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Deliveroo chooses the7stars agency for planning and buying | Restaurant delivery service Deliveroo has handed the contract for its media planning and buying in the UK and Ireland to the7stars. The independent media agency counts Gumtree, Wagamama and Squarespace among its clients. The deal follows a period of swift growth for Deliveroo, which also recently partnered with Tripadvisor to offer city listings.
| http://www.thedrum.com/news/2017/12/13/deliveroo-awards-uk-ireland-media-account-the7stars | 2017-12-13 15:29:41.760000 | Deliveroo has appointed independent media agency the7stars to handle media planning and buying on its behalf within the UK and Ireland.
Deliveroo delivers UK & Ireland media account to the7stars
The appointment caps a period of rapacious growth for the British company which specializes in delivering restaurant food direct to customers doors via its network of cyclists. |
Simility wins $17.5m backing for AI-powered anti-fraud system | A company that uses artificial intelligence (AI) in its fraud detection system has received a $17.5m funding injection from investors including online payment platform PayPal. Simility, which was founded in 2014, uses machine learning software to assist with analysing user data and help spot suspicious activity that might indicate identity fraud. Increasing numbers of companies are using AI in fraud detection, with major investors backing the development of commercial systems that can reduce risks through effective data analysis.
| https://venturebeat.com/2017/12/12/fraud-detection-startup-simility-raises-17-5-million-from-accel-paypal-others/ | 2017-12-13 15:23:26.767000 | Missed the GamesBeat Summit excitement? Don't worry! Tune in now to catch all of the live and virtual sessions here.
Simility, which develops a fraud detection platform that uses machine learning, has announced a $17.5 million round of funding led by Accel, with participation from new strategic investor PayPal. Existing investors The Valley Fund and Trinity Ventures also contributed.
Founded in 2014, Palo Alto-based Simility is one of a number of companies using machine learning to help those working in the fraud detection realm collect and analyze data. Simility’s software is aimed at companies of all sizes, from enterprises to SMBs, and is designed to prevent various kinds of fraud. This includes account takeover (ATO) fraud, whereby someone tries to gain access to another person’s online account. Here, Simility looks at various session, device, and behavioral biometrics and builds a profile for what constitutes “normal” user login behavior.
Simility can also help prevent account origination fraud, where a bad actor tries to set up a new account using stolen or fake identities. For example, the company’s software analyzes various session-related indicators, including time spent across pages, keyboard patterns, and so on, while it may also use data garnered form third-party sources to establish the credibility of information provided during setup.
Simility had raised around $7.5 million prior to now, and with its latest cash influx the company said it plans to “accelerate global expansion” of its partner network, as well as growing its sales, customer service, and data science teams. More specifically, Simility is looking to push its sales operations in the U.S., Brazil, and Europe and to grow its data science teams in Europe.
PayPal is a notable addition to the company’s roster of investors and is indicative of Simility’s target markets: Finance and online retail industries are rife with fraud.
“Digital disruption in the financial and commerce sectors has resulted in the need for a fraud and risk management solution that goes beyond legacy, static rule-based offerings to offer protection in a digital first, big data analytics-focused environment,” said Simility cofounder and CEO Rahul Pangam. “This latest funding round will enable us to enter our next phase of growth by bolstering our world-class team of industry veterans in sales, customer success, and data science to meet market demand.”
Automated fraud detection has emerged as a key focal point for tech firms and investors. Paris-based Shift Technology, which offers a platform that uses AI to help companies combat insurance fraud, recently closed a $28 million funding round. Pindrop has nabbed some big-name backers, such as Google Capital, for its AI-based phone fraud detection service, and Israel-based Forter has grabbed big bucks to help retailers battle online fraud using machine learning.
Simility claims “multiple global Fortune 500 financial services organizations” as clients, including major U.S. banks. |
California looks to launch entirely online community college | California Governor Jerry Brown is looking to launch an all-online community college aimed at "stranded workers". According to California Community Colleges Chancellor Eloy Ortiz Oakley, the college will target residents who have received an incomplete college education, have never been to college, or whose jobs are generally at risk from automation and technology. A proposal is currently being worked upon by the Governor's office in collaboration with Oakley's office, and a final proposal is likely to be included in the Governor's 2019 budget, which will be presented to the legislature in January.
| http://www.dailynews.com/2017/12/12/online-only-california-community-college-to-target-stranded-workers/ | 2017-12-13 14:59:53.943000 | By Louis Freedberg, EdSource
With time running out on his governorship, Gov. Jerry Brown is pushing California’s 114-campus community college system to create one more college: a new fully online college that would have been unimaginable during his first term as governor.
To that end, he met recently with California Community Colleges Chancellor Eloy Ortiz Oakley and Vice Chancellor of Workforce and Digital Futures Van Ton-Quinlivan to consider several options for establishing the college. Last May, Brown sent Oakley a letter asking him “to take whatever steps are necessary to establish a new community college that — exclusively — offers a fully online degree program,” and to come up with plan for how to do so by last month.
Oakley, who formerly ran Long Beach City College, created a task force to study the concept. On Nov. 30 , the team completed its report, which included four options, and Oakley presented them to the governor.
One option is to create a separate online college to be housed at an existing college. Another is to set up a consortium of colleges to create the statewide online college. A third is to create a new online community college district within the chancellor’s office in Sacramento. In response to faculty concerns, Brown was presented with a newly added option — to just expand the community colleges’ existing online offerings.
Neither the chancellor’s nor the governor’s office were willing to comment on which of the four options appealed to Brown. The proposal is likely to be included in Brown’s proposed FY2019 budget — his last as governor — that he will present to the Legislature in January.
The proposed college is designed to serve the needs of a large population of Californians that the massive community college system — the largest higher education system in the world — currently doesn’t serve.
In an interview with EdSource, Oakley said that the online college will reach California residents who have received some college education, but never completed a credential, or have been in the workforce and have never been to college at all. Especially at risk are those whose jobs are threatened by automation and technological innovation generally. Oakley said these workers number between 2.5 million and 4 million and that they have become “very vulnerable” in the post-Recession period.
He cited the example of 50-year-old-plus workers who have some or no college education, have been working for 20 or 30 years, but have no way of advancing in the job market because they lack the skills to do so. “We call these individuals stranded workers,” he said. “They become targets of predatory or for-profit institutions that take advantage of their struggles and their desperation, offer them courses promising high wages at the other end, but all they do is saddle them with high debt.”
Already about one-third of the over 2.1 million students currently enrolled in the California Community Colleges are taking at least one online course. This fall the community college system established its Online Education Initiative to further promote online instruction. Jory Hadsell, its executive director, said contrary to stereotypes, for some students online instruction encourages greater, rather than less, participation than a regular classroom. “In the structured format of online courses, students are prompted to engage right from the beginning,” he said. “It is hard to hide in the back of the classroom, and let other students answer questions.”
He also said that students have a good deal of contact with an online course’s instructor. “Students don’t sign up for an online course, and never hear from anyone for a long time,” he said. “It is quite the opposite. Our online courses are really rigorous, and the result is students getting to know each other better than they would than if they were sitting in desks in a classroom.”
Since being elected governor for a second term in 2010, Brown has persistently pushed to increase online instruction at the state’s public universities, in part in response to their limited seat capacity at a time of increasing enrollment pressures. But the path has not been without obstacles or controversy. For example, a joint program at San Jose State University with the online firm Udacity, called SJSU Plus, floundered several years ago, in part because of faculty opposition.
Brown’s online community college proposal also generated considerable opposition from the faculty. The system’s Academic Senate said that the deadline set by Brown to get the college off the ground was rushed, and that the community colleges’ existing online programs could be expanded to meet the need, in lieu of creating a separate college.
“These are legitimate questions and concerns,” Oakley said. “We feel there are answers to those, and we feel there is experience and research throughout the country to address those concerns.”
Despite faculty opposition, Brown’s push for online instruction has arguably gotten the best response at the community colleges. The nature of the community college population — older, part-time students, many of whom are working — has put more pressure on community colleges than on the University of California and California State University to offer courses that give students greater flexibility. As a result, over the past dozen years, online enrollment at the community colleges have more than doubled, from 13 percent of students in 2005 to about one-third today.
The new online college, however, will serve a largely new population, presenting the sprawling system with new challenges. “This is a population that has a hard time getting to our brick and mortar colleges, or fitting into our traditional academic schedule,” Oakley said. “We will have a lot of work to do to reach these working age adults, and give them access to higher education and the support services they need to succeed.”
This story originally appeared on EdSource.org. EdSource is an independent journalism organization that works to engage Californians on key education challenges with the goal of enhancing learning success. |
ZoomDoc looks to expand its UK doctors-on-demand service | UK start-up ZoomDoc has launched a £500,000 ($672,000) crowdsourcing campaign as it seeks to expand its GP-on-demand service. The app is a paid service which lets users in London book a National Health Service-registered GP to come to their home. It has been downloaded 5,000 times since soft-launching in May. ZoomDoc Founder Dr Kenny Livingstone said increasing demand meant the company needed to raise money for recruiting more GPs and expanding across the UK. Advice over the phone starts at £25, while costs for home visits start at £99.
| https://www.digitalhealth.net/2017/12/zoomdoc-crowd-funding-campaign/ | 2017-12-13 14:53:30.827000 | A GP on demand service has launched a crowd-funding campaign to try and raise £500,000 so it can expand.
ZoomDoc, which was founded by Dr Kenny Livingstone, is a paid-for service which allows users to book an NHS-registered GP to come to their home.
The app, which promises a GP will see you within one hour, was soft-launched in the UK in May and has been downloaded 5,000 times since then.
Livingstone told Digital Health News that increasing demand for the app prompted the crowd-funding campaign and as a result it needed to recruit more GPs to enable further technological developments.
The cash-pot will also allow ZoomDoc GPs to cover other major towns across the UK as it is currently only being used in London, this includes investment in marketing to help raise awareness about the service.
His ‘frustration’ working as a GP and not being able to deliver care to enough patients was the driving force behind ZoomDoc.
“I wanted to create an app so a GP could work on demand and can work on their terms,” Livingstone said.
“I can log into the app wherever I am in the UK and choose how far I am willing to travel.”
ZoomDoc works by patients logging on to the app and then choosing a local doctor who is on call before requesting a home visit or telephone advice.
Home visits start at £99 while telephone advice starts at £25.
However the website states that these prices can increase during evening, weekends and bank holidays.
You can see how the app works in the video below.
Livingstone said ZoomDoc is aimed at those who are prepared to pay to see a doctor, adding that the app does not ‘cherry-pick’ patients which is what video consultation app, GP at Hand, was accused of.
He also said a recent call out was an example of how ZoomDoc can ease the pressures on A&E departments.
“I received a call from parents of a 14-week-old baby who could not get access to their GP and was told by NHS 111 to go to A&E.
“However I managed to see the child within 30 minutes because of ZoomDoc and the parents avoided a trip to A&E’.”
Looking to the future, Livingstone said he is hoping to eventually work with the NHS.
“We want to work with the NHS and support it,” he said. |
AI healthcare start-up Prognos secures $20.5m | New York City start-up Prognos has raised $20.5m towards using artificial intelligence (AI) to help predict and prevent disease. The company has built a lab connectivity network in the US that processes more than 13 billion lab records for over 180 million patients. It has also developed more than a 1,000 machine-learning algorithms across 50 conditions including asthma and diabetes. The series C funding round included support from existing investors Merck Global Health Innovation Fund and Safeguard Scientifics, as well as new funders including Cigna and GIS Strategic Ventures.
| http://www.alleywatch.com/2017/12/prognos-just-raised-30m-use-ai-predict-disease/ | 2017-12-13 14:01:58.950000 | Detection can be the difference between getting cured or succumbing to disease in many cases. As health records and diagnostics all go digital, a wealth of data is being created and recorded that can be used to prevent disease. Prognos sits at the center of this growing market and application. Leveraging AI and a number of sophisticated algorithms, the Prognos platform analyzes clinical lab results to drive decisions early. While we often read about AI being used to some trivial application, this startup has the potential to literally change the world with its ground breaking technology.
AlleyWatch sat down with CEO and cofounder, Sundeep Bhan to learn more about the startup, its origin, future plans, and most recent round of funding.
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
This was a Series C round, which raised $20.5 million. Our existing investors are Merck Global Health Innovation Fund (GHI), and Safeguard Scientifics who also invested in Prognos during this round. The new investors are Cigna, GIS Strategic Ventures (the venture capital arm of the Guardian Life Insurance Company), Hermed, Hikma Ventures and Maywic.
Tell us about your Prognos.
Prognos has built the largest lab connectivity network in the U.S., processed and analyzed over 13 billion lab records for more than 180 million patients, and developed 1,000+ proprietary machine learning-enabled algorithms across 50 conditions, such as diabetes, asthma, and non-small cell lung cancer, for the lab data management and analysis.
What inspired you to start Prognos?
The understanding that anyone is vulnerable to the disease and, in many cases, if a disease is diagnosed and treated earlier, that may impact outcomes, particularly in oncology patients. Prognos concentrates on clinical lab results, which drive about 70% of medical decisions and are available in real time. Clinical lab data indicates – as soon as the lab test results are ready – how a patient is doing, if he or she needs a specific therapy or is ready for a change in therapy. Prognos originated as a concept of eradicating disease, and we started with answering the questions about improving health by tracking and predicting disease at the earliest using AI and lab data.
How is it different?
While other analytics vendors claim they use lab data, they typically use data from chart pulls, which is also limited in that EHRs only contain on average 40% lab data. Prognos is the only company in the U.S. that has built the direct lab connectivity network on such a scale.
What market you are targeting and how big is it?
According to Frost & Sullivan recent market analysis on Healthcare Artificial Intelligence Solutions Market, the addressable healthcare analytics market size for Prognos’s products has the potential to reach $6.7 billion by 2021 (growing at a staggering 40% CAGR).
What’s your business model?
We license our products to Life Science companies and payers.
Can you tell us more about how AI is changing healthcare?
We are moving towards accurate forward-looking and real-time insights. The way Prognos uses AI with lab data, often integrated with prescription and claims data, is to predict the diagnosis before it is made and identify therapy that will address the condition best based on the patient’s clinical profile. We are capable of saying, this patient has, for example, a 40% probability to develop a certain condition within the next 90 days.
What factors about Prognos led your investors to write the check?
The most significant factors are the total addressable healthcare market that we serve and the proven business model.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
Prognos will continue to focus on enabling earlier identification of patients who can benefit from enhanced treatment decision-making to drive better outcomes. These new investments will enhance Prognos product offerings to help Life Science companies across the entire commercial lifecycle and our payer clients.
What advice can you offer companies in New York that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
Enter a large market and be able to articulate your business model.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
In the near-term, we are focused on expanding our Life Science portfolio to include healthcare media-focused, market access/RWE (e.g., value-based contracting), and R&D-centric offerings, all of which involve expanding to new audiences with some combination of existing and new products. We are also enhancing our existing commercially focused offerings–increasing speed of delivery, expanding delivery channels and creating end-to-end marketing programs–as we work with innovative clients on NextGen marketing initiatives. To better serve our diagnostic laboratory partners and clients, we are investing in market measurement services and also evaluating clinical trial services. Our payer portfolio is expanding beyond risk/care management products as we invest in underwriting capabilities.
Where is your favorite bar in the city for an after work drink?
Our offices are at WeWork, where we can chat over a beer at the end of the day. |
CBA to make 'tap-on-phone' contactless payments a reality | Small retailers in Australia will soon be able to accept card payments from customers using just a mobile phone. Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) has signed a deal to allow its customers use the "tap-on-phone" SoftPOS system developed by Canadian tech firm Mobeewave, which enables customers to pay by simply tapping their card to the retailer's phone screen. Mastercard payments of up to AUD100 ($76.64) will be possible through the system.
| https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/31453/cba-to-roll-out-tap-on-phone-contactless-payments?utm_medium=rss&utm_source=finextrafeed | 2017-12-13 13:42:36.610000 | Commonwealth Bank of Australia business customers will soon be able to accept a payment by simply tapping their phone with a contactless card or mobile wallet.
Commonwealth Bank will use a white label version of Mobeewave's SoftPOS technology and Digital Enablement from Idemia to deliver the service, which will me made available for Mastercard transactions on Samsung flagship devices from the second half of 2018.
The technology is a real threat to the dongle-dependent mPOS technology of firms like Square as it requires no additional hardware plug ins to accept payments. When Square launched in Australia last year, CBA initially moved to block payments over the card reader citing security concerns.
Sam Itzcovitz, Commonwealth Bank managing director commerce and platforms, says: “This solution gives Australian small businesses the ability to accept in person payments quickly and simply using just their phone so they can get on with running their business.”
Mastercard research has shown that more than four in five Australian consumers are using contactless payment at least once a week, but fewer are making use of mobile contactless payment services.
Matt Barr, SVP, core, digital and new payment flows of Mastercard Australasia, says: “This pilot brings us one step closer to our vision of 'enabling every device to become an acceptance device'. We all use our phones to make payments, why not use them to accept payments as well. With its high use of contactless technology, Australia is an ideal environment to roll out this type of “tap-on-phone” solution.” |
Driverless cars given human-like view of the world | AEye, a company founded by Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and NASA veteran Luis Dussan, is aiming to produce solid-state LIDAR sensors, which it says work more like a human eye, by focusing on what is most important, depending on the driving conditions present at any given time. | https://futurism.com/new-sensor-gives-driverless-cars-human-like-view-world/ | 2017-12-13 13:36:25.607000 | Eyes on the Road
We're closer to making self-driving cars a reality than ever before, but at the moment the best options available to the public are along the lines of Tesla's Autopilot system, which are assistive, rather than all-out, autonomy. To get to the next stage, many would agree that we need better sensors.
AEye, a company founded by Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and NASA veteran Luis Dussan, is aiming to produce just that. Dussan started out with a plan to create artificial intelligence that could underpin a self-driving car, but soon found that sensors were the weak link.
The majority of autonomous vehicles use lidar sensors, which use laser beams to take a reading of their surroundings. They're limited in two key areas: they're expensive, and they can only emit beams at preset angles.
AEye wants to use solid-state lidar sensors, which cast a laser beam back and forth across a scene. Most current applications of this technology utilize a regular scanning method, but Dussan wants to use two distinct types of scan instead: low resolution scans of a wide area, and high resolution scans of a smaller section, where the priority can be reprogrammed on the fly.
"You can trade resolution, scene revisit rate, and range at any point in time," Dussan says. "The same sensor can adapt." Much like the human eye, the hardware would be able to focus in on what's most important depending on the driving conditions present at any given time.
AEye isn't the only company looking to push the state of sensors forward. Apple has been working on a self-driving project in relative secrecy, but its AI chief Ruslan Salakhutdinov recently offered some details about what to expect.
Apple is said to be developing sensors that are capable of identifying objects even when the lens is affected or obscured by conditions, like rainfall. Localization and mapping techniques will be used alongside the sensors to create detailed 3D maps that help with decision-making.
Drive Safe
Of course, all these attempts to create better sensors have one goal in mind: safer roads. While the masses may take a while to warm up to the idea of self-driving cars, there's plenty of evidence that autonomy will make traveling by car much safer.
The wrinkle is that we'll only see the best results when most — if not all — cars are piloted by computers. Self-driving vehicles will be able to communicate among themselves with perfect clarity, but anticipating the actions of a human driver could cause complications.
Still, advanced sensors will help make this a reality, sooner. Whether we're talking human drivers or just pedestrians, self-driving cars will always have to deal with unpredictable human behavior. Receiving as much information as possible in an efficient manner via cutting edge sensors is one way to improve our the safety of our roads. |
China's Xiaomi may still enter India's car market | Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi says it may build and sell cars in India at some point, but has no immediate plans to do so. The company has prioritised the world's second most populous market and plans to invest $1bn in 100 Indian start-ups over the next five years to create an ecosystem of apps for Xiaomi phones, founder and CEO Lei Jun said in November. The company is also considering selling other products ranging from laptops to financial services but it is one of the few Chinese technology giants not to have invested in autonomous vehicles. | http://www.scmp.com/tech/start-ups/article/2124125/chinas-xiaomi-leaves-door-open-entering-car-market-india | 2017-12-13 13:23:08.670000 | Company says regulatory filing was not an application to sell cars and related components in India, though it considers the country its top market |
Tesco could face law suit over ‘fake farm’ branding | UK supermarkets including Aldi, Asda, Lidl and Tesco, have been accused of misleading the public through their controversial use of “fake farm” branding on meat products, by food waste charity Feedback. The charity is supporting the owner of the real Woodside Farm, a name which Tesco has used on pork products since 2016, and is threatening to take the supermarket to court if it continues to use the name. The “Total Bull” campaign argues that consumers are being deceived by branding that falsely suggests that products come from small-scale UK suppliers.
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/13/tesco-faces-legal-threat-over-marketing-its-food-with-fake-farm-names | 2017-12-13 13:10:40.540000 | Major UK supermarkets including Tesco, Aldi, Asda and Lidl are being urged to stop using controversial “fake farm” branding on own-brand meat products, with a food charity claiming they are misleading shoppers.
The Feedback charity is backing the owner of a genuine farm called Woodside Farm – a name Tesco has also used on its value pork range since 2016 – and is threatening legal proceedings if the retail giant does not drop the name Woodside Farms.
Its “Total Bull” campaign says it believes shoppers are being misled with “disingenuous” branding that gives the impression it comes from real farms.
“Let’s be clear – supermarkets are selling meat under fake farm names, deliberately encouraging consumers to believe that the meat is sourced from small-scale producers,” said Feedback’s campaign director, Jessica Sinclair Taylor. “We believe this is peddling a load of bull.”
In March 2016 Tesco, the UK’s largest retailer, sparked controversy after launching a budget range of seven own-label “farm” brands – including Woodside Farms and Boswell Farms for fruit and veg as well as meat – based on British-sounding but fictitious names. Some foods were imported from overseas and given British names to make them sound local.
In April, Asda reignited the row by relaunching its value Smart Price food range as Farm Stores while German discounter Aldi replaced its Wood Farm brand with Nature’s Pick earlier this year and Lidl has a “Birchwood Farm” meat range. Marks & Spencer sells “Scottish Lochmuir” smoked salmon and “Oakham” chicken – neither are real farms.
Advert for ‘Birchwood Farm’ meat from Lidl. Photograph: Ian Francis/Alamy Stock Photo
Richard Baugh of Woodside Farm in Nottinghamshire, raises free-range pigs for his own pork products sold under his farm name through his farm shop and website. But since Tesco replaced its Tesco Value brand with “Woodside Farms”, he says he has faced confusion from customers.
“We’ve been raising pigs at Woodside Farm for 20 years – this is our livelihood,” Baugh said. “When it first came out customers were asking all the time whether we were supplying Tesco. We don’t, our pork is free-range and we think it’s higher welfare and quality than the pork they’re selling, and we’re proud of that.
Feedback wrote to Tesco on behalf of Baugh, complaining that its labelling risks confusion with his farm name and reputation, while misleading consumers about the origins of their meat.
The non-governmental organisation, which is seeking to reform Britain’s “broken” food system, has also awarded Tesco its “Total Bull” award for the number of fake farm labels it uses, and is urging shoppers to write to Tesco to shame it into dropping the branding.
Tesco said it was aware of the threat of legal action and declined to comment, but directed the Guardian to the publication of its interim results for 2017/18 when it said: “Our exclusive fresh food brands continue to be popular with customers – featuring in over 70% of baskets.”
The National Farmers’ Union (NFU) and the Soil Association have also condemned fake farm brands as misleading for consumers and insulting to farmers. Last July, the NFU filed an official complaint about Tesco’s brands with Trading Standards, but the non-existent farm staple remains on supermarket shelves. |
English rivers experiencing chronic insecticide contamination | English rivers are contaminated with neonicotinoids, the world’s most widely used insecticides, according to 2016 tests carried out under European Union (EU) regulations and obtained by the Buglife charity. The tests show that of the 23 UK rivers tested, just six were free of neonicotinoids, with around half of the 16 tested in England indicating chronic or acute contamination. The EU has banned the use of neonicotinoids on flowering crops since 2013 due to their impact on pollinators. A ban on all outdoor use is expected soon. Evidence is growing that neonicotinoids harm other species, including birds and fish.
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/13/english-rivers-polluted-by-powerful-insecticides-first-tests-reveal | 2017-12-13 12:48:31.300000 | Rivers in England are contaminated with powerful insecticides, new testing has revealed, increasing concerns over the impact of the toxic chemicals on fish and birds.
Neonicotinoids were banned from use on flowering crops in the European Union in 2013 due to the harm they cause to bees and other vital pollinators. Following even more evidence of harm, an EU vote to extend the ban to all outdoor uses is expected soon.
However, evidence is also growing that neonicotinoids – the world’s most widely used insecticide – harm other species, such as songbirds. Neonicotinoids have been in use since the early 1990s and now contaminate landscapes around the world. But very little monitoring of their concentration in soils or water is done, a failing recently condemned by a UK government chief scientific adviser.
The first systematic testing of neonicotinoids in rivers in Britain was mandated by EU water regulations and conducted in 2016. The results, obtained by the conservation charity Buglife, show that half of the 16 rivers tested in England had either chronic or acute levels of contamination. Of the 23 rivers tested across Britain, neonicotinoids were not detected in six.
No official limits exist in the EU for neonicotinoid pollution in freshwater. But a peer-reviewed scientific analysis published in 2015 recommended chronic and acute levels that should not be exceeded “to avoid lasting effects on aquatic invertebrate communities”, and these were used by Buglife to asses the new river data.
Like flying insects, aquatic insects are vulnerable to neonicotinoids and provide the main source of food for many fish and birds. Recent research in the Netherlands has shown chronic neonicotinoid pollution in water led to sharp drops in insect numbers and was linked to heavy falls in bird numbers.
“We are devastated to discover that many British rivers have been heavily damaged by neonicotinoid insecticides,” said Matt Shardlow, CEO of Buglife.
Mark Lloyd, CEO of the Angling Trust, said: “These results are highly alarming in the context of widespread declines in aquatic insect life and fish populations. We urge the government to act urgently to ban continued use of these chemicals to protect wildlife, fisheries and drinking water.”
The most polluted river tested was the river Waveney on the Norfolk/Suffolk Border, where the acute harm level was exceeded for a whole month in the summer of 2016. Sugar beet fields are the most likely source of pollution, said Shardlow.
The nearby river Wensum, in a Special Area of Conservation for its river life, was also chronically polluted. Both rivers supply the Norfolk Broads, an internationally important wetland site and home to many endangered aquatic animals.
The proposed EU ban would still allow neonicotinoids to be used in greenhouses and as a flea treatment for pets. A new Greenpeace study suggests neonicotinoids are frequently found in waterways close to greenhouses where they have been used. The new tests found contamination in a stream in the Cairngorms, which Shardlow said is most likely the result of a treated dog entering the stream.
“It is vital that action is taken to completely ban these toxins, including in greenhouses and on pets, before another year of disgraceful pollution occurs,” he said.
Arlin Rickard, CEO of the Rivers Trust, said: “We work closely with farmers and growers to reduce and better target chemical and fertiliser usage, however some chemicals are just too damaging and persistent to be tolerated.”
A spokesman for the National Farmers Union said: “British farmers take their environmental responsibilities seriously and have high levels of pesticide stewardship through schemes like the Voluntary Initiative, which offer advice and actions designed to keep pesticides out of water. The Environment Agency closely monitors pesticides in rivers and we are not aware of it raising any specific concerns about high levels of neonicotinoids.” |
Redrow Application granted for 158 houses and flats in Warrington | Redrow has been granted planning permission for 158 hours and flats at the Omega South development in Warrington. The scheme will be the second phase of development on the land, where Miller Homes have already begun construction of 200 homes. Up to 1,100 properties are set to be built by multiple developers at the site over the next 10 years. Proposals for another 86 Redrow homes on neighbouring land are still under consideration.
| https://www.placenorthwest.co.uk/news/next-phase-of-omega-housing-clears-planning/ | 2017-12-13 12:35:33.797000 | Redrow Homes is to build 158 houses and flats on Omega South, Warrington following the granting of reserved matters consent. The application was submitted by Redrow and Omega Warrington Ltd.
Plans for a further 86 Redrow homes on neighbouring land are still under consideration.
With construction of 200 homes already underway by Miller Homes, the Redrow scheme will become phase two of the build-out of residential at Omega South. Through multiple housebuilders, up to 1,100 homes will be delivered over the next decade.
Colin Graham, development director at Omega Warrington Ltd, said: “Our selection of Redrow follows significant interest earlier this year from a variety of major national housebuilders when the opportunity to build phase two was put out to market.
“We believe Redrow’s credentials make them the right housebuilder to deliver the quality of new homes we have committed to at Omega.”
Redrow’s Omega operation will be in two phases – the initial 158 homes, on a 14.5-acre site off Sophia Drive, will be a mixture of 30 two-bedroom apartments, along with terraced and semi-detached housing. It will include 48 starter homes. The following 86 houses, off Omega Boulevard, will be larger three, four and five-bedroom homes.
Work will commence imminently to prepare the site for development. Redrow expects the project in full to take three years.
Warrington Borough Council granted outline consent in June 2016 for 1,100 homes on Omega South. Landowner the Homes & Communities Agency is a partner on the project. Omega Warrington Ltd is a partnership between Miller Developments and KUC Properties, part of Royal Bank of Scotland Real Estate Asset Management. |
US healthcare industry on the brink of major tech disruption | The US healthcare industry is likely to be the next sector to face major disruption, argues management consultant Helen Leis. Regulatory changes, new ways of using data and improved diagnostic capabilities all enable more individualised care, just as the public is growing to expect the standard of service and personalisation offered by companies such as Amazon and Uber. For example, Cityblock, an Alphabet-backed start-up, aims to take advantage of the new requirement for 50% of medical payments to be tied to value by offering innovative data-based primary care and other services to Medicare and Medicaid patients. | http://www.brinknews.com/health-care-is-ripe-for-disruption-are-we-ready-for-the-tipping-point/?utm_source=BRINK+Subscribers&utm_campaign=c093920625-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_12_12&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c3639d7c98-c093920625-110036825 | 2017-12-13 12:18:12.323000 | Photo: Patrick Hertzog/AFP/Getty Images
Health care, like many other industries, has undergone a massive transformation over the past decade, with huge changes in social norms and consumer behaviors. Ten years ago, it was unheard of to rent a stranger’s apartment instead of booking a hotel room, to publicly post your kids’ baby pictures for the world to see, or to get out of a taxi without opening your wallet. And yet here we are. Technological advancements, inefficiencies in supply, and shifts in consumer behaviors have wrought fundamental changes in industry after industry—retail, travel, entertainment, and yes, health care.
The incumbents in those industries seldom saw the change coming. They recognized the threat these changes posed to their core business but were unable to break out of their mental paradigms about how they traditionally win in the marketplace to alter their course. Walmart recognized the threat Amazon posed, but it tried to solve the problem like a large retailer rather than as a digitally native company.
Pattern Recognition: Seeing the Tipping Point
Identifying the next big tipping point comes down to pattern recognition. An industry is ripe for disruptive innovation when a number of conditions collide. First, you’ll see unhappy consumers, facing many hassles or frustrations, and you’ll also see waste or inefficiencies in the supply side of the system.
Then, you need a catalyst. It could be a regulatory push, a new technological advancement, or a shift in social norms to tip the industry and create conditions ripe for disruption.
We are seeing this dangerous mix of conditions right now in health care. Regulatory changes are enabling new reimbursement models; new data and insights promise to revolutionize diagnostic capabilities and to personalize care; and consumers are beginning to expect their doctors and health plans to offer the same convenience and personalization that online shopping or ordering an Uber does.
Are We Ready for the Tipping Point?
There hasn’t actually been much movement in health care. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced that by 2018, 50 percent of all payments must be tied to value. We are not yet seeing wholesale movement in that direction, particularly by incumbents, but we are seeing startups recognize the opportunity and enter.
Take Cityblock, a startup launched by Alphabet—Google’s parent company—that offers innovative, team-based primary care, behavioral health, and social services to Medicare and Medicaid patients. Imagine the implications of Alphabet/Google providing value-based care to low-income patients with severe chronic diseases, harnessing the power of the data graph they already own, and matching that to these new data streams. That could be a significant disruptor.
The changes coming to health care are immutable. The industry will be disrupted from outside if not from within.
Another metric to watch—that also suggests there hasn’t been enough movement in health care—is Net Promoter Score measures, which is a management tool used to gauge customer loyalty and serves as an alternative to traditional customer satisfaction surveys. Health care companies—health plans and primary care physicians— typically score in the high single digits/low double digits. And they are increasingly competing against retail and technology companies with scores in the high 60s or low 70s. Take Amazon, with a Net Promoter Score of 69. It’s playing an increasing role in health care with two notable developments, its partnership with Merck to do care management via Alexa and 1492’s foray into health care technology. That isn’t even a fair fight.
The Health Care Industry Will Need To Adapt
The changes we see coming to health care are immutable forces; the industry will be disrupted from the outside if not from within. Players in the industry will need to make purposeful business decisions—identifying where the sources of economic value and strategic control will be and ensuring they have the right assets and capabilities to secure them.
Click here to watch the full main stage session, “Industry Interrupted: Why Healthcare is Ripe for Disruption,” from this year’s Oliver Wyman Health Innovation Summit. |
AIG introduces cyber risk score for clients | US insurer AIG is introducing a cyber score for its clients, allowing them to assess their readiness to face cyber threats while offering comparisons with peers. The score is calculated by assessing a client's response to 10 typical cyber attack patterns across 11 types of device. The firm is also launching a new cybersecurity initiative in collaboration with security firms CrowdStrike and Darktrace. The initiative, dubbed CyberMatics, will seek to verify information input into AIG's cybersecurity model by clients, aiming to increase the accuracy of underwriting.
| https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171212005720/en/AIG-Launches-New-Cyber-Model-Scores-Client | 2017-12-13 10:47:56.033000 | NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--American International Group, Inc. (NYSE: AIG) today announced a new cyber benchmarking model that quantifies and scores client cyber risk.
The AIG model evaluates a client’s cyber security maturity against 10 common attack patterns across 11 commonly used technology devices. The model incorporates critical security data, such as current threat intelligence from multiple sources, effectiveness of an organization’s cyber controls, potential impact of a cyber breach on an organization, and insights gained from the thousands of cyber claims handled by AIG.
AIG cyber clients, who provide the required information, can receive a report detailing security scores, peer benchmarking, and key risk mitigation controls to help quantify cyber risk.
“We developed the model based on historical insights and patterns of how companies experience cyber breaches – the points of entry and the types of attacks and vulnerabilities seen in the vast majority of cyber breach scenarios,” says Tracie Grella, Head of Cyber Risk Insurance, AIG. “Companies have been demanding a way to benchmark their cyber maturity against these known cyber risks to quantify what they are up against and where they stand.”
To further support its model, AIG is launching CyberMatics, a patent pending security approach with leading AI cyber security companies CrowdStrike and Darktrace. CyberMatics verifies inputs into AIG’s model from clients’ cyber security tools. This provides greater confidence in underwriting information, and ultimately allows for better tailored terms and conditions in cyber insurance policies.
“As an insurer, we gain a better understanding of the level of risk we are taking on with each client so we can react accordingly,” said Ms. Grella. “Our new model combined with CyberMatics can help our clients make informed and quantifiable decisions about their preparedness for cyber security risk events and insurance cover.”
AIG’s Cyber Risk Consultants, part of AIG Client Risk Solutions, can help clients act on risk scoring and evaluate data for system vulnerabilities and negative risk trends.
About CrowdStrike®
CrowdStrike is the leader in cloud-delivered endpoint protection. Leveraging artificial intelligence (AI), the CrowdStrike Falcon® platform offers instant visibility and protection across the enterprise and prevents attacks on endpoints on or off the network. CrowdStrike Falcon deploys in minutes to deliver actionable intelligence and real-time protection from Day One. It seamlessly unifies next-generation AV with best-in-class endpoint detection and response, backed by 24/7 managed hunting. Its cloud infrastructure and single-agent architecture take away complexity and add scalability, manageability, and speed.
About Darktrace
Darktrace is the world’s leading machine learning company for cyber security. Created by mathematicians from the University of Cambridge, the Enterprise Immune System uses AI algorithms to automatically detect and take action against cyber-threats within all types of networks, including physical, cloud and virtualized networks, as well as IoT and industrial control systems. A self-configuring platform, Darktrace requires no prior set-up, identifying advanced threats in real time, including zero-days, insiders and stealthy, silent attackers. Headquartered in San Francisco and Cambridge, UK, Darktrace has 30 offices worldwide.
American International Group, Inc. (AIG) is a leading global insurance organization. Founded in 1919, today AIG member companies provide a wide range of property casualty insurance, life insurance, retirement products, and other financial services to customers in more than 80 countries and jurisdictions. These diverse offerings include products and services that help businesses and individuals protect their assets, manage risks and provide for retirement security. AIG common stock is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
Additional information about AIG can be found at www.aig.com | YouTube: www.youtube.com/aig | Twitter: @AIGinsurance www.twitter.com/AIGinsurance | LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/aig. These references with additional information about AIG have been provided as a convenience, and the information contained on such websites is not incorporated by reference into this press release.
AIG is the marketing name for the worldwide property-casualty, life and retirement, and general insurance operations of American International Group, Inc. For additional information, please visit our website at www.aig.com. All products and services are written or provided by subsidiaries or affiliates of American International Group, Inc. Products or services may not be available in all countries, and coverage is subject to actual policy language. Non-insurance products and services may be provided by independent third parties. Certain property-casualty coverages may be provided by a surplus lines insurer. Surplus lines insurers do not generally participate in state guaranty funds, and insureds are therefore not protected by such funds. |
London insurtech Quantemplate raises $3.3m in funding | Insurtech Quantemplate has raised $3.3m in funding to help it expand in the UK, US and Europe. Targeted at insurers and reinsurers, the London-based fintech uses machine learning to unify and analyse the disparate types of data processed by these companies. Quantemplate has raised $13.4m since being founded five years ago. The new financing came from Columbia Lake Partners, with participation from Route 66 Ventures and Allianz, among others.
| https://www.carriermanagement.com/news/2017/12/12/173929.htm | 2017-12-13 10:42:14.160000 | Quantemplate, an InsurTech firm specializing in machine learning data transformation and analytics, raised $3.3 million in new funding to fuel its expansion plans in the UK, US. and European markets.
The London, UK-based startup has also appointed David Lundgren as CEO and board director.
Columbia Lake Partners participated in the new financing, which also included contributions from Quantemplate’s original investors: Route 66 Ventures and Anthemis (both specialists in InsurTech venture capital). TransAmerica Ventures and Allianz also participated.
Lundgren brings to Quantemplate deep insurance industry and operational expertise from firms such as Allianz, CUNA Mutual, General Electric, and AgPro Exchange, the company said. He currently serves on the boards of Jewelers Mutual and Bunker.
Quantemplate has raised $13.4 million overall since its founding five years ago.
Designed for insurers and reinsurers, Quantemplate automatically unifies the disparate types of data these companies have to process, solving issues of data integrity or compatibility through machine learning, the company said, explaining that traditional technologies and outsourcing have fallen short when faced with these problems.
By contrast, Quantemplate relies on analytics to provide business insights around market opportunity, underwriting profitability, claims and fraud, and MGA (managing general agent) integration, the company added.
Source: Quantemplate |
China adds DNA database to scrutiny of restive minority region | Chinese officials are collecting DNA samples and building a database of iris scans and blood types from everyone aged between 12 and 65 in Xinjiang, a restive region that is home to more than 11 million minority muslim Uighurs. Human Rights Watch said the additional scrutiny in the far-western region amounts to building an "open-air prison". "The mandatory databanking of a whole population"s biodata, including DNA, is a gross violation of international human rights norms. It's even more disturbing if it is done surreptitiously, under the guise of a free healthcare programme," said China director Sophie Richardson.
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/13/chinese-authorities-collecting-dna-residents-xinjiang | 2017-12-13 09:35:02.050000 | Chinese authorities are collecting DNA samples, fingerprints and other biometric data from every resident in a far western region, Human Rights Watch has said.
Officials are also building a database of iris scans and blood types of everyone aged between 12 and 65 in Xinjiang, adding to controls in a place some experts have called an “open-air prison”.
The region is home to over 11 million Uighurs, a Muslim Turkic minority, and is occasionally hit by bouts of violence.
The data can be used for “surveillance of persons because of ethnicity, religion, opinion or other protected exercise of rights like free speech”, according to Human Rights Watch.
Part of the collection is being done through government-provided medical checkups, and it is unclear if patients are aware the exam is also designed to transmit biometric data to the police.
Although the checks are officially voluntary, one Uighur said local cadres “had demanded that they must participate in the physicals”. A story in a local newspaper encouraged officials to “work hard to convince them to participate”.
Nearly 19 million people have participated in the medical exams, dubbed Physicals for All, in 2017, according to state news agency Xinhua. For people determined to be “focus personnel” – a euphemism for those the government views as dangerous – their data will be collected regardless of age.
