journal Nature Microbiology, and report on the discovery of new types of cellulases - enzymes that help break down plants into ingredients that can be used to make biofuels and bioproducts, according to a JBEI statement.
Unlike traditional methods, the cellulases were cultured from a microbial community or microbiome. Usually, isolated organisms are used to obtain enzymes.
“Here we’re cultivating an entire community of microbes to access enzymes that we couldn’t get from isolates,” said study principal investigator Steve Singer, senior scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Biological Systems and Engineering Division and director of Microbial and Enzyme Discovery at JBEI.
“Some microbes are difficult to culture in a lab. We are cultivating microbes living in communities, as they occur in the wild, which allows us to see things we don’t see when they are isolated. This opens up the opportunity to discover new types of enzymes that are only produced by microbes in communities.”
It was revealed that the bacterial population Candidatus Reconcilibacillus cellulovorans yielded cellulases that were arranged in ‘remarkably robust carbohydrate-protein complexes’, a structure never before observed in isolates.
“The enzymes persist, even after a decline in bacterial abundance,” said Singer. “We kept the microbial community cultivation going for more than three years in the lab.”
This stability makes the new cellulose complexes attractive for applications in biofuels production, the authors say. In particular, it gives the cellulases an advantage over alternatives that degrade more rapidly at high tremperature.
Industrial scale
JBEI scientists collaborated with researchers from the Advanced Biofuels and Bioproducts Process Demonstration Unit (ABPDU) at Berkeley Lab, a scale-up facility established by DOE to help accelerate the commercialisation of biofuels research discoveries, to determine whether the enzyme production could be scaled up for industrial applications.
While the JBEI scientists were able to produce 50 millilitre samples at the DOE Bioenergy Research Centre, in just six weeks the scientists at ABPDU scaled the cultures to a volume 6,000 times larger, 300 litres, in industrial bioreactors.
Sebastian Kolinko, a JBEI postdoctoral researcher, is the study’s lead author. |
Chinese quietly investing directly into India at increasing rate | Chinese direct investment is flooding into India under the radar, with indications the deals are at least five times greater than official figures show. Investments are going unnoticed because they are relatively small or are coming from Chinese-owned units headquartered outside mainland China. "Chinese investments have doubled in the last two years. I have no reason to doubt that it will not continue," said Santosh Pai at Indian law firm Link Legal. Aravind Yelery at the Delhi-based Institute of Chinese Studies said "investments that are not administered or influenced by government perception are pouring in". | https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/15/chinese-investors-are-stealthily-pouring-money-into-india.html | 2017-11-16 10:58:21.900000 | Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visit Daci'en Temple on May 14, 2015 in Xi'an, China. Sheng Jiapeng | CNSPHOTO | VCG | Getty Images
If you go by official Indian government figures, Chinese direct investments into the country this century hit a paltry $1.6 billion in March 2017. That's a weak showing compared to President Xi Jinping's 2014 promise to spend $20 billion over five years in India, one of the fastest growing Asian economies. But while there's yet to be big bang investments accompanied by political fanfare, the Chinese have steadily and quietly been investing in Indian companies over the past few years. In fact, people in India who work closely with Chinese businesses estimate that China's investments into the country could be at least five times greater than official numbers. "Chinese investments have doubled in the last two years. I have no reason to doubt that it will not continue as they have already tasted blood. If you are a Chinese company today with a limitless amount of capital and you look at the whole world and ask 'where is the big bet you can play?' the answer is India," said Santosh Pai, a partner at Link Legal, a law firm with offices throughout India. For his firm, Chinese clients are the growth drivers, and since 2011 he has helped about 150 of them get a foothold in the Indian market. Typically, investments come in from Chinese-owned companies based in the U.S., Singapore or elsewhere in the world, and therefore cannot be classified as "Chinese" investments. Also, official data only tracks investments made by companies based in mainland China and not even those out of Hong Kong and Macau, experts said.
Low key, high returns
While businesses are happy to get Chinese money, it is in no one's interest to publicise those investments given the history of Indo-China relations. The two countries have fought a war and have regular skirmishes on their shared border. "If a Chinese company says, 'We have entered the Indian market,' they will attract more scrutiny. If Indian companies say, 'We have Chinese investors,' they may lose some goodwill. It is not a conspiracy to hide these things, but the question is: Who does it benefit to stand on the roof and shout out?" Pai told CNBC. A case in point is the recent investment of $1.1 billion by Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group for a 74 percent stake in India's Gland Pharma. The Chinese major that had struck a deal in July last year to buy an 86 percent stake in the Indian generic injectable drugmaker, reduced its stake size in a bid to save the stalled deal. The deal had raised concerns among some in the Indian government, Reuters reported. India allows foreign investment of up to 100 percent in its pharmaceutical sector, anything above 74 percent requires government clearance. "Investments that are not administered or influenced by government perception are pouring in," Aravind Yelery, assistant director at the New Delhi based Institute of Chinese Studies, told CNBC. "The Indian state governments are wary of the Chinese, so they are now doing [mergers and acquisitions] and [joint ventures] in the private sector. No mainstream, huge infrastructure investments."
Boosting start-up morale
Instead, Chinese investors are coming into India with bite-sized deals of as little as $1 million for start-ups. The big spenders on that front have included Tencent and Alibaba . The two have invested $1.2 billion and $650 million, respectively, in venture capital and private equity deals over the past two years, according to data from tracking firm Venture Intelligence. That influx of funds has had a notable result in the Indian start-up community. "The Chinese are boosting morale. There is a sudden change in the perception of Indian investors as well. If the Chinese are putting money into Indian start-ups, so will I, is the feeling," said Rishabh Lawania, co-founder of Xeler8, a start-up bought by a Chinese fund in January this year. Xeler8 was a data mining company, but after the buyout it functions as a venture capital fund and incubator for start-ups. "The Chinese are here with deep pockets. It is not uncommon for them to write a million dollar check for a first stage investment. An Indian angel investor is not going to do that. He will invest one fourth that amount," said Sunil Kalra, a veteran investor in Indian start-ups. About $3.5 billion has been invested in companies less than 10 years old so far in 2017, according to Venture Intelligence. The Chinese have contributed a little less than 10 percent of that.
watch now |
Zocdoc introduces in-app Insurance Checker feature | US medical app Zocdoc, which enables consumers to make doctors appointments, has added a new feature, dubbed Insurance Checker. The in-app service allows prospective patients to check if a doctor or a treatment is covered under their health insurance plan. More than three-quarters of Americans said they need greater clarity on which doctors and medical services are in their insurance networks, according to a survey sponsored by the firm. Additionally, 22% of survey respondents said they would skip treatment if they could not find an in-network provider.
| https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2017/11/10/zocdoc-updates-app-insurance-eligibility-checkups/ | 2017-11-16 10:44:40.203000 | The complicated language commonly found in health plans makes it hard for consumers to understand the coverage their plan provides, especially when it comes to determining what physicians are in-network. More than 50% of insured Americans say they have a difficult time figuring out what their insurance will cover, and 77% would like an easier way to ensure their doctor is in-network when booking appointments, according to a survey by Kelton Global.
To remedy the problem, healthcare technology provider Zocdoc developed Insurance Checker, a new feature for its Patient-Powered Search app that helps patients find a doctor. Insurance Checker enables patients to understand the coverage under their health plan by providing such information as whether their doctor is in-network and the patient’s eligibility.
In the first week after launching Insurance Checker last month patients uploaded more than 10,000 images of insurance cards.
Such information is important to consumers when making decisions about their care, as 22% of insured Americans would skip going to the doctor if they were unable to book an appointment with an in-network doctor, and 17% would go to the emergency room for treatment instead, says the Kelton Global survey, which was sponsored by Zocdoc.
To get information about their health plan, consumers open the Zocdoc app, select Insurance Checker and snap a photo of their health insurance card using their smartphone. Insurance Checker scans the photo to gather information on the card such as name of the insurance carrier, plan type and member identification number. Combining information from the card with information from the eligibility check and information doctors provide, Insurance Checker can identify in-network physicians for the patient. Insurance Checker uses artificial intelligence to learn how to match information from an image of a patient’s insurance card with information about his health plan, Zocdoc says.
“With more consumers having high deductible plans, staying in network when booking a doctor’s appointment is important to patients,” says Ruth Sylvia, senior product manager for Zocdoc.
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Insurance Checker can also verify patient eligibility, and, if the information is available, estimate the patient’s co-pay. Confirming benefits eligibility prior to booking a doctor’s appointment ensures patients will be covered for a doctor’s visit. Of the patient’s surveyed by Kelton, 20% booking an appointment with a new doctor were turned away because the doctor didn’t accept their insurance, the survey says. In addition, 16% of insured Americans making an appointment with a new doctor did so not knowing if their insurance would cover the visit.
Confirming patient eligibility in advance of booking an appointment also benefits physicians, as doctors’ office administrators typically contact a new patient ahead of an appointment to ensure the patient’s insurance information is valid. Once an appointment is booked, Insurance Checker shares patient eligibility with the doctor’s office. Insurance Checker also saves the scanned image of a patient’s insurance card to his account for use with future appointments.
Confirmation of patient eligibility is provided by Eligible Inc., a developer of application programming interfaces for collecting medical eligibility, claims, and payments data from insurance companies.
In the first week after launching Insurance Checker last month patients uploaded more than 10,000 images of insurance cards, Sylvia says. The cost for physicians to subscribe to the Zocdoc app is $3,000 per doctor annually. The app, which is available for iOS and Android, is free to patients.
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$1 gift cards aim to make the stock market accessible to all | US fractional investment platform Stockpile is selling gift cards for as little as 99 cents, with the goal of increasing the number of people engaging with the stock market. Offering consumers access to stocks of well-known companies at a significantly cheaper price than the full shares can encourage more people to learn about investing, said the firm's CEO. Apathetic younger investors are a key audience for Stockpile.
| https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/25/stockpile-ceo-talks-fractional-stocks-amid-dwindling-us-investment.html | 2017-11-16 10:44:04.693000 | Lele's privately-held company is a clinic in making investing more accessible: it makes gift cards, sold online and at various physical locations, that function as fractional shares of stocks.
"[In] the last eight years, the tide has been rising. [The] stock market has been doing well, but most of us don't feel rich, right? Because our ships have been in dry dock. They haven't been in the water," Lele told " Mad Money " host Jim Cramer in an exclusive interview on Monday. "And here, to get into the market, I think the easiest point of access is to invest in something you know, something that you love."
Recent statistics show the number of Americans invested in stocks declining , but Stockpile Co-founder and CEO Avi Lele told CNBC his fractional share trading platform can help change that.
Consumers can also open a brokerage account with Stockpile's mobile app and start investing at 99 cents a trade. The app offers investing advice so newcomers can learn basic investing rules.
"People are told all the time, 'Start early, diversify and do it for the long haul,' but it's really hard to start early when you're young because you don't have a lot of money and you certainly don't know anything about the market," Lele said. "They don't teach it to you in school and you can't walk into a traditional brokerage saying, 'Hey, I've got $50 bucks, how does the market work?'"
The CEO said he ushered his own children into learning about investing with Stockpile when he realized they weren't interested in investing through traditional firms.
Lele had set up custodial accounts for them through a traditional brokerage firm, but he was the only account holder and just couldn't get his kids interested, he said.
But with Stockpile, "they had their own login. They could check in on their stocks, they could buy things that they knew instead of mutual funds that were hard to [grasp] and they could place trades that came to my phone for approval," Lele said. "All of a sudden, an engaging experience was born. Just a few hundred dollars, but they had skin in the game."
During a visit to his dentist, Lele even thought up a Halloween promotion that he thought would spur young people's interest in his platform.
"I was at my dentist a few weeks ago, and dentists hate giving out candy," the CEO said. "And I told him about the company and he said, 'Wouldn't it be neat if I could give out $1 stock cards to the trick-or-treaters?' And so I'm sitting there looking over here and saying, 'Well, Nike kind of goes well with Amazon, orange and black, you want to give those out?'"
Lele's central idea is that people, including disillusioned millennials, can warm to investing if they're buying shares in companies they know and love at affordable prices instead of the lucrative, but astronomically priced stock market.
"If you're an Apple fan, start investing in Apple. If you're a Nike fan, if you're a sports fan, invest in Nike. Now, that's the on-ramp," Lele said. "But once you're in, we have a whole series of lessons, many lessons, in our app that are designed to teach you, 'Hey, start diversifying. Start looking at ETFs because they're instant, great diversification. Start investing in maybe other countries' stocks to get some foreign exposure.' So it's a starting point, but then it brings you in and now you're not in dry dock." |
Financial advisers ponder ways to increase female headcount | US financial advisory firms are mulling making changes to their recruitment, compensation and training practices to attract more female employees. Despite more than half of the US population being female, only 16% of financial advisers are women. A number of firms are making sure candidates for open positions come from a diverse pool, while other firms are fostering an environment where employees can have more flexible working hours.
| http://www.investmentnews.com/article/20171114/FREE/171119969/firms-explore-ways-to-bolster-the-number-of-female-financial-advisers | 2017-11-16 10:40:46.587000 | Boosting the number of women in the financial advice business to a level that more equally represents the population may require firms make changes related to hiring, compensation, training and other areas.
It also will require getting more men on board with the effort, according to the comments from a group of about 150 women who gathered Tuesday to discuss ways to increase the ranks of female financial advisers. The group spent three hours brainstorming solutions in a pre-conference session at the Schwab Impact Conference being held in Chicago this week.
“We’re looking for specific actions that we can take back to our firms and communities to further increase the representation of women in this industry,” said Susan Forman, senior vice president and head of marketing for Schwab Advisor Services.
While 51% of the U.S. population are women, only about 15.7% of financial advisers are female, and less than a quarter of Certified Financial Planners are women — amounts that have barely changed in a decade, according to Suzanne Siracuse, publisher of InvestmentNews, who moderated the discussion.
(More: How to encourage the rise of senior women in financial advice)
Recruiting is one of the areas that firms participating in the session said needs to change. At one advisory firm, they have a recruiting team that requires there to be a diverse set of candidates identified before interviews can begin for any position at the firm. That firm also has programs to help encourage more junior employees to experience many different areas of the business to try and find one in which they can particularly thrive.
At another firm, the focus is on work-schedule flexibility, allowing four-day work weeks so advisers at the firm can care for children, or in some cases, provide care for a parent.
Other firms provide women advisers with training and coaching to help with leadership development.
Lisa Poff, director of marketing and communications at Bridgewater Wealth Management, an advisory firm, said compensation structures that are built solely to reward those who are going out and getting business versus those who are taking care of the business is another deterrent for women in this industry.
At Bridgewater, which manages about $1 billion in client assets, the firm actively tries to create an environment that’s supportive to its female advisers.
“We have created a culture of feeling like everyone’s voice is heard,” she said.
Six of its nine advisers are women.
(More: Advice firm carves out unit for women investors)
The group agreed it’s important to get more men involved with the effort to expand the numbers of women in the business.
However, they were not overflowing with examples of successful efforts.
“That’s an area where we need to look for more solutions,” Ms. Siracuse said. “Men need to buy into this and understand the business case for this.” |
TalkTalk Dunstone's shareholding falls £33m after loss announcement | TalkTalk executive chairman Sir Charles Dunstone saw £33m ($44m) wiped off the value of his shares in the telco after it posted a £75m loss for the six months through September. Dunstone, who owns almost one third of the company, returned to its helm in February to turn its fortunes around. Shares in TalkTalk fell 17% after the loss was announced, reducing the value of Dunstone's holding to £524m.
| http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/markets/article-5086573/Sir-Charles-Dunstone-hit-33m-TalkTalk-sell-off.html?ITO=1490&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490 | 2017-11-16 10:40:03.143000 | Sir Charles Dunstone saw £33million wiped off the value of his TalkTalk shares after the firm crashed into the red.
The 52-year-old businessman, who owns nearly a third of the internet provider he set up in 2003, is spearheading efforts to revive its fortunes having taken over as executive chairman in February.
But his turnaround plan suffered a bruising setback yesterday TalkTalk posted a £75million loss for the six months to September 30.
Shares tumbled 17 per cent in early trading before closing down 6 per cent or 11.3p at 178.2p.
That cut the value of Dunstone's 294m shares in the company by £33million to £524million. |
Insurers urged to provided equal coverage for mentally ill | Despite recently implemented mental health parity laws, sufferers of mental illness in New York State are rarely reimbursed for treatment, even if they have insurance coverage. A number of medical providers don't accept private insurance for treatment, due largely insurers' reluctance to pay out. In 2015, 29% of mental illness suffers said insurers rejected a claim they made following treatment, according to a survey conducted by the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
| http://www.silive.com/news/2017/11/minimal_insurance_coverage_for.html#incart_2box_silive-homepage-featured | 2017-11-16 10:39:15.130000 | (UNTREATED: This is part of a series on the care of Staten Island's mentally ill. Click here for additional stories in the project.)
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Despite laws put in place to guarantee equal coverage for mental health treatment, insurance companies are denying mental health claims more often than physical health claims.
In 2015, 29 percent of survey respondents said that their mental health claim was rejected due to the private insurance company saying it was not medically necessary, more than twice the percentage reported for denied medical claims, according to a National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) study.
Fourteen percent of medical claims were denied for the same reason, the study shows.
Affordable Care Act plans had lower total denial rates when compared to other private insurance but mental health claim denials were still almost twice as high as medical claim denials.
Claim denials, as well as low reimbursement rates for services and providers who don't accept insurance create financial burdens for many families, often forcing patients to choose between services they desperately need and services they can afford.
"Middle and working class people can't really afford the financial burden," Fran Zagor, president and CEO of the Staten Island Mental Health Society (SIMHS) told the Advance.
Leslie Moran, senior vice president of the New York Health Plan Association (NYPA), said it's not as simple as comparing mental health to physical health because the term "medically necessary" varies widely for both.
WHAT DOES MEDICALLY NECESSARY MEAN?
Moran said the NYPA has some "misgivings" about the NAMI statistic because physical claims are more defined than mental health in terms of medical necessity.
"Physical health claims -- i.e. a broken leg, doctor's visit for bronchitis, etc. -- are more defined, or more clear cut versus mental health claims where there might be a question about the appropriate number of visits within a time frame (does the patient need two visits per week?)," Moran stated.
The setting where mental health services are provided, such has inpatient versus outpatient treatment, comes in to play as well, she said.
Mental health providers say it is unfair for an insurance company to determine medically necessity for mental health treatment because treatment is more complex and insurance companies do not take into consideration the patient's medical history.
The NAMI report states that there has been little "clarity" about what criteria insurance companies use to determine what is or is not medically necessary.
"In the absence of uniform criteria, insurers have adopted their own standards and have often not been forthcoming about informing beneficiaries about these standards. This in turn has sparked concerns that insurance companies and managed care organizations deny claims for mental health care at far higher rates than other for medical care," NAMI said in the report.
When an insurance company denies a claim, they are required to provide a reason for the denial in writing and include information on how to appeal the process.
Additionally, the NAMI study does not acknowledge or include statistics regarding a person's ability to appeal the claim, Moran said.
"Both internal plan appeals and independent external appeals, and the percentage that are overturned on appeal, is not addressed in this data," she said, adding that it is not "really a fair comparison."
"In approximately 60 percent of disputes about medical necessity, the plan's decision is upheld by an independent external reviewer," she said.
PARITY LAWS IN PLACE
After decades of little to no fair coverage from insurance providers, Mental health parity laws were enacted to require insurance plans to have comparable coverage for mental health, addiction and other medical treatment.
The federal Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 prevents group health plans and health insurance issuers that provide mental health or substance use disorder benefits from imposing less favorable limitations on those benefits than on medical/surgical benefits, according to CMS.gov.
This federal law superseded New York state's "Timothy's Law," by replacing the required coverage minimum of 30 days of inpatient and 20 days of outpatient treatment with equal and consistent coverage for mental health treatment.
While parity laws have closed some gaps for mental health coverage, providers say that patient's needs are still not being met.
"The insurance companies say they meet the needs of their members but the reality is, it becomes clear when you're dealing with somebody who has a real issue and people on the insurance panel say 'We can't provide you with services,'" Zagor said.
Moran argued that Zagor's comment shows "provider's bias."
"It often comes down to a question of need versus want. In other words, providers want all the treatment for a patient that they can get the health plan to pay for, even when determination is made that the treatment isn't truly medically necessary," Moran said.
INSURANCE NOT ACCEPTED
While laws have been changed to make treatment more accessible, many treatment providers don't accept private insurance or Medicaid -- due in part to low reimbursement rates and new provider laws -- forcing those seeking treatment to pay out-of-pocket or forgo treatment altogether.
"Parents are calling us desperately looking for places to bring their children. Unfortunately, the rate of reimbursement is not high so we won't sign the contract with the insurance company because of it," Zagor explained. "Except there's nowhere else to refer them too."
She said the SIMHS will work with the families, allowing them to pay off the difference between what the insurance company pays and the cost of services.
Only 55 percent of psychiatrists accept insurance, compared to 88.7 percent of medical physicians in other specialties, a study published by JAMA Psychiatry shows.
Moran acknowledged that there are providers who do not accept insurance, but said it is each provider's decision and does not reflect the on private insurance companies.
The coverage parity law covers deductibles, co-pays, co-insurance, out-of-pocket expenses, annual and lifetime dollar limits, limits on frequency of treatment, number of visits, and other limits on the scope or duration of treatment.
"Health plans have an interest in making sure their members get the right are in the right setting at the right time, which applies to mental health services as well as physical health care. Plans work diligently to comply with the letter and spirit of mental health parity laws that ensure access to needed services," Moran said.
NAMI states that New York is "leading the nation" in terms of coverage parity and enforcement, however, obstacles still exist when trying to find and afford treatment.
"We have the expertise to deal with all of this. We provide a lot of training [for staff], we use evidence-based practices, there are psychiatrists available; in our setting, we have it all but it all goes back to having the right kind of reimbursement," Zagor said. |
Vaping sector uses Big Tobacco tactics to protect itself | The vaping industry is using tactics similar to those previously deployed by the tobacco sector in order to create doubts about the dangers of e-cigarettes and to fight regulation, according to an article in The Verge. The vaping market is currently valued at over $10bn, expected to rise to $34bn by 2021. Tobacco firms including Reynolds American and Altria (formerly Philip Morris) have taken over from small companies. The vaping and tobacco industries have spent almost $10m fighting e-cigarette regulation in California since 2009. Vaping firms have also used law firms that formerly protected the tobacco industry from litigation.
| https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/16/16658358/vape-lobby-vaping-health-risks-nicotine-big-tobacco-marketing | 2017-11-16 00:00:00 | Samir Soneji had no idea what he was getting into when he agreed to talk about the potential risks of vaping at the first US E-Cigarette Summit in Washington, DC this past May. His first clue was the booing.
As a professor at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, Soneji studies how gaps in tobacco regulation affect health. Two years before the conference, he’d reported in JAMA Pediatrics that young people who smoke hookah or use “snus,” a form of moist smokeless tobacco, are twice as likely to try cigarettes as kids who don’t. He suspected that e-cigarettes, with kid-friendly flavors like “Cinnamon Roll” and “Peanut Butter Cup,” carried a similar risk. And that’s exactly what he and several colleagues discovered in a recent review of studies that tested that possibility.
Evidence that tobacco companies targeted teens and nonsmokers with candy- and fruit-flavored cigarettes prompted the Food and Drug Administration to ban them in 2009 under the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. But those restrictions do not apply to e-cigarettes and hookahs, even though the FDA extended its authority in August 2016 to include all forms of tobacco.
Key points The e-cigarette market is expected to be worth $34 billion by 2021, and is increasingly dominated by tobacco companies such as Reynolds American and Altria (formerly known as Philip Morris).
Studies into the argument that vaping leads to smoking cessation continue to have mixed findings. Meanwhile, studies on the health risks of vaping have different results based on whether they were funded by tobacco companies, or non-affiliated public researchers.
Big Tobacco has been developing e-cigarette devices since the early 1960s, but eventually avoided marketing them because, according to executives, smokeless tobacco “complicates our efforts to resist the FDA’s attempts to regulate the tobacco industry.”
Major tobacco companies co-opted and heavily invested in the promotion of the concept of “harm reduction,” as opposed to smoking cessation, as a means of gaining access to public health experts and casting themselves as socially responsible corporations. It is the same argument vaping promoters use today.
E-cigarette manufacturer NJOY and importer Smoking Everywhere have hired the same firms that previously helped the tobacco industry evade regulation and defeat smokers’ liability claims for years. Their allies have hired law firms that have successfully defended major tobacco companies from class action lawsuits.
Philip Morris, Reynolds American, and its allies paid lobbyists nearly $1.2 million to fight a California bill to prohibit the sale of e-cigarettes in vending machines and regulate them like any other tobacco product.
Tobacco and vaping industries spent nearly $10 million to fight regulations on e-cigarettes and related legislation in California since 2009.
Soneji figured that people who came to a conference about the science and regulation of e-cigarettes actually wanted to hear the latest science, whatever the data showed. So he told the audience what he and others had found: youth who vaped were more likely to start smoking cigarettes than those who didn’t. What’s more, kids who made the leap from e-cigs to cigarettes probably wouldn’t otherwise have started smoking, he explained, because they didn’t suffer from anxiety or depression or use alcohol or drugs — risk factors associated with youth smoking. He also shared evidence that “fun” candy-flavored e-cigarettes attract kids, just as flavored cigarettes did, and that, because labels often misrepresent nicotine levels in the devices, even kids who think they’re vaping only flavors could be inhaling nicotine.
The booing was not the only sign to Soneji that this was not a typical scientific conference. He later joined a Q&A panel before the morning break. There, a Johns Hopkins researcher who said he consults for pharmaceutical companies and Reynolds American — which makes VUSE, the top-selling e-cig brand in the US — asked the panel when public health officials were going to communicate positive messages about how vaping reduces harm, like they do about using clean needles and condoms to stem the spread of disease. Soneji said it would be premature and dangerous to recommend e-cigarettes to help smokers quit, given the lack of rigorous scientific evidence to support it. Minutes later, the head of an anti-smoking organization rose from the audience to dismiss his call for more evidence as “rubbish.” The crowd laughed and cheered.
Many people in the audience, Soneji would discover, had an emotional or financial interest in vaping — and they didn’t pay up to $1,100 a ticket to hear anyone question the benefits of e-cigarettes. “I didn’t realize just how many people would be from the industry, and whose job and livelihood is [tied] to e-cigarettes,” he says. “Hearing about the harms of vaping came across as threatening to their existence.”
Many people Soneji spoke to after his talk argued that e-cigarettes save lives. They told him it’s the tar in cigarette smoke that causes lung cancer, and since e-cigarettes don’t have tar, there’s nothing to worry about. An ex-smoker-turned-vaper who had opened a vape shop to help others quit smoking told Soneji that his products were safer because they don’t produce cancer-causing tar. While that’s true, Soneji says, “he was very dismissive of any cardiovascular effects around vaping and nicotine, and around the chemical by-products of heating the e-juice.”
“Hearing about the harms of vaping came across as threatening to their existence.”
Public health campaigns have so successfully tied smoking to lung cancer that people often don’t realize more smokers die of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases than of lung cancer. Soneji tried to tell the shop owner, and many others at the summit, that smoking significantly increases the risk of cardiovascular disease and that recent studies suggest e-cigarettes also increase heart attack risk. But they didn’t listen to him. They didn’t understand how anyone could question the value of a product they believe helps people quit one of the world’s deadliest habits.
Online forums are filled with stories from ex-smokers who saw striking health improvements after switching to vaping. “I no longer wake up coughing and hacking up gunk for the first two hours of my day. I'm no longer getting winded doing the smallest things,” reported a member of the E-Cigarette Forum, which calls itself “the voice of vaping since 2007.”
Ex-smokers offer similar testimonials on vaping forums, blogs, and social media groups. The vaping advocacy group Consumer Advocates for Smoke-free Alternatives Association, or CASAA, sells a T-shirt to drive home the point: “Vaping saves lives.”
After the e-cigarette summit, a media outlet called Vaping360 described Soneji as “the speaker with the most tedious and pedestrian boilerplate anti-vaping agenda,” and attacked him and his co-authors as “a who’s who of terrible vaping researchers.”
The attacks on Soneji are similar to those lobbed at any individual who speaks out about the possible harms of vaping. On the Facebook page for the 2016 pro-vaping movie A Billion Lives, a woman who described herself as a tobacco treatment specialist dared to say, “We don’t know yet the exact repercussions of vaping because it hasn’t been around long enough. But we do know it causes [scarring] in the lungs.”
The attacks on Soneji are similar to those lobbed at any individual who speaks out about the possible harms of vaping
Within minutes, a man who’d just posted about how vaping helped him quit smoking told her: “STFU you are an idiot and a moron. Clearly you don’t know wtf to say cause you would rather people smoke.” The next comment is too profanely misogynistic to print.
It’s hard to overestimate the power of personal experience. But personal anecdotes, no matter how plentiful or powerful, are no substitute for scientific evidence derived from rigorously designed studies that test alternate hypotheses and control for confounding factors. Scientists are just beginning to test the effects of vaping on the human lung. A recent review of studies concluded that e-cigarette use may cause “significant” toxicity to the lung, but noted that more research is needed. Long-term studies clearing e-cigarettes as reasonably safe alternatives to cigarettes have not been done. But that hasn’t stopped some vaping advocates from claiming they have.
Studies across diverse subjects show that industry-funded research tends to favor the study’s sponsor
Just a decade ago, the vaping industry — which includes devices that typically heat nicotine-containing liquids to produce inhalable vapors — was largely the province of small businesses. Today, the market, which is valued at over $10 billion and expected to be worth $34 billion by 2021, is increasingly dominated by tobacco companies such as Reynolds American and Altria (formerly known as Philip Morris).
Many vaping advocates say they’re competing with Big Tobacco, which they fear will stifle innovation. They say that taxes on e-cigarettes will penalize smokers trying to quit and that regulations requiring companies to disclose the ingredients in e-juice and conform to quality standards will bankrupt small entrepreneurs. Some may well be trying to put the tobacco industry out of business. But others have joined forces with some of the same actors and have deployed the same tactics the tobacco industry used to stoke doubts about smoking’s dangers while marketing “safer” delivery systems. They’re enlisting veteran tobacco industry law firms to contest federal oversight in court and partnering with tobacco-funded libertarian groups to fight regulation in states and cities, and they’re rallying armies of ex-smokers who believe vaping saved their lives.
Turning Public Health Experts into the Enemy
For decades, tobacco control experts worked together to counter marketing campaigns that made smoking sexy. Hard-hitting TV spots featuring smokers disfigured by cancer and speaking through voice boxes, or hooked up to oxygen tanks and gasping for air helped drive a decline in smoking that had begun in the 1960s. But health alliances forged to stop smoking began to crumble in the mid-2000s with the advent of campaigns to promote “reduced harm” products like smokeless tobacco and e-cigarettes. While some of these products — including nicotine patches, lozenges, and gums — have received FDA approval to treat nicotine addiction after clinical trials showed they were safe and effective, others, including smokeless tobacco and e-cigarettes, have not.
E-cigarettes are theoretically safer than cigarettes because they don’t burn tobacco, which produces a noxious mixture of toxic and cancer-causing substances, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, aldehydes, and heavy metals like cadmium and arsenic. Instead, the battery-powered devices produce an aerosol mist by heating “e-juice,” which typically contains flavors and nicotine dissolved in solvents (propylene glycol or vegetable or both) that minimize evaporation until the cocktail is inhaled. Proponents of harm reduction, who advocate offering reduced-risk products to those who can’t stop smoking, argue that giving e-cigarettes to smokers is like providing clean needles to IV drug users: individuals can satisfy their craving while reducing their overall disease burden.
Proponents of harm reduction argue that giving e-cigarettes to smokers is like providing clean needles to IV drug users
But for a harm-reduction argument to be valid, policy makers need strong evidence that vaping improves smokers’ health without creating a new set of risks — to both users and nonusers. So far, the evidence for quitting is mixed, while long-term safety remains unknown. A systematic review of studies of e-cigarettes and smoking cessation published last year reported that two clinical trials offer evidence that vaping leads to quitting, but cautioned that they were too small to have confidence in the results. Meanwhile, another review published last year, which included a broader range of studies, concluded that people who used e-cigarettes were actually less likely to quit smoking.
Assessing risks to vapers and bystanders associated with chemicals in e-cigarette vapor has proven difficult because manufacturers keep changing the devices, which now come in over 460 brands and close to 8,000 different flavors.
Some vaping advocates insist that e-cigarettes emit only harmless water vapor — echoing marketing claims — and propylene glycol, the same ingredient used in fog machines. The FDA has deemed e-cigarette flavorings and the solvents propylene glycol and glycerin “generally recognized as safe” for use in food, but that has little bearing on whether they’re safe to inhale. Several studies have detected a range of toxic chemicals in e-cigarette vapor, including diacetyl, which is associated with the severe respiratory disease known as “popcorn lung”; aldehydes, which are probable carcinogens; acrolein, a potent irritant often found in air pollution; and the cancer-causing tobacco-specific nitrosamines that are also found in cigarette smoke. The few studies of people working with theatrical fog machines found that those working closest to the machines had reduced lung capacity — and they weren’t repeatedly sucking propylene glycol into their lungs like vapers do. What’s more, several studies report that heating propylene glycol and glycerin under normal vaping conditions can produce an array of toxic chemicals, including benzene, a known human carcinogen, and fine particles, which can cause heart disease.
Levels of toxic chemicals found in e-cigarette vapor are typically far lower than those found in tobacco smoke, but no one knows the long-term effects of inhaling them.
To figure out whether e-cigarettes reduce harm to smokers, the devices would have to undergo rigorous testing in several clinical trials, just as other nicotine-replacement therapies have. That hasn’t happened. When the Public Health England panel concluded that e-cigarettes are 95 percent safer than cigarettes, it relied on assumptions about risks, not on data derived from carefully controlled studies.
“Theoretical benefits are not evidence,” says Jonathan Klein, scientific director for the American Academy of Pediatrics Julius B. Richmond Center of Excellence, which studies tobacco. To get evidence on relative risks, at a minimum you’d need to track the disease rates of separate groups of people using different products to see if vaping reduces disease outcomes, Klein says. And if you want to protect public health, you’d prevent nonsmokers and young people from getting addicted, he says. “But that’s not the way it’s been approached.”
“Theoretical benefits are not evidence.”
Soneji says you could classify e-cigarettes as a net population benefit if the devices were better than cold turkey at helping adult smokers quit, and they didn’t attract children. Then they’d resemble conventional nicotine-replacement therapy, otherwise known as NRT (think Nicorette gum or Chantix pills). “No kids are really interested in NRT,” Soneji says. “And NRT is better than cold turkey for smokers interested in quitting.”
