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Redrow Plans revealed for over 400 properties in Telford | The Midlands branch of UK housebuilder Redrow is seeking planning permission for a 400-home development in Telford, Shropshire. Based on a scheme which previously gained planning permission in 2014, but since lapsed, the currently derelict site will include market and affordable housing. A decision on the scheme is expected to be made by Telford and Wrekin Council in the coming months.
| https://www.insidermedia.com/insider/midlands/major-housing-estate-plans-published | 2017-11-27 10:52:43.233000 | Midlands Property Jon Robinson
Credit - Redrow Homes (Midlands)
Plans have been revealed for a major housing development of more than 400 properties that could be built in Shropshire.
Applicant Redrow Homes (Midlands) is seeking permission for the project on land west of Castle Farm Way in the Priorslee area of Telford.
The site already had planning permission for 600 homes which was approved in 2014, which has now lapsed.
Telford and Wrekin Council is set to make a final decision on the plans in the coming months.
A document submitted to the council by the applicant said: "The aim of the proposal is to provide a new high quality residential development that respects and enhances the existing landscape setting of the site, but that also delivers benefits to the wider community through provision of new footpath links, open spaces and much needed market and affordable housing within the area.
"The scheme now proposed, although a full standalone application, is based on the parameters of the formal approval and the access points agreed in 2014.
"The site has been derelict for a number of years, previously housing the former Celestica factory now demolished.
"The majority of the site is now covered with rough grassland and self-set trees amongst the existing mature trees and vegetation." |
San Leon Avobone withdraws winding up petition from High Court | Irish oil and gas exploration firm San Leon has laid out a new schedule of payments to Dutch firm Avobone after the latter withdrew a winding-up order from Dublin's High Court. San Leon will now pay €3.3m ($3.93m) on or before 19 December, followed by €8.3m on or before 15 January. The move is the latest chapter in an ongoing battle between the two firms which began over a loan extended to San Leon by Avobone.
| https://www.independent.ie/business/irish/fannings-san-leon-boosted-as-rival-withdraws-petition-to-have-it-wound-up-36352389.html | 2017-11-27 10:34:55.793000 | Oil and gas explorer San Leon has been pulled back from the brink after a petition to have it wound up was withdrawn from the High Court in Dublin. Stock image
Oil and gas explorer San Leon has been pulled back from the brink after a petition to have it wound up was withdrawn from the High Court in Dublin.
The petition was lodged by Avobone, a company with which San Leon has had a long-running battle mainly relating to a loan San Leon had received from Avobone. San Leon, which had partnered up with Avobone on an asset in Poland, maintained the loan was only repayable in certain circumstances which had not been met.
Avobone disputed this and after various arbitration and court hearings San Leon agreed to pay €23.3m plus interest to Avobone.
The schedule for repayments was revised a number of times after San Leon had difficulty making payments - the company has itself been left waiting for loan note repayments due out of a project in Nigeria.
After the withdrawal of the petition, San Leon says it has to pay €3.3m on or before December 19 and €8.3m on or before January 15. A payment of €4.2m due tomorrow at the latest has been made.
"As previously announced, the company is scheduled to be repaid approximately US $19m a quarter on its loan notes from Q4 2017, with the next payment due to be received by the company on or before 1 January 2018. The company has received $5m of the sum due this quarter to date, which was allocated to Avobone."
San Leon - run by former Smart Telecom boss Oisin Fanning - told the market in the summer that a Chinese company had made an indicative takeover offer valuing the company at 67-76p a share.
A formal offer was contingent on the completion of due diligence - with the Chinese expecting to be able to make a their move within 45 days according to San Leon. That period of time elapsed and no offer was forthcoming.
San Leon then said it was still in dialogue with the company, China Great United, which had said the reason for the delay in due diligence was that it was now talking to a potential partner who could add value to the Nigerian project.
Another potential is a merger with Midwestern - a partner in the Nigerian project.
"San Leon remains in discussions with Midwestern, which are at a very early stage and broad-ranging, regarding a potential corporate transaction, which could include an offer by Midwestern for San Leon or an offer by San Leon for certain assets of Midwestern," the company said earlier this month. |
Visible Alpha acquires Alpha Exchange ahead of Mifid II | Visible Alpha has acquired Alpha Exchange to offer research management capabilites ahead of the introduction of Mifid II. Visible Alpha's analytics and research administration services will be combined with Alpha Exchange's research management platform to help customers track, value and pay for content, as the incoming EU legislation mandates the unbundling of research from trading. More than 80 companies with a combined total of $14tn in assets under management currently use Visible Alpha Tools.
| https://www.thetradenews.com/Technology/Visible-Alpha-acquires-Alpha-Exchange-ahead-of-MiFID-II/ | 2017-11-27 10:30:27.170000 | Visible Alpha has confirmed its acquisition of Alpha Exchange as it looks to create and end-to-end solution for research management ahead of MiFID II.
The deal will see Visible Alpha’s existing analysis tools and research administration services combine with Alpha Exchange’s research management platform to help clients consume, track, budget, value and pay for content.
“Alpha Exchange brings innovative, cutting-edge technology to the way research can be managed, discovered and shared,” said Scott Rosen, CEO of Visible Alpha.
“With the Alpha Exchange team on board, we will further provide investment professionals with industry-leading tools to streamline and enhance their workflows by focusing on the most relevant and meaningful research content.”
Visible Alpha currently has more than 80 firms with a combined $14 trillion in assets under management using a combination of its tools.
Emma Margetts, co-founder of Alpha Exchange, said the addition of Visible Alpha’s analytics and data will “provide the opportunity to build an even more intelligent research discovery engine”. |
China becomes Harrods' biggest global market | China has become Harrods' biggest international spender, leading London's famous luxury department store to expand into the Chinese market. A £200m ($267m) investment is planned instore and online over the next three years, including increasing its payment options for Chinese customers with Weibo and WeChat. Alibaba's Alipay is already available to Harrods customers. The move is being heralded as Harrods' most ambitious investment since it first opened its doors in 1834. | http://uk.businessinsider.com/harrods-claims-to-take-a-fifth-of-money-spent-by-chinese-tourists-in-london-2017-11?r=US&IR=T | 2017-11-27 10:25:30.270000 | Harrods' biggest international market is China, and it is planning to invest in expanding this market.
A £200 million investment into in-store and online sales is being rolled out over the next three years.
This investment will include expanding payment options for Chinese customers using We ibo and WeChat.
It is already possible to buy Harrods goods with Alibab's payment system Alipay.
Harrods, London's famous luxury department store, is planning the biggest revamp in its 180-year history as part of a £200 million (US$265 million) investment which is aimed partly at attracting more Hong Kong and Chinese customers, managing director Michael Ward told the South China Morning Post on Thursday.
He called the project the most ambitious investment and store renovation the iconic shoppers' paradise has undertaken since it first opened its hallowed doors in 1834.
The three-year capital plan includes ploughing more money into its e-commerce offering to ensure the store remains popular for customers from around the world, especially from affluent Asian destinations, led by Hong Kong and China, said Ward.
"Our Hong Kong and Chinese customers are extremely important to Harrods so are considered part of our redevelopment plans," he said in an interview with the Post.
"For us, the future is in the East and we have been focusing on that for a number of years."
At present, the UK itself is the store's largest single market, although sales to overseas customers are rising fast.
China is the largest international market for Harrods, while Hong Kong is its largest Southeast Asian market and fastest growing.
Ward said the region has been a rich long-term source of customers for Harrods, given the relationship between Britain and Hong Kong.
The company claims that research shows one in every £5 spent by Chinese visitors to London is at Harrods.
Ward said Chinese customers are some of the store's most knowledgeable, adding they "do not want to be treated in a different way".
He said the interior of the shop, which has 330 different sections covering a million square feet of retail space, will be "entirely redeveloped."
There will be no changes to the exterior, but all the interiors are being redone. For example, the Food Hall's walls have been knocked down and the fine watch room will be expanded to incorporate a marble staircase leading to new space on the lower ground floor.
Smack in the middle of London's affluent Knightsbridge, Harrods is often described as the most famous shop in the world.
It is now owned by Qatar Holdings, the sovereign wealth fund of the Gulf state, which bought it in 2010 from Mohammed al-Fayed, who had owned it since 1985.
Ward said various options are being considered to attract more Chinese customers, including improving signage to help them navigate their way through the store and more product information on food items – something specifically requested by Chinese customers.
"We have seen a lot of social media activity in China," said Ward, adding it would continue to drive the use of e-payment mechanisms, to help Chinese customers to shop there.
The company will also invest in its official Weibo and WeChat accounts, two of mainland China's most popular social media platforms.
Harrods introduced Alibaba's Alipay digital payments system last year, and plans to follow that with Tencent's WeChat Pay service next year.
Ward said the launch of Alipay has opened the doors for conversation with Alibaba's Tmall, but it has yet to decide whether it would consider selling products on the online shopping platform. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
"The growth of Chinese e-commerce platforms is very impressive and we watch their progress closely," said Ward, who is in Hong Kong this week to launch the first edition of Harrods magazine. "But it would need to be the right customer experience for us to seriously consider it."
Ward said Hong Kong customers are very familiar with Harrods.
"Many of our Hong Kong customers have second homes in London and may have children at boarding schools in the UK. They spend a significant amount of time in London and at Harrods so we don't see them as tourists, even if they do get to benefit from tax-free shopping," he said.
This year the company opened a Harrods Tea Room at The British House in Beijing in a bid to introduce the brand to mainland customers. But it has no plans to open any stores in China.
"There are no plans to recreate the Knightsbridge store anywhere else in the world, as we believe there is only one Harrods," said Ward.
The Knightsbridge store, established in 1849 by Charles Henry Harrod, attracts some 15 million customers annually. |
Record number of international students apply to UK universities | The number of international applications to UK universities rose 2% this year to a record total of 70,945, despite the Brexit process. There was also a 5% rise in applications from students outside the EU. The number of students applying from the EU fell slightly, from 31,350 to 30,700 – a 2% decline. International students pay an average of £13,000 a year, compared with the capped fees of £9,000 for British nationals. Alan Smithers, professor of education at the University of Buckingham, said: “It looks as though the fears about tougher immigration rules putting [students] off are unfounded."
| https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5004145/british-universities-see-record-number-of-international-student-admissions-despite-fears-they-may-be-put-off-by-brexit/ | 2017-11-27 10:11:24.207000 | Official figures show the number of foreign students was at 70,945 - an increase of 2%
UNIVERSITIES saw a record number of international student admissions this year - despite fears they may be put off by Brexit.
Official figures show the number of foreign students applying to British unis was the highest ever at 70,945 – a two per cent rise on last year.
2 Numbers of people from abroad applying to study at British universities soared, despite our vote to quit the bloc Credit: Alamy
Ucas said there was a five per cent rise in students applying from outside the EU like the US and China and a small decrease in students from countries like Germany France and Italy.
Overall 2,090 more international students – who pay higher fees - applied to start undergraduate courses this autumn, a 2.8 per cent hike on last year.
They more than made up for the number of EU students applying that fell slightly by 650 students to 30,700.
International students pay much more than British and EU students currently - an average of £13,000 a year but the costs of doing a degree like medicine can rise to around £24,000 a year.
2 International students pay higher fees, but EU students pay the same as British ones Credit: PA:Press Association
It comes amid feverish claims Brexit and Britain’s immigration policy may be deterring applicants.
Alan Smithers, professor of education at the University of Buckingham, said the figures underlined British universities’ reputation around the world.
He said: “With more overseas students than ever entering our universities this year it looks as though the fears about tougher immigration rules putting them off are unfounded.
“EU students are down a bit and EU students may have been unsettled by fears the very generous arrangements for them will come to an end with Brexit.
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox says no decision will be made on Northern Ireland future until after trade talks start
“It’s also good news for universities because international students pay much higher fees than British and EU students.”
Sarah Stevens, of the Russell Group, who represent the country’s most elite universities, added: “It is a very positive message that so many talented students from across the globe continue to want to come and study here, attracted by the world-class teaching and research that our universities provide.”
University chiefs have complained they face “disaster within weeks” without a clear plan for Brexit.
Prof Stuart Croft of Warwick University warned of a staff exodus because of uncertainty over their residency status. |
Indian insurer Coverfox unveils sales app for third-party agents | Indian insurance comparison service Coverfox has launched an app enabling third-party agents to sell their products. While the Coverdrive platform aims to reach as many as 2.6 million independent agents, policies can be sold through the app by anyone who completes insurance training provided by the company. Intermediaries will also be able to track information on potential clients through the app.
| https://www.outlookindia.com/newsscroll/coverfox-opens-up-its-technology-for-agents-and-micro/1195373 | 2017-11-27 10:03:36.717000 | A panel discussion about the need for the legalisation of same-sex marriages has highlighted the lack of awareness prevailing in Indian society about...
Retired Justice M.R. Shah’s unwavering belief in the theory of deterrence and advocating stricter laws for serious offenders has somehow shaped the...
Mahatta & Co, a photo studio in Srinagar which opened in 1915, has stood the test of time. Everything around has changed except for the studio and... |
Malaysia's first insurance chatbot is launched | Malaysia has seen the introduction of its first insurance-focused chatbot. Dubbed "Ask Sara", the chatbot has been introduced by AIA and will be made available to the firm's agency force. The chatbot is aimed at improving relationships between the company and its customers. It has been programmed to answer up to 700 frequently asked questions the firm regularly fields. | https://www.thestar.com.my/metro/metro-news/2017/11/25/nations-first-insurance-chatbot-launched-called-ask-sara-enquiry-channel-able-to-answer-commonlyaske/ | 2017-11-27 09:46:00.870000 | AIA Bhd has broken new ground with the launch of Malaysia’s first insurance chatbot, “Ask Sara”.
The new artificial intelligence powered enquiry channel is currently available to AIA’s 14,000-strong agency force, also known as Life Planners, as part of the insurer’s continued efforts to enable its distributors to be more effective in their day-to-day business, particularly when it comes to servicing of customers. |
Only 6% of NZ SMEs have cyber coverage | Small and medium-sized businesses in New Zealand are lagging in cyber insurance coverage compared to their Australian counterparts, the Insurance Council of New Zealand has said. More than 90% of New Zealand's businesses fall into this category, with most having less than 20 employees. Only 6% of these businesses have cyber coverage, compared to 14% of small businesses in Australia. One fifth of the country's small businesses have been subject to a cyber attack, according to a recent survey.
| http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11948348&ref=rss | 2017-11-27 09:35:25.673000 | Sixty per cent of cyber attacks target small and medium businesses. Photo / 123RF
New Zealand small businesses are lagging behind Australia in their uptake of cyber protection, according to the Insurance Council of New Zealand.
Only 6 per cent of all small businesses in New Zealand have cyber insurance - less than half the amount of Australian small businesses, at 14 per cent.
Without cyber insurance many Kiwi businesses are vulnerable to digital attacks, Insurance Council chief executive Tim Grafton said.
"Big corporates get it, we are seeing a real move to most having a cyber policy or at least a standing item on their board agendas," Grafton said. "The real problem area is small and medium enterprises. We are a nation of small businesses with more than 90 per cent of businesses in New Zealand under 20 employees."
The most common sort of crypto attacks are unsophisticated and low in value, but can be damaging to small businesses, Grafton said.
A recent Norton New Zealand small business security survey found one in five small firms in New Zealand had been targeted by a cyber attack.
Ninety per cent of cyber incidents begin with human error, which makes robust cyber risk management for organisations extremely important, he said.
"The common sorts of crypto attacks are unsophisticated, untargeted and, while low in dollar value – usually sub $5000 - enough to be an annoyance and damaging to a small business."
The average amount of time a breach goes unnoticed is around nine months.
Sixty per cent of all cyber attacks target small and medium businesses, and retail and the financial services sectors are most at risk of a data breach, according to the Insurance Council of New Zealand. |
Discarded H&M clothes fuel Swedish power plant | Swedish firm Malarenergi, which operates the Vasteras power plant near Stockholm, has burned 15 tonnes of clothing supplied by manufacturer H&M in 2017. The plant, which aims to use only renewable and recycled fuels and eliminate the use of fossil fuels by 2020, has also burned 400,000 tonnes of rubbish, generating electricity for around 150,000 households. H&M’s head of communications, Johanna Dahl, said the garments passed on to Vasteras plant were unsafe to wear and said: "Clothes that contain mould or do not comply with our strict restriction on chemicals are destroyed." | https://qz.com/1138035/a-swedish-power-plant-is-burning-discarded-hm-clothes-for-fuel/?mc_cid=17dc7d4494&mc_eid=34c4551471 | 2017-11-27 09:34:09.023000 | A Swedish power plant that aims to eliminate the use of fossil fuels by 2020 has taken to burning recycled wood and garbage—including clothes from H&M’s central warehouse, as first reported on Swedish public television.
“For us it’s a burnable material,” said Jens Neren, head of fuel supplies at Malarenergi AB, which owns and operates the plant in Vasteras, about 100 kilometers (62 miles) from Stockholm. “Our goal is to use only renewable and recycled fuels.”
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According to Bloomberg, the plant has burned about 15 tons of discarded clothing from H&M so far in 2017, making it a minuscule percentage of the 400,000 tons of trash it has burned to supply power to about 150,000 households. The clothes, according to H&M’s head of communications, Johanna Dahl, are burned because they’re unsafe for wearing.
“It is our legal obligation to make sure that clothes that contain mold or do not comply with our strict restriction on chemicals are destroyed,” Dahl told Bloomberg.“H&M does not burn any clothes that are safe to use.”
While Sweden is a leader in eliminating the use of fossil fuels, the fast fashion cycle encouraged by brands such as H&M is far from sustainable, as 15 tons of discarded clothing from a single warehouse would indicate.
Beyond the staggering resources required to produce H&M’s hundreds of millions of products globally each year, fast fashion encourages an environmentally catastrophic cycle that sees manufacturers producing ever-increasing quantities to meet rising demands in markets such as Brazil, China, India, Mexico, and Russia. According to a 2016 McKinsey study, clothing production worldwide doubled between 2010 and 2014, and from 2000 to 2011 the average number of annual collections produced by European apparel companies rose from two to five.
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It’s a lot of material for one planet to handle. Plus, when clothes are so cheap, customers value them less, making them even likelier to end up in landfills—if they’re not in an incinerator first.
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Insurtech Wesurance to launch in Hong Kong next month | Insurtech Wesurance is launching a virtual assistant app in Hong Kong, making use of artificial intelligence. The virtual assistant, called Amy, will be able to provide support, help customers take out a policy or get a quote and help process claims. The app will also have facial recognition technology and will allow customers to have their claims processed through taking photos of supporting documents. The virtual assistant has been developed in partnership with Allied World Assurance Company and TransUnion. | https://www.telecomasia.net/content/hks-wesurance-launching-dec | 2017-11-27 09:31:21.880000 | Hong Kong insurtech startup Wesurance will next month launch the city's first insurance app featuring artificial intelligence and electronic know your customer (eKYC) capabilities.
The mobile app for insurance services has been launched in partnership with Allied World Assurance Company and TransUnion.
The app features an AI powered virtual assistant named Amy who can walk customers through the process of taking out a policy. It will be available 24/7 from any location, and will use a frequently asked questions database to answer over 80% of customer queries.
Unsolved questions will be immediately directed to internal representatives, and Amy will send reminders and notifications throughout the customer journey.
Wesurance also incorporates eKYC and facial recognition technology for faster and easier user verification powered by TransUnion’s IDVision solution. Users can take a photo of their HKID card followed by a selfie to accurately verify a user's identity.
Claims can likewise be proceeded through Amy and by taking photos of supporting documents, and Wesurance promises a turnaround time of a few days.
“At Wesurance, we deliver insuretech services that allow insurance providers to offer the same simplicity and customer centricity that Hong Kong residents expect in other areas of their lives,” Wesurance CEO Eddie Chang said.
“Travel insurance policies are our first range of product. We plan to launch other insurance products on this platform at a later stage. We are confident that this mobile platform will transform the way consumers use insurance in Hong Kong.”
Wesurance will be available from the iTunes App Store or Google Play in early December.
First published in Computerworld Hong Kong
Related content |
Eni partners with Fiat Chrysler on lower-emission fuels | Italian oil company Eni and car manufacturer Fiat Chrysler have signed a memorandum of understanding to develop technology aimed at reducing carbon emissions from road vehicles. The agreement will see Eni work fuel technologies like compressed and liquefied natural gas, as well as hydrotreated vegetable oil in diesel cars, which can reduce emissions by up to 60%. The two firms will also test Eni's latest fuel, a blend of 15% methanol and 5% bioethanol, in Fiat cars. Road vehicles are responsible for around 23% of CO2 emissions. | http://www.nasdaq.com/article/eni-fiat-chrysler-come-together-to-lower-carbon-emissions-cm881528 | 2017-11-27 09:31:16.520000 | Italian oil giant Eni S.p.A.E and U.K.-based vehicle company, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles N.V. FCAU have recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to jointly develop research projects and applications that reduce carbon emission from modes of transport. The agreement in the presence of Italian Prime Minister, Paolo Gentiloni is in line with both companies' strategy to focus on carbon emission reduction.
Per Eni, the agreement will enable the companies to research extensively on technologies related to compressed natural gas (CNG) and liquefied natural gas (LNG). These technologies are expected to enable the companies to reduce tank weights and increase mileage. Moreover, Eni announced that it has developed a new kind of petrol, which includes 15% methanol and 5% bioethanol to reduce emissions. Usage of methanol in the fuel enables to significantly reduce emissions. Eni and Fiat Chrysler will together test this new type of petrol in five Fiat 500 Enjoy fleet cars. Eni believes this type of petrol can reduce around 4.3% carbon emissions.
Of the total carbon emissions, road transport vehicles alone are responsible for approximately 23%. The companies are also taking this matter into consideration and testing new types of fuels in existing modes of transport to assess their importance. The companies are testing the use of increased proportion of Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil or HVO in diesel for existing motors, which reduces emissions by 60% during the production process.
About the Company
Eni with its consolidated subsidiaries is engaged in oil and gas, electricity generation, petrochemicals, oilfield services and engineering industries. The company's major business segments are Exploration and Production (E&P), Gas and Power, and Refining and Marketing. The company conducts its major exploration and production activities for hydrocarbons. In addition, Eni is involved in offshore and onshore hydrocarbon field construction.
Price Performance
Eni has gained 1.1% year to date compared with 1.2% growth of its industry .
Zacks Rank and Stocks to Consider
Eni carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).
Some better-ranked stocks in the oil and energy sector include ConocoPhillips COP and Northern Oil and Gas, Inc. NOG . All the stocks sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank stocks here .
Houston, TX-based ConocoPhillips is a major global exploration and production company. The company's sales for 2017 are expected to increase 24.4% year over year. The company delivered an average positive earnings surprise of 152.3% in the last four quarters.
Minnetonka, MN -based Northern Oil and Gas is an independent energy company. The company's sales for the fourth quarter of 2017 are expected to increase 51.9% year over year. The company delivered an average positive earnings surprise of 175% in the last four quarters.
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The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc. |
Health IQ rewards health-conscious people with cheaper life cover | Californian start-up Health IQ Insurance Services aims to persuade more US residents to become health conscious customers by offering tailored insurance coverage boasting lower costs. The company, which recently raised $34.6m in a funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz, is licensed in all 50 states, and has spent years gathering medical data and research to prove to insurers that healthier people deserve reduced rates, securing $5.3bn in coverage over the past 22 months.
| http://www.rttnews.com/2837339/vc-watch-health-iq-raises-funds-to-give-life-insurance-to-healthy-people.aspx?refresh=1 | 2017-11-27 09:30:45.047000 | Health IQ Insurance Services, a startup focused on providing life insurance for -conscious individuals, said it has secured $34.6 million in Series C funding, led by Andreessen Horowitz.
To date, the company has raised a total of $81 million in funding mostly from its existing investors - Charles River Ventures, Ribbit Capital, Foundation Capital, First Round Capital, Felicis Ventures and Western Technology Investments.
Health IQ says its mission is to improve the health of the world by celebrating the health conscious people through financial rewards.
The company partners with insurance carriers such as SBLI, Ameritas Life Insurance Corp. and Assurity Life Insurance Co., and reinsurer partner Swiss Re to offer health conscious people between 4 percent and 33 percent lower rates on life insurance.
"We believe the best way to change the world's health is to celebrate the health conscious rather than harass the people who aren't. We are doing that celebration today with lower rates and better underwriting in life insurance," Munjal Shah, Co-Founder and CEO of Health IQ said.
Founded in 2013 by a team of health-conscious entrepreneurs, Health IQ is a licensed life insurance company in all 50 states. In 22 months, it has helped customers secure a total of $5.3 billion in insurance coverage.
Health IQ documents which individuals are health conscious and helps them to get lower rates and better coverage from insurance companies, thus rewarding the health conscious.
Health IQ has worked with carriers to develop better underwriting that takes into account unique factors related to the health conscious. For example, Body Mass Index or BMI does not differentiate between muscle and fat, resulting in weight lifters and athletic individuals being overcharged for their muscularity.
Health IQ said it has spent years gathering the science and big data to prove that the health conscious individuals deserve lower rates.
The data showed that persistent runners have a 50 percent lower risk of cardiovascular mortality, vegetarians have a 22 percent lower risk of colorectal cancer incidence, and higher muscular strength is associated with a 30 percent lower risk of cancer mortality.
Health IQ combined this medical research with its own proprietary research gleaned from the over 1 million people who took the Health IQ test launched by the company over three years ago. This research showed that health conscious individuals have a 41 percent lower mortality rate.
For comments and feedback contact: [email protected]
Business News |
Balderton Capital secures £281m amid uncertainty | Balderton Capital, a UK-based venture capital company, recently raised a fund worth £281m ($375m) for series A investments in European startups. This is the firm's sixth such fund. Bernard Liautaud, Balderton's managing partner, wouldn't disclose returns on their fifth fund, though he said that after receiving investment from Balderton, their portfolio as a whole had raised $850m. Asked if he was confident in a post-Brexit UK, Liautaud replied: "I just don't know... Other regions will rise to the challenge, but I don't think suddenly people will leave the UK".
| http://uk.businessinsider.com/balderton-capital-375-million-european-investment-fund-us-asia-2017-11 | 2017-11-27 09:20:10.443000 | UK venture capital firm Balderton Capital has raised $375 million (£281 million) for its sixth fund to invest in Series A startups in Europe.
The firm has successfully secured backing from the European Investment Fund — a major coup after the fund stopped investing in the UK after the Brexit vote.
Balderton plans to invest more in France and continental Europe with its new fund and has made 10 investments already.
Managing partner Bernard Liautaud said the UK's future as a tech hub remains up in the air.
One of the UK's biggest venture capital firms, Balderton Capital, has raised a sixth fund of $375 million (£281 million) and bucked a post-Brexit trend by landing at least some of the money from an EU fund thought to have pulled out of the UK.
Balderton Capital, founded in 2000, has backed a number of successful startups such as transport app Citymapper, investment platform Nutmeg, and banking startup Revolut.
The firm will continue focusing on Series A startups with its new fund, which is backed by fund-of-funds, pension funds, and other institutional investors. Some backers are US-based but, in a growing trend, two backers are Asian. Balderton has made 10 new investments out of the fund to date, including AI firm Sophia Genetics and Zego, an insurance firm for gig economy workers founded by ex-Deliveroo employees.
"The focus is on European entrepreneurs who have a plan to build a really big company," said Balderton's managing partner, well-known French entrepreneur Bernard Liautaud. "What we mean by early stage is Series A — we want to be the first institutional investor, after seed and friends and family."
A typical first cheque might be between $5 million (£3.8 million) and $10 million (£7.5 million) he added. Startups will need a product market fit and momentum.
It's a "doubling down" on Balderton's previous strategy, Liautaud said, because it's working. He wouldn't disclose returns on Balderton's fifth fund, but pointed to the fact that the company's portfolio startups have managed to raise substantial rounds after raising money from Balderton.
"When we look at our portfolio as a whole, they have raised $850 million (£640 million). That's an enormous amount," he said.
Liautaud added that Balderton will likely invest more in continental Europe with the new fund.
"We are seeing more opportunities in France, and we will see Balderton investing more there than we have [previously]," Liautaud said. "It's likely the relative part between the UK and continential Europe will balance out towards continental Europe than in prior funds."
France has boosted its share of VC money in the last year, thanks to local successes like adtech firm Criteo, ridesharing firm BlaBlaCar, and big data firm Talend. In 2007, Liautaud's own French firm Business Objects was acquired by SAP for €4.8 billion (then £3.3 billion).
Asked if he was confident in a post-Brexit UK, Liautaud replied: "I just don't know. The base is very strong for entrepreneurs, that continues to be very good. Other regions will rise to the challenge, but I don't think suddenly people will leave the UK."
Liautaud added that London still had advantages over other European capitals, such as its strength in finance and as a hub for talent. Its future success, he said, would depend on talent being able to emigrate to the UK once it leaves the EU.
Balderton managed to win funding from the European Investment Fund
Balderton has managed to buck a damaging post-Brexit trend with its new fund, with new funding from the European Investment Fund (EIF).
The EIF is an EU entity which to date has handed billions to UK venture capitalists to encourage investment in European tech startups. It froze investment to the UK after the country voted to leave the EU, with multiple UK-based firms affected by the sudden halt. The EIF consistently denied it had pulled out of the UK, but several fund managers told Business Insider the fund had stopped investing.
Azmat Yusuf, chief executive of Balderton portfolio startup Citymapper. Getty/John Phillips/Stringer
How is it that Balderton subsequently raised money from the EIF?
According to one source, it's likely that the EIF chose to invest in Balderton's latest fund because it had already invested in the firm's $305 million (£228 million) fifth fund back in 2014. According to the source, the EIF will invest in funds where it already has commitments, but not in any firms newly applying for funding after the Brexit vote.
The EIF confirmed to Business Insider it had backed Balderton.
Asked how difficult VCs might find closing funding rounds after Brexit, Liautaud said: "I think it depends for which kinds of fund. Our fund is very clear in its focus, it’s early stage, it’s across Europe, we have invested across Europe for 15 years now. It's well known, we have a track record, we are agnostic to the region.
"I think it’s harder for a fund that is a UK-only fund in terms of raising money from outside, maybe. Because we invest everywhere we haven’t seen an issue."
The EIF's rules mean it will only invest in funds which themselves back companies inside the EU and other designated eligible nations. That means a new fund that focuses on UK startups is unlikely to successfully raise money from the EIF — and it may partly explain why Balderton intends to shift its investment balance towards Europe.
After a summer of shame for US venture capital, Balderton is shouting about ethics
Silicon Valley has had a torrid time in the media this summer, with stories of harassment in venture capital and tech startups, and massively unethical behaviour such as Uber covering up a major data breach.
There have been fewer such stories in Europe, and Liautaud wants Balderton to proactively state its pro-ethics position. To that end, the firm is working on a manifesto as a kind of commitment to integrity and ethical behaviour in business.
"Missteps in ethics have led to enormous problems," he said, pointing outside of tech to VW's emissions scandal, and the Libor rates scandal in finance. "It results in a billion dollar fine, management wipeout, and a reputation built up for years that is completely tarnished.
"We think that ethics is a powerful force to create business."
It sounds a little vague to an insider, but it involves pledging to act with the best behaviours, integrity, not putting pressure on startups and avoiding "all the bad behaviours" we've seen. Balderton separately has a harassment policy in place.
Balderton has also spent a year working on a guide to employee equity in startups, after studying practices in the US and Europe. The guide is available to the public, with startups able to use the document as a basis. |
Small-scale hydro projects threaten environments in the Balkans | Hydropower projects in the western Balkans have surged 300% in just two years, according to a paper commissioned by RiverWatch NGO, raising concerns over environmental impacts on mountain rivers and wildlife, and human conflict over property disputes. Many of the current 187 construction sites are smaller-scale, "run-of-the-river" projects that generate less than 10 MW, which are exempt from environmental impact assessments, however, they have a "severe cumulative impact" on waterways, according to WWF, and spell the end for many species of fish and insects, said Ulrich Eichelmann, director of RiverWatch NGO.
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/27/balkan-hydropower-projects-soar-by-300-putting-wildlife-at-risk-research-shows | 2017-11-27 08:44:27.260000 | Hydropower constructions have rocketed by 300% across the western Balkans in the last two years, according to a new analysis, sparking fears of disappearing mountain rivers and biodiversity loss.
About 2,800 new dams are now in the pipeline across a zone stretching from Slovenia to Greece, 37% of which are set to be built in protected areas such as national parks or Natura 2000 sites.
Heavy machinery is already channelling new water flows at 187 construction sites, compared to just 61 in 2015, according to the research by Fluvius, a consultancy for UN and EU-backed projects.
Ulrich Eichelmann, the director of the RiverWatch NGO, which commissioned the paper, said that the small-scale nature of most projects – often in mountainous terrain – was, counterintuitively, having a disastrous impact on nature.
“They divert water through pipelines away from the river and leave behind empty channels where rivers had been,” he told the Guardian. “It is a catastrophe for local people and for the environment. For many species of fish and insects like dragonflies and stoneflies, it is the end.”
This, as yet unnamed fish species, previously unknown to science, is considered threatened by a planned hydropower plant Poçem on the river Vjosa, Albania. Photograph: Wolfram Graf/Save the Blue Heart of Europe
One stonefly species, Isoperla vjosae, was only discovered on Albania’s iconic Vjosa river this year, during an expedition by 25 scientists which also found an unnamed fish previously unknown to science. Like the Danube salmon and the Prespa trout, it is already thought to be at risk from what Eichelmann calls “a dam tsunami”.
The scientists’ report described the Vjosa as a remarkably unique and dynamic eco-haven for scores of aquatic species that have disappeared across Europe. “The majority of these viable communities are expected to irrecoverably go extinct as a result of the projected hydropower dams,” it said.
However, Damian Gjiknuri, Albania’s energy minister, told the Guardian that two planned megadams on the Vjosa would allow “the passage of fish via fish bypass or fish lanes”.
“These designs have been based on the best environmental practices that are being applied today for minimising the effects of high dams on the circulation of aquatic faunas,” he said.
The Vjosa river is home to many aquatic species that are threatened with extinction by planned dams, according to scientists. Photograph: Gregor Šubic/Save the Blue Heart of Europe
Gjiknuri disputed the new report’s findings on the basis that only two “high dams” were being built in Albania, while most others were “run-of-the-river hydropower”.
These generate less than 10MW of energy and so require no environmental impact assessments, conservationists say. But their small scale often precludes budgets for mitigation measures and allows arrays of turbines to be placed at intervals along waterways, causing what WWF calls “severe cumulative impacts”.
Beyond aquatic life, the dam boom may also be threatening humans too.
Since 2012, property conflicts between big energy companies and small farmers have led to one murder and an attempted murder, according to an EU-funded study. The paper logged three work-related deaths, and dozens of arrests linked to Albania’s wave of hydropower projects.
Photograph: Euronatur Foundation/RiverWatch/Save the Blue Heart of Europe
Albania is a regional hotspot with 81 dams under construction but Serbia, Macedonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina are also installing 71 hydro plants, and Serbia has a further 800 projects on the drawing board.
Gjiknuri said the Albanian government was committed to declaring a national park on a portion of the Vjosa upstream from the planned 50m-high Kalivaçi dam, preventing further hydro construction there.
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Swedish house-market crisis may signal declines in other nations | Rapid growth in Sweden's housing market went into reverse in the autumn, with values falling 3% in October and 1.5% in September. That follows three years of 9% annual expansion that has stoked household indebtedness. The central bank recently warned that lenders had "major exposures" to the property market and would be hit by a steep fall in prices. Some now fear the Swedish experience is an indicator of the fate of housing markets in other low-interest rate nations with brewing property bubbles. | https://qz.com/1137615/swedens-cooling-housing-market-is-a-preview-for-others-with-low-rates-and-property-bubbles/?mc_cid=90a0bf3de4&mc_eid=a37072368a | 2017-11-27 08:15:58.187000 | In Sweden, a combination of low interest rates and rapidly rising house prices has been making the central bank nervous for years. House prices have increased by an average of 9% per year for the past three years, pushing up household indebtedness in lockstep.
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But now it seems cracks are appearing in Sweden’s housing market, after property prices fell 1.5% in September from the month before and a further 3% in October, some of the steepest declines in years.
Sweden’s central bank is trying to put a positive spin on it. This week, policymakers said the slowdown would lead to a more stable market and, most importantly, limit household indebtedness. ”High and rising household indebtedness poses the greatest risk to the Swedish economy,” the Riksbank said (pdf).
Household debts are growing much faster than incomes in Sweden. The average debt-to-income ratio for households with mortgages was 338% in September, up from 326% a year earlier. This makes households vulnerable when interest rates start to rise (the current benchmark rate is below zero, even though economic growth has been relatively strong) or house prices start to fall significantly.