“The mandatory databanking of a whole population’s biodata, including DNA, is a gross violation of international human rights norms,” said Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch. “It’s even more disturbing if it is done surreptitiously, under the guise of a free healthcare program.
“Xinjiang authorities should rename their physical exams project ‘Privacy Violations for All’, as informed consent and real choice does not seem to be part of these programs,” she added.
Officials in the region claim the scheme is meant to improve policies aimed at poverty alleviation. They also say it is targeted at “social stability”, a phrase commonly used to describe crackdowns on government critics.
In the massive effort to collect biometric data from millions of residents, police in Xinjiang bought DNA sequencers from the US company Thermo Fisher Scientific, according to Human Rights Watch. The company refused to directly address its products being used in Xinjiang, saying only: “We do expect all of our customers to act in accordance with appropriate regulations and industry-standard best practices.”
Biometric data collection also applies to people originally from Xinjiang who have moved to other parts of China, where they will be required to submit their information locally.
Xinjiang is one of the most tightly controlled parts of China, with the Uighur minority facing increased scrutiny in recent years. Heavily armed troops on city streets are a common sight and the authorities frequently hold mass rallies to bolster their support in the fight against the Islamic extremists Beijing blames for a series of attacks on government officials and civilians.
But rights groups say most of the violence stems from restrictions on religion, culture, language and expression, as well as a lack of economic opportunities in the impoverished region. Uighurs often complain high-paying jobs are given only to Han Chinese. |
AI's inexperience may worsen the next stock-market crash | Artificial intelligence (AI) platforms used to make investment decisions may exacerbate the next stock-market crash because they are not experienced enough to handle crises. AI systems perform badly in situations they don't recognise and they'll be ill-prepared to manage a crash because the data they use is culled from an unusually stable period of economic activity. | https://qz.com/1151664/ai-does-not-have-enough-experience-to-handle-the-next-market-crash/?mc_cid=9f8de02646&mc_eid=a37072368a | 2017-12-13 08:08:12.903000 | Artificial intelligence is increasingly used to make decisions in financial markets. Fund managers empower AI to make trading decisions, frequently by identifying patterns in financial data. The more data that AI has, the more it learns. And with the financial world producing data at an ever-increasing rate, AI should be getting better. But what happens if the data the AI encounters isn’t normal or represents an anomaly?
Globally, around 10 times more data (pdf) was generated in 2017 than in 2010. This means that the best quality data is also highly concentrated in the recent past—a world that has been running on cheap money, supplied by central banks through purchases of safe securities, which is not a “normal” state for the market. This has had a number of effects, from causing a rise in “zombie” firms to creating generational lows in volatility to encouraging unusually large corporate buybacks (pdf).
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With so much data residing in this era, AI might not know what a “normal” market actually looks like. Robert Kaplan, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, recently pointed out some of the market extremes that exist today. The essay included a caution that growing imbalances in the economy could increase the risk of a rapid adjustment.
US stock market capitalization is now around 135% of GDP, the highest since 2000;
Corporate debt is at record highs;
Trading volume for 2017 on the New York Stock Exchange is down 51% from 2007, while the NYSE market capitalization is up 28%;
Record low volatility where the US market has gone 12 months without a 3% correction.
Today’s volatility is “extraordinarily unusual,” Kaplan noted. Cheap credit makes markets less volatile. When credit is easy, a company can rely on the promise of cheap debt to support itself so the value of equity becomes less volatile. Markets have experienced periods of low volatility before—and each time they have ended with a shock. If this current period ends violently, AI trained on predictable central-bank money flows will be unable to reconcile what it sees in new data from what it’s been trained on.
The Financial Stability Board, an international body based in Basel, Switzerland set up by the G20 in the aftermath of the last financial crisis, recently studied (pdf) the potential impacts of AI and machine learning on financial stability. One of the risks highlighted was the increased use of AI by hedge funds and market makers. Because AI is so effective at optimizing complex systems, its use can further tighten trading parameters that are vital for market stability, such as how much capital a bank has in relation to its outstanding trading positions.
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With its increasing use in financial markets, it will play a role in the next market correction, perhaps a critical one, as an era of low volatility, high debt, and cheap money comes to an end. AI will need sufficient data across a big enough timespan for the models to adapt to new market conditions without overreacting.
The question is, if and when a shock comes and an entirely unfamiliar situation arises, what will the financial AIs do? As the financial system gets more interconnected, AI could spread the impact of extreme shocks faster, making the entire system potentially less stable during a shock event. This is particularly true if data sources and AI strategies are shared, and then there is a shock to a particular data source.
Consider the example of a data shock in the case of self-driving cars. When Google was training its self-driving car on the streets of Mountain View, California, the car rounded a corner and encountered a woman in a wheelchair, waving a broom, chasing a duck. The car hadn’t encountered this before so it stopped and waited. When a Tesla driving on autopilot failed to recognize a truck turning across it on the freeway, it kept going. In both cases, the situations were unfamiliar—but one had a failsafe and the other simply failed.
AI simply isn’t good in situations it doesn’t yet recognize. |
Climate change tripled likelihood of Hurricane Harvey rains | Hurricane Harvey’s intense rainfall, which led to extreme flooding in Houston earlier this year, was made three times more likely and 15% more intense due to climate change, according to research by the World Weather Attribution (WWA) initiative. The hurricane, which killed 80 people and left 800,000 needing help, is believed to be the most expensive weather-related disaster in US history, with an estimated total cost of $190bn. | https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/13/global-warming-made-hurricane-harvey-deadly-rains-three-times-more-likely-research-shows | 2017-12-13 00:00:00 | Hurricane Harvey’s unprecedented deluge, which caused catastrophic flooding in Houston in August, was made three times more likely by climate change, new research has found.
Such a downpour was a very rare event, scientists said, but global warming meant it was 15% more intense. The storm left 80 people dead and 800,000 in need of assistance.
The scientists from the World Weather Attribution (WWA) initiative usually publish their assessments of the role of climate change in extreme weather events around the world as soon as possible. However, in this case they waited for the work to be confirmed by peer review because of the current US government’s opposition to strong action on climate change.
The researchers said their new work shows global warming is making extreme weather events worse right now and in the US. The cost of the damage caused by Hurricane Harvey has been estimated at $190bn (£140bn), which would make it the most costly weather disaster in US history, more than Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy combined.
A series of new reports have found that extreme heatwaves, droughts, floods, storms and wildfires across the planet have been made more likely or more intense by rising global temperatures. The UK’s Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) analysed 59 studies of the influence of climate change on extreme weather published in the last two years and found warming has made matters worse in 70% of cases and better in just 7%.
Another report, published on Wednesday by the American Meteorological Society, assesses 21 different extreme weather events in 2016, from US snowstorms and South African drought to ocean hotspots and Arctic heating. Most of the events can be attributed, at least in part, to human-caused climate change, the scientists found.
Hurricane Harvey made first landfall on 25 August and then stalled over Texas, with torrential downpours dumping a year’s worth of rain on Houston and surrounding areas in a few days. In east Harris County, a record 132cm (52 inches) of rain fell over six days, the highest storm total in US history.
The WWA scientists used both historical rainfall records and high-resolution climate models to determine the influence of global warming. “This multi-method analysis confirms that heavy rainfall events are increasing substantially across the Gulf Coast region because of human interference with our climate system,” said Geert Jan van Oldenborgh, at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) and lead author of the new study published in Environmental Research Letters.
“It was very a rare event – they were very unlucky,” said van Oldenborgh. But the research shows the chance of it happening was raised threefold by climate change.
The team also estimated that, even if the world limits warming to the internationally agreed 2C limit, the likelihood of such extreme downpours will triple again. “But, if we miss those targets, the increase in frequency and intensity could be much higher,” said Karin van der Wiel, also at KNMI.
“The link between global warming and more extreme weather is nowhere more obvious than in the US. Even if Donald Trump isn’t seeing the picture, many others are,” said Richard Black at the ECIU.
Friederike Otto, at Oxford University, said: “We’re now finding that for many kinds of extreme weather event, especially heatwaves and extreme rainfall, we can be quite confident about the effect of climate change. The ECIU report shows just how quickly knowledge is accumulating, and I think it’s only going to accelerate.”
Climate scientists have long predicted that global warming would increase extreme weather, based on simple physics that means warmer air can contain more water vapour and therefore lead to more intense rain.
Major storms are powered by the warmth of the water at the ocean’s surface, and therefore hotter seas lead to more violent storms. But the fast developing science of climate change attribution now means the role of climate change in many events happening today can be clearly seen. |
Social media firms should be be liable for abuse: UK committee | Social media firms should be made liable for illegal content and there should be a new electoral law to counter the intimidation of MPs during elections, according to the UK’s independent Committee on Standards in Public Life. The body, which provides ethical advice to the prime minister, has recommended the changes, which would be easier to implement after Brexit, following an inquiry into the abuse of MPs during this year’s general election. The committee also called for social media companies to remove intimidatory material quickly and for police to be trained to investigate offences committed on social media.
| https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/dec/13/make-facebook-liable-for-content-says-report-on-uk-election-intimidation | 2017-12-13 00:00:00 | Theresa May should consider the introduction of two new laws to deter the intimidation of MPs during elections and force social media firms to monitor illegal content, an influential committee has said.
The independent Committee on Standards in Public Life, which advises the prime minister on ethics, has called for the introduction within a year of a new specific offence in electoral law to halt widespread abuse when voters go to the polls.
The watchdog will recommend another law to shift the liability for illegal content on to social media firms such as Facebook and Google, a legal change which will be easier once Britain leaves the European Union.
Both changes form part of the hard-hitting conclusions of an inquiry into intimidation experienced by parliamentary candidates in this year’s election campaign.
Other recommendations include:
Social media firms should make decisions quickly to take down intimidatory content.
Political parties should, by December 2018, draw up a joint code of conduct on intimidatory behaviour during election campaigns.
The National Police Chiefs’ Council should ensure that police are trained to investigate offences committed through social media.
Ministers should bring forward rules so that council candidates will no longer be required to release their home addresses.
Lord Bew, the committee chair, said: “This level of vile and threatening behaviour, albeit by a minority of people, against those standing for public office is unacceptable in a healthy democracy. We cannot get to a point where people are put off standing, retreat from debate, and even fear for their lives as a result of their engagement in politics.
“This is not about protecting elites or stifling debate, it is about ensuring we have a vigorous democracy in which participants engage in a responsible way which recognises others’ rights to participate and to hold different points of view.”
A YouGov survey of 1,616 adults last month, commissioned by the committee, found that 49% either agreed or were ambivalent when asked if MPs who received abuse brought it upon themselves. But 62% found it highly unacceptable that any member of the public should send abusive messages to MPs on social media.
A majority of the public – 60% – found it unacceptable that MPs had been disrespectful to members of the public on social media.
MPs reported being subjected to weeks of abuse leading up to the general election, including racism, antisemitism and death threats.
The shadow home secretary, Diane Abbott, was found by Amnesty to have received 45% of all abusive tweets sent during the election, many of which were racist and sexist.
Dozens of MPs had already moved to improve their security after Labour MP Jo Cox was murdered by a rightwing extremist in 2016.
The report said that the intimidation of parliamentary candidates was of particular significance because of the threat it posed to the integrity of the democratic process.
“A new electoral offence of intimidating parliamentary candidates and party campaigners during an election should be considered. This would serve to highlight the seriousness of the issue, result in more appropriate sanctions, and serve as a deterrent,” it said.
Facebook, Twitter and Google “are not simply platforms for the content that others post” because they play a role in shaping what users see, and so “must take more responsibility for illegal material”, the committee said.
They were not liable “largely” due to a EU directive which treated them as “hosts” of online content, the watchdog said, but May’s commitment to Brexit means the government can introduce laws to make companies responsible once the UK leaves the EU.
The report said social media was “the most significant factor” driving harassment, abuse and intimidation of 2017 general election candidates, which included threats of violence and sexual violence, as well as damage to property.
“Some have felt the need to disengage entirely from social media because of the abuse they face, and it has put off others who may wish to stand for public office,” the report said.
“Not enough has been done. The committee is deeply concerned about the limited engagement of the social media companies in tackling these issues.”
The committee said it was concerned about the impact on the diversity of a representative democracy and said parties had an “important responsibility” to support female, black and minority ethnic and LGBT candidates.
Abbott welcomed the proposal for new obligations on social media companies but questioned whether it would be right to call for new legislation covering intimidation. “I’m not persuaded that yet more legislation is required. Intimidation, threatening behaviour and violence are all illegal. These laws need to be enforced for everyone,” she said.
She questioned whether she could work with all political opponents given that some were accused of being behind some social media campaigns. “Yes, of course, political parties should work together to combat intimidation. But some of my opponents have engaged in dog-whistle politics, and not just at election time,” she said. |
Social media firms should be be liable for abuse: UK committee | Social media firms should be made liable for illegal content and there should be a new electoral law to counter the intimidation of MPs during elections, according to the UK’s independent Committee on Standards in Public Life. The body, which provides ethical advice to the prime minister, has recommended the changes, which would be easier to implement after Brexit, following an inquiry into the abuse of MPs during this year’s general election. The committee also called for social media companies to remove intimidatory material quickly and for police to be trained to investigate offences committed on social media.
| https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/intimidation-in-public-life-a-review-by-the-committee-on-standards-in-public-life | 2017-12-13 00:00:00 | In recent years, the intimidation experienced by Parliamentary candidates, and others in public life, has become a threat to the diversity, integrity, and vibrancy of representative democracy in the UK.
The Committee reports on its review of intimidation in public life, including Parliamentary candidates and others.
The Committee makes a package of recommendations for action to government, social media companies, political parties, the police, broadcast and print media, and MPs and Parliamentary candidates themselves.
The Government’s response to the review was published in March 2018.
Please note that the recommendation that ‘The political parties must work together to develop a joint code of conduct on intimidatory behaviour during election campaigns by December 2018’ has since been revised. The Committee decided at their October meeting that, in view of the continuing evidence of intimidation in public life, this joint standard should apply at all times and not just during periods of general election campaigns. |
Private equity circles RIA industry in search for new investments | The registered investment advisory (RIA) space is becoming a key area for private investment, with interest peaking amid a growth of independent firms even as the industry consolidates. Private equity funds are also sitting on a large amount of unused cash. Around 75% of RIA firms manage less than $100m, but its pace of growth is high. Private equity investment in the financial advisory space has risen to $3.3bn from $2bn in the past five years, according to figures from Echelon Partners. Investors usually expect double-digit returns for relatively short-term commitments.
| http://www.investmentnews.com/article/20171209/FREE/171209933/why-private-equity-wants-a-piece-of-the-ria-market?platform=hootsuite | 2017-12-12 18:25:26.097000 | The secret is out: The independent financial advisory space is the hottest growth-investment strategy for deep-pocketed private investors.
“We’ve seen private equity money ebb and flow over the years, but over the last few years we’ve seen a surge and a change in the way PE firms are investing in the RIA space,” said Scott Slater, vice president of practice management and consulting at Fidelity Clearing & Custody Solutions.
In the latest testament to the success of the wealth management model, private equity firms have been pouring billions into the space to take advantage of a consolidation wave those same investors are helping to fuel.
For owners of financial advisory firms, this means an even steadier barrage of inquiries from PE firms looking to buy a stake in their businesses.
Phil Shaffer, an adviser who left Morgan Stanley earlier this year to launch Halite Partners, said he was getting solicitations from private equity investors even before he had any money under management.
“We are at an inflection point with private equity looking at the RIA space,” he said.
Why now?
The stars seem to be aligning on several fronts, including more adviser movement toward the independent space, consolidation of firms within that market and private equity sitting on a mountain of cash.
“The RIA space is very fragmented, with about three-quarters of firms managing less than $100 million, but at the same time it is growing at about two and a half times the pace of the wirehouses,” said Alois Pirker, research director at Aite Group.
(More: What advisers should consider before taking a capital infusion)
The trend lines from Cerulli Associates bear this out. The research firm reports that wirehouse and independent broker-dealer reps made up 53.7% of the industry in 2011, while registered independent advisers and hybrid RIAs made up 19.5%. In 2016, wirehouses and IBDs made up 49.7%, while RIAs made up 22.7%.
“I definitely think private equity is adding fuel to the fire of the independent channel,” said Marty Bicknell, chief executive of Mariner Wealth Advisors, whose parent company, Mariner Holdings, has $47 billion in assets. “And the momentum is absolutely on that side.”
PE firms now are investing about $3.3 billion a year into the financial advisory space, with the goal of capturing double-digit returns for relatively short-term commitments, said Daniel Seivert, chief executive of investment bank Echelon Partners. The amount invested in 2016 was $3.1 billion, up from $2 billion five years ago.
Advisory firms of all shapes and sizes should not be surprised by a stepped-up effort from PE firms to secure a piece of the action.
Consolidation capital
“Private equity firms are looking to take advantage of the kind of consolidation trend that has been present in other industries at different times,” said Rush Benton, senior director of strategic wealth at CapTrust. “Consolidation requires capital, and PE firms see that opportunity, which is why the trend is here to stay.”
While there are multiple ways a buyer or investor can gauge the value of an advisory firm, Mr. Shaffer said it is about increasing the value through scale.
PE firms’ investments in advisory firms Source: CB Insights and ECHELON Partners Analysis
“Most of the buyers are looking at firms with $3 billion to $5 billion under management and up,” he said. “But we’re also seeing private equity money looking at an operator that can put together $300 million. Or they might invest in five or six smaller RIAs and hire a guy to oversee them.”
In essence, the private equity influence is less about playing an active role in the wealth management business than it is about leveraging the trend toward scale across the industry.
For example, if an RIA with $300 million under management is valued at a five-times-earnings multiple, an RIA with $3 billion under management will be valued at twice the multiple.
“The real driver here is what is happening to the equity value at the firms,” Mr. Shaffer said. “The private equity guys get that. They can come in and buy lower-multiple firms, and build them up to create higher multiples.
(More: Broker-dealer M&A: Is your firm next?)
“You will not be able to buy a quality RIA with $300 million in assets for a five-times multiple five years from now,” he said. “People want to buy them because they are growth engines, and buyers will be competing for all the really good firms.”
Another factor spurring the PE buying binge, according to Preqin, a research firm focused on alternative investment assets, is the growing pile of money in private equity funds.
Swollen coffers
Of the more than $2.7 trillion in total private equity assets, nearly $1 trillion is uninvested “dry powder” still seeking investment opportunities.
By comparison, in 2012, total PE assets were less than $2 trillion, and the dry powder was around $560 billion.
“The private equity coffers are swollen, and they’re looking for good opportunities to deploy those funds,” said David DeVoe, managing partner of RIA consulting firm DeVoe & Co.
Private equity firms rarely buy entire RIA firms, but the deals almost always fuel merger and acquisition activity, which continues to pick up in the RIA space.
“Some investors are looking to get as much as they can, by taking 70% or 80% stakes,” Mr. Seivert said. “That kind of deal will feel more like an acquisition.”
Other deals will push the limits of ownership up to just under 50%, he said, and a third type will look more like a capital infusion, with the PE investors taking a 25% or 30% ownership position.
Limited terms
In almost every case, the PE ownership is limited to a term of about a half-dozen years before the private equity fund needs to provide its investors with liquidity. RIAs can find themselves linked to new ownership partners as part of a cycle that can last a long time.
Mr. Bicknell described the perpetual status of PE ownership as a “carousel,” and said RIAs should understand this on the way in. He has not yet sold any piece of his large firm to a private equity investor, but sees the trend as a positive thing.
“Private equity is going to lead to more consolidation, which I think is the best thing for this industry, and it’s also in the best interest of the clients,” he said. “As we professionalize this industry, the client wins because succession issues will no longer exist, and as more capital comes into the space, I believe it will attract more next-generation talent.”
Ron Carson, founder and chief executive of Carson Group, said the decision to sell a stake in his nearly $9 billion advisory firm for $30 million last year was all about growth.
(More: Ron Carson explains the origins of ‘Ronsense’)
“The private equity space is looking at a fragmented profession that is going to consolidate — because the larger the firm, the more valuable it is — and bigger firms are harder to mess up,” he said. “Unless firms get bigger, it will be more difficult to compete, and a lot of smaller firms that want to remain independent are going to lose their clients to larger firms.”
Mr. Carson does not buy into the notion of a rotating relationship with outside investors, like the recent $100 million deal between HighTower Advisors and Thomas H. Lee Partners. In HighTower’s case, the PE relationship provided liquidity to other institutional investors.
“I needed private equity for very specific things, and we have first right to buy our ownership back,” Mr. Carson said. “Based on where we are today, my guess is we will probably own 100% of our firm when they want to exit in four to six years. And as the deal is structured, I have complete control of the company; the only thing I can’t do is ruin it.”
But as Mr. Slater of Fidelity pointed out, there are multiple layers of pros and cons to consider when partnering with a private equity investor.
“There is a time line for classic private equity that raises the bar for performance for the firms they own,” he said. “What you may like is having very smart people coming alongside you and putting money into your business. But what you may not like is somebody pushing you to grow your business faster.
“You need to understand that you need an alignment of interests.” he said. “You can’t just take the money.” |
Redrow Redrow to develop 295 apartments in Newham | Housing association Peabody will work alongside housebuilders Berkeley Homes and Redrow Homes to create almost 1,800 properties in London. Berkeley Homes will establish 1,500 properties in west Thamesmead, the former site of Arsenal FC until 1913, while FTSE-250 firm Redrow will develop 295 apartment homes, offering a mix of properties and studios of between one and three bedrooms.
| https://www.standard.co.uk/business/berkeley-and-redrow-to-build-homes-on-old-arsenal-fc-and-newham-sites-a3715736.html | 2017-12-12 16:54:30.980000 | H ousing association giant Peabody on Monday named two builders it will partner to deliver nearly 1800 homes in London, kicking off at one of Arsenal FC’s former homes.
It said listed Berkeley Homes will create 1500 properties in west Thamesmead on a site that was home to the Premier League club until 1913 before it headed to north London.
The project is part of a wider regeneration of Thamesmead which is expected to deliver 20,000 new homes.
There will be 35% affordable homes in addition to properties for private sale at the Berkeley part of the scheme.
In Newham, Peabody has appointed FTSE-250 firm Redrow to develop 295 apartments. They will be a mix of studios and one to three bedrooms.
The company added it has acquired former Brent council land moments away from Wembley stadium. It wants to build 198 affordable homes there.
Peabody’s chief Brendan Sarsfield said it is looking “to deliver more desperately needed… homes”. |
Collaboration between EMS and primary care physicians could reduce unnecessary emergency transport for fallen seniors | Researchers from the Wake County Emergency Medical Services have found that utilizing a protocol that unites paramedic assessments of patients with primary care physician consultations significantly lowered the need for unnecessary ambulance transport for senior patients in assisted living facilities who had fallen from ground level. The top cause of nonfatal injures for those aged 65 and over admitted to emergency departments are unintentional falls. Those who live in assisted living facilities are usually transported to emergency departments as a matter of policy, even if the falls are not serious, putting unnecessary strain on health services and increasing the exposure of patients to risks such as unnecessary tests or infections. The Wake County Emergency Medical Services worked alongside the Doctors Making Housecalls service to create a protocol for specifically-trained paramedics to identify which patients required emergency transport and which could be provided with primary care provider assessment within 18 hours of the call to the emergency medical services. The study took into account 953 residents, with the group having 359 residents that suffered 840 ground-level falls over a 43-month period. The protocol found that transport was unnecessary after 553 falls, a 62.9 percent decrease in the usual level of transports. The report found that 98-99 percent of those treated by a primary care physician instead of being transported were given safe and appropriate care. The findings could lead to more effective resolution of the high numbers of unnecessary ambulance transports to an emergency department for this common issue.
| https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-12-collaboration-ems-primary-physicians-unnecessary.html | 2017-12-12 16:45:36.060000 | A protocol that couples paramedic assessment with primary care physician consultation and timely follow up significantly reduced unnecessary ambulance transport for fallen elderly residents of assisted living facilities. The findings of a prospective cohort study are published in Annals of Internal Medicine.
Unintentional falls are the leading cause of nonfatal injury for adults aged 65 years or older who are treated in emergency departments in the United States. Residents of assisted living facilities who fall may not be seriously hurt, but policy still dictates that they be transported to the emergency department. These policies burden the health care system and place patients at risk for harms, such as unnecessary tests or exposure to infection. Therefore, limiting unnecessary transport is desirable.
Researchers from Wake County Emergency Medical Services sought to determine whether unnecessary transport to the emergency department could safely be avoided for patients who experienced a ground-level fall in an assisted living facility. Wake County Emergency Medical Services collaborated with Doctors Making Housecalls, a group of primary care physicians specializing in home care for older adults, to develop a protocol for specially trained paramedics to identify a subset of patients who would not be transported to the emergency department but instead would be scheduled for a visit with a primary care provider within 18 hours of the call for emergency medical services.
The study involved a convenience sample of 953 residents, 359 of whom had 840 ground-level falls over 43 months. The protocol recommended nontransport after 553 falls, which marked a substantial decrease (62.9 percent) in transports. The researchers concluded that 98 to 99 percent of nontransported patients received safe, appropriate care. If implemented on a widespread basis, this approach could potentially avoid large numbers of unnecessary ambulance transports to the emergency department for simple falls. |
Under New Tax Plan, the Cost of Aging Could Rise | The US government’s House of Representatives and Senate are currently debating two tax bills that could significantly affect the cost of aging. The revised tax bills could potentially erase a deduction for medical expenses, removing thousands of dollars in support for the sick and elderly. The medical deductions are permitted when they exceed 10 percent of a household’s adjusted gross income. The House bill has proposed removing this deduction entirely, whereas the Senate bill plans to leave medical expense deductions untouched. If the House bill is successful, those who spent more money on health expenses this year stand to lose more money in 2018. The AARP Public Policy Institute has evaluated IRS data from 2015 and calculated that 8.8 million Americans use the deduction annually, including the elderly, those with children with special needs, and the disabled. Around 55 percent of those claiming the deduction were over the age of 65, with 69 percent having incomes under $75,000. The average sum claimed was $9,904. Around 52 percent of those who are older than 65 will require extended care before they die, federal data has found, making the deduction important for many Americans requiring assistance. The Republicans in Congress could use the eradication of the deduction to penalize states with higher income taxes by reducing the deductibles that are permitted. However, it is likely that the move will cause sick and elderly citizens to rely more on state provisions through Medicaid, putting more pressure on the federal government.
| https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/08/your-money/tax-plan-medical-deduction.html | 2017-12-12 16:33:04.933000 | Imagine two couples, both alike in incomes, in a state without income tax where we lay our scenario. They have $150,000 in income and $100,000 in medical expenses and take no other itemized deductions.
Now imagine that one gets a deduction for medical expenses and one does not. Using the 2017 tax brackets and a rule that would not allow medical deductions unless they exceed 10 percent of adjusted gross income, a couple that could access the deduction would end up with $15,547 more at the end of tax season than one that could not deduct and thus paid more in taxes, according to calculations that Ruth A. Sattig Betz, an accountant in Farmingdale, N.Y., ran for me.
Take the income down to $75,000 (where the extra $25,000 for the medical costs to pay the $100,000 in bills would come from sources or savings that are not subject to income tax) and the household with the ability to take the deduction would end the year with $6,826 more.
So the medical expenses clearly matter, a lot. “Two households may have identical incomes, but they do not at all have identical capacity to pay taxes,” said Cristina Martin Firvida, AARP’s director of financial security. “And it’s not because of a choice that one of them made.”
Indeed, to critical observers, it looks like Republican leaders in Congress are using the tax code to punish states with high income taxes. They use the bill to accomplish this by limiting how much of those state income taxes are deductible. That effectively penalizes some of those residents, who did choose to live in those states, with a higher total tax bill. |
Subway consolidates US, Canadian creative teams with Dentsu Aegis | Sandwich chain Subway is consolidating its North American media and creative advertising accounts following a review of its marketing strategy. The company selected Dentsu Aegis Network North America, a network of agencies that includes existing Subway media agency Carat, Mcgarrybowen and DentsuBos, to look after its strategy across all channels. The brand had appointed BBDO as its creative agency in 2015 but dropped the firm in October 2016 and has been mostly using its previous partner MMB since, which participated in the review but will not be involved in future.
| http://www.adweek.com/agencies/subway-consolidates-north-america-media-and-creative-with-dentsu-aegis-network/ | 2017-12-12 15:52:57.163000 | Subway announced today it will consolidate its entire U.S. and Canadian (North American) media and creative business with Dentsu Aegis Network after a review launched in July.
Beginning in early 2018, the Franchise at Dentsu Aegis Network North America—which includes Carat New York, mcgarrybowen New York, Carat Canada and DentsuBos—will be responsible for the fast-food chain’s strategy across all channels. Employees out of the Japanese conglomerate’s New York, Toronto and Montreal offices will be tasked with expanding Subway’s brand vitality with consumers.
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UK undersold Green Investment Bank: National Audit Office | The UK’s Green Investment Bank (GIB) was sold too cheaply, according to the National Audit Office (NAO). Australian bank Macquarie paid £1.6bn ($2bn) in cash for the GIB in August and agreed an additional £500m to honour the bank’s existing commitments. The NAO said that this amount was at the lower end of valuations for the GIB and that the UK government could also have gained an additional £63m if it had delayed the sale until the construction of some GIB-owned windfarms was complete. Negative effects for the GIB also resulted from the sale taking longer than anticipated.
| https://www.nao.org.uk/report/the-green-investment-bank/ | 2017-12-12 14:00:53.720000 | This examines whether the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy has achieved the objectives of the UK Green Investment Bank intervention, and whether UK Government Investments has achieved value for money in the subsequent sale of the Bank.
A report by the National Audit Office on the Green Investment Bank (GIB) has found that the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills, now the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (the Department) set up GIB with a clear mission that provided a sound basis for it to succeed. GIB quickly stimulated investment in the green economy, particularly in offshore wind where it was addressing market failures, and returns on the portfolio are forecast to exceed expectations. Its impact in other sectors is less certain, and in deciding to sell GIB the Department lacked clear criteria or evidence to show that the Bank had achieved its intended green impact. The sale of GIB in 2017 was complex and took much longer than expected but the final sale price was within the government’s valuation range, at the lower end.
The Government established the GIB to “accelerate the UK’s transition to a greener, stronger economy” by investing in green projects. The Department estimated the UK needed investment of up to £330 billion by 2020. As of March 2017 the GIB had invested in 100 projects, committing up to £3.4 billion of its own capital, and had attracted £8.6 billion of private capital, equating to around £2.50 for every £1 invested.
The Department set up GIB with a clear rationale and mission and it planned and prepared GIB generally well, providing a sound basis for GIB to succeed. GIB’s objectives included attracting co-investment from private investors, and delivering both green impact and financial returns on investments. The Department set out how it would judge GIB’s success in most areas but not in terms of its green impact. It also wanted GIB to be an ‘enduring institution’, but it was not clear what this would mean in practice.
In June 2015, the government decided that further public funding was not affordable and announced it was aiming to sell all or part of the GIB. The Department considered different options for GIB’s future against its two primary sale objectives: securing value for money, and declassifying GIB from the public sector balance sheet to reduce public debt. The Department also told us it wanted to allow GIB to raise its own finance.
In March 2016 the government launched the sale process, which UK Government Investments (UKGI) ran. UKGI obtained a premium to government’s investment. The sale achieved limited competitive tension, and the Department and UKGI had to develop a fall-back option after launching the sale. The sale process lasted nearly 18 months, more than two times longer than expected. The delay and uncertainty affected GIB operationally and a number of key staff departed, which GIB told us limited its ability to invest.
In April 2017 the government decided to sell, rather than pursue its phased sale option which it forecast could have raised an additional £63 million, although it could have raised considerably more or less than this depending on how successfully assets moved from construction to operation. The government wanted to transfer the construction and market risks of holding to the buyer. In August 2017 a Macquarie Group-led consortium paid the government £1.6 billion (excluding a stake in assets that government retained, valued at £132 million). This reduces public sector net debt by £1.6 billion.
The government intends that GIB in private ownership should continue contributing to green financing so that the UK can meet its commitments on climate change. Macquarie has made public (non legally-binding) commitments for the first three years after the sale, but government actions required to meet climate change commitments will extend beyond 2020.
“Ultimately the value for money of the Green Investment Bank intervention will only be seen over time. A key test will be whether the Government needs to intervene again in this way to stimulate growth in the green economy and to help it achieve its climate change commitments” Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office
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UK undersold Green Investment Bank: National Audit Office | The UK’s Green Investment Bank (GIB) was sold too cheaply, according to the National Audit Office (NAO). Australian bank Macquarie paid £1.6bn ($2bn) in cash for the GIB in August and agreed an additional £500m to honour the bank’s existing commitments. The NAO said that this amount was at the lower end of valuations for the GIB and that the UK government could also have gained an additional £63m if it had delayed the sale until the construction of some GIB-owned windfarms was complete. Negative effects for the GIB also resulted from the sale taking longer than anticipated.
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/12/green-investment-bank-sold-too-cheaply-watchdog-says | 2017-12-12 14:00:53.720000 | Ministers missed out on tens of millions extra on the sale of the Green Investment Bank (GIB) in August, according to the spending watchdog.
The National Audit Office said the £1.6bn paid in cash by the Australian bank Macquarie came in at the low end of the government’s valuation. Macquarie agreed to spend a further £500m to cover the bank’s existing commitments.
Moreover, the government could have increased the value of the sale by £63m if it had waited until some of the windfarms owned by the bank had finished construction. One option under consideration was a phased sale, where the government retained ownership of the bank until 2018 when most of its investments were operational and then privatised it through an initial public offering.
“It was likely that assets would have been worth more if it waited for a sale,” the spending watchdog said in a report on whether ministers achieved value for money on the sale. However, it added that ministers had avoided construction risks by selling when they did.
Caroline Lucas, the Green party co-leader, said: “It’s simply shocking that the government wasted millions of pounds by not going ahead with the phased sale option.”
The bank was a centrepiece of the coalition government’s efforts to kickstart the green economy. It invested £12bn of public and private capital in offshore windfarms, waste-to-energy plants and energy-saving projects, but, three years after it was launched, ministers said it would be sold to pay off public debt.
Even though the decision was made to sell as soon as possible rather than wait until 2018, the process still took longer than expected, with negative effects on the bank.
Delays stemming from legislative scrutiny, haggling over the price and legal challenges led the transaction to take more than 17 months – more than twice as long as expected.
The delay hit day-to-day operations as key staff fled the bank and contributed to the cost of government legal fees, that more than doubledto £2.36m.
“GIB told us the delay and uncertainty throughout the sale process led to the loss of key GIB staff, and affected GIB’s ability to continue investing in projects,” the NAO said.
Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat leader and the minister who launched the bank, said the decision to privatise the institution showed the Conservatives did not care about the environment.
“Sadly, the mishandled sale process has created uncertainty, particularly through key staff losses, at a time when the GIB should have been growing and helping the UK hit international carbon reduction targets by fostering the green economy,” he said.
The National Audit Office said that while officials had secured some commitments from Macquarie to continue its green goals, they were not legally binding.
Labour MP Meg Hillier, chair of the public accounts committee of MPs, said she was “deeply disappointed” at the guarantees the government had won on the green objectives.
The NAO report laid bare the lack of serious competition in the bidding process, particularly after a member withdrew in September 2016 from Macquarie’s main rival, the SDCL consortium.
“The Macquarie consortium became aware of this, and saw itself as the only credible bidder left in the process. This led to a loss of competitive tension in the sale process,” the report said. The NAO also noted that the drawn-out completion process effectively meant the government lost a further £14.5m on the sale on top of the £63m.
The government defended selling when it did, saying it offered a higher degree of certainty and shifted risks to Macquarie.
“The sale of the Green Investment Bank made £186m profit for the taxpayer. The UK led the world in setting up the GIB to drive investment in renewable technology,” the UK government said.
Edward Northam, the head of the Green Investment Group, Europe, said: “We’ve made very positive initial progress and look forward to lots more to come, delivering pioneering green investment in the UK and internationally.” |
Scientists develop 'black box' to track surgeons' ability | US company Intuitive Surgical has developed a "black box" technology that can evaluate a human surgeon's performance while undertaking robot-assisted prostate cancer surgery. A study published in the Journal of Urology revealed the dVLogger was able to capture data on a surgeon's movements and their duration, enabling it to distinguish between experienced and novice clinicians. Lead author Andrew Hung, an assistant professor at the University of Southern California, said the objiective evaluations carried out by the dVLogger would help develop standardised evaluations for surgical proficiency.
| http://www.business-standard.com/article/news-ians/this-black-box-recorder-can-measure-surgeons-proficiency-117121101008_1.html | 2017-12-12 13:48:54.607000 | Scientists have developed a novel recorder similar in concept to a flight recorder on an airplane that can be used to objectively measure surgeons' proficiency in robotic-assisted prostate cancer surgery.
The recorder, called the dVLogger developed by the US-based Intuitive Surgical, similar to the "black box" in flight would evaluate a surgeon's proficiency in performing the surgery to ensure patient safety.
When attached to a robotic surgery system during radical prostatectomy procedures -- the most common treatment for prostate cancer -- the recorder would capture data that could be used to discern the difference between novice and expert surgeons, the study showed.
It captures both anonymised video and movement data.
"The dVLogger records the surgeon's movements, capturing where the instruments are and how the surgeon is moving the instruments," said lead author Andrew Hung, Assistant Professor at University of Southern California.
To measure the recorder's ability, four basic prostate surgery steps were analysed. Data from 100 procedures performed by both novice and expert surgeons were recorded.
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The results, forthcoming in The Journal of Urology, showed that novice and expert surgeons could be identified by measuring time to complete operative steps, distance of instrument and camera travel and frequency of camera movements.
"We now have an opportunity to put surgeon proficiency under the microscope and see what role it plays in patient outcomes," Hung said.
"Creating a sustainable, objective method for evaluating surgeon proficiency and standardising credentialing is a way to help ensure patient safety," he noted.
--IANS
rt/umer/rn |
Chilean solar plant to provide power at night | Spain's Cox Energía will build a solar power plant that will supply 140 GWh of electricity to Chile’s grid, 24 hours a day. The Madrid-based utility secured the project with a winning bid of $34.40 per MWh. Analysts predict the company will turn to power storage in order to keep the electricity flowing day and night. Chile, alongside Mexico and Brazil, is establishing itself as a major player in the renewable energy sector. Investments in the Latin American region have grown at twice the global rate, a trend set to continue as solar prices continue to drop.
| https://qz.com/1147953/a-new-project-will-supply-chile-with-solar-power-even-at-night/ | 2017-12-12 13:48:03.300000 | A new solar power plant in Chile will to supply electricity to the country’s power grid even when the sun doesn’t shine.
With a bid of $34.40 per megawatt-hour (MWh), Cox Energía of Spain won the rights to supply 140 gigawatt-hours of electricity to the Chilean grid during day and night, through foul weather and fair, using photovoltaics alone, reports GreentechMedia. That’s enough to power about 13,000 homes for a year. To keep the electricity flowing, the company will likely rely on some sort of storage system. Exactly what technology it’ll use has not been announced, but it’s most likely some sort of lithium-ion battery setup.
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It’s yet another sign that large-scale energy storage has arrived. A series of large batteries designed to support electricity grids have been deployed this year, with projects making headlines from California to Australia. Tesla and the AES Corporation in the US, Altagas in Canada, and others have jumped in to stake their claims in a market worth an estimated $12.7 billion in 2017, and expected to grow as more and more renewable energy plants are installed around the world.
Cox Energía’s $34.40 per MWh bid comes on the heels of the lowest confirmed prices ever recorded for solar, when, in November, Mexico awarded the rights to build an 80.3-megawatt plant at $19.70 per MWh, to Mitsui and Trina, energy companies based in Japan and China, respectively. In Chile, the local subsidiary of the Italian company Enel recently won a bid to provide 593 megawatts in renewable energy—a mix of wind and solar—at $21.48 per MWh. When both the Ensel and Cox Energía projects come online—which is expected to be in 2024—the Chilean government expects residential electricity prices to fall by 50%. That should help the country hit its target of generating 70% of total energy from renewable sources by 2050.
It’s a global trend: Wind and solar developers are entering record-low bids for energy projects all over the world as they anticipate steep price drops and the arrival of new storage technologies. Project developers are building new plants more efficiently, wind turbines and photovoltaic panels have gotten cheaper with economies of scale, and storage technologies, such as lithium-ion batteries, have seen prices plummet falling by about 50% since 2014. |
Chilean solar plant to provide power at night | Spain's Cox Energía will build a solar power plant that will supply 140 GWh of electricity to Chile’s grid, 24 hours a day. The Madrid-based utility secured the project with a winning bid of $34.40 per MWh. Analysts predict the company will turn to power storage in order to keep the electricity flowing day and night. Chile, alongside Mexico and Brazil, is establishing itself as a major player in the renewable energy sector. Investments in the Latin American region have grown at twice the global rate, a trend set to continue as solar prices continue to drop.
| https://futurism.com/new-solar-plant-provide-power-13000-homes-year/ | 2017-12-12 13:48:03.300000 | Solar panels have been a hot topic of conversation for sustainably-minded people for decades, but it's taken a long time for them to become a viable option for the average person. Government subsidies have made it less expensive to outfit the roof of your home with solar panels, while tech companies have sprung up to develop smaller-scale options.