And though e-cigarette lobbyists compare vaping to needle exchange or methadone treatment, there’s a critical difference, Soneji says: unlike e-cigarettes, methadone isn’t designed to attract people who aren’t already addicted. “It’s not like you can buy mint-flavored methadone.”
E-cigarettes, by contrast, are mass-marketed in flavors that appeal to kids, who can buy them online by clicking a link that says they’re 18 or older. In 2011, at least four years after e-cigarettes hit the US market, just over 3 percent of 6th through 12th graders had tried e-cigarettes. By 2013, over 8 percent had tried vaping. More than a quarter-million kids who’d never smoked cigarettes had tried vaping that year, researchers reported in Nicotine and Tobacco Research; they were nearly twice as likely to start smoking conventional cigarettes as kids who didn’t vape. By 2015, e-cigarette use among teens had skyrocketed to 27 percent, surpassing the use of every other tobacco product. In 2017, e-cigarette use among teens dropped for the first time, according to the latest survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, though e-cigarettes are still the most favored tobacco product.
Alarmed by the uptake among kids, former surgeon general Vivek Murthy called the devices a “major public health concern” in a report on e-cigarettes last year, which the vaping industry and its allies roundly condemned. William Godshall, a longtime anti-smoking activist who promotes vaping as harm reduction, accused Murthy of lying about vapor research and threatening the lives of vapers and smokers on eJuiceMonkeys.com, which posts his newsletter. The site also posted similar reprisals from the vaping industry and its allies.
former surgeon general Vivek Murthy called e-cigarettes a “major public health concern”
Pro-vaping blogs and online forums regularly praise studies that serve their aims and condemn those that don’t. And that’s where many of the roughly 8 million vapers and owners of the rapidly rising number of vape shops and lounges — at 8,500 last year and counting, according to the CDC journal Preventing Chronic Disease — get their information. They’re also exchanging information at the growing number of meet-ups and conventions where enthusiasts can mingle with like-minded souls, geek out over the latest gear, and watch “cloud chasers” compete to blow the most impressive vapor plumes. At conventions like VapeCon, they can stock up on free samples or take a selfie with a seductively dressed Miss VapeCon. For many, vaping isn’t just a habit, it’s a way of life.
So when The Simpsons mocked industry claims that they didn’t market to kids a few years ago, many vapers weren’t amused. In the episode, Bart goes to the Kwik-E-Mart to buy e-cigs, and Apu tells him that while they’re legal for children in their state, “this is not kid stuff.” Then Apu asks, “Now would you like bubble gum flavor, strawberry shortcake, or watermelon dream?” A writer for Vaping360 complained that the show played to “common fears and misconceptions.”
Lying about Nicotine to Avoid Regulation
Vaping advocates often describe e-cigarettes as revolutionary technology that competes with Big Tobacco, and was patented in 2003 by Hon Lik, a Chinese pharmacist who wanted to quit smoking. Yet, internal industry documents released through litigation show that tobacco companies created prototypes of electronic cigarettes decades before Lik introduced his product.
The idea then, as now, was to develop a product that reduced the harm of smoking. And as part of that effort, the tobacco industry then, like the vaping industry today, denied the harmful effects not just of tar — which is not present in e-cigarettes — but also of nicotine, which is.
In 1962, British American Tobacco-contracted scientists began work on a “smoking device”
In April 1994, two months after the FDA announced it would study nicotine’s effects, the chief executives of the seven largest US tobacco companies, including Philip Morris and Reynolds, lied under oath before a congressional subcommittee to deny that nicotine is addictive, even as they manipulated nicotine levels to promote addiction. These deceptions came to light in July 1995, when tobacco control researcher Stanton Glantz and his colleagues published the first in a series of papers that analyzed thousands of formerly confidential industry documents.
The next month, President Bill Clinton proposed sweeping regulations to curb teen smoking, noting that the FDA’s 14-month study confirmed that “cigarettes and smokeless tobacco are harmful, highly addictive and aggressively marketed to our young people.” Cigarettes and smokeless tobacco “fall well within the definitions of drug and device,” the FDA had explained, because they deliver nicotine, a drug that affects the body partly by creating and sustaining addiction as tobacco companies intended.
Philip Morris, Reynolds, and a coalition of tobacco interests wasted no time filing lawsuits, using an argument that vaping interests would later tweak. Cigarettes aren’t drugs or devices, they argued, but tobacco products, which the agency has no authority to regulate. The Competitive Enterprise Institute — which now runs interference for the vaping industry — quickly stepped in to ridicule the proposed rules. Caffeine and nicotine affect the same organs, argued Competitive Enterprise Institute general counsel Sam Kazman in a petition, so the agency may as well regulate caffeinated beverages as drugs and devices. Kazman acknowledged the petition was a stunt, but tobacco executives took his ploy a step further to argue in court that nicotine is no more harmful than caffeine — a canard promoted by vaping advocates today.
Philip Morris paid the Competitive Enterprise Institute $200,000 that year as part of its public policy program, and would pay the think tank an additional $445,000 over the next six years. Reynolds also funded the institute, which in turn joined Americans for Tax Reform and the Heartland Institute in a Reynolds-backed front group called “Get Government Off Our Back” (GGOOB) to fight indoor smoking laws and other federal tobacco regulations.
As GGOOB vowed to “protect Americans from the regulators’ heavy-handed tactics,” tobacco companies hashed out what would be the largest civil litigation settlement in US history. Forty-six state attorneys general, five US territories, and the District of Columbia sued the companies for deceptive and fraudulent practices under consumer protection and antitrust laws to recover the substantial health care costs associated with smoking. The so-called Master Settlement Agreement dismissed existing and future suits against the companies in exchange for billions in annual payments to compensate the states.
Tobacco companies co-opted “harm reduction” from an Institute of Medicine report
Toward that end, they hired PR firms to create divisions among tobacco control experts and weaken public health policy by identifying moderates who might promote “safer” products while attacking the credibility of moralistic “extremists” who wouldn’t.
It’s impossible to tell whether the tobacco industry’s efforts to cause dissension among tobacco control experts accounts for the polarized debate on vaping today. The industry has a history of destroying documents that might have revealed whether they carried out their plans. What’s clear, however, is that the industry continued to call on “credible third parties” like the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Americans for Tax Reform to fight regulations by attacking inconvenient research results and highlighting “abuses” of government-funded anti-tobacco programs. And now the same third parties are helping vaping interests protect e-cigarettes.
Tobacco-funded Libertarians Lend a Hand
As of September 2017, eight states and the District of Columbia have passed laws to tax e-cigarettes. Every state except Michigan has at least one law on the books specifically regulating e-cigarettes, and in many states, including Michigan, local governments have adopted stronger rules. Where public health experts see taxes and regulations as proven strategies to reduce the use of tobacco and its alternatives, vaping advocates view the measures as an assault on their livelihood and individual rights. Their campaigns to fight taxes and regulations have been taken up by far-right libertarian activists like Grover Norquist, founder of Americans for Tax Reform, which has received over $1 million from Philip Morris and Reynolds since the mid-1990s. Norquist praised vapers on his podcast for helping to defeat the 2014 reelection bid of a New Mexico state representative who proposed taxing e-cigarettes as tobacco products, and for beating back tax increases in 26 states.
Last year, Americans for Tax Reform’s Paul Blair joined the Consumer Advocates for Smoke-Free Alternatives Association and the American Vaping Association on a multi-state “Right to Vape” tour to “raise awareness” that the FDA’s proposed regulations on e-cigarettes would destroy the industry. At a stop in Wisconsin, the rally’s emcee introduced an “activist and warrior for the cause,” Aaron Biebert, director of the cinematic valentine to vaping A Billion Lives. In the movie, named for cigarettes’ projected death toll over the next century, Biebert lays out a conspiracy to discredit vaping among puritanical “prohibitionists” who insist smokers “quit or die,” corrupt federal health officials addicted to revenues from tobacco industry taxes and lawsuits, and drug companies intent on quashing their competition.
Glosses on this theory echo across blogs, social media, vaping forums, and right-wing media channels. Biebert’s vilification of the federal government earned him spots on the Herman Cain Show, hosted by the 2012 Republican presidential candidate and Tea Party favorite, and the podcast of the Heartland Institute, the free-market think tank that took money from Exxon while attacking the science of climate change. Perhaps less well-known is that the Heartland Institute, which took at least $325,000 from Philip Morris in the 1990s, also helped the tobacco industry deny the evidence that secondhand smoke harms bystanders — and that Philip Morris targeted kids with its Joe Camel cartoons.
On Cain’s show, Biebert explained his movie’s central premise: e-cigarettes would save a billion lives if not for corrupt public health officials who lie about the risks of nicotine and vaping to promote innovation-destroying regulations that will kill an industry. “You can tell it’s kind of crooked, because it just doesn’t make sense,” Biebert said. “There’s no science to back it up and here they are shutting down 20,000 businesses, and they don’t care.” (Vapers’ estimates of vape shops tend to run higher than public health officials’.) Biebert went on to say that, time and again, studies show that the air around vapers is no different from “regular air.” Cain, who fought indoor smoking restrictions and took money from Reynolds as head of the National Restaurant Association, wrapped up the interview saying, “Big Brother has lied again to the American people.”
A Billion Lives calls on veteran anti-smoking activists to attack the “anti-tobacco industry” for not promoting vaping as a public health “miracle.” By presenting an alternative to cigarettes, contends David Sweanor, adjunct professor at the Centre for Health Law, Policy and Ethics at the University of Ottawa, vaping offers the “opportunity to do something that would rival the eradication of smallpox.” Godshall, an ardent defender of vaping, describes his idea of the perfect solution to the cigarette epidemic: it would be 99 percent less hazardous than cigarettes, wouldn’t be addicting nonsmokers, wouldn’t encourage anyone to switch to cigarettes, and would help lots of people quit smoking. “And it’s called vaping.”
Both Sweanor and Godshall, who broke with mainstream tobacco control experts over a decade ago, have long promoted alternative tobacco products to reduce the harm associated with smoking (see “A History of Promoting Reduced Harm,” above).
Sweanor told me he believes vaping could force the tobacco industry to stop selling cigarettes. “If the vast majority of the risk is from the smoke, and you can deliver what consumers would like without the smoke in a far less addictive way so you can greatly reduce their health risk and you can facilitate them getting off the product entirely if that's what they want to do,” he asks, “then how do you justify selling cigarettes?”
Sweanor believes officials should inform smokers that different tobacco products carry different risks, rather than telling them to quit tobacco. “We've got 6 million plus deaths per year, virtually all because of a dirty delivery system,” he told me.
“Maybe e-cigarettes are 50 percent safer, or 25 percent safer, or maybe they are just as bad as cigarettes in ways that we do not know.”
But are e-cigarettes a clean nicotine delivery system? That’s not what the scientific evidence shows, Soneji says. “Maybe e-cigarettes are 50 percent safer, or 25 percent safer, or maybe they are just as bad as cigarettes in ways that we do not know.”
The concerted efforts to discount evidence from studies finding cause for concern about vaping echo the tactics of tobacco industry-funded scientists who questioned the link between cancer and smoking, Soneji notes. They sowed confusion and skepticism to undermine a growing body of evidence of smoking’s harms, which helped delay regulations on cigarettes for decades. The research on e-cigarettes is just beginning, he says, yet advocates are simply dismissing potential harms while cheerleading the benefits of vaping far beyond what the science supports.
Godshall, in contrast, insists the science is settled. He blames the “left-wing” media and government-funded scientists for spreading misinformation about the benefits of vaping. “The headlines and the news are confusing and deceiving the public about the science,” he says. “Many of the people who are being paid to conduct the science have been knowingly and intentionally manipulating their results, omitting results, selectively cherry picking and basically misrepresenting their own findings because they’re getting federal funding.”
Where did Godshall get the evidence that vaping is 99 percent safer than smoking? “Basically every study that’s ever been published,” he told me.
Recycling Old Claims
Long before scientists began studying vaping’s potential harms and benefits, distributors marketed e-cigarettes as a “healthier way to smoke.” Ads featuring scantily clad women claimed e-cigarettes could help smokers “stop the habit” and get “real nicotine in a harmless water vapor that you can smoke...virtually anywhere!” Where smokers saw a new gadget to satisfy their nicotine cravings, the FDA saw companies peddling a drug with unsubstantiated health claims. And in the spring of 2009, the agency blocked imports of e-cigarettes made by three Chinese manufacturers as unapproved drug delivery devices.
Smoking Everywhere, which imported and distributed the Chinese products, promptly sued the FDA, tweaking the argument tobacco companies had made a decade earlier: e-cigarettes are not nicotine or drug delivery devices, but tobacco products and therefore outside the agency’s jurisdiction. E-cigarette distributor NJOY soon joined the lawsuit, and CASAA, Godshall, and several other vaping advocates later filed a supporting brief.
Several months after seizing the products, the FDA announced that its scientists had detected tobacco-related carcinogens and toxic chemicals in some of the samples. The industry’s libertarian allies quickly rose to its defense. The American Council on Science and Health condemned the FDA for needlessly scaring the public, while Brad Rodu and Joel Nitzkin of the R Street Institute cast doubt on the agency’s science. Godshall for his part urged the FDA to consider a test by e-cigarette manufacturer Ruyan, which he said found “no product hazards.”
Godshall also actively partnered with vaping companies. “I was the person who got the two owners of NJOY and Smoking Everywhere together and helped coordinate their legal team,” he told me. NJOY and Smoking Everywhere hired the same firms that helped the tobacco industry evade regulation and defeat smokers’ liability claims for years. And their allies, including CASAA and Godshall, hired law firms that had successfully defended tobacco companies Brown & Williamson and Philip Morris against class action lawsuits brought by smokers seeking compensation from an industry they said lied about its products’ lethal nature.
Bringing in veteran tobacco industry lawyers paid off. Nine months after Smoking Everywhere filed suit, a federal judge ordered the FDA to stop seizing e-cigarette shipments.
“There is no smoke associated with e-cigarettes. So to call them smoking devices is ridiculous.”
In the absence of federal oversight, state and city officials proposed their own measures to regulate vaping. In spring 2014, the Philadelphia City Council proposed adding e-cigarettes to indoor smoking laws and prohibiting their sale to minors. CASAA quickly issued a call to action and distributed talking points to help vapers oppose the measures. CASAA describes itself as a grassroots organization devoted to ensuring the availability of reduced harm alternatives to smoking. Yet former board members have received research grants from Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, British American Tobacco, US Smokeless Tobacco Company, and Swedish Match, which also makes smokeless tobacco.
Godshall, Gilbert Ross, then-executive director of the American Council on Science and Health, and R Street Institute’s Nitzkin also showed up to defend vaping. Defining e-cigarettes as smoking devices is “a major distortion of the truth,” Nitzkin told the city council. Godshall urged the council to reject the bills, saying the vaping ban “deceitfully defines smoke-free e-cigarettes as electronic smoking.” Ross offered his own variation on the vaping isn’t smoking trope. “There is no smoke associated with e-cigarettes,” Ross said. “So to call them smoking devices is ridiculous.”
Yet that’s exactly what the vaping companies and their supporters called e-cigarettes in their FDA lawsuit. Smoking Everywhere — as its name suggests — described itself as a “corporation that has pioneered the marketing and importation of electronic smoking devices...marketed, labeled, and sold solely to provide adult consumers with alternative ‘smoking’ pleasure, without the inconveniences of traditional tobacco smoking.”
Godshall also resurrected the argument Kazman of the Competitive Enterprise Institute used to ridicule the FDA’s first attempt to regulate nicotine as a drug. “So, I mean, why don’t you ban coffee?” Godshall asked. “It’s got carcinogens in it, toxic chemicals.”
The Philadelphia City Council, supported by the local health department, didn’t buy his argument. Both bills passed in a unanimous votes in March 2014, a month before the FDA finally proposed its “deeming” rule to regulate e-cigarettes as tobacco products.
States have had less success than cities in passing e-cigarette legislation. In California, then-state Senator Ellen Corbett introduced a bill in 2013 to prohibit the sale of e-cigarettes in vending machines and regulate them like any other tobacco product. CASAA again rallied its base to fight the measure, arguing that e-cigarettes aren’t tobacco products, exactly the opposite of what the group claimed in a brief supporting Smoking Everywhere’s lawsuit.
In the past, cigarette companies had to create phony grassroots smokers’ rights groups to take their case to the public, says UCSF’s Stanton Glantz. “Now there are grassroots groups that popped up on their own that tobacco companies hide behind.”
And as vaping advocates fight regulations in public hearings, tobacco companies work the halls and back rooms of the capitol. Philip Morris, Reynolds American, and its allies paid lobbyists nearly $1.2 million over the 2013–14 election cycle to fight Corbett’s bill and other tobacco legislation, a review of campaign filings shows, while NJOY kicked in an additional $88,105. When the bill emerged from the Assembly Governmental Organization Committee — which tobacco control advocates call the “place where tobacco control bills go to die” — e-cigarettes were no longer defined as tobacco products. The bill died after many health advocates reluctantly withdrew their support.
Former California state Senator Mark Leno also tried to regulate e-cigarettes as tobacco products in 2015. This time, the Northern California chapter of the Smoke-Free Alternatives Trade Association (SFATA) mobilized vapers. In opposing the bill, former Norcal SFATA director Stefan Didak told legislators he’s never taken money from the vaping or tobacco industry. He didn’t mention that SFATA’s board members included a former senior marketing executive for Philip Morris and a National Tobacco Company executive who claimed to have shredded a million incriminating documents for the tobacco industry in the 1990s and founded a company that makes synthetic nicotine.
Altria and its allies paid their lobbyists over $908,700 to fight Leno’s measure, while NJOY and SFATA spent $67,500. And again, the Governmental Organization Committee changed the bill’s language to say that e-cigarettes are not tobacco products. “The chair of the Assembly committee attempted to completely hijack our bill by creating a new definition of e-cigarettes, which was exactly what the tobacco industry wanted,” Leno told me. “We had to walk away from our own bill.”
The tobacco and vaping industries have spent nearly $10 million to fight regulations on e-cigarettes and related legislation in California since 2009, state records show. Altria and Reynolds American spent over $70 million in 2016 alone to fight taxes on tobacco and e-cigarettes in California. It took a special session called by Governor Jerry Brown to get around the Assembly Governmental Organization Committee. Leno reintroduced his original bill, which passed last year along with what health advocates call the most wide-reaching package of tobacco control legislation in decades.
Recent research shows that e-cigarette users have more carcinogens in their urine than nonusers
The scope of tobacco industry spending to influence policy is no surprise to Samir Soneji, who’s well-versed in the industry’s tactics. He remains troubled that tobacco-control allies who once exposed the tobacco industry’s deceptions seem to accept the same actions by the e-cigarette industry. “It might be the same playbook but they don’t make that connection.”
Even so, the summit made him think differently about the concerns of people whose lives and livelihoods are tied to vaping. It helped him understand why adult smokers who can’t quit despite repeated attempts are willing to try e-cigarettes before there’s conclusive evidence that they work. He’s even thinking of returning to the meeting next year so he can "rile up some more animosity,” he says, recalling the boos his last appearance provoked. He’s curious if anyone will change their view of vaping in light of new studies, which are “coming out constantly." Recent research shows that e-cigarette users have more carcinogens in their urine than nonusers, for example, in contrast to studies presented at the summit that “heavily discounted” their toxicity.
Vaping interests, meanwhile, continue to discount e-cigarettes’ harms as they’ve redoubled efforts to fight restrictions on the devices. After the FDA finalized its rule to regulate e-cigarettes as tobacco products last year, vaping companies and their allies again tapped tobacco industry lawyers to fight the FDA. Nicopure, which makes e-liquids and e-cigarettes, hired the same law firm that ran Philip Morris’ Whitecoat operation to cast doubt on the dangers of secondhand smoke. The suit again challenged the agency’s jurisdiction and argued that the rule violated companies’ constitutional rights to free speech by preventing e-cigarette manufacturers from making truthful statements about its products. “Notwithstanding plaintiffs’ rhetoric,” a federal judge wrote in rejecting the claims in July, “this provision does not ban truthful statements about health benefits or reduced risks; it simply requires that they be substantiated.”
“Banning e-cigarettes would actually increase transportation-related deaths by driving nicotine-dependent passengers to drive rather than fly,” their opening brief argued
The industry tried a more creative approach last year, when CASAA and the Competitive Enterprise Institute sued the Department of Transportation to overturn a rule extending the smoking ban on airplanes to e-cigarettes. “Banning e-cigarettes would actually increase transportation-related deaths by driving nicotine-dependent passengers to drive rather than fly,” their opening brief argued, “and would undermine rather than promote passenger comfort by subjecting passengers to nicotine withdrawal symptoms that are a common cause of “air rage.” A federal appeals court rejected their argument in July.
Tobacco control advocates scored another win during the summer, when San Francisco passed an ordinance banning the sale of flavored tobacco products. Within weeks, a group called Let’s Be Real, heavily promoted by by SFATA’s Didak, launched a voter petition to repeal the ban. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, R Street, and other tobacco industry allies also attacked the ban, which suggests that they fear other cities will follow suit. Let’s Be Real announced in August that it had collected far more than the required number of signatures to force a referendum on the flavor ban.
Where things get real is on the bottom line. San Francisco’s strict campaign disclosure laws require petitioners to reveal their benefactors. And the first part of that disclosure offers voters plucky, grassroots appeal: “Paid for by Let’s Be Real San Francisco, A Coalition of Concerned Citizens Supporting Freedom of Choice, Adult Consumers, Community Leaders, and Neighborhood Small Businesses.”
If that seems rosy, the punchline is somewhat more worrying: “with Major Funding by R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company.” |
UK and Canada launch alliance to phase out coal by 2030 | Canada and the UK launched a new global alliance designed to phase out the use of coal power by 2030 at the United Nations climate talks last week. However, the 19 countries, and six cities, provinces and states that have committed to the “Powering Past Coal Alliance” account for under 3% of global coal use. Key members of the group, including Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Italy, Mexico and the Netherlands had also already committed to retiring their remaining coal power. The alliance also does not include Germany, which still uses coal to generate 40% of its electricity.
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/11/16/climate/alliance-phase-out-coal.html | 2017-11-16 00:00:00 | BONN, Germany — One of the biggest announcements at this year's United Nations climate talks came on Thursday, when Canada and Britain began a new global alliance aimed at phasing out the use of coal power by 2030. But so far, the countries, states and provinces that have joined the “Powering Past Coal Alliance” account for less than 3 percent of coal use worldwide.
Many of the alliance’s key members — including Denmark, France, Finland, Italy, Austria, Mexico, and the Netherlands — were already on their way to retiring what little coal power they had left.
Opponents of coal, the most carbon-intensive of all fossil fuels, were feeling triumphant in Bonn. This week, the International Energy Agency declared that coal's “boom years” were over, as China’s once-insatiable appetite for the fuel has waned and countries like the United States have been closing their coal plants in favor of cheaper and cleaner sources like natural gas, solar, and wind.
“The market has moved on, the world has moved on, and coal is not coming back,” said Catherine McKenna, Canada’s minister of environment and climate change.
Yet coal still provides roughly 40 percent of the world’s electricity, and many countries aren’t willing to commit to a total phase-out just yet. A number of developing countries in Asia — including India, Vietnam and Bangladesh — are still looking to build new coal plants to bring electricity to those who don't have it.
For the world to meet its climate goals, the coal landscape would have to change drastically — and soon. A recent report from the United Nations Environment Program warned that keeping global warming below 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, would require either shutting down nearly every coal plant in the world before 2050 or outfitting the plants with technology to capture emissions and bury them.
The new anti-coal alliance, which is made up of 19 countries and six states, provinces and cities, has one notable omission: Germany, which still generates 40 percent of its electricity from coal. On Wednesday, Chancellor Angela Merkel acknowledged at the Bonn climate talks that Germany would most likely miss its goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 because of its continued consumption of lignite, a particularly dirty, low-grade form of coal.
While many environmentalists had hoped that Ms. Merkel would use the climate talks to set a timetable for the elimination of coal in Germany, she merely said that she was engaged in “tough discussions” on the issue as she sought to form a new government. |
Ethereum to pioneer lower blockchain energy consumption | The ethereum blockchain is set to introduce changes to its technology that could significantly reduce its energy use. At present, blockchains use vast quantities of energy, mainly through the production of digital signatures that protect them from attack through a process known as “proof of work”. An alternative “proof of stake” process, which validates blockchains on the basis of monetary deposits, is more energy efficient and could be adopted by ethereum as early as the end of this year.
| https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609480/bitcoin-uses-massive-amounts-of-energybut-theres-a-plan-to-fix-it/?utm_source=newsletters&utm_medium=email&utm_content=11-17-2017&utm_campaign=the_download&utm_source=MIT+Technology+Review&utm_campaign=86b83d18cf-The_Download&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_997ed6f472-86b83d18cf-154403165 | 2017-11-16 00:00:00 | This piece appears in our new twice-weekly newsletter, Chain Letter, which covers the world of blockchain and cryptocurrencies. Sign up here – it’s free!
Before we get to that, though, let’s talk about miners. Blockchains get a lot of love, but they are only shared sets of data. What brings cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum to life is the way all the computers in their networks agree, over and over, that what a blockchain says is true. To do this, they use an algorithm called a consensus mechanism. You’ve probably heard it called “mining.” (See: “What Bitcoin Is, and Why It Matters”)
Cryptocurrency miners do much more than unlock new coins. In the process, they check the blockchain to make sure people aren’t spending coins fraudulently, and they add new lists of transactions—the blocks—to the chain. It’s the second step, meant to secure the blockchain from attacks, that guzzles electricity.
Ultimately, the miners must transform each list of most recent transactions into a signature that can serve as proof that the information is true. All miners can do this, using a cryptographic tool that takes any input and spits out a string of seemingly random characters. But Bitcoin’s creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, made this part particularly difficult.
Nakamoto set up a competition, the object of which is to be the first to determine a very specific signature based on three inputs: the signature of the preceding block, the list of new transactions, and a random third number. Since miners don’t know the third number, they must generate signatures repeatedly until one guesses correctly. This expends an immense amount of energy, signaling to the rest of the network that a miner’s accounting can be trusted.
But while this particular method of reaching agreement—known as “proof of work”—is the most established, it isn’t the only one. A growing number of technologists are exploring different avenues, and some smaller cryptocurrencies already employ alternative means.
The one in the best position to supplant proof of work is called “proof of stake.” Whereas proof of work rewards participants for spending computational resources, blockchains that use proof of stake would select validators based in part on the size of their respective monetary deposits—their stake. This would be massively more energy efficient, but the concept is still unproven at a large scale and has a number of kinks that need working out.
Still, if all goes as planned, Ethereum will transition to proof of stake relatively soon, perhaps as early as the end of this year. That would be hugely impressive, given that its creator Vitalik Buterin has called devising an effective consensus algorithm “one of the hardest problems in cryptocurrency development.”
The reality is that we are probably stuck with energy-guzzling cryptocurrencies, at least for a while. In the meantime, maybe true believers would be wise to invest their digital coins in renewable electricity sources. |
Jotun launches coatings that can withstand 1,000-degree heat | Paint and coating provider Jotun has launched its Thermosafe range, offering coatings that can withstand extreme temperatures, for oil, gas and chemical facility assets. The Thermosafe range includes five products for particular conditions: thermal exposure, corrosion, cryogenic spills, fire, and heat from -196 to 1,000 degrees Celsius. The products should help facilities to lower costs, increase safety standards and boost efficiency. The range includes Jotatemp 250; Jotatemp 540 Zinc; Jotatemp 1000 Ceramic; Jotachar 1709; and Jotatherm TB550. | http://www.scandoil.com/moxie-bm2/news/spot_news/new-jotun-thermosafe-range-provides-better-corrosi.shtml | 2017-11-15 21:34:14.570000 | Edit page New page Hide edit links
Jotun meets extreme demands of onshore oil, gas and chemical industries with new Thermosafe range providing better corrosion protection, hence less maintenance for the operators (photo: Jotun)
The onshore oil, gas and chemical industries are evolving, and they need protective coating solutions to keep pace with ever more extreme demands. That’s the message from Jotun, one of the world’s leading global paints and coatings provider, which launches the unique Thermosafe range, enabling customers operating at higher temperatures, with enhanced safety, efficiency and productivity.
With the long life of a coating system and effective protection of facility assets growing in importance, Thermosafe was developed to enhance operational efficiency, cut costs, reduce maintenance and increase on-site safety. Thermosafe compromises five products created to suit specific extreme environments – including temperature ranges from -196C to 1000C, thermal exposure, corrosion, fire, cryogenic spills and heat enabling better corrosion protection and reduced maintenance needs.
This, Miles Buckhurst, Global Concept Director HPI at Jotun, explains, is exactly what the industry needs: “We work hand-in-hand with our global customer base in order to gain an intimate understanding of their operations,” he notes. “That insight tells us that the shift to higher temperatures, to help optimise processing and productivity, requires a new generation of coating. Thermosafe is a direct response to that demand.”
“The unbeatable protection these products deliver will allow customers to reduce material and maintenance costs, enhance safety standards, increase efficiency, and boost earnings by decreasing the amount of maintenance needed, and by bringing facilities back online faster after shut downs. We also understand that this is not a ‘one size fits all’ industry, so have utilised our established expertise to tailor solutions specifically for individual customer requirements.”
This is clearly demonstrated across the Thermosafe range. For example, Jotatemp 250 provides anti-corrosive protection for continuous operations of up to 250 degrees, providing optimal cost efficiency for customers operating within this threshold. However, those with the potential to experience anything from the lowest liquid gas temperatures up the extremes of burning hydrocarbons can choose Jotatemp 1000 Ceramic for optimum protection up to 1,000 degrees.
The full Thermosafe range, which also features mesh free epoxy passive fire protection (PFP) solutions and thermal insulation for cryogenic spills, safeguards against a comprehensive spectrum of threats, from thermal exposure, to corrosion, fires and heat.
“We have used a significant amount of resources to develop unique solutions catering for the needs of this fast-growing segment,” Buckhurst concludes. “The onshore oil, gas and chemical industries are some of the most demanding in the world, and they deserve coatings that can help them fulfill their potential. We are dedicated to delivering unrivalled performance – in our products and, as a consequence, for our customers’ operations worldwide.”
The Thermosafe range consists of: |
Sensirion develops low-power natural gas detection tech | Environmental sensor provider Sensirion has created a microthermal gas metering method to detect thermal gas, including non-conventional gas types that may be used in future, such as power-to-gas and biogas production systems. Sensirion plans to add its new method to its existing SGM6000 module range. The modules will encompass natural H, L and E gases, alongside natural gas mixtures with a maximum of 25% hydrogen content. Each device only consumes up to 10 µA. | https://www.hydrocarbonengineering.com/product-news/14112017/sensirion-welcomes-natural-gas-metering-technology/ | 2017-11-15 21:27:11.457000 | New environmentally friendly technologies, such as power-to-gas and biogas production systems, will change requirements for the entire natural gas industry, including gas metering. Due to these trends, future gas metering will be confronted with new mixtures of natural gas, including those that contain significant amounts of non-conventional fuel gases such as hydrogen or carbon dioxide. These new gas mixtures present a challenge for technologies that are currently used in natural gas metering.
Sensirion has been working on the above for many years and developed a microthermal gas metering method using a new technology to measure thermal gas characteristics. The company plans to commercialise this technology by adding the tehnology to its current product portfolio of SGM6000 modules.
The SGM6200 series is expected to fulfil both current and future market requirements. One module covers natural gases in groups H and L and E (as defined in EN437), as well as natural gas mixtures, including non-conventional fuel gases with up to 25% hydrogen content. The series will output temperature-compensated volumes of natural gas, aligned with today’s most widely used natural gas billing systems. The meters are also competitively priced, with ultra-low current consumption of 10 µA. |
CIMC's Blue Whale II rig can operate in 12,000 ft of water | Shipyard builder CIMC Raffles has initiated final sea trials for the ultra-deepwater drilling rig, the Blue Whale II, due to be launched in late 2017. The first rig in the series, the Blue Whale I, was completed in February this year, and both rigs can operate in 12,000 ft of water, and are able to drill to a depth of 50,000 ft. The rigs were designed using the Frigstad D90 design as a base, and are equipped with a dynamic positioning 3 system. Frigstad Offshore had ordered the rigs initially, but the builds were sold to a CIMC subsidiary in 2016. Blue Whale I has been used in the South China Sea for the China National Petroleum Corporation, drilling for methane hydrate in its first deepwater well. | http://gcaptain.com/photos-giant-blue-whale-ii-drilling-rig-nearing-completion-in-china/ | 2017-11-15 21:18:42.527000 | CIMC Raffles started the final series of sea trials for the ultra-deepwater drilling rig Blue Whale II in preparation for its delivery later this year.
Together with its award-winning sister rig Blue Whale I, which was completed in February, the two rigs are among the most advanced offshore drilling rigs in the world – designed to operate in 12,000 feet of water and drill to a depth of 50,000 feet.
The rigs were constructed based on the Frigstad D90 design and are equipped with a dynamic positioning 3 system.
They were originally ordered by Frigstad Offshore, but in 2016 the company decided to sell the newbuilds to a subsidiary of CIMC amid the prolonged downturn in the offshore oil and gas industry.
Blue Whale I recently finished drilling its first successful deep-water well for methane hydrate in the South China Sea on behalf of China National Petroleum Corporation. |
Senators Clash Over Last Minute Changes to Tax Bill | A conflict has arisen between Republican and Democratic senators over the changes that Republican officials have made to their proposed tax legislation. Votes are due in both chambers of Congress shortly on the proposed overhaul, but Democrats have taken issue with the insertion of a repeal of the Affordable Care Act’s mandate that most people to have health insurance, which has been replaced with a 2025 expiration date for individual tax cuts. Corporate tax cuts have been made permanent. The changes will allow the Republican party to save over $300bn over a decade, but the Congressional Budget Office has said that 13m fewer people would have insurance after a decade without the ACA mandate, and insurance premiums would rise approximately 10%. The Republicans have insisted that the individual mandate is a tax, and is a legitimate modification. The proposed legislative changes will theoretically add over $1.4tn to the federal debt over a 10 year period. The tax bill will also be merged with legislation that will allow the Alaskan Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to be opened to oil and gas drilling. The Republicans plan to protect that law from Democratic filibustering in the Senate, and when combined with the tax reform legislation, the two proposed laws would both be protected. The Trump administration has pushed Congress to resolve its differences to push the tax bill through, though, at present, there is a large divide between the House and Senate tax bills.
| https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/15/us/politics/senate-house-tax-cut.html | 2017-11-15 20:45:41.623000 | WASHINGTON — Uncertainty gripped the Senate on Wednesday over efforts to pass a sweeping $1.5 trillion tax cut after a Wisconsin Republican became the first senator in his party to declare that he could not vote for the tax bill as written, and other senators expressed serious misgivings over the cost and effect on the middle class.