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The Scandinavian country doesn’t take the prospect of a housing shock lightly, because it fears a re-run of the early 1990s, when a real estate crash and banking crisis devastated Nordic economies. The central bank warned this week that banks had “major exposures” to the property sector and would be sensitive to a large fall in prices, exacerbated by the fact that local banks are deeply interconnected. Officials are taking measures to engineer a soft landing, including plans to require borrowers to pay off more of the principal on their mortgages and not just the interest.
Worries about the housing market are also making traders jittery. This week, the Swedish krona briefly surpassed 10 krona a euro, a level reached only one other time since the financial crisis. At the same time, Sweden’s inflation has started to slow, setting back plans by the central bank to raise interest rates.
If Sweden’s housing market has reached an inflection point, marking the end of an era of low interest rates fueling rapidly rising house prices, other countries should take note. What’s happening there could serve as a preview for places where interest rates have also been low for years and experts fear that housing bubbles have inflated to dangerous levels.
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Stockholm and Sydney don’t have that much in common, but as Australia’s housing market balloons to four times the size of GDP, policymakers there should be watching closely to see whether Sweden’s housing market cools in a way that gives over-indebted households time to adjust and the central bank room to raise rates without shocking the system. |
Glyphosate licence extended another five years by EU | Glyphosate, the central component of Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller, has been granted a new five-year lease by the European Union (EU). The licence, which was due to run out in under three weeks, had been the source of an ongoing dispute between regulators, health organisations, and the public. In 2015, the World Health Organisation found that the chemical was “probably carcinogenic to humans”, but other international groups opposed this finding and Monsanto insisted its product was safe. Last week, an appeal committee ignored a petition by 1.3 million EU citizens and relicensed the pesticide.
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/27/controversial-glyphosate-weedkiller-wins-new-five-year-lease-in-europe | 2017-11-27 00:00:00 | Glyphosate, the key ingredient in the world’s bestselling weedkiller, has won a new five-year lease in Europe, closing the most bitterly fought pesticide relicensing battle of recent times.
The herbicide’s licence had been due to run out in less than three weeks, raising the prospect of Monsanto’s Roundup disappearing from store shelves and, potentially, a farmers’ revolt.
Instead, an EU appeal committee voted on Monday to reauthorise the substance despite a petition by 1.3 million EU citizens last week calling for a ban.
In 2015, the World Health Organisation’s cancer agency, the IARC, famously declared glyphosate “probably carcinogenic to humans,” although several international agencies, including Efsa, subsequently came to opposite conclusions. Monsanto insists glyphosate is safe.
The EU health commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis said: “Today’s vote shows that when we all want to, we are able to share and accept our collective responsibility in decision making.”
However, the approval falls far short of the 15-year licence the commission had originally sought and Conservative MEPs lashed out at what they called “an emotional, irrational but politically convenient fudge”.
Ashley Fox, the Conservative party’s delegation leader in the European parliament, said that the vote “simply prolongs the uncertainty for our farmers, who are being badly let down. They cannot plan for the future without long term assurances about the availability of substances they rely on.”
A re-run of the struggle to reauthorise glyphosate will now begin again in two years’ time, with a new safety assessment by the European Food Safety Authority (Efsa).
Greenpeace EU food policy director, Franziska Achterberg, commented: “The people who are supposed to protect us from dangerous pesticides have failed to do their jobs and betrayed the trust Europeans place in them.”
The Green party called it “a dark day for consumers, farmers and the environment”.
Chris Portier, an advisor to IARC in its glyphosate decision, told the Guardian that, in his view, the EU decision was scientifically unsound.
“The guidelines maintained by ECHA [the European chemical agency] would easily classify this compound as a group 1B carcinogen and, as such, it should be banned for use in Europe,” he said.
The row over glyphosate has raised questions over modern farming techniques, regulatory capture and scientific independence, as well as the safety of ubiquitous pesticides.
Traces of glyphosate are routinely found in tests of foodstuffs, water, topsoil, and human urine in amounts way above safe limits set by regulators. Ben & Jerry’s recently introduced a new line of organic ice cream, in a bid to sate public concern.
Campaigners say Monsanto ghostwrote research papers for regulators, enlisted EPA officials to block a US government review of glyphosate and formed front groups to discredit critical scientists and journalists, citing documents revealed in a US lawsuit by non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma sufferers.
More than 280 similar lawsuits are now pending against Monsanto, according to the US right to know campaign.
But the enzyme-blocking chemical has also become a mainstay of modern agricultural techniques that farmers’ unions see as environmentally friendly, even as critics condemn it as a “pesticide treadmill” of danger to plants, animals and people.
Monsanto argues that, as a no-till system, glyphosate lowers carbon emissions and protects soil quality. The company declined to comment on today’s result, deferring to farmers’ groups.
Guy Smith, vice-president of the National Farmers Union, said: “Today’s decision will be welcomed by farmers who have watched with growing concern as what should have been a straightforward decision has become increasingly political.”
“Glyphosate reduces the need to use other herbicides, it helps to protect soil and cut greenhouse gas emissions by reducing the need for ploughing, and it enables farmers in this country to grow crops that help produce safe, affordable, high-quality British food.” |
Climate change is increasing the number of child brides in Africa | Climate change is causing the emergence of a generation of child brides across Africa, according to research by The Brides of the Sun project. Rising temperatures, unpredictable rainfall and floods are leading to food shortages and making it difficult for families to feed and educate all their children, incentivising them to marry their daughters off. In Malawi alone, 1.5 million girls are at risk of marriage due to climate change-related factors. In 2015, Unicef warned that the number of child brides in Africa could double to 310 million by 2050 if current trends continue.
| https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/nov/26/climate-change-creating-generation-of-child-brides-in-africa | 2017-11-26 00:00:00 | It was the flood that ensured that Ntonya Sande’s first year as a teenager would also be the first year of her married life. Up to the moment the water swept away her parents’ field in Kachaso in the Nsanje district of Malawi, they had been scraping a living. Afterwards they were reduced to scavenging for bits of firewood to sell.
So when a young man came to their door and asked for the 13-year old’s hand in marriage, the couple didn’t think about it for too long, lest he look elsewhere. Ntonya begged them to change their minds. She was too young, she pleaded. She didn’t want to leave. But it was to no avail. Her parents sat her down and spelled it out for her: the weather had changed and taken everything from them. There was not enough food to go around. They couldn’t afford another mouth at the table.
That night she lay down in bed for the first time with the man she had never seen before and followed the instructions of her aunt, who had coached her on the important matter of sex. Ten months later, she gave birth to their first daughter.
Around 1.5 million girls in Malawi are at risk of getting married because of climate change. That’s a huge number
Everyone has their own idea of what climate change looks like. For some, it’s the walrus struggling to find space on melting ice floes on Blue Planet II. For others, it’s an apocalyptic vision of cities disappearing beneath the waves. But for more and more girls across Africa, the most palpable manifestation of climate change is the baby in their arms as they sit watching their friends walk to school. The Brides of the Sun reporting project, funded by the European Journalism Centre, set out to try to assess the scale of what many experts are warning is a real and growing crisis: the emergence of a generation of child brides as a direct result of a changing climate.
And time and again, in villages from the south of Malawi to the east coast of Mozambique, the child brides and their parents told an increasingly familiar story. In recent years they had noticed the temperatures rising, the rains becoming less predictable and coming later and sometimes flooding where there had not been flooding before. Families that would once have been able to afford to feed and educate several children reported that they now faced an impossible situation.
None of the villages had any way of recording the changes scientifically, or indeed felt any urge to do so. All they knew was that the weather had changed and that where they used to be able to pay for their girls to go through school now they couldn’t. And the only solution was for one or more daughters to get married.
Sometimes it was the parents who made the decision. For the good of the rest of the family, a daughter had to be sacrificed. She would be taken out of school and found a husband, one less mouth to feed. Sometimes it was the girl herself who made the decision and forced it upon her parents. Unhappy, hungry, she hoped that a husband might be the answer.
Fatima Mussa, 16 and nine months pregnant, lives in Nataka, in the district of Larde, near the coast in eastern Mozambique
Carlina Nortino (main image, first left) sits with her husband, Horacio, in the dry sand that is all that is left of the river that once flowed past the village of Nataka in the Larde district of Nampula province, on the east coast of Mozambique. From the ground, there is nothing to see of the river. But a drone camera sent up to hover above reveals the ghost of the river, a darker line of green growth winding its way across the plain.
Carlina is 15, Horacio 16. They married when she was 13, two years after the river disappeared, she says.
“I remember when I saw people here fishing. I used to sell the fish, I took it from the fishermen and went to sell it to the village. There was water everywhere. I remember seeing Horacio with the other fishermen. But without rain, the fish died.”
Her family used to harvest as many as 20 50kg bags of cassava. Today it is down to one or two bags. She blames the lack of rain.
Horacio looks across to where the river once ran. “I can’t fish any more because the fish don’t have water any more. The water disappeared. Now I do agriculture. Before, the rain started in September and came regularly until March. Now the rain only comes in January and February and that’s it.”
Carlina had dreamed of becoming a midwife: school was the most important part of her life. “It was never my desire to get married at that young age. I wanted to go to school. But I was forced to by my father. The family didn’t have enough food to survive. So my father accepted the proposal because he couldn’t support me to go to school.”
She give birth to their first child, a boy, earlier this year. There were problems from the start. The family could not afford to go to a hospital with an incubator and the child died. “I am sure that if my father and my husband weren’t that poor, my son would be alive,” she says.
It wasn’t his choice to marry her off, says her father, Carlitos Camilo. The 49-year-old used to support his family through fishing and farming. Then the weather changed and there was no more fish. “If I was able to feed my children, I wouldn’t have pushed her to get married so young. Look at my other daughters, they grew up, they went to school, they got married at a normal age.”
In 2015 the United Nations Population Fund estimated that 13.5 million children would marry under the age of 18 in that year alone – 37,000 child marriages every day – including 4.4 million married before they were 15. Across the whole of Africa, Unicef warned in 2015 that the total number of child brides could more than double to 310 million by 2050 if current trends continue.
There are many reasons for children marrying young. In some societies, it is regarded as simply practical; when children reach puberty, sexual behaviour starts to carry with it the risk of pregnancy. Elsewhere, poverty is the driver: when parents cannot afford to feed several children, it tends to be the girls who have to go.
But set against that is a growing awareness of the issue and a stated desire by governments to tackle it. Malawi made it illegal to marry below the age of 18 in 2015 and wrote it into its constitution this year. The rate of child marriage should be falling. Yet it persists. In Mozambique the number of child brides is actually rising as a result of the growing population. Something else has entered the equation.
Little girls fetch water in Kachaso village, Nsanje district, Malawi. Extreme poverty in the region may compel them to marry before they’re ready.
The new factor is climate change, says Mac Bain Mkandawire, executive director of Youth Net and Counselling, which campaigns for the rights of women and children from its base in Zomba, Malawi.
“We do not have detailed figures, but I would say 30% to 40% of child marriages in Malawi are due to the floods and droughts caused by climate change,” he says. There are no detailed figures, he explains, because no one has previously thought to connect the two issues and to ask the right questions.
“Given that there are about 4 or 5 million girls at risk of getting married in Malawi, around 1.5 million girls are at risk of getting married because of climate change related events. That is a huge number.”
The published figures may underestimate the scale of the problem because many marriages are informal affairs, not officially recorded. Often they are simply an agreement between two families, or if there are no parents then between the boy and the girl themselves. Sometimes a small dowry is paid by the husband or his family.
That’s how it was for Filomena Antonio. She was 15 when 21-year-old Momande Churute approached her father, Antonio, and offered him 2,000 Mozambican meticals (£25) to marry his daughter.
Antonio Momade Jamal is 50. He has lived in Moma in Nampula province, all his life. He started fishing in 1985 when it was still a profitable business. Back then, buyers used to come from the city of Nampula to compete for the catch. Then the weather started to change.
“We see that it’s too hot. We talk about that and we all agree that it’s difficult to catch enough fish because of these high temperatures,” he says. “In the areas where we used to go, the sea level is rising and the waves are much stronger.”
He thought Filomena too young to marry but he felt he had little choice and when Momande offered to support her to stay in school, he agreed. He says he is not the only one.
“I’ve seen other neighbours who, because they are struggling, let their daughters get married. I have five other kids who go to secondary school. I have two other daughters, one of 13, another of 11. If a man came to ask for their hand, I would think about it, I would consider it. This man could help me support not only my daughter, but also help my other kids continue their education.”
Filomena sits next to him, listening. She appears to have accepted her fate as long as it means she can go off to study in the city. She wants to be a nurse.
“We met here in the neighbourhood and he asked me to be with him,” she says, indicating Momande. “I liked him. I thought he was a beautiful man.”
Its course still visible from the air, the river in Nataka, Larde district, Mozambique was a vital source of fish and water for irrigation until the rains became unreliable and the river dried up.
She told him he had to ask her father’s permission. “My father accepted because he had poor conditions, so he believed that my husband could support me to go to school. I accepted because my father allowed me to. Since my father is poor, I thought I would get married so that my husband would help me. I believe that if my father had kept doing well with the fishing, he wouldn’t have accepted the proposal because then he could afford my education, the school fees, my books.”
Mozambique is one of the world’s poorest countries, with almost 70% of its 28 million people living below the poverty line. It is particularly vulnerable to climate change: the Netherlands Commission for Environmental Assessment warns that “climate-related hazards such as droughts, floods and cyclones are occurring with increasing frequency”.
The legal age of marriage is 18 (16 with parental consent) but still Mozambique has one of the highest rates of child marriage in the world, with nearly one in two girls married by the age of 18 and one in seven by 15. The highest rates of child marriage are found in the northern provinces, including Nampula, which also has the highest number of adolescent pregnancies.
Fatima Mussa is 16, and nine months pregnant. She hadn’t really wanted to get married. On the other hand, her father could no longer afford to keep her. She married 18-year-old Priorino Antonio last year when she was 15 after he approached her father in the village of Nataka, in Nampula province, and offered him 2,000 meticals. There was no ceremony.
“My father said ‘I would have never considered allowing my daughter to marry now, because she is young. But she will marry because I don’t have enough money to send her to secondary school.’ I didn’t want to get married at such a young age, but I didn’t know what to do, since I couldn’t go to school. So I saw an opportunity to marry someone who could maybe improve my life a little bit.”
Across the border in Malawi, nearly half the country’s girls are married by the age of 18 and nearly one in 10 by age 15, leaving Malawi ranked by Unicef as the 11th worst country in the world for child marriage. The legal age of marriage was raised to 18 in 2015 but there have been no reports of any prosecutions.
Poverty is the key factor, increasingly driven by climate change. The International Monetary Fund says that 70% of the 19 million population live below the poverty line, and 25% live in extreme poverty: “Considering that a significant number of the non-poor in rural areas are highly vulnerable to weather shocks, the poverty rate is – if anything – expected to increase due to the impact of recent floods and drought.”
For Lucy Anusa, it was the drought of 2016 that tipped her over the edge. She was 14, the youngest of three sisters living with their farmer parents in Namalaka, near the southern end of Lake Malawi, when the drought laid waste to their crops.
Lucy Anusa, now a 15-year-old mother, has returned to live with her family near Lake Malawi.
“I met this man who proposed to get married. I had to accept despite the fact that my parents kept telling me good things about education. But I opted for marriage given the way things were at home.”
Her parents were unhappy, but she was too stubborn. Only when she became pregnant and the husband turned her out of their home did she start to regret her decision.
Now 15, she gave birth to their daughter earlier this year. “My mother had to welcome me back. But she kept reminding me: ‘My daughter, I told you about this. You are too young for marriage. You have a lot of challenges when you go into marriage so young.’”
The changes in the weather are wrong-footing farmers, says Amos Mtonya from Malawi’s department of climate change and meteorological services. “When it starts to rain, they immediately start planting. But then, three weeks later, they realise that everything they planted is dry,” he says. “So to some, giving away their girl child can be a relief. It can also help the husband’s family, since it gets someone to assist with the household chores. Of course tradition plays its role, but climate change will encourage people to get married early.”
The government’s own report on the 2015 floods listed child marriage as one of the side effects, a view shared by the anti-child marriage campaign group Girls Not Brides. “If we don’t act now we risk another generation of childhoods being lost,” says its executive director Lakshmi Sundaram.
Maliya Mapira dropped out of school because a teacher got her pregnant. She was 15 at the time. Her parents are tobacco farmers and the worsening harvests meant they were living hand to mouth. When they discovered who the father was, they wanted Maliya to marry him. “But along the way the teacher was unable to support me, not even the baby. If my parents could have supported me, I would have preferred to continue with education rather than get married. But I didn’t want to put pressure on them. So I just decided to get married to this man to survive.”
But marriage has changed little for her. She and tobacco farmer Maliki Hestone, trying to raise her six-month-old son, Bashiru Akim, face the same problems her parents failed to overcome. “Sometimes, because of the floods, the crops get washed away. At the end of the day, we get very little harvest from it,” she says. “I don’t want to have more children because we are struggling taking care of the one I have. It would just make things more difficult.”
Five hundred miles away, in the courtyard of a house on the edge of Moma, Majuma Julio is stirring a pot of maize, preparing lunch for husband, Juma Momade, who is holding their year-old daughter, Fatima, on his lap.
Majuma Julio, now 17, married at 15 and has a daughter nearly two: ‘I don’t blame anyone. The weather just changed.’
The couple married two years ago when Majuma was 15 and Juma was 19. It’s not what she wanted, Majuma says. But she was staying with an uncle, a farmer, who was paying to support her through school. The weather changed and there was no more money; marriage was the only solution.
“It was because of the sun. There was too much sun and the rain was not falling enough. His production started to decrease three years before the marriage,” says Majuma. “It used to rain for two months, but after a while it started coming less and less. I don’t blame anyone. The weather just changed. My uncle called me and informed me that there was a man who wanted to marry me. I accepted. I didn’t like the idea but I just accepted because I wanted to study.”
Majuma knew that marriage would mean children. But Juma had promised to support her. “Juma and the imam came to my uncle’s house, they did the ceremony and we were married. I am all right now. I feel better than when I was in my uncle’s house because my husband treats me well, I keep going to school, there’s no problem.
“I won’t let my daughter get married at 15 years old. She has to study.”
Up the coast from Moma, administrator Brigi Rupio looks out across the wide blue expanse of the Larde river. “When I arrived here in 2014, there was a house right next to the river,” he says, pointing to where the bank is being undercut by the current. “But in 2015, there were severe floods that destroyed houses and increased the level of the river. Then there was drought. We had areas where we used to produce rice. But because of the dry spells, it’s not possible any more. The weather is changing. Even those who cannot read or write can notice that.”
The young girls taken out of school to marry early can attest to that. |
European Investment Bank lends €50m to Italian wind projects | The European Investment Bank (EIB) has lent €150m to Italian natural gas and electricity producer Edison for 165 MW of wind projects. The eight financed projects will form part of E2i Energie's portfolio, a joint venture between Edison and F2i, a private equity firm, bringing the total portfolio to more than 700 MW of capacity. Six projects have already begun construction, with a Puglia project due to start later this year. The loans each have a term of 15 years, being available for two years. | https://www.renewablesnow.com/news/eib-lends-eur-150m-to-e2i-wind-projects-in-italy-592185/ | 2017-11-25 15:16:13.840000 | The European Investment Bank (EIB) is lending EUR 150 million (USD 177m) to Italian wind projects with a combined capacity of 165 MW, developed by E2i Energie Speciali.
The bank said today the line of credit, granted to Italian electricity and natural gas producer Edison SpA (BIT:EDN), will finance both new and full refurbishment wind projects in Abruzzo, Basilicata, Campania, Puglia and Sicily. With these, E2i’s portfolio will grow to more than 700 MW.
E2i Energie is a joint venture between Edison and F2i, which is also known as Fondi Italiani per le Infrastrutture SGR SpA. It will use the EIB funds to complete the eight projects, awarded in the 2016 auction by GSE. Six of the projects are already under construction, while work in Puglia is planned to start later in 2017.
The EIB loan may be deployed in multiple tranches, each having a term of 15 years, and will be available for 24 months.
(EUR 1 = USD 1.18)
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Atlantis signs lease for 160 MW tidal barrage project in England | Tidal power firm Atlantis Resources has signed a long-term lease for the riverbed in the Wyre estuary in northwest England with the Duchy of Lancaster. The company plans to develop a 160 MW tidal barrage and flood protection facility, though it will take about three years to gain the appropriate consent. Atlantis will work alongside the Wyre and Lancashire council, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and local stakeholders to complete the project, which is due to generate nearly 300 GWh per year. | https://www.renewablesnow.com/news/atlantis-signs-heads-of-terms-for-160-mw-tidal-barrage-project-lease-591847/ | 2017-11-25 14:51:59.867000 | Atlantis Resources Ltd (LON:ARL) has signed heads of terms with the Duchy of Lancaster for an option for the long-term lease of the riverbed for the proposed 160-MW tidal barrage and flood protection project in the Wyre estuary, northwest England.
The tidal power company said today it expects that it will take about three years to secure all needed consents to begin development. Atlantis said it will now work with the Duchy of Lancaster, the Wyre and Lancashire councils, local stakeholders, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), the supply chain and investors to advance the project. It has begun discussions with potential development stage investors.
According to the firm, which will be the lead developer of the Wyre project, the scheme could be a pathfinder for similar barrage projects across the UK. Chief executive Tim Cornelius said it "offers a route to low cost, predictable and sustainable domestic electricity supply."
The tidal barrage is forecast to generate almost 300 GWh per year.
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LEDs linked to increasing light pollution | Light pollution is increasing as the low cost and energy consumption of LED lights leads to greater demand and use, according to a study by the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences. The research, which used the first calibrated radiometer for night lights, discovered a 2.2% increase in global outdoor artificial lighting each year between 2012 and 2016. Light pollution affects wildlife behaviour and has also been linked to sleep disruption and breast cancer in humans.
| http://edition.cnn.com/2017/11/23/health/light-pollution-increase-study/index.html | 2017-11-25 00:00:00 | Story highlights Satellites can pick up less light from LEDs However, as many countries switch to LEDs, they are also adding more lights Light pollution affects many animals as well as human health
CNN —
Artificial lighting at night is contributing to an alarming increase in light pollution, both in amount and in brightness, affecting places all over the world, a new study has found.
Some regions have showed a steady increase in light pollution aligned with economic development, but more developed nations that were thought to be “going dark” by switching to energy-saving LEDs showed no apparent decline in their rates of light pollution.
Globally, there has been a push toward more energy- and cost-efficient light sources, such as LEDs, but this has directly contributed to an alarming increase in light pollution, the researchers believe.
Using the first calibrated satellite radiometer for night lights, which can detect radiance, a team of scientists found a 2.2% increase in the Earth’s outdoor artificial lighting each year between 2012 and 2016.
“I was very surprised by the result of the study, particularly in wealthy well-lit countries like the US,” said Christopher Kyba of the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, lead author of the study.
“When we switch from a sodium lamp to a white LED, what we observe is a decrease in the total amount of light that the satellite can see. But what we saw instead for the US was basically a constant amount of light; new lights were added in other places,” he said.
In many other developed countries that are already very bright, the team saw an increase in the total amount of light, despite the fact that many cities appear to be “going dark” by switching to LEDs, Kyba added.
As with the US, some of the world’s brightest countries like Spain, Italy and the Netherlands showed stability in levels of outdoor light over this time frame.
The United States at night as seen by the Suomi NPP satellite in 2012. NASA Earth Observatory
The study also noted a consistent growth in lighting in South America, Africa and Asia, with a few exceptions in regions like Yemen and Syria, which showed a decrease due to escalating conflict and warfare.
The risks from light pollution
The study concluded that a steady increase in the use of energy-efficient lights that are cheap and readily available will result in even more light pollution and a reduction of natural day-night light cycles in areas that still experience them.
Light pollution poses a threat to 30% of vertebrates and more than 60% of invertebrates that are nocturnal, including plants, microorganisms and, most alarmingly, human health, the researchers add.
White LED light has been linked to disruptions in sleep patterns, and the glare is found to affect eyesight.
Last year, the American Medical Association issued an official policy statement about LED street lighting, recommending a radiance and color temperature level less harmful to health.
In August, a Harvard study found an increased risk of breast cancer in women living in neighborhoods with higher outdoor lighting. This was linked to increased brightness at nighttime, as the body expects light during daytime and darkness at night.
The health of birds is also at risk. A study published last month found that high-intensity light in urban areas can alter their behavior in terms of migration, foraging and vocal communication. The impact was especially adverse in nocturnal migrating birds that were used to orienting in darkness and were failing to do so due to light pollution.
Another landmark study published last year found that 83% of the world’s population and more than 99% of the US and European populations were affected by light pollution and could not see the stars at night.
Gareth Jones, professor of biological sciences at the University of Bristol, who was not part of the new study, said it is “an important paper because it uses new and carefully calibrated methods for quantifying light pollution over a wide range of wavelengths at high spatial resolution. The study confirms that light pollution continues to increase and is of global relevance.”
“Although there are benefits in terms of greater energy efficiency associated with changes to new lighting technologies such as LEDs, nevertheless light pollution and its associated risks to human health and biodiversity continue to increase,” Jones added.
The Rebound Effect: How much is too much light?
The arguments for the transition to LEDs include cost-saving and reductions in energy consumption, but this has led to increased demand and greater use of outdoor lighting.
Large cities like Milan appeared to have a decrease in radiance around the city center but an increase in rural areas, which the scientists attributed to the replacement of older lamps with LEDs.
“From energy economics, there’s a phenomenon called The Rebound Effect,” Kyba said: If we have an energy-efficient car, for example, we allow ourselves to live farther from work and thus end up driving more. Though there’s a limit to the amount of time one spends driving, with LED lights, there seems to be no saturation point.
Milan after transition to LED technology in the city center. International Astronomical Union/NASA/ESA
The improved energy efficiency has therefore led to more LED lighting being installed in households and outdoors, Kyba said.
He also highlighted an issue with the way people are using LEDs, which offer features like dimmers that are going unused.
“What is currently happening is that we take take the old lamps out, keep the masts standing and get the new lamp on,” he said. “So we’re not using these amazing ways of using LEDs.”
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He also offered a practical solution to reduce the light being emitted in cities.
“In city centers, we need to completely rethink the way we light by putting people at the center and not cars, which have their own lights,” Kyba said. “We shouldn’t have streetlights anymore. We should have lighting for pedestrians and for the people riding bikes.” |
Managers launch ETFs in India despite lack of demand | Fund managers are introducing exchange-traded funds into the Indian market, despite the fact that actively managed mutual funds still dominate in the country. One possible reason for this is the high performance of active large-cap stocks funds in the country, which have outperformed indexed offerings, returning 15% over the last five years. By comparison the BSE Sensex index has returned 12%. Distributors of fund products also have more incentive to sell mutual funds, due to the greater commissions they can reap thanks to the products' higher expense ratios.
| http://www.firstpost.com/business/lackluster-demand-for-etfs-in-india-has-not-stopped-managers-from-launching-fresh-funds-4225621.html | 2017-11-24 16:10:54.627000 | Passive funds emerged in USA more than two decades ago. The first modern day ETF S&P SPDR or Spiders started trading there in 1993. The market for ETFs has grown tremendously since then. Today, there are 2,000 ETFs listed in the US. Industry estimates suggest ETFs manage $4 trillion globally. India got its first ETF in Nifty BeES in 2001 launched by Benchmark AMC. It was probably way ahead of its time. Sensing category’s slow growth, Benchmark decided to sell it to Goldman Sachs MF in 2011. Sensing a potential for passive funds, Reliance Nippon Life lapped up Goldman Sachs schemes.
Benchmark AMC managed merely Rs 70 crore in ETFs in 2004. The size of the Indian ETF market has now grown to Rs 65,124 crore. The growth has been tepid at best if we compare that of ETFs with actively managed equity funds. During the same period, the size of the actively managed equity funds galloped from Rs 29,362 crore in 2004 to Rs 8.55 lakh crore as on October 2017.
Let’s look at the reasons for slow growth of ETFs in India. The most important factor for investors and advisers’ aversion to this category is the superior performance of actively managed funds vis-a-vis passive funds. For instance, actively managed large cap fund category has delivered 15 percent CAGR return over a five-year period while BSE Sensex has grown by 12 percent during the same period.
Since ETFs passively track their underlying indices, they come with lower expenses as compared to their active fund peers. ETFs which track the broader indices like Sensex and Nifty charge 0.05 percent-0.10 percent annual total expense ratio (TER) whereas the TER of actively managed funds can go up to as high as 3 percent. Due to their low-cost nature, ETFs have no room to pay commissions on par with actively managed funds, providing little incentive for distributors prefer to sell passive funds.
Paltry commission and performance are not the only reasons for slow take off of passive funds. ETFs can be only bought through the exchange from demat accounts and majority of MF investors in India have been investing physically through their neighborhood distributors. Even those who hold demat accounts prefer to buy shares or subscribe to IPOs rather than buying dull ETFs. This is in sharp contrast to US where seven out of the 10 most actively traded securities on US stock markets last year were ETFs, not shares, says a Financial Times report.
Passive funds are seeing huge inflows in the US as active fund managers have found it increasingly difficult to beat the market due to an efficient and developed market. We are witnessing similar trend in India in the large cap funds space. Over a 10-year period, 45 percent of active funds have underperformed the Nifty 50. High costs/TER can be one of the reasons for this underperformance. That said, fund managers believe there will be ample opportunities for outperformance especially, in the mid- and small-cap space, which are not well researched.
The lackluster demand for ETFs in India has not stopped fund houses from launching ETFs. Starting from Gold ETFs and equity ETFs, fund houses are innovating their offerings by adding new flavour to their products. Today, we have ETFs to participate in the US indices and debt markets. Further, while traditional ETFs mimic their underlying index based on market capitalisation, the new age ETFs called smart beta ETFs have emerged. These ETFs combine both active and passive methods of investing by looking at factors such as earnings, low volatility, return on equity, dividend yield, etc. through custom build indices.
While this looks like an interesting innovation, investors should note such ETFs may not be able to outdo active funds as the underlying factors/theme may not outperform in all market cycles. Active fund managers on the other hand can avoid such factors depending on market conditions. One area where smart beta ETFs score over active funds is they do not come with key-person risk as they operate on fixed automated processes.
While the ETF market could take decades to flourish in India, fund houses are fully prepared to cash in on this opportunity. The popularity of ETFs is growing due to the government’s plans to divest its holdings in PSUs through this route. The first divestment through CPSE ETF mopped up Rs 11,500 crore and the second version in the form of Bharat 22 ETF is expected to mop up Rs 8,000 crore. Fund houses are in intense race to get a mandate for managing such issues. Additionally, media reports suggest the Employees Provident Fund Organization’s or EPFO investment in ETFs is expected to touch Rs 45,000 crore by the end of this fiscal. This massive flush of flow into ETFs suggest that the category will only grow from here.
Ravi Samalad is Assistant Manager, Editorial, Morningstar Investment Adviser India Private Limited |
Statoil delivers wind farm 15% under budget | Statoil and partners Masdar and Statkraft said they delivered the 67 turbine Dudgeon offshore wind farm for about 15% below its original budget. In 2014, the 402 MW wind farm in Great Yarmouth was predicted to cost £1.5bn and was eventually brought in for about £1.25bn. Statoil’s offshore wind portfolio has the capacity to provide more than 1 million homes with electricity. | http://www.jwnenergy.com/article/2017/11/statoil-cuts-costs-15-cent-latest-offshore-wind-farm-it-further-greens-its-portfolio/ | 2017-11-24 15:51:59.947000 | Dudgeon offshore wind farm operator Statoil and partners Masdar and Statkraft say they delivered the 67 turbine project 15 per cent under budget on its opening this week.
The 402 megawatt wind farm in Great Yarmouth is now delivering electricity to the U.K. grid, providing renewable energy to around 410,000 homes.
Since the investment decision was made in 2014, construction costs have been reduced from GBP 1.5 billion to approximately GBP 1.25 billion.
“Dudgeon represents an important contribution to realizing the U.K.’s renewable energy strategy,” Statoil chief executive officer Eldar Sætre said in a statement. “The U.K. has already achieved impressive reductions in CO2-emissions with clear policies to phase out coal, and last year achieved the lowest CO2 emissions since before year 1900. Statoil is proud to contribute to this both by being a large supplier of natural gas and by our investments in offshore wind.”
The opening also moves the Norwegian state controlled company further into the green energy sector as it leverages its offshore oil and gas expertise to complement its portfolio with profitable renewable energy solutions. "As part of our strategy to develop from an oil and gas company to a broad energy major, Statoil will grow significantly in profitable renewable energy, with an ambition to invest around NOK 100 billion towards 2030,” said Sætre.
It comes as Norway's trillion-dollar sovereign wealth fund is proposing to drop oil and gas companies from its benchmark index, in part to make the Norwegian government's wealth less vulnerable to a permanent drop in oil prices.
It also comes as the U.K. government doubles down on electric vehicles to reduce emissions from the transportation sector. In its budget this week, the government announced a £400 million fund for EV charging infrastructure projects across the country and pledged to invest an extra £100 million to help people buy EVs and £40 million toward charging research and development. The more renewables are feeding the grid, the greener EVs become.
Also this month, California Gov. Jerry Brown met with top Statoil executives to discuss the company's pursuit of wind power off the Golden State's coastlines. Because of the depth of its continental shelf, the state would likely require floating wind turbine technology, another specialty of Statoil, which has in its portfolio Hywind Scotland, the world’s first floating offshore wind farm that came into production in October.
Statoil’s current offshore wind portfolio, which includes the Sheringham Shoal wind farm in the U.K. and the Arkona wind farm in Germany, has the capacity to provide more than one million homes with renewable energy.
Dudgeon is located 40 kilometres off the coast of Norfolk in England. Local suppliers account for more than 40 per cent of the value creation in the project.
Toward 2030 it is estimated the installed capacity of offshore wind in Europe can grow from 12 GW (2016) to 70 GW. Improved technology, increased deployment and lower costs are the key drivers turning offshore wind into an attractive power source, outcompeting traditional sources of energy in important markets, Statoil said. |
Shell gets 10-year licence extension for Nigeria power plant | The Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) has renewed the power generation licence for the Afam VI Power Plant, a 650 MW facility that has delivered over 24.16 million MWh of electricity into the Nigerian grid since 2008. In 2016, the combined cycle gas power plant supplied about 12% of Nigeria's grid-electricity. Afam VI utilises waste heat energy from the gas turbine exhaust to generate an additional 200 MW from a steam turbine. | https://www.thisdaylive.com/index.php/2017/11/22/shells-650mw-afam-power-plant-secures-licence-for-another-10-years/ | 2017-11-24 15:47:37.403000 | Ejiofor Alike
The Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) has renewed the power generation licence for Afam VI Power Plant, a 650MW-capacity facility that has delivered over 24.16 million Megawatt-hour (MWh) of electricity into the Nigerian grid between inception in 2008 and 2016.
Shell’s Media Relations Manager, Bamidele Odugbesan confirmed this development in a statement yesterday.
Afam VI is owned by The Shell Petroleum Development Company Joint Venture (SPDC JV) and located in Okoloma in Oyigbo Local Government area of Rivers State.
Presenting the renewed licence to the leadership of SPDC at the Commission’s office in Abuja yesterday, NERC’s Commissioner, Legal, Licensing and Compliance, Mr. Dafe Akpeneye, described SPDC JV as a committed partner in the Nigerian power sector adding that the company’s belief in the sector and its resolve to help it develop were remarkable.
“We hope for greater efficiency and improved operations from Afam VI in the next 10-year phase of your operations just as we look forward to working together to resolve some of the challenging issues in the power sector,†he said.
Receiving the licence, the General Manager, Gas of SPDC, Dr. Philip Mshelbila, described the Afam VI as a model worthy of emulation by government and other players in the power sector.
“Here’s a power plant with a dedicated gas plant operating with high uptime generating clean and efficient power from the combined cycle of three gas and one steam turbines,†he added.
He lamented the challenges of debt, power evacuation and off-take which he said prevented the plant from delivering optimally at 15 percent of the total national grid-connected electricity.
Afam VI uses combined cycle gas turbine technology that burns 40 percent less gas than plants using older open cycle technologies. This also contributes significantly to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. In 2016, Afam VI power plant supplied approximately 12 per cent of the nation’s grid-electricity.
Built with the most efficient technology in the industry and utilising waste heat energy from the gas turbine exhaust, the plant generates an additional 200MW from the steam turbine without consuming any additional gas, thereby considerably reducing its carbon footprint.