In 2022, it's possible to get solar panels designed to power your home, take camping, or replace the power adapter you use to charge your phone or other small electronics. Investing in solar panels is not only a way to reduce your carbon footprint, but using them can actually save you money. By taking part of your energy use "off the grid," solar panels can lower your monthly utility bill. Here’s how you can integrate the best solar panels into your life.
— Best Overall: Raptic Portable Power Station
— Best Budget: Grouphug Solar Charger
— Best For Camping: Jackery Solar Generator 1000
— Best Battery Pack: Nature Love Solar Power Bank
— Best For Home: Eco-Worthy Solar Power System Kit
How We Chose the Best Solar Panels
Our solar panel recommendations come from a mix of hands-on experience and research into the best options available. We picked some solar panels that were the best for one specific purpose, while two or three of our recommendations could work for different aspects of your life. In addition, we looked for solar panels that could work whether you own or rent, and live in either a house or apartment. Fortunately, there are more options than ever.
Size: The first factor you should consider when getting a solar panel is its size. Most of our solar panel recommendations are small enough to fit in a backpack or dedicated carrying case. But the largest one is several feet long and needs to be permanently attached to your roof.
Battery: Solar panels absorb the sun's rays to create energy, but they should continue to provide power even during the night. The solar panels in this guide either come with a battery or can be connected to one in order to store the energy they've created. The battery's capacity (measured in Milliamps, which is sometimes shortened to mAh) determines how much power can be stored. The batteries that are compatible with solar panels can be hooked up to anything from your smallest tech accessories to the electrical system in your house.
Power Output: Creating and storing solar energy is great, but a solar panel's power output dictates the ways you can use it. Consider this: The power adapter Apple used to ship with the iPhone could output energy at 5 watts, while the highest-ranked toaster on Amazon requires 1,800 watts. That's a wide gulf. Our solar panel recommendations can accommodate the energy requirements for both of those gadgets. You can also make sure you have power when you're off the grid with the best solar generators.
The Best Solar Panels: Reviews and Recommendations
Best Overall: Raptic Titan Solar 100
Portable and Powerful . RAPTIC
Why It Made The Cut: As our pick for the best solar panel overall, Raptic’s Titan Solar 100 is a two-panel system that’s easy to set up and carry, but capable of charging all but the most power-hungry electronics.
Specs:
— Panel Size: 42 inches long x 26 inches wide (21-inches long when folded)
— Battery: N/A
— Power Output: 100 watts
Pros:
— Powerful for its size
— Great value
— Includes a carrying case
Cons:
— Doesn’t come with a battery
Raptic's Titan Solar 100 manages to hit the sweet spot of portability, performance, and price that makes it well-suited for all but the most power-hungry needs. The system is comprised of two 50-watt solar panels, for a total power output of 100 watts. Each solar panel works independently, but Raptic attached them using a hinge system, so they fold on top of one another for easy storage. This arrangement makes the Titan Solar 100 a lot easier to set up and break down. Raptic bundles its solar panels with a carrying case to make transportation even easier.
The Titan Solar 100 is 42 inches wide and 26 inches tall when fully unfolded, which means the solar panels are large enough to capture a lot of the sun's rays. A kickstand on the back angles them to optimize their energy absorption potential, too. Raptic says its solar panels are made out of tempered glass for improved durability, so you shouldn't have to worry about degradation with regular use. The Titan Solar 100 is by far the best value in this guide, but it comes with a catch. Raptic doesn't include a battery with its solar panels, so you'll have to get one separately. Naturally, the company recommends its own power stations: the Raptic Titan and Raptic Titan XL. The Titan Solar 100 terminates into a standard DC power connector, though, so you can use any full-sized battery that has the appropriate ports.
We're inclined to recommend pairing Raptic's solar panels with its Titan or Titan XL because we've had the opportunity to test the former. We found it to be powerful enough to charge multiple devices without breaking a sweat, and were especially impressed with its relative portability. Raptic offers free shipping on all U.S. orders, which is something to keep in mind if you order directly from its site. If you only plan on getting one set of solar panels to start your journey into renewable energy, Raptic's Solar 100 is the perfect choice.
Best Budget: Grouphug Window Solar Charger
Say Goodbye to Your Phone Charger. Grouphug
Why It Made The Cut: Grouphug’s Window Solar Panel is an apartment-friendly solar panel capable of charging small electronics. It’s a good first step to take if you’re interested in starting to use solar power.
Specs:
— Panel Size: 10 inches long, 8 inches wide
— Battery: 3,400mAh
— Power Output: 10 watts
Pros:
— Apartment-friendly size
— All-in-one design
— Aesthetically pleasing
Cons:
— Not very powerful
— Only one charging port
Grouphug's Window Solar Charger is not only the most budget-friendly solar panel you can get right now, it's also the easiest to set up and most versatile. The single panel is fitted inside a pane of glass, which is wrapped in a wooden frame. This solar panel is designed to live semi-permanently on your window, where it's attached using a suction cup. There's nothing to set up: unbox the Window Solar Charger, attach it to your window, and wait.
The self-contained solar panel has a built-in 3,400mAh battery, which can charge most smartphones to about 50 percent when the sun goes down. You can plug your devices directly into the Window Solar Charger's USB-A port, which is located at the bottom of the frame. Grouphug offers a USB-C to USB-A adapter for under $10, and we recommend springing for it since many tech accessories have begun shipping with a USB-C to USB-C cable. Grouphug says it'll take roughly 10 hours of sunlight to fully charge the Window Solar Charger's battery, so be mindful of your placement.
What we like most about the Window Solar Panel is the fact that it's designed for everybody. At 14 inches tall, it's the smallest solar panel we're recommending, and the only one that can be easily used indoors whether you own or rent your place. We were skeptical about the solar panel's suction cup, but it's held for several weeks without fail.
We're a little wary about the fact that the Window Solar Charger's USB-A port is built into the frame of the solar panel, because it'll be tough — if not impossible — to repair for yourself if something goes wrong. That said, Grouphug says it'll take a broken panel back to replace parts if necessary, so there is a reparability option if you need one. If you've avoided getting solar panels because of their cost, cumbersome setup, or space constraints, Grouphug's Solar Charger leaves you with no more excuses.
Best for Camping: Jackery Solar Generator 1000
Renewable Energy for Offroading. Jackery
Why It Made The Cut: Jackery’s Solar Generator 1000 is a bundle that includes two high-powered solar panels and a high capacity battery pack. This combo generates and stores enough energy to power any camping appliance, or everyday electronics like your phone or computer.
Specs:
— Panel Size: 48 inches long x 21 inches wide (24 inches long when folded)
— Battery: Yes (capacity N/A)
— Power Output: 200 watts
Pros:
— Ultra powerful
— Includes a huge battery
Cons:
— Fairly large panels for portable use
— Doesn’t come with a carrying case
Campers devoted to making their outdoor activities as sustainable as possible should seriously consider Jacekery's Solar Generator 1000. It's handily the most powerful portable solar panel system we're recommending. Jackery, much like Raptic, has opted to design its solar panels to fold inward for easier storage. Each solar panel has a power output of 50 watts, but Jackery's system contains four panels for a total of 200 watts. Energy from the solar panels is fed directly into the Explorer 1000, Jackery's high-capacity battery pack.
The Explorer 1000 has three AC outlets, two USB-C ports, two USB-A ports, a car outlet, and a maximum power output of 1000 watts. Jackery says this is enough to run a coffee maker for 88 minutes, an electric grill for 50 minutes, and a heating blanket for 11 hours. It's feasible to run all of your camping gear through renewable energy using Jackery's solar panels. You'll probably keep the SolarSaga solar panels connected to Explorer 1000 all the time, but it's worth noting that the panels themselves have a USB-C and USB-A port. If you need to quickly charge your phone while setting up this solar power system, this is a nice touch. Another nice extra is the Explorer 1000's tiny LED screen, which displays how much power the battery has left, and the amount of energy that's currently being used.
When it comes to portability, the SolarSaga solar panels included in this bundle fare pretty well. Each one is 48 inches wide and 21 inches tall when unfolded, and half the width when folded. Jackery doesn't include a bag with these panels, though, so you'll need to get one separately. The appropriately sized artists’ portfolio is probably your best bet, as it's designed to be carried around easily. You'll need a fair bit of space to take full advantage of what Jackery's Solar Generator has to offer, but it's the ideal solar panel solution for anyone who loves spending extended periods of time outdoors.
Best Portable: Nature Love Solar Power Bank
Backpack Friendly . Nature Love
Why It Made The Cut: Because of its small size, this is the only solar panel you can take with you everywhere.
Specs:
— Panel Size: Roughly 7.5 x 5 inches
— Battery: Yes; 25000mAh
— Power Output: N/A
Pros:
— Extremely portable
— Panel built right into the battery pack
— Can charge up to four devices at once
Cons:
— Small panel size
— Can only power smaller electronics
Most of our solar panel recommendations are portable, but Natural Love's Solar Power Bank takes that concept to the next level. The high-capacity battery pack has a solar panel on its back, so you can charge it anywhere there's sunshine. We've chosen this battery pack because it's durability and wide variety of ports. Nature Love says the Solar Power Bank has an IP66 rating, which means it's dust-proof, and won't get damaged when exposed to water, though it shouldn't be fully submerged.
The Solar Power Bank can charge up to four devices at once using two USB-A ports, one USB-C port, and a wireless charging pad on top of the battery. Its 25,000mAh capacity allows you to fully recharge an iPhone up to four times and an iPad twice. The battery pack's solar panel is only on one side, so you'll need to front-side up to get an eco-friendly charge. If you need to top it up on a cloudy day, you also have the option to connect the Solar Power Bank to a traditional charging brick. This is the highest-capacity power bank we've found with a battery pack, which means it's a good pick for international travel or camping. If you get stuck outside, the Solar Power Bank's flashlights and LED array can help conserve your phone's battery. If you've begun to replace the tech accessories you rely on most with eco-friendly alternatives, Nature Love's Solar Power Bank is the only battery pack you should consider.
Best For Home: Eco-Worthy Solar Power System Kit
Permanent Solar Panels . Eco-Worthy
Why It Made The Cut: If you’re willing to put in the time and effort, Eco-Worthy’s Solar Power System Kit can help take your home off the grid without breaking the bank.
Specs:
— Panel Size: 58.3 Long x 26.2 Wide
— Battery: Yes; 50Ah (4x)
— Power Output: 1100 Watts
Pros:
— Can power any electronic device
— Very durable
Cons:
— Semi-permanent placement
— Most difficult to install
— Expensive
If you're interested in a solar panel solution to power your entire home — or at least a nice chunk of it — we highly recommend Eco-Worthy Solar Power System Kit. The kit comes with six rooftop solar panels, each of which can output up to 195 watts of electricity. These panels come with instructions, but we recommend that you get them professionally installed if you're not comfortable with moderately difficult home repairs. Keep in mind, these solar panels are designed to be permanently attached to your home.
Each panel in Eco-Worthy's kit is 58.3 inches long and 26.2 inches wide, so you'll need a fairly large area if you'd like to have them installed side by side. The company says its panels are made out of Monocrystallin (durable silicon) and designed to withstand heavy exposure to rain and snow. While they're powerful enough for home use, Eco-Worthy says its solar panel kit can be installed onto an RV or boat. In this system, energy from the solar panels is fed to a centralized control box, which routes it through a power converted into four battery cells. Each battery can output up to 3500 watts of electricity, which means they can power multiple appliances simultaneously without the risk of being overloaded. A professional electrician will be able to provide guidance on how to integrate Eco-Worthy's system into your home to mitigate any other potential risk.
It'll take a serious commitment to purchase and install Eco-Worthy's Solar System, but they're a relatively affordable purchase for the sustainably-minded homeowner. Keep in mind that installing solar panels should be seen as an investment because weaning yourself off the electrical grid will continually save you money. When you look at it through that lens, Eco-Worthy's Solar System is a no-brainer. If you're looking for a more design-oriented choice, the SunPower Equinox® complete home solar solution is another strong choice.
Things to Consider
Location: It should go without saying, but solar panels will work best if they're used in an area with a lot of sunlight. You'll want to spend a couple of weeks monitoring how much sunshine your home gets if you're opting for a whole-home solar panel system, and check the weather report before bringing portable solar panels on a trip.
Energy Consumption: If possible, you should check how much electricity you use either at home or remotely before deciding which solar panels are right for you. One easy way to do that is taking a look at the energy requirements of your most-used electronics. Smaller gadgets — think phones and tablets — will need a lot less power to operate than a washing machine and dryer. To cut down on your energy usage further, consider the best rechargeable batteries.
FAQs
Q: How long do solar panels last?
According to research conducted by the U.S. Government's National Renewable Energy Lab, solar panels can last up to 25 years at full strength. After that, the panel may become less efficient, generating less energy over time.
Q: Can the environment I live in impact the performance
Yes, another study conducted by the NREL found that extreme heat can drive solar panels to become less effective and degrade more quickly. This generally applies to rooftop solar panels installed in very hot regions.
Q: Is there a tax credit for solar panels used to power my home?
Yes, the U.S. Government does offer a 26 percent tax credit for solar photovoltaic systems installed in 2022 (this drops to 22 percent in 2023, and is currently set to expire entirely in 2024). For the full details on what can be deducted, please refer to energy.gov's comprehensive explainer.
Q: Can using solar panels meaningfully reduce the amount of money I spend on energy?
That depends entirely on a few factors including, where you live, how much energy you typically consume, the size and number of your panels, and your home's HVAC system. If you'd like to gauge the amount of money you're likely to save, energysage.com has created a calculator to help you out. Stay connected off the grid with the best wireless chargers.
Final Thoughts on Solar Panels
You may not be able to fully convert your energy consumption from fossil fuels to renewables, but getting solar panels is an excellent start. Making small changes — only charging your phone using a solar panel, for instance — can add up over time. That first step may encourage or empower you to take additional steps into lessening your reliance on fossil fuels. This is especially true if you move from an apartment into a house, which will enable you to have even more control over your home's relationship to the grid. Regardless, there's never been a better time to get a solar panel.
This post was created by a non-news editorial team at Recurrent Media, Futurism’s owner. Futurism may receive a portion of sales on products linked within this post. |
Graduway raises $12.7m to connect university alumni | UK-based software company Graduway has raised $12.7m in a series B funding round led by Susquehanna Growth Equity, bringing the company's total investment to $15.8m. Graduway has developed a platform for university alumni around the world to connect and share work opportunities, while also offering institutions a way to keep track of graduates. According to a company statement, the funds will be used to develop the platform, expand the US office and pursue new markets.
| https://www.edsurge.com/news/2017-12-11-software-company-raises-12-7m-to-expand-alumni-engagement-platform | 2017-12-12 13:46:34.007000 | SAAS-Y ALUMS: Graduway, a software company that offers a platform for college alumni management, has raised $12.7 million from Susquehanna Growth Equity in a Series B funding round. The company previously raised $3.1 million from existing investors Gigi Levy, Massa Innovations and SaaS Capital, according to Crunchbase, bringing the U.K.-based company’s total amount raised to $15.8 million.
Graduway’s platform enables registered alumni to network, share job or internship opportunities, and also provides a database for institutions to track and stay connected to their former students. The company claims to have more than 500 international clients, including the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of Oxford. According to a press release, the fundraise will be used to further develop the platform, expand its U.S. office as well as pursue new market locations. |
Google bidding glitch causes advertisers to pause ads, go manual | Google is compensating advertisers after a recent glitch saw bid costs skyrocket from a few cents to a several dollars. The hitch involved campaigns on the search giant's Shopping channel that use present return on ad spend settings. Google blamed the issue on an "engineering problem", which it said it had resolved the same day. Affected advertisers had to suspend their campaigns for 12 hours and revert to manual triggers for search ads.
| https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/311412/google-automation-hits-media-bidding-glitch-plans.html | 2017-12-12 13:24:09.507000 | by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, December 11, 2017
Advertisers and their agency partners using a smart bidding tool to run campaigns in Google Shopping that match to a preset return on ad spend (ROAS) were hit with cost per clicks (CPCs) and ad spend that were higher than usual for a few hours on December 6.
The issue was related to Shopping campaigns using ROAS settings.
ROAS bidding, an AdWords Smart Bidding strategy, allows advertisers to target ads to consumers based on a specific return on ad spend in AdWords. The bids are automatically optimized at the time of the auction.
Google identified and resolved the "engineering problem" on the same day, according to one search agency partner, who said marketers still need to keep a close eye on campaigns when they are using automated bidding policies because they are not infallible.
One advertiser wrote in a Google AdWords forum that he spent three times the company's "daily budget in a matter of hours on insane CPCs."
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Another wrote in the forum "bid costs were over 500% of normal with no increase in ROAS."
Facebook, Google, Microsoft and others are pushing marketers to place more trust in machine learning and algorithms, but a glitch that surfaced last week in Google's Shopping Ad platform reminds marketers it's still a good idea to review all campaigns with their own eyes.
The search agency partner said one advertising client saw bids jump from 40 cents to $4 on a set of keywords. "We looked at others running smart bidding and they all saw a jump in CPCs during the same hour," per the agency rep. who was buying.
Advertisers had to pause their campaigns for 12 hours and go back to using manual triggers to run search ads.
Google will continue to reach out to advertisers that were impacted by the glitch, and plans to credit their accounts with the incorrect spend during the next few weeks. |
ZhongAn to track chickens with blockchain and facial recognition | A Chinese tech company is planning to use facial recognition software to monitor chickens. ZhongAn currently uses blockchain technology in a project called "GoGo Chicken", which monitors the daily activity of the birds at free-range organic farms, from birth onwards. The technology already allows consumers to buy a baby chick and follow its development on a smartphone app, but the company is looking into using facial recognition systems to help people identify individual chickens. The technology could also be adapted for other uses, such as pet care, according to the firm.
| http://www.scmp.com/business/companies/article/2123567/blockchain-and-facial-recognition-zhongan-techs-recipe-changing | 2017-12-12 13:23:50.683000 | Tech unit of Hong Kong-listed ZhongAn Online Property & Casualty Insurance targets 23 million birds for project ‘gogochicken’ in three years |
Ouster secures $27m for laser-enhanced autonomous driving sensor | Ouster, a manufacturer of sensors used to map landscapes, has raised $27m to develop its technology for autonomous cars. The funding, led by Cox Enterprises, will enable the San Francisco company to step up production of its 64-channel, OS1 lidar sensor. The company says its new product is lighter and more energy-efficient than similar sensors but has the same resolution as the highest-performing lidar technology available.
| https://venturebeat.com/2017/12/11/ouster-raises-27-million-and-launches-its-autonomous-car-lidar-out-of-stealth/ | 2017-12-12 13:22:55.357000 | Missed the GamesBeat Summit excitement? Don't worry! Tune in now to catch all of the live and virtual sessions here.
A fledgling lidar startup is launching out of stealth today, backed by more than $30 million in investors’ money. San Francisco-based Ouster has officially unveiled its OS1 lidar, which it said represents a “step-change in lidar sensing technology” compared to what is currently available elsewhere on the market, with “marked improvements in mass, form factor, and power requirements.”
Ouster said that in addition to improvements in form factor and power requirements, its 64-channel lidar sensor, which is shipping now, also matches the resolution of the highest performing automotive lidar technology available today.
By way of a quick recap, lidar is a method of surveying the environment with laser-powered light, often used to make high-resolution maps. Many self-driving cars scan the environment using lidar, which allows the vehicle to get a sense of what’s around it and avoid obstacles. This is tricky and perilous at high speeds on busy roads, especially when poor lighting and bad weather is at play, so the need for high-quality cameras and sensors on autonomous vehicles is paramount.
Ouster was founded in early 2016 by CEO Angus Pacala and CTO Mark Frichtl, and the startup has been operating under the lidar radar in the nearly two years since.
“The company has maintained a low-profile for over two years — staying heads-down and focusing on getting the OS1 ready to ship,” noted Pacala. “I’m incredibly proud of our team for their hard work to produce the most advanced, practical, and scalable LIDAR sensor on the market, and we’re very excited about the impact our product will have in autonomous vehicles and other applications in robotics.”
The company is also announcing a $27 million series A funding round today led by Cox Enterprises, the parent company of automotive firm Cox Automotive, with participation from Fontinalis Partners, Amity Ventures, Constellation Technology Ventures, Tao Capital Partners, and Carthona Capital. This is in addition to a smaller seed round Ouster previously raised, taking its total funding past the $30 million mark.
Ouster said it will use its fresh cash injection primarily for manufacturing, as well as to develop its next-generation sensors, and reckons its manufacturing capacity will hit the “tens of thousands” of sensors in 2018.
Lidar has emerged as a key focal point for investors, technology firms, and automotive companies alike. A few months back, Innoviz Technologies raised $65 million to accelerate its lidar tech for autonomous cars, shortly before Samsung and SoftBank jumped on board to take the total round to $73 million. Elsewhere, Israel’s Oryx Vision raised a chunky $50 million round to develop its lidar technologies, while General Motors boosted its self-driving car credentials with the acquisition of lidar startup Strobe.
With so many companies now operating in the lidar realm, a key competitive factor will be the ability to optimize the size and specs, while also bringing the price down. Ouster said that the initial price of its OS1 sensor will be $12,000.
“Ouster’s OS1 LIDAR is a truly compelling piece of technology that we believe is going to accelerate the autonomous driving development curve,” said David Blau, VP of corporate strategy and investments at Cox Enterprises. |
Google partners with Fairfax to sell programmatic advertising | Australian media company Fairfax has signed an agreement with Google to sell programmatic advertising across several titles, including The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian Financial Review and The Age. Fairfax CEO Greg Hywood, who recently spoke out against the Google/Facebook duopoly on advertising, said the search giant's technology would help advertisers reach the publisher's audiences and enable it to "make new investment in our journalism".
| http://www.adnews.com.au/fairfax-and-google-ink-deal/type/yafNews | 2017-12-12 13:19:37.237000 | Fairfax has entered into a partnership with Google across digital advertising, technology and product development.
Google will support Fairfax to sell and market programmatic advertising across The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Australian Financial Review, WA Today, Canberra Times, Brisbane Times, and lifestyle properties.
The two companies will also work together to push subscriptions and improve customer experience on the publisher's websites and apps, such as improving load times.
The move will come as a surprise to some in in the industry, with both Google and Facebook being largely blamed for the demise of media companies' ad revenue within traditional media companies.
However, this year Google has been making effort to support publishers' and has responded to a lot of its critiques, such as abolishing first click free and working on better models to facilitate subscriptions.
Many media execs have spoken out against the power of Facebook and Google in the past, including CEO Greg Hywood himself, who spoke against the digital duopoly at the recent senate inquiry into journalism.
Just yesterday, MCN CEO Anthony Fitzgerald slammed Facebook and Google as "media wastelands".
Fairfax MD of Australian metro publishing Chris Janz says it's a big step forward for Fairfax.
"We are excited to be deepening our partnership with Google, providing advertisers with a new way to work with Fairfax," Janz says.
"Google’s sales channels and market-leading programmatic technology will empower and enable advertisers’ to access Fairfax’s brands and reach our valuable audiences.
“We are bringing the very best that Fairfax has to offer together with the smarts and capability of Google. The result will be a stronger Fairfax Media and continued investment in journalism.”
Fairfax is confident the deal places its business at the global forefront of digital publishing innovation, says Hywood.
"We are stepping up and understanding the future. We are ensuring our company, our media and our shareholders benefit from commercial opportunities available to us. We expect upside performance from this partnership, which will allow us to make new investment in our journalism," he says.
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AR-enhance customer experiences seen offering boost to retailers | Improving customer experiences using augmented reality (AR) offers a way for retailers to boost footfall in their stores and compete with e-commerce, according to Michael Park, CEO of AR platform PostAR. Park said that retailers such as furniture shops lost business with "try before you buy" services because shoppers often found they didn't like the item once they got it home. AR would enable buyers to virtually test a product in their home first, saving the shop money and time. Park suggested emulating Pokemon Go, incentivising customers to visit stores with "engaging game experiences" or by using celebrity-endorsed avatars.
| https://venturebeat.com/2017/12/11/ar-isnt-a-gimmick-its-a-savior-for-local-retail/ | 2017-12-12 13:16:06.293000 | Join top executives in San Francisco on July 11-12, to hear how leaders are integrating and optimizing AI investments for success. Learn More
When new technology platforms emerge, traditional retail typically gets disrupted — and often in painful ways. Consumers generally benefit from the added convenience and cost reductions from e-commerce in the short-term. However, the dominance of companies like Amazon has resulted in many retailers and small businesses closing up shop and laying off employees.
Fortunately, the next emerging tech platform, augmented reality (AR), could result in a resurgence of in-person retail shopping. I’ve interviewed several AR influencers who discuss how the technology can reverse the implosion of retail and incentivize customers to physically visit shopping locations.
Reducing customer churn
The broader trend in retail, particularly among millennials, is a shift in focus from products toward experiences. For this reason, many customers still choose to visit a physical shop even if it may be more convenient to order the item online. People still, at large, value the interaction and experience that comes with physical location shopping. For retailers, this presents an opportunity to leverage technology to literally augment the value of their products for their customers.
Alice Bonasio is a journalist and consultant who covers the AR and VR industry. She expands on this point, “the ability for customers to ‘try before you buy’ will result in a reduction in churn, one of the major pain points for retailers. When it comes to larger items like furniture or household appliances, one of the biggest drawbacks for consumers is that they misjudge the amount of space they have available or dislike the way the item looks once it’s actually in their home. This buyer’s remorse is a huge drain on resources for retailers.”
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Bonasio continues, “However, AR allows customers to see an item in-store and then project it realistically back at home before finalizing the process by placing the order online. Such omnichannel experiences will make in-person shopping a value add to the consumer and help retailers avoid churn.”
Augmenting customer support
The promise of the internet was a world in which borders and locations became irrelevant. Ironically, in the past few decades, “global cities” such as San Francisco, Tokyo, and London have become more economically competitive while less prominent urban centers have fallen behind. Fortunately, AR may be the first platform that can fully deliver on this promise, by enabling people in remote locations to provide on-site customer support.
Cathy Hackl is an AR influencer, global speaker and author of Marketing New Realities. She expands on this theme, “in a future where customers walk around wearing mixed reality glasses, it will be possible to provide on-site holographic customer support. Imagine a handicapped woman in West Virginia working remotely on a VR headset, holographically projected onto an information desk at a mall or airport in San Francisco. This would enable all of the benefits that customers would gain from an in-person interaction, save costs by not having to hire more expensive local staff, while making a positive social impact on rural communities that don’t have access to jobs.
Hackl continues, “holographic AR customer support wouldn’t just replace our current experience, but dramatically improve it, particularly if artificial intelligence (AI) is implemented as part of the experience. A store’s holographic customer support agent would be able to instantly produce an infinite number of 3D digital representations of real products for customers. The customer could then interact and play with a range of digital products while also gaining real-time enhanced data. What’s the products story? What materials were used? What color variations can be tried? What sizes are in stock in the store? All of this information would be available on-demand, thus revolutionizing the customer support experience.”
Fun experiences result in foot traffic
The popularity of Pokemon Go showed that, when properly incentivized, customers will walk to physical locations in their cities to acquire digital assets and experiences. The implications of this new consumer behavior are significant for restaurants, retailers, and other businesses that rely on foot traffic. During the zenith of the Pokemon Go phenomenon, many business owners reported doubling their sales due to players of the location-based mobile game.
Keith Curtin is the founder of See Digital, a consultancy that helps brands with their AR strategy. He expands on this point, “there are numerous ways in which AR will help retailers gain more visitors. First, special deals can be combined with engaging game experiences to entice people to show up. Brands can launch massively multiplayer scavenger hunts that result in players gaining access to limited-time deals. Through the use of AI-enabled AR avatars, it will be possible for celebrities to act as personal shopping assistants to people, thus making the experience more personal and engaging, but at scale.”
Curtin expands on this idea, “AR adds further value for companies by producing completely new valuable data sets about consumers. Brand engagement through augmented reality apps allows you to see how your customers are interacting with your products across 3D space and time – something that has never existed before. These data sets are extremely valuable for retargeting and building brand loyalty.”
Beware of gimmicks
Given the current state of AR, it’s understandable to be skeptical that the technology could impact retail in a significant way. It’s for this reason that brands should focus on designing experiences that address real customer problems with practical solutions. If a company’s AR tool doesn’t improve the user experience of its customers, it doesn’t make sense to invest in AR.
Sanem Avcil is an AR influencer and developer. She expands on this point, “brands that use AR need to focus on customer needs and the specific ways in which AR can improve the customer journey. How can AR make shopping more seamless, whether at the store or online? Research the types of AR solutions that are available and see if they will really help the customer by saving them time and money or helping them make better purchasing decisions. Ultimately, your decision should be based on whether or not you can increase foot traffic to your location and improve customer engagement once people are inside.”
Michael Park is the CEO and founder of PostAR, a platform that lets you build, explore, and share augmented realities. |
Precision farming drone unveiled by American Robotics | Boston company American Robotics has launched Scout, an unmanned aerial vehicle aimed at addressing the needs of the farming industry by autonomously monitoring crops. Once installed the system runs daily missions to establish the state of plants, sending analysis reports and crop health updates to farmers with no human intervention required. CEO Reese Mozer said full automation was a "revolutionary approach" and a "key ingredient in the future of precision farming".
| http://www.auvsi.org/industry-news/american-robotics-unveils-uas-platform-precision-farming | 2017-12-12 13:15:49.733000 | An industrial UAS developer called American Robotics has unveiled its flagship product, Scout, which is a self-charging, self-managing UAS platform capable of autonomously conducting daily scouting missions in the field of precision farming.
Specializing in agricultural automation, American Robotics says that traditional scouting techniques are “inadequate at detecting plant stress early enough to offset the billions of dollars of lost yields.” A lot of the times, these methods, which can include first-generation and consumer UAS, are time-consuming, complicated, and not financially prudent.
American Robotics says that “automation must be delivered in a reliable industrial solution” in order to improve agricultural decision-making, optimize inputs, and maximize yields, and Scout provides this automation. Once Scout is installed within a farmer's field, manual intervention to plan, fly and manage the UAS operations is not needed, and, farmers also receive health reports and analysis.
“The technology behind Scout was developed after working with farmers and ag professionals to understand the unique logistical and economic challenges they face. As a result, Scout is the first practical, industrial drone system that truly addresses the needs of this industry,” says Reese Mozer, Co-Founder and CEO of American Robotics.
“Full-automation is a key ingredient in the future of precision farming, and we’re eager and excited to finally deliver this capability to our customers.”
Gary V. McMurray, Associate Director, Collaborative Robotics, Georgia Tech Research Institute, says, “the rapid expansion of drones in farming has been impressive, but I’ve also been concerned with their inability to address the amount of time and cost required by the grower to use these tools.”
McMurray continues, “American Robotics’ Scout is the only practical solution that addresses this issue. Farmers need a tool that works for them, not another piece of technology that consumes their day. I believe fully-automated drone operation is a revolutionary approach that solves many of the real-world problems facing growers today, and I am confident Scout will scale to meet the needs of growers around the world.” |
UK brands make nearly 100% return on spend on digital display ads | Digital display ads in the UK are making twice the amount in sales that advertisers are spending on them, with a typical return on investment of £1.94 ($2.60) on £1, according to a study by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB). It monitored the programmatic display ads of nine fast moving consumer goods brands, including PG Tips and Magnum, over the course of a year, comparing display costs with figures from i2c and Nielsen's Homescan. Although the IAB did not reveal each brand's individual ROI, it said one achieved £3.38 ROI for every £1 spent. | http://www.thedrum.com/news/2017/12/12/digital-ads-return-two-fold-roi-unilever-says-iab-uk-amid-ongoing-efficiency-drive | 2017-12-12 13:12:49.457000 | On average, for every £1 Unilever and Nestlé spend on display ads in the UK both brands return almost double in sales, according to data from the Internet Advertising Bureaux (IAB UK).
The figures come as a year of FMCG digital efficiency drives and agency reviews draws to a close, with the IAB claiming that every £1 spent on digital display units yields a typical ROI of £1.94 across all major British supermarkets.
The study tracked the programmatic display advertising of nine consumer goods brands including Persil, Magnum, Tropicana, PG Tips and Nescafe across a number of premium sites like the Guardian, Mail Online, Yahoo and Gumtree.
Though it didn’t specify the breakdowns for individual brand ROI, it noted that one brand it monitored saw a £3.38 ROI for every £1 it invested.
The research was completed over a year-long period, comparing display spend with short-term sales numbers gleaned from i2c – a joint venture between Sainsbury’s and Nectar card owner Aimia – and Nielsen’s Homescan data. The resulting data, which was commissioned by i2c and the IAB gives an insight into the shopping behaviour at all major UK supermarkets.
The study comes amid an ongoing efficiency drive from Unilever, which this year decided to run 30% fewer ads as part of a wider cost-cutting exercise to improve efficiency. The brand has said it also intends to reduce the number of agencies it has (around 3,000) in half.
Its arch rival P&G has also been culling "ineffective" digital ads, noting earlier this year that rollbacks of around $140m had not impacted the company's bottom line as it delivered strong growth in the first half of the year.
According to the IAB’s chief digital officer Tim Elkington, the "vast majority" of sales attributable to group's study happened in-store.
“The calibre and range of the brands involved in the project gives marketers a reassuring guide as to what their investment in digital will pay back," he said.
All of the online ads tracked carried a Sainsbury’s logo which Elkington says illustrated the “halo effect” that store-branded advertising can have on sales in other supermarkets.
The study also revealed that online ads also had a positive effect on people’s awareness of and favourability towards the brand in question, noting that people who saw the ads were 12% more likely to consider the brand to be 'premium'. |
Sweden's Imagimob aims to bring AI to smart farming | Swedish artificial intelligence (AI) firm Imagimob is using its Edge AI technology to improve efficiency and sustainability in the industrial farming sector by identifying risks to plant and animal health. The company, a member of the Aggregate Farming in the cloud consortium, recently raised €400,000 ($469,584) in funding from the Electronic Components and Systems for European Leadership joint undertaking and Swedish state R&D body Vinnova.
| http://www.mystartupworld.com/imagimob-secures-e400k-in-funding-for-edge-ai-research-in-farming/ | 2017-12-12 13:11:51.613000 | Imagimob has received €400k in funding for Edge AI research in farming. Imagimob will use the funding to further strengthen and customise its Edge AI technology for specific requirements and challenges in the farming industry. The funding is administered by the ECSEL JU and Vinnova.
Farming is facing economic challenges in terms of productivity, cost-effectiveness, and increasing labour shortage. In addition, current farming systems have significant drawbacks such as flexibility, efficiency, sustainability and high operator cost. Reliable detection, accurate identification and quantification of factors affecting plant and animal health are critical to reduce costs, trade disruptions and even human health risks.
Imagimob is a member of The AFarCloud (Aggretate Farming in the cloud) consortium which represents the whole ICT-based agriculture solutions’ value chain needed for the future market uptake of the precision farming framework targeted in the project. There are 6 Swedish organisations in the consortium including Imagimob, Mälardalen University and RISE (Research Institutes of Sweden).
Outcomes from the AFarCloud project will strengthen the partners’ market position boosting their innovation capacity, addressing industrial needs in EU and internationally. Achievements in the AFarCloud project will be demonstrated in two field tests in both cropping and livestock scenarios. |
Researchers develop AI to significantly reduce traffic problems | Researchers from the Texas Advanced Computing Center, the University of Texas Center for Transportation Research and the City of Austin are working to develop an artificial intelligence algorithm that can help improve road safety. At the forthcoming IEEE International Conference on Big Data, the team plans to unveil the deep learning tool, which analyses data collected from traffic cameras, and can be used to determine the efficiency of a transport network and understand pedestrian behaviour.
| https://phys.org/news/2017-12-artificial-intelligence-supercomputers-alleviate-urban.html | 2017-12-12 13:10:31.150000 | A new deep learning tool uses raw traffic camera footage from City of Austin cameras to recognize objects - people, cars, buses, trucks, bicycles, motorcycles and traffic lights - and characterize how those objects move and interact. Credit: TACC, CTR, City of Austin
Look above the traffic light at a busy intersection in your city and you will probably see a camera. These devices may have been installed to monitor traffic conditions and provide visuals in the case of a collision. But can they do more? Can they help planners optimize traffic flow or identify sites that are most likely to have accidents? And can they do so without requiring individuals to slog through hours of footage?
Researchers from the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), the University of Texas Center for Transportation Research and the City of Austin believe so. Together, they are working to develop tools that allow sophisticated, searchable traffic analyses using deep learning and data mining.
At the IEEE International Conference on Big Data this month, they will present a new deep learning tool that uses raw traffic camera footage from City of Austin cameras to recognize objects - people, cars, buses, trucks, bicycles, motorcycles and traffic lights - and characterize how those objects move and interact. This information can then be analyzed and queried by traffic engineers and officials to determine, for instance, how many cars drive the wrong way down a one-way street.
"We are hoping to develop a flexible and efficient system to aid traffic researchers and decision-makers for dynamic, real-life analysis needs," said Weijia Xu, a research scientist who leads the Data Mining & Statistics Group at TACC. "We don't want to build a turn-key solution for a single, specific problem. We want to explore means that may be helpful for a number of analytical needs, even those that may pop up in the future."
The algorithm they developed for traffic analysis automatically labels all potential objects from the raw data, tracks objects by comparing them with other previously recognized objects and compares the outputs from each frame to uncover relationships among the objects.
Once researchers had developed a system capable of labeling, tracking and analyzing traffic, they applied it to two practical examples: counting how many moving vehicles traveled down a road and identifying close encounters between vehicles and pedestrians.
The system automatically counted vehicles in a 10-minute video clip, and preliminary results showed that their tool was 95 percent accurate overall. The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) is working with the University of Texas Center for Transportation Research and the City of Austin to improve the safety and efficiency of city roads. Credit: Sean Cunningham, TACC
Understanding traffic volumes and their distribution over time is critical to validating transportation models and evaluating the performance of the transportation network, said Natalia Ruiz Juri, a research associate and director of the Network Modeling Center at UT's Center for Transportation Research.
"Current practice often relies on the use of expensive sensors for continuous data collection or on traffic studies that sample traffic volumes for a few days during selected time periods," she said. "The use of artificial intelligence to automatically generate traffic volumes from existing cameras would provide a much broader spatial and temporal coverage of the transportation network, facilitating the generation of valuable datasets to support innovative research and to understand the impact of traffic management and operation decisions."
In the case of potential close encounters, researchers were able to automatically identify a number of cases where vehicles and pedestrians were in close proximity. None of these represented real-life dangers, but they demonstrated how the system discovers dangerous locations without human intervention.
"The City of Austin is committed to ending traffic fatalities, and video analytics will be a powerful tool to help us pinpoint potentially dangerous locations," said Jen Duthie, a consulting engineer for the City of Austin and a collaborator on the project. "We can direct our resources toward fixing problem locations before an injury or fatality occurs."
The researchers plan to explore how automation can facilitate other safety-related analyses, such as identifying locations where pedestrians cross busy streets outside of designated walkways, understanding how drivers react to different types of pedestrian-yield signage and quantifying how far pedestrians are willing to walk in order to use a walkway.
The project shows how artificial intelligence technologies can greatly reduce the effort involved in analyzing video data and provide actionable information for decision-makers.
"The highly anticipated introduction of self-driving and connected cars may lead to significant changes in the behavior of vehicles and pedestrians and on the performance of roadways," Ruiz Juri said. "Video data will play a key role in understanding such changes, and artificial intelligence may be central to enabling comprehensive large-scale studies that truly capture the impact of the new technologies."
More information: The team built a website where the public can view examples of their detection, tracking and query tool for traffic analysis. To learn more visit: soda.tacc.utexas.edu/ |
Leading firms hired surveillance companies to spy on protesters | Five major firms, including British Airways, Porsche and the Royal Bank of Scotland, paid corporate intelligence companies to carry out surveillance on political groups challenging their interests, according to leaked documents viewed by the Bureau for Investigative Journalism and the Guardian. The material, from two corporate intelligence companies, documents activities across several years in the 2000s, including the use of infiltrators as spies. One firm, C2i, provided information about the family of activist Rachel Corrie, who died when protesting against the destruction of Palestinian homes, to Caterpillar, the company believed to have manufactured and sold the bulldozer that killed her.
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/12/surveillance-firms-spied-on-campaign-groups-for-big-companies-leak-shows | 2017-12-12 13:09:38.783000 | British Airways, the Royal Bank of Scotland and Porsche are among five large companies that have been identified as having paid corporate intelligence firms to monitor political groups that challenged their businesses, leaked documents reveal.
The surveillance included the use of infiltrators to spy on campaigners. The targets included the grieving family of Rachel Corrie, a student protester crushed to death by a bulldozer, as well as a range of environmental campaigns, and local campaigners protesting about phone masts.