The House is set on Thursday to pass its own version of the tax bill, which would cut taxes by more than $1.4 trillion over 10 years and broadly rewrite the business tax code. But as with the health care debate earlier this year, the Senate emerged as the inconstant ally in President Trump’s pursuit of a major legislative accomplishment in his first year.
Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, came out against both chambers’ tax plans on Wednesday, saying that the bills favored corporations over small businesses and other so-called pass-through entities, whose owners pay taxes on profits through the tax code for individuals.
“These businesses truly are the engines of innovation and job creation throughout our economy, and they should not be left behind,” he said in a statement. “Unfortunately, neither the House nor Senate bill provide fair treatment, so I do not support either in their current versions.” |
50% of seniors visit the dentist annually – How to treat the rising geriatric population | With the rise in geriatric Americans, dentists are taking a new approach to providing care for oral health. Seniors face barriers to dental care, with dental disease in older adults being one of the most prevalent public health issues in the country because of the expense of care and a lack of basic dental insurance. Less than half of all US seniors saw a dentist for a check-up in the past 12 months, and most patients are eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid, but are still unable to pay for oral care. Denti-Cal, the Californian state Medicaid program, is difficult to use for many dentists. Medicare coverage at present does not cover dental issues; transportation to facilities is also difficult, causing further problems for older adults. Common dental problems include untreated tooth decay; dry mouth; tooth loss; and periodontal disease, all of which can be exacerbated with age. The CDC has said that one in five of those aged 65 and over have untreated tooth decay problems, possibly having new issues of decay at a higher rate than children. Oral cancer is seven times more likely for this demographic than it is for younger adults, and more adults die from the disease than from skin cancer. Mouth infections may also be linked to serious issues such as heart disease, diabetes, stroke, pneumonia and more. Aside from using traditional prevention techniques, helping to reduce older patients’ fear of the dental check process can be helpful, and technology such as high-resolution cameras that speed up the process make it easier. Integrating oral health care with general health care can help older citizens to avoid issues worsening and spreading to other parts of the body, as well as meeting seniors’ dental, medical and psychological needs. Using a Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment, healthcare providers can evaluate patients’ health, dental and mental needs, and provide a care plan that spans all support and social services. Coverage for senior citizens will likely improve over time as further data is collected and analyzed, and as collaborative efforts to improve access succeed.
| https://www.beckersdental.com/dso-dpms/33569-50-of-seniors-visit-the-dentist-annually-how-to-treat-the-rising-geriatric-population.html | 2017-11-15 20:26:10.483000 | As the geriatric population continues to increase, dentists are changing their approach to dental care. Karen Becerra, DDS, CEO of Gary and Mary West Senior Dental Center in San Diego discussed the challenges and opportunities for dentists when treating seniors.Despite major advances in dentistry and the ability to prevent many oral healthcare issues, dental disease in seniors is one of the most significant and widespread public health problems in America, due to the costs of care and a lack of dental insurance.Data shows that fewer than half of seniors visited a dentist in the previous year, and most of our patients are dual eligibles for both Medicare and Medicaid and can’t afford to pay for dental care. They have trouble finding dentists that will even accept Denti-Cal, California’s Medicaid program.You’d be amazed at how many people don’t realize the Medicare coverage they get when they turn 65 has no coverage for dental care. Transportation is a major issue too, so our facility is co-located within a very popular senior wellness center in Downtown San Diego that sees almost a thousand clients a day.You need to think of a patient’s overall needs – from mental, social, medical and dental – so we are constantly consulting with physicians, families and social workers to address all of the patient’s needs. You have to customize the treatment plan based on the patient’s needs and circumstances. A 99 year old is going to get a different treatment plan than a 65 year old, because their ability to tolerate the stress of treatment varies. For example, a recent 99 year old woman had a broken tooth, that after careful consideration and discussion with her primary care physician, we decided it would be better to keep it in her mouth rather than extract it. If she had been 65, we most likely would have taken it out. While every case is different, we always try to keep in mind the patient’s broader health aspects when we consider their treatment.According to the CDC, about one-in-five people 65 and older have untreated tooth decay, and they may even experience new tooth decay at higher rates than children. Seniors are also more prone to issues like dry mouth, tooth loss and periodontal disease – the prevalence and severity of which increases with age.In addition, oral cancer is seven times more common in people 65 years of age and older, as compared to younger adults, and more older adults die from oral cancer than from skin cancer in America. Research has also shown infections in the mouth may be associated with heart disease, stroke, diabetes, pneumonia and other health problems.As an industry, dentistry is always changing. New technologies and ways to treat patients and improve their experience to make them more comfortable with the dental process are always emerging. Fear is a big aspect of treating seniors, because many of them have had poor experiences in the past, so anything that can help alleviate that is helpful. For example, new high-resolution cameras let us show a patient what is happening in their mouths quickly and help us educate them on the importance of the issues in their mouth and how they need to take care of their teeth. With all of these changes, though, the basics remain the same for seniors and any other patient. If they don’t brush and improve their home care, we’re going to be limited on what I can do to help them, and the oral diseases will reoccur. Prevention stays the same regardless of how old you are.We approach the patient as whole person, looking at their social, medical, mental and dental needs. The mission of the Gary and Mary West Senior Dental Center is to provide affordable, high-quality oral healthcare with comprehensive education, clinical, and wellness services for seniors in need, enabling them to live healthy and productive lives. The Senior Dental Center links high-quality and affordable oral healthcare with a suite of nutrition, case management and wellness services offered through the Gary and Mary West Senior Wellness Center , creating a one-of-a-kind, integrated community-based system of care for older adults. We’re focused on integrating medical and dental care for a seriously underserved population of low-income seniors so oral care isn’t an isolated silo.I think it’s essential. You can’t be in good general health if you have poor oral health, and vice versa. Care has to be looked at holistically. This is a care model we’ve adopted at the Senior Dental Center, where seniors can access a variety of health and wellness services all under one roof. Health navigators are able to collect and share important health information among providers and social services professionals. Our initial intake looks at the whole person – from traditional healthcare indicators like medical, dental and psychological, but we also really focus on social issues like nutrition and housing, because if those basic needs aren’t met, patients aren’t going to be able to improve their healthcare.Every senior who comes to us with a dental issue first gets a Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment (CGA) where we evaluate overall health, dental and mental status, as well as functional ability and his or her living situation. This enables us to develop a coordinated care plan that encompasses dental, medical and supportive social services all together. The CGA allows us to understanding the holistic need of a patient so we can prioritize their needs and get them ready to be seated in one of the dental chairs. If at any point during the appointment, any social, medical or mental needs become evident, then we do a direct referral to the other social services co-located at the senior wellness center where we’re located, and we work with regularly.Yes, we expect to see improvements in access as the community at large gets educated in the importance of addressing the oral-health needs of vulnerable seniors. We expect more collaboration, engagement and action from dentists and other health professionals, as well as engagement from community leaders, advocates, insurers and seniors themselves to help address these access issues. We believe the data we are collecting and analyzing at the Senior Dental Center will demonstrate the positive health outcomes and potential cost savings of providing dental care to seniors so that more communities will develop integrated models and more seniors have access to affordable coverage. As a non-profit, we’re always trying to raise funds to support these access efforts, so please visit www.seniordentalcenter.org to see how you can donate to support this cause so we can continue to shine a light on this issue to take all of our learnings and share them with others at the state and national level to proactively address this problem. |
Caring for those senior citizens who cared for us | Between now and the end of 2019, almost 10,000 senior US citizens will reach 65 every day, but of the nearly 100,000 foundations in the US, only six are aimed at helping seniors. Californians aged 65 and older representing 13.6% of the entire state’s population last year, with the state having the highest rate of older adults living in poverty. The Gary and Mary West Foundation is a Californian initiative aimed at helping seniors to age in place with better quality and more reasonably priced healthcare, which works alongside organization the Frame Works Institute to improve interoperability between non-profits. The Gary and Mary West Foundation has joined the Reframing Aging Project, designed to better understand older citizens’ needs and to improve outreach efforts. The organization believes that reframing the process of growing old will take approximately 15 years to help it be seen as a positive experience, and to help others see older Americans as worthwhile contributors to society.
| http://www.sbsun.com/2017/11/11/caring-for-those-senior-citizens-who-cared-for-us/ | 2017-11-15 20:19:47.753000 | Nearly 10,000 seniors will turn 65 today and every day in America through 2019. The U.S. Census Bureau reported Californians 65 years of age and older accounted for 13.6 percent of the state’s population in 2016. Sadly, however, California also leads the nation in the number of older adults living in poverty.
I am privileged to serve as a member of the California Commission on Aging where I continue my advocacy work on behalf of these constituents, a focus I also championed when I chaired the Assembly Committee on Long-Term Care and Aging.
Seniors’ needs expand with age and those living in poverty often go without. Many depend on family members, government resources, community outreach and non-profit organizations to fill the gap. Yet surprisingly, as great as the needs of these vulnerable residents are, many will be surprised to learn that of the nearly 100,000 foundations spread across the country, only six are fully dedicated to serving seniors.
This week, I had an opportunity to learn more about one of these six foundations and the great work it does on behalf of older Americans. For more than a decade, the Gary and Mary West Foundation has worked at the national, state and local (San Diego) levels to enable seniors to successfully age in place with access to high-quality, affordable healthcare and other support services designed to preserve and protect their dignity, quality of life and independence. Its founders, Gary and Mary West, are working to transform the way healthcare is delivered to an aging population.
Efforts like those of the Gary and Mary West Foundation are enhanced by works of groups like the Frame Works Institute, an organization dedicated to enhancing how non-profit organizations communicate as a way to better frame public discussion on social concerns like the rapidly expanding senior population.
The group is a partner in the Reframing Aging Project, working with aged-focused organizations from all over the country to create a better understanding of the needs of older adults and their contributions to society. In addition, they are working to use communications and outreach efforts to drive a more informed conversation about aging and its implications for our communities.
Anyone who knows me, knows when I speak about seniors/older adults, I talk about the “Silver Tsunami.” I like what the sense of urgency the term implies. However, in the reframing discussion, it was determined such phrases are negative and should not be used. So, beginning today, I will start speaking in more positive terms, hoping it will have better results. Experts believe, this reframing effort will take about 15 years to change perception regarding how aging is perceived in this country.
For far too long, growing old has been viewed as a negative experience; however, people should not fear growing old. Rather than viewing this natural process as a time of declining health and increased dependency, the Reframing Aging Project is working to change this in hopes of creating a better understanding of older adults and their contributions.
We must unite at the local, state and federal levels to assure older adults can remain in their homes, healthy, independent, connected, productive and most importantly, cared-for regardless of their income. Their needs can range from food insecurity to mental health issues to physical and/or oral problems to just plain loneliness. Exploring new models of care is one way to address these concerns.
We are changing the way advocates talk about aging and it is important that when we look at seniors, we see the whole person — not just their age. We must continue to find better ways to care for those who cared for us.
Cheryl Brown of San Bernardino represented the 47th District in the California Assembly from 2012-2016. |
Opinion: Let’s Put Some Teeth into Veterans’ Healthcare Coverage | The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs provides veterans with coverage for medical care, but routine dental care only garners partial coverage, being available only to those veterans on 100% disability or with oral health problems related their service. The lack of full dental care from both the Department of Veterans Affairs, Medicare and Medicaid causes issues for veterans in need. Research supports the provision of dental as well as general health care, given that gum disease and systemic conditions are strongly correlated. Type 2 diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular disease, and osteoporosis have all been linked to oral issues, with strokes and depression potentially also related. The risk factors for these diseases are increasingly higher for the older population of Vietnam and Korean War veterans, and as nearly half of the 20m US veterans are over the age of 65, the problems will continue to worsen without intervention. For senior citizens, seven in ten have gum disease; one in five have untreated cavities, and almost one in five have no teeth remaining. Despite these facts, only 28 states offer adult dental benefits through Medicaid, and even this coverage only covers particular services, with few providers willing to offer them. As it stands, 70% of seniors do not have dental insurance, and low-income seniors generally go without basic care for their oral health.
| https://timesofsandiego.com/opinion/2017/11/11/lets-put-teeth-veterans-healthcare-coverage/ | 2017-11-15 20:16:45.913000 | By Shelley Lyford
When Brian parachuted onto the Korean Peninsula with the 187th Airborne in September of 1950, his teeth were the last thing he worried about. His primary concerns were, first, that his chute would open, second, that he wouldn’t get shot out of the sky by the enemy or tangled up with one of the thousands of other paratroopers jumping out of the “Flying Boxcar” transport planes, third, that he’d land in the jump zone clearing and not in the trees, and fourth, that he wouldn’t break his leg or become separated from his company once he landed.
Brian managed to survive that jump, as well as months of fierce combat against Chinese and North Korean troops during the freezing winter of 1951. But sixty years later, he literally didn’t have a leg to stand on. Like a lot of paratroopers, Brian had developed osteoarthritis in his knees as a result of the repeated impact of parachute landings with a heavy pack and rifle bag strapped to his body.
Brian was a good candidate for double knee replacement which would allow him to walk again, and would relieve the pain of the degenerative arthritis that had wrecked his joints. And since his disability was directly related to his wartime service, it was covered by his veteran’s benefits — which was good news indeed, because Brian was flat broke by then and just getting by on Social Security. For years after his service, Brian owned a successful restaurant in downtown San Diego. But he fell on hard times, lost his business and couldn’t keep up with his bills.
While the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs continued to cover his medical care, routine dental care is generally only covered for veterans on 100% disability or with service-related dental problems, so he couldn’t keep up with his basic dental needs. Ten years of going without dental care had taken their toll on his mouth. Most of his teeth were rotted and his gums were badly infected. So badly, that the orthopedic surgeon couldn’t operate on his knees, for fear Brian’s gum infection might spread through his bloodstream to his knee joints during surgery. So his knee replacement had to be put on hold until he could get his mouth treated. Brian didn’t have coverage for the thousands of dollars’ worth of dental work he needed to extract his rotten teeth and treat his infected gums. And because of the patchwork nature of dental coverage for seniors in California and in most states, he didn’t qualify for coverage under Medicaid, while Medicare doesn’t cover dental care.
These kinds of coverage gaps in veterans’ healthcare are all too common. It’s unconscionable that our lawmakers have failed to take care of our Veterans’ needs by ensuring they receive basic dental care.
In the past decade, we’ve come to understand that the mouth is not only the gateway to the body, but also the gateway to chronic disease. Research has uncovered consistent and strong associations between gum disease and systemic conditions such as cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes mellitus, and osteoporosis — and it’s suspected to cause many other serious conditions including stroke and depression.
While gum disease is more often a byproduct of old age, poverty and oral healthcare neglect than of battlefield injuries, those risk factors are increasingly common among the aging population of Korean and Vietnam War veterans. Almost half of our country’s 20 million veterans are over the age of 65. California is home to more vets than any other state: 1.8 million, and more than 800,000 of them are over 65.
Here are the hard facts about the oral health of our seniors overall:
7 in 10 suffer from gum disease
1 in 5 have untreated cavities
Nearly 1 in 5 have no teeth at all
Only 28 states include adult dental benefits under Medicaid, and those benefits cover only certain services and finding a dentist to treat a Medicaid patient can be extremely difficult, if not impossible. In 2009, facing a severe budget shortfall, California eliminated its adult dental care benefit. The state restored some of the benefit in 2014, but Denti-Cal payments are so limited that most dentists don’t see Medicaid patients. And since 70 percent of seniors have no dental insurance, low-income seniors are mostly going without basic dental care.
For seniors like Brian, “going without” can have far-reaching consequences. Fortunately, caseworkers at the VA were eventually able to get him the dental care he needed to proceed with his knee replacement surgery.
Veterans like Brian can’t wait for legislators to provide more funding to the VA and Medicaid so they can get critically needed dental care. His story shows how important it is for the whole community to step up and bridge the gaps in veteran’s care. That includes the public and the private sector, as well as private philanthropy.
I’m the Chair of the Board of the Gary and Mary West Senior Dental Center in downtown San Diego, an integrated, community-based model of care tailored to the special needs of seniors. In the year since it opened, our clinic has hosted more than 4,200 dental visits from low-income seniors, who also receive a spectrum of coordinated medical and social supports services under one roof.
All seniors should be able to age with dignity, and oral health is a big part of that equation. Without healthy teeth, seniors can’t eat a nutritious diet, or even engage in everyday social interaction. Our clinic has tapped into an enormous pent-up demand for affordable dental care for seniors, including veterans. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of other seniors, including veterans, are still “going without” dental care.
In addition to Gary and Mary West, visionary philanthropists and dentists in other communities have begun to create model programs to assist veterans. Aspen Dental has 450 offices across the country that have provided free dental care to more than 17,000 veterans and people in need since 2014. Meanwhile, a retired periodontist in Washington state, Theresa Cheng, was inspired by the story of a local Iraq veteran, gravely injured by an IED, to start Everyone for Veterans, a nonprofit that now works with 300 dentists to provide free dental care to veterans in need.
By working together in our communities — in coordination with state and federal agencies — for-profits and nonprofits can close the gaps in healthcare funding for veterans. It’s the least we can do to repay our debt to the brave men and women who have put their lives on the line in defense of our nation. Veterans like Brian deserve a special measure of gratitude and care. Not just today, but every day.
Shelley Lyford is President and CEO of San Diego-based West Health and the Gary and Mary West Foundation, nonprofit organizations that enables seniors to successfully age in place with access to high-quality healthcare and supportive services. |
Two-thirds of rental properties sell to cash buyers: Countrywide | Estate agent Countrywide has found that large numbers of landlords are paying for buy-to-let properties in cash. Over the past year, 65% of all homes bought by a landlord were purchased with cash, up from 60% in 2011. The figure is the highest since 2007 when Countrywide began keeping records. Over the past year landlords paying with cash bought £21bn of homes, spending £200m more than in 2016, and 32% more than in 2007. The annualised rate of rental growth dropped to 0.5% in October, from 1.1% in September, with the average British new let being £958 a month.
| http://www.propertyindustryeye.com/cash-purchases-rise-to-two-thirds-of-the-buy-to-let-market-countrywide/ | 2017-11-15 19:39:53.593000 | Post navigation
Record numbers of landlords are now building their buy-to-let portfolios using cash, Countrywide claims.
Analysis by the agent shows that over the past 12 months, 65% of all homes bought by a landlord were paid for in cash, surpassing the previous high of 60% set in 2011.
It is the highest figure since Countrywide’s records began in 2007, a year when 60% of buy-to-let purchases were paid for with a mortgage.
Landlords buying with cash bought £21bn worth of homes which is £0.2bn more than in 2016 and a 32% increase on 2007 when they spent £15.9bn.
The research also showed that the annual rate of rental growth slowed from 1.1% in September to 0.5% in October, with the cost of the average new let in Britain at £958 per month.
Excluding London, however, where rental growth dipped back into negative territory, down 0.9%, rents rose 1.2% over the 12 months to October.
The midlands and Wales continued to be the drivers of rental growth, where rents rose 2.2% and 2.6% over the last year to £677 and £658 a month respectively.
Johnny Morris, research director at Countrywide, said: “Landlords have increased their housing wealth considerably over the last 10 years. This means cash purchases are steadily becoming a bigger part of the market.
“But a landlord buying with cash will often have a mortgage either on their personal home or other properties in their portfolio. Rising prices have allowed landlords to take equity out of both their personal or other rental homes to expand their portfolios.
“Rental growth across northern England has slowed under pressure from record numbers of new landlords. But it’s a different story across the midlands and parts of the south where rents are once again nudging upwards.
“It looks like the last effects of the investor Stamp Duty surcharge have finally worked their way through the system.” |
Microfluidic droplets used to create liquid-repellent materials | Researchers led by Professor Wang Liqiu at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering at the University of Hong Kong have created a super-effective liquid-repellent surface, based on a new microfluidic droplet-based method. The new technique can make metals, glass and textiles liquid-repellent by adding a coat of the porous surface, which could lead to clothing being water repellent but flexible in future. The technique was based on the anatomy of springtails, arthropods that live in soil and have liquid-repellent cuticles with strong mechanical capabilities that translate well for human needs. | https://phys.org/news/2017-11-team-ideal-liquid-repellent-surfaces.html?utm_source=menu&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=item-menu | 2017-11-15 17:43:47.090000 | Professor Wang Liqui (left) and Dr Zhu Pingan from HKU Mechanical Engineering Department showcase the liquid repellent material they innovated. Credit: The University of Hong Kong
On liquid-repellent surfaces, liquid droplets bounce away instead of being stuck. These surfaces are important in many fields, such as water-repellent clothes and anti-fouling kitchenware. Used as drag-reduction coatings for water vehicles, these surfaces can even help with speeding up cargo ships and military equipment so as to save energy. The dream of research and development on liquid-repellents is a structure that has robust liquid repellency, strong mechanical stability, and is inexpensive to produce on a commercial scale. However, the functional outcomes of existing liquid-repellent surfaces have not been satisfactory, because of inadequacies of conventional structural design and fabrication approaches in engineering microstructures and properties of such surfaces.
The challenge was recently overcome by breakthrough research led by Professor Wang Liqiu at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, the University of Hong Kong (HKU) through the development of a robust liquid-repellent structure and the fabrication of porous surfaces by an innovative microfluidic-droplet-based technique. Materials such as textiles, metals, and glasses covered by a layer of this robust porous surface can then become liquid-repellent. The paper was recently published in academic journal Nature Communications (Zhu P. A., Kong T. T., Tang X. and Wang L. Q. 2017. Well-defined porous membranes for robust omniphobic surfaces via microfluidic emulsion templating, Nature Communications 8, 15823). With the new technology developed by the team, clothes would never get wet on rainy days in the future.
The team resolves effectively the conflict between liquid-repellency and mechanical stability by the springtail-cuticle-inspired design of liquid-repellent structures. Springtails are soil-dwelling arthropods whose habitats often experience rain and flooding. As a consequence, springtails evolve their cuticles with strong mechanical durability and robust liquid repellency to resist friction from soil particles and to survive in watery environments, respectively. Inspired by springtail cuticles, the research team designed porous surfaces composed of interconnected honeycomb-like micro-cavities with a re-entrant profile: interconnectivity ensures mechanical stability and re-entrant structure yields robust liquid-repellency. Ideal liquid-repellent surfaces developed by HKU scientists Credit: The University of Hong Kong
Robust liquid-repellent structure shows a 21-fold enhancement in mechanical stability
The robust liquid-repellent surfaces repel at least 10 types of liquid, including water, surfactant solutions, oils, and organic solvents and show an astounding over 21-fold enhancement in mechanical stability compared with discrete structures. The porous surfaces are capable of recovering their non-wetting state as well even if micro-cavities are partially wetted by water. The flexible surfaces can also be readily coated onto various objects for liquid-repellency.
Soil-dwelling springtails with dew (body length: ~2.5 mm). Credit: Brian Valentine
Porous surface material just costs about HKD1 per square metre
The research team also developed an innovative microfluidic-droplet-based technique for the fabrication of porous surfaces which is very much similar to shaped-cookies made by baking molds. Here the molds are uniform micron-sized droplets that are produced by microfluidics technology with precise control over their size, structure, and composition. Molded by microfluidic droplets, commercial-scale uniform microstructures are produced at low cost. The material cost is in a range of HKD 0.7 to 1.3 per square metre, only one thousandth of that in purchasing commercialized products such as PTFE water-repellent film. This technique has high accuracy and effectiveness in engineering surface structures, ensured by the precision and controllability of microfluidic-droplet generation that is low in cost and readily scaled up as well.
Bio-inspired design of liquid-repellent structures with robust liquid-repellency. Schematic (a) and image (b) of the designed porous surface. (c) Photo of a water drop suspended on top of the porous surface. (d) repellency of 10 different liquids by the porous surface. Credit: The University of Hong Kong
The breakthrough will change the way liquid-repellent surfaces are fabricated for robust liquid-repellency, strong mechanical stability, and economical production at a commercial scale. It has also paved the way for further progress in creating surface structures by design, and in tailoring their morphology, repellency and mechanical stability to suit a desired application in various fields, including energy, buildings, automobiles, chemical engineering, electronics, environments, bio-medical industry, advanced manufacturing, water vehicle and military equipment.
Bio-inspired design of liquid-repellent structures with enhanced mechanical stability. (a) Intact structure of interconnected porous surface. (b) Intact discrete structure. (c-d) Damaged interconnected structures at (c) 8.6 kPa (kilopascal, the unit of pressure) and (d)11.5 kPa respectively. (e-f) Damaged discrete structures at (e) 0.4 kPa and (f)2.9 kPa respectively. Credit: The University of Hong Kong
Fabrication of bioinspired liquids-repellent surfaces by microfluidic method. (a) Process of microfluidic fabrication method, involving emulsion deposition, solvent evaporation, and template removal. (b) Droplet assemblies after emulsion deposition. (c) Dry film after solvent evaporation. (d) Porous surface after template removal. (e-f) Images of porous surfaces with different pore sizes. (g) Transparency of porous surfaces. (h) Wafer-scale fabrication of the porous surface. Credit: The University of Hong Kong |
Cash buyers see bitcoin price double on local Zimbabwe exchange | The price of Bitcoin has risen sharply on Zimbabwe's only cryptocurrency exchange, after the apparent coup by the country's military. The Golix exchange recorded an average price of over $13,000 for bitcoin in the wake of the confused political developments, however, the surge appears to be limited to this exchange, and in particular to transactions with cash buyers. By contrast, the price quoted on global peer-to-peer platform, LocalBitcoins, by Zimbabwe brokers appeared to be in line with the global price of bitcoin. at around $7,000.
| https://qz.com/1130147/bitcoins-price-in-zimbabwe-is-not-actually-13000/ | 2017-11-15 17:40:53.940000 | Bitcoin is apparently surging in Zimbabwe after the military seized power in an apparent coup. Bloomberg reports that bitcoin is trading in Zimbabwe at over $13,000, nearly double the global price of bitcoin. But that’s not quite the whole picture.
The price that Bloomberg and other media have quoted comes from a cryptocurrency exchange in Zimbabwe called Golix. The Golix website shows a wide spread between bids and asks, with the current price settling at around $13,500. But go to another marketplace for bitcoin in Zimbabwe and you will see much lower prices.
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Golix appears to be the sole cryptocurrency exchange in Zimbabwe. But most markets that aren’t well served by exchanges, like Zimbabwe, usually have a thriving peer-to-peer scene. That’s what you see when you go to LocalBitcoins, the biggest global platform for peer-to-peer bitcoin trading. Zimbabwe’s LocalBitcoin brokers are quoting prices around $7,000, which is in line with the global price of bitcoin.
It’s the brokers who offer to settle transactions in cash, instead of online payemnts or via bank transfers, who are demanding a steep premium in Zimbabwe. They are asking for $17,000 to $20,000 a coin from buyers who pay them in physical US dollars.
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So what explains the inflated prices on Golix? It’s probably just low liquidity. Golix’s website shows that it traded just over 7 bitcoins in the last 24 hours, and about 147 coins over the last 30 days. That’s in contrast to tens of thousands of bitcoins traded over LocalBitcoins globally each month, or tens of thousands per day on the biggest US dollar exchanges, like Coinbase or Bitfinex.
LocalBitcoins, in fact, has been rocketing in popularity over the years. It doesn’t show data for Zimbabwe, but volumes on the platform have risen significantly around the world in recent months. |
Hospital Elder Life Program (HELP) lowers 30-day readmission rates | The Hospital Elder Life Program (HELP) a treatment scheme created in the 1990s to help older adults avoid delirium, could potentially reduce hospital readmissions by approximately 40,000 incidents per year, according to research published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. The addition of HELP programs could save almost $500m annually, as delirium – or sudden confusion that is likely to occur after surgery – was reduced. The research team examined eight surgical and medical units equipped with HELP programs at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Shadyside between 2013 and 2014, studying 4,794 patients aged over 70. Their data was compared to 2,834 similar patients in non-HELP facilities across the same period. The team found that there were 100 fewer readmissions in the first 30 days post-stay in the HELP units per year, as delirium was less likely to occur. HELP prevents delirium by providing an elder life specialist, an elder life nurse specialist, a geriatric doctor, and volunteers who have been trained for elderly care. The team offers social assistance and guidance, as well as eyeglasses and hearing assistance, to patients to help reorient them. The system is currently used in more than 200 hospitals globally.
| https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-11-hospital-elder-life-lowers-day.html | 2017-11-15 17:13:04.720000 | The Hospital Elder Life Program, or HELP, is an evidence-based treatment plan developed in the 1990s to prevent hospitalized older adults from developing delirium (the medical term for sudden confusion). Delirium can cause people to be either aggressive and agitated or sleepy and inactive—sometimes even a combination of the two. Delirium is also the most common complication older adults experience after surgery.
Delirium has many causes, including infection, excess time in bed, and an imbalance in electrolytes (important minerals dissolved in bodily fluids). Older adults with delirium have longer hospital stays, higher care costs, and increased rates of death and institutionalization.
In a new study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, researchers examined the HELP program. They wanted to learn how effective it was at preventing older people from being readmitted to the hospital within 30 days, which is often harmful for patients and costly for hospitals.
HELP consists of one or more in-hospital teams, which include an Elder Life Specialist, an Elder Life Nurse Specialist, a geriatrician, and trained volunteers. The team works together to reduce an older person's risk of developing delirium through simple strategies that target specific risk factors. For example, team members help keep patients moving and orient them as to where they are and what the time and day is The team members engage the older adults socially, and provide eyeglasses and hearing assistance as needed. HELP units also use alternatives to medication to ease insomnia and anxiety, and to make sure that older adults who might be at risk for developing delirium eat well and stay hydrated. Since it was developed, HELP has now been implemented in more than 200 hospitals across the United States and around the world.
The research team studied eight medical and surgical units with HELP programs at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Shadyside. During the study period (2013 to 2014), the HELP units had 4,794 patients over the age of 70. Researchers compared these older people to 2,834 similar individuals who were cared for in non-HELP units during the same period.
The researchers learned that the differences in hospital readmission rates between the HELP units and non-HELP units translated into 100 fewer readmissions during the year-long study.
The researchers said that on a national scale, HELP could potentially reduce hospital readmissions for older adults by 40,000 cases each year, potentially saving nearly $500 million dollars annually.
More information: Fred H. Rubin et al, Effect of the Hospital Elder Life Program on Risk of 30-Day Readmission, Journal of the American Geriatrics Society (2017). DOI: 10.1111/jgs.15132 Journal information: Journal of the American Geriatrics Society |
Sales of cryptocurrency mining equipment on the rise in Singapore | Bitcoin's surge has spurred sales of cryptocurrency mining computers in Singapore, with SG Mining saying it's now selling more than 100 rigs a month compared with 15 in June. The increase in sales preceded the suspended SegWit2x coin's hard fork but coincided with bitcoin's value rising to more than $7,000. Singapore has embraced crypto currencies and its central bank has said it has no intention of regulating the sector.
| https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-price-gains-sees-swell-among-singapore-miners/ | 2017-11-15 16:53:04.657000 | A bitcoin mining company in Singapore is seeing a rising number of customers purchasing mining rigs as the cryptocurrency gains in value. SG Mining, based ...
A bitcoin mining company in Singapore is seeing a rising number of customers purchasing mining rigs as the cryptocurrency gains in value.
SG Mining, based in Singapore, has seen sales shoot up in recent months. In July, the company was selling 15 mining rigs, but now it’s seeing sales of around 100 per month. Dexter Ng, one of the team members who builds the mining hardware and sell them, said to Channel News Asia:
Customers come in and order 50 rigs on their own. Compared to last time, probably one person only buys one or two. Now we get customers who buy 10, 20 or even 50.
Each of the mining rigs sells for between S$5,000 to over S$6,500, depending on its processing power.
This rise in the number of customers comes at a time when bitcoin saw its value soar to $7,800 earlier this month. This was in light of the fact that the organisers behind the SegWit2x hard fork had announced that they were suspending the operation due to a lack of consensus.
However, shortly following that news saw bitcoin’s price dropping to $5,500 over the weekend before making a recovery on Monday to $6,500. Of course, this is likely to fuel the opinion of critics that the digital currency is in a bubble due to its volatile prices.
Stanley Yong, a cryptocurrency researcher, said:
The price going up is probably a bubble, given that it has reached more than US$7,000 per bitcoin. And the question for us is not whether it is a bubble. But how long this bubble will be there.
It remains to be seen what future the digital currency has in Singapore. At the end of October, Ravi Menon, the managing director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), the country’s central bank, said that the country doesn’t intend to regulate the cryptocurrency or the market in the short-term.
At the time, Menon stated that bitcoin doesn’t pose a ‘risk that warrants regulation,’ however, the central bank will keep ‘an open mind‘ about it.
The jury is still be out regarding whether bitcoin becomes accepted into the mainstream in Singapore.
For now, though, many investors are keen to get involved with mining their own coins despite the fact that the market may have suffered a drastic drop over the weekend. That, however, doesn’t appear to be preventing investors from getting involved. This can be seen by the fact that bitcoin’s price has rallied back and is back up by over $1,000 from weekend lows.
Featured image from Shutterstock. |
Uber board member Huffington praises new ethics code | Following the announcement of a new company-wide ethics code, dubbed "cultural norms", Uber board member and publisher Arriana Huffington has portrayed the company's new approach as "doing the right thing -- period". The new code was published in a LinkedIn post by new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi and comprises eight bullet-point statements, including: "We value ideas over hierarchy"; "We build globally, we live locally"; and, "We celebrate differences". Huffington praised Khosrowshahi's role in implementing swift cultural change within Uber.
| https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/14/arianna-huffington-on-ubers-new-culture-we-do-the-right-thing.html | 2017-11-15 16:24:17.167000 | After a tumultuous year that saw a major sexism scandal and founder Travis Kalanick resign as CEO, Uber released new "cultural norms" last week.
Media mogul Arianna Huffington, who joined the ride-sharing service's board of directors in 2016, thinks it's a step in the right direction.
Huffington has spearheaded efforts to revamp Uber's image, pushing for changes like management training and better relationships with drivers. Her main focus going forward is changing the tech start-up's culture at its core.
At a recent Fuel List event hosted by Huffington's wellness site Thrive Global and food company Quaker Oats, Huffington told CNBC Make It that the company's new motto can be "summed up" in one key phrase: "We do the right thing. Period."
This catch-all slogan underscores internally and externally that Uber is committed to integrity at all levels of the company. In an interview with CNBC, Huffington says it's important that Uber's 65 million riders love the brand and the company just as much as they love the product.
In a recent LinkedIn post, Uber's new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi released the full list of the car service's new cultural norms:
1. We build globally, we live locally.
2. We are customer obsessed.
3. We celebrate differences.
4. We do the right thing.
5. We act like owners.
6. We persevere.
7. We value ideas over hierarchy.
8. We make big bold bets.
The CEO admits, in the blog entry, that Uber's current culture must evolve in order to get the company to the "next level."