As a Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) project under the United Nations Executive Board for Climate Change, Afam VI Power Plant eliminates over 500,000 tons of CO2 emissions per year, while also maintaining excellent safety standards.
The operations at Afam VI have generated subcontract opportunities and employment for over 150 staff from the 16 host communities. It also provided hands-on and offshore training for 15 youths in Electrical, Mechanical and Instrumentation engineering on Combined Cycle Power Plant operations and maintenance. All the trainees are already employed in the Nigerian power industry. Arrangements have been concluded for the training of another 15 community youths.
The power plant also won SPDC the Best Company in Climate Action Award in the 2016 edition of Sustainability, Enterprise, Responsibility Awards for Corporate Social Responsibility (SERAs–CSR), an annual event to celebrate organisations that invest resources to improve the socioeconomic living conditions of people in Nigeria and Africa.
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Total to install 8,000 biodigesters in India | Total has said it will deploy 8,400 biodigesters for households in the Indian state of Telangana in the coming years as part of a voluntary carbon neutrality initiative. The biodigesters use a fermentation process to convert livestock manure into biogas for cooking and hot water; the solid by-product of the fermentation process can be used as a fertiliser. The initiative is eligible for certified carbon credits and will help eliminate 50,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions over 10 years. | https://www.renewablesnow.com/news/frances-total-to-deploy-biodigesters-in-india-591822/ | 2017-11-24 15:34:58.493000 | French oil and gas major Total SA (EPA:FP) said on Monday it will deploy 8,400 biodigesters for households in the Indian state of Telangana as part of a voluntary carbon neutrality initiative.
The so-called Adilabad project will see Total start deploying the units this month, with the goal of completing work on the first ones next year.
These biodigesters use a fermentation process to convert livestock manure into biogas for cooking and hot water. What is left as solids after the fermentation can then be used as a nutrient source for crops, the company’s statement says.
The initiative is eligible for certified carbon credits and will benefit some 45,000 people. In addition, it will help eliminate 50,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions a year for a period of 10 years.
The project will be implemented under a newly-signed agreement with the GoodPlanet Foundation.
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South Africa to test country's first vanadium redox flow battery | South Africa’s first utility-scale vanadium redox flow battery will be deployed and tested over 18 months at local grid operator Eskom’s Research, Testing and Development Centre in Rosherville. Bushveld Minerals said commissioning is expected in the first half of next year. The battery, to be produced by UniEnergy Technologies will have peak power of 120 kW and will be able to store peak energy of 450 kWh. After 18 months of testing, the battery will be moved to a commercial site. | https://www.renewablesnow.com/news/s-africas-eskom-to-test-countrys-1st-vanadium-redox-flow-battery-591892/ | 2017-11-24 15:32:41.827000 | South Africa’s first utility-scale vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) will be deployed and tested over 18 months at local grid operator Eskom’s Research, Testing and Development (RT&D) Centre in Rosherville.
Bushveld Minerals Ltd (LON:BMN) today said commissioning is expected in the first half of next year. The battery, to be produced by UniEnergy Technologies (UET), is to have peak power of 120 kW and will be able to store peak energy of 450 kWh.
Bushveld Energy Ltd, a 84%-owned unit of BMN, is working on the project together with the Industrial Development Corporation of South Africa (IDC). Eskom will test the battery, its performance and applications under various simulations, including minimum load shifting, wind and solar power generation smoothing, power quality improvement and self-black-start capability. Independent power producers (IPPs), energy storage developers, decision-makers and various capital providers will also be able to get access to the VRFB.
After the 18 months of testing, the battery will be moved to a commercial site.
Eskom has identified the need for up to 2 GW of additional, daily balanced energy storage. Fortune Mojapelo, CEO of Bushveld Minerals, pointed out that South Africa is extremely well-positioned to take advantage of the expansion of the energy storage market as it has the second largest reserves of vanadium in the world in the Bushveld Complex.
“This project brings new technology to South Africa to make the local power system more efficient and more importantly create a new industry to not only supply South Africa, but offer significant export potential as well,” Mojapelo said. In 2016, Bushveld Energy and the IDC signed a cooperation agreement to partner to bring significant portions of the VRFB value chain to South Africa.
Christo Fourie, Head of the IDC's New Industries Strategic Business Unit, said that in the next year the company will support the deployment of multiple "pilot" energy storage systems together with local or international partners and technology firms.
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World Bank promises $100m for Indian solar | The World Bank has signed a guarantee with India for $98m for the “Shared Infrastructure for Solar Parks" project. The funds will be provided through the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the Clean Technology Fund loan and grant agreement schemes. A further $2m will be provided for technical assistance from CTF. The initiative forms part of the Indian government's plan to install 100 GW of solar power and 175 GW of renewables by 2022. | https://www.pv-magazine.com/2017/11/20/india-world-bank-signs-100-million-loan-agreement-for-solar-parks/ | 2017-11-24 14:59:52.303000 | India Signs Loan Agreement with the World Bank for $100 Million for utility-scale Solar Parks.
India and the World Bank have signed a guarantee agreement of $98 million provided through the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and Clean Technology Fund (CTF) loan and grant agreement for $2 million for the “Shared Infrastructure for Solar Parks Project” in India, on November 20, 2017.
Sameer Kumar Khare, Joint Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs on behalf of Government of India, and Hisham A. Abdo, Acting Country Director, World Bank India, has signed the agreement.
A loan agreement was also signed by K S Popli, Chairman and MD, India Renewable Energy Development Agency Ltd (IREDA) and Hisham A. Abdo, Acting Country Director, World Bank India.
The project consists of two components namely, first, shared infrastructure for Solar Parks (estimated total project cost of $98 million, including $75 million in IBRD loan and $23 million in CTF Loan) and second, $2 million technical assistance under CTF Grant.
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The objective of the project is to increase solar generation capacity through establishment of large-scale parks in the country.
The project will help establish large-scale solar parks and support the government’s plan to install 100 GW of solar power out of a total renewable-energy target of 175 GW by 2022. |
Google partner to support 130,000 Indian developer scholarships | Tech giant Google is partnering with education websites Udacity and Pluralsight to offer mobile and web development scholarships to 130,000 Indian students and developers. Recipients will learn advanced technical skills in emerging areas such as AI, machine learning, and the cloud. 210,000 students have completed Google-backed training with Udacity so far. The scholarships will grant free initial course access, mentorship and community support, with an extra six-month scholarship for the top 1,000 performers in the web and mobile development disciplines. | http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/info-tech/google-announces-130000-scholarships-in-collaboration-with-pluralsight-udacity/article9970949.ece?homepage=true | 2017-11-24 14:53:59.017000 | To create a pool of highly skilled tech workers, Google in association with education websites Pluralsight and Udacity on Thursday announced a new scholarship programme to help 130,000 mobile and web developers and students across India.
“In this joint effort, Google is sponsoring 100,000 scholarships on the Pluralsight technology learning platform and 30,000 scholarships on Udacity to help developers gain access to advanced learning curriculum and further their employability in emerging technologies such as mobile and web development, machine learning, artificial intelligence and cloud platforms,” said a company release.
“Since we announced our skilling initiative in India, 210,000 students have completed Google-developed courses on Udacity, with 117,000 completing the course this year,” said William Florance, Developer Products Group and Skilling Lead for India, Google, in the release.
Arun Rajamani, Country Head and General Manager, Pluralsight, said: “We are excited to see technology professionals in India future-proof their skills, move strongly towards full-stack development and push the boundaries of innovation that will create a stronger India and a better world through technology.”
Ishan Gupta, Managing Director, Udacity India, said: “With this scholarship programme, students can master web- and mobile-development skills with the experts from Udacity and Google.
“The programme will have two phases. The first phase will have free access to our courses in mobile and web development along with mentorship and community support.
“The top 1,000 students will earn an additional six-month scholarship to our mobile and web developer nano-degree programmes.”
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Engie cancels six-turbine wind project after veterans' backlash | Engie has cancelled plans to build the Bullecort project, a six-turbine wind farm on the ground of a former First World War battlefield in France. The decision was announced by the Australian Minister for Defence Personnel and Veterans’ Affairs, Dan Tehan. Thousands of Australians perished at the site, leading to a backlash over the project's development. The site would have begun generating power in 2020. | https://www.renewablesnow.com/news/to-the-point-engie-scraps-6-turbine-wind-project-at-former-wwi-site-592085/ | 2017-11-24 14:49:20.460000 | French utility Engie (EPA:ENGI) has abandoned plans to build a six-turbine wind farm at the site of a former First World War battlefield.
The company’s decision was confirmed by Australia’s Minister for Defence Personnel and Veterans’ Affairs Dan Tehan on Tuesday. The so-called Bullecourt project was planned to be developed at the small village of Bullecourt, northern France, where thousands of Australians died.
The proposal spurred a widespread emotional reaction in Australia, forcing the developer to cancel the project. Its plans called for the installation of six turbines at the historic site, which were expected to start power generation in 2020, local media reports.
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Demand is weak at Japan's first solar auction | Prices at Japan's first solar auction are triple the average of other global tenders. The lowest offer on 140 MW of tenders was $154.4/MWh and the highest $188.5 per MWh. A total of 500 MW will be auctioned. Nine successful projects were proposed by eight firms; four Japanese and four global, including Canadian Solar, X-Elio and Hanwha Q Cells. | https://www.renewablesnow.com/news/low-demand-in-japans-1st-solar-auction-592171/ | 2017-11-24 14:46:53.857000 | A solar tender in Japan seeking to award contracts to 500 MW of projects got roughly 140 MW of valid bids, with the lowest offer being JPY 17,200 (USD 154.4/EUR 130.7) per MWh.
The highest bid in the tender was of JPY 21,000 (USD 188.5/EUR 159.6) per MWh. In comparison, recent solar auctions in Germany, the Middle East, India and Latin America have attracted bids per MWh lower than or roughly equal to EUR 50 (USD 59), SAR 67 (USD 18.4/EUR 15.6), INR 2,650 (USD 41/EUR 34.6) and USD 25, respectively.
Nikkei Asian Review reports that the auction in Japan, in which rates are apparently more attractive than in other parts of the world, have lured several foreign companies. It mentions Canadian Solar, Hanwha Q Cells and X-Elio among the winners of power contracts. In total, the nine winning projects have been proposed by eight companies -- four Japanese and four international.
At the end of 2016, the Japanese government announced the start of tenders for 2-MW-plus solar power plants, including this 500-MW auction and two more in fiscal 2018/19.
(JPY 100 = USD 0.9/EUR 0.76)
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Portable skin cancer detector wins Dyson Award for Canadian team | A graduate team at McMaster University in Canada have won the James Dyson Award for their portable skin cancer detector, sKan. The device uses a pad of 16 thermistors to track the increase in skin temperature following a cold shock to a potentially cancerous patch of skin caused by an ice pack. The device then produces a heat map that can be used to determine the presence of melanoma. The prize comes with an investment of $40,000 in sKan, which the team said would help them create a more advanced prototype to use in pre-clinical testing.
| https://futurism.com/cheap-portable-skin-cancer-detector-won-dyson-award/ | 2017-11-24 14:46:37.133000 | Meet sKan
Detecting skin cancer early isn't easy. Currently, it's done through visual inspections or biopsies, but some doctors may not pick up on the disease using the former, while some patients may not be able to afford the latter. As such, a team of graduates from McMaster University in Canada set out to develop an inexpensive skin cancer detector, and their innovative work has earned them the prestigious international James Dyson Award.
Cancer affects the metabolic rate of skin cells, with cancerous cells heating up faster than their healthy counterparts following a shock of cold temperature.
To make identifying these cells easier, the McMaster University team — Michael Takla, Rotimi Fadiya, Prateek Mathur, and Shivad Bhavsar — built a skin cancer detector with 16 thermistors that can track the rate of temperature increase following a cold shock from an ice pack.
The thermistors are simply placed on the potentially cancerous area of skin, and the device produces a heat map that can be used to determine the presence of melanoma.
“By using widely available and inexpensive components, the sKan allows for melanoma skin cancer detection to be readily accessible to the many” award founder James Dyson said in a statement announcing the win. “It’s a very clever device with the potential to save lives around the world.”
In addition to winning the Dyson Award for their skin cancer detector, the team also received a cash prize of approximately $40,000 to advance their research. They received $10,000 at the the Forge’s Student Start-up Pitch competition in March.
Diagnosing Skin Cancer
According to Mathur, the team was inspired to create sKan after realizing technology hadn't had the same impact on skin cancer diagnosis as it had on other medical fields.
“We found research that used the thermal properties of cancerous skin tissue as a means of detecting melanoma. However, this was done using expensive lab equipment," he said in a McMaster University news release. "We set out to apply the research and invent a way of performing the same assessment using a more cost-effective solution.”
Going forward, the sKan team hopes to create a more advanced prototype that will allow them to begin pre-clinical testing.
Image Credit: James Dyson Awards
As reported by The Guardian, nearly 39 people are diagnosed with skin cancer every day in the U.K., and the American Cancer Society (ACS) estimates 87,110 new cases of melanoma will be diagnosed in the U.S. 2017, with 9,730 people dying from the condition. Early detection is key to cancer survival, so if sKan succeeds, it could significantly reduce that number.
“Our aspirations have become a reality,” said Mathur. “Skin cancers are the most common form of cancer worldwide, and the potential to positively impact the lives of those affected is both humbling and motivating.” |
Indian solar output almost doubles in third quarter | In the third quarter of 2017 Indian solar parks generated 5.3 billion kWh of electricity, an increase of 91% YoY, according to Mercom Capital Group. However, data from India’s Central Electricity Authority shows this number was slightly lower than the second quarter, which produced 5.5 billion kWh. Mercom projected that India will have deployed between 9.5 GW and 10 GW of solar PV this year; that is projected to fall to 7 GW next year as the market reacts to rising prices of Chinese PV modules and the renegotiation of power purchase agreements in line with record-low solar tariff levels. | https://www.renewablesnow.com/news/indias-solar-power-production-jumps-in-q3-2017-592227/ | 2017-11-24 14:38:25.277000 | India’s solar parks generated 5.3 billion kWh of electricity in the third quarter of 2017, up 91% in annual terms thanks to new capacity additions, Mercom Capital Group said on Thursday.
However, solar power generation in the three months was lower than the 5.5 billion kWh produced in the second quarter, the consultancy said, citing data from India’s Central Electricity Authority (CEA). Newly-added capacity in July-September totalled 2.2 GW, according to Mercom’s quarterly market update.
In the first nine months of the year, solar power production in the country rose by 88% on the year to 15 billion kWh. New PV installations accounted for 39% of India’s total power capacity additions in the first three quarters of the year, representing a total of 7.1 GW.
Mercom projects that India will deploy between 9.5 GW and 10 GW of PV plants this year and 7 GW next year, expecting the market to be affected by the rising prices of Chinese PV modules, certain infrastructure and power evacuation issues and the renegotiation of power purchase agreements (PPAs) terms in line with the record-low level of solar tariffs.
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African drug supply chain start-up mPharma wins backing from US | Ghana-based start-up mPharma is looking to improve the pharmaceutical supply chain across Africa. mPharma operates in four African countries managing drug inventories for pharmacies and suppliers, while also providing inventory financing and helping to lower prescription drug costs. The company's ambitions have caught the attention of investors worldwide, with a recent series A funding round raising $6.6m. This followed an initial $5m in seed funding led by Silicon Valley’s Social Capital. mPharma counts among its board members an early investor in Facebook, Jim Breyer.
| https://qz.com/1136148/a-startup-disrupting-africas-pharmaceutical-retail-has-raised-6-6-million/ | 2017-11-24 14:36:41.630000 | Greg Rockson, founder of mPharma, sometimes struggles to sum up the myriad services his three-year old startup provides. But it’s safe to say the Accra, Ghana-based company is starting to disrupt Africa’s pharmacy retail supply chain and is setting its sights on bigger targets beyond the continent.
MPharma manages prescription drug inventory for pharmacies and their suppliers in four African countries. It provides inventory financing to clients and is using its growing purchasing power to help lower the cost of prescription drugs for patients.
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The scale of its ambition to disrupt such a significant sector has attracted a bevy of major international investors for its recent Series A funding round, amounting to $6.6 million announced today.
The most recent round was led by Shravin Bharti Mittal, who runs a fund for India’s Bharti Mittal family, best known in Africa for its mobile operator Airtel. Silicon Valley venture capital firm Social Capital and local VCs Golden Palm Investments and 4DX Ventures, also joined the round. In addition, the company got backing from several new family office investors from Senegal, Kenya, and Turkey.
Early Facebook investor Jim Breyer is also investing and joining the board as an observer, Rockson says. It’s Breyer’s first investment in the Africa tech ecosystem.
mPharma had previously raised up to $5 million in seed funding led by Silicon Valley’s Social Capital. Ashley Carroll and Chamath Palihapitiya of Social Capital both joined the board in 2015.
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To date, mPharma employs over 40 people and has operations in Ghana, Nigeria, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. It currently has over 70 outlets serving more than 20,000 patients each month, largely via pharmacies in private hospitals.
The company intends to use its new funding to accelerate the use of its proprietary software for more clients. Rockson sees huge opportunities in the expansion of health insurance and the growth of private hospitals in Africa, as well as the increasing number of middle class professionals entering the workforce.
Africa’s healthcare challenges are well-chronicled. With a deficit of 4.2 million health workers, it has the world’s second-worst health worker shortage, exacerbated by a general lack of healthcare infrastructure and medical technology. And after decades of prioritizing health systems to deal with communicable diseases like malaria and HIV/Aids, the continent is now seeing a steady rise in non-communicable diseases like heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. Most countries are ill-prepared.
These challenges, along with weak input from governments, have made private pharmacies the primary healthcare providers in many African countries. Driving down prescription drug costs for end users could have a significant impact.
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The big opportunity for mPharma is fixing the fragmented prescription drug supply chain common in African countries and other emerging markets. In the four countries it operates, the 10 biggest pharmacy chains have a total of just 186 outlets, while there are up to 15,000 independent pharmacies, according to mPharma.
“The drug supply chain in Africa is built on a ‘push’ data model,” Rockson explains. “Distributors have to wait to receive a purchase order from providers before supplying drugs to them. This model is built on siloed data systems between distributors and providers. As a result, both parties are unable to forecast demand which leads to frequent stockouts,” he adds.
By taking over the inventory management of a pharmacy, accurately forecasting demand of prescription drugs, and building up bargaining power with suppliers, Rockson says mPharma has been able to lower costs for patients by as much as 30% in some cases.
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“We can serve more patients and bring down drug costs if mom and pop pharmacies are able to better manage their inventory.” |
Greatcell Solar secures $3m for perovskite test facility | Solar Cell technology developer, Greatcell Solar has secured investment of $3m from an Australian food, water and energy fund. Greatcell looks to use the funding to push development of its prototype facility at CSIRO in Clayton, Victoria. "The investment will allow us to expedite our scale-up and commercialisation plans and move forward with great financial confidence," said managing director Richard Caldwell. Greatcell noted that the investor is looking to maintain its shareholding ratio and potentially increase it over time. | https://www.renewablesnow.com/news/aussie-fund-to-invest-usd-3m-in-greatcell-solar-592240/ | 2017-11-24 14:36:07.037000 | An Australian food, water and energy fund has agreed to invest AUD 4 million (USD 3m/EUR 2.6m) in Perovskite Solar Cell (PSC) technology developer Greatcell Solar Ltd (ASX:GSL).
The company intends to use the fresh funds to accelerate the development of its prototype facility at CSIRO in Clayton, Victoria, and immediately commence procurement of the needed long lead-time capital equipment.
“The investment will allow us to expedite our scale-up and commercialisation plans and move forward with great financial confidence,” said managing director Richard Caldwell. He added that the company looks forward to announcing emerging international business relationships as the year unfolds.
Greatcell anticipates to get the investment early next month in exchange for the issuance of 18.2 million shares. It noted that the particular fund has indicated its desire to maintain its percentage shareholding and possibly even increase it over time.
(AUD 1.0 = USD 0.762/EUR 0.643)
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Tower building boom hits central Manchester | A development of 25 tower blocks in the Great Jackson Street area of Manchester could bring an additional 6,300 homes to the city, according to proposals. Deloitte Real Estate reported that the majority of homes would be one to three-bedroom flats, with no more than 33% having one bedroom. In addition, family-oriented townhouses are not ruled out. Deloitte added: “Potential ground floor uses could include retail and leisure" while "no nightclub-type uses or other potentially anti-social night-time" usage would be allowed after 11pm. The tallest tower planned is 64 storeys high.
| http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/astonishing-development-could-change-skyline-13946131#ICID=sharebar_twitter | 2017-11-24 14:31:28.037000 | Something went wrong, please try again later.
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This is the development that could transform the skyline of Manchester city centre... and it’s been a decade in the making.
A total of 25 towers – seven of which are more than 40 storeys tall – have been earmarked for the area around Great Jackson Street, with some already under construction.
Plans to transform the south of Manchester city centre have been been on the table for years... but these new images give a glimpse of how the scheme would finally look.
Proposals for the scheme were published two years ago but a new revised document promises to increase the height of some towers and raise the number of homes and apartments to more than 6,300.
(Image: Deloitte Real Estate)
The development will stretch right out to the Hulme border as part of a strategy to expand the city centre’s borders and would include restaurants, cafes, shops, and even gyms.
Several huge towers, one of which is 64 storeys in height, are already being built at Owen Street, near Deansgate, while developers DeTrafford received permission in September for a fresh cluster of skyscrapers just across the road.
The updated blueprints, which have just been revealed, show that the apartment blocks destined for the Mancunian Way/Chester Road corner of the site will also be taller than originally anticipated, after planners decided that ‘a development of a greater height could be accommodated’.
A cluster of seven buildings, known as Plot C ‘Crown Street’, will range from 50, 46, and 39 storeys in height.
It is the largest of the eight plots in the Great Jackson Street development, and this cluster alone is expected to boast almost 1,900 homes.
(Image: Deloitte Real Estate)
According to the plans, the tallest buildings will be on the outskirts of the developed area, and should ‘step down in height towards the centre of the framework area’.
The document, put together by Deloitte Real Estate, says the majority of homes will be one, two and three-bed apartment.. but does not rule out the possiblity of more family-oriented town houses.
It said: “The overall mix of apartments will be justified per plot based on market demand; however, a maximum of 33 per cent one-bed apartments should be sought.
“Opportunities to introduce Town Houses, with their own front doors and defensible space, will be used as an alternative means of creating active frontages and encouraging safe and well animated public realm.”
(Image: SimpsonHaugh & Partners)
It also provided more details on the amenities the development would bring with it, stating: “In order to provide a long-term, sustainable residential development, there will be a need to ensure a convenience offer which includes an attractive range of amenities in order to satisfy the immediate needs of the resident population - such as morning workouts, evening drinks and daily necessities.”
The document adds: “Potential ground floor uses could include retail and leisure uses such as restaurants, cafes and local convenience stores, as well as amenity facilities to support the primary
residential use, such as a residents’ lounge, gym, health care facilities and flexible working space.”
Deloitte however said in the plans that there would be no ‘nightclub-type uses or other potentially anti-social night-time’ of buildings later than 11pm. |
Enel to build 90 MW wind farm in Russia | Italian energy company Enel is set to begin construction work next year on a 90 MW wind farm, one of two projects it secured during Russia’s latest renewables auction. The Rostov Oblast project will consist of 80 turbines, installed in phases, and is set to cost $178m, according to local media reports. Implementation talks have already taken place between Enel Russia’s CEO Carlo Palasciano Villamagna and Vasily Golubev, governor of the Rostov Oblast region. Enel's other Russian wind project is a 201 MW scheme in Murmansk. | https://www.renewablesnow.com/news/enel-to-build-90-mw-wind-park-in-russias-rostov-report-591930/ | 2017-11-24 13:30:01.677000 | Italian energy group Enel (BIT:ENEL) intends to build a wind farm of over 90 MW on the Don river region in southwestern Russia, the Russian Association of Wind Power Industry (RAWI) reports.
The wind power facility will be situated in Azov, Rostov Oblast, at the site of a former gambling zone. Construction works are slated to begin next year, RAWI said on Monday, adding that talks for the implementation of the scheme have been carried out between Rostov Oblast’s governor Vasily Golubev and Enel Russia’s CEO Carlo Palasciano Villamagna.
According to the report, Enel has bought the project from Sowitec Russia OOO, the Russian subsidiary of Germany’s Sowitec Group. In earlier reports, local media said that the wind farm will consist of 80 turbines that will be installed in stages at a total cost of USD 178 million (EUR 151.6m).
Enel Russia was selected as preferred bidder for 291 MW of wind schemes in Russia’s latest renewables auction, in which a total of 2,221 MW of projects were selected. The Italian group won two projects in the tender -- a 201-MW scheme in Murmansk and the 90-MW one in Rostov.
(USD 1.0 = EUR 0.852)
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Wind tables lowest bid in Argentine renewable energy auction | The second round of Argentina's RenovAr renewable energy auction saw the lowest bid come from the wind sector, at $37.30 per MWh, while the lowest solar bid was $40.44 per MWh, said the country's Ministry of Energy and Mining. Round two was launched in August, following two previous auctions (Round 1 and Round 1.5), and procured 1.2 GW of capacity. 9.4 GW of capacity was bid, of which 7.5 GW qualified for the auction. The ministry said average prices in round two for solar and wind were $48.67/MWh and $47.64/MWh, respectively. | https://www.renewablesnow.com/news/lowest-bid-in-argentinas-renovar-2-tender-at-usd-3730mwh-592242/ | 2017-11-24 13:28:22.753000 | The lowest bid received in the Round 2 tender of Argentina's RenovAr renewable energy auction programme was of USD 37.30 (EUR 31.48) per MWh and it came from the wind sector.
The lowest bid for solar technology was USD 40.44 per MWh, Argentina's Ministry of Energy and Mining said on Thursday as it announced the opening of economic bids in the tender.
Round 2, launched in August, follows two previous tenders under the programme, Round 1 and Round 1.5, which were conducted in the second half of 2016. The latest tender aims to contract a total of 1.2 GW of capacity. Of the about 9.4 GW bids received, some 7.5 GW have been qualified to remain in the competition, whose results will be announced on November 29. The qualified bids include over 3.75 GW of solar offers and almost 3.5 GW of wind, the ministry said on Thursday.
The average Round 2 prices for wind and solar were USD 47.64 and USD 48.67 per MWh, respectively. For wind this marks a fall of 31.5% compared to Round 1 and 12.1% compared to Round 1.5, while for solar the declines are of 36.2% from Round 1 and 13.2% from Round 1.5.
The table below gives more details about the lowest and average prices per technology. The average is calculated on the basis of qualified offers.
Technology lowest USD/MWh average USD/MWh Wind 37.30 47,64 Solar 40.44 48.67 Biomass 92.00 107.07 Biogas 150.00 157.97 Biogas from landfills 128.00 129.18 Small hydropower 89.00 97.28
Under the RenovAr programme, awarded projects sign 20-year power purchase agreements (PPAs) with the Wholesale Electricity Market Administration Company (CAMMESA). A total of 2.4 GW of projects were awarded under the first two tenders of the programme.
The announcement comes on the heels of the completion of a power auction in Mexico, where a price of USD 20.57 per MWh was achieved.
(USD 1 = EUR 0.844)
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India plans 2 GW wind tender | As the country moves from feed-in tariffs to auctions, India's Ministry of New and Renewable Energy has revealed a tender for 2 GW of wind capacity will be carried out by the Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), part of 4.5 GW of wind projects set to be auctioned by February 2018. The most recent tender in October reached a price of INR2.64 ($0.04) per kWh, a price competitive enough to attract distribution companies looking to meet non-solar renewable purchase obligations. SECI will be issuing a request for selection soon. | https://www.renewablesnow.com/news/india-unveils-plans-for-2-gw-wind-tender-592328/ | 2017-11-24 13:21:20.977000 | India's renewable energy ministry on Thursday announced a tender for 2 GW of wind capacity to be carried out by Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI).
India is in a process of transitioning from feed-in tariffs (FiTs) to auctions in the wind sector. The government's first 1-GW wind auction achieved a price of INR 3.46 (USD 0.053/EUR 0.045) per kWh and was followed by a second 1-GW tender, concluded in October, that resulted in a price of INR 2.64 per kWh.
Announcing approval for the bigger tender on Wednesday, the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) said that the competitive prices are encouraging distribution companies (discoms) to purchase wind power to meet their non-solar renewable purchase obligation (RPO). Buyers under the scheme will be discoms of non-windy states that need wind power to fulfil the non-solar RPO.
According to the document, published by the ministry, SECI should issue a request for selection (RfS) in a few days. Projects of at least 50 MW and up to 400 MW will be awarded per bidder. The off-take contracts will be for 25 years.
Navigant Research this week said that wind turbine orders announced globally fell in the first half of 2017 in part due to the shift to bidding in the Indian wind industry.
When reporting half-year results earlier this month, domestic wind turbine maker Suzlon Energy Ltd (BOM:532667) said the "transition period" was impacting volumes, but expressed confidence that the industry would regain momentum. "With the newly discovered tariff, Wind is competitive with respect to other sources of energy and has emerged as a mainstream energy source," chief executive J P Chalasani said then.
Last month there were reports in local media that the Indian government was considering tendering 4.5 GW of wind projects in three batches by February 2018 to speed up capacity additions.
(INR 100 = USD 1.546/EUR 1.303)
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Black Friday to increase pollution and plastic waste | Black Friday-related online shopping will bring 82,000 diesel vans and trucks onto UK roads, sparking fears that air pollution will spike on residential streets. Shoppers are expected to spend £1.35bn ($1.8bn) on Friday alone. The biggest shopping weekend in the UK and US sees particularly high numbers of plastic toys, games and electronic items being purchased, leading environmentalists to also warn of an increase in plastic waste. However, Brian Kay, director of Green Business Watch, said that the evidence suggested that online shopping was still less environmentally damaging than customers driving to shops.
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/24/black-friday-to-cause-spikes-in-air-pollution-and-plastic-waste-warn-environmentalists | 2017-11-24 13:04:37.640000 | The online shopping frenzy of the Black Friday weekend will see 82,000 diesel vans and trucks on UK roads, raising concerns of air pollution spikes on residential streets as more than £7bn of purchases are delivered.
In the UK online shoppers are expected to spend up to £1.35bn today alone, according to analysts at IMRG, the UK’s online retail association. Plastic toys, games and electronic goods are among the most sought after items in the biggest weekend of shopping in Britain and the US, with environmentalists and health experts warning that it will add to the mountain of plastic waste and increase air pollution.
The relatively modern post-Thanksgiving tradition has been adopted from the US, where nearly 70% of Americans – 164 million people – plan to shop this weekend, which spans Black Friday through to Cyber Monday, according to the National Retail Federation.
In the UK, Black Friday is mostly an online event, although retailers also saw queues this morning at shopping centres across the country. 81% of Black Friday purchases include a home delivery, with Amazon expected to take the majority of sales. A diesel truck will leave an Amazon fulfilment centre every 93 seconds at peak times, according to Staveley Head, which insures trucks and vans for retailers.
Stephen Holgate, professor of immunopharmacology at the Medical Research Council, said online shopping contributed to the air pollution crisis. “Vans are key contributors to diesel pollution. In our RCP [Royal College of Physicians] report we show van use continues to increase. Vans are now up to 10-12% of vehicles in our cities. They, along with small goods transport vehicles, are almost all diesel and make up about 12% of diesel emissions in urban settings.
“Supermarket and internet shopping really drives this and unlike people going to the shops themselves, the vans penetrate into quiet residential roads where vulnerable groups like children and the elderly live in large numbers. These vans sit and idle for hours in the road as they wait to deliver more packages, and this is a huge problem.”
He said the chancellor had missed an opportunity not to tackle “white van man” in the budget. Vans were explicitly left out of increases in tax on new diesel cars.
The weekend also marks the start of the Christmas shopping season, during which air pollution spikes are recorded around shopping centres, according to Gary Fuller of King’s College London. “Any increase in traffic, and especially diesel traffic on our roads, will not be helpful for air pollution,” he said.
Brian Kay, director of Green Business Watch, said reports still suggested online shopping impacted less on the environment than individuals driving to the shops. “What is important is that this online shopping is done in an as environmentally friendly way as possible, so, for example, those 82,000 diesel vehicles should be electric,” he said.
Some retailers are not taking part in Black Friday. In Seattle, outdoor clothing retailer REI is giving its 12,000 employees a paid holiday and will not process any online orders. Instead it is encouraging customers to spend time outside with family and friends.
Greenpeace is launching an alternative to what it labels the “hyper-consumerism” associated with Black Friday. It has organised an international makers festival – called “Make Smthng” – where people around the world are asked to come together to make, upcycle or repair something rather than shop.
“Black Friday has become one of the major peaks of consumerism,” said Chiara Campione, Greenpeace’s global project leader. “This shopping binge also generates greater volumes of waste than ever. This dangerous trend is harming our planet. We buy without thinking for a minute, but the waste we create will sometimes last for centuries.”
Plastic toys and games are expected to be some of the most sought after items over the weekend, according to Euromonitor International. But Roland Geyer, author of the first global analysis of mass produced plastics, said recycling and incineration would not be enough to stem the plastic flow from such consumerism.
“Even if we stay on the current trends of increasing recycling and incineration rates, we will have doubled the amount of plastic waste discarded since 1950 in the next 20 years,” he said.
“The easiest way to reduce plastic waste is to not buy that product made of plastic or packaged in plastic, destined to become rubbish much sooner than we like to think.” |
Apple patents suggest move into health monitoring | Speculation has mounted that Apple may be developing a health monitoring device after it secured a number of patents relating to the technology. In August, the company obtained a patent relating to a device that would use electrical contacts to monitor heart function and generate an electrocardiogram, as well as measure other indicators such as body fat and blood pressure, and gauge people's emotional states from their skin responses. In June it was reported that Apple was working on an app to put patients' medical records on to their iPhone to help them manage their health. | http://www.mobihealthnews.com/content/apple-poised-enter-ehr-market-new-patents-have-industry-buzzing | 2017-11-24 12:11:06.627000 | A new wave of speculation from industry analysts is putting Apple in the spotlight over its supposed plans for creating a new sort of EHR – the soul of a new device, so to speak.
The new speculation is fueled by the patents Apple has recently secured.
Analysts reason that Apple may be poised to enter the mobile healthcare monitoring device, EHR, and healthcare data storage markets.
Healthcare IT News reported in June that Apple was working to put health records on the iPhone, where iPhone users could easily access their medical records, including lab results, medical tests, appointments and other healthcare records in one place.
The more recent efforts appear to go beyond healthcare records, however.
Patent US 9723997 B, obtained by Apple back in August, for example, is an electronic device that computes health data of the user based upon sensor data regarding the received light.
In some implementations, the electronic device may also include one or more electrical contacts that contact one or more body parts of the user.
As described in the patent, “in such implementations, the health data may be further computed based on the electrical measurement obtained using the electrical contacts.
According to the patent description: “'Electrical measurements may be used to measure heart function, compute an electrocardiogram, compute a galvanic skin response that may be indicative of emotional state and/or other physiological condition, and/or compute other health data such as body fat, or blood pressure.”
Apple is not the lone tech giant showing an interest in healthcare. Amazon, too, has kept a close eye on the market.
Back in July, Amazon started a secret lab at its Seattle headquarters to explore business prospects in the healthcare sector, including EHRs and telemedicine. At the time Amazon was reportedly considering developing an EHR platform as well as telemedicine and health apps for existing devices, such as its Echo smart speakers, which connect to a personal assistant, called Alexa. It dubbed the project “1492,” the year Columbus first landed in the Americas.
Later, it appeared that Amazon was looking into ways to break into the pharmaceutical sector. |
Bank Negara Malaysia expected to issue crypto-regulation early 2018 | Traders in Malaysia converting digital currencies, such as bitcoin and litecoin, into fiat coinage will be considered reporting institutions regulated by the same laws covering the nation's banks, if widely expected regulations are unveiled by the country's state bank, Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM). The regulations are expected in early 2018 and would subject traders to anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism provisions. Governor Tan Sri Muhammad Ibrahim said the regulatory framework was necessary to ensure the stability and integrity of Malaysia's financial system and prevent fraud. There are, however, no definitive moves to make digital currencies legal tender.
| https://cointelegraph.com/news/malaysian-central-bank-to-issue-cryptocurrency-regulation-in-early-2018 | 2017-11-24 11:30:29.197000 | The Malaysian central bank, Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM), is expected to issue a directive to regulate the use of digital currencies in the country in early 2018. The central bank has been discussing and working on a proposed cryptocurrency regulation for some time now and this new development is expected to be hailed by industry players.
According to BNM Governor Tan Sri Muhammad Ibrahim, the introduction of regulations for virtual currencies are intended to prevent abusing the system for criminal and illegal activities and to maintain the stability and integrity of the financial system.
