Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Savills adds 'Click to Purchase' service for swift exchanges
 Manage Cookies

Cookies are a small file saved on your computer that help store preferences and other information that’s used on the web pages you visit. See below for further information about the categories of cookies used on our site and your current preference settings. Turning any of these cookies off may affect your experience of the site.

For more information about how we and our partners use cookies on our site, see our Cookie Policy

Strictly necessary These cookies are necessary for the Savills website to function. Examples of this include: setting your privacy preferences, logging in to your Savills account, or filling in forms. Though these cookies cannot be switched off, you can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but please be aware that this will stop some parts of the Savills website from functioning as intended. Find out more about strictly necessary cookies here. Always allowed Functional cookies These cookies are used to enhance the performance of the Savills website, as without them certain functions of the website may not be available. While they are not vital for the website to run, they allow us to remember important information and your preferences such as previous location searches. Find out more about functional cookies here. Allow Targeting & tracking These cookies record your activity on the Savills website and our partners may use that information to show you adverts that they think you will be most interested in when you visit other websites. We may also use information recorded by these cookies to see how well these adverts are performing. Find out more about targeting and tracking cookies here. Allow

Output: London-based estate agency Savills has incorporated a "unique agent-operated transactional platform" aimed at expediting commercial and residential property transactions. "Click to Purchase" enables users to participate in private treaty, real-time auctions and best bids whilst on the move or at their desktop computer. In the interests of accountability and transparency, buyers must proceed through an online verification stage before being permitted to make an offer, and all exchanges between buyer and seller are recorded electronically. Electronic signatures and electronic contract notes form legally binding "tamper proof, verifiable and validated" deals which are completed in a matter of days, said Angus Potterton, MD of Savills Ireland.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
ThyssenKrupp tests maglev lift that can also travel horizontally
 As you can see in the video above, the elevator, known as Multi, doesn’t use a cable at all. Instead, it runs on rails that act as linear motors, using magnetic fields to accelerate cabins along their length. When a cabin stops at a floor, those rails can rotate so that it can move off to the left or right rather than continuing up or down.

ThyssenKrupp's vision is of a system of several such shafts placed next to each other, so software might plan routes that take cabins between shafts and around congestion, saving people time.

The linear motor technology could also help side-step a major issue facing current skyscrapers. As Wired UK notes, regular cable designs can only safely rise about 1,600 feet in one continuous stretch, so in tall buildings there have to be numerous lift shafts installed to get people to the top. Multi could solve that, which could free up space and also allow architects to design buildings in different shapes and styles.

One German developer, OVG Real Estate, has already taken the plunge, and will install the system in its forthcoming East Side Tower building in Berlin. But—and honestly, there had to be a big "but" here—it's unlikely many buildings will be kitted out with these kinds of elevators in the near future. That's because Multi will apparently cost as much as five times more than a standard lift system. And, sadly, golden tickets don't stretch very far in the world of real estate.

Output: German engineering firm ThyssenKrupp has tested the Multi, the world's first maglev lift, which uses linear motors and magnetic fields instead of cables, allowing it to move horizontally as well as vertically. In a public demonstration in Rottweil, ThyssenKrupp also revealed how software could plan routes around a building to avoid congestion. The novel technology means architects would not be limited by the maximum cable lengths of traditional lifts. German firm OVG Real Estate was the first to order a Multi system.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
China's GSR in talks to buy 20% stake in Chilean lithium mine
 An aerial view of the brine pools and processing plant of the Soquimich lithium mine on the Atacama salt flat in northern Chile, January 10, 2013.

Chinese private equity firm GSR Capital is looking to buy a substantial holding in Chile's Sociedad Quimica Y Minera (SQM), one of the world's biggest lithium producers, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter.

GSR could buy a stake of around 20 percent - worth just under $1.9 billion at current market values, one of the sources said, but added there was no firm agreement.

SQM is one of just a handful of established lithium miners globally and a Chinese investment would go hand in glove with an electric car boom in the world's biggest auto market.

Beijing is aggressively promoting the vehicles to combat air pollution and as a means for the domestic car industry to compete with foreign rivals that have decades more experience in internal combustion engines.

The sources said GSR, which has invested in clean technology and electric cars, met the Chilean government in April to discuss the potential purchase and was now moving towards a deal.

A Chilean government transparency web site reported two GSR representatives met Eduardo Bitran, the head of the government development agency Corfo that manages the nation's lithium leases, on April 24.

An SQM representative declined to comment. GSR did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.

The sources did not specify who would sell the shares to GSR, but Julio Ponce, former chairman and one-time son-in-law of Chilean ex-dictator Augusto Pinochet, has previously tried to sell part of his interest in SQM. That process ended in late 2016 after offers fell short.

Suitors then included Ningbo Shanshan , a Chinese manufacturer of lithium battery materials. Canada's Potash Corp was also seen as a potential buyer.

According to a presentation on SQM's website, Ponce's holding firm Pampa Calichera and Japanese trading and chemicals firm Kowa, who have a joint voting pact, together owned a 32 percent stake in SQM as of the end of March 2017. Potash also owns 32 percent.

Potash declined to comment. Reuters was not able to reach Ponce for comment, but a source with knowledge of Pampa Calichera said he was not aware of the potential stake purchase. Kowa did not have immediate comment.

SQM, which has access to vast mineral reserves in the so-called 'lithium triangle' in Chile and Argentina, said in May it was planning to expand production as lithium demand continues to rocket on the back of its increased use in electric vehicles and mobile phones.

GSR, currently managing a $5 billion M&A fund, mainly targets foreign industrial and emerging technology companies, including electric car batteries and pharmaceuticals firms. It is in talks to buy control of a Nissan Motor rechargeable battery unit for about $1 billion, media have reported

GSR was also involved in a Chinese consortium to take over Italian football club AC Milan last year, but dropped out before the deal was signed, sources said at the time.

It grabbed headlines in 2015 when it teamed up with other investors to buy Philips 's lighting component unit for $2.8 billion, a deal later blocked by a U.S. foreign investment panel on security grounds.