"Rather than ditching everything," Khosrowshahi writes, "I'm focused on preserving what works while quickly changing what doesn't." |
Sierra Nevada successfully tests landing for ISS cargo spaceship | Private spaceflight firm Sierra Nevada has sent its Dream Chaser vehicle on a successful gliding and landing mission, after being launched via helicopter from the Edwards Air Force Base in southern California. The free-flight test has confirmed the vehicle's landing capabilities, allowing Sierra Nevada to further develop it for release. The Dream Chaser will shortly be used for cargo missions to the International Space Station as part of NASA’s commercial cargo programme. At present, only SpaceX and Orbital ATK have contracts for NASA supplies but Sierra Nevada will be able to participate from 2019 to 2024.
| https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/13/16643094/sierra-nevada-corporation-dream-chaser-nasa-commercial-cargo-program-free-flight | 2017-11-15 16:21:40.837000 | On Saturday, private spaceflight company Sierra Nevada announced that its Dream Chaser spaceplane had successfully glided and landed on a runway after being released from a helicopter. The stunt, done at Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California, is known as a free-flight test and is meant to test out the vehicle’s landing capabilities. It’s an important milestone in the Dream Chaser’s development, as Sierra Nevada readies the plane for spaceflight.
Resembling a mini Space Shuttle, the Dream Chaser will soon be used to send cargo to and from the International Space Station as part of NASA’s Commercial Cargo Program. Right now, two companies — SpaceX and Orbital ATK — hold contracts with NASA to periodically resupply the station through 2018. But last year, NASA awarded a second round of contracts, in order to cover cargo shipments to the ISS from 2019 through 2024. Sierra Nevada was picked for that round, along with SpaceX and Orbital ATK again. The company expects to start cargo missions sometime in 2020.
The Dream Chaser is a fairly unique vehicle compared to the other two companies’ spacecraft. Both SpaceX and Orbital ATK developed wingless cargo capsules that launch to the station on top of the companies’ rockets. Orbital ATK’s capsule — known as Cygnus — is then designed to burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere once it leaves the station, while SpaceX’s Dragon cargo capsule can survive the descent to Earth, using parachutes to land in the ocean. The Dream Chaser, however, which is meant to launch on top of an Atlas V rocket, glides down to Earth like a plane after reentering the atmosphere, landing horizontally on a runway.
Originally, Sierra Nevada had hoped its Dream Chaser would carry astronauts, and not just cargo, to the ISS. Back in 2010, NASA awarded the company $20 million to develop the Dream Chaser as a crewed vehicle, and Sierra Nevada did a ton of tests over the next couples of years to prepare the spacecraft for carrying passengers. But in 2014, NASA didn’t pick the Dream Chaser to do crewed flights to the ISS, going with SpaceX and Boeing’s proposed vehicles instead. Since then, Sierra Nevada has been modifying the Dream Chaser to just carry cargo, though the company is leaving the option open to develop a crewed version of the vehicle in the future.
This weekend’s free-flight test was the second one that Sierra Nevada has done with Dream Chaser. The first one, back in 2013, didn’t go all that smoothly: the vehicle’s landing gears failed, causing the spaceplane to crash-land and then skid off the runway. This landing and flight, however, was deemed a success, according to Sierra Nevada. The test vehicle was dropped from an altitude of a little less than 12,500 feet and reached a maximum speed of 330 miles per hour during the 60-second flight. “Everything went very well for us,” Mike Sirangelo, corporate vice president of Sierra Nevada Corporation, said during a follow-up press conference this afternoon. “Overall our parameters in the test were met or exceeded in our minds.”
Sierra Nevada doesn’t expect to do any additional flights with this test vehicle if the data from this event is good, though the company says this particular Dream Chaser could fly again if needed. The data gathered from this test will then be used to refine the development of the company’s first vehicle that will go to orbit, which is currently under construction. That Dream Chaser will also go through extensive testing before its first flight to space, which will be the company’s first operational flight for NASA.
Though, it’s not just NASA that plans to use the spaceplane: the United Nations also has a deal with Sierra Nevada to fly payloads to orbit from other countries on the Dream Chaser, starting sometime in 2021. And Sierra Nevada hopes to find other customers for the vehicle in the future, too. So once this spaceplane is ready for spaceflight, it could have a lot of work to do. |
23,000 London properties deemed suitable for rooftop development | A new geospacial mapping system has been used to identify buildings in London which could be suitable for rooftop development. A recent UK government white paper suggested extra housing could be provided by extending buildings upwards to use the "airspace" above them. Property consultants Knight Frank used the Skyward software to identify 23,000 such buildings in central London, potentially providing 28 million sq ft of new housing, equivalent to 41,000 new homes. Building in this way would avoid the need to build new, taller towers in the city.
| https://qz.com/1128888/london-housing-crisis-knight-frank-says-build-on-rooftops-to-solve-the-problem/?mc_cid=5d17bce889&mc_eid=222ba8be72 | 2017-11-15 16:09:09.397000 | London may have found a radical solution for its housing crisis—building new homes on roofs.
Britain’s capital could benefit from 41,000 new homes if it developed properties on unused rooftops, adding a potential 28 million square feet of real-estate to its two most central zones, according to research from Knight Frank, a global property consultancy firm.
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The real-estate firm says there are as many as 23,000 buildings in the heart of the city that are suitable for rooftop development, which would ease the pressure on developers to find unused plots of land in London’s dense center.
The data was produced using Skyward, new geospatial mapping software, developed to investigate the feasibility of the UK government’s suggestion that “buildings can be extended upwards by using the ‘airspace’ above them” in a recent housing white paper (pdf).
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In recent years, there has been growing concern that London’s famous skyline is being ruined by new developments, but rooftop developments could offer a solution.
The volume of roof space that could be used for new housing is equal to eight of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, the current tallest building in the world at 830 meters. By spreading volume across thousands of buildings in London’s center, it avoids the need to build new, taller towers to house Londoners. (But of course, this is unlikely to stop developers building more skyscrapers to meet demand for office space.)
Housing volume isn’t just an issue that London is facing alone. Cities across the world are all grappling with the same problem: how to meet rising demand for housing and how to make homes cheaper for those living there. New Zealand is planning to ban foreigners from buying existing homes. Meanwhile, Canada has already tried imposing a steep tax on foreign buyers, with limited success. |
BuzzFeed grows commerce writing team to 19 people | As the site continues to focus on SEO-friendly content, BuzzFeed has increased the size of its commerce writing team in a bid to better pursue commerce revenue. As the holiday season approaches, BuzzFeed is keen to be seen as a publisher that readers trust enough to buy from. “We’re trying to reach people who know exactly what they want and just need to find the right thing”, said Jessica Probus, director of BuzzFeed Market. BuzzFeed's commerce writing team is now larger than those at its digital-native peers, such as Gizmodo or Business Inside.
| https://digiday.com/media/buzzfeed-now-19-people-writing-commerce-content/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=digidaydis&utm_source=uk&utm_content=171115 | 2017-11-15 16:08:24.970000 | BuzzFeed’s commitment to commerce revenue continues to grow, and as a result, it’s begun pursuing commerce revenue more like a regular publisher might: through search.
After more than two years of experiments focused on identity-focused listicles like “39 Fucking Awesome Gifts For Anyone Who Loves to Swear” or “27 Gifts Only Math and Science Nerds Will Appreciate,” BuzzFeed now has 19 people cranking out commerce posts full time.
Identity-focused posts are still a staple, but that team, which is part of BuzzFeed’s editorial operation, has recently begun focusing more on search-centric content, designed to respond to queries people make not only on BuzzFeed’s own properties but across platforms like Google and Amazon and using sales data gathered by Skimlinks.
That focus on search and SEO will play a role during the holiday season, as BuzzFeed tries to build a reputation not just as a publisher that gets you but one that you’d trust to sell you something, too.
“Our biggest change this year is we’re focused more on search,” said Jessica Probus, the director of BuzzFeed Market. “We’re trying to reach people who know exactly what they want and just need to find the right thing.”
BuzzFeed’s team of commerce writers, which is far larger than the commerce content teams at digital-native peers like Gizmodo or Business Insider, sits inside its editorial department. The content that these writers produce all gathers in a section of BuzzFeed’s website, BuzzFeed Shopping, but in typical BuzzFeed fashion, it is distributed to lots of different places, including BuzzFeed verticals like Tasty and Nifty, as well as a commerce-focused Facebook page, BuzzFeed Buy Me That, which has over 530,000 fans.
The editorial calendar, which Probus sets with the help of a few colleagues, runs about a month in advance, but it can be changed at the last minute for posts can be whipped up quickly to respond to changing trends, or to respond to the availability of products.
BuzzFeed’s first move into commerce-focused content came in 2015, focusing on identity-based gift guides – basically listicles filled with products and affiliate links. But as it’s gotten bigger, the commerce team has devoted more resources to posts that capitalize on fast-moving search and retail trends.
Without a bed of evergreen posts to rest on, BuzzFeed used information about how other identity-focused content performed — and information about which retailers delivered the best sales conversions — to shape its early commerce-focused content.
And as the shopping team grew, along with its archive of identity-focused content — Probus said the shopping team has created “several hundred” gift guides, though she declined to share a specific number — it turned its attention toward content that would address its audience’s search queries.
That emphasis on search also helped inform a gift-guide landing page that it launched for the 2017 holiday season, which sorts its archive into 18 different categories, based on things like price (“Under $25”) and intended gift recipient (“BFFs”).
The shift toward a search-focused strategy, which underpins many other commerce-curious publishers’ efforts, is natural for any publisher that’s serious about earning revenue through affiliate commissions.
“It makes no sense to decide you should have one or the other,” said Ava Seave, a principal at the consultancy Quantum Media and an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School, of the choice between search and social referral traffic. “If you have enough stuff you’re selling, it makes sense to have both of those tools.”
Adding search-centric posts also delivers another stream of signals about what its readers want to buy, which Probus’ colleagues in BuzzFeed Product Labs can use to shape their product development pipeline. The past two products that Product Labs has brought to market, including the Tasty One Top cooking appliance and Social Sabotage, a card game it released last month. “We’re trying to create a feedback loop,” Probus said. |
Charity app Bail Bloc outsources crypto mining to post bail fees | The Bronx Freedom Fund charity has partnered with online magazine The New Inquiry to develop Bail Bloc, an app that uses computer power to mine cryptocurrency that is then used to help people pay bail fees. Users who download the app can donate between 10% and 50% of their computer's processing power to create Monero coins. The project will be launched initially in New York, while a five-year roll-out to more than three dozen cities will begin in 2018.
| https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/vb3j93/you-can-now-mine-cryptocurrency-to-bail-people-out-of-jail-bail-bloc | 2017-11-15 16:05:39.287000 | A new charity initiative called Bail Bloc may have just found the only good use for cryptocurrencies to date: bailing people out of jail who can’t afford it.
Software that uses your computer power to “mine” (in other words, create) digital coins for profit have become a bit of a bogeyman online. But Bail Bloc—a collaboration between online publication The New Inquiry and the non-profit Bronx Freedom Fund—harnesses similar technology for more noble ends.
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Bail—a court-determined fee to buy your freedom before trial—is intended to keep dangerous people off the streets. But according to The New York Times, “it can, in practice, have damaging effects on poor defendants, especially those who have been charged with small offenses.” Bail Bloc argues that the cash bail system keeps low-income people in jail when they don’t need to be, and can force innocent people to plead guilty in order to get out.
Starting on Wednesday, you can visit the Bail Bloc website and download an app that dedicates some of your computer power to generating Monero, a cryptocurrency that markets itself as being even more private and anonymous than Bitcoin. All of the generated Monero will be used to bail out people who can’t afford it. The project will start by focusing on New York City jails, but in 2018 “funds will spread to more than three dozen cities in the next five years,” the Bail Bloc site states.
“We're a publishing platform created by and for communities that have been historically targeted by the state, which means that our access to capital is limited, as is true for most millennials,” Maya Binyam, an editor at The New Inquiry and organizer for Bail Bloc, wrote me in an email. “What we do have access to, however, is computing power. And so on a practical level, fundraising through mining makes sense.”
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Monero was a logical choice, Binyam said, because it’s one of a few cryptocurrencies that can be mined with common consumer-grade graphics cards. Bitcoin, in contrast, is more popular but requires specialized high-speed computer chips. The Bail Bloc program points participants’ computers towards an existing Monero mining pool, but if it becomes popular enough the project may invest in starting its own pool.
Bail Bloc estimates that if 5,000 people ran its software for a year, they could generate $151,000 USD worth of Monero and bail nearly 2,000 people out of jail. The app takes 10 percent of your CPU power by default, but generous users can set it so that they donate 25 or even 50 percent of their computing power.
According to the Bail Bloc site, the project uses a “revolving” model. Bail funds are returned to the source when the defendant appears for their court date, so every Monero coin that’s generated could be used to bail more than one person out of jail. The Bronx Freedom Fund claims that more than 90 percent of the defendants they assist return to court, so this turnover could be quite high.
“Like all forms of surveillance, bail is designed to keep people deemed dangerous within reach,” Binyam wrote in an email. “But the powers that assess an individual’s likelihood to endanger the public are more often motivated by racism, classism, and xenophobia than they are by a desire to ensure safety.”
“After all,” she continued, “the people for whom bail is set haven’t been convicted of anything.” |
Biotech plans to release lab-grown mosquitoes to kill wild ones | Kentucky bio firm MosquitoMate has been granted approval from the US Environmental Protection Agency to release laboratory-grown mosquitoes into the wild. The firm hopes that the synthetic mosquitoes will help reduce the wild population. MosquitoMate has deliberately infected its insects with the Wolbachia pipientis bacterium, which prevents the hatching of larvae, but does not affect humans or animals. The mosquitoes are due to be released in Kentucky and several US states.
| http://metro.co.uk/2017/11/08/company-plans-to-release-lab-grown-mosquitoes-to-infect-others-with-disease-7064317/ | 2017-11-15 15:45:06.747000 | Share this article via flipboard
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It sounds like a classic ‘mad scientist’ plot, the sort that usually goes badly wrong – releasing diseased ‘lab grown’ mosquitoes to kill off wild ones.
Army corporal who raped female soldier said condom made it 'fine'
In fact, we’re verging on ‘There was an old woman who swallowed a fly’ territory here.
But there’s method to the madness, CNET reports.
The lab-grown mozzies will be deliberately infected with the bacterium Wolbachia pipientis, which affects the insects (but not animals or humans).
The lab-grown (male) bugs unleashed by biotech firm MosquitoMate have been approved by America’s Environmental Protection Agency.
The mosquito
When the male mosquitoes released by MosquitoMate mate with female mosquitoes, the eggs don’t hatch due to the effects of the bacteria – cutting the population.
Mosquitomate is to release insects in several American states, starting with Kentucky where it’s based.
The company’s FAQ says, ‘Unlike traditional mosquito control, we don’t show up after you have a problem.
‘By acting proactively, your population of Asian Tiger mosquitoes will not reach a nuisance level.’ |
Amazon launches Echo, Alexa and Prime Music in Canada | Amazon has launched its Echo Dot, Echo, and Echo Plus speakers in Canada. The launch Imarks a step forward for the country, which has traditionally lagged behind the rest of the world in the adoption of new technologies. Amazon is also inviting developers to come up with integrations for Alexa Voice Service and Alexa Skills Kit aimed at the Canadian market. The move follows the launch of a stripped-down version of Amazon's Fire Stick, and comes five months after Google released its Home smart speaker in Canada.
| https://venturebeat.com/2017/11/15/amazon-brings-echo-alexa-and-prime-music-to-canada/ | 2017-11-15 15:30:17.570000 | Missed the GamesBeat Summit excitement? Don't worry! Tune in now to catch all of the live and virtual sessions here.
Amazon has announced that it’s finally launching its voice-controlled Echo speakers in Canada.
The Echo Dot, Echo, and Echo Plus are open for preorder today for $70, $130, and $200, respectively, though early orders will qualify for up to $30 off the sticker price. Amazon said that it expects the devices to start shipping on December 5, and they will also be available in-store at Best Buy, Staples, The Source, Telus, and a number of other retailers.
Alongside the Echo launch, Amazon is opening the Alexa Skills Kit and Alexa Voice Service for local developers and hardware makers to create integrations built on Alexa for the Canadian market. Additionally, the company revealed that its Prime Music streaming service is now available to Prime members in Canada.
Can’tada
Amazon launched its annual Prime membership in Canada back in 2013, and last year it rolled out Prime Video across the country. But despite its shared language and proximity to the U.S., where the Echo debuted back in 2014, Canada has been slow to gain access to key hardware and services that have first launched elsewhere in the world. The Echo speakers have been available to consumers in the U.K. and Germany since last September, and Amazon has launched the devices — alongside Alexa — in India and Japan over the past month.
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Today’s announcement comes just a week after Amazon launched its Fire TV Stick in Canada and 100 new markets — albeit a stripped-down $50 basic edition of the Fire TV Stick without Alexa support. So today is a notable occasion for Canadian consumers as it not only ushers in a triumvirate of smart speakers and Prime Music, the availability of Alexa quells criticism that Canada was being forgotten by major tech companies. Last month, Sonos announced a new voice-controlled Alexa-driven speaker called the Sonos One, which was made available in Canada, but without any promise of Alexa support. Almost a month after the launch, Alexa support for Sonos fans in Canada may be imminent.
For Amazon, the Echo and Alexa launch comes five months after rival Google launched its Home smart speaker in Canada. Apple is also gearing up to launch its HomePod, though there is no word yet on when that device may land in Canada. |
Airbnb nets $1 billion in Q3 2017 | Online short-term property rental firm Airbnb has reported Q3 net revenue of $1bn. The announcement follows a recent report from Morgan Stanley suggesting the company's growth may be slowing down, though the report did not factor in Latin America; the region saw a 150% increase in bookings in 2017 compared to the previous year. | https://therealdeal.com/2017/11/14/airbnb-takes-in-1b-in-third-quarter/ | 2017-11-15 15:22:08.077000 | Airbnb raked in $1 billion in net revenue in the third quarter of 2017, continuing a 17-month streak for the company.
The home-sharing company, founded nine years ago, first became profitable during the second half of 2016, Bloomberg reported. Over the last 17 months, Airbnb has reported a profit before interest, taxes and amortization.
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But last week, Morgan Stanley released a report that indicated Airbnb’s growth may be slowing. According to the report, fewer U.S. and European travelers than expected indicated that they’d book stays with Airbnb next year. The report was based on an online survey of 4,000 consumers, which did not include Latin America and Asia. Sources told Bloomberg that Latin America saw a 150 percent increase in bookings this year compared to last.
Earlier this month, Airbnb fired 50 full-time employees and more than 100 contractors who prepared meals in the company’s offices, the Information reported. Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said an outside food service firm was brought in to increase the number of meals served at its offices. [Bloomberg] — Kathryn Brenzel |
Australian Consolidated Milk benefits from small IoT tech upgrade | An Australian milk producing company has partnered with Advanced Computing to develop a cloud-based app solution that monitors the liquid's temperature. Victoria-based Australian Consolidated Milk is testing the system at a trial site, and said cold storage sensors gather temperature data, which is relayed via Microsoft's Azure cloud platform to a smartphone app, sending out alerts if temperatures deviated outside the required 5 degrees Celsius. The app also includes lab test results, enabling farmers to find out if they have produced premium or the 40% cheaper second-grade milk.
| http://www.northqueenslandregister.com.au/story/5054618/dairy-processor-milks-agtech-for-simple-solution/?cs=4735 | 2017-11-15 14:52:48.497000 | The system is fully operational at one trial site. Ms Morris said farmers were enthusiastic about its release. However, the cost structure of how the sensors and system are installed is yet to be determined. |
Insurer Health IQ takes cryptic approach to fitness assessments | Life insurance start-up Health IQ is aiming to offer healthier customers better rates, and is identifying likely candidates by changing the types of questions it asks potential policyholders. Rather than asking how frequently customers exercise or whether they smoke, the company phrases its questions differently, making it harder for them to bend the truth. Policyholders might be asked whether they can run a mile in a certain time, or if they can identify a recommended portion size when shown a picture of food. Health IQ has raised $81m in financing.
| https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/14/this-guy-found-the-healthiest-people----and-sold-them-life-insurance.html | 2017-11-15 14:18:09.970000 | But Munjal Shah's problem turned out to be an inflammation of the lining of his lungs. Nonetheless, that hospital visit changed the course of his life.
Shah was worried about a heart attack, given his family history — his father, who moved from India to the U.S. — had his first heart attack in his 40s.
He was 37 at the time, but hadn't quite kicked an indulgence in sugary treats, like Frosted Flakes, Pop Tarts and cinnamon rolls. "Honestly, what went through my head is that it seemed so unfair," Shah recalled. "I had the best day of my entrepreneurial life after 10 years of work, and then I was going to die."
The day after Munjal Shah sold his company to Google in 2010, he was running when he experienced sharp chest pains. He ended up in the emergency room.
While at Google, he started taking classes at Stanford to learn about health and medicine. He cleaned up his diet and lost 40 pounds. And he made new friends, all fellow entrepreneurial types, who had similar health scares and subsequently changed their lifestyles.
The group eventually decided to quit their day jobs and start a health company. They had no clear business model in mind but were all curious about finding ways to reward people who were committed to being healthy.
First, they had to find them. And that's a lot more challenging than you might think.
Many of us fib to our doctors, saying that we eat better, drink less alcohol and exercise more than we actually do.
To get around these common lies, the team launched a health quiz, called Health IQ. It features questions that assess how health-conscious a person is, rather than how healthy they claim to be. For instance, instead of asking how much you run, they might ask if you can run an eight-minute mile. Rather than asking if you eat too much, the test will figure out if you understand portion control by checking if you can estimate how many cups of rice there are in a photo.
The test did a pretty good job of picking out those who were committed to their health. And it went viral. In less than four years, more than 1 million people took it.
During that time, about 2,000 of those people died.
And that's when Shah figured out how to make money: life insurance.
After factoring in things like gender, age and education status, Shah and his team learned that the health-conscious elite — the yoga practitioners, the crossfitters, the vegans or vegetarians, the strength trainers, the cyclists, the controlled diabetics, the triathletes and the marathoners — were far less likely to be among the people who died in this test group. Forty-one percent less likely, in fact.
In particular, it became clear that these people were less likely to die from cancer, which Shah calls the "blind spot" in most life insurance underwriting. Studies have shown that those who eat little meat, for instance, have a lower risk of colorectal cancer than people who eat meat most days of the week.
Shah still doesn't know from his data why the mortality rates are lower for yogi-loving vegans, at least not yet. It might be that they exercise more, eat better, are diligent about removing toxic chemicals from the home, or maybe it's a combination of factors. But for his purposes, it doesn't really matter. Now that he knows how to find them, he can sell them cheaper life insurance. And he estimates there are a lot of them — about 50 million in the United States. |
Plastics found in animals in world’s deepest places | Animals from the world’s deepest places have been found to have plastic in their stomachs, according to a study by Newcastle University. The research, which suggests that nowhere on earth is now free from plastic pollution, showed that animals from trenches across the Pacific Ocean were contaminated with fibres that most likely originated from sources including packaging, synthetic clothing and plastic bottles. The research analysed samples of crustaceans in trenches ranging from seven to over 10 km deep across the Pacific Ocean. Ingestion of plastic ranged from 50% to 100% depending on the trench.
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/15/plastics-found-in-stomachs-of-deepest-sea-creatures | 2017-11-15 14:01:46.637000 | Animals from the deepest places on Earth have been found with plastic in their stomachs, confirming fears that manmade fibres have contaminated the most remote places on the planet.
The study, led by academics at Newcastle University, found animals from trenches across the Pacific Ocean were contaminated with fibres that probably originated from plastic bottles, packaging and synthetic clothes.
Dr Alan Jamieson, who led the study, said the findings were startling and proved that nowhere on the planet was free from plastics pollution.
“There is now no doubt that plastics pollution is so pervasive that nowhere – no matter how remote – is immune,” he said.
Evidence of the scale of plastic pollution has been growing in recent months. Earlier this year scientists found plastic in 83% of global tapwater samples, while other studies have found plastic in rock salt and fish.
Humans have produced an estimated 8.3bn tonnes of plastic since the 1950s and scientists said it risked near permanent contamination of the planet.
Jamieson said underlined the need for swift and meaningful action.
“These observations are the deepest possible record of microplastic occurrence and ingestion, indicating it is highly likely there are no marine ecosystems left that are not impacted by anthropogenic debris.”
He said it was “a very worrying find.”
“Isolating plastic fibres from inside animals from nearly 11 kilometres deep (seven miles) just shows the extent of the problem. Also, the number of areas we found this in, and the thousands of kilometre distances involved shows it is not just an isolated case, this is global.”
The study tested samples of crustaceans found in the ultra-deep trenches that span the entire Pacific Ocean – the Mariana, Japan, Izu-Bonin, Peru-Chile, New Hebrides and Kermadec trenches.
These range from seven to more than 10 kilometres deep, including the deepest point in the ocean, Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench.
The team examined 90 individual animals and found ingestion of plastic ranged from 50% in the New Hebrides Trench to 100% at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
The fragments identified include semi-synthetic cellulosic fibres, such as Rayon, Lyocell and Ramie, which are all microfibres used in products such as textiles, to plastic fibres that are likely to come from plastic bottles, fishing equipment or everyday packaging.
Jamieson said deep-sea organisms are dependent on food “raining down from the surface which in turn brings any adverse components, such as plastic and pollutants with it.”
“The deep sea is not only the ultimate sink for any material that descends from the surface, but it is also inhabited by organisms well adapted to a low food environment and these will often eat just about anything.”
Scientists have discovered plastic pollution lying on remote frozen ice floes in the middle of the Arctic Ocean. Photograph: Conor McDonnell
An estimated 300m tonnes of plastic now litters the oceans, with more than 5 trillion plastic pieces – weighing more than 250,000 tonnes – currently floating on the surface. Around 8m tonnes of plastic enters our oceans every year.
Jamieson said: “Litter discarded into the oceans will ultimately end up washed back ashore or sinking to the deep-sea, there are no other options.
“Once these plastics reach the deep-seafloor there is simply nowhere else for them to go, therefore it is assumed they will simply accumulate in greater quantities.” |
IBM overhauls data storage process with more user customization | IBM is restructuring data storage in its European cloud computing data centres to provide more stringent control over access. European customers will have increased power over their data, a feature that may be rolled out further. The change means that only EU-based IBM employees will be able to access data from the Frankfurt data centre, and only EU staff will review and approve changes from employees outside the EU, depending on client's preferences. The policy alteration comes as data companies are changing their approach to security to comply with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
| http://www.zdnet.com/article/cloud-computing-ibm-overhauls-data-access-rules-at-euro-data-centre/ | 2017-11-15 14:01:07.877000 | Video: Germany's telecom regulator weighs in on zero-rating practices
IBM is overhauling the way it manages data stored in one of its European cloud computing data centres, in order to give European customers tighter control over who can access it.
The move will give customers more control and transparency over where their data lives, who has access to it, and what they can do with this access. The policy may be rolled out further, IBM said.
The company will implement new controls so that access to customer data in its Frankfurt data centre is controlled by EU-based IBM employees only. EU-based staff will also review and approve all changes from non-EU based employees that could affect clients' data.
IBM said that customers will be able to review and approve all non-EU access requests to their content "if an instance requires support or access from a non-EU based employee". If granted, access is temporary and the IBM client will be notified when the temporary access is revoked. Logs that track access are made available to the client.
IBM also said it is adding to its customer support teams in Europe.
Sebastian Krause, GM of IBM Cloud Europe, said that concerns about data residency, security, and personal data protection are at an all-time high in Europe, especially with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) around the corner.
"Every day I hear from a wide range of global clients across every industry that they need tighter controls and visibility into where their data is stored and processed in the cloud," he said.
"The fact that explicit client approval is required for dedicated cloud instances sets IBM apart and gives clients maximum control," Krause told ZDNet.
The company also said that next year it will make it possible for customers to encrypt their data, at rest and in transit, with their own master keys.
"Encrypting data enables clients to store their data in the cloud and protect it from theft and compromise. Since the keys remain in possession of the customer, the data is protected from cloud service providers as well as from other users," Krause said.
IBM currently has 16 out of its 60 cloud data centres in Europe with data centres in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Switzerland, and the UK. Krause said the changes in Germany could roll out further.
"While data privacy is especially important in Europe, clients in many markets face regulatory pressures to protect their users' data. IBM plans to take the improvements outlined here and adopt them across other IBM locations in the future," it said.
Germany is considered to have some of the strongest data privacy legislation in the world. But more broadly, while cloud computing in theory promises that customers can cease worrying about exactly where the data is being held, in reality companies are having to pay a lot more attention to where customer data is stored.
Some of this is because of new regulations such as GDPR, which strengthen data protection in Europe. But there have also be concerns that US law enforcement could request data held in the data centres of US companies even if that data is not stored in the US.This has led some companies to change their approach significantly. For example, last year Microsoft started offering its Azure cloud services from two new German data centres where the customer data was stored under the control of a "data trustee": T-Systems International, an independent German company and subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom. Microsoft cannot access data at the sites without the customer's permission.
Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto
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LinkedIn to enable sponsored mail messages via dynamic ad format | LinkedIn is to enable sponsored InMails via a new dynamic ads format. It's part of a revamp aimed at making it easier for companies to generate new leads by allowing users to download content, such as ebooks, directly from adverts. The Sponsored Content product will only be available on the LinkedIn mobile app, while Sponsored InMail will also be available on desktop platforms. The company said that making it easier for advertisers to collect leads from the site will improve conversion rates and generate higher returns.
| https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/310209/ | 2017-11-15 13:49:52.150000 | by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, November 14, 2017
LinkedIn Marketing Solutions has created a way for businesses to solicit people for their information through ads on the social network.
The task expands on the company's Lead Gen Forms capabilities to Sponsored InMail, and introduced a new Dynamic Ads format that allows members to download content, making it easier for them to generate and search for leads.
Making it easier for businesses to collect quality leads directly from the LinkedIn platform should in turn improve conversion rates and drive higher return on investments, Vasudha Mithal, senior product manager at LinkedIn, wrote in a post.
Now there are two versions. Both versions of Lead Gen Forms work in a similar way, but there is one main distinction. The Sponsored Content version is limited to LinkedIn’s mobile app, while The Sponsored InMail version can run on both mobile and desktop.
Lead Gen Forms for Sponsored InMail will roll out this week for all customers and will work in the same way as the original Sponsored Content version.
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Marketers can generate leads and enable content downloads — such as the download of an ebook or white paper — directly from the ad unit.
The leads from the Lead Gen Forms for Sponsored Content or Sponsored inMail will become available through LinkedIn’s Lead Gen Forms in Campaign Manager self-serve tool or through third-party CRM systems DriftRock, Marketo, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Oracle’s Eloqua and Zapier.
LinkedIn will report the number of leads, completion rates, and the average cost per lead to businesses for each campaign.
Businesses also can ask custom questions on both the Sponsored Content and Sponsored InMail versions of Lead Gen Forms. Marketers can include up to three custom questions created by the advertiser. Brands can ask people who are filling out the form to answer multiple choice questions, or ask people to type in an answer that is up to 100 characters long. |
CitySprint changes contracts to avoid benefits and minimum wage | UK courier firm CitySprint has changed couriers’ contracts to avoid paying the minimum wage and holiday pay, despite losing an employment tribunal case on the matter. The company, which uses 3,500 self-employed couriers, said it had abandoned its appeal against a London tribunal that ruled it had wrongfully classified courier Mags Dewhurst as self-employed and unlawfully failed to award her holiday pay. However, CitySprint confirmed that it had now altered all its cycle courier contracts. The Independent Workers Union of Great Britain said the company was “making a mockery” of employment rights. | https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/nov/15/citysprint-employment-rights-courier-minimum-wage-holiday-pay | 2017-11-15 13:20:07.547000 | CitySprint has been accused of “making a mockery” of Britain’s employment rights system after changing couriers’ contracts rather than giving them the minimum wage and holiday pay, despite losing an employment tribunal case on the issue.
The company, which has 3,500 self-employed couriers in the UK, said it had dropped an appeal against a ruling by the central London employment tribunal that it had unlawfully failed to award holiday pay to Mags Dewhurst and wrongly classed her as a self-employed freelancer. But CitySprint said it had changed contracts for all its cycle couriers.
In January, the employment judge Joanna Wade described its contractual arrangements as contorted, indecipherable and window-dressing. The tribunal found Dewhurst should be classed as a “worker” and entitled to paid holiday and the national minimum wage under employment law.
CitySprint argued it was an “individual appeal” that did not apply to the other independent contractors.
The employment lawyer Martin Warren of Eversheds Sutherland said the company’s decision to apply the tribunal’s findings to one member of staff was risky.
“With the abolition of tribunal fees earlier this year, the chances of further waves of cases have probably increased. In any subsequent cases, the issue would not be a change in the paperwork. The tribunal would focus on whether there have been any operational changes on the ground,” he said.
CitySprint indicated that it had not changed the way it operated, but altered employment contracts to better reflect its relationship with cycle couriers, who it says have always been independent contractors.
“We have updated our [cycle] courier tender documents to simplify the language in these, further clarifying the rights and flexibilities available to self-employed couriers who provide their services to us. We enjoy a great relationship with couriers, who continue to enjoy the freedom and flexibility of their current role,” a spokesperson said.
The company will pay Dewhurst about £200 in holiday pay owed from the period covered by the tribunal, but it is understood that she will not receive holiday pay in future under her new contract.
Dewhurst told the Guardian: “As a result of my tribunal claim, CitySprint has forced everyone at the penalty of losing our jobs to sign new documents they say are contracts, but we work in exactly the same way as before – nothing has changed. It’s a shame CitySprint would rather engage in legal shenanigans than pay me and my colleagues our holidays.”
The Independent Workers Union of Great Britain, which backed the case against CitySprint, accused the courier company of ignoring the employment tribunal ruling and said it planned to hold CitySprint to account.
Jason Moyer-Lee, the IWGB general secretary, said: “It is outrageous that CitySprint is choosing to simply flout the ruling of the employment tribunal. They are making a mockery of our system of employment rights and protections and they will pay a price for doing so. It goes to show that in the absence of government enforcement of employment law, companies will try to act with total impunity.”
CitySprint’s move comes after the Central Arbitration Committee, a body that resolves worker disputes, found that Deliveroo’s takeaway couriers were self-employed contractors and therefore not entitled to holiday pay or the national minimum wage, because they had the right to allocate a substitute to do their work for them.
CitySprint said it was awaiting the government’s response to the Taylor review, which looked into ways to improve pay and conditions for those in the gig economy. The company said it hoped the government response would “bring much-needed clarity and guidance in this important area for both organisations and individuals”.
The government has said it expects to respond to the review, which called for legal clarification of the definition of self-employment, by the end of this year.