“The advent of digital currencies as some have forecast will mark the beginning of a new era in the financial sector. As authorities, we cannot be oblivious to these developments….The banking sector needs to adopt the latest and most advanced technologies to improve its risk management framework.”
Possible impact(s) of the new regulations on the cryptocurrency market
Under the regulations, individuals who convert their virtual currencies into fiat currencies will be considered as reporting institutions and will be subjected to Malaysia’s Anti-Money Laundering, Anti-Terrorism Financing and Proceeds of Unlawful Activities Act of 2001. This means that cryptocurrency transactions will be subjected to laws similar to those imposed on banks.
However, the implementation of regulations as a guide for digital currencies would not automatically mean that the virtual tokens are already accepted as legal tender in the country. It is just seen as an indication that the central bank is keeping an open mind on the new wave of innovative technologies being introduced in the financial sector.
The expected introduction of digital currency regulations also shows that an interesting future is awaiting the virtual currencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin in Malaysia. It remains to be seen, however, if this will lead to the mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies in the country. |
Council tax hike on empty homes won't solve problem, says MP | The decision by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, to allow local authorities to double council tax on properties left vacant for more than two years has been dubbed "water off an oligarch’s back" by critics. Hammond's changes would increase the highest band council tax charges on empty properties in Kensington and Chelsea from £2,124 a year to £4,248. Helen Williams, the CEO of charity Empty Homes, said: "It would be more helpful if the government carried out a review into why overseas buyers kept their properties empty."
| https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/nov/22/empty-homes-council-tax-rise-unlikely-to-deter-rich-owners-say-critics?utm_campaign=crowdfire&utm_content=crowdfire&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter#157042161-tw#1511425378000 | 2017-11-24 11:13:41.360000 | The government’s plan to tackle the housing crisis by increasing council tax on empty homes has been labelled a joke which will have little effect on the oligarchs, foreign royals and multi-millionaire businesses who own expensive vacant properties in the UK. .
Philip Hammond announced on Wednesday that councils would be able to charge 100% extra council tax on properties that have been empty for two or more years. Currently local authorities can charge up to 50%.
“It can’t be right to leave property empty when so many are desperate for a place to live,” the chancellor said in his budget address.
There are 1,652 empty homes in Kensington and Chelsea, the west London borough which includes Grenfell Tower, according to a leaked list. More than 600 of them have been empty for more than two years, and would be included in the higher tax.
Under Hammond’s plan, council tax on homes in the borough’s highest band would increase from £2,124 a year to £4,248. The average selling price there is £2.1m, with semidetached homes fetching an average of £6.2m. Some homes in the borough are valued at as much as £85m.
Paul Sweeney, the Labour MP for Glasgow North East, said Hammond’s plan would not solve the issue generally.
“We need to have a punitive rate above normal council tax to actually incentivise reuse of empty properties,” Sweeney said on Twitter. “What a joke.”
Hammond announcing an allowance for councils to charge a 100% council tax rate on empty property won't solve this issue. We need to have a punitive rate above normal council tax to actually incentivise reuse of empty properties. What a joke. #Budget2017 #FitForTheFew — Paul Sweeney MP (@PaulJSweeney) November 22, 2017
Henry Pryor, a buying agent for luxury property, said the increased tax would have no effect on wealthy buyers. “[It would be] water off an oligarch’s back,” he said. “The impact on the market is unlikely to be more than resentment from natural Conservative voters, some of whom had hoped they would be overlooked this time. Most higher value owners will regard this as a cost of doing business in London in particular and for the chance to own a home in one of the most highly regarded global centres.”
Pyror pointed out that more than 200 wealthy foreigners were already choosing to pay £218,200 a year in tax rather than declare which of London’s £20m-plus mega-mansions they owned.
Helen Williams, the chief executive of the charity Empty Homes, said the council tax increase would be little disincentive for those buying properties as investment. “For a very wealthy buyer spending millions, 100% council tax is not really enough of a disincentive,” she said. It would be more helpful if the government carried out a review into why overseas buyers kept their properties empty, she added.
Jeremy Corbyn, Labour’s leader, said: “We need a large-scale publicly funded house building programme, not this government’s accounting tricks and empty promises.”
According to Kensington and Chelsea data there are 64 homes listed as vacant in Notting Dale, the ward where Grenfell Tower was built. Of those, six are recorded as having been vacant for more than two years, and the remainder fall into the category of unoccupied and substantially unfurnished.
The ward listed as having the highest number of long-term empty properties is Brompton and Hans Town, which includes Sloane Street and Harrods. The ward has 100 homes listed as empty for more than two years and another 128 recorded as unoccupied and substantially unfurnished.
Analysis by the specialist trade magazine Inside Housing suggested there was a strong correlation between high house prices and the number of empty homes. “This will fuel suggestions that the so-called ‘buy to leave’ phenomenon – whereby investors buy properties to leave them empty – is rife in the borough,” the magazine said.
There are more than 200,000 homes in the UK that have been empty for more than six months, according to the latest government data. |
Financial consultants shrug off robo-advice threat | More than three-quarters of UK financial advisers don't see robo-advice as a threat to their businesses, according to research by Aegon. Advisers with larger client portfolios are less likely to view these platforms as a threat, according to the research. Advisers managing less than £5m ($6.7m) in client assets are three times as likely to view robo-advice as a significant threat to their businesses. Nonetheless, they expect demand for robo-advisers to increase over the next 12 months.
| http://www.financialreporter.co.uk/finance-news/three-quarters-of-advisers-unthreatened-by-robo-advice.html | 2017-11-24 11:03:59.147000 | "The poor customer take up of pure robo-advice propositions in the market today highlights the ongoing importance of the human aspect of an adviser’s service."
The research from Aegon found that the degree of concern felt by advisers correlates to the typical size of their client portfolios, with advisers whose client portfolios are at the lower end of the scale more alert to the threat from the lower cost option of robo-advice.
In some cases, this may also be explained where those with smaller portfolios may have less complex needs that could be served on a more basic, standardised approach.
For advisers with client portfolios of more than £200k, 88% feel it offers no threat to their business, and even for portfolios of up to £100k, the figure remains high at 73%.
While the majority of advisers believe robo-advice is no threat to their business, a third (31%) do point to robo-advice and similar digital services as one of the top challenges to the wider industry over the coming two years, a little behind Brexit (40%). Advisers who manage less than £5 million in client assets are three times more likely to feel threatened by the technology than those who manage over £100 million (63% vs 20%), suggesting advisers with less scale consider the new technology as more of a challenge to their business.
Steven Cameron, Pensions Director at Aegon, said: “The increasing use of technology in financial services is essential to engage customers in the future. It also provides opportunities for adviser firms to find new ways for people to access advice, particularly on less complex topics, which may not have been open to them in the past. This innovation has real potential to enhance adviser businesses, providing parallel advice and guidance offerings that can benefit customers and help close the advice gap.
“The poor customer take up of pure robo-advice propositions in the market today highlights the ongoing importance of the human aspect of an adviser’s service. For this reason we see robo-advice technology as being most likely to represent an opportunity for advisers to complement their offerings, and not a threat. Customers will increasingly come to expect digital services alongside traditional advice so it’s important advisers embrace technology and consider how best to deliver a seamless experience across digital and physical channels.
“Providers need to support intermediaries to create a successful market for advice and we believe robo developments will prove to be healthy for the adviser industry. As advisers grow used to the new innovations, they should prove to be a useful and valuable extension to face to face financial advice.” |
'Blackbox' insurance devices raise privacy concerns | Devices using artificial intelligence to track driving habits are being criticised on the grounds that users are often unclear about how private their data is. Concerns range from drivers being under surveillance by insurers to data being sold to unknown third parties. “It’s extending the Facebook model to insurance, which is what people had been worried about for a very long time,” said Madeline Ashby, a futurist and science fiction writer. However, providers of the technology argue that using this data to determine pricing allows good drivers to get lower premiums and risky driving to be properly assessed.
| https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/43nz9p/ai-powered-driving-apps-can-track-your-every-move | 2017-11-24 10:51:09.513000 | Forecast is a series exploring the future of AI and automation in a variety of different sectors—from the arts to city building to finance—to find out what the latest developments might mean for humanity's road ahead. We'll hear from Nikolas Badminton, David Usher, Jennifer Keesmaat, Heather Knight, Madeline Ashby and Director X, among others. Created by Motherboard in partnership with Audi.
Every day, approximately nine people are killed in the United States in car crashes related to distracted driving, and nearly 1,100 more are injured. In 2015, the National Safety Council, a nonprofit that promotes health and safety, reported cell phones were involved in 27 percent of all crashes in the US.
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In Canada, one estimate says distracted driving deaths have increased 26 percent in the past decade, and someone in Ontario is injured in a distracted driving-related collision every 30 minutes.
Cell phones are largely to blame for this increase in distracted driving. Lawmakers have sought to legislate the problem away, yet it remains; we’re addicted to our screens, even when that addiction could potentially kill us or others.
The tech world has taken notice and launched dozens of apps in recent years to combat the use of cellphones while driving. Live2Txt and LifeSaver, for example, block incoming calls or text messages while you’re driving.
Others, like TrueMotion, use AI algorithms to detect when you’re driving, where you’re going, what type of vehicle you’re in, how you’re using the phone (text messaging, calls, etc.) and provides a drive score that includes all of your distracted driving incidents, and when they happened.
The company (formerly Censio) touts increased safety and the potential monetary benefits of providing that safe driving data to your insurance company, but some critics are concerned about the privacy implications of apps that track your every movement without your complete knowledge.
“It’s extending the Facebook model to insurance, which is what people had been worried about for a very long time,” Madeline Ashby, a futurist and science fiction writer, told Motherboard. “You’d be surrendering vast amounts of data about yourself, from which patterns can be inferred and used against you by a judgemental system.”
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And then there’s the privacy implications of all this data, including where drivers have been, how long they were there, and other patterns they might not want others to know.
According to the terms of use for the Nexar dashcam, for example, “We reserve the right to store incidents and time-lapse photography indefinitely in order to support the ratings assigned to drivers' license plate numbers.”
Brad Cordova, co-founder of TrueMotion, told Motherboard the issue of who actually owns the data can vary based on the insurer and their agreements with clients.
“Insurance companies don’t really want all the data … they care more about the customer experience,” he said. “I think this is an ongoing discussion about who owns the data [and] when.”
The app and others like it are all part of a larger move toward so-called “usage based insurance” (UBI). This market is growing, with as many as 10 different UBI products available in almost every US state.
TrueMotion always runs in the background and uses your phone's own speed and GPS sensors, along with deep learning algorithms, to contextualize your movement and determine how your phone is being used. It can detect what kind of vehicle you’re in (a bus has a different vibration pattern from a car, for example) and whether you’re the driver or passenger. If can detect speed, sudden braking or acceleration, how far the phone is from your face, and if the device is up to your ear or sitting in a phone mount.
Cordova said it helps make the insurance process fairer for good drivers, because it can eliminate the traditional method of categorizing drivers by age and gender and instead helps companies base their rates on actual driving habits.
In May, Forbes reported a good score can earn a 20 percent premium discount from Progressive Insurance, while bad drivers can see hikes of 10 percent.
Ashby, however, worries that by using data we might not realize we’re giving up creates an unfair advantage for insurance companies. You might not even be aware of some of your driving habits, but the insurance companies are and they can ding you in the pocketbook, she said. Worse, they might examine other factors unrelated to driving performance (such as the kind of music you listen to) and make assumptions about your driving habits. |
Google, Facebook can't control their algorithms |
Large technology companies, such as Google and Facebook may not be able to fully understand the sprawling algorithms which help search for news online. Such algorithms have become so large and complex that even with careful attention they may not be able to be tweaked to alleviate bugs and other issues. Large tech players are also facing criticism for claiming they have no editorial control despite being able to set the initial parameters of their search capabilities.
| https://www.poynter.org/news/do-facebook-and-google-have-control-their-algorithms-anymore-sobering-assessment-and-warning | 2017-11-24 10:46:16.277000 | If you searched Google immediately after the recent mass shooting in Texas for information on the gunman, you would have seen what Justin Hendrix, the head of the NYC Media Lab, called a “misinformation gutter.” A spokesperson for Google later gave a statement to Gizmodo that placed blame squarely on an algorithm:
"The search results appearing from Twitter, which surface based on our ranking algorithms, are changing second by second and represent a dynamic conversation that is going on in near real-time. For the queries in question, they are not the first results we show on the page. Instead, they appear after news sources, including our Top Stories carousel which we have been constantly updating. We’ll continue to look at ways to improve how we rank tweets that appear in search."
In other words, it was an algorithm — not a human making editorial decisions — that was responsible for this gaffe. But as Gizmodo’s Tom McKay pointed out, this kind of framing is intentional and used frequently by Twitter and other social networks when problems arise.
He writes: “Google, Twitter, and Facebook have all regularly shifted the blame to algorithms when this happens, but the issue is that said companies write the algorithms, making them responsible for what they churn out.”
Algorithms can be gamed, algorithms can be trained on biased information, and algorithms can shield platforms from blame. Mike Ananny puts it this way:
By continually claiming that it is a technology company — not a media company — Facebook can claim that any perceived errors in Trending Topics or News Feed products are the result of algorithms that need tweaking, artificial intelligence that needs more training data, or reflections of users. It claims that it is not taking any editorial position.
Platforms rely on these algorithms to perform actions at scale, but algorithms at scale also become increasingly inscrutable, even to the people who wrote the code. In her recent TED Talk about the complexity of AI, Zeynep Tufekci points out that not even the people behind Facebook’s algorithms truly understand them:
We no longer really understand how these complex algorithms work. We don't understand how they're doing this categorization. It's giant matrices, thousands of rows and columns, maybe millions of rows and columns, and not the programmers and not anybody who looks at it, even if you have all the data, understands anymore how exactly it's operating any more than you'd know what I was thinking right now if you were shown a cross section of my brain. It's like we're not programming anymore, we're growing intelligence that we don't truly understand.
This is problematic for journalism. We cannot write about what we cannot see, but we increasingly write about what we think will be surfaced by these algorithms, which generate eyeballs, which then generate clicks, which then generate an increasingly smaller pool of digital ad dollars (the majority of which are now going to Facebook and Google.)
And despite our (perhaps) growing unease with these platforms, we still rely on the them for distribution. In their excellent report on the convergence between publishers and platforms, Emily Bell and Taylor Owen write that “A growing number of news organizations see investing in social platforms as the only prospect for a sustainable future, whether for traffic or for reach,” echoing what Franklin Foer recently wrote in The Atlantic about The New Republic’s increasing dependency on these platforms — and what their algorithms might surface: “Dependence generates desperation — a mad, shameless chase to gain clicks through Facebook, a relentless effort to game Google’s algorithms. It leads media outlets to sign terrible deals that look like self-preserving necessities: granting Facebook the right to sell their advertising, or giving Google permission to publish articles directly on its fast-loading server. In the end, such arrangements simply allow Facebook and Google to hold these companies ever tighter.”
Maciej Ceglowski
This reliance on algorithmic click-chasing was the basis for a recent essay by Maciej Ceglowski, who runs a bookmarking site called Pinboard and frequently writes about socio-technological issues. He traces one story that burgeoned out of Amazon’s “frequently bought together” algorithm, and then spread very quickly to other media outlets, despite little evidence that it was true. Justification for republishing, he wrote, was often because other news outlets had already reported on it. He writes: “Together with climate change, this algorithmic takeover of the public sphere is the biggest news story of the early 21st century. We desperately need journalists to cover it. But as they grow more dependent on online publishing for their professional survival, their capacity to do this kind of reporting will disappear, if it has not disappeared already.”
Our conversation is below.
You write that "the real story in this mess is not the threat that algorithms pose to Amazon shoppers, but the threat that algorithms pose to journalism." But it seems like there's also an additional threat here – that there's an increasing reliance on using these algorithms and tools to show what’s performing well on competitors' social media sites to find story ideas.
I'm curious to get your thoughts on how so many news organizations wind up with the same piece on the same topic — and how we move away from click-chasing when so many are reliant on clicks to pay the bills.
It’s important not to confuse individual tools with the broader structural problems in journalism that make people feel those tools are necessary. The tool(s) you mention (and many others like it) are a symptom of the broader problem, which is that social networks have become the primary distribution channel for news. News organizations have become wholly dependent on Facebook and Google in particular for online distribution, and for whatever revenue they still get, but the interests of those two companies do not align with those of journalists or the public. The problem is the casino, not the specific slot machines in it.
Are there ways to build reward mechanisms or incentives into search/social to combat this mentality of click-chasing? If it's not going to come from the publishers, could it come from elsewhere? Tech workers? Who has the leverage here to create change?
There is no technical solution for this problem. Publishers need to find a way to isolate journalists from the immediate pressure of click chasing, while finding a way to keep the lights on that is less reliant on Google and Facebook. In particular, we need some way to insulate working journalists from the pressure to pile on to stories they don’t have adequate time to research, and the pressure to evaluate their success by clicks and virality on a per-story basis.
The only people who have the leverage to change the rules of the casino are tech workers. Even a small group of specialized workers at Google or Facebook, if they made a concerted effort, have enough clout that they could push through policies that would improve the state of online journalism. But they have so far declined to use this power, even for modest workplace changes in their own self interest.
Who do you think is covering algorithms well and accurately? How would you like to see them covered?
Just like the story of industrial revolution was not really about valves and pistons, what’s happening around machine learning is not tied to the details of the implementation. The real story of algorithms and machine learning is how these technologies are affecting communities and societies. The algorithm story only makes sense when it’s rooted in a larger context of power relationships between people.
Journalists should not be intimidated by the technical content of machine learning, which despite its name and reputation is not prohibitively complex. The distinguishing feature of machine learning in our era is that its implementation is simple but inscrutable, even to the programmers who build it. You feed massive data sets into a fairly simple mathematical contraption, and get useful results. But you can’t point to why you got those results, any more than a brain surgeon can point to individual thoughts in your head.
Two key points I wish journalists would remember: first, for machine learning to be effective, it has to train on truly enormous amounts of user data. This drives a dynamic of restless and aggressive surveillance.
Second, when these techniques fail, they fail in ways that are not human. AI is simple math, there's no room in it for ethics, or common sense, or empathy. Some of the egregious errors we will catch, but a lot of them we will not. These systems, which would require an extraordinary level of oversight to run safely, are being deployed across the planet by naive Stanford grads with almost no human supervision, for profit, and have the potential to profoundly reshape our society.
Is it even possible to cover these systems well and accurately? If material cannot be found, it basically doesn't exist — so what's the line, and how do journalists balance?
Journalists have painted themselves into an ethical corner, because their work is hostage to the same surveillance and distribution system that is destroying their profession. They deserve some of the blame for this.
Moreover, Google has shown itself to be aggressive towards criticism that starts to hit home. But journalists are supposed to be good at confronting power. Weaning media outlets off of Facebook, and off of online ads as the sole source of revenue, will create some space for more assertive and skeptical coverage of that world.
It's almost like we need a technical ombudsman to assess these things. I'm curious what you think of that — or what role(s) within a newsroom should be taking this on. It's an ethical question, but usually the people who think about ethics in newsrooms come from a news background, not a technical one.
What you need is just a regular ombudsman, vigilant against the corrosive effects of click chasing, rushed deadlines, and herd behavior.
The technical machinery of the online ad casino is not what's vital here. What’s important is countering its effects. Witness just the last week of news, where a humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico got almost no front-page coverage because news organizations (correctly) determined that they would get the most clicks by covering a feud between the President and the NFL. At one point, the NYT had eight NFL feud stories on its front page, while millions of Puerto Ricans went without water or power.
It doesn’t take someone steeped in algorithms to point out that this is a shameful dereliction of journalistic duty. It just takes an independent voice within the organization unafraid to speak up. But the New York Times just got rid of its ombudsman role.
How do we effectively cover the technical organizations that sponsor our conferences?
If you want to bite the hand that feeds you, it’s good to have somewhere else to eat. Stop letting them sponsor your conferences! Switch to a cheaper hotel, have the conference in Dayton instead of New York, do whatever you have to do to wean yourselves off that sweet, sweet tech money. I can pass the hat for this among tech workers, if you think it will help.
But stop cozying up to the people destroying your profession. I have been to these news conferences and watched Google baldly assert that it lacks the resources to prune fake news, while prominent journalists nodded along. It was embarrassing to even watch.
Focus less on the technology (where it’s easy to fall prey to bullshit) and much more on the power relationships and which way the money flows. Talk to technical experts and cultivate technical sources. Don’t let the big tech companies intimidate you.
[Disclosure: Poynter receives funding from Google News Lab.]
What's the answer here? Like, what do we do? Reporters aren't going to be given more time to write up stories, they need to file, they have Crowdtangle and Chartbeat and Twitter Trends and ways to see what's resonating — what's the way forward?
Recognize that you are going down a path of no return for your profession. The online ad racket thrives on novelty, and you will be forever chasing new formats, with diminishing returns, while upstarts with no ideological scruples like Breitbart eat your lunch. Stop looking at which of your stories ‘resonate’, based on clicks and views, and find an alternative way to evaluate your work that is not so granular. Otherwise you’re doomed. Doooomed.
Evaluate reporters base on their aggregate body of work, not on each individual story. Burn your tracking codes. Give people a way to pay you directly, rather than through ads. Stop enabling surveillance.
Reporters have been busy, harried and on deadline since the first newspaper. That’s part of the professional identity. But you’re also prone to self-pity in a way that doesn’t do credit to your industry. Get out there and bust heads.
Switching gears for a second, I'm curious how you come up with the longform essay topics on your blog. You’ve written about Antarctica and scurvy and flight and infrastructure projects, and they're all incredibly well-researched and varied. What inspires you to take something on?
I can’t walk three steps without having a deep insight. I remember things better when I write about them, and I also enjoy long-windedly explaining things to people. So when I get particularly obsessed about a topic, it's fun for me to write it up.
You talk about algorithms, and the need for better reporting — but I also see a need for better coverage of numbers in general (You point this out more than a decade ago.) If you were going to design a curriculum for journalists to follow, what kinds of courses and skills would you want them to know? (And the all-important question: How does this then spread to smaller newsrooms where resources are even more strapped…?)
First off, journalists need to know how to do practical security. In conjunction with Tech Solidarity, I've been offering a 50-minute security briefing for working journalists, and I’m happy to offer it to any reporter, for free. People need to be safe.
If I could teach journalists three mathy things, they would be these:
1. Basic probability and statistics.
2. The concept of one-way functions and cryptographic signatures that is at the heart of secure messaging and e-commerce.
3. The basic concepts that underpin machine learning. I realize this sounds daunting, but I am an art major and absorbed this stuff.
We need better online explainers for this, and this is something the tech industry can help with. I’m hoping to get a deeper understanding of machine learning this year so I can write a decent, intellectually honest explainer for journalists and other interested people outside the field. |
India's Flipkart to start selling insurance coverage | Indian online retailer Flipkart is planning to offer insurance coverage. The retailer is awaiting regulatory approval, and will initially offer life, health and general insurance policies, while other lines may follow in the future. Flipkart will partner with three insurers for each line of coverage. A timeline for the launch of the offering has not yet been determined. Flipkart has amassed almost $4bn in funding, having garnered investment from Microsoft, eBay, SoftBank and Tencent.
| https://www.vccircle.com/flipkart-to-start-selling-insurance-products-in-services-push/ | 2017-11-24 10:40:04.510000 | Flipkart to start selling insurance products in services push
Credit: Reuters
Homegrown e-commerce major Flipkart will sell insurance products on its platform, filings with the Registrar of Companies show.
Flipkart will initially sell products in general, life and health insurance and intends to later venture into other categories such as motor insurance as well, the filings state.
The company will launch this product after obtaining the regulatory approval from the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority. IRDA regulations allow Flipkart to tie-up with up to three insurers under each of insurance category. The e-commerce major will facilitate and provide end-to-end transactions (except underwriting) that include discovery, payment, delivery and after-sales services.
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However, the exact timeline of the launch was not specified as it is not clear whether the company has already obtained the regulatory approval. It could also not be ascertained whether Flipkart has already partnered with any insurance players.
Flipkart did not immediately respond to email queries from VCCircle, seeking more information about its foray into insurance.
In June this year, media reports stated that Flipkart was considering selling financial products and services online.
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Flipkart, which sees this line of business as a potential revenue spinner, is betting on its large customer base to expand the reach of the insurance products. Besides, it is also counting on its other capabilities such as its huge data mine of consumer insights, a differentiated value proposition to customers and its ability to deliver top-notch customer experience, Flipkart stated in the filings.
Flipkart is leaving no stone unturned in its efforts to keep competition at bay with its deep-pocketed rival Amazon offering a range of diversified services, thanks to its $4 billion war chest that it amassed, courtesy of funding rounds from Japan’s SoftBank in August, and Microsoft, Tencent, and eBay in April.
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Flipkart is also reportedly developing a WeChat-like app, where it aims to become an aggregator of several services that will operate under a single platform.
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Coca-Cola and Gogglebox collaboration is most engaging Xmas ad | Coca-Cola's Christmas advert has been judged the most engaging for viewers in a survey conducted using facial recognition technology. Research agency RealEyes used webcams to monitor the reaction of viewers to video content, which it then analysed. In the survey, the company showed 55 UK Christmas adverts to 3,300 people. The Coca-Cola video showing members of Channel 4's Gogglebox programme responding to the company's Holidays Are Coming ad was rated in first place for audience reaction, while Vodafone's Christmas Love Story came in second. John Lewis finished in 17th place, after winning last year.
| http://www.thedrum.com/news/2017/11/24/emotional-tracking-says-gogglebox-and-coca-colas-christmas-collab-most-engaging-ad | 2017-11-24 09:29:08.217000 | A film showing the cast of Channel 4's Gogglebox reacting to Coca-Cola's much-anticipated and annual 'Holidays are Coming' ad was found to be the UK’s most engaging spot of the season, according to facial recognition data from Realeyes.
Coca Cola's Holidays Are Coming is the most engaging Christmas ad
The agency tested 55 of the top Christmas ads to see which ones evoked the most attention – and more importantly – emotion from viewers.
The twist on Coke's classic film, which showed families on their sofas chatting about the ad, trumped Vodafone, John Lewis and McDonald's to claim the crown.
The top ten spots were populated by the following brands.
1. Coca-Cola: Gogglebox on 'Holidays are coming'
2. Vodafone: 'A Christmas Love Story'
3. McDonald's: 'Carrot stick Christmas'
4. M&S: 'Paddington and the Christmas Visitor'
5. Currys/PC World: 'Merry Techmas'
6. H Samuel: 'Beautiful Christmas Gifts'
7. Waitrose: 'Christmas together'
8. Heathrow: 'Bears Christmas'
9.Pandora: 'Do Get What You Wish For'
10. Tesco: 'Turkey, Every Which Way'
Coca-Cola and McDonald’s, Tesco all opted for portraying typical household situations which Realeyes speculated found leverage due to audiences due to their “more honest insight into the real-life nature of Christmas”.
Mihkel Jäätma, chief executive of Realeyes, said: “Whilst the hype around Christmas ads has now become a national pastime, it’s sometimes forgotten that their job is to help sell more products and people’s emotional response plays a big part in where they decide to shop.
“This year saw advertisers trying to be more authentic by using real-life situations, humour and romance to relate to people, which could be seen as a way to cheer them up via universal themes after what’s been another divisive and turbulent year.”
John Lewis, and 'Moz the Monster' placed 17th after taking the crown in 2016 with 'Buster the Boxer'.
The study involved Realeyes measuring the emotional reactions of 3,300 people. |
Boeing and China's Okay Airways finalise $1.4bn jet order | Beijing-based Okay Airways, jointly privately owned by Boeing and China, has finalised a $1.4bn order for five 787-9 Dreamliner jets. China's aviation expansion is being spurred on by its growing middle class and tourism industry, and competition for international routes is intensifying between China's three main airlines, Air China, China Eastern and China Southern. Okay currently has 26 Boeing 737s in its fleet.
| http://www.scmp.com/business/companies/article/2121345/okay-airways-china-buys-five-boeing-dreamliners-us14-billion | 2017-11-24 09:26:13.813000 | Okay Airways, China's first privately owned airline, is seen at the terminal of Huanghua airport in the central Chinese city Changsha. The airline finalised an order for five Boeing Dreamliners. Photo: EPA |
TalkTalk Hundreds complain outage shuttered internet access | TalkTalk's home broadband service suffered an outage, according to crowd-sourced data from independent website DownDetector. It has tracked social media posts related to the subject, saying the problem appeared most severe in London, Nottingham, Manchester and Birmingham. TalkTalk's Twitter account acknowledged outages in parts of the country, apologised and said it was "working on resolving” the problem.
| https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/science-technology/883443/TalkTalk-Down-Home-Broadband-Internet-Not-Working | 2017-11-24 09:11:48.700000 | TalkTalk Down: The home broadband provider appears to be suffering an outage
Update • 14:52 GMT
TalkTalk’s online service status checker does not acknowledge any problems with its home broadband – despite hundreds of complaints from customers online.
However, the TalkTalk’s official social media account (@TalkTalk on Twitter) is informing some users that it is “currently experiencing issues” in certain areas of the UK.
Replying to one disgruntled customer from Manchester, @TalkTalk tweeted: “Hi Jody, unfortunately we're currently experiencing issues there, we're working on getting this resolved now.”
It has also tweeted that it is “currently experiencing some issues with services in the North West.
“We're working on resolving this now, and we're sorry for any inconvenience caused.”
Asked when customers could expect the problems to be fixed, the account replied: “we don't have a time right now but the team are on the case and we hope to get it sorted asap.”
Original Story –
TalkTalk appears to be down for hundreds of customers across the UK.
Enraged TalkTalk home broadband customers have flooded social media to complain about the outage. |
Dazed boosts native ads engagement with website redesign | British media group Dazed has revealed its recent website overhaul has increased user dwell time by 21% to two minutes and 19 seconds, with visitors spending an estimated seven minutes reading its native ads, compared with two minutes before the redesign. The lifestyle and culture brand also said the number of homepage visitors who read three stories has risen by 34%, while the number of viewers clicking on two has gone up by 43%. Bridget Mills-Powell, the head of digital, said part of the revamp involved ditching ads that were "great for impressions but bad for viewability".
| https://digiday.com/media/dazeds-redesign-cut-ads-people-staying-lot-longer/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=digidaydis&utm_source=uk&utm_content=171124 | 2017-11-24 08:33:50.893000 | Lifestyle and culture magazine Dazed redesigned its website this September with the goals of getting people to read more articles, making native ads more visible, and focusing on fewer, more effective display ads.
The redesign has increased time on site by 21 percent to two minutes and 19 seconds, according to the publisher. The article page was tweaked to show three related articles and one native ad, based on prior site behavior.
Dazed has served 5.7 million native ad impressions across the site in the last month, like this text-based article on portraits from citizens of Memphis in partnership eyewear brand Ace & Tate. These are co-created by the Dazed editorial team and the advertiser. According to the company, readers that come from its homepage (roughly 15 percent of all traffic, Dazed estimates) are spending on average seven minutes with its native ads, rather than roughly two minutes before the redesign.
Those changes were driven by advertising clients requesting more visibility for their native posts. Previously native ads were getting lost on the old homepage, which was an updated feed of the most-read articles, according to Bridget Mills-Powell, head of digital at Dazed.
Publishers are keen to keep people glued to their site, as time spent is proving a more attractive metric to advertisers than pageviews or video views. USA Today has redesigned its site around personalization to encourage readers to stick around, leading to a 75 percent increase in time spent per article.
As part of the redesign Dazed overhauled its display ads, scrapping ones that were “great for impressions but bad for viewability,” said Mills-Powell. Native ad revenue currently makes up half of Dazed’s digital revenue, with display advertising accounting for the other half, although Mills-Powell anticipates native will overtake display next year. Dazed introduced a bespoke header unit, which existing clients Hermes, Balenciaga and Gucci have used on campaigns. The latter had 1.66 percent click-through rate during the week the site went live, industry average click-through rates are woefully low at 0.35 percent, according to Google. As a result, viewability has also gone up by 20 percent, according to the company.
Most people won’t access Dazed by visiting its homepage, but those that do are its most loyal and engaged users. Since the redesign, the number of visitors to the homepage who go on to view three stories has increased by 34 percent and the number clicking on two stories has increased by 43 percent. Dazed doesn’t typically share absolute traffic numbers.
An internal core team of five have been working on the Dazed redesign for about two months. Dazed will keep A/B testing over the next few months, one avenue it’s looking at is how to tailor content to users based on referral, whether that’s social or search.
Image: courtesy of Dazed via Facebook. |
German, Italian Amazon workers strike on busy Black Friday | Amazon workers in Germany and Italy have gone on strike on Black Friday, one of the retailer's busiest days of the year, as their unions hold out for better bonuses and higher pay. Also, the 500 workers in Italy have said they will not do any overtime until 31 December, which may cause delays for customers. "We want a bonus because the company is having great results, and the profits need to be distributed," said trade unionist Gianluca Zilocchi. Workers at six German distribution centres are also striking on Black Friday, 24 November.
| https://www.cnet.com/news/amazon-workers-to-strike-in-italy-germany-this-black-friday/ | 2017-11-24 08:06:18.457000 | Amazon won't be enjoying Black Friday -- and the rest of the holiday season -- this year.
Over 500 workers at the e-commerce giant's main distribution hub in Italy have agreed to strike for the first time this Black Friday after disappointing talks with Amazon for bonuses and better pay, Reuters reported Wednesday. The plan follows strikes scheduled for the same day at six Amazon warehouses in Germany.
The strike is set to last the entire holiday season until Dec. 31 and expected to disrupt Amazon's busiest shopping season -- the company told the Financial Times it received more than a million orders last Black Friday. But it added that it remained committed to ensuring its customers receive their orders punctually during this period.
The number of orders Amazon receives on Black Friday may seem little compared to Alibaba's 1.48 billion shoppers this Singles' Day, but the online retailer still has to more than double its staff strength to cope with higher demand. Amazon employs 1,600 permanent staff at its Piacenza site in Northern Italy, but brings up its staff strength to 4,000 every year during the shopping season. The hub opened when Amazon launched its platform in Italy in 2010. Workers are paid a monthly average of 1,300 euros (about $1,541), according to FT.
In a statement, Amazon said its workers are among the highest paid in the logistics sector and enjoy benefits such as private medical insurance and training subsidies. But trade unions disagree.
"The world's biggest online retailer wants to achieve record sales on [Black Friday], but employees have to produce record performance not only on this day so that everything runs how Amazon wants it," Stefanie Nutzenberger, board member of a German trade union, told Reuters.
"We want a bonus because the company is having great results, and the profits need to be distributed," Gianluca Zilocchi, secretary of an Italian trade union told FT. "There's also a question of rights and a suffocating climate for workers."
CNET has reached out to Amazon for a comment.
Watch this: Shop for gifts on Amazon without giving away surprises 02:11
Rebooting the Reef: CNET dives deep into how tech can help save Australia's Great Barrier Reef.
The Smartest Stuff: Innovators are thinking up new ways to make you, and the things around you, smarter. |
Aviva fights gender inequality with shared parental leave | Insurance company Aviva is to offer equal parental leave to men and women in a move designed to promote gender equality. The policy will also apply to part-time workers. In the UK, leave of up to a year will be offered, with 26 weeks of basic full pay available to staff “regardless of gender, sexual orientation or how they became a parent”. The policy will initially be launched in a number of locations including the UK, Canada, France, Ireland and Singapore, for those who became parents on or after 19 November. It will be extended further next year. | https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/nov/24/aviva-offers-equal-paid-parental-leave-to-male-and-female-staff | 2017-11-24 00:00:00 | The insurance company Aviva is offering equal parental leave for men and women, with six months’ pay across the board, in a move that is meant to eradicate career impediments for female staff.
Parents employed by Aviva will be offered the same benefit of up to a year’s leave, with 26 weeks of basic full pay “regardless of gender, sexual orientation or how they became a parent”.
It opens the door for not only biological parents but those using a surrogate or opting for adoption.
“The new policy is part of Aviva’s strategy to create a diverse and inclusive working culture in which barriers to career progression are removed,” the company said.
The move has been hailed by unions for helping progress equality and diversity in the workplace. Andy Case, a regional officer for Unite, said: “Unite believes that the parental leave policy announced today is market leading and represents a significant and positive step forward for equality in the workplace.
“We are keen to hear our members’ comments on this positive initiative, which we will feed back to Aviva management as part of our ongoing dialogue on equality, diversity and inclusion.”
Aviva is launching the policy in a handful of locations, including the UK, Ireland, France, Singapore and Canada, for those employees who became parents on or after 19 November, before extending it to its other businesses within the next year.