Output: Chinese private equity firm GSR Capital is looking to purchase stake of around 20%, worth roughly $1.9bn, in one of the world's largest lithium producers, Chile's Sociedad Quimica Y Minera, sources have said. This move is in line with the Beijing government's vigorous promotion of electric vehicles in a bid to combat air pollution and compete with rivals in the fast-growing industry.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Zero-hours contracts linked to health of the young, finds report
 Young people employed on zero-hours contracts are more likely to have worse mental and physical health than peers with more stable positions, a study has found.

The study, conducted by the UCL Institute of Education, found 25-year-olds employed on contracts that do not guarantee a minimum number of work hours were 41% less likely to report having good physical health compared with those with secure contracts.

Young people on zero-hours contracts were also one-and-a-half times more likely to report having a mental health problem compared with someone on a more secure employment contract.

The research, part of wider work looking at young people’s experiences of the labour market, has prompted concern among unions and MPs, who are calling for the government to crack down on exploitative employment arrangements.

The Unite union’s assistant general secretary, Steve Turner, said that only by banning zero-hours contracts could the “scourge of insecure work” be tackled. He said: “This shocking research points to zero-hours contracts not just harming people’s wallets, but harming people’s physical and mental health too. Our young people deserve a better future than low-paid, insecure work and the stress of not knowing from one week to the next whether they will be able pay the bills and eat.”

The Labour MP for Great Grimsby, Melanie Onn, said: “Not knowing how many days you’ll be working, or even if you will be working, from day to day, puts huge strain on people trying to balance their household budget.”

The study’s lead author, Dr Morag Henderson, said: “Millennials have faced a number of challenges as they entered the world of work. They joined the labour market at the height of the most recent financial crisis and faced higher than ever university fees and student loan debt.”

She said one likely cause for the negative impact of zero-hours contracts on mental health was financial stress or anxiety “associated with having a low-status job”. She added the worry of not having regular work could trigger physical symptoms such as chest pain.

Frances O’Grady said: ‘If you don’t know how much work you will have from one day to the next, this is bound to impact on your health and mental wellbeing.’ Photograph: Ben Birchall/PA

There were 1.7m zero-hours contracts in the UK in November 2016, making up 6% of all employment contracts. The Resolution Foundation thinktank said the pace of growth for these contracts had slowed in the second half of 2016, to 0.8% from 7.7% in the same period a year earlier.

People on zero-hours contracts do not have set working hours a week, although there can be pressure for them to come in when needed. Companies including Sports Direct and McDonald’s have been criticised for using such employment methods.

The Trades Union Congress (TUC) and Unite have urged the government to follow New Zealand’s lead and ban zero-hour contracts.

The Institute of Education study followed 7,707 people living in England who were aged between 13 and 14 in 2004. When they reached 25 in 2015 they were asked about their working life and to rate their physical and mental health on a scale from excellent to poor.

Two-thirds of 25-year-olds researchers spoke to were employed full-time, 12% were employed part-time and 7% were unemployed. About a quarter worked shifts, and 5% had zero-hours contracts. The largest proportion (15%) were in professional roles such as teaching.

Concern about zero-hours contracts prompted Theresa May to hire Matthew Taylor, the former head of Tony Blair’s policy unit, to head a review of workers’ rights. The response is due in the summer.

The Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said: “We are committed to building an economy that works for everyone and making sure employment rules and rights keep up to date to reflect new ways of working, that’s why we asked Matthew Taylor in October to conduct an independent review into modern working practices. As part of his review, Matthew has been looking at different ways of working and wellbeing, which we expect to be published shortly.”

Frances O’Grady, the general secretary of the TUC, said: “If you don’t know how much work you will have from one day to the next, this is bound to impact on your health and mental wellbeing.”

“Employers must not be allowed to get away with treating workers like disposable labour.”

Output: Zero-hours contracts may have an effect on young people’s mental and physical health, according to a study by the UCL Institute of Education. The research found that 25-year-olds employed on such contracts were 41% less likely to report good physical health and one and a half times more likely to report mental ill health than those on secure contracts. The study followed 7,707 people in England. In November 2016, 1.7 million zero-hours contracts existed in the UK, comprising 6% of all employment contracts.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Zero-hours contracts linked to health of the young, finds report
 New research from the UCL Institute of Education (IOE) reveals that young adults who are employed on zero-hours contracts are less likely to be in good health, and are at higher risk of poor mental health than workers with stable jobs.

Researchers from the IOE's Centre for Longitudinal Studies (CLS) analysed data on more than 7,700 people living in England who were born in 1989-90 and are being followed by a study called Next Steps.

They found that at age 25, people on zero-hours contracts and those who were unemployed were less likely to report feeling healthy, compared to those in more secure employment.

Those with zero-hours contracts were also at greater risk of reporting symptoms of psychological distress. However, young adults who were unemployed were more than twice as likely to suffer from mental ill health compared to those who were in work.

And, although shift workers were at no greater risk than those working regular hours to be in poor health, they were more likely to have psychological problems.

The lead author, Dr Morag Henderson, said:

"Millennials have faced a number of challenges as they entered the world of work. They joined the labour market at the height of the most recent financial crisis and faced higher than ever university fees and student loan debt.

"There is evidence that those with a precarious relationship to the labour market, such as shift workers, zero-hours contract holders and the unemployed are more at risk of poor mental health and physical health than their peers.

"One explanation for these findings is that financial stress or the stress associated with having a low-status job increases the risk of poor mental health. It may also be that the worry of having no work or irregular work triggers physical symptoms of stress, including chest pain, headaches and muscle tension."

Two thirds of 25-year-olds were employed full-time, 1 in 8 (12%) were employed part time, and 7 per cent were unemployed. Around a quarter (23%) worked shifts, and 5 per cent had zero-hours contracts.

By occupation, the largest proportion of young adults (15%) were in professional roles, such as teachers, engineers and accountants. A further 14 per cent had professional support roles, including paramedics, librarians and pharmacists, 9 per cent were in administrative or secretarial occupations and 8 per cent had manual roles, such as general labourers and forestry workers.

The findings took into account background factors such as gender, ethnicity, social class, prior mental health, sleep duration, frequency of exercise and weight.