Employment law experts said CitySprint was likely to have decided to drop its appeal after Uber lost a similar appeal at the Employment Appeal Tribunal last week.
The drivers James Farrar and Yaseen Aslam won an employment tribunal case last year after arguing that they should be classified as workers, citing Uber’s control over their working conditions. The taxi-hailing app has said it plans a further appeal.
Similar cases have been successfully brought against Pimlico Plumbers and the Royal Mail subsidiary eCourier. Pimlico Plumbers’ final appeal on the issue is to be heard at the supreme court in January. |
Hulu prepares new ways of advertising to binge watchers | Video streaming service Hulu is looking for ways to target ads at binge-watching viewers. The new ads will be woven as seamlessly as possible into the programming, so as to feel less intrusive. "There’s a desire to find new ways to reach audiences who have the control to avoid ads and conventional television” said Peter Naylor, senior vice president of advertising at Hulu. The streaming service has enlisted two marketers to sponsor a virtual reality offering it expects to launch next year.
| http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/hulu-advertising-virtual-reality-binge-watching-1202614422/ | 2017-11-15 13:09:32.790000 | Hulu subscribers watching “The Mindy Project” may have seen something that looks a lot like the show, but really isn’t. It’s a commercial from Volkswagen that uses scenes from the Mindy Kaling-produced series and mixes them with a promotional message from the automaker.
“It’s a spot that can run not just in ‘Mindy,’ but in front of other audiences who are watching similar comedies, or people we know who have watched ‘Mindy’ in the past,” says Peter Naylor, senior vice president of advertising at the streaming-video site, which is owned jointly by Comcast’s NBCUniversal, 21st Century Fox, Time Warner and Walt Disney Co. “People come to us so they can learn some new plays.”
As Hulu bids farewell to “The Mindy Project” – the series finale surfaced on Hulu earlier this morning – it hopes to drum up new business among advertisers eager to test the waters of streaming-video. Netflix doesn’t take traditional commercials and Amazon only runs them in limited fashion. But Hulu, the offspring of traditional TV companies, hopes to catch Madison Avenue’s eye with offers of new commercial formats that can be distributed to select cuts of audience based on program choices and other behaviors. Advertisers who sense a couch-potato migration from living-room TV to mobile screen might have interest.
When it launched in 2007, Hulu offered new ideas about how to advertise alongside video. It ran fewer ads than TV networks, and even let subscribers pick the type of commercial they wanted to see. There’s some hopes among traditional TV executives they can adopt similar tactics. But Hulu isn’t resting on past innovations. “There’s a desire to find new ways to reach audiences who have the control to avoid ads and conventional television,” says Naylor.
Hulu aims to offer ads aimed specifically at people in the midst of binge-viewing; ads woven into new virtual-reality programming; and ads keyed to specific occasions, such as the premiere of a new series. The company is making its pitch as advertisers are showing more interest in courting streaming-video subscribers and as it has ramped up production of its own original series.
Hulu is also in a bit of flux itself. Mike Hopkins, who had been CEO, recently left the company to join Sony Pictures Entertainment. He is being replaced by Randy Freer, formerly the chief operating officer of Fox Networks Group.
Hulu has enlisted two marketers to sponsor a new virtual-reality offering it expects to launch next year. As users watch “Door No. 1,” a story about a high-school class’ ten-year reunion, they will be able to choose the way the plot unfolds. And as part of the story, they will see Nissan and the dating-app Bumble show up in the storylines, says Nicole Sabatini, vice president of integrated marketing at Hulu.
“It’s a unique opportunity to reach a very specific type of audience – a more influential audience that is looking to try the newest content experiences,” she says. In the program, two characters will end up matching on Bumble and meeting up at the reunion, says Andee Olson, the company’s director of content strategy. “They don’t really remember each other from high school,” she explains.“I would imagine that happens in real life.” Finding ways to accompany video consumed via digital means is important to the company, she says. “Our audience in general seems more prone to the digital side of advertising.”
Discover Los Angeles, part of the Los Angeles Tourism & Convention Board, has moved all of its advertising to digital video, notes John Boudouvas, the unit’s vice president of marketing. It will run two 30-second ads that accompany Hulu’s new program, “Runaways,” which features Marvel characters. Actors from the program will appear in the commercials, says Boudouvas, and talk about the many different people who live in the area.
The marketer had run ads on local TV in the past, he says, but “it’s not only more expensive, it’s harder to reach a target audience, and that’s really what we are looking for.”
Hulu is currently exploring ways to get advertisers to tell a story in multiple segments over the course of a viewer’s specific binge experience, says Sabatini. “Viewers could get pieces of the story as they are watching multiple episodes,” she explains. As more video consumption takes place via streaming, Hulu’s new ideas could become mainstream ones embraced by multiple players in the not-too-distant future. |
Insurance firms increasingly divesting from coal | Insurance firms are increasingly divesting from coal companies and declining to underwrite their operations, according to research by the Unfriend Coal campaign. The study reveals that approximately £15bn ($20bn) has been divested over the past two years. Fifteen companies, including Allianz, Aviva and Axa, have fully or partially severed financial links to the sector. Zurich, the seventh-largest insurer in the world, also announced this week that it is divesting from coal and Lloyd’s and Swiss Re are expected to make similar commitments in the next few months. However, companies that have divested still represent just 13% of global insurance assets. | https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/15/growing-number-of-global-insurance-firms-divesting-from-fossil-fuels | 2017-11-15 12:49:04.033000 | A growing number of insurance companies increasingly affected by the consequences of climate change are selling holdings in coal companies and refusing to underwrite their operations.
About £15bn has been divested in the past two years, according to a new report that rates the world’s leading insurers’ efforts to distance themselves from the fossil fuel industry that is most responsible for carbon emissions.
Fifteen companies – almost all based in Europe – have fully or partially cut financial ties, says the study by the Unfriend Coal campaign, which represents a coalition of a dozen environmental groups including Greenpeace, 350.org and the Sierra Club.
Zurich, the world’s seventh biggest insurer, is the latest to shift away from coal, announcing this week that it is pulling out of coal to contribute to broader efforts to achieve the Paris accord goal of keeping global warming below 2C.
Allianz, Aviva and Axa have previously made similar moves. Lloyd’s and Swiss Re are expected to follow in the coming months.
The campaign has a long way to go. The early movers represent only 13% of all global insurance assets. None of the major US insurers such as Berkshire Hathaway, AIG and Liberty Mutual have taken action, according to the study.
Despite this, the authors say the shift of assets and coverage since 2015 is gaining momentum.
“Coal needs to become uninsurable,” said Peter Bosshard, the coordinator of Unfriend Coal. “If insurers cease to cover the numerous natural, technical, commercial and political risks of coal projects, then new coalmines and power plants cannot be built and existing operations will have to be shut down.”
Such financial pressure is crucial if global warming is to be kept in check.
The International Energy Agency says 99% of coal generation needs to be phased out by 2050 if even the upper goal is be reached, but coal production continues to rise and governments have shown insufficient commitment to reining it back.
Zurich said its decision to pull out was a practical as well as altruistic. “It’s not about politics or blame. It’s about utilising the immense amount of data and analytics we have from internal engineers, as well as external scientific experts, to guide our view of the future,” said Rob Kuchinski, global head of property and energy.
The Bank of England has identified four reasons insurers should be concerned about climate change: their fossil fuel assets could be stranded, they could be held liable for damages linked to their investments, they could see their market diminish, and their payouts could rise.
Payouts are also expected to rise. Munich Re, the world’s largest reinsurer, recently suffered a €1.4bn loss and also faces soaring claims from hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria.
“Left unchecked,” British insurer Aviva states, climate change will “render significant portions of the economy uninsurable, shrinking our addressable market.”
The topic of insurance is prominent on the agenda of UN climate talks in Bonn this week, where the focus is on the lack of coverage for small islands and other nations most affected by rising sea levels and worsening droughts. Wealthy nations are proposing a plan to underwrite climate change coverage to 400 million people in developing countries by 2020. |
One billion Android devices reckoned to have outdated software | Uptake of new versions of Android appears to be slowing down, with at least 50% of all active Android devices likely to be running outdated software, according to one programmer. By using Android market share data, Dan Luu found that nearly 50% of the two billion active Android devices are running software that's at least two years out of date. Luu identifies three possible explanations: growth of the Android platform is slowing, device turnover is slowing or fewer devices are receiving updates from Google.
| http://bgr.com/2017/11/14/android-8-0-update-fragmentation-1-billion-devices-outdated/ | 2017-11-15 12:37:39.690000 | Android and Apple fans can argue endlessly about who stole what and which phones are better, but there is at least one area where Android has consistently failed to keep up with its biggest rival: fragmentation. For years, we’ve been writing about Google’s failure to roll out the latest versions of its operating system to vendors in a timely fashion, but despite promises to the contrary, Google has failed to make any significant progress to date.
You don’t have to dig very deep to confirm this fact either, as the Android Developers Dashboard is regularly updated with a breakdown of platform version distribution. But this week, programmer Dan Luu discovered a worrisome trend after combing through some data: Uptake of new versions of Android appears to be slowing down.
Using Android market share data, Luu was able to create a graph showcasing the growing divide between Android version usage over time. As for why uptake is slowing, Luu deduces that there could be three possible explanations: Android growth is slowing, device turnover is slowing and/or fewer devices are receiving updates.
“But even with the data we have, we can take a guess at how many outdated devices are in use,” Luu writes. “In May 2017, Google announced that there are over two billion active Android devices. If we look at the latest stats (the far right edge), we can see that nearly half of these devices are two years out of date. At this point, we should expect that there are more than one billion devices that are two years out of date! Given Android’s update model, we should expect approximately 0% of those devices to ever get updated to a modern version of Android.”
One billion outdated Android devices. And considering that Google’s latest platform version breakdown shows that just 0.3% of devices have been updated to Android 8.0 Oreo, there are approximately 1.99 billion phones and tablets that have yet to receive the most recent update (which originally launched in August, by the way).
To put that into perspective, over 50% of all iOS devices have already been updated to iOS 11 less than two months after launch. While there is some hope that Google has started on the long road to recover with Android 8.0, it will be years before Google comes close to catching Apple, providing it ever does. |
Channel 4 joins European Broadcaster Exchange to run ads on VOD | UK-based Channel 4 has taken a 25% stake in the European Broadcast Exchange (EBX), an alliance between some of Europe’s biggest broadcasters that aims to challenge the advertising duopoly of Google and Facebook. Channel 4, whose digital revenues rose by almost a quarter last year to £102m ($135m), will be the sole UK partner in EBX, which is set to launch next year. The London-based exchange will allow advertisers to serve pan-European campaigns reaching more than 160 million viewers a month via Channel 4's All4, as well as Germany’s ProSiebenSat1, France’s TF1 and Italian/Spanish outlet Mediaset.
| https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/nov/13/channel-4-tv-ad-alliance-google-facebook | 2017-11-15 12:23:49.390000 | Channel 4 has joined an alliance of Europe’s biggest broadcasters to run commercials across their video-on-demand (VOD) services, in a move to combat Google and Facebook’s dominance of online advertising.
Channel 4, which offers shows including Great British Bake Off, Gogglebox, Humans and Hunted via All4, will be the exclusive UK partner in the alliance, the European Broadcaster Exchange (EBX).
Advertisers will be able to book pan-European campaigns across Channel 4’s All4 and equivalent online TV services operated by Germany’s ProSiebenSat1, France’s TF1 and Mediaset, which has operations in Italy and Spain. The broadcasters claim their VOD services reach more than 160 million viewers a month.
Channel 4, which has reported more than 20% annual growth in its video service to more than 60 million monthly viewers, has taken a 25% stake in the joint venture for an undisclosed sum.
Broadcasters have started to make increasing amounts of money from catch-up TV services, with Channel 4’s digital revenues climbing 24% last year to £102m.
However, there are fears that the sheer scale of Google’s YouTube and Facebook’s online video could limit the commercial growth of broadcasters’ VOD services. They also fear that marketers’ spend on TV advertising could be lost to online video.
The Silicon Valley giants already snap up as much as 90% of every new £1 of online advertising money spent in the UK.
Broadcasters are are attempting to attract more digital marketing money by focusing on the issues facing Google and Facebook, including ads running next to inappropriate content such as extremist sites and fake news.
“The demand for multi-territory digital ad campaigns in brand safe and transparent environments is increasing,” said Jonathan Lewis, head of digital and partnership innovation at Channel 4. “The video ad market continues to grow exponentially across Europe.”
EBX will launch next year with its headquarters based in London. |
Regus Another 200,000 sq ft of shared office space planned in Manchester | Shared and short-term office providers are planning up to 200,000 sq ft of new office space in Manchester. WeWork is planning a third outlet expected to be in the Northern Quarter of the city, while Regus and Spaces are also looking for additional premises. A report by property company Colliers International showed that serviced office providers accounted for a fifth of Manchester's office space in the first three quarters of the year, with 100,000 sq ft of new space taken in the summer. Demand from the media and technology sectors is causing the increase, according to the report.
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Specialist providers are planning another 200,000 sq ft of shared and short-term office space as Manchester’s office market goes flexible.
City sources suggest that WeWork are looking for a third Manchester outlet – probably in the Northern Quarter – whilst rival providers Regus and Spaces head a list of half a dozen new requirements.
If all the flexible office providers now plotting expansion in the city complete deals it could mean another 200,000 sq ft of flexible workspace. This would double the 100,000 sq ft signed up during the summer quarter.
Speculation about a fast-expanding sector comes as Colliers International say flexible working is going to dominate the Manchester office market in the coming year.
The report showed serviced office providers addressed the need for flexible working from small and growing operators by taking up to one fifth of space in Manchester in the first three quarters of 2017.
Major developments included global co-working specialist WeWork following the opening of its first office outside London at No 1 Spinningfields by adding another 44,000 sq ft at One St Peter’s Square and property developer Allied London launching its own co-working brand All Work & Social to operate alongside WeWork at Spinningfields.
Much of the demand for flexible office space comes from the media and tech sectors, and follows a similar expansion of flexible workspace in London.
Peter Gallagher, director, national offices at the Manchester office of Colliers International, said: “Greater Manchester’s booming media and tech sector, making the region increasingly the Silicon Valley of the North, has a strengthening requirement for office space tailor-made to meet its needs so it’s no surprise to see it play a major role in the take-up of modern and flexible office space throughout 2017.”
Colliers’ Manchester office market snapshot for the third quarter of 2017 also reported ongoing buoyant demand for office space in general with 447,809 sq ft transacted in 79 deals, including nine deals of more than 10,000 sq ft.
However, some experts have raised concerns about the rapid growth of flexible office providers, warning that a recession or economic slowdown could hit them first, and hardest.
Listed provider IWG recently issued a profit warning, saying its profits would be significantly below market expectations, down by about a third to £160m. Doubts have been raised about the $20 billion valuation of WeWork, one of the market leaders.
The lesson from history is that serviced office space can suffer – but can also benefit – from recessions. Whilst the end of the dot-com bubble in 2000 hurt industry giant Regus whose U.S. division went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, the 2008-2012 recession was generally good for serviced offices as businesses reduced long-term property commitments to focus on short-term deals instead. |
Social media giant Tencent posts Q3 revenues of nearly $10bn | Chinese social media giant Tencent has reported Q3 group revenues of $9.81bn, an increase of 61%, and revealed it has more than 43 million subscribers to its Tencent Video unit. It is the first time subscriber numbers have been released, but the company did not offer up the unit's contribution to revenues or earnings. However, Tencent did announce net profits were up by 67% to $2.71bn and in a statement said it would "increase investment in video content, especially self-commissioned video content".
| http://variety.com/2017/digital/asia/streaming-video-subscribers-hit-43-million-at-chinas-tencent-1202615443/ | 2017-11-15 12:19:38.043000 | Streaming video boosted China’s games and social media giant Tencent in the three months to the end of September. Revealing figures for Tencent Video for the first time, the company claimed about 43 million video subscribers.
Tencent reported a 61% surge in group revenues to $9.81 billion (RMB65.2 billion) in the period, the third quarter of its financial year. Net profits increased by 67% to $2.71 billion (RMB18 billion), or 46% to $2.57 billion (RMB17.1 billion) on the more conservative non-GAAP basis.
“Our video platform gained audience and revenue market share. We believe it has become China’s top online video platform in terms of mobile daily active users and subscriptions,” said Tencent’s chairman and CEO Pony Ma Huateng. “We believe this success reflects our increasing investment in self-commissioned video content, our improved selection of licensed video content, and our scheduling and audience management initiatives.”
The company said that Tencent Video “has exceeded 43 million fee-based subscriptions” and repeated the claim that it is now China’s largest video platform. Netflix claims 109 million subscriptions worldwide.
However, even within China, comparisons are difficult. Tencent has not previously revealed video subscription numbers, so a growth rate cannot be calculated. Tencent Video’s biggest competitor, iQIYI, has previously claimed over 60 million paying users, though the bases for measurement may be different. Tencent did not disclose Tencent Video’s revenue contribution or its impact on earnings.
Nevertheless, it made made several bold statements for the unit. “We will continue to increase our investment in video content, especially self-commissioned video content, and to reinforce our content recommendation algorithms,” it said. It was also encouraged by this month’s successful flotation of its online bookstore, China Literature. “We believe our multi-faceted digital content businesses are synergistic with each other, and allow us to deliver unique content to our users,” the company said.
Its ecosystem, driven by massive social media presence, delivered “strong business and revenue growth across multiple business lines including games, digital content, online advertising and payment-related services.”
Its older QQ messaging service saw monthly users numbers drop by 4% to 843 million. But its newer, hyper-connected Weixin/WeChat platform gained 16% to 980 million users. |
Landsec CEO touts blockchain for future contract processes | Robert Noel, CEO of the UK's biggest property firm Landsec, has said that blockchain definitely has a role to play in the company's future. In an interview on CNBC, Noel said: "anything that speeds up archaic land law, and contract law, and leasing law, etcetera, will be welcomed". Many in the industry believe blockchain would bring increased accuracy and speed to the contracts-signing process. However, when asked if he thought the technology could lead to job losses, Noel said: "I wouldn't go quite that far".
| https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/14/landsec-blockchain-property-contracts.html | 2017-11-15 11:51:51.773000 | Blockchain technology will "absolutely" have a function in Landsec's business, the CEO of the U.K.'s largest property firm told CNBC on Tuesday.
Landsec is the developer behind some Britain's biggest shopping malls and most iconic sites. For example, it owns the electronic advertising billboards in London's Piccadilly Circus.
The FTSE 100-listed firm deals with a lot of contracts from leasing properties to hiring contractors.
When asked if blockchain technology would be used in this part of the business, Chief Executive Robert Noel replied in the affirmative.
"Absolutely... If you look at the way what we provide, which is services to business, and those services are around contract, anything that speeds up archaic land law, and contract law, and leasing law, etcetera, will be welcomed," Noel told CNBC in a TV interview.
"And so I'm absolutely sure that there will be progress in that sphere."
Blockchain is the underlying technology behind the cryptocurrency bitcoin. But the theory behind it can be applied to numerous industries. Blockchain is also called distributed ledger technology and refers to a method of decentralizing processes. |
Snapchat launches Ad Manager 2.0 tools upgrade for marketers | Snap, owner of social media outlet Snapchat, is streamlining its advertising suite into one, unified tool with the launch of Ad Manager 2.0. The offering includes audience filters, as well as ad set duplication and frequency capping, and aims to allow advertisers to "buy, optimise, target, and measure in one simple place", according to Peter Sellis, the director of revenue product at Snap. The launch followed Q3 losses of $443.2m, which prompted a 20% fall in the company's share price, and precedes an app revamp in Q4.
| http://mobilemarketingmagazine.com/snapchat-unveils-ad-manager-20-its-biggest-improvement-since-launching | 2017-11-15 11:47:06.537000 | Snapchat-owner Snap has announced the launch of Ad Manager 2.0, the firm's biggest upgrade to its ad tools since it first rolled out a solution for marketers using the photo and video-sharing app. New features include simplified ad buying and management tools, as well as new Audience Filters, providing marketers with targeting beyond national or hyper local location filters.
Ad Manager 2.0 will unify several of Snapchat's existing advertising tools, including Advanced Mode, Snap Publisher, Business Manager and the new Audience Filters, into a single streamlined tool, and also incorporated Ad Set Duplication and Frequency Capping into the everyday ad buying experience.
Audience Filters will offer advertisers targeting filters at scale for the first time on the platform, enabling advanced targeting based on a number of factors, as well as improved measurement and more efficient pricing.
"We've streamlined Snapchat Ads Manager so advertisers can buy, optimise, target, and measuer in one simple place," said Peter Sellis, director of revenue product at Snap. "And we added Audience Filters to the tool, a big win for advertisers who want to run creative, targeted camera ads at an efficient price."
Marketers will now be able to run Filter-based campaigns with targeting based on age, gender, language, device type, location or any of Snap's Lifestyle Categories. Brands can also fine-tune their delivery schedule, re-engage based on users who shared their filter, and see real-time metrics like paid impressions, saves, shares and spend.
The new tool rollout comes less than a week after Snap announced its Q3 results, which saw the firm report losses of $443.2m (£376.9m) and caused its share price to drop by over 20 per cent. A redesign of the entire app is planned for Q4, with a focus on making the app more user-friendly in an effort to pull in more users and increase revenues.
Join us at the 2017 Effective Mobile Marketing Awards Ceremony, taking place in London on Thursday 16 November, to mix with the industry's best and brightest, and raise a glass to the year's best campaigns and solutions. To find out more, and to book your place, click here. |
Redrow Gold Duke of York Award in technical education for Redrow apprentices | Abstract: Two young people who served at Redrow Homes’s southeast division as part of their work experience have been given the Gold Duke of York Award for technical education. Billy Tivey and Rebecca Driver were presented with their awards by Prince Andrew at Buckingham Palace. Both have gone on to full-time jobs within Redrow. Tivey is a trainee site assistant with Redrow at St Andrews Park in Halling, while Driver is a commercial apprentice. The award recognises those who have achieved the highest grades in their technical education and have excelled in their work experience.
| http://www.showhouse.co.uk/news/duke-of-york-presents-awards-to-two-redrow-apprentices/ | 2017-11-15 11:19:02.963000 | Two Redrow apprentices have been presented with a Gold Duke of York Award for Technical Education by Prince Andrew in an event at Buckingham Palace.
The award winners are Billy Tivey and Rebecca Driver, both former students of Medway University Technical College (UTC), where they studied BTEC Level 3 Extended Diploma in Construction and the Built Environment, which is the equivalent of three A-Levels.
Part of the course involved two weeks of work experience with Redrow’s South East division at its headquarters in Chatham, where they were able to gain some practical on-site experience as well as an understanding of what a career in the construction sector will offer.
The Duke of York Award rewards young people who have excelled and achieved the highest grades in their technical education as well as being exceptionally talented during their work experience, excelling in their work experience as well as reasoning in the work they do and communication skills with colleagues.
As well as these prestigious awards, both winners now have full-time jobs with Redrow: Billy as a trainee site assistant at the St Andrews Park in Halling, Rebecca as a commercial apprentice, aiming to become a chartered quantity surveyor.
“The work experience provided me with the opportunity to experience first-hand the day-to-day of what being a site manager involves and the role really appeals to me,” says Billy. “Before my work experience I wasn’t sure whether to pursue a career in design. It’s been really exciting going up to Buckingham Palace and receiving my award from Prince Andrew, definitely a day to remember.”
Rebecca says: “I was 14 when I figured out that a career in the construction industry would suit my abilities. I’m quite good with figures and like how these can be translated into a practical job on site. I am currently working towards a Level 6 Degree in Quantity Surveying and can’t wait to be fully qualified. It was great to be recognised by the UTC for my knowledge of the construction sector.”
Delighted by the double-win for the pair of the company’s apprentices, Mike Tynan, area construction manager at Redrow (South East), adds: “They are both exceptionally bright and it’s been so wonderful to see passionate and committed individuals coming into the sector. The construction industry is facing a real crisis in recruitment and we have found that the partnership with Medway UTC has been an excellent way of introducing young people to the opportunities within the sector and enabled them to further develop their skills.”
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TalkTalk TalkTalk shares crash 17% despite 46,000 new customers | Shares in UK telecoms firm TalkTalk fell by 17% after a "triple-whammy of bad news": reduced profits, a half-year loss of £75m ($99m) and a reduced dividend. The company, which has been restructuring under executive chairman Sir Charles Dunstone and CEO Tristia Harrison, revealed half-year profits would be lower than expected at between £270m and £300m. However, TalkTalk added 46,000 customers during the six months to September, compared with losing 29,000 during the same period in 2016, while better customer service is credited with reducing churn from 1.5% to 1.3%.
| https://www.standard.co.uk/business/city-punishes-talktalk-after-blow-to-profits-a3691636.html | 2017-11-15 11:18:05.037000 | T alkTalk shares crashed 17% on Wednesday after a warning on profits that comes despite a surge in demand for its cheap TV, internet and phone deals.
The challenger telecoms company embarked on an overhaul of its business last May, pledging to invest at the expense of profits, saying farewell to long-time chief executive Dido Harding and taking an axe to the dividend.
With 30% shareholder Sir Charles Dunstone leading the shake-up alongside new boss Tristia Harrison, TalkTalk had promised to boost its sometimes shaky service and cut the market share of BT.
Today’s half-year results showed some signs that this is working.
The City was alarmed by the admission that the profits will be at the bottom end of expectations of £270 million to £300 million, and the shares got hammered. Later, they were down 20p, 10%, at 170p.
In words that could be taken as direct criticism of Harding, Harrison (pictured) said the business had been “simplified and reset”.
There has been a “turnaround from where we were 12 months ago”, she said.
TalkTalk added 46,000 customers in the six months to September 30, compared with a loss of 29,000 last time.
The half-year dividend of 2.5p is more than halved but is paid despite a loss of £75 million. Mike van Dulken at Accendo Markets said there was a “triple-whammy of bad news” in lower profits, an “unsightly loss” and a cut to the divi. “This is the last thing loyal shareholders will have wanted to hear,” he added.
Customer churn is down from 1.5% to 1.3%, thanks to better service. Harrison thinks the “customer experience is much more stable” and people are flocking to its cheaper offer.
“These are tough economic times. Customers do not want to be ripped off,” she said.
“We have now delivered a third consecutive quarter of growth in our broadband base, with both retail and wholesale bases growing; returned to on-net revenue growth; and delivered lower churn than a year ago,” she added.
Half-year sales slipped 5% to £856 million and the company has taken a £31 million restructuring hit for overhauling its mobile phones business.
Barclays’ equity arm cut its price target for the shares from 215p to 200p.
TalkTalk is working on building an internet network with an “ultrafibre” rollout in York in partnership with Sky and CityFibre.
Sir Charles told the Standard: “If I were dictator of the country, I would cancel HS2 and put the money into broadband.”
Nigel Langstaff, the former finance chief of Carphone Warehouse, founded by Dunstone, is joining the board.
TalkTalk suffered a huge cyber hack in 2015, hitting 157,000 customers. |
China's ICBC launches robo-advice platform | The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) has introduced a robo-adivsory platform for its retail banking customers. Consumers will be able to access the service for a minimum investment of CNY10,000 ($1,506), significantly below what wealth management clients of the bank normally pay. Other Chinese banks have also sort to enter the robo-advice space with China Merchants Bank, Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, Industrial Bank and Ping An Bank among those launching platforms.
| http://www.scmp.com/business/companies/article/2119722/icbc-launches-robo-adviser-service-wealth-management-products | 2017-11-15 11:00:32.967000 | ICBC’s newly launched “robo-adviser” service will see computer programmes dish out investment advice to retail investors over its mobile banking platform, becoming the first among the nation’s “big-four” state-owned lenders to unlock the potential of the hot new service being adopted rapidly by the industry, worldwide. Photo: AFP |
Billion pound investment in insurance tech fails to impress | Despite more than $1.8bn invested in insurtech this year, consumers are still largely waiting to see the benefits with legacy systems obstructing progress, according to a study from Consumer Intelligence, reported Simon Allin in the Financial Times. | https://www.ftadviser.com/protection/2017/11/14/billion-pound-investment-in-insurance-tech-fails-to-impress/ | 2017-11-15 10:41:10.893000 | Customers and brokers remain disconnected from insurtech despite $1.8bn-worth (£1.35bn) of investment into the sector in 2017, according to a report.
Legacy systems and the slow pace at which start-ups are able to grow mean many people have yet to see the benefits of technological innovations, according to a survey of 1,500 consumers and 100 insurance industry professionals by Consumer Intelligence.
The survey suggested one in five insurance brokers blames technology for difficulties they experience when dealing with insurers.
In addition, 70 per cent of customers claim their insurer is no easier to deal with than two years ago - despite the high levels of investment in technology.
What’s more, despite consumers’ demands for transparency and simplicity, 61 per cent of customers believe insurers make ‘claiming’ deliberately confusing.
Just one in ten consumers fully understood their policy cover, claiming jargon and long and complicated terms and conditions acted as barriers to comprehension.
And while the vast majority (96 per cent) of insurers ranked technology as the top investment priority, a third believe insurance is five years behind the digital curve.
According to the research, large corporates are still beginning their digital transformation, while start-ups lack the customers and data to launch at scale.
Matt Connolly, chief executive at Tallt Ventures, a data driven insight and intelligence business, said: “Our most recent research indicates that not all insurers are positioned to answer the demands of their customers, as they are hindered by age old legacy systems.
“It is clear that there is a disconnect between the initial promise of the insurtech revolution and the current reality experienced by millions of customers, who feel sold short.”
Daren O’Brien, director at London-based Aurora Financial, commented: “They do have issues with legacy systems, and with all the mergers and acquisitions that have happened it does not make it easier for them.
“When customers take out a new product, it is all singing, all dancing, but on any older plans we are talking about legacy systems that have been around for 20 or 30 years. It is too expensive to move them across to new systems, or they are not compatible with the new systems.
“It is only in the last decade that we have seen technology driven forward. It does cause massive problems - the information is never readily available and it takes ages to get the information, or they have outsourced their legacy plans to other companies.”
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Canadian insurers urged to prepare for cyber attacks | Canada's government is urging insurers to pay more attention to their own cyber protection policies. Though insurers are showing an increasing appetite to take on cyber risk on behalf of their clients, they themselves are also vulnerable, Don Forgeron, head of the Insurance Bureau of Canada recently noted at a conference. Insurers hold a vast amount of client information, Forgeron noted, and could learn from the recent Equifax security breach about how best to safeguard this data.
| http://thompsonsnews.com/insurers-urged-to-prepare-for-more-cyber-risk-oversight/ | 2017-11-15 10:38:08.477000 | THE FEDERAL government has become more focused on cyber security since the breach at credit rating firm Equifax, delegates heard at the recent Insurance Bureau of Canada’s Regulatory Affairs Symposium in Toronto.
The Equifax breach leaked highly personal information including names, addresses, social security numbers and birthdates of millions of its customers in the U.S. and Canada. The company was breached in July but Equifax didn’t notify customers until September. The incident led ceo Richard Smith to retire and subsequently issue a public apology in the Wall Street Journal.
IBC president and ceo Don Forgeron said that, due to the Equifax incident, when the IBC met with Malcolm Brown, the deputy minister of public safety, to talk about flood issues and natural catastrophes, he was “absolutely seized” with cyber breach issues.
“Everyone from the federal government and small business owners are asking how to protect themselves,” Mr. Forgeron said.
He added that the federal government has plans to act on and respond to these issues soon.
“No amount of security can completely adequately protect against cyber attacks and although insurance transfers some risk it isn’t the whole solution,” Mr. Forgeron said.
And while insurers have an appetite to cover cyber risk, they are also vulnerable. “Insurers are also becoming much more aware of their very own real exposure to cyber attacks,” he said. “Insurers hold personal information, and a lot of it. How do we protect our own systems?’
Mr. Forgeron and two speakers at the symposium said Canadian insurers can learn a lot from the Equifax breach. Speaking at a privacy law development panel during the symposium, Farah Zafar, senior counsel, corporate compliance and privacy officer at Economical Insurance, said one of the biggest impacts of a cyber breach is on a company’s brand. She said one of the biggest concerns with the Equifax breach was how long it took the company to tell its customers about it.
“Certainly consumers looking at that felt that Equifax took too long to share that information.
“There seems to be a visceral reaction because they felt Equifax took too long in getting the information out to impacted consumers.” But Ms. Zafar said it is difficult for companies to assess when to report breaches.
“The reality is that it can be challenging to get your arms around these breaches and fully understand what has actually happened,” she said.
“Even figuring out what happened and fully understanding and providing meaningful information — that in and of itself can take time although there seems to be a public perception that it needs to be immediate and shared as soon as it happens.” That, she said, makes it crucial for companies to have incident plans in place prior to anything bad happening.
Creating an incident plan once a breach happens is too late.
“Insurers have to be proactive about these things since insurers are aware of the volumes of data they hold from their customers,” Ms. Zafar said.
“It’s really important to be proactive and internally develop a team to respond to these situations that can triage and assess and understand what is going on.” Co-panellist Timothy Banks, a partner at law firm Dentons Canada, said his observations of breach incidents in general is that delaying reporting to consumers is sometimes a wise decision.
He said usually the numbers of customers affected goes down from what is often initially estimated. “So there is always a risk in coming out and reporting the size of a breach too early,” Mr. Banks said. “Because chances are that through additional forensics you are going to narrow the scope of the breach and know the timeline and scope of the intrusion — narrowing the total number of people affected.”
(More coverage of the symposium was presented in our Nov. 13th weekly edition. To subscribe, please choose the ‘Subscribe’ tab on our main page or email [email protected]). |
Chinese helicopter sales surge as airspace rules relaxed | A relaxing of tight airspace rules in China last year has led to a surge in helicopter orders in the country. "This year we have already received more than 200 orders from China alone. This is more than we have received for the rest of the world", said Patrick Moulay, executive vice president at Bell Helicopter. The gap between the size of China's helicopter fleet and that of the US is fast closing, said Moulay.
| https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/15/china-is-pushing-up-helicopter-sales.html | 2017-11-15 09:49:54.283000 | China's growing love affair with helicopters looks set to continue.
Previously tight airspace rules in the country were relaxed in 2016, allowing civilian use below 3,000 meters. In the months that followed, Bell Helicopter, Airbus Helicopters and Leonardo Helicopters have all secured big orders in China.
In June, Bell secured a bumper contract to sell 100 407GXP helicopters to Shaanxi Helicopter (SHC).
Speaking at the Dubai Airshow on Tuesday, Patrick Moulay, the executive vice president of global sales for Bell Helicopter, said the gap between the fleet size in China and that of the U.S. was huge and the former is racing to catch up.