However, it said the amount of time off and resulting pay could differ by country. UK staff will be offered up to 12 months off – half of which will be paid.
The policy will be available to any employee regardless of the amount of time they have worked at Aviva or how much they earn.
Part-time employees are also eligible, and there is no requirement to share leave between parents even if they both work for the insurer.
The Aviva chief executive, Mark Wilson, said: “I want to live in a world where the only criteria for success is someone’s talent, not their gender. Treating parents equally will help make this happen.
“We want Aviva to be a progressive, inclusive, welcoming place to work. It’s good for our people and it’s also good business sense.” |
US farmers use twice as many antibiotics as those in UK | US farmers could be using more than twice as many antibiotics per animal as those in the UK, according to research by food and farming group Sustain. The research has exacerbated fears that food standards in the UK would be undermined by a trade deal with the US after Brexit. Sustain said that sales of antibiotics for animals in the US have risen by 26% since 2009, compared with a 27% fall in the UK. Medical experts have called for an urgent reduction in the use of antibiotics in order to avoid the development of antibiotic resistance.
| https://www.sustainweb.org/news/nov17_us_farms_use_twice_antibiotics_of_uk_farms/ | 2017-11-24 00:00:00 | Fresh analysis published by the food and farming alliance Sustain today indicates that US farm antibiotic use is now more than twice as high per animal as it is in the UK. Data from the US Food and Drug Administration [1] shows that total sales of medically important antibiotics for use in animals increased by 26% between 2009 and 2015. By contrast, the UK government recently reported on a 27 per cent drop in use of antibiotics in animals reared on British farms over the last two years. [2]
American farmers and meat processors routinely use antibiotics, chlorine rinses and irradiation to reduce food-poisoning bugs in meat. However, health campaigners argue these carry their own risks and often mask poor welfare and hygiene standards on farms, in slaughterhouses and in meat processing. The World Health Organisation recently called on farmers and the food industry to stop routinely using antibiotics prophylactically in healthy animals. [3] This is to preserve the effectiveness for treatment of actual disease outbreaks in humans and animals.
Kath Dalmeny, Chief Executive of the Sustain food and farming alliance [4] said:
“When US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told the CBI last week that the UK would have to accept US meat standards, I was horrified. Mass-produced American chicken may seem cheap, but it comes at a gigantic cost to our health, animals and workers.
“British food and farming industries have started to take action on the critically important issue of overuse of antibiotics in farming. We simply cannot afford to let our trade negotiators sweep such progress aside by flooding our market with cut-price US chicken raised with routine antibiotic use.
“If antibiotics lose their efficacy through over-use in medicine and farming, we will return to an era when millions of lives could be lost every year to simple infections. [5] All food and trade policy must reinforce international efforts to reduce antibiotic use, not create new markets for farmers – such as those in the US – who are using much more than they should.”
Cóilín Nunan, Scientific Adviser to the Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics [6], said:
“We need to consider what pressure UK regulators will come under - and what farming practices we may be supporting internationally – as a result of international trade deals. Many European countries, including the UK, are starting to phase out routine preventative use and to significantly cut overall antibiotic use. There is even the real possibility of an EU-wide ban in routine preventative use in the next few years. In contrast, the United States still has no serious plans to deal with antibiotic abuse in farming, and use is increasing every year. Antimicrobial-resistant bacteria are no respecters of country borders. Rather than the UK adopting US standards, we need to call on the US to show some leadership on reducing the use of antibiotics in animals through improvements in production systems and animal husbandry. This is in everyone’s interests.”
The new comparison of farm antibiotic use data comes as the Government enters trade talks with the US, in which the Americans are expected to argue strongly in favour of the UK abandoning EU food standards in order to secure a speedy trade deal. [7] But a House of Lords report from July this year flagged that domestic producers fear the market being flooded with cheaper, lower welfare imports that will make it difficult for them to compete. [8]
ENDS. Media contact: Orla Delargy, Sustain; email: [email protected]
Editor’s notes
[1] 2015 Summary Report on Antimicrobials Sold or Distributed for Use in Food-Producing Animals; US Food and Drug Administration Department of Health and Human Services, December 2016: https://www.fda.gov/downloads/ForIndustry/UserFees/AnimalDrugUserFeeActADUFA/UCM534243.pdf
[2] Press release: Record low for sales of antibiotics for use in animals, from: Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, Veterinary Medicines Directorate, and Department of Health. Published 27 October 2017: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/record-low-for-sales-of-antibiotics-for-use-in-animals
[3] News release: Stop using antibiotics in healthy animals to prevent the spread of antibiotic resistance, UN World Health Organization. Published 7 November 2017: http://who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2017/antibiotics-animals-effectiveness/en/
[4] Sustain representing about 100 national organisations working for better food, fishing and farming – to improve health, ethical food production, farming livelihoods and the environment: https://www.sustainweb.org
[5] Taken from conclusions of the UK’s Review on Antimicrobial Resistance, commissioned by the UK government and chaired by Jim O’Neill – see the 2016 report at: https://amr-review.org/
[6] The Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics is an alliance of health, medical, civil society and animal welfare groups campaigning to stop the overuse of antibiotics in animal farming. It was founded by Compassion in World Farming, the Soil Association and Sustain in 2009, and is supported by the Jeremy Coller Foundation. The alliance’s vision is a world in which human and animal health and well-being are protected by food and farming systems that do not rely on routine antibiotic use: http://www.saveourantibiotics.org/
[7] US commerce secretary Wilbur Ross said to the CBI on 6 November 2017: “Discussions with the private sector reveal that the removal of both tariff and non-tariff barriers will be a critical component of any trade discussions between us… we must reduce unnecessary divergences in regulations and standards that many of our companies, especially our SMEs, face.” See Guardian report, 6 November 2017, Trump adviser Ross says UK-US trade deal will mean scrapping EU rules: Commerce secretary’s comments suggest Britain will have to accept chlorinated chicken in post-Brexit agreement: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/nov/06/trump-ross-says-uk-us-trade-deal-eu-brexit-chlorinated-chicken and CBI report at: http://www.cbi.org.uk/news/cbi2017-blog-wilbur-ross-speaks-at-the-cbi-annual-conference/
[8] House of Lords European Union Committee, 5th Report of Session 2017–19, HL Paper 15, Brexit: farm animal welfare, published 25 July 2017: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201719/ldselect/ldeucom/15/15.pdf
Notes on data analysis
A rough comparison can be made between antibiotic use in US and UK livestock. In 2015, total sales of medically important antibiotics in the US was 9,702 tonnes whereas in the UK in 2016 it was 337 tonnes. So total US use was approximately 29 times higher than UK use in absolute terms. In terms of livestock populations, in 2015:
the US had 9.3 times more cattle
the US had 14.4 times more pigs
the US slaughtered 11.2 times more chickens (figures for the UK are for 2014)
the US had 6.2 times fewer sheep.
Since antibiotic use is known to be extremely low in sheep in comparison to other species, these figures suggest that US farm antibiotic use is more than twice as high per animal as it is in the UK.
Published 24 Nov 2017 Save Our Antibiotics: The Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics is a coalition of health, medical, environmental and animal welfare groups campaigning to stop the overuse of antibiotics in animal farming. Press office |
HeyDoctor unveils app enabling doctors to text prescriptions | Medical technology start-up HeyDoctor has launched a telemedicine app enabling doctors to prescribe treatments for some conditions via text message. Patients can be referred for services including urinary tract infection treatment, cold sore and acne management, HIV testing and birth control provision. Once a prescription has been given, medication can be ordered via mail or collected at a pharmacy. Payment is made through the app rather than via an insurer. HeyDoctor has an in-house medical team of doctors to evaluate patients' needs through it may in future work with health systems.
| https://medcitynews.com/2017/11/heydoctor-app/?rf=1 | 2017-11-23 18:57:11.700000 | Getting a prescription via text is a possibility.
San Francisco, California-based HeyDoctor has released a new telemedicine app that enables physicians to prescribe certain treatments through text messaging.
It works like this: Patients can download the app and click on the issue that fits their need. HeyDoctor currently offers a variety of services, including UTI testing, acne diagnosis, cold sore management, birth control, HIV testing, erectile dysfunction treatment, smoking cessation and more.
After answering a few questions about their condition, the patient’s needs are evaluated by a doctor, who prescribes proper treatment. Any medications needed can be sent via mail order or picked up at a pharmacy.
Patients don’t need health insurance to use the app. Instead, they can use a credit or debit card to pay for care. In a recent phone interview, HeyDoctor cofounder and CMO Brendan Levy said a service like UTI testing and treatment costs about $20.
Consultations are administered by HeyDoctor’s own in-house medical team of board-certified physicians.
Levy, a family medicine doctor, said the company’s origins stem from his interest in making it easier for physicians to connect with patients. At the beginning of 2017, he and Rohit Malhotra founded HeyDoctor to fulfill that goal and help people get low-acuity primary care online.
Currently, the startup is pursuing a direct-to-consumer business model. Going forward, Levy noted that HeyDoctor may also partner with health systems to provide ongoing care to specific patient populations.
“You could follow up on our platform [and] have better results and lower costs,” he said.
To ensure it’s keeping patients’ information safe, Levy said HeyDoctor utilizes encryption technologies and security consultants.
“We think that security’s obviously paramount,” he noted.
Currently, the app is available in 19 states: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia and Washington. Within the next three months, it plans to expand to 10 more: Alaska, Colorado, Delaware, Kentucky, Mississippi, New Mexico, Tennessee, Texas, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
In addition to expanding geographically, Levy said HeyDoctor also wants to increase the number of services it offers.
Overall, one of the key benefits of the startup’s technology is that it enables patients to follow up with the same provider fairly quickly after the initial diagnosis.
“In this case, it’s nice because you have an ongoing chat relationship,” Levy said.
HeyDoctor isn’t the only company taking advantage of texting capabilities. Earlier this year, Austin, Texas-based Medici launched as a messaging app that allows patients to text all their doctors — including their physician, dentist, therapist and veterinarian — from a single platform.
Photo: diego_cervo, Getty Images |
Algae microbots may enable internal drugs delivery and diagnoses | Chinese University of Hong Kong researchers have helped create "biohybrid" remote-controlled "micro-robots" that could be produced to carry and release cancer-battling drugs within the human body. The bots are composed of spirulina algae cells fitted with magnetic particles that enable operators to direct them around the body. Their natural fluorescence makes them detectable using imaging techniques and they naturally release cancer-fighting chemicals as they degrade, making them a potential method of delivering drugs. Their ability to react to changes in the body in the presence of illness also makes them possible disease detectors. | http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/cancer-robot-inside-body-fight-disease-treatment-a8070406.html | 2017-11-23 18:21:39.373000 | Sign up for a full digest of all the best opinions of the week in our Voices Dispatches email Sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter 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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Scientists have developed tiny, remote-controlled “microrobots” with the ability to release cancer-targeting drugs, which they hope will one day be used to diagnose disease and administer drugs inside the human body.
Known as “biohybrids”, they are biological cells with useful engineered features added on, namely magnetic particles that allow them to be guided around the body.
But despite their highly technical capability, the robots are made from spirulina algae, a product more recognisable as a health food product than a construction material.
“Rather than fabricate a functional microrobot from scratch using intricate laboratory techniques and processes, we set out to directly engineer smart materials in nature,” said Professor Li Zhang, an engineer at the Chinese University of Hong Kong who contributed to the Science Robotics study.
As a result they were able to make use of the algae’s intrinsic properties.
“For instance, because these biohybrid bots have a naturally fluorescent biological interior and magnetic iron-oxide exterior, we can track and actuate a swarm of those agents inside the body quite easily using fluorescence imaging and magnetic resonance imaging,” said Professor Zhang
This meant the scientists were able to control the robots remotely using magnetism as they moved them to sites in the stomachs of rats.
The devices also released cancer-fighting compounds as they degraded, meaning they could have the potential to treat disease.
“Creating robotic systems which can be propelled and guided in the body has been and still is a holy grail in the field of delivery system engineering,” said nanomedicine researcher Professor Kostas Kostarelos, another team member from the University of Manchester.
The robots are also able to sense changes in the body associated with the onset of illness, an ability that could make them useful tools for diagnosis.
Science news in pictures Show all 20 1 / 20 Science news in pictures Science news in pictures Pluto has 'beating heart' of frozen nitrogen Pluto has a 'beating heart' of frozen nitrogen that is doing strange things to its surface, Nasa has found. The mysterious core seems to be the cause of features on its surface that have fascinated scientists since they were spotted by Nasa's New Horizons mission. "Before New Horizons, everyone thought Pluto was going to be a netball - completely flat, almost no diversity," said Tanguy Bertrand, an astrophysicist and planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center and the lead author on the new study. "But it's completely different. It has a lot of different landscapes and we are trying to understand what's going on there." Getty Science news in pictures Over 400 species discovered this year by Natural History Museum The ancient invertabrate worm-like species rhenopyrgus viviani (pictured) is one of over 400 species previously unknown to science that were discovered by experts at the Natural History Museum this year PA Science news in pictures Jackdaws can identify 'dangerous' humans Jackdaws can identify “dangerous” humans from listening to each other’s warning calls, scientists say. The highly social birds will also remember that person if they come near their nests again, according to researchers from the University of Exeter. In the study, a person unknown to the wild jackdaws approached their nest. At the same time scientists played a recording of a warning call (threatening) or “contact calls” (non-threatening). The next time jackdaws saw this same person, the birds that had previously heard the warning call were defensive and returned to their nests more than twice as quickly on average. Getty Science news in pictures Turtle embryos influence sex by shaking The sex of the turtle is determined by the temperatures at which they are incubated. Warm temperatures favour females. But by wiggling around the egg, embryos can find the “Goldilocks Zone” which means they are able to shield themselves against extreme thermal conditions and produce a balanced sex ratio, according to the new study published in Current Biology journal Ye et al/Current Biology Science news in pictures Elephant poaching rates drop in Africa African elephant poaching rates have dropped by 60 per cent in six years, an international study has found. It is thought the decline could be associated with the ivory trade ban introduced in China in 2017. Reuters Science news in pictures Ancient four-legged whale discovered in Peru Scientists have identified a four-legged creature with webbed feet to be an ancestor of the whale. Fossils unearthed in Peru have led scientists to conclude that the enormous creatures that traverse the planet’s oceans today are descended from small hoofed ancestors that lived in south Asia 50 million years ago A. Gennari Science news in pictures Animal with transient anus discovered A scientist has stumbled upon a creature with a “transient anus” that appears only when it is needed, before vanishing completely. Dr Sidney Tamm of the Marine Biological Laboratory could not initially find any trace of an anus on the species. However, as the animal gets full, a pore opens up to dispose of waste Steven G Johnson Science news in pictures Giant bee spotted Feared extinct, the Wallace's Giant bee has been spotted for the first time in nearly 40 years. An international team of conservationists spotted the bee, that is four times the size of a typical honeybee, on an expedition to a group of Indonesian Islands Clay Bolt Science news in pictures New mammal species found inside crocodile Fossilised bones digested by crocodiles have revealed the existence of three new mammal species that roamed the Cayman Islands 300 years ago. The bones belonged to two large rodent species and a small shrew-like animal New Mexico Museum of Natural History Science news in pictures Fabric that changes according to temperature created Scientists at the University of Maryland have created a fabric that adapts to heat, expanding to allow more heat to escape the body when warm and compacting to retain more heat when cold Faye Levine, University of Maryland Science news in pictures Baby mice tears could be used in pest control A study from the University of Tokyo has found that the tears of baby mice cause female mice to be less interested in the sexual advances of males Getty Science news in pictures Final warning to limit "climate catastrophe" The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has issued a report which projects the impact of a rise in global temperatures of 1.5 degrees Celsius and warns against a higher increase Getty Science news in pictures Nobel prize for evolution chemists The nobel prize for chemistry has been awarded to three chemists working with evolution. Frances Smith is being awarded the prize for her work on directing the evolution of enzymes, while Gregory Winter and George Smith take the prize for their work on phage display of peptides and antibodies Getty/AFP Science news in pictures Nobel prize for laser physicists The nobel prize for physics has been awarded to three physicists working with lasers. Arthur Ashkin (L) was awarded for his "optical tweezers" which use lasers to grab particles, atoms, viruses and other living cells. Donna Strickland and Gérard Mourou were jointly awarded the prize for developing chirped-pulse amplification of lasers Reuters/AP Science news in pictures Discovery of a new species of dinosaur The Ledumahadi Mafube roamed around 200 million years ago in what is now South Africa. Recently discovered by a team of international scientists, it was the largest land animal of its time, weighing 12 tons and standing at 13 feet. In Sesotho, the South African language of the region in which the dinosaur was discovered, its name means "a giant thunderclap at dawn" Viktor Radermacher / SWNS Science news in pictures Birth of a planet Scientists have witnessed the birth of a planet for the first time ever. This spectacular image from the SPHERE instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope is the first clear image of a planet caught in the very act of formation around the dwarf star PDS 70. The planet stands clearly out, visible as a bright point to the right of the center of the image, which is blacked out by the coronagraph mask used to block the blinding light of the central star. ESO/A. Müller et al Science news in pictures New human organ discovered that was previously missed by scientists Layers long thought to be dense, connective tissue are actually a series of fluid-filled compartments researchers have termed the “interstitium”. These compartments are found beneath the skin, as well as lining the gut, lungs, blood vessels and muscles, and join together to form a network supported by a mesh of strong, flexible proteins Getty Science news in pictures Previously unknown society lived in Amazon rainforest before Europeans arrived, say archaeologists Working in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, a team led by archaeologists at the University of Exeter unearthed hundreds of villages hidden in the depths of the rainforest. These excavations included evidence of fortifications and mysterious earthworks called geoglyphs José Iriarte Science news in pictures One in 10 people have traces of cocaine or heroin on fingerprints, study finds More than one in 10 people were found to have traces of class A drugs on their fingers by scientists developing a new fingerprint-based drug test. Using sensitive analysis of the chemical composition of sweat, researchers were able to tell the difference between those who had been directly exposed to heroin and cocaine, and those who had encountered it indirectly. Getty Science news in pictures Nasa releases stunning images of Jupiter's great red spot The storm bigger than the Earth, has been swhirling for 350 years. The image's colours have been enhanced after it was sent back to Earth. Pictures by: Tom Momary
It’s still early days for the robots. Rigorous tests need to be undertaken to ensure that having been inserted into the body, they either degrade naturally without leaving any harmful substances, or else they can be removed or excreted after finishing their work.
One of the key points about this work, said Professor Kostarelos, is that it represents the first example of how such robots could degrade naturally.
The iron magnetic coating helps fine-tune the rate at which the bots degrade in the body.
The real potential of these bots, according to Professor Kostarelos, lies in the potential to navigate them towards “hard-to-reach cavities of the human body” where they can treat or diagnose disease without the need for more invasive methods. |
Tech firms turn to public spaces as new source of consumer data | Private corporations are looking to exploit the potential for data mining in privately managed public spaces. Developers are taking on the ownership and management of public spaces in deals with local authorities that offer benefits for both sides. In return for providing and maintaining public facilities, companies can gain planning concessions that enhance the value of their developments. In one example, Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs is working with Toronto on a privately owned public space initiative, where it would fill a currently derelict waterfront area with sensors that would gather data that Google could use across its businesses.
| http://www.citymetric.com/fabric/owning-public-space-expensive-so-why-do-developers-want-do-it-3492 | 2017-11-23 17:46:58.327000 | A great deal has been written about privately owned public space, or POPS. A Guardian investigation earlier this year revealed the proliferation of “pseudo-public spaces”. Tales of people being watched, removed from or told off in POPS have spread online. Activists have taken to monitoring POPS, and politicians on both sides of the pond are calling for reforms in how they are run.
Local authorities’ motives for selling off public spaces are normally simple: getting companies to buy and maintain public space saves precious public pounds. Less straightforward and often overlooked in this debate is why – given the maintenance costs, public safety concerns and increasingly unflattering media attention – developers would actually want to own public space in the first place.
To answer that question it’s important to note that POPS can’t be viewed as isolated places, like parks or other public spaces might be. For the companies that own them, public spaces are bound up in the business that takes place inside their private buildings; POPS are tools that allow them, in one way or another, to boost profits.
Trade-offs
In some cities, such as Hong Kong and New York, ownership of public space is a trade-off for the right to bend the rules in planning and zoning. In 1961 New York introduced a policy that came to be known as ‘incentive zoning’. Developers who took on the provision of some public space could build wider, taller buildings, ignoring restrictions that had previously required staggered vertical growth to let sunlight and air into streets.
Since then, the city has allowed developers to build 20m square feet of private space in exchange for 80 acres of POPS, or 525 individual spaces, according to watchdog Advocates for Privately Owned Public Space (APOPS).
Several of those spaces lie in Trump Tower. Before the King of the Deal began construction on his new headquarters in 1979, he secured a pretty good deal with the city: Trump Tower would provide two atriums, two gardens, some restrooms and some benches for public use; in exchange 20 floors could be added to the top of the skyscraper. That’s quite a lot of condos.
Shockingly, the current president has not always kept up his end of the bargain and has been fined multiple times for dissuading members of the public from using POPS by doing things like placing flower pots on top of benches – violating a 1975 rule which said that companies had to provide amenities that actually make public spaces useable. The incident might suggest the failure of the ‘honour system’ under which POPS operate day-to-day. Once developers have secured their extra square footage, they might be tempted to undermine, subtly, the ‘public’ nature of their public spaces.
But what about where there aren’t necessarily planning benefits to providing public space? Why would companies go to the trouble of managing spaces that the council would otherwise take care of?
Attracting the ‘right sort’
Granary Square, part of the £5bn redevelopment of London’s Kings Cross, has been open since 2012. It is one of Europe’s largest privately-owned public spaces and has become a focal point for concerns over corporate control of public space. Yet developers of the neighbouring Coal Drop Yards site, due to open in October 2018, are also making their “dynamic new public space” a key point in marketing.
Cushman Wakefield, the real estate company in charge of Coal Drops Yard, says that the vision of the developers, Argent, has been to “retain the historical architecture to create a dramatic environment that will attract visitors to the 100,000 square feet of boutiques”. The key word here is “attract”. By designing and managing POPS, developers can attract the consumers who are essential to the success of their sites and who might be put off by a grubby council-managed square – or by a sterile shopping mall door.
A 2011 London Assembly Report found that the expansion of Canary Wharf in the 1990s was a turning point for developers who now “assume that they themselves will take ownership of an open space, with absolute control, in order to protect the value of the development as a whole”. In many ways this is a win-win situation; who doesn’t appreciate a nice water feature or shrub or whatever else big developer money can buy?
The caveat is, as academic Tridib Banerjee pointed out back in 2001: “The public is welcome as long as they are patrons of shops and restaurants, office workers, or clients of businesses located on the premises. But access to and use of the space is only a privilege and not a right” – hence the stories of security guards removing protesters or homeless people who threaten the aspirational appeal of places like Granary Square.
In the US, developers have taken this kind of space-curation even further, using public spaces as part of their formula for attracting the right kind of worker, as well as consumer, for nearby businesses. In Cincinnati, developer 3CDC transformed the notoriously crime-ridden Over-The-Rhine (OTR) neighbourhood into a young professional paradise. Pouring $47m into an initial make-over in 2010, 3CDC beautified parks and public space as well as private buildings.
To do so, the firm received $50 million in funding from corporations like Procter and Gamble, whose Cincinnati headquarters sits to the South-West of OTR. This kind of hyper-gentrification has profoundly change the demographics of the neighbourhood – to the anger of many long-term residents – attracting, essentially, the kind of people who work at Procter and Gamble.
Elsewhere, in cities like Alpharetta, Georgia, 3CDC have taken their public space management even further, running events and entertainment designed to attract productive young people to otherwise dull neighbourhoods.
Data pools
The proposed partnership between the city of Toronto and Sidewalk Labs (owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet) has highlighted another motive for companies to own public space: the most modern of all resources, data.
Data collection is at the heart of the ‘smart city’ utopia: the idea that by turning public spaces and the people into them into a vast data pool, tech companies can find ways to improve transport, the environment and urban quality of life. If approved next year, Sidewalk would take over the mostly derelict east waterfront area, developing public and private space filled with sensors.
Of course, this isn’t altruism. The Globe and Mail describe Sidewalk’s desired role as “the private garbage collectors of data”. It’s an apt phrase that reflects the merging of public service and private opportunity in Toronto’s future public space.
The data that Sidewalk could collect in Toronto would be used by Google in its commercial projects. Indeed, they’ve already done so in New York’s LinkNYC and London’s LinkUK. Kiosks installed around the cities provide the public with wifi and charging points, whilst monitoring traffic and pedestrians and generating data to feed into Google Maps.
The subway station at Hudson Yards, New York City. Image: Getty.
This is all pretty anodyne stuff. Data on how we move around public spaces is probably a small price to pay for more efficient transport information, and of course Sidewalk don’t own the areas around their Link Kiosks. But elsewhere companies’ plans to collect data in their POPS have sparked controversy. In New York’s Hudson Yards development – which Sidewalk also has a stake in – ambiguity over how visitors and residents can opt out of sharing their data when in its public square, have raised concerns over privacy.
In Toronto, Sidewalk have already offered to share their data with the city. However, Martin Kenney, researcher at the University of California at Davis and co-author of 2016’s ‘The Rise of the Platform Economy’, has warned that the potential value of a tech company collecting a community’s data should not be underestimated. “What’s really important is the deals Toronto cuts with Sidewalk may set terms and conditions for the rest of the world,” he said after the announcement in October.
The project could crystallise all three motives behind the ownership of POPS. Alongside data collection, Sidewalk will likely have some leeway over planning regulations and will certainly tailor its public spaces to its ideal workers and consumers – Google have already announced that it would move its Canadian headquarters, from their current location in Downton Toronto, into the first pilot phase of the development.
Even if the Sidewalks Lab project never happens, the motives behind companies’ ownership of POPS tell us that cities’ public realms are of increasing interest to private hands.
Want more of this stuff? Follow CityMetric on Twitter or Facebook. |
Lyft looks for another $500m on top of $1bn already raised | The US ride-hailing service Lyft has extended its latest investment round with the aim of raising an additional $500m in capital, it has announced. The move came after Google parent company Alphabet put in $1bn through its venture capital division CapitalG in October. The company has added 100 new markets during 2017, bringing its coverage to 95% of the US population. The extra investment will support its planned expansion into Canada before the end of the year, and the development of its autonomous vehicle testing programme in California. | http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5112545/Lyft-raises-500m-war-chest-battle-Uber.html | 2017-11-23 17:31:57.487000 | Uber rival Lyft is raising an additional $500 million in funding ion its ongoinjg battle with Uber, according to a U.S. share authorization document filed in Delaware.
The additional funding round, led by Alphabet's CapitalG, is an extension of the $1 billion round announced in October.
Lyft spokesman Adrian Durbin, confirming the funding round, in an e-mailed statement said, 'Increasing the potential for this round will allow us to further accelerate our commitment to serving passengers and drivers.'
Scroll down for video
The additional funding round, led by Alphabet's CapitalG, is an extension of a $1 billion round announced in October, and raises the firm's valuation to $11.5 billion
Axios was first to report the news.
In October Lyft had said that the previous round of funding boosted its valuation to $11 billion from $7.5 billion.
The fresh funding would raise its valuation to $11.5 billion.
It comes a day after Lyft secured a permit to test autonomous vehicles in California, taking it one step further in the race with several other companies to bring self-driving cars to the masses.
Lyft's permit, reflected on the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) website, comes two months after it announced plans to offer a self-driving car as a ride option in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Lyft already has partnerships in place with autonomous car companies to advance its self-driving strategy.
Ride-hailing firm Lyft Inc said on Monday it would launch its service in Toronto, marking the first international expansion for the U.S.-based rival of Uber Technologies Inc. A stock image is pictured
FORD'S SELF-DRIVING VEHICLES Ford self-driving test vehicles will be connected to Lyft's network, but at first, customers will not be able to use them, according to Sherif Marakby, Ford's vice president for autonomous vehicles and electrification. The firm will initially put human-driven vehicles on Lyft's network, and it is unclear when the first self-driving cars will hit roads. Ford is also testing delivery services using self-driving vehicles and a van shuttle service. The self-driving vehicles Ford will deploy through Lyft will use software developed by Argo AI, Advertisement !- - ad: https://mads.dailymail.co.uk/v8/ru/sciencetech/none/article/other/mpu_factbox.html?id=mpu_factbox_1 - ->
The firm struck a research collaboration earlier this year with Alphabet unit Waymo.
It has also secured deals with Ford Motor Co and startup Nutonomy to incorporate self-driving cars in its fleet.
Earlier this year, Lyft joined forces with Ford to deploy self-driving vehicles in 'large numbers' by 2021.
Ford and Lyft teams will begin working together to design software to allow Ford vehicles to communicate with Lyft's smartphone apps.
Ford will initially put human-driven vehicles on Lyft's network, and it is unclear when the first self-driving cars will hit roads.
Ford self-driving test vehicles will be connected to Lyft's network, but at first, customers will not be able to use them, according to Sherif Marakby, Ford's vice president for autonomous vehicles and electrification.
'We're not building prototypes for the sake of building prototypes,' Mr Marakby said, adding Ford intends to ultimately put thousands of self-driving vehicles in use.
Ford's new Chief Executive Jim Hackett is scheduled to meet with investors next weel to outline the automaker's strategy for boosting profitability.
Lyft co-founder John Zimmer displays his company's 'glowstache' following a launch event in San Francisco.
Mr Hackett's plans to compete for revenue from mobility services, which include car sharing and ride-hailing, will be one area of focus for investors.
The Lyft partnership fills in a piece of the puzzle.
Ford is also testing delivery services using self-driving vehicles and a van shuttle service.
The self-driving vehicles Ford will deploy through Lyft will use software developed by Argo AI, a company in which Ford is investing $1 billion (£746 million) over the next five years.
Lyft's chief rival Uber secured the California permit to test self-driving cars in March. Apple Inc, Samsung Electronics, Tesla Inc and a host of automakers also have the permit. |
Hippeas looks to launch its own e-commerce site to avoid Amazon | Chickpeas snack maker Hippeas is looking to wean itself off Amazon and sell direct to online customers. CEO Livio Bisterzo sees the move as key to maintaining sales momentum that has the company forecasting revenue of $25m next year and $133m by 2022. Bisterzo wants access to Hippea's customer data, which Amazon doesn't share. “By having a B2C site, we can genuinely start to understand how meaningful our online spend is,” Bisterzo said.
| https://digiday.com/marketing/hippeas-preps-e-commerce-site-keep-amazon-arms-length/ | 2017-11-23 17:29:56.157000 | Chickpea snack brand Hippeas has gone from zero to making a million dollars a month in revenue in less than two years. While Amazon orders have fueled those sales, the startup wants to keep the retailer at arm’s length by launching its own e-commerce site.
The site is expected in 2018. Selling directly to shoppers is a priority for Hippeas, with founder Livio Bisterzo fearing the momentum behind the business will fade if it doesn’t sidestep retailers. On its current sales trajectory, which puts the business at £7.5 million ($10 million) this year and £18.8 million ($25 million) the next, Hippeas is projected to make £100 million ($132.8 million) in sales by 2022.
It will take longer to hit those numbers without going directly to customers, said Bisterzo, who also sees the move as a chance to be less reliant on Amazon. While Starbucks is Hippeas’ biggest distribution channel, orders from Hippeas’ Amazon store are forecast to hit $3.5 million next year. Although Bisterzo is grateful for both the visibility and increased sales that come with selling on Amazon, he views it as a frenemy.
Having an e-commerce site is important because Hippeas can “fully curate” the experience, which you can’t do on Amazon, he explained. Bisterzo wants control of the type of customer data that Amazon possesses. The online behemoth’s reluctance to share shopper data has long been a point of contention for retailers on the site, many of whom have no choice but to accept the situation or risk losing revenue by not being on a site that e-commerce research firm Slice Intelligence said accounted for 43 percent of all online revenue in the U.S. last year.
While Hippeas’ sales are exponentially growing on Amazon, the site itself is not a marketing tool but a transactional one, said Debbie Ellison, head of digital at Geometry. She pointed to Graze, a U.K.-based snack brand that expanded through a direct-to-consumer relationship, as an example of how Hippeas wants to use shopper data to develop new products and drop products that don’t work.
“If Amazon holds stock and fulfills orders, this model cannot work,” Ellison said. “It makes sense that Hippeas launches its own e-commerce site to further connect emotionally with their shoppers to drive purchase and product innovation.”
Selling directly to consumers also means Hippeas can see what ads drive sales, said Bisterzo. It’s difficult to spend “big money” on online ads without having a platform that you can “clearly see a direct return” from, he added. “We would argue that some of our Amazon traffic is driven by our campaigns, but there’s no direct correlation when it comes to understanding what works and what doesn’t,” he continued. “By having a [business-to-consumer] site, we can genuinely start to understand how meaningful our online spend is.”
Once the site launches, Bisterzo said more of its ads, which appear mainly on Facebook and Instagram, would encourage people to visit with calls to action.
Bisterzo acknowledges that going directly to consumers will be easier said than done. Larger and richer companies such as Diageo, Mondelēz and Heineken have struggled with e-commerce. Yet unlike those companies, Hippeas isn’t a legacy business with retailer commitments to appease and deep-rooted customer behaviors to change. “I don’t see many consumers buying cases of Pepsi from Pepsi.com,” Bisterzo explained.
For all the talk of selling directly to customers, Hippeas won’t abandon Amazon anytime soon. Hippeas has invested in Amazon to the point where it now has a dedicated member of its team managing its vendor profile on the e-commerce site. Hippeas began as a seller in the Amazon Launchpad program for startups before transitioning to Amazon’s Vendor Central, in which it sold in bulk to Amazon rather than directly to customers on the site. In the summer, Hippeas set up its own shop on Amazon, selling directly to customers, which is a “game-changer” for the business, Bisterzo said.
“The big challenge has been becoming a meaningful vendor on Amazon, which we were able to do by driving traffic through some of our campaigns,” Bisterzo said. “The beauty of working with Amazon is that you have live data and analytics that you can learn from.” |
Facebook, Instagram tout 540 million fans to World Cup marketers | Facebook and Instagram hope to attract marketers and advertisers to engage with their combined 540 million football-fan users during the 2018 World Cup. The platforms are poised to overtake the three billion World Cup-related interactions they hosted during the 2014 finals. "This year’s tournament is set to be even more massive across both platforms," said Ian Edwards, Facebook head of communications for Europe. "For marketers, the potential is huge.”
| http://www.thedrum.com/news/2017/11/23/the-largest-football-stadium-will-be-facebook-and-instagram | 2017-11-23 17:20:56.303000 | With the world’s most popular sporting tournament taking place next summer, Facebook and Instagram are leveraging their massive popularity among football fans to provide marketers and advertisers with opportunities to score…
On 14 June, 2018, the most famous sporting tournament on the planet, the FIFA World Cup, will kick-off for the twenty-first time, with Russia as host. While 32 teams battle it out on the pitch, millions of football fans around the world will share their love for the game on Facebook and Instagram.
Facebook has more than 400m football fans as users, while Instagram, which joined the Facebook family in 2012, offers more than 140m. Football, in fact, is by far the most popular sport on both platforms, with three times more followers than the next most popular sport, basketball. Facebook’s director of comms planning in Northern Europe, Ian Edwards, believes that this level of engagement offers unrivalled opportunities for marketers.
“In 2014, 350m people produced over 3bn interactions with World Cup content on Facebook, more engagement than any other event in the platform’s history,” says Edwards. “Bearing in mind that Instagram was a young player last time round, this year’s tournament is set to be even more massive across both platforms. For marketers, the potential is huge.”
Big match, small screen
Edwards believes that to successfully engage football fans, online marketers need to understand the consumer trends shaping the way we experience football.
“Sport is no longer something that only happens in a stadium or on television. It’s happening across multiple screens, with 90% of sports fans saying they use a mobile device while watching games. What’s more, our data shows that mobile usage of Facebook increases during the commercial breaks of major TV shows and football matches.
“Mobile phones have also created a 24/7 appetite for football content online. When we analysed football conversation over an average month during the regular football season we saw 1.6bn interactions with football-related content. Factor a global football tournament World Cup into the equation and you can imagine how those numbers will skyrocket.”
Edwards points to how mobile has also created new ways for fans to interact with their heroes, with players offering privileged access to their off-field lives through Instagram and Facebook.
“94% of sports fans on Instagram use the platform to see the personal side of athletes. This kind of authenticity is especially important to millennial and Generation Z fans.”