The leaked documents suggest the use of secretive corporate security firms to gather intelligence about political campaigners has been widespread. However, police chiefs have in the past raised a “massive concern” that the activities of the corporate firms are barely regulated and completely uncontrolled.
The police have claimed that commercial firms have had more spies embedded in political groups than there were undercover police officers.
The revelations are based on hundreds of pages of leaked documents from two corporate intelligence firms, seen by the Guardian and the Bureau for Investigative Journalism, that reveal the inner workings of a normally subterranean industry over several years in the 2000s.
The cache shows how one of the firms, C2i International, used two infiltrators to acquire advance warning of demonstrations that were being mounted against firms and to feed this information to those firms.
The infiltrators pretended to be activists sympathetic to the cause of the campaigners, helping to organise and attending their demonstrations, including on one occasion dressing up as a pirate with a cutlass and eyepatch as part of a protest. They often obtained the campaigners’ internal documents such as emails and accounts of meetings.
Caterpillar, one of the world’s biggest manufacturing companies, hired C2i, which gathered information about a grieving family that was taking legal action against the firm. A contract drawn up by Caterpillar and signed by C2i instructed that its work should be kept confidential.
Corrie, 23, was crushed to death in 2003 by an Israeli military bulldozer as she protested against the demolition of Palestinian homes. The bulldozer was said to have been manufactured and sold to the Israeli military by Caterpillar.
Corrie’s family took legal action against Caterpillar, alleging that the firm was complicit in war crimes by exporting bulldozers to the Israelis knowing that they would be used to demolish Palestinian homes.
In 2007, US judges dismissed the Corries’ legal action, concluding that they did not have the jurisdiction to decide the case.
Nine days later Corrie’s mother, Cindy, spoke on a conference telephone call to around 70 members of a campaign that was supporting the family’s lawsuit. C2i obtained the campaign’s notes of the call.
Her comments are recorded in a five-page “restricted – commercial” document known as a “corporate threat intelligence alert”, written by C2i and marked with the Caterpillar logo.
According to the alert, the conference call was “held in direct response to the collapse” of the court case and the recent death of a 17-year-old in Gaza. It appears that any member of the public could dial into the call, which was relatively little publicised.
The alert noted that “Cindy Corrie gave an update on the court case and the future strategy of campaign was discussed … She gave a detailed chronological account of the legal developments in the case most notably the judges’ decision not to reinstate the case.”
It recorded how she gave her views on the progress on the lawsuit and their options for taking it forward.
Cindy Corrie told the Guardian that she found it “really distasteful” that the corporate spies had misrepresented themselves to listen in on the conference call, which she thought consisted of a group of supporters. She said her family had asked Caterpillar for an open dialogue about the lawsuit but had been turned down.
In the UK, Caterpillar hired a second corporate intelligence firm to monitor protesters in 2005, according to another set of leaked documents.
The clandestine Inkerman Group gathers information about protesters and has covertly deployed infiltrators on demonstrations that are directed at firms. One of its confidential documents has warned of the threat presented by protest groups that use direct action to disrupt the “economic welfare” of companies.
Caterpillar declined to answer specific questions, saying that “as a general practice” it did not “discuss specifics of its relationship with suppliers”. It said: “Where Caterpillar uses outside firms, the company would expect those firms to act in a lawful manner and in accordance with our values in action.”
Leaked Inkerman documents also show how the firm obtained what it called “verbatim” emails that were being circulated among local protesters who were objecting on health grounds to phone masts being built. The campaigner who sent one of the emails said he believed it was a private communication.
Inkerman noted in a 2003 internal assessment that the anti-mast campaigners appeared to be copying tactics used by environmentalists against firms that it said it had “attracted their perverse attention”.
Inkerman declined to comment when it was asked who had hired it to collect information about the phone mast campaigners and how it had obtained the emails.
The energy firm RWE nPower has said it hired Inkerman in the past.
Leaked documents show that C2i claimed it had “real-time intelligence assets” in a range of environmental campaigns including Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, local green groups in Oxford and “all anti‐aviation groups”.
Its clients included Royal Bank of Scotland, British Airways and Porsche around 2008. That year, C2i pitched its services to Donald Trump’s property development firm, which was seeking to create a huge golf course and build a hotel and flats on ecologically sensitive land in Scotland. C2i said Trump’s firm was “under threat from a consortium of environmental activists”. However, it is not known whether Trump’s firm hired C2i. The firm and C2i declined to comment.
RBS said it no longer used corporate intelligence firms to gather information.
C2i, which changed its name before being wound up in 2011, was set up by Justin King, a former special forces pilot who said he specialised in surveillance and counter-intelligence. |
AmEx to no longer require signatures for purchases | American Express has announced its worldwide customers will no longer need to sign for any purchases made with their cards from next year. The change will take effect in April, with the company saying its fraud prevention capabilities have improved enough to make signatures unnecessary. The payment card company has already removed the requirement for retailers in the US to collect signatures for amounts of less than $50, and other companies including Mastercard have similarly dropped the requirement for customers in North America.
| http://money.cnn.com/2017/12/11/news/companies/american-express-drops-signatures/index.html | 2017-12-12 13:06:04.257000 | Starting next April, you won't need to sign anything to make a purchase with an American Express card.
American Express (AXP) announced the change Monday, saying it aims to create a more consistent and faster checkout experience.
"The payments landscape has evolved to the point where we can now eliminate this pain point for our merchants," said Jaromir Divilek, an executive vice president for Amex. "Our fraud capabilities have advanced so that signatures are no longer necessary to fight fraud."
Related: Should you open a store credit card?
American Express already stopped requiring U.S. merchants to collect signatures on purchases of less than $50. And there were different threshold amounts in other countries. In some regions outside the United States the use of signatures are already less common, according to the company.
"Having to sign a receipt can be a hassle for customers, and is not necessary to prevent fraud at the point of sale," said Mike Cook, an assistant vice president at Walmart (WMT) in a quote provided by American Express. He said the nation's largest retailer is pleased by the change, "which will promote a more seamless shopping and checkout experience" for customers.
Even if it takes only a few seconds for a customer to leave a signature, the requirement to get and keep a record of that signature is costly for merchants, said Cherian Abraham, a digital payment executive with Experian. And speeding up the check out process by even just a few seconds can save money and reduce friction with the customer, he said.
"For a merchant like Walmart, every additional second at the point of sale translates into several millions in terms of costs," he said.
Related: Square unveils cash register of the future
The industry has been moving away from signatures for some time. Modern credit cards have a computer chip that provides additional fraud prevention. And customers are already used to buying things online, and on their smartphones, without a signature.
American Express is the first card provider to make this change across the board, worldwide. But MasterCard (MA) announced in October that it was dropping the requirement for purchases in the United States and Canada, and Discover (DFS) announced the same change last week for purchases in those countries as well as Mexico and the Caribbean. As with Amex, those policies will change in April. |
Google launches three new apps in mobile photography initiative | Google has launched a suite of three apps that make the most of features on smartphone cameras. The Appsperiments offering includes the Android-only Storyboard, which chooses the most arresting frames from a video; Selfissimo, available on iOS and Android, which takes automatic black-and-white images, and; Scrubbies, which creates video loops. Google plans to build out on the Appsperiments technology, which is built on a wide range of technologies, including object recognition, person segmentation and image encoding.
| https://www.siliconrepublic.com/gear/google-photography-apps-appsperiments | 2017-12-12 13:06:00.273000 | From creating comic strips to selfie photoshoots, Google’s new apps show the capabilities of our smartphone cameras.
Google has today (12 December) announced a new initiative called Appsperiments, in an effort to create useful and innovative apps focused on mobile photography.
Under the Appsperiments umbrella, the company has launched three apps, which are fully functional in their own right but are based on new technology that Google will continue to build out over time.
Three new Google Appsperiments
The first app is called Storyboard, available only on Android so far. Here, a user shoots a video on their phone and loads it into the app. The Storyboard app then automatically selects the most visually interesting frames, lays them out and applies one of six different visual styles. In a nutshell, the app can create fun comic strips of your mobile videos and, according to Google, there are approximately 1.6trn different possibilities.
Selfissimo is an iOS and Android offering, which is basically an automated selfie photographer that takes a black-and-white image each time you pose. You tap the screen to start the photoshoot and are encouraged to pose, with the app snapping a picture every time you stop moving. After the photo session, you can review the contact sheet and save either single photographs or the entire photoshoot.
The third in this suite is an app called Scrubbies, which lets you manipulate the speed and direction of video playback to create video loops that highlight actions and facial expressions, and replay particular moments. You shoot a video in the Scrubbies app and then ‘remix it’ by scratching it like a DJ.
The Appsperiments were inspired by the success of Google’s existing Motion Stills app, which creates cinemagraphs and time lapses using experimental stabilisation and rendering technologies.
A multitude of technologies at work
The new apps rely on a vast swathe of technologies, such as object recognition, person segmentation, stylisation algorithms, and efficient image encoding and decoding technologies.
Google explained that it wanted to give people a look at what their smartphone camera could be capable of: “Each of the world’s approximately 2bn smartphone owners is carrying a camera capable of capturing photos and video of a tonal richness and quality unimaginable even five years ago. Until recently, those cameras behaved mostly as optical sensors, capturing light and operating on the resulting image’s pixels.
“The next generation of cameras, however, will have the capability to blend hardware and computer vision algorithms that operate as well on an image’s semantic content, enabling radically new, creative mobile photo and video applications.”
The apps can be downloaded on Google Play or the App Store, depending on your phone’s capabilities. |
Pearson launches entirely online Spanish A-level | UK educational publisher Pearson is launching an online A-level Spanish course in September, the first of several foreign-language syllabuses it is planning to offer. The move is in response to a lack of funding in schools for foreign language courses, as well as reduced numbers of teachers. The use of online courses is a growing trend in the UK, with companies such as Wey Education, which offers online GCSE and A-level language courses, going from five students in 2015-16 to 46 this year. Pearson's course costs £1,000 a year, with reductions for five or more students from the same institution. | https://schoolsweek.co.uk/pearson-launches-virtual-a-levels-to-battle-teacher-shortage/ | 2017-12-12 13:02:56.273000 | An exam board will launch its first “virtual” language A-level so pupils can earn their qualifications online despite the shortage of teachers of modern foreign languages.
Pearson will offer an online Spanish A-level from next September, in which pupils get access to tutors, resources and tests online. There are more languages to follow, Schools Week can exclusively reveal.
Other virtual learning groups have reported a rise in schools signing up their pupils, and one such company has enjoyed a hike of more than 800 per cent.
Pupils are entered to improve their grades, if they are struggling with a phobia of school, or to study languages their schools can’t fund, Schools Week has found.
A spokesperson for Pearson said it is offering the Spanish course in the wake of its success in teaching 70,000 pupils via online courses in the USA.
The A-level will also tackle the “sincere challenges some schools are facing in finding MFL teachers”.
Schools can’t financially justify their classes any more
The government only filled 93 per cent of its places for MFL teacher-training this year, and is expected to need another 3,500 teachers to meet its targets in coming years.
But Rene Koglbauer, chair of trustees at the Association of Language Learning, said the main issue was not so much shortages of teachers as budget cuts, which mean classes need more pupils to be viable.
“That’s why a lot of schools can’t offer some languages – they can’t financially justify it any longer,” he said.
Pearson will offer its virtual course for £1,000 per pupil per year, and £900 if five or more students enter from the same school, trust or federation
Wey Education, another UK company which delivers online learning, has a network of online “schools” including Interhigh, which offers GCSEs and A-levels in French, Spanish and German.
Pupils taking these qualifications increased by 16 per cent this year, said a spokesperson.
Meanwhile, the number of schools and local authorities signing pupils up for online qualifications at Wey has risen by more than 800 per cent – from five in 2015-16, to 46 this year.
Paula Reynolds, a business development manager at Wey Ecademy, the arm of the company that sells its courses to schools, said school-refusing pupils were a “massive” factor in the rise.
Schools are using online qualifications as a way of ensuring anxious pupils keep learning at home while they remain on their school roll, she said.
A pupil in this situation gets a timetable of online lessons and must log in to watch and interact with a tutor. They need a headset and microphone to talk, and can type responses too.
We can’t make a child log in
Teachers in school, meanwhile, have an observer account to check their pupils are doing the lessons.
“We can’t make a child log in,” said Reynolds.
To do a language A-level with Wey costs £2,700, while the GCSE is about £1,000.
The Goethe Institute in London, which promotes cultural exchange with Germany, has twice as many pupils taking its online German GCSE this year than last, because “increasingly schools don’t offer German anymore”, according to a spokesperson. About 30 pupils are taking the GCSE, and 11 pupils are taking A-level.
Karl Pfeiffer, the institute’s director of educational links, said many schools don’t “have the time for extra tuition” but want to boost a pupil’s grade. In other cases, parents pay the £360 for the A-level or GCSE.
Geoff Barton, the general secretary for the Association of School and College Leaders, welcomed helping pupils to learn languages, but warned pupils could be disadvantaged by not having face-to-face interactions with a teacher. |
Baby wipes form 93% of material blocking UK sewers | Approximately 93% of material causing UK sewer blockages, costing approximately £100m ($134m) each year, is formed of baby wipes, according to a report by trade body Water UK. The research, which revealed that the country experiences an annual 300,000 sewer blockages, led to calls for greater education by water companies and manufacturers as to which items should not be flushed in toilets. A section of east London’s sewer system was blocked earlier this year by a fatberg which was the weight of 11 double-decker buses.
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/12/baby-wipes-93-percent-matter-causing-uk-sewer-blockages?CMP=share_btn_tw | 2017-12-12 12:49:07.520000 | Baby wipes are causing hundreds of thousands of blockages in the UK sewer system and costing the country £100m every year, according to a new report.
The study from Water UK, the trade body representing all of the main water and sewerage companies in the country, found that wipes made up about 93% of the material causing the sewer blockages.
Water UK’s director of corporate affairs, Rae Stewart, said the findings proved that sewer blockages that cost £100m a year are “a problem we can all do something about”.
“There are things that water companies can do, such as improve education about what should and shouldn’t be flushed. There are things manufacturers can do, such as make labelling clearer on non-flushable products. And, of course, there are things individuals can do – which is bin the wipes rather than flush them.”
The report said there are approximately 300,000 sewer blockages every year, costing the country £100m – money which Water UK says could be taken off bills or spent on improving services.
Earlier this year a fatberg weighing the same as 11 double decker buses and stretching the length of two football pitches was found blocking a section of the sewer system in east London.
Natalie Fee, from the plastic pollution campaign group City to Sea which has been running a campaign about not flushing wipes and other single-use plastic down the toilet, said people should rethink their flushing habits and only flush “the three Ps: pee, paper and poo”.
Fee also called on manufacturers to do more to label wipes properly. “Most people still don’t know that baby wipes contain plastic, and they would be a lot less likely to flush them if it was listed as an ingredient on the pack.” |
UK should increase aid spending on ocean plastic: Gove | More of the UK’s £13bn ($17bn) annual overseas aid budget should be spent on reducing the amount of plastic pollution in the oceans, according to the country’s environment secretary, Michael Gove. The call comes as research from Germany’s Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research revealed that 90% of all plastic waste in the oceans comes from the following 10 rivers: the Niger and Nile in Africa, and the Amur, Ganges, Haihe, Indus, Mekong, Pearl, Yangtze and Yellow in Asia.
| http://www.ufz.de/index.php?en=36336&webc_pm=34/2017 | 2017-12-12 12:35:32.217000 | press release, 17. October 2017
Rivers carry plastic debris into the sea
UFZ researchers have proven that large river systems are the main culprits for plastic pollution in the oceans
Every year, millions of tonnes of plastic debris ends up in the sea - a global environmental problem with unforeseeable ecological consequences. The path taken by plastic to reach the sea must be elucidated before it will be possible to reduce the volume of plastic input. To date, there was only little information available on this. It has now been followed up by an interdisciplinary research team who were able to show that plastic debris is primarily carried into the sea by large rivers.
Every year, millions of tonnes of plastic debris ends up in the sea a global environmental problem with ecological consequences.
Photo: Richard Carey, fotolia Rivers as source for global marine plastic pollution.
Photo: Susan Walter, UFZ
In the meantime, minute plastic particles can be found in the water in virtually every sea and river. This constitutes a serious and growing global environmental problem. There are enormous quantities of input each year and plastic weathers only very slowly. Marine life can be harmed by the tiny plastic particles floating in the water. One example of how this happens is when fish, seabirds or marine mammals mistake the particles for food and consume them. "It is still impossible to foresee the ecological consequences of this. One thing is certain, however: this situation cannot continue," says Dr. Christian Schmidt, a hydrogeologist at the UFZ. "But as it is impossible to clean up the plastic debris that is already in the oceans, we must take precautions and reduce the input of plastic quickly and efficiently."
However, in order to take practical measures to reduce plastic input, it will be necessary to answer the initial questions: Where does all the plastic come from anyhow? And how does it get into the sea? Schmidt and his team addressed these questions in a study that recently appeared in the current issue of "Environmental Science & Technology" journal. For this purpose, the researchers analysed various scientific studies that examined the plastic load - that is the quantity of plastic carried by the water - in rivers. They converted the results of the studies into mutually comparable datasets and determined the ratio of these figures to the quantity of waste that is not disposed of properly in the respective catchment area. "We were able to demonstrate that there is a definite correlation in this respect," says Schmidt. "The more waste there is in a catchment area that is not disposed of properly, the more plastic ultimately ends up in the river and takes this route to the sea." In this context, large rivers obviously play a particularly large role - not only because they also carry a comparatively large volume of waste on account of their larger discharge. Schmidt says, "the concentrations of plastic, i.e. the quantity of plastic per cubic metre of water are significantly higher in large rivers than small ones. The plastic loads consequently increase at a disproportionately higher rate than the size of the river."
The researchers have also calculated that the ten river systems with the highest plastic loads (eight of them are in Asia and two in Africa) - areas in which hundreds of millions of people live, in some cases - are responsible for around 90 percent of the global riverine* input of plastic into the sea. "Halving the plastic input from the catchment areas of these rivers would already be a major success", says Schmidt. "To achieve this, it will be necessary to improve the waste management and raise public awareness for the issue. We hope that our study will make a contribution to a positive development so that the plastic problem in our oceans can be curbed in the long run."
In future investigations, the UFZ team intends to find out how long plastic debris takes to reach the sea once it gets into a river. Does it take only a few months or even decades? "It is important to be aware of this as the impact of a measure becomes apparent only with a corresponding time delay as existing pollution has yet to be washed into the sea", explains Schmidt. "Only when we are aware of roughly how long plastic debris remains in the respective river system will it also be possible to assess a measure to improve the waste management system in the catchment area."
Publication:
Schmidt, C., Krauth, T., Wagner, S. (2017): Export of Plastic Debris by Rivers into the Sea. Environ. Sci. Technol. DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.7b02368 http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.7b02368
*added later to avoid misinterpretations
Further information
Dr. Christian Schmidt
UFZ Department of Hydrogeology
Phone: +49 341 235 1986
[email protected]
UFZ press office
Susanne Hufe
Phone: +49 341 235-1630
[email protected] |
UK should increase aid spending on ocean plastic: Gove | More of the UK’s £13bn ($17bn) annual overseas aid budget should be spent on reducing the amount of plastic pollution in the oceans, according to the country’s environment secretary, Michael Gove. The call comes as research from Germany’s Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research revealed that 90% of all plastic waste in the oceans comes from the following 10 rivers: the Niger and Nile in Africa, and the Amur, Ganges, Haihe, Indus, Mekong, Pearl, Yangtze and Yellow in Asia.
| https://news.sky.com/story/gove-more-overseas-aid-to-be-spent-on-reducing-ocean-plastic-11167349 | 2017-12-12 12:35:32.217000 | The Prime Minister has confirmed the Government will look at using foreign aid cash to help tackle plastic pollution clogging up the world's oceans.
Sky News understands Environment Secretary Michael Gove has asked the Department for International Development (DfID) to consider increasing the proportion of the £13bn annual overseas aid budget that is spent combating the problem.
:: Fishing for plastic to build litter-picking boats
Speaking in Paris after attending a major climate change summit of world leaders, Theresa May acknowledged greater amounts of overseas aid money could be used to save marine life.
"We've all been very concerned by the pictures we've seen in recent months of the impact of pollution on marine life, the impact of plastic pollution," she said.
"Of course the UK Government has already taken steps in relation to plastic - a charge on carrier bags, a ban on microbeads.
"But we are looking at what more we can do.
"That's not just the Environment Secretary but the International Development Secretary.
"To see how we can use overseas aid money to ensure we're doing what I think everybody wants, which is reducing this terrible pollution that is taking place and affecting marine life so devastatingly."
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:: Plastic in sea could be worse than first feared
Meanwhile, a study by the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) in Leipzig, Germany, has found 90% of plastic waste entering the oceans comes from just 10 rivers.
Two of them, the Nile and the Niger, are in Africa, while the other eight are in Asia: the Indus, Ganges, Amur, Mekong, Pearl, Haihe, Yellow and Yangtze.
:: Sky has been running a campaign to make people more aware of the effect plastic has on the world's oceans and to share ways of tackling the problem. To get involved in Sky Ocean Rescue, visit the campaign website here. You can also watch our documentary, A Plastic Voyage. |
UK scientists make breakthrough in treating Huntington's disease | Scientists at University College London’s Huntington’s Disease Centre have developed a drug based on synthetic DNA that appears to halt the progression of the incurable degenerative condition Huntington’s disease. The leader of the phase one trial involving 46 early-stage patients, Sarah Tabrizi, said the outcome was "probably the most significant moment in the history of Huntington’s" since the genetic disorder's discovery. The drug, Ionis-HTTRx, was developed by California biotech firm Ionis Pharmaceuticals. Swiss company Roche has paid $45m for a licence to develop the drug for clinical use.
| https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/dec/11/excitement-as-huntingtons-drug-shown-to-slow-progress-of-devastating-disease | 2017-12-12 12:07:45.980000 | A landmark trial for Huntington’s disease has announced positive results, suggesting that an experimental drug could become the first to slow the progression of the devastating genetic illness.
The results have been hailed as “enormously significant” because it is the first time any drug has been shown to suppress the effects of the Huntington’s mutation that causes irreversible damage to the brain. Current treatments only help with symptoms, rather than slowing the disease’s progression.
Q&A What is Huntington's disease? Show Huntington’s disease is a congenital degenerative condition caused by a single defective gene. Most patients are diagnosed in middle age, with symptoms including mood swings, irritability and depression. As the disease progresses, more serious symptoms can include involuntary jerky movements, cognitive difficulties and issues with speech and swallowing.
Currently there is no cure for Huntington's, although drugs exist which help manage some of the symptoms. It is thought that about 12 people in 100,000 are affected by Huntington's, and if a parent carries the faulty gene there is a 50% chance they will pass it on to their offspring. Was this helpful? Thank you for your feedback.
Prof Sarah Tabrizi, director of University College London’s Huntington’s Disease Centre who led the phase 1 trial, said the results were “beyond what I’d ever hoped ... The results of this trial are of ground-breaking importance for Huntington’s disease patients and families,” she said.
The results have also caused ripples of excitement across the scientific world because the drug, which is a synthetic strand of DNA, could potentially be adapted to target other incurable brain disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. The Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche has paid a $45m licence fee to take the drug forward to clinical use.
Huntington’s is an incurable degenerative disease caused by a single gene defect that is passed down through families.
The first symptoms, which typically appear in middle age, include mood swings, anger and depression. Later patients develop uncontrolled jerky movements, dementia and ultimately paralysis. Some people die within a decade of diagnosis.
“Most of our patients know what’s in their future,” said Ed Wild, a UCL scientist and consultant neurologist at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London, who administered the drug in the trial.
The mutant Huntington’s gene contains instructions for cells to make a toxic protein, called huntingtin. This code is copied by a messenger molecule and dispatched to the cell’s protein-making machinery. The drug, called Ionis-HTTRx, works by intercepting the messenger molecule and destroying it before the harmful protein can be made, effectively silencing the effects of the mutant gene.
To deliver the drug to the brain, it has to be injected into the fluid around the spine using a four-inch needle.
Prof John Hardy, a neuroscientist at UCL who was not involved in the trial, said: “If I’d have been asked five years ago if this could work, I would have absolutely said no. The fact that it does work is really remarkable.”
The trial involved 46 men and women with early stage Huntington’s disease in the UK, Germany and Canada. The patients were given four spinal injections one month apart and the drug dose was increased at each session; roughly a quarter of participants had a placebo injection.
After being given the drug, the concentration of harmful protein in the spinal cord fluid dropped significantly and in proportion with the strength of the dose. This kind of closely matched relationship normally indicates a drug is having a powerful effect.
“For the first time a drug has lowered the level of the toxic disease-causing protein in the nervous system, and the drug was safe and well-tolerated,” said Tabrizi. “This is probably the most significant moment in the history of Huntington’s since the gene [was isolated].”
The trial was too small, and not long enough, to show whether patients’ clinical symptoms improved, but Roche is now expected to launch a major trial aimed at testing this.
If the future trial is successful, Tabrizi believes the drug could ultimately be used in people with the Huntington’s gene before they become ill, possibly stopping symptoms ever occurring. “They may just need a pulse every three to four months,” she said. “One day we want to prevent the disease.”
The drug, developed by the California biotech firm Ionis Pharmaceuticals, is a synthetic single strand of DNA customised to latch onto the huntingtin messenger molecule.
The unexpected success raises the tantalising possibility that a similar approach might work for other degenerative brain disorders. “The drug’s like Lego,” said Wild. “You can target [any protein].”
For instance, a similar synthetic strand of DNA could be made to target the messenger that produces misshapen amyloid or tau proteins in Alzheimer’s.
“Huntington’s alone is exciting enough,” said Hardy, who first proposed that amyloid proteins play a central role in Alzheimer’s. “I don’t want to overstate this too much, but if it works for one, why can’t it work for a lot of them? I am very, very excited.”
Prof Giovanna Mallucci, associate director of UK Dementia Research Institute at the University of Cambridge, described the work as a “tremendous step forward” for individuals with Huntington’s disease and their families.
“Clearly, there will be much interest into whether it can be applied to the treatment of other neurodegenerative diseases, like Alzheimer’s,” she added. However, she said that in the case of most other disorders the genetic causes are complex and less well understood, making them potentially harder to target.
About 10,000 people in the UK have the condition and about 25,000 are at risk. Most people with Huntington’s inherited the gene from a parent, but about one in five patients have no known family history of the disease.
The full results of the trial are expected to be published in a scientific journal next year. |
Karrot Health offers bonuses for using employer gym memberships | Chicago start-up Karrot Health is aiming to encourage people to use gym memberships handed out by employers with an app offering financial bonuses for hitting fitness milestones. The company, which is preparing for beta testing, said participants' data is automatically collected from their wearables by its iOS app, while Apple's HealthKit monitors and tracks their attendance and progress. The company aims to expand the app's availability to Android and other fitness trackers, and also plans to broaden the app to include personalised goals and social features.
| https://www.builtinchicago.org/2017/12/11/would-cash-bonus-convince-you-hit-gym-startup-wants-find-out | 2017-12-12 12:03:21.330000 | Image via shutterstock
In their efforts to promote health and wellness, many companies cover gym memberships for their employees. But what if they just paid them to work out instead?
That’s the premise behind Karrot Health, a new Chicago startup targeting the employee wellness market.
“When I worked for Uber, they gave me $80 a month for a gym membership, which adds up to almost $1,000 per year,” said founder and CEO Kelley Halpin. “All they could tell was that, at some point, I signed up for a gym.”
Karrot lets employers set up a recurring “bonus” for employees that is unlocked by hitting certain fitness milestones — like logging 10,000 calories’ worth of workouts in a single month. Employees track progress using wearable devices or the fitness tracking features built into their smartphones.
To ensure that employees actually take advantage of the program, Karrot’s iOS app pulls data automatically from HealthKit, Apple’s default fitness feature, allowing users to track workouts without having to remember to activate anything.
“That the data was collected passively was important to me,” said Halpin. “Once you set this up, you are good to go. Everything just runs smoothly on its own after that.”
Halpin said Karrot is currently gearing up for beta tests with a handful of early customers. Companies typically offer around $50 per month per employee in incentives, but they’re free to adjust that amount as they see fit.
While Karrot’s beta version is centered primarily around payouts for workouts, Halpin said his long-term plan is to build a full-fledged workout app with personalized challenges and social features. He also wants to dig deep into their data to learn how, when and where users are exercising in order to nudge them into exercising at just the right time.
Although Karrot is initially launching for iOS and Apple Watch, its goal is to support as many devices as possible, including Android devices and popular fitness trackers like Fitbit. To get there, the startup is recruiting for additional technical talent.
“We’re looking for at least two or three developers to start,” said Halpin. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
For now, Karrot is primarily working with startups and smaller technology companies, which Halpin said tend to be more open to adopting new technologies — and have employees who use Apple Watches and other wearable devices. But he’s also in dialog with some larger employers.
“When companies reach a certain size, they start to self-insure employees,” he said. “That makes health insurance costs very important for them.” |
Samsung to expand biometrics security with palm-scanning feature | South Korean electronics giant Samsung has filed a patent for palm-print recognition technology as a means of helping users recover forgotten passwords. According to the filing, a photo of the user's upturned hand could be examined in order to proffer password hints and reminders. The filing suggests the technology could also be used to unlock devices. Samsung has developed other means of biometric identification, from fingerprint scanning to facial recognition. | https://futurism.com/samsungs-new-phones-might-literally-read-palm-hand/ | 2017-12-12 12:00:37.200000 | Going Mystical
Samsung could be looking to branch into palm reading sometime in the near future, but not to gain insight into your love life.
Recent patent filings by the South Korean electronics giant show that the company may be investing in yet another means of biometric scanning. Samsung's palm recognition technology would join other biometrics, such as facial recognition and fingerprint scanning, along with standard passwords, pin numbers, and patterns as a means of securing your device.
Image credit: Samsung
The patent shows that this functionality is meant to deliver password hints to the user — it won't unlock the phone directly. The filing includes an image of a user taking a photo of a hand and using the lines in the palm to complete letters on the device's screen.
These letters are supposed to provide a subtle hint at the password. However, Samsung could theoretically extend the capabilities of this function to allow the palm scans to unlock the device directly.
Biometrics Showdown
Some may question the need for yet another bio-scanning capability. Apple, Samsung's chief competitor in the mobile phone market, has done away with all biometric security features other than facial recognition in their top-of-the-line iPhone X.
The use of biometrics, in general, is also still fairly controversial. While these features may be more secure and convenient than traditional passwords or pins, they also carry some unique weaknesses. A person's fingerprint can be lifted off another surface and used to hack their phone, or someone could even use a sleeping person's finger to unlock their device.
Samsung's palm recognition feature is just a patent, and it may never actually make it into a device. However, with each new potential security feature, companies need to ensure safety is always the top priority. Convenience cannot trump security in terms of importance for consumers. |
Microsoft to set up $50m 'AI for Earth' project | Microsoft has announced $50m of extra funds for a new Artificial Intelligence project aimed at saving the planet. 'AI for Earth' was initially launched this summer with $2m, which has provided the funds for 35 environmental projects around the world. Among those it has supported are a mosquito tracking programme and a system for helping farmers maximise crop efficiency and use fewer resources. The new funding will help support these existing projects and new ones, with partners receiving training and access to Microsoft's AI products, including the Azure platform.
| https://www.technologyreview.com/the-download/609745/microsoft-announces-50-million-for-its-ai-for-earth-project/ | 2017-12-12 11:59:10.213000 | There are plenty of stories about artificial intelligence ending the world as we know it (see 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Terminator, certain Elon Musk tweets). There are fewer about how AI could save the world, but believers are out there. At a gathering Monday for the two-year anniversary of the Paris climate accord, Microsoft announced a $50 million investment in its AI for Earth project that it believes can be a “game-changer for our planet.”
Microsoft launched AI for Earth over the summer with an initial $2 million, hiring Lucas Joppa to run it as the company’s chief environmental scientist—a role that, as far as Joppa knows, doesn’t exist at any other technology company. Since the launch, the company has given out 35 grants to groups in 10 countries. The new investment will support and expand upon the current projects as well as new ventures over the next five years.
“We’re impatient and a lot of partners are too,” Joppa told MIT Technology Review. “There isn’t enough money and resources for people doubling down on these issues.”
AI for Earth grants give groups access and training to use the Azure platform and other Microsoft AI products. The projects so far include producing a more precise land cover map of the Chesapeake Bay watershed for conservation work, a mosquito tracking program that lets researchers learn about wildlife populations through blood analysis (it also functions as an early-warning system for Zika outbreaks), and getting farmers more data to increase crop yields with fewer resources.
AI for Earth is, of course, good for Microsoft’s bottom line as well. Joppa said that if the technology works for small, cash-strapped groups often working in tough conditions in the field, Microsoft gets feedback for their products and clients can be assured that the system will work for them.
“Anytime we can stress-test the technology, the better,” he said.
And of course, AI talent retention and recruiting is a huge concern for the tech industry. Joppa said that AI for Earth and its mission are a draw for researchers and developers.
“Yes, you need to pay them,” he said. “But you need to give them meaningful things to work on.” |
FDA to add new pathway to medical device approval process | The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is planning to update its almost 40-year-old regulatory processes for approval of medical devices by adding a voluntary alternative alongside the existing 510(K) pathway, according to commissioner Scott Gottlieb. He said identifying "sufficient, appropriate predicate devices" for testing sometimes stood in the way of innovation, and the new FDA framework would be open to pre-specified mature device categories that met or exceeded the criteria applying to products already on the market. Draft guidance on the voluntary pathway is set to be released early next year.
| http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/fda-add-new-voluntary-approval-pathway-medical-devices | 2017-12-12 11:58:39.987000 | The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is planning to add a new voluntary, alternative pathway for medical devices, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, MD, announced Monday.
The flexible pathway will lean on more modern criteria for a reference standard and allow comparisons to standards that are more closely aligned with the particular technology FDA is being asked to evaluate.
The new framework will let device manufacturers demonstrate substantial equivalence by meeting objective performance and safety rules. Gottlieb said this will include FDA-recognized standards, guidance documents, or a combination of the two.
[Also: 2017 was a big year for FDA digital health regulations]
Further, the pathway will be available to pre-specified mature device categories that meet or exceed the safety and performance criteria of existing devices on the market. Gottlieb said the approach will make it easier for the agency to adopt a new product framework that meets international consensus standards.
The new pathway would be voluntary and manufacturers could opt to continue to use the current 510(K) evaluation pathway.
Regulatory processes for the agency have remained relatively the same since its first implementation about 40 years ago, Gottlieb wrote. The 510(K) pathway for device approval, for instance, requires manufacturers to show a new device is substantially equivalent to similar devices already on the market and it demands comparisons to devices often up to 40 years old.
“FDA recognizes that such direct comparison testing creates burdens for 510(K) applicants, especially when many new devices are designed in novel ways, using more advanced technologies,” Gottlieb wrote. “It’s sometimes hard to identify sufficient, appropriate predicate devices in order to conduct testing. This can create an obstacle to certain kinds of innovation and lead to inefficiency in the review process with few, if any, benefits to patient safety.”
The FDA will release its draft guidance on the new 510(K) pathway in the first quarter of 2018.
Healthcare IT year in review This was one of our most popular stories of the year.
Twitter: @JessieFDavis
Email the writer: [email protected] |
MEP tables amendments to make joint report legally binding | David Davis, the UK's Brexit Secretary, has angered the EU by saying that the joint report released, indicating the first stages of agreement on Brexit, is not legally binding, speaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr show. In response, Guy Verhofstadt, the Brexit Coordinator for the European Parliament, has submitted amendments to the resolution to hold the UK accountable for agreements made. | https://news.sky.com/story/david-davis-slammed-for-calling-brexit-deal-statement-of-intent-11167642 | 2017-12-12 11:56:49.777000 | David Davis calling the phase one Brexit deal a "statement of intent" was "unhelpful and undermines trust", the European Parliament's chief Brexit coordinator has said.
Guy Verhofstadt has gone as far as proposing amendments to the European Parliament document that approves the deal so that it reflects his displeasure.
He tweeted two pictures of the amendments.
One says Mr Davis' comments were a "risk to undermine the good faith that has been built during the negotiations".
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The other says phase two talks could only happen "if the UK Government also fully respects the commitments it made".
Mr Davis responded hours later on Twitter saying it was a "pleasure, as ever" to talk to Mr Verhofstadt.
He wrote: "We both agreed on the importance of the Joint Report. Let's work together to get it converted into legal text as soon as possible."
Liberal Democrat MP Tom Brake responded by calling for Mr Davis to "put a sock in it".
He said: "David Davis has endangered the entire divorce agreement because he couldn't resist playing to the Brexit gallery and because the Cabinet can't even agree among itself what kind of Brexit it wants.
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"The sheer incompetence and chaos coming from the Government is unprecedented in my lifetime. Every time David Davis speaks, the Brexit divorce grows worse for Britain."
The row broke out after Mr Davis said the deal struck between Downing Street and Brussels last week was not "legally enforcable".
Irish government chief whip Joe McHugh quickly shot back that they would "be holding the United Kingdom to account, as will the EU".
He told broadcaster RTE: "My question to anybody within the British Government would be: why would there be an agreement, a set of principled agreements, in order to get to phase two, if they weren't going to be held up?
"That just sounds bizarre to me.
"This, as far as we're concerned, is a binding agreement, an agreement in principle."
Image: EU chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier insisted there is 'no possibility' of a trade deal by 2019
Leaders of the remaining 27 EU member states will meet in Brussels at the end of this week to decide whether to formally sanction the start of Brexit trade talks.
Ahead of the summit, European Council president Donald Tusk wrote to heads of government confirming he will recommend a progression to the second phase of negotiations.
But, in an apparent warning over the chances of agreeing a final Brexit agreement before the UK's departure in March 2019, Mr Tusk wrote: "The conclusion of the first phase of negotiations is moderate progress, since we only have ten months left to determine the transition period and our future relations with the UK.
"This will be a furious race against time, where again our unity will be key."
Meanwhile, EU chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier insisted there is "no possibility" that Britain and the EU can conclude a free trade deal by the time Britain quits the bloc.
The European Commission official said only a "political declaration" outlining a future EU-UK relationship will be ready by March 2019. |
Skills shortage sees Microsoft set up internal 'AI university' | Microsoft is setting up an internal university to teach its employees the knowledge and skills to develop artificial intelligence (AI) technology. The move is in response to the current skills shortage in AI, which has raised salaries along with concerns over an academia “brain drain” and competition for top talent. Against this backdrop, Microsoft’s recruitment has adopted a co-working approach, partnering with universities, enabling employees to continue to teach, giving students access to its researchers and funding PhD scholarships and internships.
| https://www.developer-tech.com/news/2017/dec/11/microsoft-setting-ai-university-address-talent-shortage/ | 2017-12-12 11:50:33.793000 | Ryan is a senior editor at TechForge Media with over a decade of experience covering the latest technology and interviewing leading industry figures. He can often be sighted at tech conferences with a strong coffee in one hand and a laptop in the other. If it's geeky, he’s probably into it. Find him on Twitter (@Gadget_Ry) or Mastodon (@[email protected])
Microsoft is so concerned about the shortage of AI skills that it’s setting up an ‘AI university’ to overcome it. Unfortunately, it’s only for Microsoft employees (for now.)
The internal AI university will train employees on different concepts that are important for the development of AI. Microsoft Research Director Chris Bishop says the program is designed to give practical skills and knowledge to people who are trained elsewhere in the business.
I recently covered Microsoft’s concern about the lack of AI talent on our sister publication, IoT News. The company is not alone, and many have voiced their concerns about private companies stealing talent from academia — which is in danger of leaving a generation without important skills.
For its part, Microsoft is taking an ethical approach to recruiting AI talent.
The company partners with universities to ensure it doesn’t steal talent, allows employees to continue roles in teaching, funds some related PhD scholarships, sends researchers to co-supervise students in universities, and offers paid internships to work alongside teams at Microsoft on projects.
For those who have AI skills, they are currently reaping the benefits of the shortage. AI talent is so in demand that employers are offering six-figure salaries.
These large salaries pose another problem as — while companies like Microsoft, Google, and Apple can afford it — innovative startups have even less of a chance at competing against these established giants by not being able to offer the same huge paychecks.
Nevertheless, Microsoft’s continued approach to recruiting and training its own AI talent is commendable. Hopefully, other companies will follow to ensure the industry can thrive without being hindered by a lack of skills.
What are your thoughts on the AI talent shortage? Let us know in the comments. |
Skills shortage sees Microsoft set up internal 'AI university' | Microsoft is setting up an internal university to teach its employees the knowledge and skills to develop artificial intelligence (AI) technology. The move is in response to the current skills shortage in AI, which has raised salaries along with concerns over an academia “brain drain” and competition for top talent. Against this backdrop, Microsoft’s recruitment has adopted a co-working approach, partnering with universities, enabling employees to continue to teach, giving students access to its researchers and funding PhD scholarships and internships. | http://uk.businessinsider.com/microsoft-has-set-up-an-internal-ai-university-to-try-and-get-around-the-skills-shortage-2017-12?r=US&IR=T | 2017-12-12 11:50:33.793000 | Microsoft has set up its own internal "university" to train Microsoft staff in the field of artificial intelligence.