"This year we have already received more than 200 orders from China alone. This is more than we have received for the rest of the world," Moulay said. |
Toshiba sells TV business to China's Hisense Group for $114m | Toshiba is selling its television business to China's Hisense Group. The struggling Japanese conglomerate is selling 95% in shares of its Toshiba Visual Solutions division for $114m as part of its financial structural reforms. It is also selling its chip business to a consortium led by Bain Capital for JPY2tn. Toshiba made a net loss of $436m in its fiscal first half.
| http://news.abs-cbn.com/business/11/14/17/toshiba-sells-tv-business-to-chinas-hisense | 2017-11-15 09:21:31.163000 | The logo of Toshiba is seen as a shareholder arrives at Toshiba's extraordinary shareholders meeting in Chiba, Japan March 30, 2017. Toru Hanai, Reuters/FILE PHOTO
TOKYO - Struggling Japanese conglomerate Toshiba said Tuesday it has decided to sell its television business to China's Hisense Group as part of its efforts to restore its balance sheet.
Toshiba agreed with the Chinese group to sell 95 percent in shares of its unit Toshiba Visual Solutions (TVS) for about 12.9 billion yen ($114 million), it said in a statement.
"Toshiba has been considering structural reforms that will ... strengthen Toshiba's financial base," the firm said.
"It has become difficult for Toshiba itself to further invest its management resources and execute measures to strengthen the competitiveness" of the TV business, it said.
Accordingly, it determined that the best way to strengthen the business is "to transfer it to Hisense".
The announcement came days after the Tokyo-based firm said it logged a net loss of $436 million for the fiscal first half, as it moves to complete the multi-billion-dollar sale of its chip business.
After months of wrangling with competing bidders, Toshiba said in September it had formally signed an agreement to sell the chip unit for 2 trillion yen to a consortium led by US investor Bain Capital, which included US tech giants Apple and Dell as well as South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix.
The chip unit brought in around a quarter of Toshiba's total annual revenue and is the crown jewel in a vast range of businesses ranging from home appliances to nuclear reactors.
The deal is seen as crucial to the survival of the cash-strapped company, one of Japan's best-known firms.
Toshiba is on the ropes after the disastrous acquisition of US nuclear energy firm Westinghouse, which racked up billions of dollars in losses before being placed in bankruptcy protection.
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Over 16,000 sign scientists’ letter warning of threat to planet | More than 16,000 scientists from 184 countries have issued a warning to humanity about the consequences of climate change. The statement is a follow-up to the 1992 World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity, signed by 1,700 individuals, which stated that environmental damage could threaten our survival. The new letter argues that the planet will experience “substantial and irreversible“ harm unless public pressure results in behavioural change. The scientists cited data that showed environmental problems have got much worse since the first letter was published.
| http://edition.cnn.com/2017/11/14/health/scientists-warn-humanity/index.html | 2017-11-15 00:00:00 | Story highlights Scientists send warning to the public to fix environmental problems now The letter has been so popular, hundreds more have signed it since it came out Monday
CNN —
More than 16,000 scientists from 184 countries have published a second warning to humanity advising that we need to change our wicked ways to help the planet.
In 1992, 1,700 independent scientists signed the “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity.” The letter warned that “human beings and the natural world are on a collision course” and if environmental damage was not stopped, our future was at risk.
That letter made headlines 25 years ago, but the world still faces daunting environmental challenges. So environmental scientist William Ripple and his colleagues decided to create a new letter that has also struck a nerve. Since it was published in the journal BioScience on Monday, hundreds more scientists have signed on to the letter.
The letter essentially says that if there is not a groundswell of public pressure to change human behavior, the planet will sustain “substantial and irreversible” harm.
“This is not about some natural phenomenon that is removed from humans,” said Ripple, a distinguished professor of ecology at Oregon State University. “If we don’t have a healthy biosphere, as it is called, if we continue to have major environmental problems and climate change problems, then this goes directly to the welfare of humans. People need to understand that we are trying to save ourselves from catastrophic huge misery.”
Though there have been a handful of positive changes, current data show that many environmental problems have gotten “alarmingly” worse since the last letter was penned.
Climate change
Future global warming
Since 1970, carbon dioxide emissions have increased sharply, by about 90%. About 78% of that comes from fossil fuel combustion, such as through the use of coal to heat our homes and driving cars that use gas, and through basic industrial processes and human activity which accounts for the majority of the total greenhouse gas emissions increase from 1970 to 2011, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
That human activity has helped raise the global average temperature. 2016 was the warmest year on record, according to NASA. In fact, the 10 warmest years on the 136-year record have occurred since 1998, according to the most recent data available.
Though the Trump administration has said climate change programs are a “waste of your money” and that climate change itself is an “expensive hoax,” the data suggest that temperature increases will probably cause a shortage in the world’s food crops. The weather will become more damaging, with more intense storms. Sea levels will rise and threaten coastal cities like Miami and New Orleans.
Dead zones
The Dead Zone
The new letter lists data showing a 75% increase in the number of ocean dead zones since the publication of the first letter. Dead zones are the areas in oceans, large lakes and rivers where marine life either dies or is driven away because the zone lacks sufficient oxygen.
Although dead zones can occur naturally, they are created largely by excessive nutrient pollution from human activities like farming and industrial pollution, according to the National Ocean Service. There are many along the US East Coast and in the Great Lakes, and the second largest in the world is in the northern Gulf of Mexico.
Scientists believe there are at least 405 dead zones worldwide, including near South America, Japan, China and southeast Australia.
That’s not merely bad news for the fish that live there; it is bad news for the humans who eat the fish and other seafood that need the fish to survive. The dead zone in the Chesapeake Bay, for instance – which measures 1.89 cubic miles, or nearly the volume of 3.2 million Olympic-size swimming pools – results in the loss of tens of millions of fish, which both humans and crabs eat. It threatens the oysters there, too.
Despite the challenges there, the proposed Trump budget would cut cleanup funds for the Chesapeake Bay, the Great Lakes and other bodies of water with dead zones.
Fish in trouble
Seafood - Something For Everyone
There has been an increasing appetite for fish, but it is getting harder to catch them. The recent revision of the US dietary guidelines urged Americans to eat more fish for heart health and weight control. More people have started to see the health benefits of the Mediterranean diet, which also emphasizes fish over meat.
The fishing industry has upped its efforts, but there has been a large drop in the harvest of wild-caught fish. In fact, a 2006 study found that all species of wild seafood could collapse within the next 50 years if more isn’t done to protect these populations. About 2,300 species of fish are listed as endangered or threatened according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
In earlier research, scientists also predicted that this drop could compromise people’s need for protein and for micronutrients, particularly in developing nations. Already, 45% of deaths among children under age 5 is due largely to health problems caused by undernutrition according to a 2013 study.
Fresh water threatened
Protecting Water Quality for People and the Environment
Earth has seen a 26% reduction in the amount of fresh water available per capita since the 1992 letter. If conservation efforts and industry levels of pollution don’t change, UNESCO predicts that the world will face a 40% global water deficit by 2030.
Population growth, industrialization, urbanization and an increase in water consumption have threatened our freshwater sources significantly, research shows.
Currently, 20% of the world’s aquifers are being over-exploited.
Investment in water infrastructure has gone up globally and in the US, but some scientists question whether that investment will be enough.
Forests threatened
CNN Explains: Deforestation 02:22 - Source: CNN
Between 1990 and 2015, the world has lost 129 million hectares of forest land – an area about the size of South Africa.
Most deforestation has happened in tropical areas, but the US has also lost significant forest land. Studies have projected that with US population growth continuing as predicted, the country could lose 50 million more acres by 2050.
Trees aren’t merely pretty; they help clean the air and water, provide lumber for construction, create habitats for animals and help mitigate the impact of climate change.
There is some hope when it comes to forests though, as studies have shown that deforestation has slowed and more forests are better managed globally, suggesting that if humans put their minds to it, negative environmental trends can change.
Unsustainable population spike
Population growth across Africa 00:56 - Source: CNN
There has been a 35% increase in the human population since the 1992 letter, putting a strain on the increasingly limited number of available natural resources. That trend is not expected to change any time soon.
Researchers predict that there will be nearly 10 billion people living on Earth by 2050, according to the United Nations, with much of the population growth occurring in developing nations with the highest fertility rates but also the lowest food security.
Progress has also been seen when it comes to slowing growth, in the form of increasing education for women and girls and concentrated family planning efforts.
Animals disappearing
He can hear species disappearing 05:40 - Source: CNN
There has been a nearly 29% collective reduction in the number of animals in the world since the 1992 letter. Scientists say we are living in the sixth mass-extinction event, which means three-quarters of all species could disappear in the coming centuries.
A 2017 publication also looked at a well-studied group of 177 mammal species and found that all of them had lost at least 30% of their territory between 1900 and 2015; more than 40% of those species “experienced severe population declines,” meaning they lost at least 80% of their geographic range during that time. Put another way: This particular extinction is “more severe” than previously thought.
Some progress
Antarctic ozone layer is healing 01:20 - Source: CNN
In the past 25 years, ozone depletion is the one significant positive trend.
There had been a steady decline in the Earth’s ozone layer, caused in part by gasses released by aerosol spray cans and refrigerants, reducing the ozone layer’s ability to absorb ultraviolet radiation.
After 1987, when the world’s governments came together to craft the United Nations Montreal Protocol, emissions of ozone-depleting gasses decreased significantly. The ozone is expected to see a significant recovery by the middle of the century.
The effort to help the ozone is one example, Ripple said, that when people come together to work on something, they can make a huge impact. That’s what he hopes the new letter will accomplish.
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In addition to seeing more scientists sign the letter after its publication, Ripple has been overwhelmed by the number of other people who have reached out, some sending poems and songs that they have created about the environment, and pledged to help.
Ripple and his co-authors aren’t sure what the next steps will be, but like many a manifesto writer before him, he is hopeful, despite the dire tone of the letter.
“I’m an optimist,” he said. “My hope is that this letter triggers a worldwide conversation about these environmental and climate trends and perhaps more fundamentally that it can raise people’s awareness of the seriousness of global environmental problems so we can come together. It is so important to work together as a human race to make a sustainable future on planet Earth.” |
India to introduce clean fuels two years early due to smog | India is to introduce measures designed to reduce vehicle emissions two years ahead of schedule, the country's government has announced. The move is a response to the current smog crisis in Delhi. The country’s petroleum ministry will introduce Bharat VI fuels, which have one-fifth of the sulphur count of existing fuels and 1,000 times less sulphur than fuels from 1995, from April 2018, instead of April 2020. Vehicle emissions are responsible for 20% of total pollution in Delhi, which has an estimated 10 million cars, with road dust contributing a further 35%. | https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/15/india-to-introduce-clean-fuels-faster-to-combat-delhi-smog-crisis | 2017-11-15 00:00:00 | Measures aimed at slashing vehicle emissions will be introduced two years early, the Indian government has announced in its first major policy response to the Delhi smog crisis.
As the haze improved slightly on Wednesday – albeit to levels still considered “very poor” – the Indian petroleum ministry said it would introduce Bharat VI fuels from April next year, instead of April 2020 as originally planned.
The Bharat standards govern the volume of toxic materials permitted in the fuels that power the estimated 10 million cars that operate in the Indian capital and contribute significantly to its dangerously poor air quality.
The new fuels will have one-fifth the sulphur count of the existing standards, and 1,000 times less sulphur than fuels used in 1995.
Polash Mukherjee, an air pollution researcher at the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment, said the fuel standards would need to be paired with equally stringent technology standards to be fully effective. The combination of the two could reduce particulate matter from diesel vehicles by 90%, and petrol vehicles by around 60%, he said.
The technology standards are scheduled to be implemented in 2020, but Mukherjee said lobbying efforts were under way to bring them forward.
Vehicle emissions make up around a fifth of the total pollution load in Delhi. Studies suggest road dust thrown up by vehicles contributes another 35%. The two combined result in gaseous fumes forming secondary particles that bond with the thick dust and linger in the air.
The initiative is the first long-term policy step to be taken by the central government since pollution levels reached “hazardous” levels last week and doctors declared a public health emergency.
00:31 Delhi smog declared public health emergency – video
Narendra Modi’s government has been accused of failing to take the crisis seriously, while some measures announced by Delhi authorities have been held up by courts and criticised as quick fixes.
On Wednesday the Delhi chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, met his counterpart in Haryana, a neighbouring state that also has dangerous air pollution levels. In a joint statement with Manohar Lal Khattar, Kejriwal said the pair had agreed “on many measures aimed at preventing its re-occurrence in the winter of 2018”.
Kejriwal has been critical of the states that surround Delhi for not cracking down on the annual burning of hundreds of acres of crop waste, which sends toxic smoke billowing across north India. However, state leaders including the Punjab chief minister, Amarinder Singh, have said their farmers cannot afford to clear their fields any other way, and need financial incentives to do so.
“Farmers cannot be expected to give up crop residue burning completely till the time they are provided viable solutions,” Singh said on Tuesday.
Meteorologists have predicted the “very poor” conditions will last for the foreseeable future.
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Brazil planing fire-sale of oil reserves, claim environmentalists | Brazil is planning to hold a fire-sale of its oil resources before prices fall due to decreasing global carbon budgets, according to environmental groups including Climate Observatory, Greenpeace and WWF. The country’s government is proposing up to $300bn in tax relief for firms that develop offshore oilfields that campaigners argue would use up 7% of the total emissions budget if the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement are to be achieved. The areas that would be included in the sale are believed to hold oil and gas equivalent to 176 billion barrels of crude, or 74.8 billion tonnes of CO2. | https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/15/brazils-oil-sale-plans-undermine-its-role-at-bonn | 2017-11-15 00:00:00 | Brazil is planning a fire-sale of its oil resources before shrinking global carbon budgets push down demand and prices, environmental groups have warned.
The focus of concern is a government proposal for up to $300bn in tax relief to companies that develop offshore oilfields that opponents claim would use up 7% of humanity’s emission budget if global warming is to be kept below 2C.
Climate Observatory, WWF, Greenpeace and other groups say the subsidies could spark a get-it-out-of-the-ground race with fossil fuel rivals such as the US, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Norway and the UK.
The accusations contradict Brazil’s position at this week’s climate talks, where the country’s negotiators have urged the world to be more ambitious in cutting carbon emissions.
“The country is doing the exact opposite – increasing emissions and opening itself up to big oil with billionaire subsidies at a time when the country still tries to recover from its worst recession,” said Carlos Rittl, executive secretary of Climate Observatory.
The pre-salt fields are believed to contain oil and gas equivalent to 176bn barrels of crude, or 74.8bn tonnes of CO2. This is 7% of the carbon budget for 2C and 18% for 1.5C, according to calculations by Climate Observatory
Extraction is already under way, but the administration of Michel Temer, who seized power in an impeachment plot against former president Dilma Rousseff last year, is keen to accelerate the process.
It has proposed a bill – known as MP 795 – that would slash taxes up until 2040 for firms that win auctions to develop the oil fields. The subsidy would give the government one of the lowest revenue shares in the world of each barrel extracted, effectively undercutting the competition.
“This is a terrible signal,” said Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace International. “With this bill, Brazil will make the global responsibility to reduce emissions even more difficult than it already is.”
Congress is due to vote on the bill before 15 December. Opposition congressmen say the subsidies for oil are unjust at a time when health and education budgets have been frozen for 20 years and payments for forest protection have been slashed.
The government says the measure is necessary to ensure the success of future auctions which will generate revenue to help an economy that is only slowly emerging from its worst recession in a century. It has earmarked 70.5% of all energy investment until 2026 (pdf) to be spent on fossil fuels.
Brazil’s carbon emissions surged 8.9% last year – the biggest rise since 2008 – largely as a result of increased deforestation in the Amazon and Cerrado.
This threatens the lead-by-example role that Brazil’s skilled diplomats have long played at climate talks.
Officials point out that many developing countries are also promoting oil and coal and that in some cases, such as Germany, their emissions are also rising. By comparison, they say, Brazil gets 74% of its energy from renewables (mostly hydropower dams) and that the pace of deforestation slowed by 16% this year after a two-year uptick that pushed the country off course from its climate goals.
José Antônio Marcondes, Brazil’s chief negotiator for climate change, urged developed nations to pick up the pace. Photograph: Kiara Worth/ENB/IISD
The country’s chief climate change negotiator, José Antônio Marcondes, insisted Brazil was doing its part and urged developed nations to pick up the pace by taking action over the next three years.
“If we are to reach the goals set out in Paris, we cannot delay action until 2020. Ambition and actions should not be postponed,” he said. “If we do not meet the deadlines, if things become even harder on the discussions – which we are doing everything to avoid, we must not, we cannot run the risk of repeating Copenhagen when the world failed to agree on action.”
It was exactly the sort of stirring and positive argument that has enabled Brazil to push past negotiations forward and bridge the gap between rich and poor countries. However, when asked about proposals back home for fossil fuel subsides, he was far less assured.
“We are of course following the legislative discussions around any possible fiscal measures. However, it should not be overlooked that we adopted in the Paris Agreement emissions reduction targets that are among the most ambitious in the world – across both developed and developing countries – and these targets are on top of the dramatic reductions already achieved,” he said.
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UK publishers need more details on how GDPR law will be enforced | Publishers are waiting for guidance from the UK government about how they should implement the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which takes effect in May. In particular, they are concerned about the lack of detail over what they will be able to do with customers' data and when they are required to seek consent to use it. However, the Information Commissioner's Office has released partial information on user profiling and consent conditions, and more details about data processing are expected this December. Publishers are also concerned about shared liability with vendors for data misuse when vendors haven't obtained consumer consent.
| https://digiday.com/media/calm-storm-publishers-playing-gdpr-waiting-game/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=digidaydis&utm_source=uk&utm_content=171114 | 2017-11-14 22:10:44.357000 | The scramble to get businesses ready for the enforcement of the General Data Protection Regulation in May has led to a whirlwind of internal committees and strategy meetings. Legal teams are being wheeled out to explain the finer nuts and bolts of the new law, while publishing execs crane their necks to see what peers are doing.
But developing concrete plans of action is tough. That’s largely because there are still so many areas of the law that can be widely interpreted. The Information Commissioner’s Office is releasing details and guidance on the areas that are still vague, but in a piecemeal fashion. Some publishers and ad tech businesses feel like they’re in limbo, unable to push the button on action plans while they await details on how the law will be enforced. It’s a concern already voiced by the marketing side of the industry.
“It’s very hard to strategize before the next [ICO] guidance is out because we don’t know what the permissions are going to be,” said a publisher for a national newspaper who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Companies like Google and Facebook are making a big PR play of being compliant, but we don’t know what that looks like yet. We need to go about getting those permissions [for consumer consent] without obliterating our user base,” this person said.
The ICO has recently released additional guidance on areas like user profiling and under what conditions consent will be required. But it has yet to issue further guidance on other areas where consent will be needed and what kinds of data processing will be acceptable under the new law. The final guidance is expected in December — leaving little time to implement.
That’s not to say publishers are sitting on their hands. As News UK’s chief data privacy officer Robert Streeter said in September at Rubicon Project’s Automation event, waiting around for additional guidance from the ICO isn’t the best move — there are other ways to push forward. Many have appointed chief privacy officers, and some publishers are already looking at messaging which would be used to inform users about consent.
“As long as you can demonstrate you have an audit trail that shows compliance plans, that’s the main thing,” said Charles Yardley, gm for strategic partnerships for Forbes Europe. “Everyone is in the same boat with this.”
But for some, the GDPR has become a bit of a hot potato, with vendors passing the compliance buck back to publishers. One bone of contention stems from the fact that a publisher will share liability if a vendor within its digital ad supply chain passes on that publisher’s data without the vendor itself having obtained consumer consent. In turn, some vendors are not taking much action, believing the onus is on the publisher to “fix it” and incorporate consent for the third-party vendors they use.
“It is all rather confusing now, as no one is fully sure how it should be interpreted. There’s a lot of uncertainty,” said another publishing exec.
Ensuring compliance throughout the supply chain is just one element that needs to be addressed. Publishers are also whiteboarding scenarios in which they must create totally different technology infrastructures and digital offerings that are appropriate for people who say they don’t want to give consent for their data to be used in exchange for personalized news. Publishers will need to come up with more vanilla, less personalized news services.
Some publishers have expressed concerns that they’ll be out of step with the rest of the industry in their interpretation of the law. Some may interpret the law strictly and switch off all their marketing, wipe their cookies, start over with a clean slate and then ask users politely for consent. Others could explore ways to get automated consent and then allow users to opt out easily. “Because of how broad the interpretation is, you could find you end up going one way and the industry going in another,” said a publishing exec. |
Aspiring lithium miner Altura plans Pilbara expansion | Altura Mining is preparing to raise production of spodumene concentrate from 220,000 tonnes a year to 440,000 tonnes at its $170m Pilgangoora lithium project in Western Australia's Pilbara. Commissioning is scheduled for the Q2, 2018, with first lithium concentrate sales in the Q2. J&R Optimum, the major shareholder in Altura, and Lionergy each have binding offtake agreements for a minimum of 100,000 tonnes a year of spodumene concentrate for an initial five-year period. Two significant players in the Chinese lithium battery market had encouraged Altura to pursue the production expansion to 440,000 tonnes. | http://www.afr.com/business/altura-sees-double-on-pilbara-lithium-production-20171112-gzjw59 | 2017-11-14 17:52:21.713000 | J & R Optimum, the major shareholder in Altura, and Lionergy each have binding offtake agreements for a minimum of 100,000 tonnes a year of spodumene concentrate for an initial five-year period.
Mr Brown said the two significant players in Chinese lithium battery market had encouraged Altura to pursue the production expansion to 440,000 tonnes. Despite their interest Altura was keeping its funding options open.
The positive in-house scoping study was based on the recently-revised Mineral Resource estimate of 44 million tonnes at 1.00 per cent lithium oxide and the revised ore reserve estimate of 34.2 million tonnes at 1.04 per cent.
The study canvassed introducing 24-hour-a-day operations to boost production with mine life remaining at greater than 10 years and further mine resource extension drilling planned for 2018.
The Altura share price has more than doubled since early last month when it completed a $26 million institutional placement a 19¢ a share to help pay for the expansion study. Just under half the placement was taken by US asset manger BlackRock, which has also built a position in Pilbara Minerals.
The placement came soon after Altura locked away a $US110 million debt facility that was the final piece of funding for the first stage of the Pilgangoora project.
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Lionergy is building a lithium carbonate/lithium hydroxide plant in China for a consortium which includes J & R with completion expected to coincide with first production for Altura.
Altura has an option to take equity in the plant and Mr Brown confirmed it would consider that option after achieving initial production targets.
Altura executives will travel to Inner Mongolia in the next few weeks to inspect progress on the plant, which has the capacity to absorb all the production from Stage 1 of Altura's Pilgangoora mine.
Mr Brown said the size of the spodumene resources around Pilgangoora meant Altura along with others coming into production in Pilbara Minerals and Mineral Resources could consider localised lithium processing consortium in the future.
"The downstream opportunities are very much in their infancy and at the moment I think we are all focused on production first," he said.
Altura and Pilbara Minerals have a formal co-operation agreement, which sees them share some costs, including an access road to the adjoining mines about 120 kilometres from Port Hedland.
The reporter was a guest of Altura Mining Limited. |
Landlords and tenants unaware of rights and obligations: survey | A "huge proportion of UK renters" and a "concerning number of landlords" are badly informed about the regulations governing the rental sector, according to a study by online letting agent LetBritain. Among the results it found were 37% of tenants and 16% of landlords were unaware an eviction requires two months' notice, while half of tenants and 27% of landlords did not know rent charged must be comparable to that of other similar, local properties. Fareed Nabir, the CEO of LetBritain, said more needed to be done to ensure everyone in the rental sector was better informed.
| https://www.propertywire.com/news/uk/research-reveals-shocking-lack-awareness-among-tenants-landlords-uk/ | 2017-11-14 17:07:03 | Millions of tenants and landlords across the UK are unaware of the laws governing the rental sector with landlords even unsure about responsibilities regarding being safe and fair, new research has found.
Some 37% of UK tenants and 16% of landlords do not know that renters must be given at least two months’ notice if a landlord wishes to evict them and 34%, or 5.8 million people, do not realise they have the right for their deposits to be placed in a Tenancy Deposit Protection scheme.
The research from online letting agent LetBritain, also found that 43% of tenants and 19% of landlords have no idea that tenants can challenge any excessive charges made by a landlord via an ombudsman while 28% of tenants did not know a landlord should provide 24 hours’ notice before entering their property.
Some 34% were unaware that a landlord must provide an Energy Performance Certificate and 50% of tenants are uninformed that the rent charged by a landlord should be comparable to similar properties in the area or can be challenged while 27% of landlords did not realise this either.
The firm says the lack of knowledge is worrying. The research also found that 14% of landlords do not realise it is their responsibility to arrange and pay for any repairs to the exterior of a property.
‘It is clear that a huge proportion of UK renters, a population growing in size, do not truly understand the legislation and regulation in place to protect them. Likewise, a concerning number of landlords are also in the dark about exactly what rights and responsibilities they have,’ said Fareed Nabir, chief executive officer of LetBritain.
‘Such a lack of awareness increases the risk of renters and landlords being exploited and it must be addressed and lettings agents certainly have a duty to better inform all their customers about the vital legislative framework governing the rental sector,’ he added. |
Suite of acquisitions could signal the end of Agtech startup boom | The recent spate of acquisitions involving big corporations snapping up agtech start-ups leaves the future in doubt for smaller players and newcomers to the space, according to Ben Johnson, precision farming coordinator at Ag View FS. In a company blog post, Johnson cited John Deere's purchase of Blue River Technology, DuPont's acquisition of Granular, and Premier Crop Systems being snapped up by Syngenta as examples of large corporations with deep pockets snuffing out potentially disruptive competition.
| http://www.precisionag.com/service-providers/is-the-agtech-startup-boom-over/ | 2017-11-14 16:58:25.343000 | Share
In the past few months there has been a flurry of acquisitions of agtech startups by major players in the industry. Let’s look at a short and hardly complete list of a few of these recent acquisitions:
With startups like these all being recently purchased and absorbed into the larger framework of the digital ag platforms of some major players, one has to wonder if the agtech startup boom is ending.
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It almost feels like this is becoming a game of musical chairs, and what companies are going to find themselves without a seat in one of these large digital ag platforms when the music stops?
Of the startups that do remain, one has to wonder about their survival without either new investment dollars coming in past their B and C investment rounds or a sound enough business plan to get them in the black on their own. I speculate that some of these startups that are lacking in those two areas will either go belly up soon or get purchased for a song by a major player.
As for the rest of the agtech space, there are some very large digital ag platforms being assembled by major players in the industry. Monsanto with Climate FieldView and Dow/DuPont with their combination of Encirca, Granular, and AcreValue are both very robust digital ag platforms with a lot of capabilities that are only going to increase over time.
Little guys with a product with a narrow focus have got to be concerned. Sure, a lot of growers like to deal with companies independent of their seed and chemical manufacturers, but logging on to 15 different websites and transferring all of your data to all of them is a real pain and overwhelming to update the information on a regular basis. We’re at a point where we expect all of this stuff to just flow together with minimal effort. Growers expect that maybe there is some work upfront, but it should be easy on an ongoing basis since that was half the point in doing this anyway. This is where the large digital ag platforms have a huge advantage.
Farmers Edge seems to be filling the independent segment of the market as they also appear to be developing into a digital ag platform, but what are the realistic chances of a new startup coming in and entering this space? When you think of the deep pockets they are up against, do new startups really stand a chance at this stage of the game?
0 1 5 Is the Agtech Startup Boom Over? |
AI chatbot tested in end-of-life care strategies | Doctors from Northeastern University and Boston Medical Center in the US are testing the use of an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot as part of a palliative care strategy for terminally ill patients. The $1.3m study, which is in the second year of a three-year cycle, has seen about 360 patients with less than a year to live handed computers featuring the chatbot. Different modules embedded within the technology perform medical and social tasks, including monitoring pain medication and offering spiritual counselling. All interactions are monitored by clinical staff and results suggest patients are comfortable asking the chatbot questions.
| https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/13/an-artificial-intelligence-created-for-the-end-of-life-is-already-here.html | 2017-11-14 16:55:00.643000 | patients might be more inclined to share their symptoms or ask questions when no other human is present.
Universal Images Group | Getty Images
Chatbots are used for a variety of tasks: ordering pizza, getting product suggestions via Facebook Messenger and receiving online customer support. But can they cope with death? A three-year clinical study with financial backing of more than $1 million from the National Institutes of Health is exploring whether a chatbot can help terminally ill, geriatric patients with their end-of-life care. Over the next three years, Northeastern University professor Timothy Bickmore and Boston Medical Center doctor Michael Paasche-Orlow will distribute Microsoft Surface tablets preloaded with a chatbot to about 360 patients who have been told they have less than a year to live. Designed in consultation with experts from Boston Medical Center and programmed by Bickmore and other Northeastern University researchers, the chatbot — which takes the form of a middle-age female digital character — is preloaded with a number of capabilities. These include clinical ones — such as gauging a patient's level of pain and keeping tabs on whether medication is being taken — as well as ones to improve a patient's quality of life. There are modules for talking about stress management and promoting exercise, a social chat feature if patients are just looking for someone to talk to, and even a module for spiritual counseling. What Bickmore and Paasche-Orlow expect is that geriatric patients going through palliative care near the end of their lives will get use out of a tablet-based chatbot, and that having such a service available to hospitals and clinics will be valuable to patients long before they're in hospice care. "Primary-care physicians don't think to call in palliative-care services until patients are incurable, when in fact the patient might have been in pain or could've used some kind of intervention beforehand," said Bickmore, associate dean for research in Northeastern University's College of Computer and Information Science. Today about 90 million Americans live with a serious illness, according to the Center to Advance Palliative Care. This number is expected to double over the next 25 years as the baby boomer generation ages.
It turns out that patients were very happy to talk with a computer about it. They were very explicit in telling us, 'The doctor never asked me about these things.' Michael Paasche-Orlow Boston Medical Center doctor
The interactions patients are having with these chatbots are monitored continuously by nurses, who can activate care if a patient tells the chatbot they're experiencing symptoms. The nurses will also alert a family member if patients are telling the chatbot they're thinking about making end-of-life decisions, like completing a last will and testament. "If a patient rates their nausea or pain a little higher, we ask them if they've taken medicine for that and then try to figure out and troubleshoot that experience," Paasche-Orlow said. "With a lot of these types of things, humans just forget to follow up on them, so there's a lot of lost opportunities to support people in different ways." More from Modern Medicine:
Nobel-winning research says don't take your phone into bed
FDA testing human organs-on-a-chip
Scientists invent a pen that detects cancer in 10 seconds For a decade Bickmore and Paasche-Orlow have collaborated on health IT projects that make use of conversational artificial intelligence, or what Bickmore calls relational agents: computer agents designed to simulate face-to-face conversations with other people, as well as pick up on gesticulations, facial expressions and body posture. Their latest endeavor began with a call for technologies that could potentially assist older patients in the last stages of a terminal illness. These would be issued by a number of high-level institutes, such as the NIH, National Institute of Nursing Research, National Cancer Institute and the National Institute on Aging. In the medical world, conversational artificial intelligence elicits a mixed response. It's a potentially transformative technology, and something against which doctors and patients should guard themselves. Research around chatbots being used for mental health patients published in 2016 in the Journal of the American Medical Association demonstrated that some patients are more likely to display true emotions when they think they're talking to a computer, an insight that could lead to further deployment of conversational agents as a means to automate and lower the costs of clinical treatments. But there are risks of "ineffective care and patient harm," as the JAMA research said. In particular, researchers singled out digital voice assistants of the kinds created by large tech companies, like Apple , Google , Microsoft and Samsung . Certainly, those voice assistants are not intended to act as de facto doctors, but the JAMA research found that when people asked their digital voice assistants questions related to their mental health, responses were "inconsistent and sometimes inappropriate." "There's a growing number of chatbots or characters out there that pretend to be a health oracle," Bickmore said. "That's a real setup for safety issues for patients." Users of the tablet-based chatbot in the palliative-care study are prevented from giving open-ended responses. Whenever it's a patient's turn to say something to the chatbot, they're given prompts on the screen, multiple-choice style. "We know exactly what their intent is, and they can't go off topic or talk about something we hadn't considered," Bickmore said.
The palliative care chatbot in use at Northeastern University and Boston Medical Center only allows patients to use multiple choice responses to keep communication focused, and keep it from going off topic. Northeastern University
Now in year two of a five-year project that began in 2016, the chatbot project has received $1.3 million, with more funding contingent on the success of the clinical trial that began this year.
An emotional support for seniors |
'Starshades' for space telescopes to help search for planet life | Scientists are testing "starshades", flying screens that block out starlight enabling orbiting telescopes to process only dimmer planetary light. Following night-time tests at the McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona, the team hopes to fly a starshade with Nasa's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope, which is set to launch in 2024 or 2025. It's believed a starshade could allow telescopes to accumulate more precise data on the "habitable zones" of stars, where planets with liquid water might exist.
| https://www.space.com/30429-starshade-alien-life-search-wfirst-tech.html | 2017-11-14 15:59:21.950000 | Nineteen different subscale versions of a light-blocking "starshade" were tested recently in the Nevada desert.
The next step in the exoplanet revolution may be an in-space "starshade" that lets alien worlds step out of a blinding glare.
Researchers are testing designs for a starshade, which would fly in formation with a future space-based telescope. The starshade, also known as an "external occulter," would block the light from a star while allowing the scope to spot emissions from much dimmer orbiting planets.
Scientists are conducting desert tests of the technology on Earth. They're using the McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona to model a starshade's ability to help future instruments find and characterize rocky, Earth-like alien worlds. [10 Exoplanets That Could Host Alien Life]
A starshade may be used on NASA's potential Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), a space-based instrument that would feature a primary mirror 8 feet (2.4 meters) wide, the same size as that of the agency's iconic Hubble Space Telescope.
Several years ago, the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) donated two space telescopes to NASA. In 2013, the space agency announced it hoped to use one of these scopes for WFIRST. That move spurred anticipation in the U.S. astronomical community for Hubble-quality imaging over an area of sky 100 times larger than that viewed by Hubble. This version of the mission is called WFIRST-AFTA (for "Astrophysics-Focused Telescope Assets").
The WFIRST-AFTA mission would carry out exoplanet exploration, dark energy research, and galactic and extragalactic surveys.
Desert and mountaintop testing
Small-scale versions of starshades have undergone nighttime desert testing in Nevada and California and, more recently, at the McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope site.
How a starshade works. The concept is telescope-agnostic and could find use on NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) project. (Image credit: Northrop Grumman)
The sites selected for evaluating starshade designs each have pros and cons, but collectively the evaluations are complementary and help to validate optical modeling of the idea, said Steve Warwick, Starshade program manager at Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems.