The rise in mobile has, of course, also led to an explosion in video consumption. Three times more video was uploaded to Facebook in 2016 compared to 2015, while sports fans on Instagram watch twice as much video as non-fans. During Euro 2016, there were nearly 1bn views for videos related to the tournament.
Edwards says: “People spend five times as long looking at moving versus static imagery on Facebook. Not using video as the centre of your sporting campaigns on Facebook and Instagram would be a little like buying TV time during the Christmas period and then running a static image.
“Considered together, these trends point the way forward for marketers hoping to leverage the power of social media around next year’s tournament.”
Three new global communities
While football fans are a diverse bunch, Facebook has discovered three distinct personalities among the hundreds of millions of fans on their platforms. As you would expect, each of these personas has different needs and expectations and respond to different creative approaches. “It’s important to consider the different types of fans drawn to such a massive global event,” says Edwards.
The first of these, Match Maniacs, are “predominantly young men whose lives revolve around football,” says Edwards. “They revel in rivalries with friends and are twice as likely to report watching a sports match than the general population.” There are 103 million Match Maniac on Facebook and Instagram, with especially high numbers across EMEA in Italy, the UK, Germany, France and Spain.
The second grouping is Homeland Heroes: moderately engaged fans who regard supporting their national team as part of their identity, particularly around big games. Homeland Heroes are more evenly split between male and female than Match Maniacs, and tend to be more family-oriented. There are 160m Homeland Heroes on Facebook and Instagram, with the largest numbers in Egypt and Italy, across EMEA.
The third type of fan, Social Supporters, are always looking for cool ways to show their influence and join in the fun. “These friends of fans are mostly female and love the energy of the event rather than the details of the match. They are 1.6 times more likely to discuss food or drinks in their posts as they organise social events around sporting events World Cup and, crucially, are at least twice as likely to buy consumer packaged goods online,” says Edwards. There are 307 million Social Supporters on Facebook and Instagram, with the UK, Germany, Italy, France and Egypt all ranking highly.
Edwards says: “Facebook and Instagram are constantly creating new tools to help brands tell great stories to different audiences. We offer immersive 360 Video, Instagram Stories (created by 300m people every day), and Facebook Live, which lets any brand become a broadcaster on mobile.
“With all these new formats, we recognise that creating video for mobile be a challenge. Brands have had six decades to learn the rules for television, but mobile is still in its infancy. At the same time, that means there’s a huge opportunity to experiment and innovate. To help brands know what great creative looks like on mobile, we’ve created an interactive gallery on Facebook’s Creative Hub that offers examples and lets them mock-up their own Facebook and Instagram creative.”
For marketers hoping to target football fans, it looks like the goal is wide open. |
The New York Times grows by selling custom ads programmatically | The New York Times is offering direct programmatic purchases for its custom Flex Frame ad units, doubling revenue between Q2 and Q3 2017 to reach $49m. The Times has increased its programmatic staffers from three to six in the past year, and extended its programmatic sales globally. The entirety of its ad product range is now available through programmatic buying. Half of the Times' annual programmatic ad revenue still relies on open exchanges, though this is being reduced.
| https://digiday.com/media/not-just-banner-ads-anymore-new-york-times-making-ads-available-programmatically/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=digidaydis&utm_source=uk&utm_content=171122 | 2017-11-23 16:53:08.780000 | The New York Times is growing its programmatic business by allowing machines to sell its custom ad units.
In the third quarter, the Times began selling its custom Flex Frame ads programmatically, which helped it double its programmatic direct revenue over the previous quarter, said Sara Badler, director of programmatic advertising at the Times, declining to share precise figures. Over the past 12 months, the Times also doubled its number of programmatic staffers from three to six, expanded its programmatic sales internationally and opened all of its ad products, including homepage and video ads, to programmatic buying.
While the Times’ business model has shifted toward a renewed emphasis on subscriptions — its CEO Mark Thompson believes the paper can get 10 million subscribers, and its digital subscription revenue rose 46 percent year over year to $86 million in the third quarter — it reported that it raked in $49 million in digital ad revenue in the third quarter. To prevent its ad business from becoming stale, the Times is opening its ad products to programmatic in response to buyers increasingly pushing their dollars through automated channels.
“Clients want to do cooler things programmatically,” Badler said. “It’s not just about banner ads anymore.”
Open exchanges still account for more than half of the Times’ annual programmatic ad revenue, but the percentage is shrinking as the Times’ programmatic direct business grows, said Badler, declining to provide specific percentages. The line items on the Times’ ads.txt file indicate that Google and the Facebook Audience Network sell much of the Times’ open market inventory.
But the Times keeps its video ads and custom units sheltered from open exchanges, where ad rates tend to be lower and publishers have less control over what brands will wind up on their site. For example, programmatic advertisers who buy its proprietary Flex Frame ads — which dynamically adjust size to fit a user’s screen — have to set up a programmatic guaranteed deal, in which publishers and buyers agree to a fixed price and inventory commitment before the transaction occurs. About 20 brands have purchased Flex Frames this way, Badler said.
Compared to the open exchange, programmatic guaranteed gives publishers better control over their inventory and allows them to charge a premium. For about a year, the Times has used Google’s programmatic guaranteed product whenever buyers want to set up a deal outside of the open exchange so that they can layer on their own first-party data for audience targeting.
Michael Stoeckel, vp of global tech strategy at Prohaska Consulting, said most publishers still reserve their custom ad units for direct sales since programmatic has a reputation for being low-price and commoditized. Even in 2017, some publisher execs at legacy media companies say direct salespeople view programmatic as a boogeyman that cannibalizes sales.
But selling custom units and proprietary audience data has become more common in private marketplaces as publishers package together deals to get higher CPMs than the open market, Stoeckel said. USA Today and CafeMedia sell custom ads programmatically, according to company spokespeople. Even Snapchat, which built its ad business around custom units, has opened up to programmatic.
Chris Wexler, executive director of media and analytics at ad agency Cramer-Krasselt, said the Times selling custom units programmatically is indicative of a broader shift in the industry. Wexler said programmatic is finally beginning to shift from “just a way to clear remnant banner inventory to a core mechanism that will power the future of most media transactions.” |
Stamp duty cut will stoke prices for first-time homebuyers: OBR | UK house prices could rise by around 0.3% following Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond's decision to axe stamp duty on homes sales of less than £300,000, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility. Hammond said the cut would help first-time buyers onto the property ladder. Financial experts criticised the measure, saying it would benefit only those who had saved up a 5% deposit to buy a house and it would do nothing for a generation that could only afford to rent a home. The average house price in the UK is £226,000 ($301,800) after rising 5.4% in September, up from 4.8% in August. | http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/budget-2017-stamp-duty-relief-house-prices-housing-market-obr-property-value-a8069721.html | 2017-11-23 16:18:06.997000 | 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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The scrapping of stamp duty for first-time buyers will leave them paying more for their homes than the saving made because it will ramp up prices, the Treasury auditor has said.
The biggest winners will be existing homeowners – rather than people struggling to get on the housing ladder – the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) warned.
Just 3,500 additional homes would be bought each year because of the headline-grabbing Budget measure, expected to cost about £3.2bn by 2022-23.
And it was open to “abuse”, with couples tempted to put a purchase in the name of whoever was a first-time buyer, the OBR suggested.
The head of the Resolution Foundation think tank suggested it meant the cost to the public purse would be a cool £900,000 for each extra first time buyer.
“It would be much cheaper to literally build them a house each,” said Torsten Bell, its director.
In his Budget “rabbit”, Philip Hammond announced that stamp duty will be scrapped immediately for first-time buyers of homes below £300,000.
In London and other property hotspots, it will be axed on the first £300,000 of a purchase price up to £500,000 – representing a cut of up to £5,000.
The Chancellor said that the move would slash the tax for 95 per cent of first-time buyers and abolish it altogether for 80 per cent of them.
But, asked by The Independent if the increase in house prices sparked by the abolition of stamp duty would be greater than the saving made, the OBR’s chairman Robert Chote replied: “Yes.”
He said first-time buyers would still feel the were benefiting, if they were able to buy a home they otherwise would be denied.
But, he added: “Those houses will be more expensive.”
While some initially cheered the move, personal-finance experts slammed it as a token measure and one that’s unlikely to offer significant relief to savers trying to buy their own home.
“While welcome, abolishing stamp duty is a drop in the ocean given the affordability challenge of getting Generation Rent onto the property ladder,” said Simon Heawood, chief executive and founder of property investment site Bricklane.com.
“The focus on bridging the housing generational gap must lie on the all-important first rung of the ladder – saving up for a deposit. The issue of housing supply and price is important, but looking at measures to support Generation Rent’s ability to get together a deposit is crucial,” he added.
House prices have surged in recent years, barring many from being able to buy, especially as wage growth has stagnated.
The most recently available official data shows that annual house-price growth across the UK stood at 5.4 per cent in September, up from 4.8 per cent in August.
The average UK house price was £226,000 during the month, marking a 0.4 per cent increase on the previous month.
Responding to Mr Hammond’s announcement, the OBR also said that the move would probably have the effect of driving house prices up even more – by around 0.3 per cent, with most of the increase happening in 2018.
Polly Neate, chief executive of housing charity Shelter, also responded critically to the news.
“The stamp duty holiday focused on first-time buyers sounds positive on paper but realistically, this will only help a very small number of people who have already been able to save enough for a deposit,” she said.
“For most young people, home ownership has become a pipe dream and the high cost of rents has made it difficult for them to save.”
Separately on Wednesday, Mr Hammond promised a wide-ranging spending package to boost housebuilding. He set a target of an annual 300,000 homes built by the middle of the next decade.
Higher capital funding, loans and guarantees, plus measures to boost the supply of skills, resources and land, would add up to £44bn, he said.
And the Chancellor adopted another Labour policy, with a threat of what have been dubbed “use-it-or-lose-it” powers to target developers who hoard land but refuse to build.
Big developers have repeatedly been accused of exercising an iron grip on the pace of housebuilding, with no commercial incentive to build faster unless prices are on the rise.
But they have resolutely rejected accusations of land-hoarding, insisting delays are often caused by a cumbersome planning system and failures by local-authority planners.
New cash set aside for housebuilding will include a £630m small-sites fund, £2.7bn to more than double the Housing Infrastructure Fund, £400m for estate regeneration, £8bn of new financial guarantees to support private housebuilding and an additional £34m to develop construction skills, Mr Hammond said.
He defended the Government’s housebuilding record, claiming 1.1 million homes had been built since 2010, of which 350,000 were “affordable”, but also warned that the proportion of young homeowners had plunged from 59 per cent of young people to just 38 per cent over 13 years.
“We need to do better still if we are to see affordability improved,” he said. |
Lego unveils Facebook chatbot Ralph to drive Christmas sales | Lego has deployed a chatbot on Facebook's Messenger service to help drive Christmas sales. Ralph will help customers in the UK, US, Canada, France, Germany and Poland find their ideal gift through a series of questions about age, budget and the type of set required. Ralph is also aimed at giving the Danish toy manufacturer a foothold in the digital e-commerce space.
| http://www.thedrum.com/news/2017/11/23/meet-lego-s-facebook-messenger-chatbot-ralph-helpful-alternative-bricks-and-mortar | 2017-11-23 16:09:34.387000 | Lego has embraced a Facebook Messenger chatbot to help engage fans and aid consumers with gift indecision in the run up to Christmas.
Ralph the giftbot has been created as a guide through the notoriously stacked back catalogue of Lego kits. He was built to capitulate upon Christmas indecision around gift-making and to give Lego an ecommerce foothold on the social network.
James Poulter, senior manager, digital consumer engagement at Lego, said: “We are continuously searching for new and fun ways to engage with our consumers and shoppers. Chat bots are increasingly being used by brands to engage in the digital space, and in turn to drive sales. The Lego Group is one of the first in the toy industry to embrace this concept.”
The bot has been developed as a streamlined experience where user inputs are limited to answering questions via on-screen prompts. Ralph the Robot asks users questions like their age, budget, and the type of sets they are interested in. A few seconds later and a slew of kits have been coughed up for purchase, complete with free shipping.
This controlled environment has been designed where user inputs are limited, meaning that Ralph’s responses will be solely created to reduce friction from potential purchases on the social network. The tone is broken up with numerous Gifs of the bot in action.
Genelle Holton, UK digital marketing manager, stated that Facebook’s market reach made it a desirable platform to host the bot on. Ricardo Caetano, global creative strategist at Facebook Creative Shop, added: "The Messenger Platform enables businesses to build experiences that facilitate connection with customers, create meaningful interactions and ultimately drive results."
Try the bot out here. It is featured in UK, US, Canada, France, Germany and Poland. |
Amazon UAM header bidding test throws down ad gauntlet to Google | Amazon looks set to challenge Google in the programmatic ad space as it tests header bidding solution Unified Ad Marketplace (UAM) with a select group of publishers, according to anonymous insiders. Invitation-only, cloud-based programme UAM enables supply-side platforms to bid on inventory, while also offering access to Amazon's vast swathes of consumer data, enabling hyper-targeted ads. However, critics have argued the data provided is the "bare minimum". The development of UAM follows last December's launch of Transparent Ad Marketplace.
| https://digiday.com/media/amazon-pitches-publishers-new-header-bidding-wrapper/ | 2017-11-23 16:04:30.470000 | Amazon is testing a header bidding solution called Unified Ad Marketplace with select publishers, according to three sources close to the product.
UAM, which is in a limited test, is a header bidding container that lets other exchanges or supply-side platforms bid on the same display ad inventory concurrently. Amazon UAM doesn’t work with Prebid.js — an open-source header bidding solution that the likes of AppNexus and Rubicon Project have adopted — so publishers will need to set up a separate line item for UAM if they use it along with Prebid.js solutions, said two publishing executives interviewed for the story.
One midsize publisher said his team started testing UAM this month. Although his team hasn’t yet received much information on UAM’s performance due to its novelty, he sees many upsides. For instance, a big value-add is Amazon’s “unique ad demand” — Amazon has users’ email, credit card and shopping data that other SSPs don’t have, so it can tie every data point together and serve very targeted ads, said this person. Meanwhile, UAM reacts to a bid request fast as it’s cloud-based, and Amazon pays publishers every 60 days based on CPMs, while most SSPs pay publishers every 90 days, said this publishing executive.
“As a publisher, I don’t have much bargaining power with SSPs on payment terms, so it’s great that Amazon helps us reconcile billings with SSPs and pays us quicker,” said this person. “Amazon also has safe demand — UAM doesn’t provide in-banner video and mobile redirects that we found in lots of open exchanges.”
By creating another ad tech product, UAM helps Amazon become a more serious threat to Google’s programmatic dominance. Amazon already has the industry’s most popular server-to-server wrapper in the industry, according to ServerBid. And its DSP business has grown considerably over the past year. UAM will help Amazon penetrate the market for smaller and midsize publishers’ ad tech, which is a market that Google has had a stranglehold on.
UAM runs first-price auctions, and Amazon offers publishers auction-level data, meaning that publishers are able to confirm that they are getting the highest available rate for their inventory, according to a source familiar with UAM’s development. But that doesn’t seem to be enough for publishers.
The executive from the above midsize publisher believes a big downside of UAM is that Amazon’s reporting is very basic. “You can’t take bidding data outside of Amazon,” said the executive. “Publishers usually take reporting from SSPs and use data tools to visualize that information, but UAM doesn’t offer reporting API [application programming interface].”
Another executive from a major publisher, who also doesn’t want to talk about UAM on the record, agreed that the data Amazon provides is the “bare minimum.” This person added that Amazon will soon make UAM self-serve.
Amazon UAM is free of charge for publishers, but Amazon takes a cut of ad impressions sold. Digiday obtained Amazon’s UAM instructions for publishers, which say that “UAM charges a 10 percent transaction fee by deducting 10 percent from SSP bid prices prior to conducting a first-price auction.”
Of course, UAM is not Amazon’s first foray into header bidding. Amazon introduced a header bidding wrapper called Transparent Ad Marketplace last December. UAM and TAM function in similar ways and are both part of Amazon Publisher Services, but the former seems to be developed for publishers — mainly small to medium-sized ones — that don’t necessarily have partnerships with major exchanges, while the latter serves big publishers that want to manage exchanges they are already working with through Amazon, according to publishing executives.
“We are not big enough for [Amazon] to open up TAM for us, but I know that some publishers smaller than us use TAM,” said the first publishing executive. “So [TAM] is probably like many coveted ad tech integrations, and it is about who you know, not always your volume.” |
YouTube introduces new guidelines to protect children from harm | Google-owned video sharing site YouTube is looking to crack down on disturbing or suggestive content aimed at, or including, minors. The goal is to ensure such content doesn't make it to the website. The company has released a five-point plan, including blocking inappropriate comments on videos featuring children and disabling ads from inappropriate videos aimed at families. The move follows instances of content including disturbing imagery going unrecognised by YouTube's algorithms. Videos featuring youngsters in abusive or vulnerable situations were also reported to the site by Buzzfeed.
| https://www.cnet.com/news/youtube-5-new-guidelines-protect-kids/ | 2017-11-23 16:01:41.877000 | YouTube says it's trying to make the video site safer for kids.
After recent criticism that YouTube is not doing enough to crack down on disturbing and exploitative videos aimed at children, the Google-owned video service on Wednesday announced a five-point plan to "toughen" its approach on family-friendly content.
The new guidelines are:
Tougher application of community guidelines and faster enforcement through technology
Removing ads from inappropriate videos targeting families
Blocking inappropriate comments on videos featuring minors
Providing guidance for creators who make family-friendly content
Engaging and learning from experts
The rules follow reports earlier this month that exposed flaws in YouTube's algorithms and screening policies. The controversy stemmed from YouTube Kids, designed as a more child-friendly version of the video site. The service's filters failed to recognize or pull down some videos that feature disturbing imagery but are aimed at children -- like Mickey Mouse laying in a pool of blood, or a claymation version of Spider Man urinating on Elsa, the Disney princess from "Frozen."
Watch this: YouTube sets rules for terrorism gray-zone videos 01:40
Videos featuring children doing innocuous activities like exercising are also riddled with predatory or sexual comments from viewers, something YouTube is attempting to curb with its new guidelines.
And more recently, the company took down several videos that featured children in abusive or vulnerable situations only after BuzzFeed brought the videos to the company's attention.
The new guidelines come as tech giants find themselves under intense scrutiny from Congress for the power and influence they have over what billions of people see online. Earlier this month, Google, Facebook and Twitter testified in marathon Senate and House hearings over the way Russian trolls abused their platforms to meddle in last year's US presidential election. Lawmakers grilled the tech companies over accountability for the algorithms they used.
Regulating family-friendly content isn't the only thing YouTube is working on. Earlier last week, Google said it's cracking down on terror videos in an effort to fight against online extremism.
Those extremist videos have landed YouTube in hot water before. Earlier this year, advertisers boycotted YouTube after their ads appeared next to extremist and hate content because of YouTube's automated advertising technology. Major brands, including AT&T and Johnson & Johnson, ditched advertising on the platform. But Ruth Porat, Google's CFO, said on an earnings conference call last month that most of the advertisers that boycotted have returned to the platform.
To read more about safeguarding YouTube, check out CNET's guide to make YouTube safer for your children.
First published Nov. 22 at 1:18 p.m. PT.
Update at 1:58 p.m. PT: Adds more background.
The Smartest Stuff: Innovators are thinking up new ways to make you, and the things around you, smarter.
Special Reports: CNET's in-depth features in one place. |
UK lenders told to extend open banking to e-wallets, cards | The UK's Competition and Markets Authority has requested the nine biggest UK lenders extend open banking provisions to e-wallets, credit cards and prepaid cards. It's urged the banks to create a governing body for common standards on application programming interfaces (APIs), software bridges that enable the sharing of customers' financial data with non-banking firms. The project has been extended to coincide with the API requirements' initiation in January, with a release programme due over the next two years.
| https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/31368/uk-open-banking-expanded-to-cover-all-psd2-products | 2017-11-23 16:01:09.830000 | The UK's Open Banking project is being expanded to embrace all payment account types - including credit cards, prepaid cards and e-wallets - covered by PSD2.
In a bid to boost competition and innovation, last year the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) told the nine largest current account providers in Great Britain and Northern Ireland to set up a body to build common API standards to let customers share their financial data with non-bank providers.
With the core set of requirements coming into force in January, the CMA and UK Treasury is already looking ahead to expanding the project to let bank customers using credit cards, e-wallets and prepaid cards take advantage of open banking services through a programme of releases over the next two years.
Imran Gulamhuseinwala, trustee of the Open Banking Implementation Entity, says: "Key to any innovation is the process of discovery and it became clear through the second half of 2017 that there is much more the OBIE could do to drive adoption of Open Banking and create a richer environment for new services.
"These enhancements should give even greater confidence to the fintech community to seize the opportunity to participate fully in the financial services ecosystem. They will create standards for future dated, recurring and international payments as well as all the payment and product types covered by PSD2." |
Yoox creates 15-second fashion ads to generate sense of urgency | Stink Studios and Google have collaborated on a campaign for fashion brand Yoox, creating 15-second video ads that Google is calling "brandformance at its best". The ephemeral ads, which will run until mid-December, aim to instill a sense of urgency in consumers, who have only the duration of the video to buy an item before it "vanishes" from the Yoox site. The innovative format uses Stink Studios' RITA technology, which shows videos in real time and allows them to change in response to user preferences.
| http://www.thedrum.com/news/2017/11/23/yoox-and-google-launch-now-or-never-shoppable-ad-create-sense-urgency-fashion-videos | 2017-11-23 15:56:32.167000 | Fashion brand Yoox has created a video campaign in which buyers can ‘save’ the ‘endangered’ fashion items buy buying them only within the 15 seconds ad format, before they are gone forever, from both the ad and from the Yoox website.
Yoox and Google create shoppable 15 second video ad
The items are actually then shown to someone else, giving them the chance to buy the item instead, in a campaign that hopes to create a sense of urgency around the 15 seconds video ad format. |
Facebook reveals plans for two digital training schemes in India | Facebook will launch two initiatives in its Indian market aimed at giving up to five million people digital skills by 2020. Facebook Digital Training offers free social media and content marketing education, while the Startup Training Hub looks to bring digitisation to entrepreneurs, as well as small and medium-sized businesses. The personalised learning schemes, offered via mobile in English and Hindi, also support the government's Digital India initiative. It has been estimated that the country will have a digital economy worth $1tn by 2022.
| http://www.thedrum.com/news/2017/11/23/facebook-india-unveils-two-programmes-provide-digital-training-entrepreneurs-and | 2017-11-23 15:49:30.573000 | Facebook continues to intensify its Indian operations as it has unveiled two programmes designed for individuals and startups, with the aim of training more than five million people on digital skills by 2020, to keep up with the Indian government's Digital India initiative.
Facebook India unveils two programmes to provide digital training to entrepreneurs and SMB's
The two India-exclusive programmes are Facebook Digital Training, which will offer free social and content marketing training (not just limited to Facebook) and Facebook Startup Training Hub, which will aim to help entrepreneurs and small and medium businesses (SMB) to digitise their business, as reported by gadgets 360. |
Brexit to cost UK £72bn by 2021: Office for Budget Responsibility | The impact of Brexit will cause the UK economy £72bn in lost economic activity by 2021, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility's economic and fiscal outlook. This equates to GDP being 3.4% smaller in 2021 than originally estimated in March 2016, before the referendum took place.
| http://budgetresponsibility.org.uk/efo/economic-fiscal-outlook-november-2017/ | 2017-11-23 15:32:14.943000 | The latest update of our forecasts was published on the 22 November 2017 in the November 2017 Economic and fiscal outlook. Read the overview.
In Chapter 2, we begin by looking at the main developments since our last forecast and the latest external forecasts for the UK economy. The latest outturns give us a starting point for our forecasts.
Chapter 3 sets out our forecasts for the economy over a five year horizon. We cover our assumptions regarding the UK’s exit from the EU, our latest forecast changes in light of recent developments and the effect of policies announced in the Budget.
Chapter 4 sets out our forecasts for receipts and public spending over a five year horizon. We also explain our loans and other financial transactions forecasts. All this, together with new policy decisions, builds the outlook for borrowing and debt.
In Chapter 5, we assess the Government against its fiscal targets. We examine whether the Government has a better than 50 per cent chance of meeting them on current policy. We also test the sensitivity of our fiscal forecasts in an alternative economic scenario.
Annex A covers the Autumn Budget 2017 policy decisions and Annex B explains the UK’s EU contributions in our spending forecasts.
Watch the presentation |
Brexit to cost UK £72bn by 2021: Office for Budget Responsibility | The impact of Brexit will cause the UK economy £72bn in lost economic activity by 2021, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility's economic and fiscal outlook. This equates to GDP being 3.4% smaller in 2021 than originally estimated in March 2016, before the referendum took place.
| http://uk.businessinsider.com/the-economic-cost-of-brexit-in-gdp-2017-11 | 2017-11-23 15:32:14.943000 | Brexit will cost Britain £72 billion in lost economic activity annually, according to an analysis of government figures.
Leaving the EU is already dragging down the British economy.
The UK is now growing more slowly than Japan or Italy.
LONDON — Chancellor Philip Hammond's annual budget, presented yesterday, has finally given Britain the first concrete numbers on the cost of Brexit.
The government's Office for Budget Responsibility published revised GDP growth numbers based on data following the June 2016 referendum. Those new estimates suggest that Brexit will cost Britain £72 billion in lost annual economic activity by 2021, according to an analysis by the Resolution Foundation.
Previously, the best estimate of the economic damage leaving Europe will inflict on the UK came from a private estimate by one of Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union David Davis's advisors, of about £22 billion per year, mostly from extra trade tariffs and barriers.
Here are the new GDP charts from the OBR.
They show other major economies such as the US, the EU, and Canada all growing faster now than they were in the six months prior to the Brexit referendum in 2016. Only in the UK has growth slowed, as the pound lost value and investors hit the pause button. Even Japan, an infamous economic basket case hobbled by years of stagnation, is doing better than the UK:
OBR
In terms of sequential GDP growth through Q3 2017, Britain now lags France and debt-ridden Italy, too. This chart comes from Pantheon Macroeconomics:
Pantheon Macroeconomics
This next chart shows how much we are forecast to lose in GDP activity every year, based on the difference between the OBR's previous estimate in March and its new estimate, from updated post-referendum data:
OBR
The Resolution Foundation says the gap will represent a loss of £72 billion in 2021:
"The economy is now expected to be roughly £42 billion smaller at the start of 2022 than was thought back in March. This downgrade comes on top of the deterioration pencilled in after the Brexit vote of June 2016. As such, the latest GDP projections point to an economy that will be £72 billion (or 3.4 percent) smaller in 2021 than had been projected in March 2016."
That's £72 billion in lost jobs, revenues, consumer spending, and so on.
There are other factors at play, of course. A big one is the UK's chronic lack of productivity, exacerbated by its refusal to allow in the young immigrant workers to generate the income tax receipts its ageing population needs to pay for the NHS and its state pensions.
But the OBR's downward revisions from March to November of this year all come in the post-Brexit-vote period, and the only thing of macroeconomic substance that changed between then and now was the realisation that the UK is headed toward hard Brexit rather than a trade deal that would keep the country closely tied to the single market. |
Global firms used timber from firm linked to massacre: Greenpeace | Over a dozen European and US firms have imported timber from a Brazilian logging company owned by a man implicated in an Amazonian massacre, according to Greenpeace. Valdelir João de Souza, founder of Madeireira Cedroarana, was accused by police of ordering the murder of nine people in Mato Grosso in Brazil, in order to gain access to forest land, in April. Since his indictment, de Souza has been on the run, but his company has allegedly sold products to overseas firms. Greenpeace claims the transactions could contravene the US Lacey Act and the European Union’s timber regulation.
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/23/global-firms-accused-of-importing-timber-linked-to-amazon-massacre | 2017-11-23 15:18:28.477000 | More than a dozen US and European companies have been importing timber from a Brazilian logging firm whose owner is implicated in one of the most brutal Amazonian massacres in recent memory, according to a Greenpeace Brazil investigation.
The first-world buyers allegedly continued trading with Madeireira Cedroarana after police accused its founder, Valdelir João de Souza, of ordering the torture and murder of nine people in Colniza, Mato Grosso, on 19 April, claims the report by the NGO.
The state attorney alleges de Souza organised the assassinations to gain access to the forest where the victims – all smallholders – lived. Since the indictment on 15 May, the suspect has been on the run.
During this period, the fugitive’s company allegedly sold products to foreign firms who shipped them to the US, Germany, France, Belgium, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Canada and Japan.
Greenpeace alleges these shipments may be in contravention of the US Lacey Act, which bans trade in timber that violates any foreign law, and the European Union’s timber regulation, which obliges companies to conduct due diligence to ensure there is “no more than a negligible risk that it has been illegally harvested.”
It lists the 13 companies involved as Pine Products, Lacey Wood Products, Mid-State Lumber Corp, South Florida Lumber, Wood Brokerage International, Vogel Import & Export, Delfin Germany, Tiger Deck, Global Timber, Centre Import Bois Méditerranée, Derlage Junior Hout, Global Gold Forest and Houthandel van der Hoek.
Greenpeace activists set up crosses in Brasília in memory of people killed during conflicts in the Amazon. Photograph: Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters
Even before this year’s massacre, the report alleges these firms should have hesitated to do business with Madeireira Cedroarana because it had accrued about £130,000 in unpaid federal fines for stocking and trading illegal timber. There also appears to be evidence of widespread fraud, timber laundering and killings of forest defenders in Amazon states including Mato Grosso.
Greenpeace urged US and European authorities to consider Brazilian timber to be at high risk of coming from an illegal source, and thus to oblige companies to go beyond official paperwork and to carry out third-party field audits. |
Thames Water to stop using Cayman Islands subsidiaries | Thames Water, the UK’s largest water and wastewater services firm, will close its two Cayman Islands subsidiaries. The company has appointed former boss of energy company SSE, Ian Marchant, as chairman to review the entire business and to simplify the firm’s nine-company structure. Thames Water, which has not paid corporation tax within the UK for the past decade, said that the subsidiaries offered no tax advantage and were created to raise money for infrastructure investment through bonds. However, the company’s management has accepted that the use of the subsidiaries “just looks wrong”.
| https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/nov/23/thames-water-cayman-island-subsidiaries-chairman | 2017-11-23 14:20:47.543000 | Thames Water has appointed the former SSE boss Ian Marchant as chairman to spearhead a review of the business, including closing the company’s controversial Cayman Islands subsidiaries.
Britain’s biggest water and wastewater services company, which has not paid corporation tax in the UK for the past 10 years, said there was no tax advantage from its two Cayman subsidiaries and that they were created for the purpose of raising money through bonds to fund its infrastucture investment programme. But it is understood that management accepts that “it just looks wrong”.
The company said the subsidiaries “have always been fully registered in the UK for tax purposes but no longer serve their original purpose of enabling smoother access to the global bond markets”.
Thames Water has a complicated structure of nine companies and the new chairman has been tasked with simplifying it. Marchant, who ran energy firm SSE for more than 10 years and also chairs the engineering services firm John Wood Group, will join Thames Water’s board on 1 December and become chairman on 26 January.
Thames Water said it had been able to defer corporation tax because of its capital investment programme – which includes a £4.2bn, 15-mile sewer under the Thames.
But critics note that about £1.2bn has been taken out of Thames Water in the form of dividends in the past 10 years. Its owner over that period, the Australian investment bank Macquarie, which sold its final stake earlier this year, landed it with £10.75bn of debt financing. In March, Thames Water was fined a record £20.3m after huge leaks of untreated sewage into the Thames and on land.
Marchant succeeds Sir Peter Mason, who became chairman in 2006 and delayed his retirement last year to help the company through a transitional phase with the arrival of a new chief executive, Steve Robertson, and chief financial officer, Brandon Rennet, as well as new investors.
New shareholders include the Universities Superannuation Scheme, one of the UK’s largest pension funds, which has acquired a 10% stake and is pushing for an overhaul of governance arrangements and customer service. The biggest shareholder is Canadian pension fund Omers, followed by the BT pension scheme.
Thames Water was a public utility until it was privatised in 1989. In the mid-1990s it was sold to a consortium led by Macquarie. |
Russians turn food waste into biofuel via 'hydrothermal liquefaction' | Scientists from Skoltech and the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Joint Institute for High Temperatures have used hydrothermal liquefaction to convert food waste into biofuel. The energy-efficient process converts wet biomass, including parmesan cheese, ham and apples into biofuel.
| http://www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2017/11/19/russian-scientists-discover-method-to-convert-food-waste-into-biofuels/ | 2017-11-23 13:39:05.947000 | In Russia, scientists from Skoltech and the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Joint Institute for High Temperatures proposed a new way to convert food waste into biofuel via hydrothermal liquefaction – a thermal depolymerization process used to turn wet biomass into oil. Other researchers use carbohydrates fermentation or fat transesterification for biofuel production but since only part of their respective biomasses are converted to fuel, the leftovers remain to be disposed of and doesn’t solve the food waste issue.
Trying to solve the food waste issue, Skoltech scientists theorized that hydrothermal liquefaction presented a uniquely energy-efficient and universal option. In particular, this method makes it possible to produce biofuel directly from wet biomass. Notably, it is best to convert the wet biomass before it dries, as the drying process consumes a considerable amount of energy. They experimented with various types of food waste, including parmesan cheese, ham and apples. Knowledge of the molecular composition of products obtained as a result of hydrothermal liquefaction will allow scientists to develop the most optimal methods for their subsequent processing to produce fuel suitable for powering cars. |
UAE researchers produce biodiesel from date pits | Date pits have been found to contain nearly 12% oil that is suitable for biodiesel production at about 90% efficiency, according to a team from UAE University. When the date-based biodiesel is combusted, methane and hydrogen was produced, which could be captured for further use as energy. About 40 million date palms are planted around the UAE with most pits going to waste, though some are used to produce soaps and cosmetics.
| http://www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2017/11/20/uae-researchers-produce-biodiesel-from-date-pits/ | 2017-11-23 13:31:27.497000 | In the UAE, a group researchers led by UAE University found that date pits hold nearly 12% oil that is suitable for biodiesel production at about 90% efficiency. The study Biodiesel Production from Oils Extracted from Date Pits, appears in the journal Green and Sustainable Chemistry.
“It’s a waste material. It’s not a valuable material we’re looking at … We’re making use of it before we discard it … Anything we can get of value out of it will be a positive,” Dr Sulaiman Al Zuhair of UAE University told The National. The
When the date-based biodiesel is combusted, the research team said they detected methane and hydrogen produced, which could be captured for further use as energy. About 40 million date palms are planted around the UAE with most pits going to waste, though some are used to produce soaps and cosmetics but before then it was used as charcoal in ancient times. |
Uber developing tech for non-smartphone users in India | The vice-president and global head of product at Uber, Daniel Graf, has said that the company is committing to reaching people in India with low connectivity - 2G, 3G or less - and those without a smartphone. Although he did not provide details of how this will occur, he acknowledged that there is a large consumer base with little access to internet and out-of-date phone software. He added that the company is striving to improve reliability issues caused by unpredictable traffic, bottlenecks and changing infrastructure. India "continues to be a focus market" for Uber, which has over 1,000 employees there.
| https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/business/uber-innovating-to-let-non-smartphone-users-also-take-a-ride-daniel-graf/articleshow/61664331.cms | 2017-11-23 13:29:54.977000 | San Francisco-headquartered Uber is working on technologies that will allow people in India without smartphones or in low bandwidth areas to book a ride. On the cards are several innovations for India, which is the second-largest market for the ride hailing firm, Daniel Graf , vice-president and global head of product at Uber told ET in an interview.“We are making a big investment in India which could also help other markets with similar conditions… Many areas get 3G or 2G connectivity or even less than that. How do you make it work there? This is an android dominant market and many of the phones are 2012 or older, some folks don’t have a smartphone but they should be able to get an Uber too,” said Graf. He added that the company which already has 1,000 people in India is making a “strong commitment” to grow the talent in India.Graf who is on his first visit to the country, said Uber is investing heavily towards making the trips through the ride sharing app more reliable and affordable. In the works are technology changes that will make predicting the arrival time more accurate despite constant changes to the infrastructure and traffic bottlenecks along making the pricing more stable.“There are stakeholders for Uber — drivers and riders and we want to create a ride which is reliable and affordable. Reliable means low ETA, but that’s not always the case. We have a long way to go to make it more reliable,” said Graf. He added that apart from making it affordable, the company’s goal is to make the ride safer with the use of technology. He added that for instance, Uber has introduced features that can sense if a driver has not mounted the phone (that helps with navigation) and is holding it in his hand. “If the driver has accelerated or braked too aggressively, we can detect that too with the sensors,” said Graf.Despite the management reshuffle at Uber recently which led to its founder Travis Kalanick being replaced by Dara Khosrowshahi as its CEO, Graf said that India continues to be a focus market for the company. On being asked about SoftBank’s proposed investment in Uber which may create conditions for a merger with bitter rival Ola, Graf said, “It’s not about Ola or Uber, it’s about transportation in general. We are (ride sharing) at low single digit of the overall transportation opportunity, even if there were more players, there are so many opportunities in the market.”As far as some features offered by its rivals are concerned such as booking outstation trips or offering rentals is concerned, Graf said the company is currently focused on its priorities which is to make the rides more reliable, affordable and safer. “It always depends, at the end of the day, we want to give reliable transportation. There are so many things we can do, we experiment a lot, and then we decide where we are going to double down and where we are not. Maybe, (accurate) ETAs are more important than something else.”Graf who is credited with building Google Maps and Google Local at his previous stint at Google, said the company is investing heavily in its mapping technology in line with the complexities of India.The idea is to map destinations and pick up points accurately and match rides better on the pool (ride sharing) offering which will not just help riders and drivers but also cities as it may help in reducing congestion. |
Mathematical model helps make wheat straw pellets for ethanol | Researchers from Kansas State University and Yangzhou University in China have created a mathematical model that advances the science behind the production of ethanol from wheat straw. The model determines factors that affect temperature rise during the pelleting process that precedes the creation of fuel. | http://www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2017/11/22/kansas-and-chinese-researchers-make-breakthrough-with-wheat-straw-ethanol-production/ | 2017-11-23 13:21:30.903000 | In Kansas, thanks to an international and interdisciplinary collaboration, faculty at Kansas State University’s Institute of Computational and Comparative Medicine and bioenergy researchers at Yangzhou University in China have marked a significant milestone for the production of ethanol fuel from wheat straw.