Media contacts

Ryan Bradshaw

Tel: 020 7612 6516 or 07952 910359

Email: r.bradshaw@ucl.ac.uk

Katherine Butler

Tel: 020 7911 5389

Email: k.butler@ucl.ac.uk

Media coverage

Prime Minister's Questions 5 July 2017 - Jeremy Corbyn: "When Tories talk of tough choices, we know who suffers: the poorest and most vulnerable in our society. Young people employed on zero-hours contracts are more likely to have worse mental and physical health."

Links

Output: Zero-hours contracts may have an effect on young people’s mental and physical health, according to a study by the UCL Institute of Education. The research found that 25-year-olds employed on such contracts were 41% less likely to report good physical health and one and a half times more likely to report mental ill health than those on secure contracts. The study followed 7,707 people in England. In November 2016, 1.7 million zero-hours contracts existed in the UK, comprising 6% of all employment contracts.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Amstel launches Pokémon Go-inspired free beer hunt
 Heinken-owned beer brand Amstel has partnered with AR app Snatch for a summer promotion.

10,000 pints of Amstel are being given away in the app, to players who can find one of the prize locations, Pokémon Go style, and then hold onto it for six hours without another nearby player ‘snatching’ it.

The free drink vouchers are redeemable in Mitchells & Butlers bars and pubs, including All Bar One, Nicholson’s and Toby Carvery. Amstel is also be giving away three holidays to Amsterdam, where the Amstel brewery is located, plus 20 bikes.

Snatch launched in February, with the backing of Unilever Ventures. It has worked with brands including Topshop, Just Eat and Pizza Hut.

“Snatch is about brands engaging with consumers in a place they’re accepted and welcomed, not interrupting them with advertising,” said Phil Lloyd, chief customer officer at Snatch. “Combining brand rewards, real-world gaming and AR is fairly new territory but it’s powerful.”

Output: Heineken-owned beer brand Amstel has joined up with augmented reality (AR) app Snatch for a Pokémon Go-style promotional campaign. Users can win vouchers for free beer by finding a prize location and hanging onto it for six hours without anyone else in the vicinity ‘snatching’ it. The campaign will see 10,000 pints given away, with vouchers redeemable at Mitchells & Butlers bars and pubs. "Combining brand rewards, real-world gaming and AR is fairly new territory but it’s powerful," said Phil Lloyd, chief customer officer at Snatch.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
One in seven UK tenants spend more than half their wages on rent
 One in seven tenants privately renting from a landlord is paying more than half of their income in rent, compared with just 2% of homeowners who pay more than half their income on their mortgage, according to new research.

The Local Government Association, which compiled the figures, said high rents were preventing young adults from saving up for a deposit for a home of their own. It said the average deposit now cost 71% of a first-time buyer’s annual income.

The research also found that four out of 10 private tenants spend more than 30% of their pay on rent, compared with only 11% of those with a mortgage.

Private rents currently average £852 a month across Britain, although the figures are skewed by high costs in London.

The LGA is calling for the government to give councils powers to fund more affordable homes and social rents. Last year, there were only 30,000 new affordable homes built in England, the lowest number in 24 years. Councils say they need to be able to borrow to invest in housing and to keep 100% of the receipts from any homes they sell to replace them.

Councillor Judith Blake, LGA housing spokesman, said: “When one in seven private renters is spending half their income on rent, it’s no wonder we have a rental logjam – with a shortage of homes with genuinely affordable rent, and young people struggling to have enough income left over to save for a deposit.

“A thriving private rented sector helps create a balanced mix of available housing. A new wave of genuinely affordable homes for rental, that cost 30% of household income or less, would provide tenants with stability, reduce the squeeze on household incomes and help more people get on the housing ladder.”

There has been mild relief for tenants in some parts of the country, with evidence that private rents have fallen in London and the south-east over the past year. One rental index last month showed that average UK rents had fallen for the first time since 2009, with the biggest declines in London.

Tenants will also benefit from a long-awaited ban on fees imposed by letting agents that was confirmed in the Queen’s speech, and a new cap on deposits limiting them to just one month’s rent.

But while rent rises have plateaued, critics say this has only come after many years of outpacing rises in earnings.

Research by the Chartered Institute of Housing last week found that rents across England grew an average of 14.6% from May 2011 to May 2017 while wages increased 10% over the same period. In London, rents have increased 22% over the same period.

Terrie Alafat, chief executive of the CIH, said: “This analysis reveals just how stark the growth in private rents is in London and the south-east, where it is clear there is now a very significant gap between the amount people earn and the cost of their housing.”

Councils are swimming against a tide of right to buy sales that means they are losing much more of their stock than they are replacing. It emerged last year that 54,581 units of social housing have been sold since David Cameron’s government boosted the discounts in 2012, but work has begun on only 12,472 replacements.

The Association of Residential Letting Agents is forecasting that rents will start to rise again in coming months. Its latest survey of members found that 27% put through rent rises in May – the highest level since July 2016. It said just 2.8% of tenants had managed to negotiate a rent reduction last month.

It also forecasts that rents will rise by £103 to compensate for the loss of letting fees, although the evidence from Scotland, where a ban was put in place several years ago, is mixed.

Output: One in seven UK tenants privately renting from a landlord are paying more than half their income on rent, according to research from the Local Government Association (LGA). Meanwhile, just 2% of homeowners pay more than half their income on their mortgage. The LGA also found that four in 10 private tenants spend more than 30% of their pay on rent, compared with 11% of home-owners on their mortgages. Additionally, high rents are preventing young adults from saving for a deposit for their own home, with the average deposit costing 71% of a first-time buyer's annual income.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Roughly a third of second-time buyers need help financing a move
 Nearly a third (32%) of second-time buyers (aka second steppers) purchasing their next home need an average of £21,231 in financial support from family and friends, research has found.

According to the latest Lloyds Bank Second Steppers report, over a third (35%) said that without financial support, they wouldn’t be able to make their next move.

Some 17% of second steppers intend to borrow from the ‘Bank of Mum and Dad’, with 9% planning to borrow from grandparents and 6% from friends.

Andy Mason, mortgage director at Lloyds Bank, said: “Parental support continues to play a vital role in helping young people to get on the property ladder.

Poll As a broker, do you currently quote 'green' loan options alongside standard loan quotes for property development finance? Yes No Vote Results

“However, it is clear that despite improved conditions for this part of the housing market, second steppers will still rely on the ‘Bank of Mum and Dad’, with hard-pressed parents being once again called on for financial help.”