"We can't do everything we can do in space on the ground in terms of optics, but the tests add a lot of confidence to how the starshade will work on orbit," Warwick told Space.com.
McMath operators said testing sharshades with the telescope, which was dedicated in 1962, was the craziest way that anyone had used the facility to date, Warwick said.
"They were extremely helpful and excited to see what we could do with their facility," Warwick said of the McMath team. Starshade testing at the Arizona site has been done twice so far, in late March and then in June.
The hope is to return to that location in the November-December time period; the exact timing will depend partly on other McMath users' schedules, Warwick said.
A mix of NASA funding and Northrop Grumman funding has enabled the starshade test program to move forward.
Planet light
So what's the big deal about starshades?
The technology — a flower-shaped screen that flies at a considerable distance from a space telescope —blocks starlight to create a high-contrast shadow. This shadow is so dark that only planet light enters a space telescope for examination by onboard instruments.
NASA's proposed Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) is an orbiting telescope with a 2.4-meter primary mirror — the same size as the Hubble Space Telescope mirror. Work is underway to fly a starshade in concert with WFIRST to enable exoplanet studies. (Image credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center)
You can think of it as your big thumb blocking out blazing beams of light from the sun.
Tackling technology gaps
But a starshade in space has never seen the light of day, so to speak. While starshade engineers are drawing upon a successful track record of fielding large, deployable antennas in space, they must also beat back what are called "key technology gaps," Warwick said.
"For there to be a starshade launch with any telescope," Warwick said, "we obviously need a lot of confidence that we're going to get the science that we want to get."
Both the desert trials and McMath mountaintop testing address a key technology gap — "that the optical models are trustworthy … that the models agree with what we measure," said Warwick. He added that he thinks these gaps can be filled relatively soon.
"For me, where I sit, what excites me is the idea of being able to fly along with WFIRST," he added.
Technicians have made use of the McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona to assess and validate optical models of starshade designs. (Image credit: Northrop Grumman/Robert Brown)
Given the potential 2024-2025 launch of that instrument, a decision about whether to include a starshade on the mission could come in the next two to three years, Warwick said.
There are other possibilities beyond WFIRST as well. For example, the proposed 33-foot (10 m) Large Ultraviolet Optical Infrared (LUVOIR) telescope and the projected Habitable Planet Explorer, or HabEx for short, could also incorporate starshades, Warwick said. [Next-Generation Space Telescopes Could Look for Aliens (Video)]
Snagging spectra
There is growing general support for WFIRST to include technology demonstrations of both a coronagraph (a light-blocking instrument that's built into the space telescope) and a starshade (which flies separately), Warwick said.
"From our point of view, that's a very exciting opportunity," Warwick said. Such technology may enable spectra to be examined of some planets located in the "habitable zone" around their stars, where liquid water could exist on a world's surface.
"A starshade with WFIRST could give us indications about habitable planets … but there's a huge difference between 'habitable' and 'inhabited,'" Warwick cautioned.
A larger telescope with a larger starshade could inform scientists about biosignatures from exoplanets, Warwick said, "and that would give us an indication of inhabited planets."
But again, Warwick said, any biosignatures detected would not necessarily identify intelligent alien life. Rather, such signs would indicate some type of biological activity that has changed the planet's atmosphere.
In pondering the larger cosmic picture, Warwick said he sees a starshade or something similar revealing that Earth life is not alone in the universe.
"I'll take a bet that we will find signs of life outside of our solar system before we find it inside our solar system," Warwick concluded.
Leonard David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. He is former director of research for the National Commission on Space and is co-author of Buzz Aldrin's 2013 book "Mission to Mars – My Vision for Space Exploration" published by National Geographic with a new updated paperback version released in May 2015. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com. |
Developers building micro homes to reach affordability quotas | The increased construction of micro units, apartments of around 300-400 sq ft, is helping US housebuilders comply with affordable housing requirements, according to Anne Herbert-Rollins of law firm Miles & Stockbridge. Herbert-Rollins said moderately priced dwelling unit ordinances give developers the flexibility to either build affordable housing themselves, or pay into a fund that can be used by another firm to construct the homes.
| https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/micro-units-the-latest-trend-in-high-65285/ | 2017-11-14 15:45:48.287000 | In my previous article “The Tiny House Craze: Zoning Laws Could Be a Tiny Impediment” I discussed the popular new “tiny house” trend in residential housing options. Along with the “tiny house” craze, another new and growing trend in housing options, particularly in urban areas, is the increasing popularity of the “micro unit.” Whether the popularity and demand is being driven by economic factors and the need for more affordable housing, or by peoples’ preference to downsize to a more simplified lifestyle, “micro units” are becoming more popular and common. The “micro unit” has become very popular in urban areas, and seems to have particular appeal to “millennials” and “empty nesters” looking to downsize. Developers are answering the demand by including more “micro unit” options in multi-family buildings projects.
Unlike a “tiny house” which is a separate, detached dwelling unit, sometimes even built on a platform with wheels, a “micro unit” is a small, individual, attached unit making up part of a larger, high density multi-family housing building or complex. So, unlike a “tiny house” on a separate building lot, which must meet zoning regulations for minimum lot size, setbacks, density, and other zoning and building code requirements, a “micro unit” is part of a larger multi-family building or development, so the development and construction of an individual “micro unit” would be regulated as part of a larger plan, rather than as individual units.
The attributes and appeal of the “micro unit” are many. The smaller size and relatively smaller cost appeals to the affordability aspect. Where a one or two bedroom apartment or condominium unit may be over 1,000 square feet or more, and a typical “studio” apartment may be in the 400 to 600 square foot range, the new “micro units” typically contain only 300 to 400 square feet of living space. To make up for the smaller unit size, “micro units” tend to have a lot of built-in storage space or “pull down” options to allow for additional room when certain components are not being used. To make up for less space within the individual units, developers often provide more shared amenities, such as storage areas, laundry rooms, and fitness rooms.
From the developer’s perspective, another appealing aspect of the “micro unit” is that it may assist the developer in complying with any regulations requiring the developer to provide affordable housing. Some jurisdictions, such as the City of Frederick, have adopted moderately priced dwelling unit (“MPDU”) or similar ordinances, which require a certain percentage of affordable housing units to be built as part of any development over a certain size and density. Often MPDU ordinances allow the developer to pay a “fee in lieu” to develop the project without including the actual affordable housing units. The fee is paid into a fund which is then used to support other affordable housing options. Unlike a moderately priced single family home, which a developer may not find as easy to market for sale in a single family neighborhood of higher priced homes, an affordable micro unit included within a large apartment or condominium project does not present those similar concerns.
In addition to zoning and subdivision regulations, building codes, and MPDU ordinances, many jurisdictions, including both the City of Frederick and Frederick County, have also adopted “adequate public facilities ordinances” (“APFO”) which require that adequate public facilities and infrastructure are in place to support new development before the new development is approved and constructed. Public facilities to be considered under an APFO usually include a development’s impact on roads, schools, parks, and other municipal services and facilities, such as public water and sewer services. The developer is required to either provide the facilities at its expense or to pay fees for the resulting impact on existing facilities or new facilities. Jurisdictions will now need to consider how a “micro unit” impacts those public facilities.
Some jurisdictions have also adopted and implemented “impact fees” which are charged to the developer to pay the cost of the “impact” of any new development. Impact fees generally vary depending on the type of residential unit or structure. Jurisdictions would need to consider where a “micro unit” would fit into the impact fee scale based on the anticipated impact of a “micro unit” on public facilities and services, as compared with a standard sized apartment unit or condominium or other types of residential dwelling units.
As the demand grows, planners and elected officials will need to consider where and how “micro units” fit into their community. Real estate and land use attorneys and developers should stay updated on local zoning regulations which may be adopted to allow for “micro units.”
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Space station sent 360-degree 3D movie camera to shoot VR film | A Vuze virtual reality (VR) movie camera has been sent to the International Space Station to capture footage for a documentary series to be made by "Requiem for a Dream" director Darren Aronofsky. The VR camera, developed by Humaneyes, will record 360-degree, and 3D images, with ultra-HD (4K) resolution. Images will be downloaded to Earth to be included in a National Geographic film for its "One Strange Rock" series. The film is set to air in 2018.
| https://www.space.com/38769-national-geographic-vr-camera-to-space-station.html | 2017-11-14 15:34:43.717000 | European Space Agency astronaut Paolo Nespoli will use a Vuze VR camera to document life on the International Space Station for a VR companion to National Geographic's upcoming series "One Strange Rock."
A cool new virtual reality camera arrived at the International Space Station today (Nov. 14) aboard Orbital ATK's Cygnus cargo spacecraft. The camera will be used to film a 3D, 360-degree cinematic virtual reality (VR) experience as part of National Geographic's upcoming series "One Strange Rock."
European Space Agency astronaut Paolo Nespoli will use the new camera to "lead us on a tour of the space station," Matt Zymet, National Geographic's executive director for advanced formats, said in a prelaunch teleconference with reporters. "The idea is to use all of that footage to document a day in the life on the space station."
The Vuze VR camera, created by a company called Humaneyes, is a compact and lightweight device with the dimensions of a typical four-sided sandwich. Its eight built-in cameras can record videos and shoot still images in 360 degrees and 3D with ultra-HD (4K) resolution. So, for those of us who have never been to the International Space Station, Nespoli's Vuze VR footage may be the closest we'll ever get to experiencing life in space. [Space Station Photos: Expedition 53 Mission Crew in Orbit]
"What is it like to live more than 200 miles above the Earth? Life for the astronauts aboard the International Space Station is unlike anything else — they are among the elite who have left the Earth and seen our home from space," National Geographic officials said in a statement.
Nespoli will serve as National Geographic's VR director and cameraman, "using the camera to tour the various modules, show the famous Cupola view of Earth and give viewers a sense of what it’s like to live on board," the statement said. "Throughout the course of filming, Paolo will be working with ground control to downlink footage back to Earth, where it will be incorporated into a VR short film that will accompany the premiere of National Geographic's "One Strange Rock."
Award-winning filmmaker Darren Aronofsky (director of "Requiem for a Dream") and the production company Nutopia are working together on this new global series, which will be filmed for 100 weeks around the world and in space.
"The series will use innovative micro- and macro-photography technology and bring cameras where they’ve never been before, to explore how the particularities of Earth’s unique history made it ideally suited as a cradle for life and to demonstrate how the planet’s biological, chemical and physical systems form an interdependent equilibrium, sustaining all the wonders of the living world we know," Nutopia officials said in a statement.
The virtual reality companion to the television series "will not only give you a sense of what life is like up on the space station, but through the stories that the astronauts who are on our show tell, will really give you a lens on what is amazing about our planet as seen through their eyes from space," Zymet said.
At the International Space Station, European Space Agency astronaut Paolo Nespoli films the Earth through the windows of the Cupola observatory. (Image credit: ESA/NASA/ Twitter
"One Strange Rock explores how intricate, interwoven and fragile life as we know it is on Earth and how rare it may be in the universe," Aronofsky said in a statement. "The more we appreciate how awe-inspiring the development of life on this planet has been, the more likely we are to become inspired stewards of the home that sustains it."
The series is scheduled to premiere on the National Geographic Channel sometime in 2018. To see Nespoli's footage in 3D and 360 degrees, viewers will need to use a VR headset, Zymet explained, adding that the videos will mainly be distributed via Facebook, Oculus, YouTube and PlayStation VR platforms.
Editor's note: You don't have to be an astronaut to shoot amazing 3D, 360-degree VR videos and photos. The same Vuze VR camera kit that Nespoli will use to shoot footage for "One Strange Rock" at the International Space Station is available online from Vuze for $799.
Email Hanneke Weitering at [email protected] or follow her @hannekescience. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com. |
Cisco launches $1bn programme for global smart city development | Hot on the heels of Bill Gates' announcement that he will invest $80m in an Arizona smart city, Cisco has unveiled a $1bn programme to accelerate smart cities' global development. The City Infrastructure Financing Acceleration Program, facilitated via the company's financial arm Cisco Capital, in partnership with Digital Alpha Advisors, among others, aims to make it easier for cities to adopt community-transforming technologies, according to Anil Menon, global president of Cisco’s Smart+Connected Communities.
| https://www.uktech.news/news/cisco-announces-1bn-program-for-smart-city-development-across-the-globe-20171114 | 2017-11-14 15:26:23.643000 | Cisco has announced a $1bn program to spur the development of smart cities across the world.
The City Infrastructure Financing Acceleration Program, as it is known, will seek to make it easier, faster and more affordable for cities to fund and adopt technologies that will help to transform their communities.
“Funding is a major stumbling block for municipalities beginning their smart city transformation,” said Anil Menon, global [resident of Cisco’s Smart+Connected Communities.
“With our partners, Cisco will bring the capital and expertise it takes to make smart city projects a reality. Digital Alpha, APG, and Whitehelm Capital bring a fresh perspective on investment in an area that has previously been perceived as too new and, therefore, too difficult to finance,” added Menon.
According to a statement, the funding will be facilitated through Cisco Capital in partnership with Digital Alpha Advisors, a private equity firm.
Pension and fund investors APG Asset Management and Whitehelm Capital will also collaborate.
The news comes after Bill Gates said he would be spending $80m to build a new smart city near Belmont in Arizona (US). |
Sounds of space orchestrated for Voyager 1's 40th anniversary | Scientists from Anglia Ruskin University, GEANT, the pan-European data network provider, and Exeter University have premiered a three-minute composition, based on data collected by the Voyager 1 spacecraft, at the SC17 Supercomputing Conference in Denver, Colorado. Using a process called data sonification, the team turned data deriving from sub-atomic particles in space into a musical score. The data was collected between 1977 and November 2017. Dr Domenico Vicinanza of Anglia Ruskin University said he hoped the piece would enable people to "hear aspects of Voyager 1's journey that are perhaps not so obvious when looking at graphs of data".
| https://newatlas.com/voyager-1-music-spheres/52131/ | 2017-11-14 14:59:57.850000 | Deep space probe, interstellar explorer, and envoy to alien civilisations, Voyager 1 has already racked up an impressive resume to which songwriter can now be added. Using data from the unmanned spacecraft, Dr Domenico Vicinanza, of Anglia Ruskin University and GEANT, and Dr Genevieve Williams, of the University of Exeter, have created a musical composition to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the pathfinding mission.
In 1619, Johannes Kepler published his treatise Harmonices Mundi, in which he combined his astronomical data about the orbit of the planets with his ideas about the geometric harmony of the universe to create what is commonly known as the Music of the Spheres. On November 13 at the NASA Booth at the SC17 Supercomputing Conference in Denver, Colorado, a 21st century equivalent will make its world premiere.
The three-minute number was created using a process known as data sonification, where the data about protons, alpha particles, and heavier nuclei in space from Voyager's Low-Energy Charged Particle (LECP) telescope and spacecraft trajectory were used to create melody, harmony and orchestration. The information was collected by the probe from 1977 until this month with each 26-day period converted into one note. The composition includes the moment when Voyager entered interstellar space in 2012.
The solemn main melody played by the second violins is based on the cosmic ray count, which changes over to flute, piccolo and glockenspiel at the 2012 mark. Meanwhile, piano and French horns double the violins to mark the flybys of Jupiter and Saturn, where the cosmic ray count fluctuated as they passed close by the gas giants. The passage through the heliopause is a key change from C major to E flat major with an alternation of orchestration and harmony.
"Our orchestra score is more than just inspired by one of the most successful space missions of all time, it is shaped entirely by Voyager 1's incredible journey," says Vicinanza. "Data sonification can play an important role in helping to share scientific discoveries and we hope that by converting 40 years of data into music, listeners will be able to hear aspects of Voyager 1's journey that are perhaps not so obvious when looking at graphs of data."
Voyager 1 is one of the two deep space probes sent by NASA to study the outer planets and the frontiers of the Solar System. The 722 -kg (1,590-lb) spacecraft was launched on September 5, 1977 and is powered by three radiothermal generators. In 1979, it flew by Jupiter and in 1980 it visited Saturn. As it did so, the giant planets sent Voyager on a one-way slingshot trajectory toward interstellar space at a speed of 17.043 km/s (38,120 mph) relative to the Sun.
An excerpt of the Voyager 1 music can be heard in the video below.
Source: Anglia Ruskin University |
Gene therapy could treat inherited vision problems | A gene therapy which offers "meaningful improvements" to the vision of an inherited retinal disease could be given US Food and Drug Administration approval by January 2018, following unanimous endorsement by an advisory panel in October. Early results of a study of the therapy, published in The Lancet, revealed 93% of participants suffering with rare inherited retinal disease Leber congenital amaurosis experienced improved vision after treatment. Medics leading the study hope it could open the door to future therapies for other ocular conditions. | https://newatlas.com/gene-therapy-vision-restoration-fda-approval/52171/ | 2017-11-14 14:41:45.783000 | Back in August, the FDA approved the first gene therapy for general use in the United States. That particular treatment, for cancer was beset by controversy due to its exorbitant price tag and potential side effects. Now another gene therapy is on the cusp of approval, this time to treat a form of hereditary blindness. If given the tick by the FDA, this therapy could pave the way for a whole host of treatments for genetically-based vision problems.
The gene therapy focuses on a rare inherited retinal disease called Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA), which is caused by a mutation in one of 19 particular genes. The therapy focuses in one specific gene called RPE65. A healthy version of that gene is attached to a genetically modified harmless virus and injected into a patient's eyes.
The treatment is currently undergoing final phase 3 clinical trials after nearly a decade of research and the early results have been excitingly positive. Data from the first phase 3 trial showed 93 percent of subjects (27 out of 29) displayed "meaningful improvements in their vision."
"These are kids who could not walk through a room in normal light, and who were absolutely paralyzed in dim light," says study leader Stephen Russell. "Now they're walking around markedly better."
The final FDA approval decision is hoped to come by January 2018, and back in October an advisory panel unanimously endorsed the efficacy of the treatment. The FDA doesn't have to follow the advice of this expert panel, but it traditionally does.
The gene therapy focuses on a rare inherited retinal disease called Leber congenital amaurosis paulistano/Depositphotos
While this particular therapy is not a complete cure, and it is targeted at a rare genetic disease, many hope it is the first in a new wave of gene therapies directed at a wide variety of ocular diseases. There are over 225 known genetic mutations that cause blindness, and the genetically modified virus used in this particular treatment can likely be used as a delivery mechanism in treatments for a great majority of those conditions.
If this therapy is ultimately approved it will certainly be a landmark for modern gene therapy. Unlike the prior cancer therapy approved in August, which concentrates on genetically modifying immune cells, this treatment will be the first to replace, or essentially fix, specific missing and mutated genes that directly cause disease.
The early trial results were published in the journal The Lancet.
Sources: University of Iowa, American Academy of Ophthalmology
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Smog grounds Delhi’s anti-smog helicopters | Helicopters engaged to disperse smog in Delhi by spraying water in order to settle pollutants have been grounded because of the thickness of the haze. A further problem has arisen because many parts of the city, including where the government is situated, operate a no-fly zone. Doctors have declared a public health emergency in the city due to the poor air quality. Last week, extensive crop burning and slow winds caused air pollution levels in northern parts of the country to rise to over 30 times the World Health Organisation recommended limit for daily exposure.
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/14/delhi-smog-fighting-helicopters-cant-fly-because-of-smog | 2017-11-14 14:41:32.220000 | An ambitious plan to use helicopters to fight Delhi’s air pollution has been grounded because the aircraft cannot operate in the thick smog, underscoring growing frustration at authorities’ inability to address the toxic haze engulfing the city.
Accusations that Narendra Modi’s government is failing to take the crisis seriously were further fuelled on Tuesday when the environment minister, Harsh Vardhan, urged residents to remain calm, saying only “routine precautions” were needed, even though air quality levels remain “severe”.
The city authorities had engaged a state-owned helicopter company to spray water over Delhi in the hope of settling the thick haze of pollutants. But on Monday administrators were told they would be unable to help dissipate the smog until the smog itself had cleared.
“Right now, with the prevailing smog, it is not possible for the helicopters to carry out operations,” the chairman and managing director of the company, BP Sharma, told the Indian Express. “We have communicated the same to the Delhi government. There was a meeting regarding this on Monday.”
The other hitch is that many parts of Delhi – particularly its southern quarters where parliament, the presidency and the prime minister are all based – are within a strictly policed no-fly zone.
A spokesman for the city government could not be reached but told the Indian Express: “There are a few issues and these will be worked out … All stakeholders are being consulted.”
A 2015 study found that 52% of the particulate matter in the city’s air was from dust kicked up by the tens of thousands of cars on its roads. Uncovered sand and soil from construction sites also contribute to the choking atmosphere.
In the last week, massive crop burning in neighbouring states and slow winds have also been a factor in sending air pollution levels in parts of north India to more than 30 times the World Health Organisation standards for daily exposure.
Doctors have declared a public health emergency in Delhi, but Vardhan was blasé, contrasting the pollution to the 1984 gas leak in Bhopal that killed at least 25,000 people.
Bhopal, he argued was “an emergency situation where you have to panic and you have to see what you have to do”, he said in an interview with CNN-18 news.
“I’m not saying we shouldn’t do anything about it [the Delhi smog], everyone has to respond to what he is supposed to do. But there is no need to spread panic among the people.”
Public pressure has centred on the city’s chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, a populist former bureaucrat and engineer. His proposal to ration traffic according to the last digit of number plates – odd numbers one day, evens the other – has been blocked by judges since Friday.
Kejriwal wants to maintain a long list of exemptions to the odd-even rule, including single women, cars transporting children and two-wheelers. Even if implemented, studies of the last time Delhi attempted the measure have found its impact was “abysmally small”.
The sprinkling helicopter policy was also rubbished by experts who said it would make no difference.
Though Delhi gets the most attention, the haze has settled across the entire north Indian plain, including parts of Pakistan. A lasting solution would require a nationally coordinated response across state and international borders.
A study on Monday found the air quality in Varanasi, in Modi’s home constituency, had even worse air than Delhi. The Indian prime minister is yet to comment on the crisis.
Polash Mukherjee, an air pollution researcher from the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment, said there was a “sense of despondency” among the city’s residents, who were increasingly aware of the dangers associated with breathing dense particulate matter.
“They know it’s severe, and they know something should be done about it, but no one seems to be doing anything,” he said.
The head of the All-India Parents Association, Ashok Agrawal, said the government was “not sincere” about the issue. “It happened last year,” he said. “They could have taken steps so that it didn’t happen again, or so the density was lower.
“But they have done nothing to address the problem and it is a health emergency.”
With the city government unable to find the right steps, and the central one reluctant to take any, Delhi residents have been left to rely on the heavens. Drizzle has been predicted for Wednesday, when forecasters say the city’s air will “recover” – albeit to levels still classified as “very poor”. |
Tech companies offer concierge services in the workplace | Increasing numbers of landlords and companies, particularly in the tech sector, are turning to high-end concierge services to attract and retain corporate tenants, according to Erica Stricker, a managing director at CBRE. For a monthly fee, staff can get help with chores such as arranging childcare, picking up dry cleaning or arranging car repairs, with support from teams with experience in five-star hotels or boutique resorts. As well as reducing stress, concierge services can improve employee retention. Michigan-based Bronson Healthcare Group saw its staff turnover drop by more than half three years after introducing its service.
| https://blueprint.cbre.com/how-technology-and-concierge-services-are-elevating-the-workspace/ | 2017-11-14 14:40:10.243000 | We are the global leader in commercial real estate services and investments. With services, insights and data that span every dimension of the industry, we create solutions for clients of every size, in every sector and across every geography.
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Lidl is worst UK supermarket for food chain antibiotics control | Most of the largest UK supermarket chains are failing to adequately reduce the use of antibiotics in their meat and animal product supply chains, posing a potential risk to human health through antibiotic resistance, according to pressure group the Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics. Of the nine chains investigated by the group, Lidl performed worst, with no publicly available policy on the issue. Waitrose performed best, having a clear policy on and strategy to reduce antibiotics use, with a ban on routine farm use. Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury’s and Tesco were ranked next, with Aldi and Asda second worst.
| https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/nov/14/most-uk-supermarkets-falling-short-in-fight-against-antibiotics-crisis | 2017-11-14 14:22:35.427000 | Most of the UK’s biggest supermarket chains are falling short on measures to reduce the use of antibiotics in the production of the meat and animal products they sell, campaigners have warned, with potentially harmful impacts on human health.
Lidl performed worst of the nine supermarket chains examined by the Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics, a pressure group made up of several NGOs.
Lidl had no publicly available policy on the use of antibiotics in its farm supply chain, leaving consumers in the dark and with no publicly available evidence of any effort to curb the overuse of antibiotics of concern.
The supermarket told the Guardian it had been working on a policy, which would soon be published. The policy it sent to the Guardian is four sentences long and “encourages producers to optimise welfare, health, hygiene, husbandry and biosecurity” of their animals, using antibiotics “as little as possible and as much as necessary”, without containing any specifics on how this can be achieved or measured.
The overuse of antibiotics on farms is a major cause of the growing resistance in humans that is giving rise to superbugs, bacteria impervious to all but the strongest medicines and which pose a huge and growing threat to human health.
The UK’s chief medical officer has repeatedly warned that growing resistance to antibiotics could render even routine operations highly dangerous in a few years.
The best-performing supermarket was Waitrose, which not only has a clearly articulated policy on antibiotics in its supply chain, but also a strategy for reducing antibiotic use and a commitment to publishing the results, showing the amount of antibiotics used on the farms from which it is supplied.
The supermarket also bans the routine use of antibiotics on its farms, and the use of some of the strongest antibiotics, which the World Health Organisation has urged should be reserved for the use of human patients, not farm animals.
Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury’s and Tesco were ranked next, while second from bottom were Asda and Aldi, which had publicly available policies on antibiotic use but few stringent measures associated with them, with the Co-op group also falling short on measures such as banning the strong antibiotic colistin and publishing data on antibiotic use.
Suzi Shingler, campaign manager at the Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics, said: “These findings show some supermarkets are finally starting to take the issue of antibiotic resistance more seriously. This is very welcome and has undoubtedly contributed to the recent reductions in use.
“Unfortunately, our survey also shows that some supermarkets have much more to do, and others have yet to take any significant action.”
All of the supermarkets in the report were contacted by the Guardian for comment. Some referred the Guardian to the British Retail Consortium, which represents major retailers. Andrew Opie, director of food policy at the trade body, said in a statement: “Retailers are aware of the challenges in relation to continued use of antimicrobials in the supply chain and advocate that medicines are used responsibly.
“This prevents unnecessary use while protecting against any negative effects on animal welfare. It is important that any decisions are supported by robust scientific justification. Significant reductions have already been achieved in UK food and farming and retailers are working collaboratively with industry partners to make sustained improvements.”
A herd of Friesian dairy cows feeding in a cattle shed. Photograph: Alamy
In addition, Asda said it would soon update its antibiotics policy.
Waitrose said: “Waitrose recognises the potential risks to human healthcare of the overuse of antibiotics in livestock supply chains. Within the Waitrose supply chain, all antibiotics are used carefully, under strict protocols and only in controlled circumstances; entirely healthy animals are not routinely given antibiotics, they are only used for treating ill animals or for those with pre-existing conditions.
“We maintain some antibiotics are important medicines to hold in the animal health armoury but must be used sparingly and only as a last resort.”
The Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics advises some basic measures to reduce antibiotic use on farms. These include leaving piglets with their mothers for a few weeks longer after birth, which drastically reduces the need for antibiotics to halt the diarrhoea associated with early weaning.
Fast-growing chickens, usually sent to slaughter only a month or five weeks from birth, can be replaced with slower-growing kinds less likely to fall prey to illness. Lower-stocking densities among indoor chickens also reduce antibiotic use substantially.
Among dairy cows, those raised indoors tend to suffer more from conditions such as mastitis, which requires antibiotic use. The Guardian recently found a large increase in the number of megafarms in the UK, where hundreds or thousands of animals are kept in large sheds, which has concerned antibiotics and animal welfare campaigners.
Cóilín Nunan, scientific adviser to the Alliance, said: “Much greater cuts in use are urgently needed if we are to preserve our remaining antibiotics. Intensive livestock farmers have much to learn from the practices of more extensive farming systems, which often have minimal antibiotic use.
“Moving to later weaning of piglets, using slower-growing chickens, lowering stocking densities of animals kept indoors and keeping cattle on pasture are all essential and achievable measures which can lower antibiotic use.” |
OnTheMarket loses more than 1,000 branches it took from Zoopla | More than 1,000 estate agency branches that abandoned Zoopla for rival OnTheMarket (OTM) have returned to the online giant, it said. Mark Goddard, managing director of Zoopla parent ZPG Property Services, said agents had returned because they "increasingly understand that they are at a competitive disadvantage when not partnering with us". Zoopla said it now has 14,750 agency branches. Arun Estates could become the first major agent to list on all three of the UK's major portals after recently striking a five-year deal with OTM.
| http://www.propertyindustryeye.com/over-1000-branches-that-left-zoopla-after-onthe-market-launch-have-now-returned/ | 2017-11-14 14:19:54.873000 | Post navigation
The number of estate agency branches that left Zoopla to join OnTheMarket when it launched in 2015 but have subsequently left OTM to rejoin ZPG has now reached more than 1,000.
Zoopla said yesterday that it now has over 14,750 agency branches.
It claimed that OTM’s branch numbers have fallen from a high of 6,500 to a new low of 5,500 branches.
The most recent agencies to rejoin ZPG include eleven Martin & Co branches, six Hurford Salvi Carr branches in London and five Andrew Milsom branches covering the Thames Valley and Chiltern Hills.
ZPG’s announcement came after it recently signed long-term listing agreements with Countrywide and Connells.
Mark Goddard, managing director of ZPG Property Services, said: “We are continuing to see agencies from around the country rejoining ZPG on a weekly basis as agents increasingly understand that they are at a competitive disadvantage when not partnering with us.”
In September 2014, before OTM’s launch, Zoopla had 16,373 branches listing.
This number fell to 12,902 at OTM’s launch towards the end of January 2015.
OTM implemented a ‘one other portal’ rule at launch, which it still operates today.
Zoopla’s membership figure did not pick up over OTM’s first year of operation – and in fact fell slightly, with 12,841 UK agency offices listing on Zoopla by January 31, 2016.
OTM has recently been quiet on its overall membership number, but has announced a five-year listing deal with the 100-branch Arun Estates group.
This is conditional on OTM’s stock market listing when the ‘one other portal’ rule will be dropped – meaning that Arun currently looks as though it will be the first major agent to be listing on all three major portals.
EYE has approached OTM for comment about Zoopla’s latest claims. |
Stamp duty changes could help older sellers downsize | Changes to the UK's stamp duty land tax (SDLT) could help older homeowners downsize and improve the country's housing stock, according to a report by the London School of Economics and the Family Building Society. However, Chase de Vere certified financial planner Patrick Connolly said that while SDLT was a major problem, it wasn't the only barrier to older homeowners, and said finding "somewhere else to live that meets the criteria for their lifestyle" was also an issue. Chancellor Philip Hammond is not expected to scrap or change SDLT in next week's Budget.
| https://www.professionaladviser.com/professional-adviser/news/3020997/govt-must-overhaul-stamp-duty-charging-to-persuade-the-elderly-to-move | 2017-11-14 14:17:38.800000 | A report published today by the London School of Economics and The Family Building Society found potential downsizers cannot buy something that costs the same as their original house without spending large amounts of money on stamp duty - but they can stay where they are for free. It found those aged between 51 and 80 were most likely to say they intended to downsize. It said older retired people in big family houses who are looking to move to a more manageable property should be incentivised to do so, as it would be beneficial to their own wellbeing as well as improve the efficiency ... |
Supermarket prices rose 3.4% in Q3 2017 due to weakened GBP | The price of groceries is rising at its fastest rate since November 2013, at 3.4%. The lower-value GBP has raised the costs of imports and pushed up the rate of inflation, causing grocery bills to now stand at an average of £18.26. This price increase amounts to an additional 62p per shop, adding £143.70 to a typical family’s grocery bill over the year. Prices have been rising steadily since Q4 2016.
| https://www.kantarworldpanel.com/global/News/Prices-rising-at-fastest-rate-in-four-years | 2017-11-14 13:55:05.960000 | The latest grocery market share figures from Kantar Worldpanel, published today for the 12 weeks to 5 November 2017, show supermarket sales have increased in value by 3.2% year on year in the run up to Christmas.
Fraser McKevitt, head of retail and consumer insight at Kantar Worldpanel, explains: “Volume sales have increased by less than 1%, meaning it’s price rises keeping supermarket performance buoyant. Like-for-like grocery inflation now stands at 3.4% – its highest level since November 2013. With the average shop currently costing £18.26, consumers are now paying an extra 62 pence each time and over the course of a year it could add £143.70 to a typical family’s grocery bill.”
The Christmas season has begun in earnest for UK retailers, marked by a flurry of festive adverts in recent weeks, accompanied by inventive product tie ups as grocers look to capitalise on their chosen themes. Fraser McKevitt continues: “Consumers have already been digging deep in preparation for the holiday season, buying 10.1 million packs of traditional Christmas biscuits in October alone. Alcohol sales have ramped up too, increasing by 5.3% year on year as shoppers parted with an extra £142 million on their favourite tipples. The British public is only just getting started when it comes to Christmas shopping, and is expected to shell out a whopping £28.7 billion at the grocers in the final 12 weeks of 2017.”
Lidl is Britain’s fastest growing supermarket for the fifth consecutive period, with sales up 15.1%. New store openings – and the opportunity they bring to attract new shoppers – have contributed to the impressive performance. Some 10.6 million households visited Lidl at least once during the past three months, boosting the grocer’s market share by 0.5 percentage points to 5.1%. Sales at Aldi – which attracted 11.9 million households during the same period – increased by 13.1%, advancing the retailer’s market share to 6.7%.
Meanwhile Sainsbury’s grew sales by 2.6%, attracting an additional 364,000 shoppers to become the fastest growing among the big four for the first time since April 2016. Fraser McKevitt explains: “Brands were the fastest-selling products at Sainsbury’s during the past 12 weeks – particularly in soft drinks and dairy – flying in the face of the market’s focus on own-label lines. The grocer’s strongest growth came from both its Local convenience stores and online sales. Despite a positive quarter, Sainsbury’s market share fell back by 0.1 percentage points year on year to stand at 16.2%.”
Tesco welcomed 76% of British households during the past 12 weeks, growing sales by 2.3% as its market share dipped to 28.0%: down 0.2 percentage points on last year. Morrisons saw sales increase by 2.1%, accompanied by a marginal fall in share – from 10.5% last year to 10.4% during the latest quarter.
Fraser McKevitt continues: “Asda has enjoyed its eighth consecutive period of growth – the longest run of sales increases the retailer has seen since March 2014. Both cheaper and more premium own label lines delivered an impressive performance to help increase overall sales by 1.5% year on year. Asda’s budget Farm Stores range grew by 88%, while sales of its Extra Special line were up 22%. The grocer will be looking to build on this growth over Christmas and well into the new year.”