The company is also looking to hire people at machine learning conferences likes NIPS.
Chris Bishop, head of the Microsoft Research lab in Cambridge, said he's keen to avoid "hoovering" up AI professors from universities.
Microsoft has set up an internal "AI University" in a bid to help it overcome the skills shortage in the booming field of artificial intelligence (AI).
Chris Bishop, the director of a Microsoft Research lab in Cambridge, UK, told Business Insider that the Microsoft AI University is one of several schemes Microsoft has implemented to address the lack of talent in the field of AI, where there's fierce competition between tech firms to hire the best people.
"We have a thing called AI University, which is an internal education programme so that people who are incredibly smart and capable but trained in a different domain can quickly learn about machine learning both in a foundational sense but also in a practical sense of how to use it," said Bishop.
When it comes to AI talent, Microsoft is competing with the likes of Amazon and Apple, who also have research offices in Cambridge, as well as DeepMind (owned by Google), Facebook, Twitter, and many others.
Chris Bishop is the head of a Microsoft Research lab in Cambridge. Microsoft
The global battle for talent is raging because of the potential AI breakthroughs that bright minds stand to make in the next few years thanks to recent advances in computation power and the availability of vast data sets.
AI is now at the core of almost all of the big tech companies' major products (think Apple's iPhone, Amazon Echo, Microsoft Surface, etc) and even fairly small advances in areas like speech recognition and image search could have a big impact on profits.
In a bid to attract the most capable people, the multibillion dollar tech giants are offering annual salaries in the hundreds of thousands of pounds and some people leading AI-focused teams at these companies are earning over £1 million a year, according to multiple sources that Business Insider has spoken to.
How Microsoft is recruiting AI talent
Microsoft is also trying to bring people into the company by finding talent at conferences and sponsoring students through university on the condition that they take a job when they've finished studying.
The Redmond-headquartered company has set up a large stand at an AI conference in LA this week called NIPS (The Conference and Workshop on Neural Information Processing Systems), where Bishop and his team hope to recruit a number of people.
The computer science department at Cambridge University. Business Insider UK/Sam Shead
Unlike some other companies, Microsoft is keen to avoid hiring all the best AI professors straight out of university, according to Bishop.
"One of the things we're trying to avoid doing is simply going into a university, hoovering up all the top professors and then just leaving tumbleweed blowing down the corridors," he said.
"That might be a short term fix for some companies but I don't think it serves even the industry itself very well, let alone academia or the nation, to take that rather short term view."
Dozens of AI researchers have left Oxford and Cambridge over the last few years for what are likely to be better-paid roles at DeepMind, according to LinkedIn.
Irina Higgins, for example, left her role as a machine learning tutor at Oxford in April 2015 before joining DeepMind as a research scientist in June of the same year. Higgins also completed a PhD in computational neuroscience and artificial intelligence at Oxford before leaving to join DeepMind.
Salaries at DeepMind averaged $345,000 (£258,000) in 2016, according to UK regulatory filings cited by Bloomberg.
Bishop, who declined to comment on DeepMind's hiring, said his lab is funding masters degrees and PhDs at the University of Cambridge and other schools in a bid to spot talent early and get it on side.
"We try to work with them [universities] to fuel that talent pipeline," said Bishop. "So for example we're a major sponsor of a masters programme at Cambridge University." Bishop added that Microsoft Research has funded around 200 PhD scholarships at the centuries-old institution.
Other tech firms, including DeepMind, are also funding students through university but perhaps not on the same scale. Researchers from DeepMind are also giving AI and machine learning lectures to students, and some are even acting as PhD supervisors.
Staff from Microsoft Research in Cambridge also helped to develop the UK's new "computing" curriculum, which replaced ICT in 2014. |
South Korea to create military drone swarm unit | Army officers in South Korea are working on plans to create an attack unit of weaponised drones for use in the event of conflict with North Korea. The autonomous aerial vehicles would be primarily used to conduct surveillance operations, but would have the ability to 'swarm' into battle if needed. The technology is based on systems created by Israel, though similar systems are in development by a range of other countries, including the US, Russia and China.
| https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/world/south-korean-drone-swarm-to-face-down-pyongyang-20171207-h008se.html | 2017-12-12 11:46:35.507000 | Beijing: South Korea plans to create a combat unit of weaponised drones next year that would be capable of swarming the nuclear-armed North in the event of a conflict.
Army officials said the drones would primarily focus on reconnaissance operations against strategic North Korean military sites, amid growing tensions over Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programme.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un inspects an intercontinental ballistic missile test in North Korea. Credit: AP
But the unit could be mobilised to launch swarm attacks if necessary, with an army official claiming drone combat would be a "game-changer in warfare" on the Korean peninsula.
"The army plans to set up a special organisation to lead the development of dronebots, establish a standard platform and expand the dronebot programme," the unnamed official said. |
AEye develops hybrid sensor that works like the human eye | San Francisco start-up AEye has developed an adaptive imaging hybrid sensor for self-driving cars. According to CEO Luis Dussan, AEye's combination of a low-light camera, solid-state lidar and embedded artificial-intelligence algorithms can scan areas in low and high resolution, and add colour to pick out important objects. However, the system is restricted to a 70-degree field of vision, making it expensive to ensure 360-degree coverage on a single car. AEye said it is testing the sensors in automated taxis with "one of the largest vehicle manufacturer OEMs on the planet". | https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609718/a-new-sensor-gives-driverless-cars-a-human-like-view-of-the-world/ | 2017-12-12 11:29:47.253000 | Dussan, AEye’s founder and CEO, has worked in electronics and optics labs at Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory; he put a PhD in computational physics on hold to launch the startup. He initially planned to build AI to help vehicles drive themselves, but he soon found that sensors on the market couldn’t provide the data he wanted to use. “We realized we had to build our own hardware,” he explains. “So we did.”
Most autonomous cars use lidar sensors, which bounce laser beams off nearby objects, to create accurate 3-D maps of their surroundings. The best versions that are commercially available, made by market leader Velodyne, are mechanical, rapidly sweeping as many as 128 stacked laser beams in a full 360 degrees around a vehicle.
But even though they’re good, there are a couple of problems with those mechanical devices. First, they’re expensive (see “Lidar Just Got Way Better—But It’s Still Too Expensive for Your Car”). Second, they don’t offer much flexibility, because the lasers point out at predetermined angles. That means a car might capture a very detailed view of the sky as it crests a hill, say, or look too far off into the distance during low-speed city driving—and there’s no way to change it.
AEye
The leading alternative, solid-state lidar, uses electronics to quickly steer a laser beam back and forth to achieve the same effect as mechanical devices. Many companies have seized on the technology because they can be made cheaply. But the resulting sensors, which are on offer for as little as $100, scan a regular, unvarying rectangular grid and don’t offer the standard of data required for driving at highway speeds (see “Low-Quality Lidar Will Keep Self-Driving Cars in the Slow Lane”).
AEye wants to use solid-state devices a little differently, programming them to spit out laser beams in focused areas instead of a regular grid. The firm isn’t revealing detailed specifications on how accurately it can steer the beam yet, but it does say it should be able to see as far as 300 meters with an angular resolution as small as 0.1 degrees. That’s as good as market-leading mechanical devices.
AEye’s setup doesn’t scan a whole scene in such high levels of detail all the time, though: it will scan certain areas at lower resolution, and other areas at higher resolution, depending on the priority of the car's control software.
Still, the fact that it can be reprogrammed at will makes that a useful feature. “You can trade resolution, scene revisit rate, and range at any point in time,” Dussan says. “The same sensor can adapt.” On the freeway its view could be focused primarily on the lane ahead, like a human eye, gathering fewer data points in the periphery of the image. On city streets, it could cover the entire field of view equally, but randomly shift where the points are acquired to minimize the chances of missing an obstacle.
The device can also use data from its camera in some neat ways. First, it can add color to raw lidar images. That’s a bit different from the way most autonomous cars process lidar, sending it to a central computer to be fused with data from other sensors. Such rapid processing is useful for quickly spotting things where color is important—like brake lights. |
Redrow Redrow announces net gain approach to enhance biodiversity | Housing developer Redrow has announced a new initiative to enhance biodiversity and improve the ecological value of its sites. The new "net gain" approach has been trialled at developments in Exeter and Bedfordshire, and will now be rolled out to all new projects. It means the company will aim to achieve a net biodiversity gain across all its developments, making it the first housebuilder in the UK to do so. Projects completed so far include the conversion of a 6,000-space car park into woodland at one site, and the creation of pollinator-friendly habitats at another.
| https://www.edie.net/news/7/Redrow-targets-biodiversity--net-gain--at-new-developments/ | 2017-12-12 11:23:42.290000 | Join our growing army of changemakers and get unlimited access to our premium content
Redrow has been trialling ways to enhance biodiversity across select developments, with an aim in place to improve the ecological value of an area after project construction has been completed. Following successful trials at Caddington Woods in Bedfordshire and Saxon Brook in Exeter, the housebuilder has agreed to expand the initiative across all new developments.
“At Redrow we don’t just build homes, we strive to foster thriving communities, and promoting natural habitats and wildlife in an accessible way for residents is an integral part of this,” Redrow’s sustainability manager Nicola Johansen said.
“We have established important partnerships and initiatives in recent years relating to site ecology and wildlife. In order to entrench the importance of biodiversity across the business we are now taking the step of measuring biodiversity on our developments, to ensure we are having a positive impact and can make improvements where necessary.”
Redrow becomes one of the first UK housebuilders to attempt to achieve a net biodiversity gain across all developments, including homes, amenities and green spaces.
The company worked with the RSPB at Caddington Woods to transform the former 6,000-space car park to improve surrounding woodland areas. At Saxon Brook, Redrow has partnered with the Bumblebee Conservation Trust to create pollinator-friendly habitats. Redrow is also building 950 homes at Ebbsfleet Garden City, the largest Healthy New Town Programme pilot.
In 2015, Redrow was the first housebuilder to be awarded WWF’s Three Trees status for sustainable timber use. The housebuilder has been awarded the status again this year, as part of a second assessment period.
New approaches
There are ongoing calls for the construction sector to champion approaches to biodiversity and natural capital. The concept of natural capital seeks to integrate ecosystem-oriented management with economic decision-making and development and some think tanks believe that it can be combined with conservation approaches to align business actions and environmental protection.
There are also specific cases of this type of approach leading to economic benefits. AECOM and National Grid found that an estimated £9,000 of natural capital improvements could be made per hectare on the land they assessed, driving a benefit-to-cost ratio of 8:1 over 30 years.
Redrow’s announcement arrives at an interesting time for UK housebuilders. Last week, NextGeneration, which benchmarks the sustainability performance of the UK’s largest homebuilders, awarded Lendlease the top spot in its sustainability index. Redrow was ranked third in the report.
At a national level, the Clean Growth Strategy confirmed that all fuel-poor homes will be upgraded to EPC band C by 2030, while a sector deal with the construction industry following the new Industrial Strategy saw the industry pledge to halve emissions in the built environment by 2025.
Matt Mace |
People warned not to put homes at risk to buy into bitcoin mania | People are taking out mortgages and using credit cards to buy bitcoin, according to Joseph Borg, a securities regulator. He warned people buying into bitcoin "you're on this mania curve. At some point there's got to be a levelling off. This is not something a guy who's making $100,000 a year, who's got a mortgage and two kids in college ought to be invested in." The chief economist of UBS Wealth Management, Paul Donovan, is also sceptical of bitcoin as a currency despite the launch of futures, saying, "the bubble to end all bubbles continues". | https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/11/ubs-cryptocurrencies-like-bitcoin-are-the-bubble-to-end-all-bubbles.html | 2017-12-12 11:19:59.847000 | UBS Wealth Management is not a believer in bitcoin becoming a legitimate currency even as the launch of futures lead some investors to believe the cryptocurrency will become a more stable market.
"The bubble to end all bubbles continues. Cryptocurrencies only have value if accepted as currencies. However, they cannot be used for the most important transaction in an economy, and cryptocurrency supply can only rise and never fall (making them a poor store of value)," global chief economist Paul Donovan wrote in a post Monday. "To date, using cryptocurrencies requires (effectively) a simultaneous asset sale and purchase of goods or services."
The economist said in an October report that bitcoin's extreme price volatility detracted from its ability to be a "store of value," which is an essential feature of being a currency.
"A twenty-fold increase in bitcoin prices in just two years, and an absence of any fundamental economic backing, cryptocurrency prices are almost certainly a bubble," he wrote in that report. |
People warned not to put homes at risk to buy into bitcoin mania | People are taking out mortgages and using credit cards to buy bitcoin, according to Joseph Borg, a securities regulator. He warned people buying into bitcoin "you're on this mania curve. At some point there's got to be a levelling off. This is not something a guy who's making $100,000 a year, who's got a mortgage and two kids in college ought to be invested in." The chief economist of UBS Wealth Management, Paul Donovan, is also sceptical of bitcoin as a currency despite the launch of futures, saying, "the bubble to end all bubbles continues". | https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/11/people-are-taking-out-mortgages-to-buy-bitcoin-says-joseph-borg.html | 2017-12-12 11:19:59.847000 | Bitcoin is in the "mania" phase, with some people even borrowing money to get in on the action, securities regulator Joseph Borg told CNBC on Monday.
"We've seen mortgages being taken out to buy bitcoin. … People do credit cards, equity lines," said Borg, president of the North American Securities Administrators Association, a voluntary organization devoted to investor protection. Borg is also director of the Alabama Securities Commission.
"This is not something a guy who's making $100,000 a year, who's got a mortgage and two kids in college ought to be invested in."
Bitcoin has been soaring all year, starting out at $1,000 and rocketing above $19,000 on the Coinbase exchange last week. The price on Coinbase, which accounts for a third of bitcoin trading value, is often at a premium over other exchanges.
The cryptocurrency was trading at just under $16,700 on Coinbase at 2:21 p.m. New York time Monday.
"You're on this mania curve. At some point in time there's got to be a leveling off. Cryptocurrency is here to stay. Blockchain is here to stay. Whether it is bitcoin or not, I don't know," Borg said in an interview with "Power Lunch."
He also doesn't think futures contracts legitimize the digital currency.
Bitcoin futures , trading under the XBT ticker symbol, debuted on the Cboe futures exchange on Sunday night. The CME plans to launch its bitcoin futures Dec. 18.
While futures contracts are regulated, bitcoin itself is not. Borg said that's because innovation and technology always outrun regulation.
"As [technology] continues to accelerate and continues to increase, regulators have got to understand what it is that the innovation's coming up with and we're still trying to get educated," he said.
"We're looking at it from a money transmission point of view but that doesn't cover the entire bitcoin space."
Disclaimer |
PolicyCastle ties up with Cocoon home security to offer discount | UK online home insurance provider PolicyCastle is offering a discount to customers who make use of the monitoring system developed by smart home security firm Cocoon. Policyholders receive a 15% discount when purchasing policies through the online platform while also making use of Cocoon's home security system. Cocoon is backed by UK insurer Aviva.
| http://youtalk-insurance.com/broker-news/cocoon-partners-with-policycastle-to-save-uk-home-insurance-customers-money | 2017-12-12 11:09:31.843000 | PolicyCastle now offers a market-leading 15% home insurance discount to Cocoon home security customers who use the AI-powered smart home security device to protect their home
Cocoon, the Aviva-backed smart home security system, has announced a deal with PolicyCastle, the innovative digital home insurance platform, giving people buying home insurance through PolicyCastle a 15% discount when protecting their home with the connected security system.
Cocoon’s partnership with PolicyCastle bolsters people’s security across the UK with this new market-leading home insurance deal, providing home protection in the lead up to Christmas when potential intruders take advantage of the dark nights and high-value presents.
PolicyCastle’s transparent online service helps UK customers make informed choices when buying home insurance, and perfectly aligns with Cocoon’s mission to help people feel safe at home. UK homeowners can now benefit from the home insurance offer when buying a policy with PolicyCastle for properties protected by a Cocoon smart home security system.
Sanjay Parekh, Cocoon CEO said: “We’re delighted to partner with PolicyCastle, the innovative digital home insurance platform, giving UK homeowners using Cocoon to protect their homes and loved ones a genuinely
market-leading discount on their home insurance policy. The connected home has gone through a technological evolution, having mostly failed to deliver much real-world benefits to customers, but just as smart thermostats have saved customers hard-earned cash, Cocoon partnering with PolicyCastle gives UK homeowners security and real year-on-year cost savings at a time when household incomes are being squeezed. We call that a win for the customer.
We see innovation, whether through technology or commercial partnerships, as the most effective way to improve the lives of our customers. Working together with PolicyCastle and other innovative insurance partners is just one way to kickstart change in the home insurance industry and force larger, established brands to improve their offerings to UK customers. The cost of protecting the home and loved ones is priceless, and here at Cocoon we truly believe that our smart security system will be at the centre of that change”.
Edmund Dilger, PolicyCastle CEO said: “We are excited to partner with Cocoon to offer a home insurance discount to their customers. Smart home devices have the opportunity to revolutionise the way we maintain and protect our homes and we are delighted to support customers who are using them. PolicyCastle is creating the first database relating different smart home devices, perils and claims, and will work with insurers to provide tailored home insurance policies for customers based on the data. We are delighted to work with Cocoon and other smart home technology businesses as we innovate on behalf of customers.”
Cocoon is changing the way we all secure our homes, with a unique AI-powered all-in-one home security system that uses sound-detection to protect more of the home than any other security device. Simple to setup and use, keeping people connected to their home via an app, Cocoon’s Subsound® technology, offers multi-room protection through infrasound motion detection. A hassle-free way to protect what you care about most. |
Vietnam hit by rare billion-dollar economic catastrophe losses | Major storms over Vietnam caused an unprecedented VND22.1tn ($1bn) of damage to the economy last month, according to insurer Aon Benfield. Much of the costs will be absorbed by the country as "insurance penetration remains low in this part of the world", warned Adam Podlaha, global head of Impact Forecasting. The catastrophe losses illustrate the financial vulnerabilities of "an at-risk population", he added.
| https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/international/2017/12/11/473710.htm | 2017-12-12 11:09:22.157000 | Typhoon Damrey made landfall in Vietnam during November as a Category 2 strength storm, bringing estimated economic damages of VND22.1 trillion (US$1.0 billion) – a rare billion-dollar event for the country, according to Impact Forecasting, Aon Benfield’s catastrophe model development team.
This year marks the first time since 1993 in which Vietnam has had a season with a Category 2 storm (Damrey) and Category 3 storm (Doksuri) making landfall, said Impact Forecasting’s November 2017 Global Catastrophe Recap.
Damrey killed at least 108 people, injured 364, while 12 people were listed as missing as a result of the storm, which destroyed more than 3,560 homes and caused damage to an estimated 300,000 additional homes, said the report.
“The month of November featured an active stretch throughout parts of Asia. Vietnam endured its second significant typhoon landfall of 2017 after Typhoon Damrey left an estimated US$1.0 billion in economic damage, primarily due to flooding,” said Adam Podlaha, global head of Impact Forecasting. [Editor’s note: economic damage is uninsured damage].
“Additional floods were noted elsewhere in Asia with the return of the annual northeast monsoon, with particular impacts in sections of Sri Lanka, India, Malaysia and Thailand,” he added. “Despite the expensive nature of these events, insurance penetration remains low in this part of the world and signifies the continued financial vulnerabilities of an at-risk population to natural disasters.”
Further natural hazard events to have occurred elsewhere during November include:
A major magnitude-7.3 earthquake struck northeastern Iraq, killing at least 543 people and injuring almost 10,000 others. At least 40,000 structures collapsed, primarily in rural areas with poor construction. Damage in Iran alone was estimated at up to IRR26 trillion (US$740 million). Local insurers cited that roughly 3 percent of residents in the affected region have insurance.
South Korea endured its joint strongest earthquake on record when a moderate magnitude-5.4 tremor struck Gyeongsangbuk-do province on November 15, injuring at least 57 people. The tremor caused damage to more than 1,000 homes and infrastructure.
Separate tremors also struck Tibet and China, causing damage to a combined 12,000 structures.
Powerful thunderstorms left widespread damage across parts of the United States in the Midwest and Northeast. The greatest impacts resulted from tornado touchdowns, hail larger than the size of baseballs, and damaging straight-line winds. Some of the hardest-hit areas came in the states of Missouri, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Total economic losses were estimated around US$275 million. Public and private insurers cited payouts nearing US$200 million.
A strong storm system in the Mediterranean Sea led to outbreaks of powerful thunderstorms in parts of Greece, Turkey and Italy. At least 17 fatalities were reported, along with considerable damage to homes, businesses and vehicles. The deadliest episode occurred in western Attika region of central Greece.
Seasonal flooding associated with the northeast monsoon led to flood damage in at least nine provinces in southern Thailand. At least five people were killed and 161,266 homes were inundated.
Flooding rains from Cyclone Cempaka killed 11 people in Indonesia.
Additional flooding in November was recorded in Sri Lanka, Norway and India.
Mount Agung began erupting on Indonesia’s Bali Island, leading to the cancellation of hundreds of flights and prompting massive evacuations due to plumes of ash.
Source: Aon Benfield/Impact Forecasting
Topics Catastrophe USA Profit Loss Flood Aon |
Ageing insurance agents main factor in protection gap: Swiss Re | A decline in issued life insurance policies has suggested a coverage gap is emerging that could be worth as much as $20tn, according to Chris Behling, the head of strategic partnerships and alliances at Swiss Re. He pointed out that the average age of a life insurance agent is 59 and most agents don't serve clients online, relying instead on face-to-face interactions backed up by paperwork. Behling added that for businesses to move to digital distribution they need to do more than simply refresh their websites. Clients should feel they receive value back through exchanging data with insurers, he noted.
| https://www.dig-in.com/news/aging-agent-force-requires-insurance-to-shift-tactics-to-digital-swiss-re-exec | 2017-12-12 11:07:04.463000 | Despite steady growth in annual underwritten premiums, the number of issued life insurance policies continues to decline across the industry hinting at a protection gap, according to Chris Behling, head of strategic partnerships and alliances at Swiss Re.
That void is currently at $20 trillion, Behling told a room of carriers, venture capitalists and insurtech startups at American Family Ventures’ InsurTech NYC event, organized in partnership with Montoux.
While acknowledging the existence of external factors as contributors to consumer underinsured levels, Behling believes a big factor within the industry is the average agent of insurance agents, currently at 59 and a half. Most are not selling online, he says, and still rely heavily on in-person pitches and paper work.
“No one wants to have an agent show up at their door or have to get in a car and drive to an office,” Behling says.
Also see: How Swiss Re tackles underinsurance with analytics
Swiss Re looks at life insurance innovation in three segments: Engage, transact and retain. This isn’t necessarily accomplished by going direct to consumer, according to the insurer. As it stands, only two percent of the life insurance market follows this model.
“I’ve heard lots of pitches on how to do it, but no ideas on how to engage,” Behling added, noting that the real answer to carriers’ troubles does not lie in a fancy new website, but in the value customers receive in exchange for data.
At Swiss Re, that benefit can be found in policyholders learning their mortality age compared to actual age through gamification. Developing products that grow with the customer from early days when a child’s college tuition is a concern up until retirement is yet another value proposition.
“Think of the data you will give someone if you get something else in return,” Behling concluded. “How do we take information and give customers back real value?” |
TalkTalk Openreach drones help bring broadband to Welsh village | Telecoms company Openreach has become the first in the world to use an aerial drone to help lay high-speed FTTP broadband cables. The drones helped carry the fibre-optic line to remote homes in Pontfadog, Wales, as part of the Superfast Cymru programme, a state-supported project designed to increase high-speed broadband availability to 95% of the country. The Welsh government is consulting on a plan to roll out connectivity to all homes by 2020. BT subsidiary EE has used drones to deliver 4G in rural areas.
| https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2017/11/openreach-aerial-drone-brings-rural-full-fibre-broadband-village-wales.html | 2017-12-12 11:02:54.237000 | Thursday, Nov 30th, 2017 (9:00 am) - Score 6,117
Sometimes getting fibre optic cable from one point to another over difficult terrain (rivers, unstable rocks etc.) can be tricky, which is partly why Openreach (BT) has today become one of the first in the world to use an aerial drone to help deploy the cable for a new FTTP network in the village of Pontfadog.
The development itself shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, not least because Openreach has previously hinted about their plans to test such an approach and BT’s mobile sibling (EE) also appears to have gained plenty of experience in the field by using similar technology to deploy 4G mobile connectivity (details). Nevertheless using a drone to carry optical fibre cables is a very different challenge.
In this example the target for Openreach’s first public test was the small rural village of Pontfadog in the rugged Ceiriog Valley (Wrexham, North Wales), which until recently would have struggled to get much more than a handful of Megabits (ADSL MAX) out of the local Glyn Ceiriog exchange.
The good news is that a new 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based “ultrafast broadband” network has now been rolled out to almost the whole village on the valley floor. Sadly around 20 premises sat further up one side of the valley (described locally as the “dark side” of the village), which made them tricky to reach.
In other words, digging trenches and erecting roadside cabinets wasn’t an option. Wireless and Satellite solutions were also been ruled out, although it’s unclear why (Openreach don’t appear to build those, so that may be the main reason).
At least they were tricky, until a group of Openreach’s engineers used a portable drone to land cabling on the isolated group of homes.
The deployment itself took place as part of the state aid support Superfast Cymru programme, which aims to make “fibre broadband” (FTTC/P) services available to around 95% of Wales (currently around 92% of premises can already order “superfast” speeds of 24Mbps+). Many of those that are left to finish off under the current contract will use FTTP instead of slower hybrid fibre FTTC (VDSL2) connections.
We should point out that the Welsh Government are currently consulting on a plan to extend this roll-out so that “fast reliable broadband” (defined as 30Mbps+) can reach “every property” in Wales by 2020 (here).
Andy Whale, Openreach’s Chief Engineer, said: “It’s a bit different to connecting an apartment block in London, that’s for sure. We managed to connect up virtually the whole village in the valley floor, but getting to this group of 20 houses up one side of the valley was a bit trickier. There’s a particularly steep drop-off from these houses back down the valley, and it’s covered in dense trees and scrubland. We also had the river running along the bottom to contend with, so dragging a cable and digging it in wasn’t really an option. If we tried running the cable through woods it was also very likely we’d get it caught up in branches and other natural obstructions, so we figured the best option was to fly it in over the top of the tree canopy and then lift it up to make sure it was clear of the tree line. Had we tried to lay the cable using standard methods, even if it were possible, this process would have taken days, but in the event it took us less than an hour. We’re constantly trialing new techniques and technologies to help us take fibre broadband further and faster, and importantly to drive delivery costs down. All this means we can now deliver high-speed broadband in situations where traditionally it’s been impossible for any business or partnership to justify the work.”
At this point any buddying drone enthusiast will point out that the kit being used by Openreach is too small to lift all that cable over any kind of distance and you’d be right. Instead the drone was hooked up to a length of high strength fishing line, which was then flown around 100 meters and dropped across the top of the trees. That line was attached to a draw-rope – itself attached to a fibre cable – and the cable was then pulled over.
Openreach said they were “not aware of this technique being used anywhere in the world to deliver fixed line broadband in such a situation,” although the basic idea of using drones to carry new cabling is not a new one (e.g. they’ve already been used to help connect cables for new bridges).
The operator is now likely to conduct further trials and after that they will considers “plans to equip and train selected engineers to pilot drones in engineering teams across the UK.”
UPDATE 11:04am
For any drone enthusiasts out there, Openreach are using the DJI Mavic Pro (costs around £800-£1000). The flyer weighs 750g and has a flight time of 27 minutes per battery, with a max payload of 1.5lbs, plus collision avoidance sensors to help dodge the heads of local engineering teams and a 4K stabilised motorised camera.
Openreach also used a custom 3D printed release mechanism for the cable. |
US authorities will not prosecute HSBC following lengthy saga | Shares in HSBC, the UK's biggest bank, rose by almost 2% after the US Department of Justice said it would file papers to dismiss a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) that had been suspended for five years. The DPA was imposed following allegations that HSBC's lax controls had allowed money laundering to take place. As part of the DPA, US lawyer Michael Cherkasky monitored HSBC's activities, and will continue to do so until July 2018, while outgoing CEO Stuart Gulliver said the progress made at the bank meant it could combat fraud more effectively than five years ago.
| https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/dec/11/hsbc-prosecution-threat-us-money-laundering | 2017-12-12 10:54:13.627000 | HSBC has avoided the threat of prosecution in the US over allegations that its lax controls allowed Mexican drug traffickers to launder cash through the bank.
The risk of a prosecution has been hanging over Britain’s biggest bank for the past five years after it was forced to pay $1.9bn (£1.4bn) to the US authorities to settle claims it allowed “narcotics traffickers and others to launder hundreds of millions of dollars through HSBC subsidiaries and to facilitate hundreds of millions more in transactions with sanctioned countries”.
Five years to the day that the settlement was announced, HSBC said the US Department of Justice would file a motion in the district court in the eastern district of New York to dismiss the deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) that had been imposed on the bank at the time.
The bank said it had “lived up to all of its commitments”under the DPA and was pleased that the DoJ had recognised its progress in strengthening its compliance with anti-money laundering rules and sanctions rules.
The lifting of the DPA is a relief for the bank, its former chairman Douglas Flint and its outgoing chief executive, Stuart Gulliver. Under Gulliver HSBC has spent $1bn on efforts to clean up its business and bolster its compliance operations. Its shares rose almost 2% to 746p on Monday.
Under the DPA, the DoJ installed a monitor, American lawyer Michael Cherkasky, in the bank’s operations and he will remain in place until July 2018, exactly five years after he began his oversight of the bank’s operations.
At the same time the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority appointed Cherkasky in a similar role on its behalf and HSBC said he would “continue in that capacity for a period of time at the FCA’s discretion”.
When the DPA was announced, the US had described it as “sword of Damocles” hanging over HSBC. According to a report by the US Congress, the bank avoided criminal charges at the time because the then chancellor, George Osborne, had warned it could lead to a financial disaster if the bank lost its licence to operate in the US.
Gulliver – who is leaving HSBC in February after nearly four decades – said the bank was now able to combat financial crime more effectively than five years ago.
“We are committed to doing our part to protect the integrity of the global financial system, and further improvements to our own capability and contributions toward the partnerships we have established with governments in this area will remain a top priority for the Bank into 2018 and beyond,” said Gulliver, who is being replaced by insider John Flint.
The monitor’s role has been mentioned in HSBC’s annual reports – which spell out any risks facing the bank – and in February it admitted he had raised concerns that had sparked an FCA investigation into to potential breaches of money laundering rules.
In recent months, the Guardian reported that the monitor had also been informed about alleged ties between the wealthy Gupta family and the South African president, Jacob Zuma. Concerns were raised by former Labour cabinet minister Peter Hain, and HSBC said it had closed bank accounts held by “front companies” associated with the Guptas.
HSBC was subject to further scrutiny of its activities after the Guardian and other publications revealed in 2015 that the bank’s Swiss operations had helped wealthy customers dodge taxes and conceal millions of dollars of assets. This followed the leak of documents of 30,000 accounts that covering the period 2005-07.
Rival bank Standard Chartered was subject to a DPA at the same time as HSBC and last month admitted it was being extended for a second time to July 2018.
Ian Gordon, an analyst at financial firm Investec, said: “It is clearly a relief that the DPA has not been extended in contrast to Standard Chartered. It will also potentially lead to an annual monitor-related cost saving of £200m but not yet as the D0J monitor remains in place until July 2018 … and this could be extended by the FCA.” |
Flo Technologies raises $11.5m, looks to reduce home water damage | Home monitoring system Flo Technologies has raised $11.5m in a financing round including from an affiliate of insurer USAA. The firm has introduced a home water monitoring system called Flo which can track water pressure and temperature along with water usage patterns. Flo aims to proactively detect faults in a home's water supply and can shut it off in the event of a significant vulnerability. The system will retail at $699, but is available for $399 if customers sign up for an early-adopter programme. | https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2017/11/20/471758.htm | 2017-12-12 10:50:57.980000 | Flo Technologies has unveiled Flo, an intelligent home water monitoring and conservation system that promises to help reduce water damage insurance claims. The startup has raised a total of $11.5 million from investors led by Crosslink Capital with participation from Anthemis Group and an affiliate of insurer USAA.
The Flo product is a water monitoring and shut-off system that senses water pressure, flow rate and temperature and uses artificial intelligence to learn homeowners’ water usage patterns. Flo proactively detects vulnerabilities or the tiniest leaks in a home and automatically shuts off the water supply in response to a pipe burst or other catastrophic event.
The product is the brainchild of Henry Halimi, a mechanical engineer with 25 years of experience who developed his invention over the last 10 years.
According to ISO/Verisk about one in 50 insured homes has a property damage claim caused by water damage or freezing each year. These claims cost insurers about $9 billion a year. The average water damage claim costs about $8,860.
How Flo Works
Flo is a Wi-Fi connected device that is installed on the main water supply line to the home and includes as an app that provides control over a range of conservation and security settings. Its makers say Flo is sensitive enough to detect “micro-leaks as small as a single drop of water a minute, and intelligently learns a home’s water usage pattern,” which helps avoid catastrophic failures.
Flo is a system-wide service than can detect both visible leaks (such as running toilets that could waste over 3,000 gallons of water a day) and invisible leaks (like drips behind walls or under floors).
Flo does not detect water coming in from outside the home as in the case of leak in a roof.
Its temperature sensors provide early warnings when pipes are about to freeze.
Using the app, users can control how the system will alert them and respond to potential issues.
Flo, which will sell at retail for $699 starting in the first quarter of 2018, is being made available at a discounted rate of $399 for those willing to participate in an early adopter program and allow their experience to help the company refine its product.
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Financial crisis starting in China twice as likely: Deutsche Bank | A significant financial crisis beginning in China is almost twice as likely to happen than in any other major global economy, say analysts at Deutsche Bank. The banks chief economist Dr Michael Spencer adds that the probability is as much as 13%, due to concerns over China's huge debt levels which have surged, and coincided with the rapid expansion of the country's economy: "Since 2008, the level of debt owed by Chinese non-financial corporations, households and governments has risen by more than 100% of GDP. As the debt burden has grown, so has concern about financial stability," says Spencer.
| http://markets.businessinsider.com/currencies/news/deutsche-bank-china-debt-financial-crisis-probability-2017-12-1010917277 | 2017-12-12 10:45:16.877000 | Deutsche Bank argues that China is almost twice as likely as any other major economy to experience a financial crisis in the coming years.
The bank points to the country's notoriously high levels of debt as the reason for this.
Chief economist for Asia Pacific Michael Spencer does note however, that the risks are low compared to "some countries prior to the peripheral European debt crisis or the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s."
LONDON – The probability of a financial crisis starting in China is almost twice as high as in any other major global economy, according to new research from analysts at Deutsche Bank.
Writing in a note titled "How much risk in China?" — Deutsche Bank's chief economist for the Asia Pacific region, Dr Michael Spencer, warned that the probability of a crisis in the world's second largest economy was as much as 13%.
That, Spencer said, is "nearly twice the probability of a crisis in the next riskiest country and nearly three times the probability of a crisis in any random country at any random point in time."
Like the majority of discussions around a potential financial crisis in China, Deutsche Bank's concerns centre around the huge levels of indebtedness in the country, which have soared in conjunction with the rapid expansion of the Chinese economy in the last few decades.
"Since 2008, the level of debt owed by Chinese non-financial corporations, households and governments has risen by more than 100% of GDP. As the debt burden has grown, so has concern about financial stability," Spencer wrote.
"The stock of debt owed by all non-financial borrowers rose by 36% of GDP in 2009 alone. An easy monetary policy stance since 2013 has seen indebtedness rise steadily, with total nonfinancial sector borrowing reaching 255% of GDP at the end of last year. And with each step higher in the credit/GDP ratio, investor concerns have risen," he continued.
Now, China may be the major economy at the greatest threat of a financial crisis, but Spencer noted that the likelihood of a crisis "is well below the probabilities calculated for some countries prior to the peripheral European debt crisis or the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s."
Deutsche Bank
That's largely down to the significant current account surplus China's government continues to run, which provides a large amount of protection against any crisis.
"The current account surplus does, according to our estimates, play an important role in reducing the risk of a crisis in China," Spencer wrote.
"Had the current account been a deficit of 2% of GDP last year rather than a surplus of nearly 2%, the probability of a crisis would have been 7% higher."
While he is relatively sanguine about China, Spencer's warnings do echo the thoughts of the International Monetary Fund, which has warned on numerous occassions about the threats China's ballooning debt poses not only to its own economy, but also the global financial system.
Last week, for example, an IMF report warned of the global financial stability risks created by the situation in China right now.
The report, released after the fund's annual fact-finding mission to the world's second largest economy, noted that while China's political classes have taken steps to try and prevent debt levels getting out of control and improve overall financial stability in recent years, more still must be done.
"The system’s increasing complexity has sown financial stability risks," the IMF’s assessment said.
"Credit growth has outpaced GDP growth, leading to a large credit overhang. The credit-to-GDP ratio is now about 25% above the long-term trend, very high by international standards and consistent with a high probability of financial distress. |
UK inflation rises to 3.1% as wage growth remains muted | UK inflation measured by the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) rose to an almost six-year high of 3.1% in November, up from 3% in October, the Office for National Statistics said. The Bank of England Governor is obliged to write a letter to the Chancellor of the Exchequer explaining any rise above 3% and outlining how it plans to return the rate to 2%. The most recent data shows that average weekly wages are growing at just 2.2%. Richard Lim, chief executive at Retail Economics said the rise in inflation had come "at precisely the wrong time for retailers". | https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/bulletins/consumerpriceinflation/november2017 | 2017-12-12 10:11:31.117000 | 2. Things you need to know about this release
The Bank of England were granted exceptional pre-release access to an estimate of the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) at 9.00am on Monday, 11 December 2017 so that the data were available for the Monetary Policy Committee meeting held on that day. Correspondence with the Bank of England is available.
On Tuesday, 19 December we will be publishing our first set of preliminary estimates of the Household Costs Indices (HCIs). The HCIs are a set of experimental measures, currently in development, that aim to reflect UK households’ experience of changing prices and costs. Estimates will be produced for retired and non-retired households, low- and high-income households, and households with and without children.
The National Statistics status of the Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers’ housing costs (CPIH) was reinstated on 31 July 2017. A letter 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 with preliminary estimates published for the first time on 19 December) 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 (2013) 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 14 November 2017. |
Chinese tourists spend record $7.75bn in Australia | Spending by Chinese visitors in Australia reached a record $7.75bn in the 12 months to the end of September, according to the latest International Visitor Survey by Tourism Research Australia. China was the second-largest source of overseas visitors to Australia at 1.33 million, behind New Zealand's 1.35 million. Australia's Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment Steve Ciobo said growth in Australian tourism was being driven by visitors from Asian countries. | http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-12/12/c_136820102.htm | 2017-12-12 09:39:10.260000 | Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-12 15:28:02|Editor: Yurou
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CANBERRA, Dec. 12 (Xinhua) -- Spending by Chinese tourists in Australia has hit an all-time high, a major tourism study said on Tuesday.
The International Visitor Survey (IVS) revealed that Chinese tourists spent 7.75 billion U.S. dollars in Australia in the 12 months to the end of September 2017.
China was the second biggest source of international visitors to Australia with 1.33 million people, trailing only New Zealand with 1.35 million.
In total, more than eight million tourists visited Australia in the 12-month period, staying a total of 268 million nights in the country and spending a record 31 billion U.S. dollars.
Steve Ciobo, Australia's Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment, said that much of the growth in Australia's tourism sector was being driven by visitors from Asia, including China, India and other countries and regions.
"The Turnbull Coalition Government is working to maximise the potential of China -- Australia's fastest growing and most valuable inbound tourism market -- to create new Australian jobs," Ciobo said.
Chinese and Australian officials announced that 2017 is the China-Australia Year of Tourism. An open capacity aviation agreement between Australia and China and significant visa reform have contributed to the 13 percent growth in spend by Chinese visitors. Eight new aviation routes between the two countries are expected to be opened within the next 12 months.
"Another market that has seen consistent growth is the United States, with visitors and spending both growing by 40 percent over the last three years," Ciobo said.
"Youth travellers to Australia are also growing strongly with a 10 percent increase in spend in the year ending September 2017," he added.