Almost half of second steppers (47%) believe that their parents have had to make sacrifices to help them move up the property ladder and almost a quarter (23%) have put off having kids of their own until they have sold their first home.

Andy added: “Without this extra financial support, second steppers believe that they wouldn’t be able to make the next move on the property ladder for some time.”

Output: At least 32% of homeowners looking to purchase their second home have to rely on assistance from family and friends, according to a Lloyds Bank Second Steppers report. It found second steppers had to find an average of £21,231 in financial support, with 17% having recourse to borrowing from parents, 9% turning to grandparents and 7% asking friends for help. "Without this extra financial support, second steppers believe that they wouldn’t be able to make the next move on the property ladder for some time," said Andy Mason, mortgage director at Lloyds Bank.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Most builders don't get asked for critical paperwork: FMB
 The Federation of Master Builders (FMB) has warned that an “alarming” number of homeowners do not ask their builders for essentials such as a contract or references.

This follows research from the FMB which found that 90% of builders say that the majority of homeowners do not ask for a written contract.

Brian Berry, chief executive of the FMB, felt there were indications that homeowners were leaving themselves vulnerable to problems in terms of how they approached their building work.

“The vast majority of builders say that most clients fail to ask for references and even fewer ask for a written contract on their work.

“There is a similar trend when it comes to asking for critical things like an agreed payment schedule and key warranties on work, as well as checking whether the builder has any external accreditation or recognition from professional trade associations like the FMB.

“These protections really are essential to helping clients weed out the cowboys and mitigate against any issues that could crop up during the build.

Poll As a broker, do you currently quote 'green' loan options alongside standard loan quotes for property development finance? Yes No Vote Results

“A quality builder will insist on these things and if they don’t, consumers ought to question why.”

The research from FMB found:

More than 40% of builders need at least four months’ notice from consumers who want to hire their firm

90% of builders say that the majority of homeowners do not ask for a written contract

80% of builders report that most consumers do not ask for an agreed payment schedule

Fewer than 10% of builders say that clients normally request to see vital insurance policies, such as public liability or employer’s liability insurance.

Brian added that if a builder was free to start work tomorrow, then alarm bells should be ringing.

“Demand for building work is incredibly high at the moment and it should be no surprise that almost one in two builders need to be contacted at least four months in advance of when a client is looking to start a home improvement project.

“The workloads of builders have been rising steadily over the past two years and there’s no shortage of work.

“That’s why we’re urging homeowners who are keen to crack on with their build or renovation projects to start getting in touch with prospective builders as soon as possible.

“Otherwise, they risk disappointment delaying their projects or worse still, working with a dodgy builder.

“So many building horror stories start with a client approaching a builder who’s free to start work sooner than the more professional builder who is really busy.”

Output: UK homeowners have been leaving themselves open to disappointment as 90% of builders report customers do not ask for a written contract, according to research from the Federation of Master Builders (FBM). In addition, 80% of builders said they were never asked for an agreed payment schedule, and most said they have not been called upon to provide references. "These protections really are essential to helping clients weed out the cowboys and mitigate against any issues that could crop up during the build," said Brian Berry, CEO of the FMB.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
AI payments company Previse completes £2m seed funding round
 Source: Previse

Previse, a fintech start-up, announces the successful completion of a seed funding round worth £2 million.

The funding will facilitate the development of their proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) solution designed to support instant payments between large corporates and SMEs.

The funding round is led by company builder, Hambro Perks alongside Founders Factory and high net worth angel investors with extensive networks in high profile multinationals.

Today, three out of five small suppliers are paid late by large corporate buyers. As a result, SMEs are forced to take out expensive, short term credit from banks to cover their cash flow difficulties, ultimately driving up the price of their products. In the UK alone, 50,000 SMEs go bankrupt as a result of late payments each year1.

How it works

As soon as the invoice is issued, Previse uses advanced AI and hundreds of millions of data points to score the likelihood that a corporate buyer will ultimately pay a supplier’s invoice. Previse provides the score to funders, principally banks and asset managers, which pay the supplier instantly on the buyer’s behalf. In exchange, suppliers offer a small discount on their invoices.

This results in reduced transaction costs for buyers; improved working capital for suppliers and a safe, attractive new asset class for funders. Eliminating late payments would boost the UK economy significantly.1

Previse’s co-founder and CEO Paul Christensen, who was previously Global Co-head of Goldman Sachs' Principal Strategic Investments team; said: “SMEs are the backbone of the world economy, generating the majority of growth, employment and innovation. Yet, most of them are consistently paid late by corporate buyers. It is an unsustainable position which damages the entire economy.

“Previse’s AI technology ensures we no longer have to accept this situation. Instant, frictionless and efficient payments can become the new standard for B2B payments. The prize is 50,000 more small businesses kept open in the UK alone, corporates able to exceed their obligations to suppliers and a new £2.4 trillion global market for funders.” 2

Previse’s Chief Data Scientist and co-founder Philipp Schoenbucher said: “Payment decisions are a perfect candidate to apply machine learning. Our advanced proprietary machine learning algorithms were developed using data sets of multiple billion dollars of corporate spending, building upon state of the art binary classifiers and highly innovative domain-specific feature engineering methods.”

Output: Invoicing start-up Previse has raised £2m ($2.6m) in seed capital to develop its proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) platform for supporting instant payments between big corporates and SMEs. Previse's AI platform puts a score on the probability that a corporate buyer will pay a supplier's invoice. The score is then sent to banks and asset managers, which pay the supplier on the buyer's behalf in exchange for a small fee taken from the supplier's invoice. Previse aims to make B2B payments fast and frictionless so SMEs don't lose money covering late invoice payments with expensive short-term credit, said CEO Paul Christensen.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
The Shard has unsold apartments five years after completion
 When it opened the developers of the Shard boasted that it should only take “about 20 phone calls” to sell the 10 exclusive apartments near the top of the tower for up to £50m each.

Yet five years on from the Duke of York and the former prime minister of Qatar officially opening “Europe’s first vertical city” with a dazzling laser display on 5 July 2012, all 10 of the flats on the 53rd to 65th floors of the 72-storey building appear to remain unsold.