Sales at Iceland increased by 1.1%, with share falling slightly to 2.0% – down from 2.1% last year. Nearly half of the retailer’s growth came from categories outside its core frozen ranges, such as alcohol, which grew by 23% thanks to increased listings of wine, lager and cider.
Fraser McKevitt continues: “Amid news that Nisa’s shareholders have backed Co-op’s takeover of the group, there is plenty of room for growth: convenience stores in all their forms currently account for 12.1% of grocery sales. Nearly 60% of UK households currently visit this type of retailer, spending £3.2 billion in smaller stores during the past 12 weeks. Co-op is already the nation’s most frequently visited grocer – shoppers pop in almost twice a week on average – despite having seen sales fall by 1.5% compared to the same period last year.”
Waitrose held market share steady year on year at 5.3%, seeing sales growth across the board: from convenience stores, larger supermarkets and online. Internet specialist Ocado increased sales by 6.8%, growing ahead of the overall online grocery market.
Download the full press release with data table through the link on this website. |
Facebook carefully selecting AR partners from advertiser list
| Facebook is selecting partners from its list of advertisers to work on a potential augmented reality (AR) offering. The company offered a closed beta programme to 30 of its leading advertisers to test AR, and has now opened the floor to 700 ad developers to create interactive photo and video effects for its latest camera feature. Executives who've seen the company's pitch say Facebook appears keener to win over innovative partners to generate public interest in its AR than big media buyers.
| https://digiday.com/marketing/facebooks-charm-offensive-ar-advertisers-gains-speed/ | 2017-11-14 13:49:37.543000 | Facebook is trying to drum up early support among advertisers for its push into augmented reality.
The recruitment pitch started three months ago, when a group of 30 advertisers and agencies, including Nike, StudioCanal and TSB, were given access to a closed beta program to create AR campaigns. Now, around 700 developers for advertisers and agencies, including British retailer John Lewis and digital production agency Stink Studios, are creating interactive photo and video effects for the new Facebook camera feature. Other agencies like Possible, We Are Social and Ralph are waiting to use the feature, as it seems Facebook is being selective about which partners it involves early on.
Agency executives who have seen the social network’s pitch say it is more interested in winning over partners that can do something innovative to generate public interest in the feature than it is in convincing its biggest media buyers. For example, the much-hyped John Lewis Christmas ad was viewed as a key opportunity to get as many people as possible to use the camera, which in itself is a step change in how people use the app. Rather than upload pictures to Facebook’s app, people must take pictures from it to use the AR feature, which in the case of John Lewis lets them take their own monster selfie resembling the ad’s cuddly monster character.
If AR is to become as big for Facebook as mobile and video have been, then it needs more examples like John Lewis in the early stages, said Matt Payne, head of creative technology and innovation at We Are Social. For Facebook, the key is in the implementation, added Charles Crotty, digital strategy lead for Publicis Media’s Spark Foundry. The social network has the user base, but Snapchat is more established in AR.
For advertisers who have early access to Facebook’s AR tools, the social network is offering developer support, even providing a private Facebook page where developers who have beta access can share what they’ve learned with one another. One source, who spoke to Digiday on the condition of anonymity, said they were surprised when Facebook appeared at their offices in the U.S. unannounced with a filter it had developed for the company.
“[Facebook] offered us a filter for an event we had in the summer, which didn’t have great exposure but was an interesting test,” said this person. “We’ve got access to the developer kit now and will be making our own.”
Facebook also sent a developer to StudioCanal’s headquarters two months ago to help the movie producer and its team of Havas agencies produce a filter for this week’s release of “Paddington 2.”
The filter places the Paddington Bear character’s signature red hat and blue coat on the user, which they can then share. Two days after it launched, the filter had been used over 26,000 times, said Jamie McHale, the digital marketing manager at StudioCanal. That number is as much as McHale and his team know about how the filter is being used, as Facebook has limited the metrics it shares with them. However, Facebook has assured McHale this will change over time.
“The reason I decided to do it [the AR campaign] with Facebook was the pure reach and scale of its platform,” McHale said. “It absolutely dwarfs Snapchat.”
That StudioCanal is already ready to back Facebook’s AR push over Snapchat’s more established AR offering is a testament to the work Facebook has done with brands directly. McHale said Facebook first floated the idea of an AR feature to him a year ago, months before founder Mark Zuckerberg revealed the tools for developers to build AR experiences in the Facebook app in April. Agencies, however, aren’t threatened by Facebook going directly to their clients, as it has asked to be kept updated on the brands already being pitched AR campaigns to avoid doubling up.
To date, anecdotal evidence on the performance of AR campaigns has been mixed. Advertisers and their agencies accept that AR on Facebook is more trial and error now than it is delivering real return. Most of the ad executives Digiday spoke to agreed it is too early to compare the performance of Facebook’s AR proposition to that of Snapchat’s. Facebook’s AR camera doesn’t have enough awareness yet, argued Melissa Ditson, executive creative director at 360i Europe, which developed an AR filter for TSB’s sponsorship of the Pride of Britain Awards. “We’re really pleased with what we’ve seen for the Pride of Britain filter so far,” she said.
Other marketers aren’t so quick to buy into the hype around Facebook’s AR ads just yet. Executives at King, Essence and DigitasLBi recently told Business Insider that Snapchat is way ahead of its rivals in the AR race. Tom Winbow, the strategy director at Ralph, said what he has seen of Facebook’s AR features has left him “cold”; Facebook is an “incredibly cost-effective” way to get both mass reach and engagement, but it’s “just not very fun.” Snapchat is where users naturally live through a lens and, therefore, is “still the most fun place for AR” when it comes to social experiences, Winbow said.
The biggest difference so far between Facebook’s AR pitch and Snapchat’s is that the latter is essentially a closed ecosystem. Brands and agencies mainly rely on Snapchat’s developers to build lenses and filters, whereas Facebook’s platform is open, albeit to a select group currently. Being hands-on might allow Snapchat to control the quality of AR activations, which could lead it to price itself out of the reach of most advertisers. There’s no fee attached to developing AR campaigns on Facebook beyond the advertiser’s or agency’s labor costs. On Snapchat, an ad agency would have to pass Snapchat’s development costs on to the client. |
AdColony cuts 20% of workforce in shift to programmatic business | Mobile video ad firm AdColony will shed more than 20% of its staff in a "painful but necessary" round of job cuts as it shifts focus to performance advertising, programmatic and mobile video inventory. The cuts follow the loss of 100 jobs in July and CEO Will Kassoy said a lack of customers meant the company couldn't grow its core areas as fast as he would have liked, leading to more layoffs. Kassoy said he aims to increase AdColony's revenue from programmatic to 50% from 20% and added the firm was focusing its efforts on "video and the app-install market".
| https://adexchanger.com/mobile/adcolony-cuts-125-jobs-shuts-admarvel-ad-server-mediation-business/ | 2017-11-14 13:11:17.243000 | AdColony will lay off more than 20% of its workforce and exit the mediation and ad-serving game in a bid to focus its business on programmatic.
The mobile video ad company said Monday that it will shutter most of AdMarvel, the mobile ad tech company it acquired in 2010. The ad exchange portion of AdMarvel will remain, however, and be integrated into the AdColony platform.
Roughly 125 people will lose their jobs in addition to the 100 people AdColony let go in July as the company slims down on the path to programmatic. The new headcount will be just over 400 people.
AdMarvel will continue to operate until May as AdColony works with its publisher partners to migrate off of the legacy tech.
The process is painful but necessary, said AdColony CEO Will Kassoy.
“My aim was to have a softer transition and bring everyone into our new business over time rather than having to let people go,” he said. “But advertisers aren’t looking to us for ad serving and mediation anymore, and as those areas have dried up, we haven’t been able to grow the core areas as fast as we’ve wanted to.”
Those core areas include a focus on performance advertising, scaling the company’s programmatic business and opening up more mobile video inventory.
One reason growth has been slow is that it’s still early days for programmatic video in mobile, in-app in particular. And that’s where AdColony sees opportunity, Kassoy said.
AdColony’s SDK is integrated into most of the top 1,000 apps, according to data from Metamarkets. That footprint acts as a conduit to a lot of direct video supply, including vertical video and proprietary AdColony video formats.
But it wasn’t easy making that inventory available programmatically. AdColony products weren’t designed with programmatic in mind, Kassoy said.
“Now we’re putting all of our resources into areas of future growth, into places where we can add value, and that’s video and the app-install market,” he said. “Programmatic is clearly how more and more advertisers want to do these transactions.”
Today, programmatic represents about 20% of AdColony’s revenue, but Kassoy is hoping the changes the company is making will help that number approach 50%.
It’s been a long and circuitous road for AdColony, which started life as a mobile ad network back in 2008.
Six years later, Norwegian software company Opera bought AdColony to support its mobile ad subsidiary, Opera Mediaworks. In February, a Chinese consortium almost bought Opera Mediaworks as part of a larger acquisition of the overall Opera business, but the deal fell apart and Opera Mediaworks was spun off into a separate independent company that, full-circle style, changed its name back to AdColony.
Over the years, Opera Mediaworks had acquired a hodgepodge of mobile ad tech, including AdMarvel, Mobile Theory, Apprupt, 4th Screen, Hunt Mobile Ads and Handster, and it became the newly incorporated AdColony’s plan under Kassoy to bring the disparate pieces together into one integrated platform.
But it became clear that jamming bits of technology together wasn’t the way forward.
“We realized while working on these integrations that some of these platforms were becoming less viable,” said Kassoy. Although AdMarvel was bringing in revenue, the overall business wasn’t positioned for growth.
And that meant making some tough decisions.
The need for mobile mediation “will start to go away” over the next few years as publishers demand more transparency in their transactions, he said, and ad serving is becoming a commodity. A lot of publishers are also taking their ad serving in-house.
“These are lines of business that were viable a few years ago and were profitable even in the last year,” Kassoy said. “But the technology just didn’t make sense to maintain.”
In Q2, AdColony revenue was down year over year, but up quarter over quarter. With its new playbook in place, it’s the company’s aim is to generate profitable quarters going forward and “start clean in 2018,” Kassoy said.
“We want to be the largest independent in-app mobile marketplace outside of social with high-quality demand and supply,” he said. “You can’t just be arbitraging media anymore.”
Opera Software reports its Q3 earnings on Nov. 23. |
GBP dips below 1.31 USD, but analysts are optimistic: Bloomberg | Following announcements of rebellion amongst Conservatives MPs, the value of the GBP dipped below 1.31 USD. However, a survey of seven banks by Bloomberg put the odds of the UK and EU reaching a deal in December at 68%. This follows Davis' reported odds of 50-50, a statement his spokeman has since denied he said. The probabilities amongst the banks surveyed range from 35 to 80%.
| https://news.sky.com/story/pound-slips-lower-as-may-faces-leadership-pressure-11124672 | 2017-11-14 13:05:51.487000 | The pound has fallen amid market jitters over increasing pressure facing Theresa May's leadership.
Sterling dropped by more than a cent against the US dollar to $1.3062 in early European trade and was also down by a cent against the euro.
It was put down to reports that 40 Conservative MPs are prepared to sign a letter of no confidence in the Prime Minister.
Mrs May also faced weekend claims that she was being held "hostage" by Boris Johnson and Michael Gove about how to deliver Brexit.
Joshua Mahony, market analyst at IG, said: "The potential for yet another political upheaval in the UK has no doubt grabbed market attention."
Kit Juckes, global fixed income strategist at Societe Generale, said: "Sterling is priced for soggy (economic) growth and difficult (political) negotiations."
The pound later recovered some poise back above $1.31 but its latest wobble comes as the time frame for trying to reach the next stage of Brexit negotiations comes into sharp focus.
EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier said on Friday that the UK must clarify or concede more in the next two weeks if it wants to move on to trade talks in December.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player 3:06 EU gives UK a deadline on Brexit bill
The CBI and its counterparts from Europe's largest economies used a meeting with the Prime Minister on Monday to urge her to fight for an immediate transition deal.
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The value of the pound collapsed after the vote to leave the European Union in June last year and was as low as $1.20 against the dollar earlier in 2017.
Since then it has partially recovered but the pound is still around 13% lower than just before the referendum result emerged.
A weak pound makes imports more expensive, driving up prices for consumers as well as squeezing retailers as they try to absorb some of the higher costs.
But it has a positive impact for some manufacturers as cheaper sterling means UK-made goods are more competitively priced.
Sterling's fall has also been positive for the FTSE 100, since many of the index's constituent companies earn much of their revenue in foreign currencies.
The top-flight index was ahead on Monday after the pound's latest slip but closed 17 points lower at 7415, reflecting wider market fears about stocks being over-valued. |
Facebook requests FEC flexibility on political ad disclaimers | Facebook's legal team has requested that the Federal Election Commission's (FEC) eventual proposals for political advertising disclaimers be transparent but flexible enough to allow for future technological developments. In response to the FEC's request for comments on such ads, the social media site's general counsel, Colin Stretch, also argued that character-limited ads were so small as to not require disclaimers, and asked that recognisable icons or other "obvious indicators" be included instead. Facebook urged that the definition of "ad" be broadened to include "digital or online communications that mention federal candidates".
| https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/310155/ | 2017-11-14 12:59:44.503000 | by Wendy Davis @wendyndavis, November 13, 2017
Facebook is urging the Federal Election Commission to craft flexible rules for political ad disclaimers, arguing that advertisers should be able to make disclaimers via an icon or other "obvious indicator."
"An approach that prescribes both precisely what information must be disclosed and the transparency goals that must be achieved, but that maintains flexibility as to the specific interface elements by which that information is displayed, would ensure that the Commission’s rules will be relevant and viable for the technology that exists today and the technology that will be developed in the future," Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch says in comments filed Monday with the FEC.
The comments come in response to an FEC request for comments regarding online political ads. The agency recently opened a proceeding to explore whether online political ads must carry the same disclaimers as TV and newspaper ads, which must state the identity of whoever paid for the ad.
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In 2011, Facebook argued to the FEC that the "character-limited ads" on the social-networking service were so physically small that disclaimers should not be required.
Stretch says Facebook ads have evolved since 2011. The company still offers small ads, as well as formats. "Ads can now include videos, can include scrolling carousels of images, and can even cover the entire screen of a mobile device," he writes.
"Allowing ads to include an icon or other obvious indicator that more information about an ad is available via quick navigation (like a single click) would give clear guidance on how to include disclaimers in new technologies as they are developed," Stretch says in his letter.
Facebook also says the FEC's definition of "ad" should be broadened to include any "digital or online communications that mention federal candidates" that are run 30 days before a primary or 60 days before a general election.
Currently, disclaimer rules apply to "electioneering" ads that explicitly ask people to vote for or against a particular candidate or to donate money.
Facebook's filing comes two weeks after the company told lawmakers that material created by Russian agents, including at least 3,000 ads, may have reached 146 million users -- 126 million on Facebook and an additional 20 million on Instagram.
Some of the ads that ran before the election clearly favored President Donald Trump. One on Facebook called Hillary Clinton "a Satan," while another blamed Clinton and former President Barack Obama for illegal border crossings by "rapists, drug dealers, human traffickers, and others."
Facebook also says it plans to require more information from advertisers who run ads related to federal elections, and will create a searchable archive of those ads. |
Standard Chartered launches client-facing chatbot AI | UK bank Standard Chartered is training an artificial intelligence-powered chatbot to offer customers support with financial services. While it should be able to handle simple problems, the bot can escalate issues to human advisers if required. The system is based on the Kasisto KAI Banking product, which has been adopted by global institutions including MasterCard, DBS Bank and Wells Fargo. Standard Chartered will begin a phased roll-out in Hong Kong next year.
| https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/31329/standard-chartered-to-roll-out-ai-chatbot | 2017-11-14 12:55:45.943000 | Standard Chartered is to launch an AI-powered chatbot to provide clients with natural language assistance in managing money, making payments and analysing their spending.
The bank is to roll out the chatbot across its call centres and mobile and online channels in a phased deployment beginning next year in Hong Kong.
The new virtual assistant will use technology provided by Kasisto's KAI Banking product to engage clients in 'human like' conversations and is currently undergoing training to deliver answers to questions on the bank's suite of products and services.
Kasisto has already found success in deploying its chatbot at some of the largest banks in the world, including DBS Bank, Mastercard, TD Bank, and Wells Fargo.
Zor Gorelov, Kasisto co-foundr and CEO, says: “KAI is already a banking expert and once it’s trained on Standard Chartered products and services, it will serve as a powerful AI brain ready to meet their clients in the channel they prefer. It has the know-how to fulfil client requests, make recommendations and solve problems - while delivering banking with a human touch. When there is a need to talk to a human, the bot can seamlessly hand off to a Standard Chartered banking professional.”
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YouTube to remove in-video promotional pop-ups | YouTube is to remove video links that pop up during clips to promote other content. Until now, creators could plug other videos, playlists or live streams with in-video links, but figures show very few users actually click on them, and most regard them as spam. The links will be removed from new and existing videos from 14 December, resulting in instances where presenters point to links that no longer appear. YouTube says that end-screen links and video descriptions are a more effective way of promoting other videos.
| https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/13/youtube-ends-in-video-recommendation-pop-ups/ | 2017-11-14 12:44:49.717000 | Have you ever clicked a YouTube creator's suggested video link when it pops up mid-clip? No? You're far from alone. YouTube has revealed that it's removing the ability to promote videos, playlists or livestreams through in-video notifications as of December 14th. The streaming service isn't shy about the reason why: few people were actually interested in these links. Only 1 in 20 people actually clicked on them, and many of those people were taken to a dead livestream. Users said it felt like spam, according to YouTube.
The company doesn't think this will cause too many problems. Cards and end screen video links are more effective, YouTube said. For third-party links, it wants you to use video descriptions, channel pages or even your channel artwork.
YouTube told us this will remove existing in-video notifications, which could lead to some awkward moments in videos where presenters point to pop-ups that no longer exist. On the balance, though, this appears to be positive news if you're a YouTube fan. It should mean fewer intrusions while you're viewing on the web, and fewer creators going out of their way to plug one video while you're watching another. |
Losing skilled EU labour could cost UK economy up to £22bn: PWC | A 50% reduction in EU migration to the UK after Brexit could cut UK GDP by around 1.1% in 2030, or £22bn at 2017 GDP values. This is according to PwC's most recent UK Economic Outlook, which notes that the industry most likely to lose out from EU labour shortage is the food-manufacturing sector (31% of workforce from European Economic Area), followed by accommodation (18%), warehousing (17%), food and beverage services (13%), and construction (10%). Overall EEA workers make up 7% of the UK's workforce, and 14% of London's.
| https://qz.com/1127944/britains-economy-could-lose-29-billion-if-eu-migration-halves-post-brexit/ | 2017-11-14 12:41:12.970000 | One of the biggest issues for Brexit’s “leave” voters was a fear of immigration. Now the UK government is aiming to reduce EU migration into Britain—drastically.
Brexit talks have yet to include whether the UK will still take part in the Freedom of Movement act, which allows EU citizens free and easy passage between member states. Net migration is already falling, but the lack of clarity over what a post-Brexit UK immigration policy looks like is causing a huge level of uncertainty for people, industries, and the economy.
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In its latest UK Economic Outlook, consulting giant PwC used economic modeling to predict the impact of a sharp reduction in EU migration. It found that a 50% reduction in future EU migration to the UK could reduce the level of UK GDP by around 1.1% in 2030, or £22 billion ($29 billion) at 2017 GDP values.
“EU migrants have played an increasingly important role in the UK economy since 2004, with particularly large impacts on London and certain sectors such as food manufacturing, hotels and restaurants, warehousing, and construction,” PwC wrote. (Quartz has also noted the role played by lower-skilled EU migrants in Britain’s services sector, which accounts for around 80% of total GDP.)
In 2016, according to PwC, workers from the European Economic Area accounted for 31% of the UK’s food-manufacturing workforce, while also accounting for a large chunk of other service-industry sectors: accommodation (18%), warehousing (17%), food and beverage services (13%), and construction (10%). Overall, EEA workers account for 7% of total UK employment, though some regions (like London) account for much larger portions, and could be all the more affected by a workforce gulf.
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Region % workers EEA born in 2004 % workers EEA born in 2016 London 7% 14% Scotland 3% 8% Northern Ireland 1% 7% Wales 1% 3% Rest of England (ex. London) 2% 6% UK average 2% 7%
“If migration from the EU is significantly reduced after Brexit, then government and businesses will need to work together to try and fill the gaps,” says Julia Onslow-Cole, global head of immigration at PwC and a member of the Mayor of London’s Brexit expert advisory panel. “While enhanced training of UK nationals and automation might be a solution in certain sectors if we look 10-20 years ahead, realistically they’re unlikely to make up fully for any large reduction in EU migrant workers over the next 5-10 years.
“Businesses from all sectors have voiced concern over restrictions to EU migration, but healthcare, hospitality, retail, and construction are particularly dependent on EU workers. It’s important that not only do we take steps to retain the EU migrants already living in the UK, but make special provisions for them in the new immigration system post 2021.” |
Internet Media Services acquires majority stake in Httpool | Sony Pictures-owned firm Internet Media Services is set to acquire a majority stake in cross-channel ad network Httpool, pending regulatory approval. The deal would result in an agency boasting more than 6,000 international agencies and brands, with clients including Twitter, Spotify and LinkedIn. Andy Kaplan, president of worldwide networks at Sony Pictures Television, said that the acquisition would create a "one-stop solution for advertisers across many of the world’s fastest-growing emerging markets".
| http://www.marketing-interactive.com/sony-pictures-networks-ims-to-acquire-majority-stake-in-httpool/ | 2017-11-14 12:33:59.853000 | Internet Media Services (IMS), a subsidiary of Sony Pictures Television Networks, would acquire a majority stake in Httpool, a cross-channel ad network with a presence in Central and Eastern Europe and Asia.Subject to regulatory approval, the deal will create a digital marketing and ad sales company with a combined operation supporting more than 6,000 agencies and brands worldwide, and exclusively representing Twitter, LinkedIn, Spotify and more than 5,000 global and local publishers across 30 countries in Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe, and the Asia Pacific regions.In Hong Kong, the firm is led by Charlene Ree (right) and Angie Chung. Revenue for Httpool Asia is ranked second globally in the group, the company said. The closing acquisition is a global Httpool action that Httpool Asia, based in Hong Kong, played a critical role in.Established in 2009, the Httpool Asia completes some 1,500 campaigns annually, which amounts to working with on average 200 brands annually.Httpool Asia clients include Sun Hung Kai, AXA, Standard Chartered, Lenovo, Hong Kong Tourism Board and Fortress."Bringing together IMS and Httpool will create a one-stop solution for advertisers launching local or international campaigns, as well as networks and publishers looking to monetise content across many of the world's fastest-growing emerging markets," said Andy Kaplan, president, worldwide networks, Sony Pictures Television."IMS and Httpool share the same vision, so we couldn't imagine a more appropriate partner. This deal represents a major milestone for Httpool and an important recognition for all our past achievements. Teaming with IMS will fuel our increasing growth, and enable us to expand our proprietary solutions on a global scale," said Aljosa Jenko, CEO and founder of Httpool.Httpool Asia managing director Angie Chung and managing partner Charlene Ree said: "We welcome the news of the IMS majority stake acquisition of Httpool and we expect that this development will see new business avenues come to fruition for our business in Asia." |
EON and Clever to build EV charging network from Norway to Italy | EON and Danish e-mobility provider Clever are partnering to develop a charging network between Italy and Norway. In total, the partnership will install 160 charging stations between the two countries, with EON working with Norwegian service station chain YX to complete another 20. Each station will have a capacity of 150 kW, charging a 250-mile-range battery to full capacity in 20 to 30 minutes. The initiative has received almost $12m in funding from the European Commission. | https://futurism.com/electric-norway-italy-highway/ | 2017-11-14 12:33:06.823000 | One More (EV Charger) for the Road
To facilitate the adoption of electric vehicles (EVs), consumers need to know it's just as easy to recharge EVs as it is to pump gas into a petrol or diesel car. We've seen companies like Tesla install hundreds of supercharger stations around the world — from the United States, to Australia and Europe, and even China. Automakers like BMW, Ford, and Volkswagen have come together for the pan-European charging network called IONITY, to install 400 charging stations in Germany, Norway, and Austria by 2020. In both cases, the stations are deliberately placed on highways or within populated urban areas to provide a convenient and reliable way for EV owners to charge up and get back on the road.
Now, two more companies — international energy and e-mobility company E.ON and Denmark e-mobility provider CLEVER — are partnering to build yet another network of charging stations. Over the next three years, their network will provide 180 "ultra-fast" charging stations across 7 countries between Norway and Italy. Each station has a capacity of 150 kW, putting it almost on par with Tesla's 145 kW stations, but behind IONITY's 350 kW capacity.
CLEVER isn't the only company E.ON has partnered with; in fact, their team-up only accounts for 160 of the 180 charging stations. The final 20 will come as part of a deal with Norwegian service station chain YX. Based on how well construction goes on the initial 180 stations, E.ON and CLEVER are open to expanding to 400 stations spread throughout Europe.
"Together with strong partners we are taking a joint step towards establishing a comprehensive ultra-fast charging infrastructure in Europe," said Frank Meyer, Head of Innovation and B2C at E.ON, in a statement. "We see a reliable ultra-fast charging network in combination with our home and destination solutions as main prerequisites for a mass market adoption of electric mobility."
Fully Charged in 30 Electric Minutes or Less
The initiative has already received €10 million (nearly $12 million) in funding from the European Commission, and is only 1 of 4 projects chosen to be explored. The first series of stations will be located in Germany and Denmark, with each station containing 2-6 chargers. According to E.ON, each charger will be capable of fully charging a 400-km (248-mile) range battery in about 20-30 minutes. Of course, that's only a rough estimate, and the actual charging time will vary by car and battery capacity.
"We believe that the combination of being able to cater for almost any car brand, securing the right locations, and offering customers well thought through solutions will be part of convincing people that EVs are a real alternative to conventional cars,” said CLEVER CEO Casper Kirketerp-Møller.
We'll have to wait and see how successful and reliable their charging network will truly be, but consider their partnership to be another step forward to worldwide adoption of electric vehicles. Simply being a better alternative that diesel may be enough for some consumers to make the change, but convenience and availability of necessary resources goes a long way to winning people over. Hopefully we'll see other companies and car manufacturers make similar moves to further entice people away from traditional vehicles. |
Amazon denies it is planning free version of Prime with ad breaks | Amazon has begun selling advertising during its live streaming of American Football games on its Prime Video service. The move has prompted speculation that it is developing a free version of the subscription service that would be supported by advertising, although the company denies it has any plans to do so. The number of subscription video services has increased in recent years, with a number of broadcasters launching their own platforms. Surveys suggest many younger customers think they are too expensive. While Netflix has no adverts, free platforms like YouTube and Facebook rely on them. | https://qz.com/1127802/amazon-prime-video-could-soon-be-free-with-ads/ | 2017-11-14 12:29:06.637000 | Amazon is acquiring a taste for ads.
The e-commerce giant, which is already becoming a force to be reckoned with in digital advertising and is seemingly intent on taking over every industry on the planet, began selling short windows of commercial time this year during its live Thursday night streams of NFL games on its Prime Video subscription service.
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Now, it’s developing a free version of Prime Video—with commercials like those that air on regular TV. Amazon is in talks with TV networks, movie studios, and other media companies about creating programming for the platform, Advertising Age reported (paywall).
It’s reportedly looking for back catalogs of children’s programming from TV and movie studios, as well as lifestyle, travel, cooking, and other shows that fit well within Amazon’s e-commerce ecosystem, the publication reported. There, customers can already buy everything they need for a Thanksgiving dinner, for example, from the table to the turkey. A cooking show on Amazon Prime Video’s ad-supported channel could show how best to prepare the meal (or build that table).
A freemium model could also help Amazon breakout from the bevy of subscription-video offerings out there, including rivals Netflix and Hulu, by offering TV shows and movies free alongside ads instead of for a monthly fee. And it could drive new sign-ups to the service, a la Spotify.
Prime Video—which features Amazon original movies like Manchester by the Sea and TV shows like Transparent and Man in the High Castle, the live NFL games, and a rich back catalog of movies and TV shows from other networks and studios—is currently only available with a $99-a-year Prime shipping subscription or through an $8.99-a-month standalone subscription in the US.
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But more subscription services are popping up daily, for everything from music and video to food and clothing, and people can only justify spending on so many. From Netflix to HBO to SlingTV, how many subscription-video services does one need, after all? Legacy players like Disney and CBS are launching services of their own, too. More than half of US millennials say there are too many already, and 42% say they think they are paying too much for them, according to a survey published in August from Morning Consult.
Rival Netflix has shied away from advertisements, preferring its members to binge video uninterrupted. And Hulu, which runs ads in all of its packages, did away with its free package last year. But others have embraced ads, even snagging dollars from traditional TV. YouTube, where almost anyone can upload and share videos, thrives on ads. And Facebook, which recently launched a hub for original video, airs ads as well.
Amazon’s massive ecosystem is a big selling point for advertisers, too. It offers a peak at data that’s never been available to them before. During the two minutes or so of ad time Amazon reportedly sells in each NFL game, it tracks how many people purchased or looked up products after seeing ads. It could tell an advertiser like Gillette, for example, how many people bought its razors and blades during and immediately after a game where its ad aired, Yahoo Finance reported. (The other ads that air in the game are national spots that also air on TV broadcasts; they are not sold by Amazon.)
The additional advertising revenue could also support the influx of content coming to the streaming service. Amazon is expected to spend $4.5 billion on video content this year.
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Update (Nov 14): Amazon told Quartz no plans to create a free, ad-supported version of Prime Video. |
Airbus aims to test electric 'flying car' by close of 2017 | Airbus aims to test its flying-car project, called Vahana, by the close of 2017. Revealing the project in a series of images, Airbus showed a number of engineers working on its vertical take-off and landing electric vehicle. The European aerospace company wants to develop an autonomous, electric tilt-multirotor vehicle to overcome congestion in urban environments. | https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/13/16633392/airbus-vahana-flying-car-a-cubed-photos | 2017-11-14 12:16:59.430000 | Airbus is making progress on its new electric-powered vertical take-off and landing aircraft — colloquially (and incorrectly) known as a “flying car.” The European aerospace giant posted a series of photos today from its Vahana project, showing its team working on a pair of single-seat, tilt-rotor vehicles with a paint job that would make a Stormtrooper envious.
Airbus has said it wants to build a fleet of electric, autonomous, multirotor VTOL aircraft that can be used to fly from rooftop to rooftop in dense cities where traffic is often at a standstill. The project launched in early 2016 as one of the first pursuits of A³ (pronounced A-cubed), its Silicon Valley subsidiary. (Vahana is a Sanskrit word that refers to the vehicle or mount of a god.) Since then, the company has reported regular updates, including a concept video of the user experience.
In its post, the company says that a full-scale demonstrator is currently under production, with the goal of taking flight by the end of the year. The prototype was recently moved from California to a new flight test center in Pendleton, Oregon, where it will conduct its first demonstration. A³ has said it plans to have a production-ready version by 2020.
Airbus, which competes with the US-based Boeing, is best known for large jetliners like the double-decker A380. However, the flying car project shows that the Toulouse, France-based company is not above dabbling in some high-concept, and perhaps unrealistic, aviation ideas. |
Lark's AI 'coach' aims to help with weight loss and diabetes | Artificial intelligence systems have the ability to provide compassionate care to sufferers of chronic condition Type 2 diabetes, according to a year-long study by Californian firm Lark Technologies. It handed out its personalised Lark Weight Loss Health Coach AI (HCAI) app to 239 overweight and obese patients at risk of the condition, resulting in users dropping 2.38% of their weight and increasing healthy meals by almost one third. Lark said its HCAI, which takes a "holistic approach to weight loss and management", already has around one million users.
| http://www.mobihealthnews.com/content/study-larks-ai-coach-could-help-weight-loss-diabetes-prevention | 2017-11-14 12:16:51.387000 | A new study reveals that artificial intelligence could be a useful tool to help patients prevent Type 2 diabetes. The study, published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, showed that patients at risk of Type 2 diabetes who used the Lark Weight Loss Health Coach AI, dropped 2.38 percent of their baseline weight and increase the percentage of healthful meals they ate by 31 percent.
“I’m really excited,” Lark CEO and cofounder Julia Hu told MobiHealthNews. “I think stepping back and looking at pre-diabetes, it really is such a crushing and chronic condition. Eighty-six million people in the US have pre-diabetes and it costs the health industry billions of dollars a year.”
The longitudinal observational study was a partnership between six primary care offices in Nevada and southern California and Lark Technologies. The study examined 239 overweight and obese patients at risk of Type 2 diabetes. Participants were offered the app free of charge by their primary care physician. No further physician support was given to the patients, according to the study. The retrospective study looked at users from July 2016 to January 2017.
The app is personalized to meet patients’ needs and goals. The user can enter their age, gender, weight, height, and goals.
“This is really AI coaching and mimicking healthcare at its best, but the cool thing about AI is that it is infinitely scalable,” said Hu.
The study, noted that one of its limitations was the fact that it did not have a control group to directly compare the results to. In addition, the study was observational and not experimental, which meant it was not able to determine causality.
Lark’s HCAI has been on the market since 2015 and currently has about a million users, according to Hu. It provides weight loss coaching through modules on an array of topics in unlimited text-based counseling sessions. The modules take about 16 weeks depending on whether users miss a week of the classes or decide to rewatch a module.
According to the study, the design takes a holistic approach to weight loss and management. It allows users to report feelings, such as guilt, and then gives the user encouraging advice based on that situation.
“I grew up with a chronic disease all my life,” said Hu. “I had an amazing care team, my pediatrician and my dad. They were there for me not just medically but emotionally … so that made a huge impact on me, people struggling with chronic conditions could really use a friend and someone who is there for them when they need it. We wanted to scale that sense of compassion and relationship.”
The company has a healthcare committee of 15 members, including several Harvard and Stanford faculty members that specialize in psychology of some kind.
Lark Technologies debuted in 2011 and was originally focused on sleep technologies, but have pivoted, or as Hu says, evolved. Now there are no longer field devices but the technologies sit on top of 70 different health monitors.
“The idea was, can we create an AI coach that coaches on several different aspects of your health,” said Hu. “We started with sleep then, went to exercise, then went to nutrition and that helped us really build for chronic conditions. They are diseases that require lifestyle changes, behavioral health change, and self efficacy.”
Currently, Lark has four products on the marketing including a wellness, diabetes prevention, diabetes management, and hypertension management platforms.
“This study demonstrates AI’s potential to provide compassionate care that is associated with weight loss, increased healthy lifestyle behaviors, and user trust that can reduce diabetes risk,” the study reads. |