New South Wales benefited most from international tourism with 7.85 billion U.S. dollars spent in the state, a 12 percent increase on the previous year. |
Meat giant Tyson beefs up stake in vegan burger maker Beyond Meat | Vegan food start-up Beyond Meat raised $55m in its latest funding round, as America's largest meat producer Tyson Food increased its stake in the company. "Our investment in Beyond Meat provides another fantastic alternative for consumers as we strive to sustainably feed the world," said Tyson's Justin Whitmore. Beyond Meat has formed partnerships with major grocers including Safeway, Kroger and Sysco over the past year and from January TGI Fridays will serve its meatless burgers. As we highlighted this week, the Farm Animal Investment Risk and Return Initiative believes meat will be taxed within the decade. | http://www.powderbulksolids.com/news/Tyson-Ups-Stake-in-Plant-Based-Protein-Firm-Beyond-Meat-12-11-2017 | 2017-12-12 09:23:21.343000 | America’s biggest meat producer, Tyson Foods, increased its stake in Beyond Meat, a maker of plant-based protein food products, during the startups most recent round of fundraising, the Springdale, AR company announced in a Dec. 7 press release.
“Global demand for all protein remains high and we’re passionate about meeting that demand sustainably,” Justin Whitmore, executive vice president of corporate strategy and chief sustainability officer at Tyson, said in a statement. “Our investment in Beyond Meat provides another fantastic alternative for consumers as we strive to sustainably feed the world.”
In October 2016, Tyson acquired a 5% stake in Beyond Meat, pledging to assist the plant-based protein maker in expanding its product offerings and distribution, Powder & Bulk Solids reported. Charles “Chuck” J. Muth, a former Coca-Cola executive was appointed as the new Chief Growth Officer of Beyond Meat in May 2017.
Tyson’s most recent investment “slightly increases” its stake beyond the initial 5%, the release said. Beyond Meat’s latest round of investments will be used to boost production, support the firm’s R&D efforts, and further sales and distribution. The faux meat maker raised $55 million in this latest round, the Wall Street Journal’s coverage said.
“This investment reinforces our focus on protein and enables us to support Beyond Meat’s efforts to produce new, leading edge products. What we’re most excited about is that we can do all of this while continuing to provide the great tasting, high quality food that is the hallmark of our company,” said Whitmore.
For more news headlines, articles, and equipment reviews, visit our Equipment Zones |
Bitcoin ban in China sees local crypto surge 80-fold in 40 days | With China left out of the bitcoin surge due to Beijing's ban in September on initial coin offerings, its cryptocurrency enthusiasts have turned to OneCoin, designed by Chinese tech firm Xunlei. Its value surged more than 80-fold within 40 days of launch despite not being traded on any major exchange, according to reports. OneCoin has been the best-performing stock on Nasdaq over much of the past eight weeks. It remains to be seen how long the cryptocurrency's rally lasts and whether the Chinese government will ban it. | https://qz.com/1152564/the-hottest-cryptocurrency-in-china-isnt-bitcoin-its-onecoin-make-that-lianke-by-xunlei-xnet/?mc_cid=04c03ec219&mc_eid=a37072368a | 2017-12-12 08:09:15.213000 | China’s cryptocurrency enthusiasts have been left out of bitcoin’s historic rally in recent months, thanks to the Chinese government banning initial coin offerings in September and then shutting down all major domestic exchanges. But it didn’t take long for them to find something new to pour their money into.
That turned out to be OneCoin, designed by Chinese tech company Xunlei. Since its launch in mid-October, OneCoin’s value has jumped dramatically in secondary markets—at one point more than 80-fold, according to numerous reports (link in Chinese). That’s despite OneCoin not being available for trade in any major marketplace. Its crazy ride has helped Xunlei become the best-performing stock on Nasdaq for most of the past two months.
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Xunlei’s share price plunged in recent days after OneCoin drew public scrutiny. That came after a disenchanted business partner accused OneCoin of being an initial coin offering—a hard-to-regulate way to raise funds based on an offering of cryptocurrency rather than shares.
Will Beijing eventually intervene to ban OneCoin? How long can the OneCoin frenzy last? These are among the key questions now being pondered by cryptocurrency fans and speculative investors alike.
What the heck is OneCoin?
Let’s first talk about Xunlei for a bit. Founded in 2003, the Shenzhen-based company started out as a torrent downloader, a sort of Chinese answer to Pirate Bay. Later Xunlei transformed itself into a video-streaming platform with mostly licensed content, even as peer-to-peer downloading remained a key offering. In 2014, Xunlei went public on Nasdaq, after a first attempt failed due partly to concerns over the pirated materials on its platforms. In late August, the company announced that it would become a blockchain company—a big shift in its business strategy. It also released a blockchain-based hardware product called OneCloud.
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In essence, OneCloud is a network-attached storage device that lets multiple users share online storage remotely. On top of that, it’s a “mining machine” that allows users to share their idle bandwidth with Xunlei’s content delivery networks (CDNs)—and earn some OneCoin as a reward.
OneCoin, also known as Wankebi, can then be used to purchase value-added services provided by Xunlei—for example, extra storage on its cloud service, or faster download speeds for its torrent downloader software.
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OneCoin is designed in a similar way to bitcoin. Currently, there are over 1.6 million OneCoin up for grabs every 24 hours. The reward will cut in half annually, and OneCoin’s total number will be capped at around 1.5 billion.
Xunlei hasn’t published the code for OneCoin, whereas major cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ethereum are open-sourced. The company runs a wallet app for OneCoin that supports peer-to-peer transactions but not centralized exchange services. As shown by the app’s installation files, OneCoin runs on a private blockchain based on the ethereum network, according to Xiao Lei, a Beijing-based bitcoin analyst.
Xunlei didn’t reply to a request for comment for this story.
What’s the hype about OneCoin?
Xunlei has said that OneCoin miners should be focused on the idea of shared computing rather than making money on speculation. But apparently people are flocking to OneCoin for the wrong reason, as far as its creator is concerned.
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According to a report from the Beijing News (link in Chinese), by the end of last month OneCoin traded at around 8 yuan ($1.21) in numerous chat groups on QQ, a popular social network. That means it had increased in value more than 80-fold in 40 days since its launch. What’s more, the OneCloud device—that storage-cum-mining tool—was reportedly being sold online for around 2,000 yuan by enterprising types, more than five times its original price tag. Meanwhile over 24 million people have pre-ordered the device on the website of Xunlei, which has struggled to meet demand.
The rally of both Xunlei’s shares and OneCoin’s price halted at the end of last month, after Xunlei fell into a dispute with a partner called Shenzhen Xunlei Big Data Information Services Company, which runs online services selling wealth-management products. Xunlei had originally given Big Data the right to use Xunlei branding (unrelated to OneCoin) for its data and financial services, but it later retracted that, saying the arrangement wasn’t fair. In retaliation, Big Data accused Xunlei of conducting an illegal ICO through the OneCoin project—an allegation Xunlei denied. Later, the two sides issued a joint statement saying they had settled their “misunderstanding” and reached new partnership deals, without offering more details.
During the dispute, state broadcaster CCTV aired a short segment (link in Chinese) endorsing the technology innovation behind OneCoin. State-backed financial experts interviewed by the program dismissed the idea that OneCoin is an ICO, noting Xunlei didn’t raise a penny through the project.
So will OneCoin be banned?
OneCoin seems to be on path to having a legal status similar to that of bitcoin in China. Bitcoin itself is legal in the country, but trading it is largely restricted.
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Over the weekend, Xunlei announced that (link in Chinese) it has renamed OneCoin “Lianke” and the OneCoin wallet app to “Lianke Pocket.” The company now requires all users of the new wallet app to register with their real names by Dec. 14; otherwise, they’ll be unable to use the app’s transaction function. Last but not least, Xunlei said it would work with authorities to crack down on illegal trading platforms for Lianke.
In the wake of Xunlei’s announcement, OneCoin’s price plummeted in intraday trading to 4.3 yuan today (Dec. 11) on buywkb.com, a small cryptocurrency trading venue based in Hong Kong.
Xiao, the bitcoin analyst, said OneCoin has put Xunlei in a “very awkward position.” For one thing, he explained, OneCoin’s limited supply makes it highly speculative by nature, whether Xunlei likes it or not. Although Xunlei didn’t raise money through OneCoin, he noted, if OneCoin trading becomes popular on third-party exchanges, then the company essentially launched a securitized asset without government approval. “It’s playing around in the gray area,” he said. |
EU commits $10bn to fighting climate change at Paris summit | The European commission has pledged €9bn ($10.6bn) to counter climate change as part of the European Union’s External Investment Plan. The commitment was announced on Tuesday at the One Planet Summit in Paris, which marked the second anniversary of the 2015 Paris Climate Accord. The funds will primarily be directed towards clean energy, and sustainable agriculture and cities. At the conference several companies, including French insurer Axa and Dutch bank ING, announced partial divestments from fossil fuels. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation also pledged $300m to help poor farmers adapt to climate change.
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/12/eu-announces-9bn-in-funding-for-climate-action | 2017-12-12 00:00:00 | The European commission has announced funding of €9bn (£8bn) for action on climate change, one of a flurry of measures from governments, businesses and investors aimed at achieving the goals of the 2015 Paris agreement.
The EU funds will form part of the bloc’s External Investment Plan, and will be focused on sustainable cities, clean energy and sustainable agriculture. The announcement was made at the One Planet Summit in Paris on Tuesday, held to mark the second anniversary of the landmark 2015 pact.
French president Emmanuel Macron hailed the progress made at the event and said it was possible to create alternatives to the fossil-fuel driven economy, but that more effort was needed globally.
Miguel Arias Cañete, commissioner for climate action and energy for the EU, said the Paris agreement was already resulting in more investment flowing to moves to combat global warming. He said: “These kinds of investments are of critical importance if we are to move from aspirations to action. The EU’s plan will scale up much-needed investments across Africa and the EU neighbourhood region.”
He said new jobs would be created, and the knock-on effects would include poverty reduction, improved health and better access to technology in poorer regions.
Neven Mimica, commissioner for international cooperation and development, added that the aims included supporting the digitalisation of small and medium-sized companies, essential for sustainable development and reducing poverty.
The EU and its member states are the world’s biggest providers of climate finance, with a total of more than €20bn provided to developing countries last year.
Other measures unveiled at the conference included large companies, such as the French insurer Axa and the ING bank, partially divesting from fossil fuels, and local governments from across the world signing up to improved goals on cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
Theresa May, the UK prime minister, said developed countries had a responsibility to help the world’s poor adapt to the expected ravages of climate change, and pledged £140m to poor countries to help them do so.
However, the Liberal Democrats attacked her participation, arguing that the government had failed to put the UK on track to achieve its goals on emissions reduction, for instance by withdrawing support for clean energy and selling off the Green Investment Bank, a move which was criticised by the government watchdog. Lynne Featherstone, the Lib Dem spokeswoman on energy and climate, said: “I don’t know how Theresa May has the front to show her face [at the international conference]. Her record on the environment is a disgrace – she has failed to take the ambitious steps needed to decarbonise our economy and protect our planet.”
The World Bank vowed to phase out most of its finance for oil and gas by 2019, and publish more data on the impacts of its investments on climate change. The group, which has been criticised by environmental campaigners for failing to take action on its fossil fuel investments in the past, also formed a partnership with the Global Covenant of Mayors aimed at providing $4.5bn for cities to adapt to the effects of climate change.
Bill Gates, one of the world’s richest men, also joined the pledges, vowing that his philanthropic foundation would devote $300m (£225m) to helping the world’s poorest farmers adapt to the effects of climate change.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will spend the sum over the next three years, providing smallholders in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia with the means to protect their farms from the droughts, heatwaves and floods that are expected to be the result of a changing climate. The money will be spent through governments and direct grants.
Nick Austin, director of agricultural development at the foundation, told the Guardian he expected poor farmers to bear the brunt of climatic changes, at a time when the world’s burgeoning population is putting ever greater pressure on food supplies.
Adaptation to the effects of climate change, also termed resilience, has become a greater focus for environmentalists as scientists have warned that some changes to the climate are becoming inevitable, even if the world succeeds in limiting global temperature rises to 2C.
Austin said: “We recognise that adaptation has been a vastly under-invested opportunity . [There is] an upside in economic opportunities for resilience to climate change. Agriculture will benefit, but there is still a long way to go.”
In a separate move, Microsoft will spend $50m on artificial intelligence technology aimed at protecting the planet against climate change, the company said on Tuesday.
Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, told the Guardian the investment would spur technological change that would help deliver clean energy and cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions.
He gave the example of using artificial intelligence to create “smart” buildings, that would use less energy by responding to and anticipating their occupants’ behaviour. It could also be used in agriculture to increase crop yields in the face of the effects of global warming, which is expected to cause droughts, floods and heatwaves across the globe.
However, not everyone was impressed by the deals emerging from the One Planet summit. Brandon Wu, director of policy and at ActionAid USA, said the poor were still being short-changed by rich countries.
“Despite the hype, the One Planet summit delivering little for the world’s people who are most vulnerable to climate change,” he said. “People in poor countries already living with increasingly severe hurricanes, floods and other disasters made worse by the climate crisis, need commitments for real money from rich countries.” |
World Bank to stop financing oil and gas after 2019 | The World Bank will stop providing financial support for oil and gas exploration within two years. The bank made the statement at the One Planet Summit in Paris, which marked the second anniversary of the Paris Climate Accord. The bank, which stopped lending for coal-fired power plants in 2010, currently lends $1bn per year for oil and gas in the developing world. At the summit, Bank of England governor Mark Carney announced that 237 companies with a joint market capitalisation of $6.3tn were now supporting the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures. | https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/dec/12/uk-banks-join-multinationals-pledge-come-clean-climate-change-risks-mark-carney | 2017-12-12 00:00:00 | The World Bank will end its financial support for oil and gas extraction within the next two years in response to the growing threat posed by climate change.
In a statement that delighted campaigners opposed to fossil fuels, the Bank used a conference in Paris to announce that it “will no longer finance upstream oil and gas” after 2019.
The Bank ceased lending for coal-fired power stations in 2010 but has been under pressure from lobby groups also to halt the $1bn (£750m) a year it has been lending for oil and gas in developing countries.
The Bank said it saw the need to change the way it was operating in a “rapidly changing world”, adding that it was on course to have 28% of its lending going to climate action by 2020. At present, 1-2% of the Bank’s $280bn portfolio is accounted for by oil and gas projects.
In exceptional circumstances, the Bank said it would consider lending for oil and gas projects in the very poorest countries but only where it helped the poor get access to energy and the project did not conflict with commitments to reduce greenhouse gases made in the 2015 Paris climate change accord.
The announcement was made at the One Planet Summit, convened by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, the World Bank president, Yim Yong Kim, and the UN secretary general, António Guterres, to mark the two-year anniversary of the agreement.
The Greenpeace International climate campaigner Gyorgy Dallos said: “The end is clearly coming for the oil and gas industry as the pace of change accelerates.”
Dallos said the Bank had sent a damning vote of no confidence in the future of the fossil fuel industry. “The world’s financial institutions now need to take note and decide whether their financing is going to be part of the problem or the solution,” he said.
Stephen Kretzmann, an executive director of the Washington-based advocacy group Oil Change International, said: “It is hard to overstate the significance of this historic announcement by the World Bank.
“Environmental, human rights, and development campaigners have been amplifying the voices of frontline communities for decades in calling for an end to World Bank financing of upstream oil and gas projects. [Now] the World Bank has raised the bar for climate leadership by recognising the simple yet inconvenient truth that achieving the Paris agreement’s climate goals requires an end to the expansion of the fossil fuel industry. It is time for all of the institutions, countries, investors and individuals who are still in the Paris agreement to stop funding fossils – once and for all.”
The World Bank announcement came as the Bank of England’s governor revealed that there was growing global support for a new initiative designed to help pave the way for a low-carbon economy by persuading companies to come clean about their exposure to climate change risks.
From left: Michael Bloomberg, Mark Carney and Axa chief executive Thomas Buberl at the One Planet Summit. Photograph: Philippe Lopez/AFP/Getty Images
Speaking at the Paris summit, Carney said 237 companies with a combined market capitalisation of $6.3tn (£4.7tn) were now backing the scheme.
Britain’s six leading banks – Lloyds, Barclays, HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland, Santander and Standard Chartered – have all supported the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures, set up by Carney in his role as chairman of the Financial Stability Board, an international body charged with preventing a repeat of the 2008 banking crisis.
Under the plan, companies pledge to use their financial reports to disclose their direct and indirect exposure to global warming under a range of different scenarios. Banks are obliged to say how much they have lent to companies with climate-related risks.
Carney said 20 of the 30 globally systemically important banks and eight out of 10 of the largest asset managers and leading insurance companies were committed to informing investors. Leading construction, consumer goods, transport, mining and energy companies have also signed up.
“Markets need the right information to seize the opportunities and mitigate the risks that are being created by the transition to a low-carbon economy,” Carney said. “This solution, of the market and for the market, is truly entering the mainstream.”
UK sources said that London was becoming a hub for climate change-related finance, with green bonds issued in more than 40 different currencies, including the Indian rupee and the Chinese yuan.
Michael Bloomberg, the chair of the taskforce, said: “Climate change poses both economic risks and opportunities. But right now, companies don’t have the data they need to accurately measure the risks and evaluate the opportunities.”
The article was amended on Thursday 14 December to better reflect the World’s Bank’s decision to end financial support for both exploration and extraction. |
Forests may not grow back after wildfires, according to US study | Some US and Canadian forests may never grow back after wildfires, due to the increasing heat and dryness of the general climate, according to research by US scientists. The study examined the impact of 52 wildfires on 1,500 sites in five states in the Rockies, between 1985 and 2015. Findings showed that seedlings were not regrowing at approximately one third of these sites after 2000, up from 15% prior to that date. Permanent forest loss could raise the risk of further fires and increase the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere.
| http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/forests-wildfires-1.4444998?cmp=rss | 2017-12-12 00:00:00 | Bigger, hotter wildfires are ravaging forests and burning them to the ground more frequently as the climate gets hotter and drier. Now a new study shows that in some places in the U.S., those forests may never grow back.
That adds to evidence that amid climate change, some forest landscapes — including those in Canada — can change dramatically after being burned.
The new U.S. study looked at 1,500 forest sites affected by 52 wildfires in five states in the U.S. Rockies between 1985 and 2015. It found overall decreases in the amount of tree regrowth since 2000 compared to before 2000 due to warmer, drier conditions.
After 2000, no seedlings were growing back at about one third of sites, compared to 15 per cent of sites that burned before 2000, said Camille Stevens-Rumann, lead author of the study published today in the journal Ecology Letters.
The forest failed to regrow following the Buffalo Creek fire of 1996. Researchers say that some areas have grown warmer and drier over the past 30 years and may no longer have suitable conditions for the growth of some tree species. (Monica Rother)
That complete lack of regrowth happened most frequently at lower-elevation sites that have become measurably warmer and drier in the past 30 years, said Stevens-Rumann, an assistant professor in the Department of Forest and Rangeland Stewardship at Colorado State University. Those areas may no longer have suitable conditions for the growth of tree species that were there before and may become other types of ecosystems, such as grasslands.
Sped-up climate effects
"We often think about climate change as something that we're going to feel the effects of in the future. The truth is wildfires are facilitating those changes happening sooner," Stevens-Rumann told CBC News. "And I think that was a really big surprise to all of us to see it even over just a 30 year period."
And it's not just a matter of giving those forests a little more time to grow back. Stevens-Rumann said most seedlings sprout in the first three years after a fire, and that the number there after that time is a strong predictor of how dense the regrown forest will be.
Few surviving trees remain in the changed landscape located in the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness Area in Idaho after a forest fire in 2007. No seedlings were growing back at all at a third of sites that burned since 2000. (Camille Stevens-Rumann)
She said the findings of the study — funded by the U.S. government — suggest that, going forward, replacement trees may need to be planted at higher elevations than before. And at lower elevations? "We need to just start accepting that they're not going to become forests again, unfortunately," said Stevens-Rumann.
The permanent loss of forests after a fire could have many effects on local ecosystems.
In addition, large patches where the trees don't grow back could pose a greater hazard if another fire erupts, said Stevens-Rumann. That's because the dead, fallen trees provide ample fuel for fires that are harder to control in an open landscape.
Carbon release
This lack of regrowth may also reduce the amount carbon taken up by trees and increase the amount released into the atmosphere: "That's a big shift in carbon and carbon storage, definitely."
What is happening in the U.S. Rockies won't necessarily happen everywhere. In southern California, where huge flames from several wildfires continue to tear across the landscape after destroying more than 680 homes and forcing thousands of people to flee, huge, intense fires have been frequent for thousands of years, Stevens-Rumann said.
"They resprout very quickly after a fire and will likely continue to do so even with these large fire events."
CalFire works in Ventura County as efforts continue against the Thomas Fire in Ojai, Calif., Dec. 9, 2017. In southern California, intense fires have been frequent for thousands of years, and vegetation tends to grow back quickly. (John Cetrino/EPA-EFE)
In Canada, researchers say some forests here could also fail to grow back after fires in drier areas.
They have also seen some changes in the way the northern boreal forests of Canada and Alaska respond to fires as the climate changes.
According to Natural Resources Canada, climate change during this century is expected to result in more frequent fires in many boreal forests, potentially doubling the amount of area burned by 2100 compared to recent decades.
And the fires are also expected to get larger and more intense, says University of Guelph researcher Merritt Turetsky, who holds a Canada Research Chair in Integrative Ecology.
Turetsky has studied boreal forest sites in Alaska burned by a huge fire in 2004, and said about five per cent of those have no regrowth.
"It looks like a different planet," she told CBC News.
Smoke and flames from the wildfires erupt behind a car on the highway near Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada, May 7, 2016. According to Natural Resources Canada, climate change could potentially double the amount of northern boreal forest burned by 2100 compared to recent decades. (Mark Blinch/Reuters)
The fire was so intense in some places that it burned up all organic matter needed to help the soil retain nutrients and moisture required for trees to grow.
That could happen more in the future as the peat covering much of the north — including the floor of the boreal forest — dries out more and burns more frequently, making fires more intense.
Aspen win
Ellen Whitman, a PhD candidate at the University of Alberta and the Canadian Forest Service, is studying the regrowth of boreal forest after fires in Wood Buffalo National Park in the Northwest Territories.
In most cases, the forests are growing back as they were before, she said.
But in some cases, the dominant black spruce and white spruce are being replaced by deciduous trees such as aspen. That's especially the case for forests that burned less than 80 years ago, where trees haven't yet had time to develop fire-resistant seed cones. Spruce trees are also outcompeted in drier areas, suggesting climate may also play a role, Whitman said.
Aspen trees show their bright yellow fall colours near Nederland, Colo., Sept. 22. Under some conditions, aspen are outcompeting spruce and dominating after wildfires in Canada's northern boreal forest, researchers say. (Rick Wilking/Reuters)
"Those forests that were there previously were in part the product of the previous climate," she added, "so when we do see these shifts, it's quite likely that it's due to [climate change]."
The shift from a coniferous to a deciduous forests could have wide ranging effects on northern ecosystems, including wildlife. For example, it may benefit moose and deer that do well in deciduous forests and could have a negative impact on woodland caribou in some places, as they're thought to prefer older conifer forests.
Interestingly, Whitman said, the shift could also make forests more fire resistant, as deciduous trees don't burn as easily as spruce. |
Wells Fargo sued for $50m by Navajo Nation | Wells Fargo has been sued for over $50m in the US by the Navajo Nation, which alleges that bank employees targeted its citizens in order to fulfil sales targets. The lawsuit, filed in Albuquerque on Tuesday, cites many practices, such as the opening of unauthorized accounts, that led to last year’s $185m settlement by the bank with US regulators. The case also claims that Wells Fargo targeted vulnerable Navajo citizens, including the elderly, minors and those who did not speak English, and lied to the tribe when it claimed no members had been harmed by its practices.
| http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-navajo-wells-fargo-20171212-story.html | 2017-12-12 00:00:00 | The Navajo Nation has sued Wells Fargo, saying its citizens were targeted by workers trying to meet the bank’s aggressive sales quotas.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in federal court in Albuquerque, alleges many of the same practices that led to last year’s $185-million settlement between Wells Fargo and regulators, including the creation of unauthorized banking accounts, credit cards and other products.
But the lawsuit also goes further, alleging that the San Francisco bank targeted particularly vulnerable members of the Navajo Nation, including minors, the elderly and those who do not speak English. It also alleges that Wells Fargo lied to the tribe when, in a letter sent early this year, it said no tribal members were harmed by the bank’s sales practices.
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“This shows a specific targeting of an ethnic community in the United States and, within that, subgroups of vulnerable Navajos,” said John Hueston, a Los Angeles attorney representing the tribe. “It’s a level of exploitation of a vulnerable community that has not surfaced in other cases to date.”
The nation is seeking damages, fines and penalties of more than $50 million, Hueston said.
Wells Fargo spokesman Jim Seitz said in a statement that the bank could not comment on ongoing litigation, but he reiterated steps the bank has taken to compensate consumers and change practices in the wake of last year’s accounts scandal.
“Over the past year we have taken significant steps to make things right for our customers, including members of the Navajo Nation, who may have been affected by unacceptable retail sales practices,” he said.
The bank has eliminated the sales goals that, along with pressure from managers and lax oversight from top executives, were blamed for pushing workers to open sham accounts and credit cards for customers. It has also agreed to pay $142 million in a class-action settlement that will be open to all customers who had unauthorized accounts opened in their names since 2002.
Wells Fargo is the only major bank that has locations within the Navajo Nation, Hueston said.
A former Wells Fargo worker in Arizona said in a sworn statement — part of another lawsuit filed this year — that workers pushed credit cards and bank accounts on Native Americans seeking to cash tribal checks.
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Arctic sea ice melting fastest for 1,500 years | Arctic sea ice is melting at the fastest rate in 1,500 years, while seawater in the region is also warming, according to the annual report by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Last year, areas of permafrost reached record high temperatures, sometimes exceeding the thawing point. Winter sea ice levels this year were the lowest recorded since records began in 1979, marking the third consecutive year of record lows for winter recovery. Jeremy Mathis, a co-author of the report, described the Arctic as “the refrigerator to the plant” adding “the door of the refrigerator has been left open”.
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/12/arctic-permafrost-sea-ice-thaw-climate-change-report | 2017-12-12 00:00:00 | Permafrost in the Arctic is thawing faster than ever, according to a new US government report that also found Arctic seawater is warming and sea ice is melting at the fastest pace in 1,500 years.
The annual report released on Tuesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showed slightly less warming in many measurements than a record hot 2016. But scientists remain concerned because the far northern region is warming twice as fast as the rest of the globe and has reached a level of warming that’s unprecedented in modern times.
The Arctic has traditionally been the refrigerator to the planet, but the door of the refrigerator has been left open Jeremy Mathis
“2017 continued to show us we are on this deepening trend where the Arctic is a very different place than it was even a decade ago,” said Jeremy Mathis, head of NOAA’s Arctic research program and co-author of the 93-page report.
Findings were discussed at the American Geophysical Union meeting in New Orleans.
“What happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic; it affects the rest of the planet,” said acting NOAA chief Timothy Gallaudet. “The Arctic has huge influence on the world at large.”
Permafrost records show the frozen ground that many buildings, roads and pipelines are built on reached record warm temperatures last year nearing and sometimes exceeding the thawing point. That could make them vulnerable when the ground melts and shifts, the report said. Unlike other readings, permafrost data tend to lag a year.
Preliminary reports from the US and Canada in 2017 showed permafrost temperatures are “again the warmest for all sites” measured in North America, said study co-author Vladimir Romanovsky, a professor at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks.
Arctic sea ice usually shrinks in September and this year it was only the eighth lowest on record for the melting season. But scientists said they were most concerned about what happens in the winter – especially March – when sea ice is supposed to be building to its highest levels.
Arctic winter sea ice maximum levels in 2017 were the smallest they’ve ever been for the season when ice normally grows. It was the third straight year of record low winter sea ice recovery. Records go back to 1979.
About 79% of the Arctic sea ice is thin and only a year old. In 1985, 45% of the sea ice in the Arctic was thick, older ice, said NOAA Arctic scientist Emily Osborne.
New research looking into the Arctic’s past using ice cores, fossils, corals and shells as stand-ins for temperature measurements show that Arctic ocean temperatures are rising and sea ice levels are falling at rates not seen in the 1,500 years. And those dramatic changes coincide with the large increase in carbon dioxide levels in the air, the report said.
This isn’t just a concern for the few people who live north of the Arctic circle. Changes in the Arctic can alter fish supply. And more ice-free Arctic summers can lead to countries competing to exploit new areas for resources. Research also shows changes in Arctic sea ice and temperature can alter the jet stream, which is a major factor in US weather.
This is probably partly responsible for the current unusual weather in the United States that brought destructive wildfires to California and a sharp cold snap to the south and east, according to NOAA scientist James Overland and private meteorologist expert Judah Cohen.
“The Arctic has traditionally been the refrigerator to the planet, but the door of the refrigerator has been left open,” Mathis said.
Outside scientists praised the report card.
“Overall, the new data fit with the long-term trends, showing the clear evidence of warming causing major changes,” in the Arctic, said Pennsylvania State University ice scientist Richard Alley. |
Electrochaea uses CO2 from wastewater to make natural gas | Electrochaea has transformed carbon dioxide from wastewater into natural gas, using the excess green energy from wind turbines or solar panels that would otherwise be wasted. The solution could be scaled to create multi-seasonal energy storage, something that most batteries are not capable of, the company said. | https://qz.com/1133123/batteries-cant-solve-the-worlds-biggest-energy-storage-problem-one-startup-has-a-solution/ | 2017-12-11 19:37:22.780000 | Copenhagen, Denmark
Sometimes, there can be too much of a good thing.
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Every so often, from California to Germany, there’s news of “negative electricity prices,” a peculiar side effect of global efforts to generate clean energy. Solar farms and wind turbines produce varying amounts of power based on the vagaries of the weather. So we build electrical grids to handle only the power levels we expect in a given location. But in some cases, there’s more sun or wind than expected, and these renewable energy sources pump in more power than the grid can handle. The producers of that power then have to pay customers to use up the excess electricity; otherwise, the grid would be overloaded and fail.
As we build more and more renewable-power capacity in efforts to meet the emissions-reduction goals of the Paris climate agreement, these situations will become more common. Startups led by entrepreneurs who see this future on the horizon are now looking for ways to make money off the inevitable excess clean electricity.
On a mildly chilly day in April, with the smell of poo in the air, I met one of these startups at a sewage-water treatment plant in Copenhagen, Denmark. Electrochaea takes carbon dioxide produced during the process of cleaning wastewater, and converts it into natural gas. That alone would be impressive enough; if we want to stop global warming in its tracks, we need to do everything we can to keep CO2 from entering the atmosphere. But Electrochaea has also figured out a way to power the whole enterprise with the excess green energy produced during particularly sunny and windy days that otherwise would have gone to waste, because there would have been no way to store it.
In other words, when scaled up, Electrochaea’s process could be an answer to one of the biggest problems of the 21st century: energy storage, while also making a dent in cutting emissions.
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This article is part of The Race to Zero Emissions series investigating carbon-capture technology. You can also read our feature laying out the case for using the technology to fight climate change.
The battery problem
The biggest problem with wind and solar energy is that they’re intermittent. There might be violent winds one day, and calm skies the next; broiling sunshine on Monday and 100% cloud cover on Tuesday. Some argue this problem is easily overcome by storing any excess energy in batteries until it’s needed at a later time. Further, battery advocates say, even though the bookcase-sized batteries required to store solar energy for a small home are expensive today, prices are falling and will continue to fall for some time.
Except it’s not that easy. The batteries on the market for these applications are, essentially, large versions of the lithium-ion batteries found in mobile phones. They can only store energy for a certain amount of time—weeks, at most. As soon as the charging source is removed, they start to lose the charge.
That’s not a problem if the batteries are for ironing out the peaks and troughs of daily use. The trouble is that humanity’s energy demand is skewed based on local seasons, which requires sometimes drawing on every available source, and sometimes not using much energy at all. Mumbai’s peak energy demand is during the hottest days of summer, when people run air conditioners to survive. London’s peak energy demand comes during the coldest days of winters, when people burn natural gas to heat their homes and offices.
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Peak energy demand, whether for heating or cooling, can be as much as 20 times the energy consumed on an average day. Today, we shovel more coal or pump more natural gas into fossil-fuel power plants on those high-demand days. Some places, like Bridgeport in Connecticut, have old fossil-fuel plants, often coal, that they keep shut down most of the year and fire up only during peak demand. Obviously, that won’t work in a future powered by renewable energy.
There are two solutions on the table for inter-seasonal energy storage, and they both involve massive investment in infrastructure: First, you could build so many solar panel fields or so many wind turbines that you could produce much more than 20 times the power of an average day. The upshot: you’d have much more excess energy on a low-demand day, but would at least be able to fill demand on peak-demand days. The second option is to get so many batteries that they can store up enough excess energy that, even as they lose their charge, there’s still enough power to get the grid through peak-demand days.
Even if both renewable generation and storage were affordable enough for these plans—and they’re not, yet—there’s still another economic wall that might be impossible to traverse: Most of the time, your new gigantic power plant and fleet of batteries would be useless, because peak demand happens only a few times each year. No government can waste the money needed to build something with so little utility.
Store it another way
Beyond batteries, there are other mechanical ways to store energy. One is to pump water into elevated lakes. Another is to compress air with excess energy. Yet another is to store energy in the form of a high-speed rotating disk. But, like batteries, none of these options can store energy between seasons.
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There is one option for the inter-seasonal problem called underground thermal-energy storage. It works on a simple principle: no matter the temperature above ground, at a depth of about 15 meters, temperature in most places on Earth is about the same: 10°C (or 50°F). The planet’s soil provides natural insulation, and, in theory, we could use that insulation to store energy.
There have been successful pilot projects around the world showing you can set up solar panels that, after filling the grid, use any excess electricity to heat gravel, heat-carrying chemicals, or water stored in tanks deep underground. With enough insulation, the heat could be stored for months, until it’s needed in homes nearby, and delivered to them via pipes and heat pumps. (This heat energy can also be converted to run air conditioners, where cooling is needed instead of heating.)
There are just two problems when it comes to scaling up: First, it’s expensive to build. Even if the cost of construction and management were to come down, if cities and towns haven’t already planned for underground reservoirs (and most haven’t), then it can be prohibitively exorbitant to find and secure the space. Second, the solution only works at a local scale, because transporting heat comes with natural losses. So the farther you need to move it from the storage site, the more loss you have to deal with.
Electrochaea provides another option, where renewable energy could be stored indefinitely and transported without losses.
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The green goo
If you don’t mind the smell, wastewater treatment plants are fascinating. The Copenhagen plant takes in all the water sent down toilets, bathrooms, and kitchen sinks, and puts out H2O that’s nearly clean enough to drink—just one more step would be required, the plant operator told me. But since the city has no shortage of water, the treatment plant dumps its clean, but non-potable water into the North Sea.
Before that, the water goes through dozens of steps, including one where organic matter is allowed to settled to the bottom of large, open tanks. This sludge, rich in carbon-containing molecules, is transferred to a sealed bioreactor where microbes filtered from local soil are added. If this were done in the open tanks, the microbes would break the matter down slowly to produce carbon dioxide. But, in the bioreactor, in the absence of oxygen, a different set of microbes springs into action. They produce methane—the primary component of natural gas—instead.
The facility takes the methane (and any remaining sludge that can’t be broken down) and then burns it in a biomass power plant. “We produce more energy than we consume to clean up the water coming into our plant,” says Dines Thornberg, a manager at Biofos, the part-government-owned company that operates the treatment plant.
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That may be true. But the process still does pollute, since some chemical degradation happens independent of microbes and creates carbon dioxide. To help Denmark hit its Paris agreement goals, Biofos wants to cut its own carbon footprint. That’s why the company gave Electrochaea valuable space at its plant to build the pilot-scale chemical plant that completes the job that Biofos’s microbes couldn’t do: convert the carbon dioxide released in the bioreactor into methane. To achieve this amazing transformation, Electrochaea gets help from microbial life called archaea.
Archaea are the oldest of the three branches of life, which include bacteria and eukaryotes (consisting of all other more advanced organisms including humans). Their ancient survival skills include one that us humans now can put to good use: an ability to naturally take in CO2 and turn it into methane.
Most scientists believe life on Earth was formed in hydrothermal vents, created by underwater volcanoes. The temperatures there can reach 400°C (750°F), far higher than that of boiling water. But the water in the vents doesn’t boil and the gases the vents release—including carbon dioxide and hydrogen—don’t explode thanks to the tremendous pressure applied by miles of seawater above. Some archaea that live in the vents have learned to use carbon dioxide as food, combining the carbon (C) from carbon dioxide (CO2) with hydrogen (H2) to form and release methane (CH4). Humans do the reverse, consuming carbon-rich food and combining it with oxygen—both readily available on land—to make and expel carbon dioxide.
Electrochaea’s pilot plant on Biofos’s premises takes up an area the size of a tennis court. As usual for a chemical factory, there’s a tangle of stainless steel pipes with sensors and control valves. The pipes all lead to a big cylindrical bioreactor, about 10 meters (30 ft) tall, kept at 60°C (140°F) and eight times the atmospheric pressure. Through a small glass window at the bottom of the bioreactor, I can see a bubbling mixture the color of an avocado milkshake. That’s Electrochaea’s proprietary species of archaea, cultured and bred to efficiently combine carbon dioxide and hydrogen to produce methane.
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The gases injected into the bioreactor come from two sources. The wastewater-treatment plant sends a mixture of carbon dioxide and methane. Meanwhile, two shipping container-sized electrolyzers use renewable electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. The oxygen is sent off into the atmosphere, and the hydrogen to the Electrochaea bioreactor.
The microbes are so effective that in the time the mixture of gases travels from the bottom of the bioreactor to its top, 99 out of every 100 molecules of carbon dioxide and hydrogen are converted into methane, water, and heat. The heat is useful: it helps keep the temperature inside the reactor steady. Meanwhile, as the archaea consume the CO2 and H2, they multiply. Because they are naturally occurring species, extra archaea can be simply dumped into sewers, flushed out by the water also created in the process.
The valuable product from the reaction is methane. In fact, the stuff created through this process is even more valuable than typical methane. It’s “renewable methane” or “biomethane,” because the gas was produced from non-fossil-fuel sources and without any fossil-fuel power. This methane can be used to run boilers in homes, power plants, and even cars or buses. It’s a cleaner fuel than coal and oil, producing the fewest emissions for each unit of energy released. Methane can also be very easily stored. In fact, across Europe, there are large underground stores, connected by pipes that can safely transport the gas.
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When the system runs at full capacity, the archaea produce about 50 cubic meters of natural gas per hour. For every unit of energy of electricity fed into the system, it produces about 0.75 units of energy stored in the form of methane, according to Doris Hafenbradl, Electrochaea’s chief scientist. That’s not as good as lithium-ion batteries, which can reach near 100% efficiency. But unlike the energy stored in batteries, once methane is produced it can be stored indefinitely, because it doesn’t spontaneously degrade into other chemicals. If this process could be scaled up, it could solve renewable energy’s inter-seasonal storage problem.
Electrochaea’s plant does not need to be close to solar farms or wind turbines, because excess electricity can be extracted from anywhere on the grid. The limitations on location come based on access to CO2. Water treatment plants are fair game and so are ethanol producers (such as beer and liquor factories). Exhaust gases from power plants could be used, but they will need to be cleaned to remove sulfur and particulate emissions, which could harm archaea.
Solving problems at scale
The Copenhagen plant is one of three where Electrochaea has successfully installed its technology. The US National Renewable Energy Laboratory has one installation on its campus in Boulder, Colorado, and the last is part of a European Commission-funded project in Solothurn, Switzerland. Ultimately, Electrochaea’s core business model is to license the technology. The company is currently courting a Hungarian power company that wants to build a plant 10 times the size of the one in Copenhagen. It would be the startup’s biggest yet. And the carmaker Audi has shown interest in Electrochaea’s technology as a way to use biomethane in its natural-gas-powered cars.
Electrochaea is one of a growing number of players in the “power-to-gas” industry. ITM Power and Hydrogenics, for example, make electrolyzers that convert excess renewable energy into storable hydrogen. But hydrogen is not as widely used as natural gas. That’s why companies such as Electrochaea, MicrobEnergy, and ETOGas are betting that it’s worth the extra step of turning that hydrogen into methane. MicrobEnergy, as the name suggests, uses microbes for the conversion, just like Electrochaea. ETOGas, a Hitachi-supported startup, uses metal catalysts.
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Doing it this way also gives these companies a potential second business model: Because these processes all involve injecting carbon dioxide into the system, it could turn out to be the case that they are hired to install their power-to-gas systems simply to reduce a facility’s CO2 emissions, whether it has an excess of renewable energy or not.
Electrochaea hasn’t secured a carbon-capture customer yet. And to be sure, its technology is carbon-capture and recycling—not storage or removal. The methane produced in the process will eventually be burned again, and that will put carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. In other words, it simply delays the production of greenhouse gases, instead of eliminating them.
That said, there is some value in delaying emissions. Every CO2 molecule not dumped in the atmosphere right now is a CO2 molecule that doesn’t absorb and retain sun’s heat. If nothing else, Electrochaea and companies like it may do their part in saving the planet simply by helping change the conversation around carbon dioxide, from treating it as a byproduct to considering it as a feedstock.