Brochures for the apartments, which include three two-storey duplex units, boasted that on a clear day residents should be able to see the sea and the grandstands at Ascot from their new perch in the centre of the capital.

The penthouse stands at 735ft, just below the entrance to the £30.95-a-time public viewing deck, which attracts up to 6,000 visitors a day. Even the lowest apartment, which it was hoped would sell for £30m, is higher than any home ever built in London.

But the brochures are no longer available and the tower’s developers and its Qatari owners are reluctant to speak about the residences, which they had boasted would be among the most luxurious in London. As well as the views and double-height entertaining space, potential residents were said to have the luxury of being able to order room service from the five-star Shangri-La hotel below, and call on its maids to turn down their beds. A “back stairs” service lift was shown in floorplans so meals and cleaners could be delivered directly to the apartments’ kitchens.

Baron Phillips, spokesman for Irvine Sellar, the recently deceased property visionary who led the development of the Shard, declined to comment about the unsold apartments. It was Phillips who told the media that several of the world’s super-rich had expressed interest in buying apartments years before the building was finished and said of selling them: “I should think about 20 phone calls should do it, don’t you?”

The view from the 67th floor of the Shard. Photograph: Victoria Jones/PA

Sellar convinced Italian architect Renzo Piano to design the Shard over lunch in Berlin in 2000, with the first designs sketched on a menu. But the project nearly collapsed in the wake of the 2007-08 financial crisis before Qatar stepped in to buy 80% of the tower.

Representatives of Qatar Diar, the real estate arm of the gulf state’s sovereign wealth fund, did not respond to requests for comment. A spokeswoman for Real Estate Management, the property management firm appointed to oversee the day-to-day management of the Shard, said the apartments were still “completely empty shells”.

No apartment sales have been recorded by the Land Registry. Levels 53 to 65 and the apartments’ exclusive entrance on the ground floor were in December 2015 leased to LBQ Four, a Jersey-registered firm believed to be part of the London Bridge Quarter, the holding company that owns the Shard. The 250-year lease valued the 10 apartments at a total of £199,250,000.

Henry Pryor, a luxury property buying agent, said he was not surprised that the Shard’s owners had yet to sell any of the apartments as a sale of one apartment would set a publicly recorded price and make it harder to sell the other apartments for more if and when the London ultra-prime property market improves.

“If they could sell them for what they want for them they would have sold by now,” he said. “If they sell they will crystallise a price and that makes it very difficult for future sales because the benchmark has been set. That is one reason developers chuck in goodies [like cars or fine wine] to keep the apparent price up.”

Pryor said the Shard apartments have not been able to attract prices near the record £136m paid for a flat in the Candy brothers’ One Hyde Park for reasons that any avid watcher of TV property shows would know: “Location, location, location.”

“Kirstie and Phil tell us it every week, location, location, location. Rich people don’t want to shell out zillions living south of the river, it’s a shock enough living anywhere south of the [Hyde] park,” he said. “Nobody knows anyone who lives south of the river.”

The Shard has done better at letting the lower floors for offices, although many have gone to companies owned or partially owned by Qatar. But some whole floors are still to be let, including all 29,824 sq ft of the 12th floor.

The University of Warwick’s business school has rented level 17 and fitted it out with a lecture theatre with perhaps the best student view in the world.

Output: The 10 luxury flats in iconic London development The Shard have remained empty because no one is willing to pay the high price tag for a south-of-the-river location, according to Henry Pryor, a luxury property buying agent. The Shard, opened by the Duke of York and the former prime minister of Qatar amid a wave of publicity in 2012, has found several customers for its office space, though there are still some floors that have yet to be let.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Buy-side bond firms struggle with retention of data managers
 MiFID II will impose a range of new pre- and post-trade reporting requirements on European traders that will make Europe one of the most transparent markets in the world.

This new era of transparency, coupled with other regulatory and economic developments around the world, are causing major upheaval in the fixed income sector in particular.

The final session of The TRADE and ICE Data Services “Overcoming MiFID II Data Challenges” event brought together a panel of experts to answer audience submitted questions on whether the buy-side will soon be equipped with enough data to have an edge over the banks and become key players in fixed income markets.

One of the key issues audience members were concerned about was whether they would need to hire quant and data specialists in order to fully exploit the new opportunities in the bond market.

Virginie O’Shea, research director at consultancy Aite Group, said some firms had realised the need to get a grip on data.

“Our stats show 24% of the top 50 global asset managers now have a chief data officer in place, but less encouragingly, they tend to last just under two years on average [in the role], so the tenure of a chief data officer is not very long unfortunately,” she said.

It was unclear whether this rapid turnover in top data executives was due to a lack of operational support of investment, but should be concerning for the asset management industry in particular. Chief data officers in sell-side firms tend to last longer, O’Shea added, where effective data management has become a more mature function.

“It can be very hard for firms to find the right people, to handle the day-to-day crunching of big data. Banks have been leading in this area, but asset managers are much further behind,” said O’Shea.

There is also a considerable divide between how larger asset managers are reacting to the need for better data management to get ahead in the marker compared to smaller firms, according to Claudio Salinardi, managing director, Pricing and Reference Data, EMEA, ICE Data Services.

“Bigger firms are already used to archiving a lot of the information they gather to use it effectively. Buy-siders have access to public information, to research and to floor, positioning and dealer axes, they are getting increasingly sophisticated in terms of analysing this,” Salinardi explained. “Those firms already have something in place, but as highlighted today, other firms would have to look at third parties who can bring them the kind of tools they will need to take a more analytical approach.”

Jonathan Gray, head of fixed income EMEA at Liquidnet, said: “Ultimately this comes down to costs, and budgets on the buy-side are squeezed so paying £100,000 extra for data analysis that you might already be handling in-house is a big ask.”

The other key issue the panel raised was the issue of data quality, which can be a major concern for the buy-side.

“Failure rates in fixed income are incredibly high, and that is mostly due to data quality issues,” added O’Shea.

Being able to adequately assess the quality of data is one area which is likely to trouble the buy-side in the future, and may require evidencing as part of best execution requirements, highlighting the need to get on top of data issues.

Ashlin Kohler, director of EMEA fixed income market structure at Citi, gave an example: “We see cases such as two different bond issues, with different terms for example, will have the same ISIN, but trading behaviour between the two issues could be very different.”