Their study, “Predictive temperature modeling and experimental investigation of ultrasonic vibration-assisted pelleting of wheat straw,” was recently published in Applied Energy, a top-tier journal in the field of energy. Their work examined factors that affect production of large-scale biomass during ultrasonic vibration-assisted pelleting.
The research team developed a computational and mathematical model to determine factors that impact temperature rise during a pelleting process of biomass. The condensed biomass, or pellets, can be easily handled and transported to make ethanol. Ethanol extracted from pellets can substitute for fossil fuels and mitigate accumulation of greenhouse gases.
By studying the entire pelleting process of biomass, the proposed mathematical model determines the key factors and delivers a new guideline for pellet production by avoiding unnecessary experiments. |
TalkTalk Watchdog to bring in new rules on broadband speed in ads | Telecoms companies will be required to change how they advertise broadband speeds. Research has found that households in 284 out of 390 local authorities are typically getting slower speeds than promised. Under new rules from the Committee on Advertising Practice, providers will have to base speed claims in advertisements on the average speed that is available to at least 50% of customers at peak times rather than the "up to" speeds. "It is good to see people may finally see the speeds they could achieve before they sign up to a deal," said Alex Neill of consumer group Which?.
| http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5109749/Watchdog-brings-new-rules-broadband-speeds-adverts.html?ITO=1490&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490 | 2017-11-23 13:05:17.830000 | Internet giants are to be blocked from misleading millions of customers with bogus claims about how fast their broadband is.
At the moment, companies such as BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin advertise their broadband based on so-called ‘up to’ speeds.
However, few customers realise that the claims are allowed even if just 10 per cent of households can achieve those speeds.
The new rules, announced by the Committee on Advertising Practice (CAP), mean the firms will have to limit their claims to the average speed available to at least 50 per cent of customers at peak times.
Companies such as BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin advertise their broadband based on so-called ‘up to’ speeds but few realise the claims are allowed even if just 10 per cent of households can achieve those speeds
The current state of Britain’s broadband service has come under fire from families, businesses and consumer groups. Many feel misled over the claims about speeds, breakdowns in service and rocketing costs.
Some homes are paying more than £1,500 a year for packages which include pay TV, yet our broadband system is second rate compared to nations including Slovakia, Lithuania, Bulgaria and Romania.
This is largely because most UK services are carried along ancient copper telephone wires rather than hi-tech fibre optic cables. So, the further people are from telephone exchanges, the slower their service is.
CAP director Shahriar Coupal said: ‘When it comes to broadband ads our new standards will give consumers a better understanding of the speeds offered by different providers when deciding to switch providers.’
The rules will come into force in May next year and will apply to residential broadband adverts.
The Government’s digital minister, Matt Hancock, said: ‘Headline “up to” speeds that only need to be available to 10 per cent of consumers are incredibly misleading – customers need clear, concise and accurate information in order to make an informed choice.
Many feel misled over the claims about speeds, breakdowns in service and rocketing costs
‘We have been fighting for this for some time now, and it’s a great victory for consumers.’
Managing director of home products and services at consumer group Which?, Alex Neill, added: ‘Millions of households are currently experiencing broadband speeds that just don’t live up to their expectations and unrealistic adverts showing speeds you’re never likely to get don’t help.
‘It is good to see people may finally see the speeds they could achieve before they sign up to a deal.’
The telecoms regulator, Ofcom, which recently outlined a new compensation scheme for customers whose broadband service fails, welcomed the announcement.
Its consumer group director, Lindsey Fussell, said: ‘We’ve been backing this change, which will help close the gap between what broadband shoppers expect, and what they receive.’ Under Ofcom’s arrangements, compensation will be £8 per day for loss of service and £25 if a firm misses an appointment to carry out a repair.
And £5 per day will be paid if a firm fails to start a new service when promised. The fines will come into effect at the start of 2019.
Our broadband system is second rate compared to nations including Slovakia, Lithuania, Bulgaria and Romania
The crackdown comes after a Which? study found last week that broadband speeds in three in four homes are slower than those claimed by internet providers.
Families in 284 out of 390 local authority areas are typically getting slower speeds than stated.
Firms provide official estimates of their median broadband speed to Ofcom. Which? compared the latest figures to the median speeds that households are actually getting, based on 712,000 home tests. The median is the mid-point speed seen from all the tests in a local area.
The biggest gap was in Ashfield in Nottinghamshire where tests found the median download speed was 62 per cent slower than the figure claimed by broadband firms.
The actual figure was 15.1 megabits per second (Mbit/s) versus the official claim of 40 Mbit/s.
The figure in Surrey Heath was 58 per cent below expectations and in Havant, Hampshire, it was 57 per cent slower. Cambridge, Gloucester and St Albans in Hertfordshire were all 56 per cent lower than stated. |
TalkTalk Customers unhappy in West Midlands as TV boxes fail to record | TalkTalk has been beset with complaints from its customers in the West Midlands region after their YouView boxes failed to record. In an apology statement, TalkTalk confirmed that the issue was caused by a signal problem rather than any faults with hardware. "The majority of issues experienced were caused by some changes to the way regional transmitters were broadcasting TV channels that had an adverse effect on our TV boxes", said the company. Many customers were advised to perform factory resets of their YouView boxes during the incident, which erased their recorded content.
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Talktalk customers have been left fuming after their Youview boxes failed to record.
Numerous viewers from across the region have been plagued by the issues this week.
Scores took to Twitter to vent their fury, with the firm receiving dozens of complaints.
Customers who contacted Talktalk have been told to book in an engineer - but it now has emerged that the problem was not with the hardware.
The issue, which has been restricted to customers across the West Midlands, is due to the signal, Talktalk has revealed.
In a post on a help forum the company said: "We want to thank you all for your patience while we’ve been investigating the recent issues you’ve been reporting to us with your recordings.
"Thanks to your feedback, we’ve discovered this to affect a proportion of our customers that happen to be in and around the West Midlands area.
"The majority of issues experienced were caused by some changes to the way regional transmitters were broadcasting TV channels that had an adverse effect on our TV boxes. The changes are being rolled back today, so your service should resume to normal again by this evening but you may need to reboot your box once more for this to take effect. We’d like to apologise for the inconvenience caused during this time.”
The issue had left customers infuriated as there seemed to be no reason for their boxes to suddenly stop working.
One customer said: "I was advised to do a factory reset. This means all my old recordings were lost. Now it seems like it was nothing was wrong with the Youview bvox. It's a shame Talktalk didn't put two and two together earlier."
Another said: “So my recordings have failed FOUR NIGHTS IN A ROW. I reboot STB as instructed, everything looks fine then I come home at 2 am to find it supposedly recording something from several days ago...and Scheduled showing I have nothing scheduled. Check my recordings for that evening and every single one has failed. So I reboot and everything looks OK..then same old Groundhog Day.”
A talktalk user added: “I had a new TV box in September and it started to play up about 3 weeks ago. It now stops recording in the middle of programmes, it won’t ad hoc record, it loses recordings, it won’t delete, it sticks, and I have reset it at lease twice a day since Thursday.” |
Driver assistance systems installed in Revv's rental cars | The Mobileye-powered Advanced Driver Assist System (ADAS) has been installed into the cars of Indian automobile rental company Revv. The ADAS system includes a forward-collision warning which gauges proximity to the car ahead, has headway monitor warning, pedestrian and cyclist collision warning, lane departure warning and speed limit indicator. Mobileye is testing the software on India's "tricky" roads to refine and improve its systems.
| https://www.digit.in/car-tech/car-rental-service-revv-to-now-have-mobileye-powered-driver-assistance-systems-37886.html | 2017-11-23 13:01:30.527000 | Indian self-drive car rental startup Revv has partnered with Mobileye to equip their cars with Mobileye's Advanced Driver Assist Systems (ADAS). Mobileye, an Intel company, specialises in on-road image sensing and providing crucial data to aid assistive and autonomous driving technology. The ADAS system is a set of advanced safety features that Mobileye can retrofit in production cars to make them safer and smarter, and it is this very set that will be present in Revv's cars, going forward.
The Mobileye ADAS unit includes — forward collision warning (FCW) by gauging acceleration, braking and trajectory of the car ahead, headway monitor and warning (HMW) to gauge proximity from the car ahead, pedestrian and cyclist collision warning (PCW) to avoid accidents (only works during day), lane departure warning and speed limit indication. The retrofitted technology will include Mobileye's own camera and sensor units, which enable computer vision to process environment data while travelling. Revv, notably, is the first Indian company in the commercial commuting and ride sharing space to avail and equip its fleet with the advanced assistance technology.
While the switch towards autonomy has been evident for a while, the nascent steps are only being taken now. With Revv adopting Mobileye's ADAS technologies, more players in the ride sharing and commercial commuting space, which are often prone to accidents, will move to equip their fleet with similar technologies. Revv reportedly carried out on-road tests of the 30 ADAS equipped cars (out of its fleet of 800 cars) and drove for over 4,00,000kms. Mobileye, meanwhile, has been one of the most noted companies working on advanced autonomy, and will be using Revv's platform as an effective way to gauge the tricky Indian roads and improve the systems. |
TalkTalk TalkTalk announces multiscreen feature in new app | TalkTalk TV looks set to finally catch up with the likes of Sky, Virgin Media and BT with the launch of its multiscreen streaming app in 2018. Available on iOS and Android, the app will enable subscribers to watch TalkTalk's live TV and on-demand library anywhere on mobile devices. However, content can only be streamed to one device at any given time. The app will also feature a curation service called "My TV", and will be free for all existing TalkTalk customers.
| https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/22/talktalk-tv-multiscreen/ | 2017-11-23 12:56:12.050000 | Sky, Virgin Media and BT all offer their customers ways to watch TV beyond the living room. TalkTalk has an app for its rental and purchase store -- formerly Blinkbox, you might recall -- but otherwise it's fallen behind the pack somewhat. The company is changing that sometime in the first few months of next year, though, when it'll launch new apps that take TalkTalk TV truly multiscreen for the first time.
Quite simply, the new app for iOS and Android will put TalkTalk's live TV and on-demand library on mobile devices. Subscribers will be able to watch Freeview and any of their paid channel bundles anywhere, so it's not limited to devices on the same home network as the set-top box. The apps support Chromecast too, so you can push TV to another bigger screen elsewhere, and exactly the same experience will be available in browsers, should a laptop or PC be your second screen of choice.
There is one limitation. While you can be logged in to the TalkTalk app on up to 4 devices, you can only stream to one at a time -- in addition to whatever's playing on your home set-top box, of course. That won't strictly be true for TalkTalk's fibre broadband customers though, as next year they will also be able to add another set-top box to their package to create a multiroom situation at home. The one additional device rule will still apply here, though technically that means there can be three active screens at any one time, including the two set-top boxes. TalkTalk isn't sharing how much an additional box will set you back just yet, but for everyone, the new multiscreen feature of the service will be free and not a paid perk.
To make multiscreen happen, TalkTalk built its new mobile apps and web interface from scratch so users can get at all their live and on-demand TV in the same way they can on their set-top boxes. It has a different look, of course, since navigation isn't bound to a remote. The apps sport a more visual, card-like UI highlighting popular live and on-demand content, as well as the newest releases in the movie and boxset purchase and rental store. This is in addition to a traditional EPG view of live TV for quick-browsing. For anything that isn't live -- so, anything on a catch-up service or something you've rented, for example -- you can pause on one device and pick up where you left off on another.
TalkTalk also throws some curation into the mix within the "My TV" section of the app, which is what the company calls a "safe space." What's meant by that is recommendations will only come from channels and such you already own, so it won't suggest things you need to buy or sign up to another channel bundle in order to watch. Multiscreen is still a few months away for customers at this point, but when it does launch next year it'll see TalkTalk close the distance on its main rivals with this important value-adding feature. |
Graphene 'could provide limitless energy' | There is strong evidence that the internal motion of 2D materials could be used as a source of clean, limitless energy, and a device to prove the concept is under construction, according to researchers at the University of Arkansas. The team has applied for a patent for the Vibration Energy Harvester, which makes use of the internal movements of carbon atoms in graphene. The so-called Lévy flights have been observed in a variety of contexts, such as biomedical signals and climate dynamics, but never before in an inorganic atomic-scale system. The technology could be used to power small, digital objects, such as watches, pacemakers and internet of things devices.
| https://www.graphene-info.com/graphenes-internal-motion-could-provide-limitless-clean-energy | 2017-11-23 12:43:45.830000 | Researchers at the University of Arkansas, led by professor Paul Thibado, have found strong evidence that the internal motion of 2D materials could be used as a source of clean, limitless energy. The team has reportedly taken the first steps toward creating a device that can turn this energy into electricity, with the potential for many applications. A patent has recently been applied on this invention, called a Vibration Energy Harvester, or VEH.
The team studied the internal movements of carbon atoms in graphene and observed two distinct features: small Brownian motion and larger, coordinated movements. In these larger movements, the entire ripple buckled, flipping up and down like a thin piece of metal being repeatedly flexed. This pattern of small random motion combined with larger sudden movements is known as Lévy flights. This phenomenon can be observed in a variety of contexts, such as biomedical signals, climate dynamics, and more. Thibado is claimed to be the first to have observed these flights spontaneously occurring in an inorganic atomic-scale system.
while other researchers have theorized that temperature-induced curvature inversion in graphene could be used as an energy source, Thibado’s work is unique thanks to his discovery that graphene has naturally occurring ripples that invert their curvature as the atoms vibrate in response to the ambient temperature. This is the key to using the motion of 2D materials as a source of harvestable energy, Thibado said. Unlike atoms in a liquid, which move in a random directions, atoms connected in a sheet of graphene move together. This means their energy can be collected using existing nanotechnology.
Such a VEH device would involve a negatively charged sheet of graphene suspended between two metal electrodes. When the graphene flips up, it induces a positive charge in the top electrode, and when it flips down, it charges the bottom one, creating an alternating current.
The pieces of graphene in Thibado’s lab measure about ten microns across, so tiny that more than 20,000 of them could fit on the head of a pin. Each Levy flight exhibited by an individual ripple measures only 10 nanometers by 10 nanometers, yet could produce 10 picowatts of power. As a result, each of these micro-sized membranes has the potential to produce enough energy to power a wristwatch, and they would never wear out or need charging.
The team will also be experimenting with other 2D materials, in addition to graphene. Ironically, it was found that the superior conductivity of grapheneâa characteristic that that allows it to excel as a material for creating tiny electric circuits in other contextsâmakes it less than ideal for this purposes. His VEH device yields more energy if the active material is not conductive, because if electrons move too easily across it, this lowers its efficiency. The researchers are studying other 2D materials to determine if they could produce energy more efficiently than graphene.
A VEH technology could have significant implications on the effort to connect physical objects to the digital world, known as the Internet of Things. This self-charging, microscopic power source could make everyday objects into smart devices, as well as powering more sophisticated biomedical devices such as pace-makers, hearing aids, and wearable sensors. Self-powering enables smart bio-implants, explained Thibado, which would profoundly impact society. |
Drivezy builds own currency to allow users to crowdfund vehicles | Indian car rental company, Drivezy, has created a cryptocurrency called RentalCoins, which allows users to crowdfund its fleet of vehicles. Formerly named JustRide, Drivezy is a technology aggregator for self-drive cars and bike rentals. The company has raised $10m and has been backed by Google, DAS Capital and Axan Ventures, amongst others. The company is now looking to raise $20m through a public ICO in 2018 and two private ICOs previously.
| https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/304291 | 2017-11-23 12:41:40 | 4 hacks on how to raise funds by the believer in blockchain technology to fuel world economy
You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media.
The ride for this startup is picking up.
From being a pioneer among Indian companies to allow the use of cryptocurrency in operations to addressing bottlenecks that challenged the scalability of its platform in less just two years of operations, Drivezy is nothing short of exemplary.
Formerly called JustRide in 2015, the car-sharing aggregator transformed into a peer-to-peer marketplace for self-drive cars and two-wheeler rentals last year and is now venturing into cycle rental services.
What's fuelling their growth? In its latest feat, the company has raised $10 million, part equity from Das Capital, and existing investors Axan Partners and IT-Farm. Part debt funding has been made by Mahindra Finance, ICICI Bank, Shriram Finance and Cholamandalam Finance.
Road To RentalCoins
Embracing technology could be the road ahead for innovation in India.
Quick to imbibe this, Drivezy built RentalCoins, a cryptocurrency that allows users to crowdfund a fleet of vehicles that would cater to everyone's needs.
People invest only what they can afford. By lowering the barrier to entry, this system is expected to allow a greater segment of the Indian population to invest in a shared fleet of vehicle that generates monthly returns.
According to Ashwarya Singh, CEO and Founder of Drivezy, investors from across the globe will be able to directly invest in shared vehicles for the first time in India.
"We aim to raise $20 million through two private ICO's to fund 2,000 vehicles that shall ply across the country. The initial phase of the project will be a proof of our concept and shall be open to accredited investors only. We shall convene a public ICO in 2018 which would allow everyone to participate," Singh told Entrepreneur India.
Singh believes blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies are the missing links that could unite individual sharing markets like vehicle sharing, ride sharing, co-working spaces etc into a true sharing economy.
The amalgamation of blockchain and sharing economy will give rise to a new economic paradigm where nobody buys anything, but everyone owns everything, said Singh. The company's RentalCoins can potentially create almost 10 lakh micro-entrepreneurs, who can supplement their household income by renting their assets Singh claims.
Drivezy is aiming to leverage the power of the blockchain to build a secure and transparent technology to globalize the Indian car sharing marketplace via its upcoming Initial Coin Offering (ICO).
How Do You Get Investors Interested in Your Vision
Starting up your own business is not easy, especially if you're doing it for the first time. There are a multitude of factors at play when you look to raise funds for your startup and a successful fundraise entails striking the right balance. Here's how Singh thinks is required to get the first (or next) round of funding.
Figure out the Problem: A common advice that does rounds in start-ups is always aiming to solve real-world problems to build great products. The irony is that you cannot build a great product unless you figure out what the actual problem is.
"Our initial idea was to build a seamless self-drive car rental service as more than 90% Indians don't own a car. However, initially we had neglected a crucial piece of the puzzle; the people who did own a car, used it for less than a few hours each day," Singh said.
Seek Mentors, Not Investors: There's a wide variety of potential seed investors out there, and very few of them are known to public. Because of this, it's important to think about fundraising not in terms of pure cash but rather in terms of relationships and value. Your early-stage investors are the cornerstone for your future fundraises. They provide credibility to your idea and help build your network for the next round.
"When we raised our seed investment back in 2015, we looked for people who could guide our business and believed in us and our vision. There are bound to be ups and downs so choose wisely. If you have figured the right problem to solve, then startup accelerators can offer excellent guidance," Singh said.
Hire the Right Team: Hiring amazing talent is both the most difficult thing founders will ever do and the most transformative for their start up. Don't just hire the best; but hire the people who match your culture and management style. If you hire a smart set, and provide them the right environment, the team will collectively work towards the common issue your company is trying to solve.
Start Small, Think Big and Scale Fast: No matter how valuable you think your idea is, your product must be market-fit. Find a value hypothesis that compels people to use your product. You cannot create a great product overnight. Building a great product is a painstaking iterative journey. You can start local, but once you've served the first hundred customers, figure out how you can scale your idea to cover the next hundred moving toward thousand. Above all time is the key. If you're too slow to figure it out, someone will surely pip you to the finish line. |
Graphene additive doubles life of road surfaces | Directa Plus has collaborated with Italy-based Iterchimica to create a patent-pending graphene-enhanced asphalt additive that can significantly improve the durability and sustainability of road surfaces. Iterchimica's Eco Pave incorporating Directa’s Graphene Plus (G+) can extend the life of an asphalt road surface from the current average of 6-7 years to 12-14 years, it said. The asphalt is less susceptible to hardening and cracking in cold temperatures, and to softening in warm temperatures. Iterchimica also claims that road surfaces built with asphalt containing Eco Pave will be recyclable with up to 100% of the milled asphalt being reusable. | https://www.graphene-info.com/directa-plus-and-iterchimica-develop-new-graphene-enhanced-asphalt-additive | 2017-11-23 12:30:09.563000 | Directa Plus has announced its collaboration with Iterchimica, am Italy-based producer and distributor of specialized additives for asphalt. The collaboration with Iterchimica is focused on developing a graphene-enhanced asphalt additive, which is patent-pending, that can significantly improve the durability and sustainability of asphalt road surfaces.
The new additive incorporating the Directa’s Graphene Plus (G+) has been launched by Iterchimica as "Eco Pave". As per reports, the success of laboratory and small-scale trials convinced Iterchimica to conduct a pilot test where Eco Pave will be used as an additive for asphalt covering several kilometers of road surface.
The Company anticipates receiving an initial order for G+ before the year-end for the pilot test. The presence of G+ reportedly produces a technically-advanced, sustainable additive that significantly enhances the performance of asphalt used for road surfacing. In particular, due to the thermal management properties of G+, the asphalt is less susceptible to hardening and cracking in cold temperatures as well as to softening in warm temperatures. It increases the elasticity and strength to reduce the wear, particularly with high loads, which is especially beneficial for maintenance purposes such as repairing potholes.
In addition, road surfaces built with asphalt containing Eco Pave will be recyclable with up to 100% of the milled asphalt being repeatedly re-used to build a new pavement, which avoids the landfilling of the exhausted material as well as the extraction of new bitumen.
Based on their research, Iterchimica estimate that the addition of Eco Pave will extend the life of an asphalt road surface from the current average of 6-7 years to 12-14 years. Thanks to the joint R&D process undertaken by Directa Plus and Iterchimica, the parties have been able to produce Eco Pave at a commercially viable selling price. As a result, asphalt containing Eco Pave could significantly reduce maintenance costs.
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Redrow Two more Redrow show homes open at Amington Green in Tamworth | UK housebuilder Redrow has opened two show houses as part of the Amington Green phase of its £14m ($18.6m) Amington Garden Village development in Tamworth, Staffordshire. They add to the four show homes from the Amington Fairway phase that are already open to the public, and include family homes, as well as properties pitched at the 55+ market.
| https://www.easier.com/137597-tamworth-buyers-are-green-with-envy.html | 2017-11-23 12:27:11.123000 | Tamworth buyers are green with envy
The grass is always greener on the other side and with even more to see at Amington Garden Village that’s sure to be the case for Tamworth house hunters.
Work on the landmark new community is progressing well with two more Redrow show homes now open at the Amington Green phase in addition to the four that have been wowing visitors to Amington Fairway since the summer.
Combining traditional Arts & Crafts inspired architecture with interiors designed with how real families live today, Redrow’s Heritage Collection homes offer the best of old and new.
Pauline Turnbull, sales director for Redrow Homes (Midlands), explains: “It’s almost six months since we launched Amington Garden Village, a flagship scheme to create hundreds of much-needed new homes in Tamworth. It wouldn’t be practical to have a show home for every property style we’re building but with six professionally styled and fully furnished examples available to view, buyers can gain a real insight as to what it could be like to live in a brand new Redrow home.”
The new show homes at Amington Green are an Oxford Lifestyle, a surprisingly spacious home with all three bedrooms boasting an en-suite, and a four-bedroom Shrewsbury style property. Both are detached designs.
“At Amington Fairway the show homes are very much designed with family living in mind, but we also recognise that there’s a demand from the over 55 market including downsizers or rightsizers as we prefer to call them,” Pauline adds.
“Not everyone whose children have flown the nest will want a smaller home, they might just want a property that’s easier to manage and more in keeping with their lifestyle. Our research has revealed a growing number of people don’t necessarily want lots of bedrooms but bigger bedrooms and well planned living space. The Oxford Lifestyle at Amington Fairway is a prime example as all of the bedrooms have an en-suite with the master also featuring a dressing area; while downstairs there’s an inviting and sociable open plan kitchen and dining room, with adjoining utility, complemented by separate lounge with feature bay window.”
The ground floor of the Shrewsbury is similar in that there’s a combined kitchen and dining room, with handy utility and cloakroom to the rear of the property, and lounge at the front. Journey upstairs and there are four bedrooms, including master with en-suite, plus the family bathroom.
Along with building new homes on the former golf course site, Redrow will invest around £14 million to help ensure Amington Garden Village is sustainable for the benefit of the wider community. This includes contributions towards the cost of building a new primary school, creating a new community woodland, extending the Hodge Lane Local Nature Reserve and funding improvements to sports facilities.
For more information about Amington Fairway see redrow.co.uk/amington.
To find out more about Amington Green see redrow.co.uk/amingtongreen. |
Nomad Health opens online marketplace to telehealth freelances | Nomad Health has added listings for freelance telehealth professionals to its online portal, according to a company statement. Strategic sales manager Sam Toole said telehealth roles posted so far had received a "massive amount of interaction, excitement, number of applications and inquiries". The addition of telehealth positions follows the inclusion of nurses in June and an official endorsement for the platform from Texas Hospital Association last month.
| http://www.mobihealthnews.com/content/nomad-health-opens-online-job-board-telehealth-providers | 2017-11-23 12:14:41.080000 | Nomad Health’s online freelance marketplace for healthcare professional staffing now includes postings for telehealth positions alongside traditional healthcare roles.
With the updated service, doctors interested in telehealth practice will be able to view and apply to open position listings from several telehealth service providers, including American Well and First Stop Health. Current telemedicine openings include specific areas such as tele-urgent care, teledermatology, and telepsychiatry, according to a statement from the company.
“Thanks to modern technology, doctors are returning to their roots and seeing patients at home. The comfort of easy access to high quality care is leading to extraordinarily high satisfaction for telemedicine doctors and their patients,” Dr. Alexi G. Nazem, CEO and cofounder of Nomad Health, said in a statement. “Telemedicine is a win-win, and Nomad is so pleased to help drive this medical technology revolution forward.”
Sam Toole, strategic sales manager at Nomad, explained that much of the infrastructure and interface developed for the telehealth postings were similar to those already in place for in-person positions. Still, he said that Nomad “worked closely with all of our clients” through an early limited release of the functionality, and incorporated the telemedicine providers’ feedback into the final system.
“On the telemedicine side it’s more of just making sure that the platform worked well in terms of their model and how they hire doctors,” Toole told MobiHealthNews. “It’s a little bit different, obviously, than bringing in a full-time doctor to be working in a hospital, so we just worked with our early clients to make sure that we built the system in a way that was easy and intuitive for them to use, for both in tracking of time they were working with doctors and then posting those jobs so it was clear to the clinician what the opportunity was.”
Now that the telehealth posting functionality has been fully released, Toole said that the service is enjoying a warm reception from employers and jobseekers alike.
“We see that the providers on Nomad are extremely excited about these roles, and it is evident in terms of the activity the jobs do get when they are posted on the platform,” he said. “It is very common for telemedicine roles to be posted and get a massive amount of interaction, excitement, number of applications, inquiries about the role very quickly. So as we on-board telemedicine companies around the United States, we continue to see the providers be very, very excited.”
The inclusion of telemedicine is the latest in a stream of service expansions for the company, which was founded in 2015 and initially served the east coast. After raising $4 million for the platform from First Round Capital, RRE Ventures, and .406 Ventures last year, the platform opened its doors to nurses in July and has steadily introduced itself to a number of new states including Texas, Florida, North Carolina, and California. Last month, Nomad’s platform was also officially endorsed by the Texas Hospital Association. |
Digital adoption is driving insurance prices down | The adoption of digital initiatives by insurance companies is creating greater transparency, which in turn is driving pricing down, according to a survey by consultancy Simon-Kucher & Partners. Nearly half of global insurers responding to the survey said that pricing pressure is a barrier to revenue growth. The adoption of digital initiatives is also seen to be contributing to the commoditisation of services and greater negotiating power being placed into the hands of consumers, according to the insurers surveyed.
| https://www.dig-in.com/news/digital-is-driving-down-insurance-prices?brief=00000159-faf0-d111-af7d-fbfd9f0a0000 | 2017-11-23 12:13:49.727000 | Insurers are focused on changing their processes in order to meet customer demands for a more digital experience, but that trend is having some unintended consequences, according to a new survey.
The efficiency and transparency realized by increased digitalization in insurance is driving prices down, consultancy Simon-Kucher & Partners discovered in its 2017 Global Pricing and Sales Study. The company interviewed 46 insurers around the world and found that 46% -- nearly half -- identified price pressure as the biggest barrier to revenue growth. Most planned price increases are slashed or not implemented at all -- a third of insurers said that they implemented 20% or fewer planned increases.
What's good news for customers, though, isn't good news for insurers. Implementing digital processes at the expense of growth impacts the long-term viability of a company. Specifically, digitalization is correlated with low-cost competition and increased price transparency, the two largest contributors to price pressure.
Insurers can't afford to put the brakes on digitalization though. So, Simon-Kucher suggests that carriers invest in "value selling" -- that is, training the sales staff and designing the digital customer acquisition experience to focus more on the value proposition of the product, and using data to identify the highest-value customers. That is, insurers need to think of digital in terms of how it delivers growth, not just how it cuts costs.
"Like many other industries, digital transformation is top of mind for the insurance industry. However, we find that most of the digitalization investments to-date are focusing primarily on process efficiency," says Wei Ke, head of the North American financial-services practice for Simon-Kucher & Partners. "The natural next step is to consider monetization opportunities through the digital channel, both at the point of sale and post-sale engagement." |
Outdated laws hinder Crispr research in Canada, say scientists | Scientists in Canada have called for a 13-year-old law preventing the use of gene-editing systems such as Crispr to be re-evaluated, claiming they are being left behind in the field. Researchers have pointed to the US as a model, where Crispr research on embryos is permitted, as long as they do not develop into babies. Researchers want a similar law in Canada, where the Assisted Human Reproduction Act bans all gene-editing work, even when it does not make genetic alterations that could be passed on to future generations.
| http://www.digitaljournal.com/life/health/outdated-law-makes-gene-editing-using-crispr-illegal-in-canada/article/508284 | 2017-11-23 12:01:13.467000 | CRISPR, pronounced “crisper,” is a simple yet powerful tool for editing genomes. It allows researchers to easily alter DNA sequences and modify gene function. The protein Cas9 (or “CRISPR-associated”) is an enzyme that acts like a pair of molecular scissors, capable of cutting strands of DNA.
CRISPR and targeted genome editing have opened a new era in molecular biology. The technology has given researchers an efficient and reliable way to make precise, targeted changes to the genome of living cells, and this has been a long-standing goal of biomedical research.
CRISPR – revolutionary new tool to cut and splice DNA. Illustration courtesy of Jennifer Doudna/UC Berkeley
Canadian scientists have been left out of the conversation on CRISPR gene-editing, and that is a real shame. By the end of 2014, some 1000 research papers had been published that mentioned CRISPR.
The technology had been used to functionally inactivate genes in human cell lines and cells, to study Candida albicans, to modify yeasts used to make biofuels and to genetically modify crop strains. CRISPR can also be used to change mosquitoes so they cannot transmit diseases such as malaria.
The two faces of CRISPR technology
CRISPR is one of the most exciting yet controversial technologies in health sciences today. On the one hand, it has the potential to alter the genetic content of cells, potentially preventing inherited diseases. Research was done in 2015 at Canada’s Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, where researchers used CRISPR technology to correct the mutation that causes Duchenne muscular dystrophy.
Sooam Biotech clones many animals, including cattle and pigs for medical research and breed preservation, but is best known for its commercial dog service Jung Yeon-Je, AFP
Yet, on the other hand, there is the fear the technology will be used to create genetically enhanced humans, The potential of the technology is huge and the theoretical risks this could play into creating designer humans also bring up the distasteful case for eugenics and cloning.
However, despite fears of the technology being used in the wrong way, on November 8, one major Canadian science group announced it wants the country’s law on CRISPR gene-editing changed, calling on the federal government to lift the prohibition and allow researchers to alter the genome of inheritable “germ” cells and embryos.
Canada’s Assisted Human Reproduction Act
Even though CRISPR technology is allowed to be used in the United States, it is still illegal to use gene-editing techniques to make genetic alterations that can be passed on to future generations. This is an important distinction because, in the U.S., scientists are still allowed to conduct experiments that include genetically altering embryos – as long as those embryos never become babies.
However, in Canada, under the federal AHRA law, even basic research that could be categorized as “gene-editing” is illegal, with penalties of up to 10 years in jail. The focus by scientists and ethicists is one a key provision of the 13-year-old AHRA that makes it a crime to alter the genome of a cell or embryo that’s capable of being transmitted to descendants.
The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada used CRISPR technology to correct the mutation that causes Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Hospital for Sick Children
“Scientists here feel left behind,” Vardit Ravitsky, a University of Montreal bioethicist, told Gizmodo. “They have the technical capacity to do this research and they have these good research questions. The only reason they’re not doing it is legal.”
“The main logic here is a slippery slope logic. If you allow us to genetically alter an embryo for research, what’s next?” said Ravitsky. “But embryos don’t fall by chance into a uterus. By banning research you are banning research that is not just about making babies. This research can promote our understanding of reproductive development, of the development of diseases. It makes no sense to say no to research.”
Ravitsky thinks Canada should have a law closer to the one in the U.S. where research is allowed, but altered embryos are not allowed to be implanted into the uterus. “In a few years, if we decide it’s safe and we want to move ahead with the first gene-edited pregnancy, we can decide then,” she said. “We don’t have to decide now.” |
ABB unveils digital pilot projects for hydrocarbon industry | ABB is investing $24m in 20 pilot projects, including three that apply digital technologies across oil, gas and petrochemical facilities. The projects will address condition-based maintenance, servicing of rotating equipment and fine-tuning the process performance of installed control systems. The maintenance project aims to provide customers with the services, tools and information they need to capture, trust and act upon the data and online information generated by today's installed condition monitoring systems. The system is designed to end arbitrary maintenance of electrical equipment by performing it only when necessary, reducing costs. | https://www.hydrocarbonengineering.com/special-reports/21112017/first-digital-flagship-projects-from-abb/ | 2017-11-23 11:59:24.330000 | With an investment of US$24 million, the first wave from some 20 digital pilot projects emerge from ABB, targeting maintenance cost reduction and data in-sights across oil, gas and chemicals facilities.
ABB is investing in a series of pilot projects aimed at bringing new digital products, services and solutions to industry. All projects are built using the ABB Ability platform, which, by using digitally enabled industry solutions, collects, stores, searches, finds, views and analyses data. The data is then presented as useful information in different contexts and timeframes.
The pilot projects extend from agile manufacturing, cloud-based collaboration and energy grid of the future to cyber asset management, digitally enabled process performance services and condition-based maintenance. Three projects specifically targeting the oil, gas and chemicals sectors, address the un-tapped potential of condition based maintenance, servicing of rotating equipment and fine-tuning process performance of installed control systems.
The first project targets maintenance, one of the most significant and untapped areas of cost savings in oil, gas and chemical facilities. With maintenance budgets accounting for some two-thirds of annual net profit, it is the largest single controllable expenditure. One leading oil operator estimates that about 63% of maintenance labour results in no action. This is because maintenance that is not needed is sometimes performed on perfectly functional equipment, thereby introducing unnecessary cost and risk.