You can sign up to our newsletter for more stories on the challenges and opportunities of low-emissions technology. The reporting was supported by a fellowship from the McGraw Center for Business Journalism at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism. |
UK chemical and pharma industries appeal to remain within EU | The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) and the Chemical Industries Association (CIA) have asked for a continued membership of EU Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) regulation. This will enable both industries to keep market access to the EU. In a letter to Michael Gove, the Environment Secretary, the CIA said 60% of all chemical exports from the UK were destined for the EU, and 75% of all chemical imports came from the EU - meaning that staying in REACH was the "most cost-effective" solution. | https://www.out-law.com/en/articles/2017/december/chemicals-and-pharmaceuticals-industries-call-for-continued-cooperation-with-eu-rules-post-brexit/ | 2017-12-11 17:23:37.993000 | Following last week's announcement that a deal had been reached between the UK and EU on phase one of Brexit negotiations, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) called for a cooperation agreement between the UK and EU on medicines.
“It is now crucial that the regulation and supply of medicines for UK and EU patients is prioritised. A cooperation agreement between the UK and the EU on medicines is the best way to ensure that there is no disruption to 500m patients receiving the medicines that they need,” the ABPI said.
Pharmaceutical expert Catherine Drew of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com, said the ABPI statement reflected the industry’s continued pressure for a pragmatic solution to medicines regulation post-Brexit.
Meanwhile, in a letter to environment secretary Michael Gove seen by Out-Law.com, the Chemical Industries Association (CIA) asked for continued membership of the EU Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) regulation, to enable its members to retain market access to the EU.
CIA chief executive Steve Elliott said in the letter that because 60% of all chemical exports from the UK were destined for the EU, and 75% of all chemical imports came from the EU, continued engagement with REACH and the European Chemicals Agency was “the most cost-effective way of securing the competitiveness of our sector”.
Elliott said a “no deal” scenario or exclusion from REACH would mean registrations and authorisations would become non-existent on the day the UK leaves the EU. “Duplicating registration costs would obviously affect the competitiveness of UK products and create a significant drain on resources in order to simply stay where we are today,” Elliott said.
The CIA letter conceded REACH was “far from perfect” but said the best way of minimising disruption to supply chains was by staying within the regime and under the remit of the European Chemicals Agency.
The calls from the ABPI and CIA echoed similar statements from pharmaceutical giants AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Merck and Roche, which submitted their views on the potential impact of Brexit to a UK parliamentary inquiry last week. |
Uber license decision will not be heard until spring 2018 | Ride-sharing app Uber is to appeal the loss of its London private hire licence in spring next year. Uber and Transport for London appeared at Westminster Magistrates' Court for a case management hearing on Monday. A hearing as to whether the Licensed Taxi Drivers' Association and the GMB union could be interested parties in the case will take place next week. An exact date for a full appeal hearing has yet to be set. TfL scrapped Uber's operating licence in September, accusing it of lacking corporate responsibility over issues around public safety.
| http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/uber-london-ban-appeal-tfl-licence-taxi-app-spring-2018-heard-court-ride-hailing-a8103666.html | 2017-12-11 17:21:35.823000 | For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails 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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Minicab app firm Uber’s appeal against Transport for London’s decision not to renew its licence in the city will not be heard until spring 2018.
Both sides of the dispute appeared before Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London on Monday, for a case-management hearing. Chief magistrate Emma Arbuthnot said that a hearing as to whether the GMB union and the Licensed Taxi Drivers’ Association could become interested parties in the case would take place on Tuesday and Wednesday next week. A full appeal hearing on the case, though, would not be happen until either May or June next year. An exact date is yet to be set.
TfL announced its decision to scrap Uber’s operating licence in the capital in September, sparking a fierce battle between the company, unions, politicians, rival services and customers.
Recommended Sheffield suspends Uber licence over management questions
The transport authority had accused the Silicon Valley giant of lacking corporate responsibility in relation to issues around public safety and security.
In October, Uber chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi met with TfL and apologised to Londoners for some of the company’s past practices. Both sides described those talks as constructive but details of progress in negotiations have been sparse since.
Uber employs around 40,000 drivers in London, servicing an estimated 3.5 million people, which makes the capital one of its most important international markets. However, it has been under severe fire from a growing army of UK critics over the past year.
Some have claimed that the privately owned company unfairly skews competition, while other have accused it of not doing enough to crack down on incidents of violence involving drivers.
Beyond London, Uber’s licence was recently also suspended in Sheffield after the company reportedly failed to respond to official requests about its management.
In Brighton its licence was renewed in early November, but only for a period of six months.
In London, Uber can continue servicing its London passengers until the appeals process is exhausted, which some experts have said could take several years.
In a statement on Monday, a spokesperson for Uber said that the company had filed the appeal “so that we can continue serving millions of riders and tens of thousands of drivers in London”.
The spokesperson added that discussions with TfL around resolving the issue were still “constructive”.
“As our new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has said, we are determined to make things right.” |
City will lose 10,500 jobs on day one of Brexit: EY | Using a job tracker which counts job announcements by City companies, EY has predicted that 10,500 jobs will move away from London on the first day the UK departs from the EU. The number of roles affected has fallen from the 12,500 predicted a year ago, however the nature of the roles has changed to more so-called "front room" staff - those dealing with clients, not just administrative roles as originally predicted.
| https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/dec/11/brexit-city-of-london-jobs-ey-dublin-frankfurt | 2017-12-11 17:15:19.507000 | City firms plan to move 10,500 jobs out of the UK on “day one” of Brexit, with Dublin and Frankfurt the financial centres most likely to benefit from the UK’s departure from the EU.
The job tracker compiled by the accountants EY, which counts job announcements to the end of November, found that the number of roles likely to be affected had fallen from estimates of 12,500 a year ago. But it also concluded that the jobs being affected by Brexit were not just the “back office” ones initially forecast, but “front office” staff who deal directly with clients.
Omar Ali, EY’s UK financial services leader, said Friday’s announcement of a first-stage deal, allowing talks to move on to trade, had sent “a wave of relief across the City”.
“It signalled an intention to agree a transitional period as early as possible next year and the starting point for negotiations on future trade deals, both of which are fundamental to avoid adding any additional risks to the system and for the future strength of the UK financial services industry,” said Ali.
Major City firms have started to announce how they will respond to the UK’s exit from the EU after being told by the Bank of England to present contingency plans for all eventualities, including a “hard” Brexit. Last month Sam Woods, a deputy governor of the Bank, warned that 10,000 jobs could leave the City on “day one” after reviewing these plans.
Ali said firms’ contingency plans had become more detailed over the past year. “The extent of broader strategic restructurings and relocation plans will of course ultimately depend on the specifics of any long-term UK deal with the EU, but a drop in the volume of jobs moving will be welcome news for the City.”
EY said that since the July 2016 referendum 31% of the 222 companies it was tracking have said they are considering or have confirmed the movement of some of their operations and/or staff out of the UK.
Goldman Sachs, for instance, has begun to implement contingency plans by taking the top eight floors of a 37-storey block under construction in Frankfurt, even though it is building a new European headquarters in London. It has not said how many of its 6,000 roles in London will be impacted.
EY’s tracker puts Dublin and Frankfurt ahead of other alternative centres in the EU, attracting 14 and 12 companies, respectively.
Analysts at the Japanese bank Nomura are also tracking the potential for job moves and said: “Depending on whether we get a transitional deal, 10,000 jobs spread over a one- to three-year period is a relatively small number, but for markets it’s the long- term impact of Brexit that we find adds up to 35-40,000 that will matter more.” |
Brexit could leave UK vulnerable to global monopolies | Brexit could leave the UK unable to challenge US technology giants over their policies on data and paying tax or to tackle traditional industries on, for example, diesel emissions or plastic waste, argues economist and writer Will Hutton. The tendency of digital capitalism is towards monopoly, with companies such as Facebook and Google defying traditional economic analysis to become more rather than less efficient as they grow. Regulators such as the World Trade Organisation are becoming weaker as corporate power grows, leaving the UK in a weaker position when negotiating deals with major trading nations post-Brexit. | https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/10/corporate-goliaths-grow-ever-larger-britain-increasingly-exposed | 2017-12-11 17:13:56.667000 | We live in a world of corporate goliaths and the trend to gigantism is accelerating. The new era of hi-tech data capitalism has an embedded proclivity to monopoly. The bigger the network, whether Facebook or Google, the more valuable it is to be connected. Big is good in the digital universe, while even bigger is better.
Meanwhile, analogue capitalism, confronted by the challenge of the new, is reacting by consolidating and merging into ever larger entities. Unless they do, comes the reply to any challenge from national competition authorities, they won’t have the heft and scale to meet the new competition. Increasingly, we are surrounded by the most awesome concentration of corporate power in the history of capitalism. In every industry, reported the Obama administration last year, the market power of the biggest companies has been growing and mark-ups and profit margins with them. America’s era of the robber barons in the late 19th century had nothing on this.
Last week came another small milestone, in Britain. Hammerson, a property company few will have heard of, swooped on its rival, Intu, even less well known, in a £3.2bn bid. Yet the outcome will affect us all. Many major shopping malls – London’s Brent Cross, Birmingham’s Bullring, Manchester’s Trafford Park, Oxfordshire’s Bicester Village – will be owned by the same company. Hammerson will be the arbiter of how we shop: what stores are positioned where, in what mall and at what rent; it can even determine the restrictions on forms of permissible public activity in its private spaces.
Hammerson will argue that it had no choice. So much shopping is online that the mall is looking increasingly like a late 20th-century phenomenon, outdated and outmoded. E-shopping is booming and, with the advent of virtual reality, you can go beyond browsing online to “handling” the goods you plan to buy. Hammerson’s only option is to buy up its competitors and try to hold the digital invaders at bay. You can see its point, but its monopolistic grip on the market will be such that it is better empowered to resist declines in rent and will take any opportunity to lift them. Our competition authorities stand idly by, helpless onlookers rather than proactive interveners.
Birmingham’s Bullring shopping centre is now owned by Hammerson after its takeover of Intu. Photograph: Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Meanwhile, the digital invaders are getting bigger. One of the laws of economics, itself an analogue discipline teaching doctrines far removed from the realities of today’s markets, used to be that as companies grow they start to lose control of their capacity to be efficient and unit costs rise. This is called decreasing returns to scale. In this way, or so the theory went, we could trust a free market not to produce corporate goliaths because they become inefficient, the ideology that Brexiters so blindly believe. But one of the features of data capitalism is exactly the opposite: increasing returns to scale. One of the attractions of Facebook, Spotify, Uber, Amazon or Airbnb is their very size. Their managers don’t lose control of their operations as they grow. Indeed, computerised techniques allow costs, from wages to the organisation of production lines, supply chains and warehouses, to be ever more efficiently managed.
From the users’ point of view, the bigger the network and search engine the more efficient it is to use: Google is the search engine of choice because of its scale; similarly, Uber, the ride-hailing app; Facebook, the communication channel, and Airbnb, the means to find a room. In every case, the sheer size of their network means we get the best results. On top of this, they take over rivals. Facebook has bought WhatsApp, Microsoft owns LinkedIn, and Google acquired YouTube, along with a host of small companies destined to be potential challengers but that were devoured. Thus today’s capitalism: corporations are growing ever bigger in the new and old economy alike. In the new economy, they hold more and more personal information and data about consumers; in the old, they hold ever more market power. Profits as a share of GDP in advanced industrial economies are rising and, with them, share prices and directors’ remuneration; wages and job security are declining. Globalisation has become a universe of monopoly, oligopoly and shadow cartels. Prices are not fixed in smoke-filled rooms: the market leader in whatever global industry sets a reference price that everybody follows tacitly – or faces dire consequences.
This is a far cry from the imagined world of Brexiters, where supranational authorities and regulations, especially EU regulations, are “shackles”. National competition authorities are all that are needed to ensure free and fair competition; virtuous global enterprise is rewarded and policed by the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the fabulously effective and universally revered global trade referee. All Britain has to do is champion free trade outside the sclerotic EU under WTO rules and it will be blessed with a new age of growth and prosperity. In reality, competition and anti-monopoly authorities are no match for the behemoths and the WTO is systematically gamed and undermined by the two economic superpowers. The US, the Brexiters’ great buddy, is refusing to nominate judges to the WTO’s appeal court; instead, it takes on China unilaterally for alleged trade abuses. The WTO is weak and getting weaker.
International trade is not a game of cricket between equally matched teams, only disturbed by Brussels Eurocrats, as Jacob Rees-Mogg, Boris Johnson et al imagine, waiting for a Britain, energised by leaving the EU, to further stimulate it. It is a dog-eat-dog world in which the choice for a medium-size country is to make common cause with one of the three economic blocs capable of challenging the new monopolists and cartels – China, the US or the EU – or roll over and be plundered. Britain alone has no chance of challenging the West Coast tech giants over their policies on anything from tax to data or challenge any of the analogue goliaths over their stance, say, on diesel emissions or plastic packaging.
You don’t have to be a Marxist to worry about where today’s capitalism is heading – both the Bank of England and the Economist magazine share the concerns. But it is curious that Labour’s allegedly leftwing leadership is so quiet. Far from a capitalist plot, EU membership is one of Britain’s few available defences. Trade unions understand this well: it is time for Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell to find their voice. Leaving the EU can and must be stopped. |
Neural networks learning to forget useless information | A team of researchers at the University of Leuven, together with Facebook AI Research, is aiming to improve machine learning by training artificial neural networks to learn and forget skills akin to how humans absorb information. Researchers have developed a way for these networks to employee Hebbian learning - the idea neurons work better when they "fire" together. If an action is perceived as correct, or useful, it can be reinforced while incorrect, or less useful, actions can be discarded. | https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609710/neural-networks-are-learning-what-to-remember-and-what-to-forget/ | 2017-12-11 16:56:26.860000 | That’s an important skill. The world provides a never-ending source of data, much of which is irrelevant to the tricky business of survival, and most of which is impossible to store in a limited memory. So humans and other creatures have evolved ways to retain important skills while forgetting irrelevant ones.
Neural networks are now being taught how to forget.
The same cannot be said of machines. Any skill they learn is quickly overwritten, regardless of how important it is. There is currently no reliable mechanism they can use to prioritize these skills, deciding what to remember and what to forget.
Today that looks set to change thanks to the work of Rahaf Aljundi and pals at the University of Leuven in Belgium and at Facebook AI Research. These guys have shown that the approach biological systems use to learn, and to forget, can work with artificial neural networks too.
The key is a process known as Hebbian learning, first proposed in the 1940s by the Canadian psychologist Donald Hebb to explain the way brains learn via synaptic plasticity. Hebb’s theory can be famously summarized as “Cells that fire together wire together.”
In other words, the connections between neurons grow stronger if they fire together, and these connections are therefore more difficult to break. This is how we learn—repeated synchronized firing of neurons makes the connections between them stronger and harder to overwrite.
So Aljundi and co have developed a way for artificial neural networks to behave in the same way. They do this by measuring the outputs from a neural network and monitoring how sensitive they are to changes in the connections within the network.
This gives them a sense of which network parameters are most important and should therefore be preserved. “When learning a new task, changes to important parameters are penalized,” say the team. They say the resulting network has “memory aware synapses.”
They’ve put this idea through its paces with a set of tests in which a neural network trained to do one thing is then given data that trains it to do something else. For example, a network trained to recognize flowers is then shown birds. The researchers then show it flowers again to see how much of this skill is preserved. |
China open to global partnerships for space station project | The Chinese government is planning to increase its activities in space exploration, according to Romanian diplomat and cosmonaut Dumitru-Dorin Prunariu. The country is building a space station called Tiangong 3, which is expected to be in orbit by 2022, and has signed an agreement with the United Nations to allow developing countries to use the facility to conduct space experiments. Co-operation with other advanced countries is also thought likely, although the United States is prevented by a clause in a 2011 bill from collaborating with China on space projects.
| https://intpolicydigest.org/2017/12/10/china-s-belt-road-initiative-space-initiative/ | 2017-12-11 16:36:37.697000 | SHENZHEN, China – “After the Belt and Road Initiative, I think China has a space initiative in mind. China has invited developing nations to conduct experiments on its space station planned to be on the orbit in 2022, has signed an agreement with the UN, and does not neglect any possibility to conclude an agreement with countries that have expertise on the peaceful use of the outer space. For instance, in July 2017, it signed a memorandum of understanding with Romania, which possesses such expertise, and, geopolitically, it falls along the route of the Belt and Road Initiative,” said Dumitru-Dorin Prunariu, a Romanian cosmonaut and diplomat.
As an annual delegate to COPUOS, Prunariu is very familiar with China’s space achievements: “China is strikingly advanced in space activities and focused on manned human space flights. I felt from the beginning China’s huge potential in space. When I was still the president of the Association of Space Explorers, I personally insisted to have Chinese astronauts become members of ASE and to hold the ASE congress in Beijing in 2014, to start getting to know each other better. The first Chinese astronaut, Yang Liwei, was elected as a member of ASE Board. Time showed indeed that China is promoting space activities and open to develop space projects as well as advanced technology and science, with the purpose to ensure national security and to gain its place, prestige and recognition on the global stage, as a strong space-faring nation with a high level of technology.”
Wu Ping, Deputy Director General of China Manned Space Agency, presented the project to the 59th session of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) at the UN in Vienna in June 2016. Under the agreements, UNOOSA and CMSA will work together to enable United Nations member states, particularly from developing countries, to conduct space experiments on board China’s space station, and to provide flight opportunities for astronauts and payload engineers. China and the UN will promote international cooperation in human space flight and other space activities, increased awareness of the benefits of human space technology and its applications, and capacity-building activities in space technology.
The Chinese space station, Tiangong 3, is currently under development and is expected to be operational around 2022. It will have a core module and two experimental modules, and can be expanded further. The modules are scheduled to be sent into space between 2020–2022. It will be capable of accommodating three full-time astronauts and up to six during rotation periods. The station will also accommodate the Chinese future Xuntian space telescope.
With its advanced technology and multi-purpose onboard facilities, the station could provide opportunities for UN member states to conduct microgravity experiments on physics, biology, and life science as well as Earth observation.
The UN signed several agreements with various Chinese institutions ranging from disasters management and emergency response, the use of space-based data, and the infrastructure of disasters management and emergency response, as well as cooperating in exploration and innovation. Prunariu stresses that “only cooperation in various fields, including space, can make nations know each other better, remove suspicion and gradually build mutual trust.”
The CMSA hopes for broadened collaboration with other countries and international organizations under the framework of the agreement, on the principle of peaceful uses of outer space, equality and mutual benefit, and joint development.
It is unlikely that there will be cooperation between China and the US for the moment. In 2011, Rep. Frank Wolf inserted a clause into the US spending bill to prevent NASA or the OSTP (White House Office of Science and Technology Policy) from using federal funds “to develop, design, plan, promulgate, implement or execute a bilateral policy, program, order, or contract of any kind to participate, collaborate, or coordinate bilaterally in any way with China or any Chinese-owned company.”
However, Jeffrey Manber, CEO of NANORACKS, a private commercial company that provides hardware for the International Space Station, explains that there is always a way where there is a will: “The Canadians, Russians and Americans would have worked with the Chinese on the ISS but this law forbids it. When we started to work, we felt this amendment does not apply to us because we are a commercial company, we are not using tax-payers’ money. We have customers from 30 nations who pay us for services. We went to Obama administration and asked to engage the Chinese, and they gave us permission. Charles Bolden, administrator of NASA at the same, wrote a letter to the Congress saying this complies with the Wolf amendment, NASA was not involved, no technology transfer.”
China is gradually achieving excellence in its space programs and it has the capabilities to implement outstanding space projects. The wide range of programs, the long term planning and the openness to international cooperation makes it a unique space-faring country. |
Visa to reassure consumers with 'sensory branding' for payments | Visa is exploring using "sensory branding" to help signal completed and secure transactions. Seven in 10 people think the Visa logo shows that a website is secure and the company wants to expand this sense of security with a software development kit that can create animation, sound and haptic (vibration) clues, which it will make available on the Visa Developer Platform and through the Visa Ready programme. While the move may appear novel, some 81% of consumers polled by Visa said the features would make them view merchants more positively. Pilot programmes are being planned for next year.
| https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/31431/see-hear-feel-visa-rolls-out-sensory-branding | 2017-12-11 16:20:00.853000 | In an ever-expanding universe of connected, payments-enabled devices, Visa is looking to reassure consumers (and promote itself) with a "sensory branding" programme that will use sound, animation and haptic cues to signify completed transactions.
With research showing that up to 71% of people think that the Visa logo signifies that a website is secure, the company is bidding to find new ways to evoke the same emotions in the digital and physical world.
To this end, the card scheme has developed short sound, animation and haptic (vibration) cues that it will make available as a software development kit on the Visa Developer Platform, and through the Visa Ready program, next year.
While the plans may seem gimmicky, 83% of people polled by Visa say that the sound or animation cues positively impacted their perception of the firm's brand, while 81% say the features would make them have a more positive view of merchants.
With this in mind, a national merchant and POS hardware vendors have agreed to pilot programmes for 2018.
Meanwhile, Visa is hoping to take advantage of haptic technology's ability to incite feelings of happiness and excitement with a global advertising campaign ahead of the Olympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018.
Lynne Biggar, chief marketing and communications officer, Visa, says: "As payments become increasingly embedded in commerce, the notion of ‘Everywhere You Want To Be’ takes on even greater meaning for our brand. As new payment experiences continue to take shape in the world, this suite of sensory branding elements will give consumers the assurances we know they want every time they use Visa." |
Euclid develops combination of materials for expandable proppants | Composite manufacturer Terves' expandable proppant technology, which allows hydraulic fractures to remain open by swelling and applying force to the fracture network, is close to commercialisation. The XO Prop product has been added to the Terves Exalon rigid expandable product range, and uses semi-permeable expandable rigid polymer beads in a soon-to-be-patented formula. The proppant expands over one to two days, and comes in a rod or sphere shape between 20 and 100 mesh in size. | http://www.upstreamonline.com/upstreamtechnology/1366233/expanding-the-horizons-of-proppants | 2017-12-11 16:19:02.817000 | Over the years, proppant technology has evolved from sands to engineered, high-strength proppants, cured and partially cured resin-coated proppants to prevent fines, lightweight and deformable proppants, and coated walnut shells for improved transportation and reduced embedment.
The latest in the line-up could be expandable proppants, which are nearing commercialisation from a technology developer in the US.
“We’re working to understand the in-situ application of force in the fracture network to control and manage development of that network,” says Andy Sherman, president and chief executive of Euclid, Ohio-based Terves. |
Scientists attempt to convert space debris into IoT devices | Chinese scientists are seeking to turn discarded rocket sections into internet of things (IoT) devices. Researchers at Shanghai's Fudan University are installing smart chips in the final stages of space-bound rockets so they can be used as low-cost experiment and communication platforms, rather than becoming yet more space debris. The system, which is still at a test stage, is being called Xinyun, which means "cloud of chips" in Chinese. More than 500,000 pieces of space junk are thought to be orbiting Earth at up to 17,500 mph, according to NASA.
| https://www.inquisitr.com/4674000/chinese-scientists-install-intelligent-chip-systems-on-rockets-to-use-them-as-internet-of-things-in-space/ | 2017-12-11 16:15:51.100000 | Chinese scientists have devised an innovative way to utilize a spent rocket in space as a smart application platform. They are now working on a plan to fit intelligent chip systems in the final stage of their space-bound rockets to turn them into an orbital Internet of Things (IoT). In this way, these rockets can be used as a communication and experiment platform rather than being discarded as space junk after sending a satellite into orbit.
A report published in Xinhua News talks about a program being conducted at Fudan University in Shanghai. Chinese scientists working under this program installed smart chips on the final stage of a Long March 4C rocket that was used to send the Fengyun-3D satellite into space last month. Zheng Lirong, the lead scientist of the project, told Xinhua News that fitting smart chips on that rocket enabled scientists to establish the preliminary stage of an in-orbit IoT. This smart chip system has been named “Xinyun” in Chinese, which literally means the cloud of chips.
“With these intelligent chips attached, space debris can be transformed into a low-cost science experiment and communication platform,” Lirong said.
According to NASA, more than 500,000 pieces of space junk are currently orbiting the Earth at speeds up to 17,500 miles per hour (28,300 kilometers per hour). Scientists recognize orbital junk as a serious threat to space missions as even a small piece of space debris can damage spacecraft, satellites, and even the International Space Station (ISS). The majority of this orbital junk includes rocket sections that were discarded during space launches. NASA already has an established set of procedures and guidelines on how to avert a potential collision with orbital junk in space.
A program carried out installed several #intelligent chips on the final stage of the Long March 4C #rocket, which sent the Fengyun-#3Dsatellite into orbit in November. https://t.co/S7WEowqk7Y — CGTN Radio (@CGTNRadio) December 8, 2017
According to Xinhua News, Chinese scientists have been working on this project for the past two years and during these two years, they successfully developed the functional modules to create “nanosatellites” able to work in space.
IoT is a concept discussed by technology companies for decades. It is all about connecting different devices over the internet and enabling them to communicate with humans, with other applications, and with each other as well. The concept not only talks about connected devices and smart homes but also offers a vision of smart cities and industries. IoT solutions are already being employed in our daily lives, ranging from smart, wearable gadgets and GPS-tracked grazing to connected, driverless cars.
According to Xinhua News, the new Chinese technology is still in testing phase, and scientists are currently studying the path of orbiting debris. The IoT system has been in space for more than 430 hours, and the communication between the space nodes and the ground networks is currently stable. The system is receiving commands from the ground staff and is sending them the data from space. Further tests will let scientists verify the energy self-sufficiency, fault tolerance, and other functions of the intelligent chip system in space. |
VC investment in AI totals $7.6bn through first 9 months of 2017 | Artificial intelligence (AI) received $7.6bn in venture capital (VC) investment between January and September, more than the $5.4bn for all of 2016, according to data provider PitchBook. AI-related merger and asset deals amounted to $21.3bn this year. Big names such as Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet are putting AI at the heart of their strategies, seeing the technology as a way to better their existing services and to push into new areas such as augmented reality and self-driving cars.
| https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21732111-artificial-intelligence-looks-tailor-made-incumbent-tech-giants-worry-battle | 2017-12-11 16:07:16.440000 | TWO letters can add up to a lot of money. No area of technology is hotter than AI, or artificial intelligence. Venture-capital investment in AI in the first nine months of 2017 totalled $7.6bn, according to PitchBook, a data provider; that compares with full-year figures of $5.4bn in 2016. In the year to date there have been $21.3bn in AI-related M&A deals, around 26 times more than in 2015. In earnings calls public companies now mention AI far more often than “big data”. At the heart of the frenzy are some familiar names: the likes of Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft. A similar, though less transparent, battle is under way in China among firms like Alibaba and Baidu. Several have put AI at the centre of their strategies. All are enthusiastic acquirers of AI firms, often in order to snap up the people they employ. They see AI as a way to improve their existing services, from cloud computing to logistics, and to push into new areas, from autonomous cars to augmented reality (see article). Many observers fear that, by cementing and extending the power of a handful of giants, AI will hurt competition. That will depend on three open questions, involving one magic ingredient.
AlphaGone
The tech giants certainly have big advantages in the battle to develop AI. They have tonnes of data, oodles of computing power and boffins aplenty—especially in China, which expects to charge ahead. Imagine a future, some warn, in which you are transported everywhere in a Waymo autonomous car (owner: Alphabet, parent of Google), pay for everything with an Android phone (developer: Google), watch YouTube (owner: Google) to relax, and search the web using—you can guess. Markets with just a handful of firms can be fiercely competitive. A world in which the same few names duke it out in several industries could still be a good one for consumers. But if people rely on one firm’s services like this, and if AI enables that firm to predict their needs and customise its offering ever more precisely, it will be burdensome to switch to a rival.
That future is still a long way off. AI programs remain narrowly focused. Moreover, the ability of the incumbents to perpetuate their advantages is made uncertain by three questions.
The most important is whether AI will always depend on vast amounts of data. Machines today are usually trained on huge datasets, from which they can recognise useful patterns such as fraudulent financial transactions. If real-world data remain essential to AI, the tech superstars are in clover. They have vast amounts of the stuff, and are gaining more as they push into fresh areas such as health care.
A competing vision of AI stresses simulations, in which machines teach themselves using synthetic data or in virtual environments. Early versions of a program developed to play Go, an Asian board game, by DeepMind, a unit of Alphabet, were trained using data from actual games; the latest was simply given the rules and started playing Go against itself. Within three days it had surpassed its predecessor, which had itself beaten the best player humanity could muster. If this approach is widely applicable, or if future AI systems can be trained using sparser amounts of data, the tech giants’ edge is blunted.
But some applications will always require data. How much of the world’s stock of it the tech giants will end up controlling is the second question. They have clout in the consumer realm, and they keep pushing into new areas, from Amazon’s interest in medicine to Microsoft’s purchase of LinkedIn, a professional-networking site. But data in the corporate realm are harder to get at, and their value is increasingly well understood. Autonomous cars will be a good test. Alphabet’s Waymo has done more real-world testing of self-driving cars than any other firm: over 4m miles (6.5m kilometres) on public roads. But established carmakers, and startups like Tesla, can generate more data from their existing fleets; other firms, like Mobileye, a driverless-tech firm owned by Intel, are also in the race.
The third question is how openly knowledge will be shared. The tech giants’ ability to recruit AI expertise from universities is helped by their willingness to publish research; Google and Facebook have opened software libraries to outside developers. But their incentives to share valuable data and algorithms are weak. Much will depend on whether regulations prise open their grip. Europe’s impending data-protection rules, for example, require firms to get explicit consent for how they use data and to make it easier for customers to transfer their information to other providers. China may try to help its firms by having negligible regulation.
The battle in AI is fiercest among the tech giants. It is too early to know how good that will be for competition, but not to anticipate the magic ingredient that will determine the outcome: the importance, accessibility and openness of data. |
Made In Space to create optical fibres in orbit | Made In Space has launched into space a machine that prints optical fibres in orbit. The device, which is about the size of a microwave, was sent towards the International Space Station on board a SpaceX Dragon capsule. If successful, Made In Space's machine will make items good enough to sell on Earth, opening up space to greater commercial and industrial use.
| https://www.space.com/39039-made-in-space-off-earth-manufacturing-test.html | 2017-12-11 16:01:04.333000 | Made In Space has partnered with the New Jersey company Thorlabs on a project to produce ZBLAN optical fiber in orbit. This machine, which is a bit bigger than a microwave, is scheduled to launch toward the International Space Station abroad a SpaceX Dragon capsule on Dec. 12, 2017.
A bold plan to rev up off-Earth manufacturing is about to get a big test.
A small, privately built machine designed to make optical fiber is launching toward the International Space Station (ISS) aboard SpaceX's Dragon cargo capsule tomorrow (Dec. 12).
If all goes according to plan, this little factory — which is owned by California-based startup Made In Space — will churn out stuff that's good enough to sell here on Earth, opening up space to greater commercial use. [3D Printing: 10 Ways It Could Transform Space Travel]
"We believe that we're really on the verge of something truly amazing here, with kind of using space for industrial purposes for some of the very first times," Made In Space CEO Andrew Rush said during a news conference in late November.
Made In Space is no stranger to the ISS. In 2014, a 3D printer built by the company made it to the orbiting lab, as part of a pilot project with NASA that aimed prove out the technology's use in space. That machine performed well, so the company launched a commercial version, known as the Additive Manufacturing Facility (AMF), to the station in 2016. The AMF continues to produce stuff for a variety of customers today. (NASA owns the 3D printer that launched in 2014.)
The machine that will launch tomorrow, which Rush said is a bit bigger than a microwave, is more specialized. It will produce a type of exotic optical fiber known as ZBLAN, which Made In Space representatives said is difficult to make on Earth: The high-gravity environment here causes tiny crystalline flaws to emerge in the fiber.
"In space, ZBLAN optical fiber can be produced without these crystals, providing superior data-transmission capabilities compared to both Earth-produced ZBLAN and traditional silica-fiber optic lines," Made In Space representatives wrote in a description of the project. "This microgravity-produced fiber has numerous applications, including trans-Atlantic telecommunications, high-speed internet [and] lasers, as well as enhancing technologies in space."
The Made In Space machine will produce at least 330 feet (100 meters) of ZBLAN on this trial run, pulling the material like taffy from heated feedstock material. The fiber will then come back to Earth (aboard the same Dragon that took the feedstock up) for study and characterization, with the aid of project partner Thorlabs, a New Jersey-based company.
If the space-made ZBLAN looks good, Made In Space will aim to sell it, Rush said. And that will be just the beginning.
"We do intend to develop this into a commercial product that we sell in large quantities," he said. "The progression of that will be kind of a step-by-step approach."
Launching raw materials to space is expensive, but ZBLAN is the sort of high-value product that makes on-orbit manufacturing economically feasible, Rush has said. And the company can make a lot of the material from a relatively small launch mass — about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) of fiber per 2.2 lbs. (4 kilograms) of ZBLAN "preform," Rush said during the news conference.
There's a lot of other cool stuff going up on the Dragon tomorrow as well: for example, a super-sensitive space-junk sensor, an experimental new bone adhesive, and an instrument that will measure the amount of energy going into and out of the Earth system with incredible precision.
And the launch itself will be a milestone in SpaceX's quest to develop reusable spaceflight systems, a key priority of the company's founder and CEO, Elon Musk. The Dragon flying tomorrow already has one space mission under its belt, as does the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket that will carry the capsule aloft.
Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com. |
Amazon Alexa voice purchases up 13.5% this quarter | Amazon Alexa users bought 13.5% more products using the device's voice technology in Q3 2017 than in Q2, figures show. The figure increased 7.5% in the previous quarter of this year, according to a study by Linc Global and Rakuten. The same companies also showed a surprisingly high 60% upsell rate, with consumers buying more items from the same brand after their initial Echo purchase. The statistic indicates that Alexa could prove a key marketing platform, said James Lee, an analyst at Mizuho Securities.
| https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/06/amazon-alexa-customers-buy-more.html?utm_content=64165313&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=Post%20Blast%20%28bii-e-commerce%29:%20Alibaba%20invests%20in%20Indian%20online%20grocery%20%E2%80%94%20Echo%20users%20a%20boon%20for%20Amazon%20%E2%80%94%20The%20Vitamin%20Shoppe%20commits%20to%20relationship%20commerce&utm_term=BII%20List%20E-Comm%20ALL | 2017-12-11 15:59:06.490000 | The Echo Plus looks premium, and almost identical to the original
Amazon 's Alexa voice technology is helping consumer brands sell more, according to a recent study, underscoring its potential as a major marketing platform.
The study, run by Linc Global and Rakuten, shows that Echo owners increased their purchases of consumer products, like diapers, by 13.5% in the third quarter of 2017, up from the 7.5% jump seen in the second quarter of this year. Those companies also saw an unusually high 60% upsell rate, meaning the consumers bought more products from the same brand after their Echo purchase.
"This study indicates that voice search has a positive impact on sales of standardized products," James Lee, an analyst at Mizuho Securities wrote in a note published Wednesday.
The broader takeaway, according to Lee, is that Alexa's voice technology could turn into a major marketing platform for consumer brands. For example, the note says Pamper diapers could build an Alexa app that recommends re-orders of previous purchases or new products based on past shopping history.
Amazon is also testing a new service that would potentially let customers order products from the consumer brand's Alexa app and pick up at local retailers, according the Mizuho note.
"Alexa's voice platform provides a powerful marketing channel for brands to sell direct," Lee wrote in the note.
Related: If Apple is serious about Siri, it needs to compete on Amazon's turf |
Amazon Alexa voice purchases up 13.5% this quarter | Amazon Alexa users bought 13.5% more products using the device's voice technology in Q3 2017 than in Q2, figures show. The figure increased 7.5% in the previous quarter of this year, according to a study by Linc Global and Rakuten. The same companies also showed a surprisingly high 60% upsell rate, with consumers buying more items from the same brand after their initial Echo purchase. The statistic indicates that Alexa could prove a key marketing platform, said James Lee, an analyst at Mizuho Securities.
| http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-echo-owners-are-making-more-voice-purchases-2017-12?IR=T | 2017-12-11 15:59:06.490000 | BII
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Echo owners have been increasing their voice purchases of consumer products in Q3 2017, according to a study by Linc Global and Rakuten cited by CNBC.
The study found that Amazon Echo users increased their voice purchases of consumer products, like diapers and paper towels, by nearly 14% in Q3 — much steeper growth than the 7.5% increase in Q2. Moreover, shoppers who bought items through the Echo continued to make additional voice purchases from the same brands, which boosted upsell rates by 60%. However, Amazon offers voice-only deals that may be enticing these shoppers to buy more products.
Voice shopping still has a ways to go before consumers start using it regularly for nonconventional purchases. A separate survey by SAP Hybris found that 28% of voice device owners weren’t confident that their devices could provide them with suitable gift recommendations. Twenty percent of respondents stated that smart speakers are limited because they can't determine the visual quality of products, while 19% felt that speakers require too much guidance to make shopping through them worthwhile.
This means that the shopping experience still isn’t robust or frictionless enough for customers to widely adopt it beyond repeat purchases — customers will likely continue to buy the same household items via voice, for example, because they know the brand and quality of the items they'll receive.
Home devices with a screen — such as the Echo Show — may help increase voice shopping. Providing a screen could help customers better evaluate products if they need to. Additionally, voice assistants could use AI to power product recommendations for voice shoppers, which could help boost purchasing beyond consumer products. Amazon is especially well poised to do this, as it has a surfeit of customer data from its online shoppers, and is known for its product recommendations.
However, Google is also known for its AI capabilities, and retailers could take advantage of a partnership with the company by allowing it to access their customer data. With voice-enabled speakers estimated to be in about 55% of US households by 2022, retailers should be developing strong strategies on this channel now to benefit from the growing adoption of these devices.
A revolution in payments and banking is beginning as virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa gain the abilities of cashiers, personal shoppers, and bank tellers.
Already, Siri can help users make peer-to-peer (P2P) transfers with Venmo, Alexa can pay off Capital One credit card bills, and Google Assistant can let users shop with their voice from nearby stores.
This is just the beginning. Today, 18 million US consumers have made a voice payment, and BI Intelligence projects that figure will quadruple over the next five years.
Dan Van Dyke, senior research analyst for BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has compiled a detailed report on voice payments that:
Shares current and projected adoption of voice payments.
Outlines voice payments and banking integrations on the market.
Examines growth drivers and barriers to consumers' voice payments adoption.
Provides strategies for successfully deploying voice interfaces.
To get the full report, subscribe to an ALL-ACCESS Membership with BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report AND more than 250 other expertly researched deep-dive reports, subscriptions to all of our daily newsletters, and much more. >> Learn More Now
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Nuvo introduces AI-driven robo-adviser | Cheshire-based start-up Nuvo is offering customers tailored financial advice via a free platform employing artificial intelligence and chatbots. According to CEO Richard Hayes, the platform learns about its customers' habits and requirements using AI, while the chatbot offers a range of tailored financial products. Nuvo is positioning itself somewhere between a robo-adviser and a comparison site, earning revenue through commissions from asset managers and insurers rather than fees paid by customers. Human advisers are also available to discuss more complex issues, according to the firm.
| http://www.altfi.com/article/3851_nuvo_launches_chatbot_robo_advisor | 2017-12-11 15:53:37.520000 | Nuvo describes itself as an “artificially intelligent digital broker powered by chatbot technology”, offering financial advice through a combination of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and an in-house team of experts.
The FCA-regulated platform uses AI technology to learn about its customers and show them financial products suited to their needs and spending behaviour, positioning itself as something between a financial advisor and a comparison site.
Nuvo charges no fee for usage, and instead makes a profit by charging banks and insurers a commission fee.
According to CEO and co-founder Richard Hayes, Nuvo can field thousands of concurrent conversations and recall user data to avoid repetition when fulfilling new quotes. It also runs regular analysis to ensure customers are always receiving the best deal for their circumstances, providing notifications when users come out of an introductory period or a new price is on offer.
For more complicated products like mortgages, Nuvo has a team of financial experts on board to provide personalised expertise to customers.
The news comes as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanely alum Ramya Joseph launched AI-powered ETFs platform Pefin last week, charging $14 a month with no minimum investment.
Speaking to the FT Adviser, Hayes said: “"It's the advice and understanding that places the customer at the centre of recommendations that is currently missing. Cheapest is not always best for the customer.
“This is where Nuvo comes in, to provide free, impartial advice that ensures customers get the right option for them. Nuvo recommends the right product at the right price."