Dealing with this sort of oddity that crops up in the fixed income market will be one of the biggest challenges facing buy-siders that hope to take a major role in the new fixed income landscape, and having the right specialist tools and personnel could make the difference between their success and failure.

Output: Statistics from consultancy Aite Group showed that 24% of the world's 50 top asset managers "now have a chief data officer in place" but they "tend to last just under two years on average" in the role. Such a turnover could be a result of too little operational or financial support. However, chief data officers in sell-side firms typically stay in their positions for longer, according to Virginie O'Shea, Aite Group's research director, where data management is a more mature operation.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Large investors want to see strong corporate ESG initiatives
 Three-quarters of institutional investors in a recent survey say building environmental, social and governance initiatives into a company’s business model is a smart business decision, and 98% say a company with strong ESG initiatives makes for a more attractive investment.

The survey results, incorporated in a white paper developed by public relations firm Burson-Marsteller and its sister agency Penn Schoen Berland, found that 95% of investors agreed it was important to their clients that companies share and improve their ESG performance.

Another 89% said their clients are well-informed about companies’ ESG initiatives.

“The responsible investment movement is here to stay,” Tim Mohin, chief executive of the Global Reporting Initiative, a standards organization, said in a statement released by Burson-Marsteller.

“Savvy investors realize that aligning their capital with sustainable business practice is a smart, long-term strategy.”

Indeed, investment advisors no longer find ESG investing optional; it’s essential. A recent report said one out of every five dollars under professional management is being invested according to socially responsible investment strategies.

Data Demands

Which ESG data are most important to institutional investors? Forty-one percent of respondents in the Burson-Marsteller survey said the return on dollars invested in social and environmental initiatives, and 31% said impact data, such as quantified reduction in carbon emissions.

Also important were year-over-year trend data (ideally up to five years) to measure the impact of an initiative, planning for future initiatives, case studies and company priorities.

Six in 10 investors said ESG reports should provide comprehensive and detailed information, while 37% preferred them to be short and concise.

Output: Three-quarters of institutional investors believe companies should build environmental, social and governance (ESG) initiatives, according to a study from public relations firm Burson-Marsteller. About 98% of investors agreed that a company with strong ESG initiatives makes for a more appealing investment, while 95% of investors said companies should share and improve their ESG performance. Return on dollars invested in social and environmental initiatives was the most important data for investors, according to 41% of respondents. Another 31% said data on the impact of ESG initiatives was most important.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Princeton researchers develop 'smart window' system
 Rather than fumbling with blinds, the windows of the future could change their tint or opacity on demand to keep out unwanted heat, light or attention from nosy neighbors. We've seen plenty of different techniques over the years, but now a team from Princeton has developed a self-powered "smart window" system that uses a transparent solar cell to harvest UV energy from sunlight.

The Sun gives off a cocktail of different wavelengths of light: there's the visible light that allows us to see, the infrared rays that warm the planet, and UV radiation that's damaging in high doses. While different levels of natural light and heat are desirable in a given room, UV would normally just be blocked. To improve efficiency, the Princeton team wanted to come up with a way to harness UV rays to power the system.

Smart windows are made of electrochromic materials that allow them to change their tint from clear to dark blue in response to small electric currents. To provide that current, the Princeton team developed solar cells made of contorted hexabenzocoronene (cHBC) derivatives, which can be tweaked to absorb a specific range of wavelengths. In this case, cHBC semiconductors are designed to absorb near-UV light to power the electrochromic material, and the whole system can be incorporated into a thin, transparent film that can be fitted over panes of ordinary glass.

"This new technology is actually smart management of the entire spectrum of sunlight," says Yueh-Lin Loo, an author of the study. "Using near-UV light to power these windows means that the solar cells can be transparent and occupy the same footprint of the window without competing for the same spectral range or imposing aesthetic and design constraints."

Some previous systems have used external power sources, while others have harvested energy from the infrared part of the spectrum. The problem there is that it cannibalizes some of the heat from sunlight, which a user might be trying to warm their house with.

When dark, the Princeton system can apparently block out up to 80 percent of visible light. Longer term, the team wants to develop a smart film that can be retroactively applied to existing windows, allowing a user to change the tint from their smart phone, and the system could potentially also be applied to car windows to run small appliances.

"Someone in their house or apartment could take these wireless smart window laminates – which could have a sticky backing that is peeled off – and install them on the interior of their windows," says Nicholas Davy, lead author of the paper. "Then you could control the sunlight passing into your home using an app on your phone, thereby instantly improving energy efficiency, comfort and privacy."

The paper was published in the journal Nature Energy and the team demonstrates the technology in the video below.

Source: Princeton University

Output: Scientists from Princeton have developed a self-tinting smart window, utilising a transparent solar cell that is powered by UV light, according to an article published in the journal Nature Energy. The team created a solar cell composed of contorted hexabenzocoronene derivatives which were manipulated to absorb a particular span of wavelengths, and the entire system is housed in a transparent film. The researchers are also seeking to create smart laminates that can be installed on existing windows, affording variable amounts of shade in the home according to adjustments made via a mobile app.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Irish-led team develops nano-material that could replace silicon
 An illustration showing the combination of C60, graphene and hBN in the new van der Waals solid.

A researcher at Queen’s University Belfast in the UK has led an international team of scientists to the discovery of a new material that could finally bring an end to the misery of cracked smartphone and tablet screens.

Currently, most parts of a smartphone are made of silicon and other compounds, which are expensive and break easily, but with almost 1.5 billion smartphones purchased worldwide last year, manufacturers are on the lookout for materials that are more durable and less costly.

Elton Santos from Queen’s University’s School of Mathematics and Physics has been working with a team of scientists from Stanford University, University of California and California State University in the US and the National Institute for Materials Science in Japan. Their aim is to create new dynamic hybrid devices that are able to conduct electricity at unprecedented speeds and are light, durable and easy to manufacture in large-scale semiconductor plants.

The has team found that by combining semiconducting molecules of C 60 , commonly known as buckyballs, with layered materials such as graphene and hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) they can produce a unique material that could revolutionize the concept of smart devices.