ABB is investing in a series of pilot projects aimed at bringing new digital products, services and solutions to oil, gas and chemical facilities.
The project provides customers with the services, tools and information needed to capture, trust and act upon data and online information generated by todays installed condition monitoring systems. It ensures electrical equipment maintenance is only performed when necessary and not on an arbitrary schedule, eliminating needless interruption to production and reducing expenditures.
“Our approach provides the vital piece of the puzzle in the transition from a scheduled maintenance ap-proach to one that’s predictive – regardless of what kind of condition monitoring system is in place,” says ABB’s Dan Overly, Head of Product management for ABB’s oil gas and chemicals business. “We are helping customers get value from data. Early testing shows that this project can help reduce customer maintenan-ce costs by as much as 30%.”
A second project, targeting rotating equipment, provides a suite of analytical services and applications that give access to good quality data, identifies failure patterns of rotating equipment and predicts their potential failures. In addition, it benchmarks the customer fleet for improved budget allocation and al-lows ABB to build adjacent service offerings based upon the data collected.
This offering addresses the demands of chemical plant managers who are asking for a better understand-ing of how their fleet of rotating equipment performs, predict failures before they occur, and eliminate unnecessary maintenance to reduce operating costs.
The third project focuses on digitally enabled process performance services. It aims to improve operation and production quality by collecting data from customers’ existing assets, identifying areas where process improvement is needed, suggesting approaches to address challenges and deficits, and then implementing the services necessary to strengthen performance.
With lower oil prices, upstream operators are increasingly focusing on improving production. With today’s prices, process performance improvement can significantly improve the bottom line of the oil companies. Typically, 3 – 5% increased production is achievable, translating into about US$35 million extra earnings annually for a platform producing 50 000 bpd at US$50/bbl.
One outcome of this project is the ABB AbilityTM Process Performance Dashboard. Following some 15 years of identifying poor process system performance in upstream oil and gas facilities, ABB has developed six key performance indicators (KPIs) for the process performance of a plant. These include three symptoms and three results of bad process behavior. |
Edtech Kiddom claims presence in 70% of US school districts | US edtech Kiddom, which offers personalised free learning tools, said its software has been used in 70% of the country's school districts. CEO Ahsan Rizvi said the firm aims to start generating revenue by charging for new products. Kiddom's platform has been praised for enabling teachers to track students' progress, monitor the speed at which they learn and match assignments to education standards. Critics argue that personalised learning increases teachers' workloads and moves students away from working as a group. | https://www.axios.com/a-silicon-valley-startup-is-quietly-taking-over-u-s-classrooms-2511356737.html | 2017-11-23 11:54:04.127000 | Silicon Valley is determined to improve education by infusing it with technology. Its latest example is Kiddom, whose personalized learning software has quietly entered classrooms in 70% of U.S. school districts, according to the company.
Bottom line: Education is an obvious target for tech entrepreneurs—it has both mission and market size, especially as schools increasingly invest in tablets and lightweight laptops, amidst growing concerns over of the future of work.
The pitch: The promise of "personalized learning" is that students will be more successful if enabled to learn and work at their individual paces, along with regular guidance from teachers. Kiddom helps track each student's progress and can provide customized lesson materials. It also collects information on each student's skill level, learning pace and learning style.
"I think it's a data problem," says venture capitalist Keith Rabois, who led an investment in Kiddom for Khosla Ventures. He points out that medical records weren't digitized until recently, before which it was more difficult for patients and doctors to get a full understanding of a person's health. "There's a big promise in personalized learning, almost a Holy Grail."
Although Kiddom isn't currently making any money, CEO Ahsan Rizvi says that revenue generation likely will include charging use fees to school districts for new products (its currently free tools will remain free).
Kiddom says that once 20% of teachers in a school are using its software tools, it usually takes six to seven months for the rest of the school to adopt.
"Memorizing content is not what makes students successful," argues Abby Griffy, an instructional supervisor for Marshall County School District in Kentucky. Griffy's district began using Kiddom earlier this year as part of an effort to overhaul its approach and shift away from its previous focus on standardized tests. It also still uses software from some of Kiddom's competitors.
One of the district's main goals is to better prepare students for jobs and educational pursuits after high school—to "instill 21st Century skills in them," Griffy says.
One of Kiddom's most compelling features, for Griffy and Marshall County's school district, is the ability to match student assignments and work to education standards. For this, the company is using content from a dozen providers, such as Khan Academy and PBS Learning Media, and uses machine learning to analyze the school work.
Since it began these efforts, standardized tests scores have dropped, says Griffy, though administrators expected a dip as part of the transition.
But not all experts are convinced yet that tech-enabled personalized learning is an education panacea.
Personalized learning can require that teachers prepare more assignments and lesson plans, putting a strain on their already busy schedules.
Some experts are concerned that the heavy use of computers for lessons and assignments can deprive students of skills like group collaboration. Asked for comment, Kiddom tells Axios that it views technology as a way to enhance interactions between the student and teacher, not as a replacement for it.
The Carpe Diem Collegiate High School and Middle School in Yuma, Ariz. was initially praised for its rows of cubes with computers for each student that produced higher standardized tests scores. However, the school struggled to retain students. Silicon Valley-based AltSchool also recently said it's scaling back its school operations to instead focus on selling its software.
Kiddom, which has only raised $6.5 million in funding, faces several better-capitalized competitors, including Google Classroom, Summit Learning Platform (330 schools in 40 states, backed by Mark Zuckerberg's philanthropic organization), and AltSchool ($174 million raised).
Go deeper: Mother Jones recently looked into Summit Learning Platform and its parent company, a network of charter schools founded in 2003.
Editor's Note: Sign up for Axios newsletters to get our smart brevity delivered to your inbox every morning.
The story has been updated to clarify that Khan Academy and others aren't formal partners. |
Drilling Systems releases 'on-rig' training simulator | Drilling Systems has released an "On the Rig" (OTR) portable work-site simulator package. The fully mobile solution uses 3D simulations to delivery training and competence modules on well control, drilling practices, BOP landing, disconnects of lower marine rising packages, managed pressure drilling, drill-well-on-sim, complex lifts, banksman, human factors/CRM, operational readiness, lifting and deck operations. | https://www.oilfieldtechnology.com/drilling-and-production/14112017/new-on-platform-training-simulator-will-improve-safety-and-operational-efficiency/ | 2017-11-23 11:29:14.043000 | Drilling Systems has announced the release of its new ‘On the Rig’ (OTR) portable work-site simulator package. This advanced simulator provides flexible multi-discipline training modules and many other features to enable comprehensive training, development and personnel assessment in a fully mobile solution.
In an offshore environment, safety is of paramount importance. Operators face the challenge of ensuring skills and competencies are up to date and HSE targets met, while trying to meet increasing efficiency and operational performance goals. The OTR simulator addresses this challenge by providing high quality training without the need to leave the rig. Designed in a modular form, the system assesses and trains at every level of capability and can be used on multiple platform types across various operational disciplines.
The OTR system offers comprehensive training and competence modules for operations including well control, drilling practices, BOP landing, lower marine rising packages (LMRP) disconnects, managed pressure drilling, Drill-well-on-sim (DWOS), complex lifts, banksman, human factors/CRM, operational readiness, lifting and deck operations. Highly adaptable and easy to use, it can be used to put theory into practice and verify personnel competence for heightened on-site safety. It contains many years of experience about different scenarios and, as well as keeping personnel up to date with latest operational processes and procedures, enables training for emergency and other abnormal situations without any risk to safety. With 3D simulation and an easy to use learning management interface, the system provides both self-led or instructor supported learning in a way that helps personnel better retain information and learn how to apply theoretical knowledge.
OTR is a highly adaptable simulation platform which combines training on technical and non-technical skills using an easy to use, app-style interface. The simulation platform has integrated competence assessment, which provides both student and instructor with clear progress indicators and feedback. Modules are split into volumes and chapters with pass or fail at each stage to ensure robust learning. To enable well-defined benchmarking and evaluation of skills, the OTR continuous learning, development and assessment capability are mapped against industry standards. Data capture and in-simulation assessment against position specific profiles for different rig roles provide managers with complete evaluation of skills levels and tracking of individual maturity progression.
Ian Hudson, CEO at Drilling Systems commented, “This new package was specifically developed to address the need for high quality training on the rig. From discussions with operators, we are convinced that this is the best way to increase safety with an improved learning experience for rig crews across multiple disciplines. Having this system on site and without the need to engage an instructor, personnel can keep themselves completely up to date with latest practices and skill levels. The integrated tracking within the system also means that managers can easily see and assess skill levels – making the whole skills management process much more efficient.”
Ultimately, the OTR simulator package offers a new way for operators to efficiently manage accreditation, competency and value as part of daily operational activities. Without the need to leave the platform, skills can be regularly refreshed and latest procedures or new processes readily learned. Through this more integrated approach to the development and verification of skill levels, the OTR simulator can help reduce risks to safety from human error and enhance individual performance for greater operational efficiency – without overtly impacting on day to day operations. |
Wintershall deploys Emerson wireless downhole system on Maria | Wintershall is using Emerson’s latest Roxar Downhole Sensor System at the Maria field offshore Norway, with the aim of improving well integrity monitoring and offshore safety. The wireless system measures online and real-time pressure and temperature information from behind the casing in subsea production wells, allowing Wintershall to verify that predicted pressure build-up is within the design criteria, and to notify engineers if it falls outside them. The system has been tested at 225 C and can withstand pressures of up to 1,380 Bar. | http://www.scandoil.com/moxie-bm2/news/spot_news/wintershall-deploys-emersons-advanced-downhole-wir.shtml | 2017-11-23 11:08:44.267000 | Edit page New page Hide edit links
The Roxar Downhole Sensor System (illustration: Emerson)
Emerson’s latest Roxar Downhole Sensor System has been deployed on the Maria field offshore Norway, providing the field’s operator Wintershall with improved well integrity monitoring and offshore safety. The latest deployment of the system – a wireless solution that delivers crucial integrity data and measures online and real-time pressure and temperature information from behind the casing in subsea production wells – follows the successful deployment of several dozen systems in other fields over the past four years, all providing crucial data to offshore operators on the status of their well barriers and casing. The pressure and temperature monitoring system allows Wintershall to verify that the predicted pressure build-up falls within the design criteria, and an alarm trigger point is implemented in case pressures that are potentially outside the system design are reached.
The Roxar Downhole Sensor System also comes with new advances that enable operators to access online displays and trending of previously unreachable temperature and pressure subsurface data behind the well casing and achieve online integrity verification without any impact on production. The system, that has been tested at 225° C/437° F and can withstand pressures of up to 1,380 Bar/20,000 Psi, has already generated significant direct savings for operators, due to reduced testing requirements and more time to focus on production.
“After continued sales and further advances to the system, the Roxar Wireless Downhole Sensor Solution has reached full maturity,” says Sturle Haaland, European sales director at Emerson Automation Solutions. “The system and its track record prove yet again that Emerson has the willingness and capabilities to respond to customers’ specific demands and follow through with best-in-class technology and services to meet them. Operators will now have the information they need to make informed decisions on well integrity, adhere to regulatory requirements, ensure offshore safety, and enable their wells to produce at optimal levels.”
The added knowledge on pressure and temperature dynamics delivered by the Roxar Downhole Sensor System’s highly accurate quartz gauges in previously unreachable parts of the completion has also led to a better understanding and confidence in operators’ well integrity strategies. The system ensures that wells meet integrity monitoring standards, such as API RP90 and NORSOK D-010. The system also has a Technology Readiness Level of TRL7 as per API RP 17N “Recommended Practices for Subsea Production System Reliability, Technical Risk and Integrity Management.” |
Canadian banks invest in Montreal-based AI innovation labs | Two leading Canadian banks are investing in a new project to support tech start-ups working on artificial intelligence (AI). The Bank of Montreal and the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) are working with Creative Destruction Lab on the CAD2m ($1.6m) programme in Montreal. A total of 28 firms were selected from 200 applicants to receive mentoring, equity support and business development to turn their technologies into profitable companies. The project expands the presence of AI research and development in the city, after Borealis AI, funded by RBC, announced it will open a research lab in the new year. | https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/31365/canadian-banks-rally-round-montreal-ai-lab | 2017-11-23 10:57:21.043000 | BMO Financial group is to inject $2 million into a new AI lab in Montreal that will aim to help startups make the transition from science projects to high-growth companies.
The bank is working with Creative Destruction Lab on a new programme in Montreal that will usher 28 artificial intelligence startups through a six-month accelerator programme.
"The CDL-Montreal programme represents a stimulant challenge, not only for our startup companies but also for all the partners involved in this innovative project," says Fil Papich, co-head BMO Capital Markets, Quebec. "HEC Montréal's commitment to building bridges between BMO and the top emerging technology companies provides us with a valuable perspective on providing products and services that enable technology entrepreneurs to accomplish their business ventures."
The 28 firms selected for the cohort were whittled down from a list of 200 seed-stage applicants, the majority of already have a patent or are in the process of obtaining one. The six-month interneship will offer business and technology mentoring, equity opportunities, and business development partnerships.
Andrew Irvine, head, Canadian Business Banking & BMO Partners, BMO Bank of Montreal. "The talented entrepreneurs that we get the chance to work with through this programme have so much to offer to our industry. We look forward to collaborating with them and helping to provide opportunities that will enhance the financial technology landscape and ultimately provide a better customer experience."
Montreal is fast becoming a hotbed for AI and data science startups. BMO's involvement in the CDL lab comes hot on the heels of an announcement by Broealis AI, an RBC Institute for Research, to open a new academic and research lab in the city early next year. RBC is also joining BMO in supporting the Creative Destruction Lab initiative. |
Walmart testing autonomous floor-scrubbing robots | US retailer Walmart is amongst a number of companies testing autonomous robots to clean floors in their stores. Developed by artificial intelligence (AI) start-up Brain Corp, the robots can navigate down aisles after first being driven by a human to learn the route. They then use sensors and cameras to help them avoid obstacles when operating independently. Brain Corp says the technology is being used in over 50 shopping centres, airports and other venues across the country. In association with their partner, SoftBank robotics, they plan to expand into Japan next year. | https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/22/walmart-testing-self-driving-floor-scrubbing-robot/ | 2017-11-23 10:52:35.933000 | Walmart has been testing autonomous floor-cleaning robots in five of its stores, LinkedIn reports. The floor scrubber, developed by Brain Corp., is equipped with cameras, sensors and LiDAR to help it maneuver down aisles and around obstacles. And it can largely navigate itself after first being driven by a person in order to learn its path.
Phil Duffy, VP of innovation and marketing for Brain Corp., told Fox Business that the company's technology is in approximately 50 malls and retailers nationwide. "We are also in airports, educational campuses, corporate campuses and industrial sites. In addition, we will be launching in Japan, through our partner, SoftBank Robotics, by summer 2018," he said.
Of course, this type of technology leads some to wonder how many jobs will be on the line if it's adopted more widely. Walmart is also testing shelf-scanning robots that can look for misplaced items, check prices and note inventory levels. However, the company insists that both are meant to complement its workforce, not replace it, and their use would allow Walmart staff to focus on other aspects of their jobs. A Walmart spokesperson told Fox, "The maintenance team is actually quite excited to work with new technology like this." But that doesn't seem to apply to everyone. As one Walmart employee told LinkedIn, "Nobody in my store likes it." |
BMW proposes AI-managed electric bike roads to ease traffic | BMW has developed plans for an elevated roadway for electric bikes to help reduce road congestion, make riding safer and reduce air pollution in cities. The Vision E3 Way concept has been developed in association with Tongji University in Shanghai, and is thought to be most suitable for adoption in Chinese cities. The new roadways would be situated above existing roads, and use artificial intelligence (AI) traffic management to regulate speeds and prevent accidents. The proposal includes the provision of rental bikes to increase accessibility to the lanes. | https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/23/bmw-designs-roads-for-e-bikes/ | 2017-11-23 10:50:08.577000 | In some cities, the most common electric vehicles are likely to be two-wheelers like bikes and motorcycles. But cities aren't really designed for them -- you have to compete with cars on the road and at charging stations. BMW and Tongji University think they can do better: they've developed a concept, Vision E3 Way, that gives e-bike riders their own roads. The paths would be safer and reduce traffic congestion, as you might expect, but they'd also take advantage of the electric nature of the vehicles to make two-wheel riding more accessible.
The routes would typically sit above regular roads, and would be decidedly cozier thanks to covering and a cooling system driven by purified rainwater. An automatic speed limit (in the concept, about 15.5MPH) and AI-driven traffic management would prevent the faster vehicles from crashing into scooters. And you might not even need to own a machine to use it -- BMW envisions a rental system where you'd pick up a bike at an access point if you need to get across town in a hurry.
You won't necessarily see something like this in markets where cars dominate, like North America. A system like Vision E3 Way could be very useful in countries like China, however. It's not just that many more people ride bikes in these areas -- it's that high population densities could necessitate separate, automated roads to keep traffic flowing. The challenge is getting cities to take up the idea. Even if these roadways don't cost much to build, it's no mean feat to significantly alter the urban landscape. |
Sugar industry accused of manipulating research like tobacco | The US Sugar Research Foundation (now the Sugar Association) intentionally kept research from the 1960s linking sugar and heart disease and bladder cancer in rats, from being published, claim researchers from the University of California San Francisco. They likened the manipulation of research to practices used by tobacco firms. Some of the researchers also claimed last year that in 1967 the lobby group paid three Harvard scientists to portray fat as the problem, not sugar. The Sugar Association denied the allegations of the new study, which it said was conducted and funded by known industry critics.
| http://uk.businessinsider.com/big-sugar-heart-disease-cancer-link-went-unreported-2017-11?r=US&IR=T | 2017-11-23 09:56:58.123000 | New evidence shows the sugar industry suppressed scientific research that linked sugar to heart disease and bladder cancer in rats.
The Sugar Research Foundation, the group funding the studies, cut the project short and didn't publish the results.
Nutritionists caution that sugar, not fat, is largely to blame for many of the problems in our modern diets.
For decades, sugar lobbyists have been taking aim at studies linking sugar and cancer.
When a study last year found that mice on sugar-heavy diets were more likely to develop breast cancer, the Sugar Association, one of the biggest sugar lobbying groups in the US, called it “sensationalized.” The group insists that “no credible link between ingested sugars and cancer has been established.”
But doctors and researchers claim the sugar industry may have been intentionally keeping research about that link from getting published. A new study in the journal PLOS Biology reveals how the Sugar Association worked to suppress scientific findings on the harmful effects of table sugar on rodents nearly 50 years ago.
The report details the results of two unpublished studies, known as Project 259, which were funded by the sugar lobby in the late 1960s. Both involved research on the effects of feeding sugar to rats.
In the first study, one group of rats was fed a balanced diet of cereal, beans, fish and yeast, while the other rats were given a high-sugar diet. The researchers found that the sugar eaters were at greater risk for strokes, heart attacks and heart disease, and had higher-than-normal levels of fat (triglycerides) in their blood.
The second study compared sugar-fed rats with starch-fed rats and found that the sugar-eating rodents were more likely to have elevated levels of an enzyme associated with bladder cancer in humans.
None of that rodent research saw the light of day, though. The Sugar Research Foundation cut Project 259 short and didn’t publish any of the results.
"Our study contributes to a wider body of literature documenting industry manipulation of science," the researchers, who hail from the University of California San Francisco, wrote in their report.
In a statement, the Sugar Association denied that allegation, saying the new study is just "a collection of speculations and assumptions about events that happened nearly five decades ago, conducted by a group of researchers and funded by individuals and organizations that are known critics of the sugar industry."
"We reviewed our research archives and found documentation that the study in question ended for three reasons, none of which involved potential research findings: the study was significantly delayed; it was consequently over budget; and the delay overlapped with an organizational restructuring," the group said.
But this is not the first time we’ve learned that ‘big sugar’ has gotten in the way of science. Last year, some of the same researchers found that the Sugar Research Foundation — the former name of the Sugar Association — paid off three Harvard scientists in 1967 to make sugar seem less unhealthy and suggest that fat was the problem in our diets instead.
"The kind of manipulation of research is similar to what the tobacco industry does," study co-author Stanton Glantz said in a release.
Decades of research on sugar since Project 259 have linked sugar consumption to a glut of serious health problems, including high cholesterol, heart disease, and kidney disease, to name a few. Recent research also suggests that sugar may play a role in tumor growth, but scientists don't think it makes cancer grow faster, and still aren't certain whether sugar consumption has any link to cancer formation.
After years of fueling up on high-sugar, low fat foods, consumers are finally becoming wise to the problems with sugar that were hidden for so many years. And the US Food and Drug Administration is, too — by 2021, all nutrition labels will have to include the percent daily value of added sugars for the first time, while the "calories from fat" column will get scrubbed. |
China Merchants gets approval to buy Brazil's lucrative port TCP | Brazil's competition regulator has given unrestricted approval for China Merchants Port Holdings (CMPH) to buy its port operator TCP Participações. CMPH was looking to buy a 90% stake in TCP, which is Brazil's most profitable container terminal, for $887m as part of a Latin American expansion. CMPH is also planning to invest up to $1.12bn in developing and running a major port in Sri Lanka. As we highlighted in July, China is investing heavily in overseas ports to increase its maritime power and open up new shipping routes. | http://www.portstrategy.com/news101/world/south-america/china-merchants-given-go-ahead-to-buy-tcp-participaoes | 2017-11-23 09:25:25.863000 | Want to read more before deciding on a subscription? It only takes a minute to sign up for a free account and you’ll get to enjoy:
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Alibaba's Taobao online auctions finally shift Boeing 747s | Three Boeing 747 cargo aeroplanes went up for auction on Alibaba's Taobao online platform this week, with Chinese logistics company SF Express buying two of them for a total of CNY320m ($48.3m) and the third going unsold. Over the past two years, six offline auctions failed to shift the aircraft; however, they were quickly bought once listed on the popular online platform. As we have highlighted, Alibaba has been moving into new areas of business over the past few months, such as buying up bricks-and-mortar retail shops.
| http://money.cnn.com/2017/11/22/news/companies/alibaba-boeing-747-auction/index.html | 2017-11-23 08:30:01.303000 | Fancy an airplane to go with your clothes, toys and groceries? Chinese online shopping platform Taobao just sold two.
Three Boeing 747 cargo aircraft went under the hammer this week on the popular site, which is owned by Chinese internet behemoth Alibaba (BABA).
Chinese logistics giant SF Express bought two of the planes for a combined total of more than 320 million yuan ($48.3 million), an Alibaba spokeswoman told CNNMoney. The third 747 went unsold in the online auction, as only one interested buyer signed up.
Related: $24 billion in 24 hours: World's biggest shopping day sets new record
Six offline auctions over the last two years had apparently failed to unearth buyers for the aircraft, but they were quickly snapped up after being listed with Taobao on Monday.
The sale comes as Boeing (BA) winds down production of the 747 -- once the world's largest passenger plane -- citing low demand. It has already stopped making new passenger versions of the jet, but will continue making cargo planes for at least a few years.
Alibaba said the three jets previously belonged to Jade Cargo International, a freight carrier that filed for bankruptcy in 2013.
They were listed on a special section of Taobao where bankrupt companies can auction off assets. Potential buyers were asked to shell out a 6.7 million yuan ($1 million) deposit to take part in the auction.
Related: It's not just Amazon: Chinese tech giants are selling groceries too
Perhaps unsurprisingly, this appears to be the first time an aircraft of this size has been sold on Taobao. Back in 2013, the platform began selling light aircraft online.
In recent months the company has been pushing into new lines of business, such as selling groceries at traditional brick-and-mortar stores.
While impressive, the Boeing 747 sale doesn't come close to matching a record set by eBay (EBAY), one of Alibaba's big global rivals, more than a decade ago. A 405-foot pleasure boat known as the "Gigayacht", was sold for $168 million on the site in 2006.
-- Steven Jiang contributed to this report. |
China pursues Myanmar peace role to protect its investments | China is stepping in to try and halt the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Myanmar's Rohingya minority, primarily to ensure stability for its major investments in the region. "It is fair to say that commercial interests are at play," said Nick Marro at The Economist Intelligence Unit. "China has significant investments in Rakhine state, the center of the crisis." The Myanmar government has brutally suppressed the minority muslim group in the country's north. China has proposed a three-point strategy to put an end to the crisis and stop any threat of a return of US sanctions to Myanmar.
| https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/22/chinas-peace-plan-for-myanmar-has-a-business-agenda.html | 2017-11-23 08:09:00.747000 | The world's second-largest economy raised its hand this week to help halt the ongoing ethnic cleansing in Myanmar. But it's not just altruism: China has an eye on ensuring stability for its hefty investments in the region.
In the wake of rising brutality against Rohingya Muslims, an ethnic minority in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, China proposed a three-point plan to resolve a crisis that threatens to bring a return of U.S. sanctions to the former military dictatorship.
The proposal involves a cease-fire, repatriation of refugees from neighboring Bangladesh and talks for a long-term solution to improve economic prosperity in the northern Burmese state of Rakhine, where the Rohingya are largely based. As one of Myanmar's poorest provinces, Rakhine is also the site of a special economic zone currently being built by a China-led consortium.
Based in Kyaukpyu, one of Rakhine's major towns, the zone includes a $7.3 billion deep sea port, oil and gas pipelines that will run from Rakhine's coast to China's Yunnan province and a $2.3 billion industrial park.
It's not unusual for Beijing to intervene in Burmese domestic affairs — China has previously played a mediating role in Myanmar's Kachin and Shan states, areas also struck by ethnic strife. But the Asian giant's latest diplomatic initiative has a clear business agenda, analysts said.
"It is fair to say that commercial interests are at play, China has significant investments in Rakhine state, the center of the crisis," said Nick Marro, China analyst at The Economist Intelligence Unit. |
Nebraska reassess active/passive asset mix | Nebraka Investment Council has restructured its equity portfolio. The council's defined benefit will now cover all of its global equity holdings in actively managed strategies and all of its international holdings in passive offerings. The institution is not hiring any new investment managers despite the changes. Previously, passive management accounted for 25% of Nebraska's global equity strategies. Active management previously accounted for 42.5% of the firm's international stock exposure. Nebraska has 90% of its domestic equity exposure in passive strategies.
| http://www.pionline.com/article/20171122/ONLINE/171129950/nebraska-turns-to-all-active-management-for-global-equity-passive-for-international-equity | 2017-11-22 19:00:06.103000 | Nebraska Investment Council, Lincoln, restructured the overall equity portfolio in the defined benefit plan and cash balance plan it oversees, moving to 100% active management in global equities and 100% passive management in international equities, said Michael Walden-Newman, state investment officer, in an email.
The council, which oversees $26.2 billion in assets including the $11.8 billion defined benefit plan and $2.1 billion cash balance plan, approved changes to those plans' equity allocations at its meeting Monday. The council increased global equity to 19% from 15%, and decreased domestic equity to 27% from 29% and international equity to 11.5% from 13.5%. The overall target allocation to equity remains unchanged at 57.5%.
Global equity will change to a 100% active portfolio from its current 75% active/25% passive construction. In council meeting materials, a presentation from investment consultant Aon Hewitt Investment Consulting said staff and the consultant "believe that global mandates provide a more fertile hunting ground for 'alpha' than region-specific (e.g., 'international' or 'emerging market') mandates."
International equity, meanwhile, will change to a 100% passive portfolio from a 57.5% passive/42.5% active mix because "staff and AHIC do not believe that active management in non-U.S. is the most efficient use of our active risk," according to the presentation. Domestic equity will remain unchanged at 90% passive/10% active.
No new managers are being hired as a result of the changes. Despite the additional assets being allocated to active global equity, the council will not hire additional managers. The meeting materials said fewer active managers "reduces the potential that managers will take off-setting active positions, thus creating a 'closet index' with active management fees."
In global equities, the council is terminating BlackRock from its $502 million passive global equity portfolio and reallocating to the four existing active managers: Arrowstreet Capital to $864 million from $602 million; Dodge & Cox to $610 million from $301 million; MFS Investment Management to $801 million from $401 million and Wellington Management to $267 million from $201 million. The remaining additional funding for the active managers is from the international and domestic equity reductions.
In international equities, the council is terminating active managers Baillie Gifford and Gryphon International Investment from their respective portfolios of $316 million and $452 million and increasing BlackRock's passive portfolio to $1.54 billion from $1.04 billion.
In domestic equities, BlackRock's passive portfolio is being decreased to $3.25 billion from $3.49 billion and Dimensional Fund's Advisors' active portfolio to $361 million from $388 million. |
Amazon to take 122,000 sq ft at WeWork's NYC Herald Square site | Amazon has closed on a membership deal for all the available desk space at the WeWork facility at 2 Herald Square, a New York midtown building that had been at risk of foreclosure. The 122,000 sq ft premises was leased to WeWork in 2016. Amazon is also said to be in talks to lease 59,000 sq ft of retail space in the building. At present, the sole tenant is Victoria’s Secret. The building is owned by Sitt Asset Management, alongside more than 80 investors. | https://therealdeal.com/2017/11/17/amazon-taking-all-of-weworks-space-at-2-herald-square/?utm_source=internal&utm_medium=popular_widget&utm_campaign=posts_popular | 2017-11-22 18:26:05.963000 | Amazon agreed to sign a membership deal for all desks in the WeWork space at 2 Herald Square, a Midtown office building that has been on the brink of foreclosure, sources told The Real Deal.
The e-commerce giant is taking over the full 122,000-square-foot space and some employees have already begun working there, sources said. WeWork, which has the address of 950 Sixth Avenue on the eastern side of the 11-story, 354,000-square-foot building, signed a lease there late last year.
Multiple sources also said Amazon is negotiating to lease part of the building’s retail component. Avison Young has been marketing 59,000 square feet of vacant retail space there. Victoria’s Secret is the building’s only retail tenant.
Sitt Asset Management and more than 80 investors own the property, which has been facing a flurry of troubles – a family ownership dispute, a defaulted senior mortgage and the long-delayed sale of the leasehold. Paramount Group, which has a preferred-equity position in the building, has held off on its plans to take control of the leasehold, even as foreclosure looms.
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SL Green Realty, which owns the $250 million leasehold mortgage, was expected to begin foreclosure proceedings in October. Sources said the real estate investment trust is still planning that move.
WeWork declined to comment, and Amazon and Avison Young could not be reached.
WeWork struck a similar deal earlier this year with IBM, which signed for an entire WeWork building at 88 University Place.
Amazon, meanwhile, is growing rapidly in New York City. The company, which has a market cap of nearly $550 billion, signed a 15-year lease for 359,000 square feet at Brookfield Property Partners’ 5 Manhattan West and struck a deal for a 855,000-square-foot distribution warehouse on Staten Island. |
Signs of flowing water on Mars likely to be false | Images thought by NASA to show flowing water on the surface of Mars may actually show a torrent of flowing sand, reducing the likelihood of life taking root there, according to research from the US Geological Survey. “Mars still has water now, it just might be in fewer accessible places,” said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA’s Mars Exploration Program. “There are lots of things that speak to Mars at least having the potential for life early on”, said Meyer. “And if it did happen, it has the potential for life hidden deep down below the surface”.
| https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/22/16685278/nasa-mars-recurring-slope-lineae-liquid-water-sand | 2017-11-22 17:34:07.097000 | Two years ago, NASA made a big splash when it announced the discovery of flowing water on the surface of Mars. But it turns out, the space agency might have been wrong. The surface features that NASA thought were made up of liquid water may actually be flowing grains of sand instead, according to new research from the US Geological Survey. And that could decrease the chances of microbial life living on the Red Planet.
The features in question are dark streaks that show up periodically on Martian hills, known as recurring slope lineae, or RSLs. When one of NASA’s spacecraft, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, studied these lines more closely, it found that the RSLs were made up of hydrated salts — meaning they were mixed with water molecules. At the time, NASA thought that was significant evidence that flowing liquid water caused these bizarre streaks.
“Mars still has water now, it just might be in fewer accessible places.”
But researchers at the USGS say these features look identical to certain types of slopes found on sand dunes here on Earth. Those slopes are caused by dry grains of sand flowing downhill, without the help of any water. It’s possible the same thing is happening on Mars, too. Since liquid water is key for life here on Earth, many thought these strange lines of flowing water may help support life on the Martian surface. But now these RSLs may not be the best place to look for life anymore.
Of course, it’s still possible that life could exist on Mars, but researchers may want to focus on other places, like under the surface. It’s thought that liquid water exists underground, where it’s a bit warmer and easier for water to stay a liquid. “Mars still has water now, it just might be in fewer accessible places,” Michael Meyer, the lead scientist for NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, tells The Verge.
Recurring slope lineae on the walls of Garni Crater on Mars. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
The RSLs seemed to contain water because of the weird way they behave: the streaks seem to seep down the hills, a bit like water trickling downward. That, and they grow thicker in the warmer months. While Mars is pretty frigid, its temperatures can exceed -9 degrees Fahrenheit during the summer, making the surface a bit more accommodating for water. In fact, water on Mars is thought to contain a type of salt called perchlorates that can make it easier for water to exist as a liquid at colder temperatures. Scientists thought that maybe the warm summers allowed this salty water to flow.
But the USGS thinks there’s another explanation for how the streaks form: researchers studied the shapes of 151 RSLs and found that all of them are located on slopes steeper than 27 degrees. But the flows appear to stop when the slopes become less steep — which water wouldn’t do. Instead, the RSLs all seem to form at slopes similar to what you’d find with piles of sand on Earth, according to lead study author Colin Dundas. Plus, the dark streaks seem to flow out of the tops of the hills, but water probably wouldn’t sprout out of the the tops of slopes at these angles, he says. Instead, the water would probably start flowing out somewhere farther down the slope.
“This suggests there isn’t a large amount of liquid water associated with RSLs.”
Researchers still think that what the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter found is solid, and that hydrated salts are involved. But they’re probably not as wet as NASA originally thought. “This suggests there isn’t a large amount of liquid water associated with RSLs,” Dundas, a research geologist with the USGS, tells The Verge. “There may be a small amount of liquid water involved... but this is pointing to a relatively dry mechanism.” |
Apple admits China students were illegally overworked on iPhone X | Apple has admitted that student interns hired in China by sub-contractor Foxconn to assemble its iPhone X were illegally overworked. The students toiled for more than 11 hours a day in the Zhengzhou factory, in breach of local labour laws that prohibit them from working more than 40 hours a week. The company and its suppliers have come under scrutiny multiple times before over mistreatment of Chinese workers, facing accusations of overcrowding and excessive work hours.
| http://variety.com/2017/digital/news/apple-china-illegal-workers-overtime-iphone-x-1202621452/ | 2017-11-22 17:23:41.133000 | High-school students hired to assemble iPhone X devices by Apple manufacturing partner Foxconn — rushing to meet holiday demand for the new smartphone — illegally worked overtime hours at a plant in China, Apple has acknowledged.
According to a report Tuesday by the Financial Times, at least six students from a group of 3,000 from a vocational school sent to work at the iPhone X factory in Zhengzhou, China, said they worked 11-hour days, in violation of local labor laws barring students from working more than 40 hours per week.
In a statement, Apple said, “During the course of a recent audit, we discovered instances of student interns working overtime at a supplier facility in China. We’ve confirmed the students worked voluntarily, were compensated and provided benefits, but they should not have been allowed to work overtime.”
The tech company also said, “Apple is dedicated to ensuring everyone in our supply chain is treated with the dignity and respect they deserve. We know our work is never done and we’ll continue to do all we can to make a positive impact and protect workers in our supply chain.”
The iPhone is Apple’s most critical product line, representing 55% of revenue for the quarter ended Sept. 30. The company beat Wall Street forecasts for the period thanks to a bump in iPhone sales.
Apple said demand for the iPhone X, which began shipping this month, was “off the charts” but according to several reports it was forced to cut the expected number of units produced in 2017 by as much as half. The iPhone X — priced starting at $1,000, it’s Apple’s most expensive smartphone ever — has a nearly full edge-to-edge 5.8-inch screen, an advanced camera system, and a new facial-recognition feature used to unlock the device.
“We couldn’t be more excited as we begin to deliver our vision for the future with this stunning device,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said about the iPhone X (with the “X” pronounced “ten”) on the company’s quarterly earnings call.
Apple and its suppliers have come under fire multiple times in past years for mistreatment of workers at Chinese manufacturing facilities, with reports of overcrowded factory dorms and excessive labor hours.
In 2010, Foxconn experienced a wave of suicides and suicide attempts among its workforce, and in 2011 an explosion at Foxconn’s iPad plant in Chengdu, China, killed four people. In 2014, a BBC investigative report found Apple’s standards for protecting workers at Chinese facilities were being violated.
Pictured above: An ad for the iPhone X in Beijing, where the smartphone went on sale Nov. 3. |