This article first appeared on http://www.digitalwealth.news/ |
Google leading the AI race: The Economist | Google is leading the charge in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), thanks to projects including DeepMind, TensorFlow and Google Brain, according to an article in The Economist. It said that Google's combination of huge quantities of data, computing power, human talent and smart algorithms help put the search giant ahead of its rivals, and could give it the edge when it comes to scaling and commercialising rapidly evolving AI technologies, such as autonomous cars and virtual reality. | https://www.economist.com/news/business/21732125-tech-giants-are-investing-billions-transformative-technology-google-leads-race | 2017-12-11 15:35:58.827000 | COMMANDING the plot lines of Hollywood films, covers of magazines and reams of newsprint, the contest between artificial intelligence (AI) and mankind draws much attention. Doomsayers warn that AI could eradicate jobs, break laws and start wars. But such predictions concern the distant future. The competition today is not between humans and machines but among the world’s technology giants, which are investing feverishly to get a lead over each other in AI.
An exponential increase in the availability of digital data, the force of computing power and the brilliance of algorithms has fuelled excitement about this formerly obscure corner of computer science. The West’s largest tech firms, including Alphabet (Google’s parent), Amazon, Apple, Facebook, IBM and Microsoft are investing huge sums to develop their AI capabilities, as are their counterparts in China. Although it is difficult to separate tech firms’ investments in AI from other kinds, so far in 2017 (see chart 1) companies globally have completed around $21.3bn in mergers and acquisitions related to AI, according to PitchBook, a data provider, or around 26 times more than in 2015.
Machine learning is the branch of AI that is most relevant to these firms. Computers sift through data to recognise patterns and make predictions without being explicitly programmed to do so. The technique is now used in all manner of applications in the tech industry, including online ad targeting, product recommendations, augmented reality and self-driving cars. Zoubin Ghahramani, who leads AI research at Uber, believes that AI will be as transformative as the rise of computers.
One way to understand AI’s potential impact is to look at databases. From the 1980s these made it cheap to store information, pull out insights and handle cognitive tasks such as inventory management. Databases powered the first generation of software; AI will make the next far more predictive and responsive, says Frank Chen of Andreessen Horowitz, a venture-capital firm. An application such as Google’s Gmail, which scans the content of e-mails and suggests quick, one-touch replies on mobile devices, is an early example of what could be coming.
As with past waves of new technology, such as the rise of personal computers and mobile telephony, AI has the potential to shake up the businesses of the tech giants by helping them overhaul existing operations and dream up new enterprises. But it also comes with a sense of menace. “If you’re a tech company and you’re not building AI as a core competence, then you’re setting yourself up for an invention from the outside,” says Jeff Wilke, chief executive of “worldwide consumer” at Amazon, and adjutant to Jeff Bezos.
Fuelled by rivalry, high hopes and hype, the AI boom can feel like the first California gold rush. Although Chinese firms such as Baidu and Alibaba are also investing in AI, and deploying it in their home market, the most visible prospectors are Western tech firms. Alphabet is widely perceived to be in the lead. It has been making sizeable profits from AI for years and has many of the best-known researchers. But it is early days and the race is far from over. Over the next several years, large tech firms are going to go head-to-head in three ways. They will continue to compete for talent to help train their corporate “brains”; they will try to apply machine learning to their existing businesses more effectively than rivals; and they will try to create new profit centres with the help of AI.
Idiot savants
The most frenzied rush is for human talent, which is far more scarce than either data or computing power. Demand for AI “builders” who can apply machine-learning techniques to huge sets of data in creative ways has ballooned, far exceeding the number of top students who have studied the techniques.
Today AI systems are like “idiot savants,” says Gurdeep Singh Pall of Microsoft. “They are great at what they do, but if you don’t use them correctly, it’s a disaster.” Hiring the right people can be critical to a firm’s survival (some startups fail for lack of the right AI skills) which has set off a trend of firms plundering academic departments to hire professors and graduate students before they finish their degrees.
Job fairs now resemble frantic “Thanksgiving Black Friday sales at Walmart”, says Andrew Moore, dean of Carnegie Mellon University’s (CMU) school of computer science, a pioneering institution in AI (whose robotics department was famously plundered by Uber in 2015). Academic conferences, such as this week’s Neural Information Processing Systems in Long Beach, California, double up as places to shop for talent (see article). The best recruiters are academia’s AI celebrities: people like Yann LeCun of Facebook and Geoffrey Hinton of Google—both former professors who keep a university affiliation—can attract others to work alongside them. Proprietary data can also serve as a draw, if the huge salaries are not enough.
If none of that works, companies buy whole startups. The tech industry first took notice of this trend in 2014, when Google spent an estimated $500m on DeepMind, a startup with no revenue or marketable product but a team of “deep learning” researchers; after the deal they designed a program that beat the world champion at “Go”, an ancient board game. Other firms have also shelled out to buy money-losing startups, which are typically valued not on future profits or even sales but instead receive a price for each employee that can be as much as $5m-10m.
Behind closed doors
Companies have different philosophies about how to deal with staff. Some, such as Microsoft and IBM, invest heavily in AI research and publish a large number of papers (see chart 2), but do not require researchers to apply their findings to money-making activities. At the opposite end of the scale are Apple and Amazon, which do not have enormous research initiatives, expect all work to feed into products and are tight-lipped about their work. Google and Facebook are somewhere in between on whether researchers must toil only on money-making ventures.
The intense battle for talent may force secretive companies to become more open. “If you tell them, ‘come work with us but you can’t tell anyone what you’re working on’, then they won’t come because you’ll be killing their career,” explains Mr LeCun, who leads Facebook’s AI research lab. This trade-off between secrecy and the need to attract people also applies to the Chinese giants, which are trying to establish Western outposts and hire American researchers. Baidu has opened two research labs with an AI focus in Silicon Valley, in 2013 and this year. Western AI researchers rate them highly but prefer to work for the American giants, in part due to their relative transparency. If companies can lure the right people in AI, the effect is to extend their workforces exponentially. AI is “like having a million interns” at one’s disposal, says Benedict Evans of Andreessen Horowitz. That computational power is then integrated into firms’ existing businesses. The advantages of AI are most visible in firms’ predictions of what users want. Automated recommendations and suggestions are responsible for around three-quarters of what people watch on Netflix, for example, and more than a third of what people buy on Amazon. Facebook, which owns the popular app Instagram, uses machine learning to recognise the content of posts, photos and videos and display relevant ones to users, as well as filter out spam. In the past it ranked posts chronologically, but serving up posts and ads by relevance keeps users more engaged. Without machine learning, Facebook would never have achieved its current scale, argues Joaquin Candela, head of its applied AI group. Companies that did not use AI in search, or were late to do so, struggled, as in the case of Yahoo and its search engine, and also Microsoft’s Bing.
Amazon and Google have gone furthest in applying AI to a range of operations. Machine learning makes Amazon’s online and physical operations more efficient. It has around 80,000 robots in its fulfilment centres, and also uses AI to categorise inventory and decide which trucks to allocate packages to. For grocery ordering, it has applied computer vision to recognise which strawberries and other fruits are ripe and fresh enough to be delivered to customers, and is developing autonomous drones that will one day deliver orders.
As for Google, it uses AI to categorise content on YouTube, its online-video website, and weed out (some) objectionable material, and also to identify people and group them in its app, Google Photos. AI is also embedded in Android, its operating system, helping it to work more smoothly and to predict which apps people are interested in using. Google Brain is regarded in the field of AI as one of the best research groups at applying machine-learning advances profitably, for example by improving search algorithms. As for DeepMind, the British firm may not ever generate much actual revenue for Alphabet, but it has helped its parent save money by increasing the energy efficiency of its global data centres (and its Go experiment was a public-relations coup).
Artificial intelligence is also being applied in the corporate world. David Kenny, the boss of Watson, IBM’s AI platform, predicts that there will be “two AIs”: companies that profit from offering AI-infused services to consumers and others which offer them to businesses. In practice, the two worlds meet because of the tech giants’ cloud-computing arms. Providers are competing to use AI as a way to differentiate their offerings and lock in customers. The three largest—Amazon Web Services, Microsoft’s Azure and Google Cloud—offer application-programming interfaces (APIs) that provide machine-learning capabilities to other companies. Microsoft’s cloud offering, Azure, for example, helped Uber build a verification tool that asks drivers to take a selfie to confirm their identities when they work. Google Cloud offers a “jobs API”, which helps companies match jobseekers with the best positions.
AI on the brain
Many firms in other industries, from retailing to media, stand to benefit from what those in the cloud business tout as the “democratisation” of AI. Providing AI to companies that do not have the skills or scale to build up sophisticated capabilities independently could be a money-spinner in the $250bn cloud market. But providers often must customise APIs for clients’ complex needs, which is time-consuming. Microsoft, with its history of selling software to clients and offering them support, seems likely to do well in this area. It is only a matter of time before AI offerings become “more and more self-help”, counters Diane Greene, who runs Google Cloud.
IBM is another contender, having backed a huge marketing campaign for its Watson platform. AI researchers tend to be dismissive of IBM, which has a large consulting business and a reputation for valuing time billed over terabytes. The firm’s critics also point out that, although IBM has invested over $15bn in Watson and spent $5bn between 2010 and 2015 to buy companies, much of that with the aim of acquiring proprietary data, for the most part it does not have unique data of its own. But IBM’s weaknesses may not hold it back. Bosses of most businesses feel pressure to have an AI strategy, and they will pay handsomely to acquire one quickly.
To date tech giants have mostly tried to apply AI to reap profits from their existing operations. In the next few years they hope that AI will let them build new businesses. One area of intense competition is virtual assistants. Smartphones know their users intimately, but AI-powered virtual assistants aim to take the relationship further, whether through phones or smartspeakers. Apple was first to explore their promise when it bought Siri, a voice assistant, in 2010. Since then Amazon, Google and Microsoft have invested heavily: their assistants’ speech recognition is better as a result. Samsung, Facebook and Baidu are also competing to offer them.
One algorithm to rule them all
It is unclear whether standalone speakers will become a huge market, but it is certain that people will move beyond text to engage with the internet. “All these companies understand that whoever owns that choke point for consumers will rule the market,” says Pedro Domingos, author of “The Master Algorithm”, a book about AI.
Further into the future, augmented-reality (AR) devices are another AI-infused opportunity. Mobile apps like Snap, a messaging app, and the game Pokémon Go are early examples of AR. But AR could more radically transform people’s relationship with the internet, so that they consume digital information not from a small screen but via an ambient, ever-present experience. AR devices will offer portable AI capabilities, such as simultaneous translation and facial recognition.
In the race for AR, big tech firms have not got much beyond the warm-up phase. Google and Apple have launched AR software-development kits; they both want developers to build apps that use AR on their platforms. There is also a rush to develop AR hardware. Google was early to launch a prototype for AR glasses, but they flopped. Microsoft has developed a headset it calls HoloLens, but with a price of between $3,000-5,000, it is a niche product. Other firms, including Facebook and Apple, are thought to be planning their own offerings. Being ahead in AI could translate into big leads in these new fields.
Nowhere is that truer than in the realm of autonomous vehicles. Tech firms are driving millions of miles to build up big, proprietary datasets, and are making use of computer vision to train their systems to recognise objects in the real world. The potential spoils are huge. Personal transportation is a vast market, worth around $10trn globally, and whoever cracks self-driving cars can apply their knowledge to other AI-based projects, such as drones and robots. Unlike search engines, where people may choose to use a service that is good enough, users are more likely to favour self-driving cars with the best safety record, meaning that the companies that best employ AI to map out the physical world and register the fewest crashes will enjoy outsize benefits.
Each firm is approaching the problem differently. Baidu, the Chinese giant, is trying to create a self-driving-car operating system, much like Google’s Android in mobile devices (although it is unclear how it plans to make money). Alphabet has its own autonomous-car effort, as do Uber, Tesla, an electric carmaker, a herd of little-known startups and, increasingly, established carmakers. (Apple is rumoured to have scaled back its car ambitions.)
Self-driving cars are just one example of how technology firms’ AI strategies are pushing beyond the virtual world of software into hardware. Many companies, including Alphabet, Apple and Microsoft, are also investing to build specialised, powerful “AI chips” that can power their various activities. These will compete with those made by NVIDIA, a tech firm that has built an empire on powerful chips used in various AI realms, such as autonomous cars and virtual reality.
It is unclear whether the likes of Alphabet and Apple will sell these chips to rival firms or keep them for themselves. They have an incentive to use their innovations to improve their own services, rather than renting or selling them to rivals—which could become a problem if it means a very few firms develop a meaningful advantage in brute computing power.
That begs the broader question of whether AI will further concentrate power among today’s digital giants. It seems likely that the incumbent tech groups will capture many of AI’s gains, given their wealth of data, computing power, smart algorithms and human talent, not to mention a head start on investing. History points to the likelihood of concentration; both databases and personal computers ushered in ascendancies, if only for a while, of a tiny group of tech firms (Oracle and IBM in databases, Microsoft and Apple in personal computers).
By the metrics that count—talent, computing power and data—Google appears to be in the lead in AI. It can afford the cleverest people and has such a variety of projects, from drones to cars to smart software, that people interested in machine learning rarely leave. Other firms had to learn to take AI seriously, but Google’s founders were early devotees of machine learning and always saw it as a competitive edge.
AI’s spiritual home
Some in the tech industry, such as Elon Musk, the boss of Tesla and rocket firm SpaceX, worry about Alphabet and other firms monopolising AI talent and expertise. He and a handful of other prominent Silicon Valley bosses funded OpenAI, a not-for-profit research outfit focused on AI with no corporate affiliation. Mr Musk and others are worried about what might happen when a firm finally cracks “general intelligence”, the ability of a computer to perform any human task without being explicitly programmed to do so. Such a vision is probably decades away, but that does not stop Google from talking about it. “We absolutely want to” crack general AI, says Jeff Dean, the boss of Google Brain. If a firm were to manage this, it could change the competitive landscape entirely.
In the meantime, much will depend on whether tech firms are open and collaborative. In addition to publishing papers, many companies today make their machine-learning software libraries open source, offering internal tools to rivals and independent developers. Google’s library, TensorFlow, is particularly popular. Facebook has open-sourced two of its libraries, Caffe2 and Pytorch. Openness has strategic advantages. As they are used, the libraries are debugged, and the firms behind them get reputational benefits. “Beware of geeks bearing gifts,” quips Oren Etzioni of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, another non-profit research group.
One guru of the field worries that libraries such as TensorFlow will bring in talented researchers but that their owners may start charging later on, or use them for profit in other ways. Such caution may prove wise, but few think about the long term when a gold rush is under way. So it is now in Silicon Valley. Most techies are too consumed by the promise and potential profits of AI to spend too much time worrying about the future. |
Rwanda launches healthcare platform to entice medical tourists | Rwanda is looking to establish itself as a medical tourism hub after a local start-up launched a health services booking and travel platform. Revisions to the visa regime and expanded flights for local carrier RwandAir are also expected to draw in more overseas patients. The platform, managed by Infinite Health International, the African representative of healthcare services provider Best in Class Care, offers patients immediate virtual consultations, while those with medical referrals can access care in accredited Rwandan hospitals, as well as get help with medical travel. The service also aims to give Rwandans better access to healthcare.
| http://www.newtimes.co.rw/section/read/225367/ | 2017-12-11 15:34:14.177000 | New drive to ease access to specialised medical care
Ordinarily, a Rwandan seeking specialized treatment abroad would go through a rigorous process. Most of them go through agents of various international hospitals who will come with a markup price while others rely on friends and family abroad to get them appointments. |
Brexit is a distraction from UK's economic downfall: Mitchell | A sluggish economy, low productivity and static pay are bigger threats to the UK than Brexit, according to former Labour MP for Grimsby, Austin Mitchell. Deindustrialisation and economic policy have turned the UK into "a nation of shoppers, dependent on debt", says Mitchell. An annual balance of payments deficit of over 6% of GDP demonstrates this consumption, he states. Mitchell advises a turn to reindustrialisation and a more long-term approach to growth.
| https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/11/brexit-distraction-real-problem-uk-clapped-out-economy-winden-manufacturing-production-base | 2017-12-11 15:33:08.970000 | As Brexiteers shout “forward” and remainers chant “ back”, the battle over the EU dominates British politics. Yet it obscures a more basic British problem. Our clapped-out economy, brilliant at consumption, poor at production, is becoming unviable. A “nation of shopkeepers” has become a nation of shoppers, dependent on debt.
Deindustrialisation and misguided economic policies have reduced the former workshop of the world to a level where Britain can neither pay its way, nor afford the defence and public services an advanced society needs. Everything in which we once were leaders – ships, railways, TV, great bridges, nuclear plants, bicycles, textiles, clothing, even Kit Kats – we now import.
We consume more than we produce, leading to an annual balance of payments deficit rising above 6% of GDP, financed by borrowing and selling companies, property and citizenship to survive. The result is a sluggish economy (a growing proportion of which is owned by foreigners); low productivity (because the manufacturing sector has shrunk to one-tenth of GDP); and static pay, as every sector except finance cuts costs to survive.
Being in or out of the EU has little relevance to this basic problem. The EU is a market, not a mutual support system. Instead of redistributing growth to succour laggards it punishes them, as it has Greece. It drains us and proscribes the techniques of nurture by state aid, protectionism and devaluation by which Germany and France grew. Its “aid” is just our own money back, with the EU’s heavy costs taken out. Even worse, Germany’s huge surpluses mean that deficit countries like the UK, with our £60bn-plus trade deficit, are compounded by the single market.
Yet coming out offers no solution either. It generates uncertainty and deters investment. Most of world trade is controlled by multinationals, and Britain would be more vulnerable to their ministrations. Tory Brexiteers aim at turning us, down and dirty, into a low-wage, deregulated, cost-cutting tax haven-on-Thames. Hardly acceptable to an electorate that has already endured decades of that.
Training and upskilling are little use without industries to employ the beneficiaries
The only solution is to rebalance an economy excessively dependent on finance and services by widening the manufacturing and production base and making it competitive. Neither free trade nor the single market will do that. New industries don’t just come, still less grow to scale, or become national champions like VW, Samsung or Toyota, unaided. The only historic model of rebuilding is that used by Germany and Japan after the second world war, and later by young dragons such as Korea and Taiwan, followed now by China.
All built powerful exporting sectors by the opposite methods to those that have reduced Britain to its present pass. They used a devalued exchange rate, deliberately kept low to penalise imports and boost exports. They built up powerful exporting sectors and strong competitor companies by industrial policy, state support and investment, while restraining domestic demand to channel ability and investment into production. The result was a process of continuous improvement, while Britain wound down.
Harsh treatment, but what alternative do we have? Neoliberalism has damaged, not boosted. Shelf-stacking and delivery driving for the consumer society offer few prospects. The Washington consensus doesn’t work. Training and upskilling are little use without industries to employ the beneficiaries. The financial sector is better at producing wealth for the few than jobs for the many.
The government’s new industrial strategy offers hope without muscle. Our civil servants are hopeless at working with industry. We lack the French pantouflage skill at transferring their elite civil servants between public and private sectors, while Treasury rules make financial support bureaucratic and restrictive. Our governments have been generous to the banks, not to manufacturing. Finance prefers safe lending on mortgages to venture capital. Our unions don’t work like the German ones do in the Mitbestimmung system. Our companies look to short-term profit rather than long-term growth. Our capitalism is better at rent-seeking than competing.
Serious policies of state support, economic discipline, corporate governance and investment priorities are essential to make Britain’s economy fit for use, in or out of the single market. Widening and deepening our industrial base requires a substantial devaluation, a restraint on domestic living standards, an industrial policy sustained by state intervention, investment and a venture capitalism that will allow a hundred plants to blossom. Britain won’t make it unless it can make things and sell them to the world.
The prospect is daunting. Hopes for a government strong enough to do it look slim, and an electorate already alienated by years of austerity to no purpose won’t welcome more tough measures. Perhaps we’re set on a path of decline which has to go further and hurt more, before anything is done. Yet nothing will be, unless our political elite grasps the real problem. The argument over EU membership is just another distraction. |
Boeing aims to beat Elon Musk to be first to land humans on Mars | The CEO of aircraft manufacturer Boeing has revealed the company is working with NASA to build a rocket capable of reaching Mars. Dennis Muilenburg said Boeing's Space Launch System rocket is due for a test flight in 2019 and added: "I firmly believe that the first person that sets foot on Mars will get there in a Boeing rocket." In contrast, Elon Musk estimated his SpaceX system "BFR", plans for which were unveiled in September, would be ready for launch in five years. | https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/07/boeing-ceo-expects-to-beat-elon-musk-in-race-to-mars.html | 2017-12-11 15:29:46.650000 | Take that Elon Musk! Boeing will beat SpaceX to Mars, CEO Dennis Muilenburg told CNBC.
Musk has made it clear that sending humans to Mars is one of his primary goals, even saying it is the reason he started SpaceX in the first place.
But Boeing is in the final assembly stages of building a rocket called the Space Launch System with NASA, and the company will be the first to bring humans to the red planet, Muilenberg told "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer in an exclusive interview.
Boeing expects to have the system ready for a test flight in 2019.
"Eventually we are going to go to Mars, and I firmly believe that the first person that sets foot on Mars will get there in a Boeing rocket," he said.
SpaceX was not immediately available for comment.
Musk unveiled plans for a massive SpaceX rocket and spacecraft system called the "BFR" in September. It will ultimately replace all of SpaceX's current lineup, and will be used for space exploration and for rapid transport around Earth.
"I feel fairly confident we can build the ship and be ready for the launch in five years," Musk said during his presentation at the International Astronautical Congress in Australia in late September. "Five years seems like a long time for me." |
YouTube plans to launch a music-streaming service | Alphabet, the parent company of YouTube, will launch music-streaming service Remix in March 2018, according to reports. Warner Music Group is said to have already signed up for the service, with talks going on with independent label consortium Merlin, as well as Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group. No pricing details have been released. Remix marks Alphabet's third foray into the increasingly competitive sector, following Google Play Music in 2011 and YouTube Music Key, launched in 2014 and rebranded as YouTube Red two years later.
| http://www.factmag.com/2017/12/08/youtube-remix-streaming-service-report/ | 2017-12-11 15:24:53.950000 | Spotify and Apple Music may have a new streaming rival in 2018.
YouTube is planning to launch a standalone paid music streaming service in March 2018, according to a report at Bloomberg.
According to sources, the service will be called Remix and is expected to feature on-demand music streaming like Spotify alongside a video clip element borrowed from YouTube. No pricing details have been confirmed as yet.
Remix wouldn’t be the first time that YouTube’s parent company Alphabet has launched a streaming service: as well as Google Play Music, launched in 2011, there was 2014’s ad-free music video service YouTube Music Key, which turned into subscription service YouTube Red in 2016.
According to Bloomberg’s report, Warner Music Group has already signed onto the service with Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and independent label consortium Merlin also said to be in talks.
Remix will be entering a crowded marketplace: as well as Spotify, Apple Music and Tidal, the new streaming service will also have Amazon’s recent Music Unlimited to contend with.
Read next: How the technology behind Bitcoin could change the music industry – and help everyone get paid |
Starling Bank connects with Railsbank to use its open API | Mobile challenger bank Starling Bank has joined the Railsbank platform, giving businesses access to UK banking services and Faster Payments through Railsbank's open API. Starling also joins the start-up's banking panel alongside Arkéa Banking Services. Railsbank's COO, Clive Mitchell, said the deal “shows wholesale open banking with APIs is a reality".
| https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/31430/starling-bank-connects-with-railsbank | 2017-12-11 15:23:25.113000 | Starling Bank has hopped on to the Railsbank platform, providing a firm footing for businesses to issue UK bank accounts and access Faster Payments via the Railsbank Open API.
Launched last year by serial entrepreneur Nigel Verdon, Railsbank promises to provide businesses with access to global banking services with just five lines of code.
Starling - which announced plans to move into the business banking market in October - now joins Railsbank stakeholder Arkéa Banking Services, a subsidiary of Credit Mutuel Arkéa, on the startup's banking panel.
COO and co-founder of Railsbank Clive Mitchell says: “We are delighted to be partnered with the team at Starling and to be one of the first aggregator platform live on Starling. It shows that our partner bank network is growing quickly, and that wholesale open banking with APIs is a reality." |
Grocery band Kroger attempts to challenge Amazon and Walmart | Kroger, one of the biggest grocery brands in the US, is working to develop its own media unit, offering data-driven, personalised ad campaigns to consumer packaged goods firms. Collaborating with data analytics firm 84.51°, Kroger helps brands optimise its data as well as third-party information for highly-targeted advertising. The retailer, whose loyalty card is held by half of US households, aims to take on rivals Amazon and Walmart with its programmatic offerings, and is set to launch a platform next year.
| https://digiday.com/marketing/watch-amazon-walmart-kroger-also-building-advertising-business/ | 2017-12-11 15:09:37.330000 | Amazon’s advertising business is worth at least $1 billion, and Walmart has a growing advertising platform, too. Kroger, one of the biggest grocery brands in the U.S., is also venturing into retail media. Kroger is selling its suppliers ad units and solutions, and it is developing a programmatic platform that will go live next year.
Kroger, which owns the likes of Harris Teeter, Baker’s and Fred Meyer Jewelers, generated $27.7 billion in sales from July to September of this year, up 4.5 percent from the same period a year prior, according its quarterly earnings report released in November. Approximately half of all U.S. households have a Kroger loyalty card, which drives nearly 90 percent of Kroger’s sales, according to the company. Like Walmart, Kroger boasts that its loyalty program data and purchase data gathered from its mobile apps, brand websites and around 2,800 stores across 35 states in the U.S. can help its suppliers (mostly consumer packaged goods companies like Procter & Gamble) serve targeted ads on Kroger’s properties and the open web.
Kroger’s sales pitch may sound familiar, as mass retailers like Amazon and Walmart all use their consumer purchase data as the cornerstone to carve out a media business. But different from Amazon, which has an in-house media division called Amazon Marketing Group, and Walmart, whose media platform was largely built by WPP-owned Triad Retail Media (which also creates ad units to sell for other retailers), Kroger bought the data analytics piece of agency Dunnhumby (formerly a joint venture between Kroger and Tesco) around three years ago to form its own consumer insights subsidiary called 84.51°.
“CPG brands today are splitting their marketing spend between trade and advertising. Trade promotion is one of the industry’s largest investments — this is promotional dollars to influence brick-and-mortar sale pricing like temporary price reductions,” said Cara Pratt, vp of customer communications product strategy and innovation for 84.51°. “CPGs shift their marketing budgets across vehicles — many of which deliver against different business objectives, but all are intended to [generate] sales. Our science and Kroger’s customer insights help CPG brands drive actions.”
Kroger is the only retailer that the 84.51° team of 775 serves. The division also helps more than 300 CPG clients understand how to better use Kroger’s data and third-party data for advertising. The majority of 84.51° employees are based in its Cincinnati office, which is only a 10-minute walk from the Kroger headquarters. A small team in Portland, Oregon, is also responsible for media planning and buying for the Kroger brand, according to Bob Welch, svp of customer communications and Kroger media services for 84.51°.
Welch said Kroger’s advertising business has two pillars: One component is Kroger’s customer communications program, where the retailer runs direct and email campaigns for its suppliers with tailored content and promotions; the other is what the company calls “precision marketing solution,” powered by Kroger’s purchase data from 60 million households.
One offering under Kroger’s precision marketing solution is on-site advertising on Kroger.com. 84.51° is responsible for developing ad formats on the site and managing ad sales for Kroger, much like what Triad Retail Media does for Walmart. “You can say that we borrowed the Triad model, but the differentiation is our ability to personalize the experience,” said Pratt. “We can connect 96 percent of Kroger transactions to a customer, which allows us to serve very targeted product placement and drive better conversion.”
CPG clients can also buy co-branded media on the open web — largely display ads that include the Kroger logo and direct consumers to Kroger properties when they click on the ad — as well as run word-of-mouth campaigns through Kroger’s MyMagazine Sharing Network, where brands give out free products, and members give their feedback and share the product on social media in return, according to Pratt.
Pratt declined to share the total number of ad formats Kroger sells and the corresponding pricing model. “Some formats are CPM-based and some are [cost-per-click]-based,” she said. “CPC-based ads are more connected to search marketing.”
Most Kroger precision marketing buys are placed programmatically through a combination of programmatic direct and open exchange inventory, according to Pratt. 84.51° is also developing a programmatic platform that will be available in the next year to let advertisers buy ads on Kroger.com. Kroger’s ad solutions don’t apply to Harris Teeter or Roundy’s brands at the moment.
“Extending our capabilities to those newer brands to the Kroger family will occur in the future,” said Pratt. |
Samsung Pay offers app for mobile banking in South Korea | South Korea's Samsung Electronics is upgrading the payment system on its latest smartphones to allow users to withdraw and send money using local banks Shinhan and Woori. The upgrade affects nine million domestic Samsung Pay users, who need to download a dedicated app to access the service, but will no longer need to rely on ATM cards after having done so. The company said it plans to expand the roll-out to other local banks. | http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20171210000107 | 2017-12-11 14:34:54.267000 | Samsung Electronics Co.'s mobile payment system is moving to expand into the banking sector to offer more diverse services to users, the South Korean tech giant said Sunday.
The company said that starting Thursday, the payment system installed on some of its newer smartphones can be used to carry out transactions at some local banks.
Under the upgrade, the 9 million domestic users of Samsung Pay, who can now use their phones like cash or credit cards, as well as at ATMs, will be able to withdraw or send money from accounts in Shinhan and Woori banks. This can be done by downloading a dedicated app on their smartphones.
The system makes full use of the iris scanner on its top of the line phones, with users no longer required to present bank books and ATM cards. The sending of money can be done without the use of one time password systems.
Samsung said it plans to expand the same services to other local lenders.
"The mobile payment is being developed so that it will one day fully replace a person's purse of wallet," a Samsung executive said.
Related to such an expansion, LG Pay, set up by Samsung's main domestic rival LG Electronics Inc., said it is moving to expand its services in more stores across the country.
The consumer electronics company said while its payment system is currently being offered only with its premium phones like the V30, it plans to incorporate the feature into mid-range phones starting next year. It said LG Pay will reach the United States next year. (Yonhap)
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Data devices could use 20% of global electricity by 2025 | The rapidly growing communications industry, with its billions of smartphones, tablets and interconnected devices, could cause 3.5% of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, 5.5% by 2025 and up to 14% by 2040. It is also on target to use 20% of the world's electricity by 2025. This is despite the industry long claiming that it can lower carbon emissions by reducing waste and increasing efficiency. The major technology companies have committed to using renewable energy for their data centres, but at present only 20% of electricity used in the world's data centres is from renewable sources.
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/11/tsunami-of-data-could-consume-fifth-global-electricity-by-2025?CMP=twt_a-environment_b-gdneco | 2017-12-11 14:30:03.113000 | The communications industry could use 20% of all the world’s electricity by 2025, hampering attempts to meet climate change targets and straining grids as demand by power-hungry server farms storing digital data from billions of smartphones, tablets and internet-connected devices grows exponentially.
The industry has long argued that it can considerably reduce carbon emissions by increasing efficiency and reducing waste, but academics are challenging industry assumptions. A new paper, due to be published by US researchers later this month, will forecast that information and communications technology could create up to 3.5% of global emissions by 2020 – surpassing aviation and shipping – and up to 14% 2040, around the same proportion as the US today.
Global computing power demand from internet-connected devices, high resolution video streaming, emails, surveillance cameras and a new generation of smart TVs is increasing 20% a year, consuming roughly 3-5% of the world’s electricity in 2015, says Swedish researcher Anders Andrae.
In an update to a 2016 peer-reviewed study, Andrae found that without dramatic increases in efficiency, the ICT industry could use 20% of all electricity and emit up to 5.5% of the world’s carbon emissions by 2025. This would be more than any country except the US, China and India.
He expects industry power demand to increase from 200-300 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity a year now, to 1,200 or even 3,000TWh by 2025. Data centres on their own could produce 1.9 gigatonnes (Gt) (or 3.2% of the global total) of carbon emissions, he says.
“The situation is alarming,” said Andrae, who works for the Chinese communications technology firm Huawei. “We have a tsunami of data approaching. Everything which can be is being digitalised. It is a perfect storm. 5G [the fifth generation of mobile technology] is coming, IP [internet protocol] traffic is much higher than estimated, and all cars and machines, robots and artificial intelligence are being digitalised, producing huge amounts of data which is stored in data centres.”
US researchers expect power consumption to triple in the next five years as one billion more people come online in developing countries, and the “internet of things” (IoT), driverless cars, robots, video surveillance and artificial intelligence grows exponentially in rich countries.
“There will be 8.4bn connected things in 2017, setting the stage for 20.4bn internet of things devices to be deployed by 2020,” says the leading internet analyst firm Gartner.
The industry has encouraged the idea that the digital transformation of economies and large-scale energy efficiencies will slash global emissions by 20% or more, but the scale and speed of the revolution has been a surprise.
Global internet traffic will increase nearly threefold in the next five years says the latest Cisco Visual Networking Index, a leading industry tracker of internet use.
“More than one billion new internet users are expected, growing from three billion in 2015 to 4.1bn by 2020. Over the next five years global IP networks will support up to 10bn new devices and connections, increasing from 16.3bn in 2015 to 26bn by 2020,” says Cisco.
A 2016 Berkeley laboratory report for the US government estimated the country’s data centres, which held about 350m terabytes of data in 2015, could together need over 100TWh of electricity a year by 2020. This is the equivalent of about 10 large nuclear power stations.
Data centre capacity is also rocketing in Europe and Asia with London, Frankfurt, Paris and Amsterdam expected to add nearly 200MW of consumption in 2017, or the power equivalent of a medium size power station.
“We are seeing massive growth of data centres in all regions. Trends that started in the US are now standard in Europe. Asia is taking off massively,” says Mitual Patel, head of EMEA data centre research at global investment firm CBRE.
“The volume of data being handled by such centres is growing at unprecedented rates. They are seen as a key element in the next stage of growth for the ICT industry”, says Peter Corcoran, a researcher at the university of Ireland, Galway.
Using renewable energy sounds good but no one else benefits from what will be generated, and it skews national attempts to reduce emissions
Ireland, which with Denmark is becoming a data base for the world’s biggest tech companies, has 350MW connected to data centres but this is expected to triple to over 1,000MW, or the equivalent of a nuclear power station size plant, in the next five years.
Permission has been given for a further 550MW to be connected and 750MW more is in the pipeline, says Eirgrid, the country’s main grid operator.
“If all enquiries connect, the data centre load could account for 20% of Ireland’s peak demand,” says Eirgrid in its All-Island Generation Capacity Statement 2017-2026 report.
The data will be stored in vast new one million square feet or larger “hyper-scale” server farms, which companies are now building. The scale of these farms is huge; a single $1bn Apple data centre planned for Athenry in Co Galway, expects to eventually use 300MW of electricity, or over 8% of the national capacity and more than the daily entire usage of Dublin. It will require 144 large diesel generators as back up for when the wind does not blow.
Facebook’s Lulea data centre in Sweden, located on the edge of the Arctic circle, uses outside air for cooling rather than air conditioning and runs on hydroelectic power generated on the nearby Lule River. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian
Pressed by Greenpeace and other environment groups, large tech companies with a public face , including Google, Facebook, Apple, Intel and Amazon, have promised to use renewable energy to power data centres. In most cases they are buying it off grid but some are planning to build solar and wind farms close to their centres.
Greenpeace IT analyst Gary Cook says only about 20% of the electricity used in the world’s data centres is so far renewable, with 80% of the power still coming from fossil fuels.
“The good news is that some companies have certainly embraced their responsibility, and are moving quite aggressively to meet their rapid growth with renewable energy. Others are just growing aggressively,” he says.
Architect David Hughes, who has challenged Apple’s new centre in Ireland, says the government should not be taken in by the promises.
“Using renewable energy sounds good but no one else benefits from what will be generated, and it skews national attempts to reduce emissions. Data centres … have eaten into any progress we made to achieving Ireland’s 40% carbon emissions reduction target. They are just adding to demand and reducing our percentage. They are getting a free ride at the Irish citizens’ expense,” says Hughes.
Eirgrid estimates indicate that by 2025, one in every 3kWh generated in Ireland could be going to a data centre, he added. “We have sleepwalked our way into a 10% increase in electricity consumption.”
Fossil fuel plants may have to be kept open longer to power other parts of the country and the costs will fall on the consumer, he says. “We will have to upgrade our grid and build more power generation both wind and backup generation for when the wind isn’t there and this all goes onto people’s bills.”
Under a best case scenario, says Andrae, there will be massive continuous improvements of power saving, renewable energy will become the norm and the explosive growth in demand for data will slow.
But equally, he says, demand could continue to rise dramatically if the industry keeps growing at 20% a year, driverless cars each with dozens of embedded sensors, and cypto-currencies like Bitcoin which need vast amounts of computer power become mainstream.
“There is a real risk that it all gets out of control. Policy makers need to keep a close eye on this,” says Andrae. |
Agtech start-up Roots develops crop-temperature control system | Roots Sustainable Agricultural Technologies has developed a crop-root temperature control system it said uses minimal energy. The Israeli start-up said the system increases yield by mitigating the stress brought about by extreme temperature fluctuations. The company, which recently listed on the Australian stock exchange and raised AUD5m ($3.8m) in an initial public offering, has also developed an irrigation method that relies solely on condensation. | https://www.israel21c.org/former-cannabis-activists-agtech-ideas-are-game-changers/ | 2017-12-11 14:28:21.640000 | Boaz Wachtel is best known in Israel for founding the Green Leaf (Ale Yarok) political party, which ran for Knesset several times on a platform of legalizing cannabis. Green Leaf never passed the voter threshold and Watchtel “retired” from the party in 2006. He has now transformed his passion for green into a different kind of initiative.
Wachtel is the founder of several Israeli agriculture technology companies. His latest – Roots Sustainable Agricultural Technologies – just went public on the Australian Stock Exchange, raising a modest $5 million.
There’s nothing modest about Watchtel’s ambitions for Roots, however, which he believes will be a game-changer addressing both worldwide hunger and the impact of drought on population migration. If Watchtel’s technology had been available six years ago, when the climate change-sparked civil war first broke out in Syria, he says, “I don’t think that disaster would have occurred.”
What does Roots make that could be so revolutionary that it can stall revolutions? A seemingly simple technology that heats and cools the roots of plants, and another that can irrigate whole farms by harnessing dew.
The formal name for the latter is “irrigation by condensation” (IBC). Pipes filled with cooled water are run through crop beds. The contrast between the temperature of the cooled water in the pipe and the air outside extracts enough water through condensation to irrigate the plants. It works even in deserts or areas where there’s little rainfall but plenty of humidity, Wachtel tells ISRAEL21c.
Wachtel got the idea when he was living in the United States in the late 1980s. Another entrepreneur was doing something similar, but with seawater. The problem was that “no farmer wants seawater running on his farm,” Wachtel explains. If the pipe breaks, the crops would be ruined. “And if the farm isn’t close to the sea, pumping the water can be very expensive.”
Roots’ IBC system is standalone, with its own fresh water and electricity-cooled pipes. Eventually, Watchtel hopes to run it all by solar power. IBC was lauded as a “technology of the month” by NASA’s Tech Briefs.
While IBC is still in development, Roots’ other technology, root zone temperature optimization (RZTO), is in trials on 12 Israeli farms and three in Spain. RTZO helps plants survive harsh weather by heating their roots in the winter and cooling them in the summer.
The Guardian featured RTZO prominently in an article asking “How do you feed 9.7 billion people?”
Keeping plants at the right temperature is nothing new – that’s what greenhouses are all about. But most technologies “focus on air and temperature management, which is very wasteful, since there’s a large volume of air,” Wachtel says.
By focusing on just the roots, Wachtel’s Roots uses less energy, making it more environmentally friendly. RTZO works by inserting heat-exchanging coils into the ground.
Roots’ tests so far show great promise. RTZO has led to crop yield increases of 20 to 40 percent for strawberries, cucumbers, tomatoes and basil, and up to 60% increases for lettuce.
The Australia connection
Wachtel hasn’t strayed entirely from his Green Leaf roots – both Roots’ products can be used for growing cannabis. And the two companies Wachtel started previously are both in the medical cannabis space: MMJ Phytotech, which has a market cap of $56 million, and Cresco Pharma, valued at $37 million.
MMJ and Cresco, like Roots, are publicly traded in Australia, where there is a lot of interest in Israeli agricultural technologies. Like Israel, much of Australia is arid desert.
However, the Australia connection is not just about water. The Australian Stock Exchange has been trying to expand beyond resource stocks (mining, forestry, oil exploration), Wachtel says. “As a result, they have been very open to listing startups and early-stage companies as a way to diversify the stock exchange.”
Roots began operating in 2012 within the Avital Pharma tech incubator and received seed funding from the Israel Innovation Authority (formerly the Office of the Chief Scientist).
Roots is still small – just seven people, under the leadership of Sharon Devir, who has a background in agricultural engineering.
Wachtel, the inventor, is not a farmer or even a techie. He holds a master’s degree in management and marketing from the University of Maryland.
“I’m a curious guy who reads a lot,” he tells ISRAEL21c. “And I have a passion to solve water scarcity issues.” In the early 1990s, Wachtel worked on water policy issues as a guest researcher at the Freedom House NGO.
Roots plans to sell RTZO and IBC together in a single package. “And it has to be affordable, for low-income farmers, to provide them access to water,” Watchtel stresses.
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