The winning combination works because hBN provides stability, electronic compatibility and isolation charge to graphene, while C 60 can convert sunlight into electricity. Any smart device made from this combination would benefit from this unique mix of features, which do not exist in materials naturally. This process for fabricating these so-called van der Waals solids allows compounds to be brought together and assembled in a predefined way.

“Our findings show that this new ‘miracle material’ has similar physical properties to silicon but it has improved chemical stability, lightness and flexibility, which could potentially be used in smart devices and would be much less likely to break,” explains Elton Santos. “The material also could mean that devices use less energy than before because of the device architecture so could have improved battery life and less electric shocks.

“By bringing together scientists from across the globe with expertise in chemistry, physics and materials science we were able to work together and use simulations to predict how all of the materials could function when combined – and ultimately how these could work to help solve everyday problems. This cutting-edge research is timely and a hot-topic involving key players in the field, which opens a clear international pathway to put Queen’s on the road-map of further outstanding investigations.”

The project initially started with simulations predicting that an assembly of hBN, graphene and C 60 could result in a solid with remarkable new physical and chemical properties. Following this, Santos talked with his collaborators Alex Zettl and Claudia Ojeda-Aristizabal at the University of California and California State University in Long Beach about the findings. There was a strong synergy between theory and experiments throughout the project.

“It is a sort of a ‘dream project’ for a theoretician since the accuracy achieved in the experiments remarkably matched what I predicted and this is not normally easy to find,” says Santos. “The model made several assumptions that have proven to be completely right.”

The findings, which have been published in a paper in ACS Nano, open the doors for further exploration of new materials. One issue that still needs to be solved is that graphene and the new material architecture lack a ‘band gap’, which is key to the on-off switching operations performed by electronic devices.

However, Santos’ team is already investigating a potential solution – transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs). These nanomaterials are a hot topic at the moment, as they are very chemically stable, have large sources for production and band gaps that rival silicon.

“By using these findings, we have now produced a template but in future we hope to add an additional feature with TMDs,” says Santos. “These are semiconductors, which bypass the problem of the band gap, so we now have a real transistor on the horizon.”

This story is adapted from material from Queen’s University Belfast, with editorial changes made by Materials Today. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of Elsevier. Link to original source.

Output: An international team of scientists led by a researcher at Queen's University Belfast has developed a material that has similar physical properties to silicon while being more durable, lightweight and flexible. The material layers a carbon molecule known as a "buckyball" with graphene and hexagonal boron nitride to create a van der Waals solid with a unique range of features. The researchers believe the material could help create smart devices that are far more robust that current ones, use far less power and conduct electricity at far greater speeds.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Mimicking a bee's eyes could improve robot and drone vision
 Bee optics could inform the technology of drones and robots

By Adrian Dyer, Andrew Greentree and Jair Garcia •

Image credit: James Dorey

Reading Time: 5 Minutes • Print this page

Researchers say that if they can mimic the way bees process colour, the technology of drones and robots can be drastically improved.

WHEN YOU STEP OUTSIDE your house, light from the sun means that the colour of everything changes. You probably haven’t even noticed it, because your brain helps you see colours the same way under most conditions.

But it’s a phenomenon that is incredibly hard to mimic with technology, and so our cameras often struggle to interpret colour with the same accuracy.

Published today, our latest research identifies how the eyes and brains of honeybees work together to process colour information.

For a honeybee, matching colours under all conditions is vital so they can go to the right flower. It’s literally a matter of life or death for the colony.

If we can design technology to mimic the way bees do this, we’ll be able to create better cameras and image-processing systems for drones and robots.

What is colour constancy?

Being able to see an object as the same colour – the “true” colour – independent of illumination is called colour constancy. This visual phenomenon fascinated the impressionist Monet, who painted the Rouen Cathedral in France in different weather conditions, noting the changes in the stone’s colour.

Monet’s Series paintingsin which he painted many views of the same subject under different lighting conditions, are an attempt to illustrate the importance of light in our perception of a subject at a given time and place (Image Credit: Wikimedia)

Many theories of colour constancy assume that on average a scene should appear grey. Then the approximate colour of the light can be estimated, whether in an animal or a camera system. However, these approaches, and even more complex methods, are imperfect.

Despite our large and complex brains, colour constancy is not perfect in humans. How can bees solve this problem with their brain the size of a sesame seed? Bees must be able to identify the same flowers in direct or shaded light, or a green forest.

Like most people, bees have trichromatic (three-colour) vision. For humans, the primary colours we perceive are red, green and blue, with wavelengths measured in nanometres (nm) around 570nm, 540nm and 430nm. The forward facing compound eyes of bees respond most strongly to ultraviolet (350 nm), blue (440 nm), and green (540 nm) light.

In addition to their compound eyes used for sight, bees have three tiny “eyes” called ocelli. Until now we didn’t really know what ocelli were for – they had been assumed to aid flight stability. But we also know that each of the ocelli contains two colour sensors pointing up, sensing the whole sky. This study focused on those sensors.

A model of bee vision

It is relatively easy to measure the colour of the sky in the laboratory with a device called a spectrophotometer; but bees don’t have access to lab based equipment.

We asked the question: in a system containing just two colour receptors, could this allow bees to interpret the whole spectrum from red through to ultraviolet? We built a mathematical model to solve this problem. Our model showed that an ocelli sensitivity focusing on 330 nm and 470 nm (ultraviolet and blue), is optimal for typical foraging illuminations that bees encounter.

Whether in shade or full sun, bees must be able to reliably use colour to pick out flowers worth visiting. (Image Credit: shutterstock)

We then applied our model to a database of 111 flower colours and compared their apparent colour change with natural daylight variation. By combining the data from sensing in ocelli, the model significantly reduced variation in how colours were perceived. We found a model that – in theory – showed how bees would find the right flower most often.

This mathematical model shows that honeybees could use this information – but it doesn’t show how they do it in reality. To find out, our colleague Yu-Shan Hung (University of Melbourne) carefully stained and traced the neural pathways from bee ocelli, and found that these connected with a region of the brain that performs high-level colour processing.

As well as showing the connections that exist between bee ocelli and the brain, our model also explains certain bee behaviours. Honeybees have difficulty foraging under artificial light – our model shows that such light is “too yellowish” for the ocelli to properly interpret colours.

Also, honeybees that have blocked ocelli typically forage later in the morning, and return to the hive earlier. This makes sense, as bees in this state can’t take advantage of information from ocelli to correct for the highly variable coloured light conditions at the start and end of the day.

Designing artificial visual systems and cameras

Evolution has invested millions of years finding clever solutions to practical tasks in life. Understanding how insects solve these tasks is important, because it can give us hints around ways to avoid using complicated solutions that require sophisticated, energy-hungry computers.

Right now, we capture images with cameras, and then rely on intensive computer processing to interpret and present the colours in ways that make sense to our brains. If we can make cameras more like bee visual processing solutions, then we could collect images in a way that mimics nature more closely. Then the demand on processing the image becomes reduced.

Beyond just better photos, there are implications for industry too. For humans using machine vision in complex natural environments to reliably find coloured objects (like mineral-rich sands, ripe fruit or defects in building constructions), it is vital to find new, reliable and efficient solutions to the colour constancy problem.

With better cameras, drones could check orchards for ripe fruit. (Image Credit: shuttershock)

The honeybee shows that two very simple, small and spectrally different sensors are sufficient to reconstruct true colour for most illumination conditions found on Earth. Similar sensors could be cheaply added to the skyward facing surface of a device such as a camera to efficiently provide information about illumination. This would drastically reduce the computational cost of colour constancy.

Adrian Dyer is an Associate Professor at the RMIT University, Andrew Greentree is a Professor of Quantum Physics and Australian Research Council Future Fellow at RMIT University, and Jair Garcia is a Research Officer at RMIT University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

READ MORE:

Output: The fact that the same colours look very different under different lights is a major issue for robotic optical systems trying to recognise and negotiate physical objects and environments. Researchers from Australia's RMIT university have discovered that bees use the three extra eyes on top of their heads to monitor the wavelengths of light in the sky and adjust their colour perception accordingly, allowing them to identify the same colours in a wide range of conditions – crucial when trying to locate particular flowers. Similar sensors on robots and drones could perform the same service without adding computational overhead.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Leak of CIA hacking tools reveals Linux-targeting malware
 OutlawCountry is described as a kernel module for Linux 2.6 that allows CIA operators to redirect outbound traffic to a server they control. Image: CIA/WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks' latest Vault7 release of leaked CIA documents detailing its hacking tools reveals malware called OutlawCountry that targets Linux systems.

OutlawCountry is described in documents dated June 4, 2015 as a kernel module for Linux 2.6 that allows CIA operators to redirect outbound traffic to a server they control by creating an hidden netfilter or iptables table. Netfilter is a packet-filtering framework within the Linux kernel's networking stack.

OutlawCountry creates a hidden netfilter table with an "obscure name", which the operator can use to create new rules that override existing netfilter rules. The new rules can only be seen by an admin if the table name is known, which, according to the documents, is 'dpxvke8h18'.

The malware is designed for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.x and CentOS 6.x systems with the 6.4-bit 2.6.32 version of the Linux kernel. However, the operator needs to have already compromised the target to load a malicious module and must have gained root privileges to operate the malware.

WikiLeaks notes that an "operator will have to rely on the available CIA exploits and backdoors to inject the kernel module into a target operating system".

RedHat's advisory for OutlawCountry describes the command to use to determine if the CIA's kernel module has been loaded.

WikiLeaks dumped over 8,000 CIA documents when it launched Vault 7 in March and has released several documents a month detailing specific CIA malware programs.

OutlawCountry is the 14th malware program detailed in the series. Earlier this month it released details of 'Elsa' for tracking the location of Windows PCs, 'Brutal Kangaroo' for hopping across air-gapped networks via an infected USB stick, the 'CherryBlossom' router malware, and 'Pandemic', which targeted Windows file-sharing.

More on the CIA and hacking

Output: WikiLeaks' latest leak of CIA documents details Linux-targeting malware OutlawCountry. OutlawCountry is described as a kernel module for Linux 2.6 that lets CIA operators redirect outbound traffic to a server they control. It then creates a hidden netfilter table, which can be used to create new rules that override existing ones. The new rules can only be seen if the table name is known, which is said to be "dpxvke8h18". WikiLeaks dumped over 8,000 CIA documents when it launched Vault 7 in March and has released several documents a month detailing specific CIA malware programs.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Indian tax change unlocks a huge opportunity for robotics
 From the busy highway that runs through it, Gurugram’s Sector 34 doesn’t quite look like a hotbed for the robotics revolution. It’s a dystopian confusion of glass-fronted buildings, roadside shacks, and maddening traffic, all of which comprehensively camouflage the quest for order and efficiency underway here.

Inside a spanking new office block, there are still unoccupied workstations in the two-and-a-half floors leased by GreyOrange. The robotics company founded in this commercial hub bordering New Delhi in 2011 is preparing for new employees, and a wave of new business, to come through its doors. A five-minute drive away at Hi-Tech Robotic Systemz, another homegrown firm that focuses on industrial automation, there’s a similar air of anticipation.

Advertisement

The two companies await a common but consequential development: for India’s goods and services tax (GST) to upend the country’s warehousing industry.

“Our market size pre-GST was $300 million-$500 million annually,” said Samay Kohli, GreyOrange co-founder and CEO. Now, he reckons, the six-year-old company, which counts Tiger Global and Blume Ventures among its investors, is staring at an opportunity worth at least $6 billion.

For Hi-Tech, the overall target was around 3,000 robots by the end of 2022. But the GST has prompted a reset. “I think we might approach that target by 2020,” said Ritukar Vijay, head of autonomous technology and business strategy at the company.

The rationale for such optimism is simple. As the GST subsumes a range of central and state taxes to turn India into a single market, it removes all variations in local taxation rates that once forced businesses to operate multiple warehouses across 29 states and seven union territories. Structured primarily to avoid paying multiple taxes for the same goods, this warehousing network is now primed to rationalise itself to trim costs and improve efficiency.

Advertisement

So, although their sheer numbers will come down, warehouses will get much bigger—between four and 10 times the size of the current facilities—as companies realign their logistics networks to serve wider swathes of the country from a single hub. “I think post GST, half-a-million square feet is going to be kind of the minimum threshold at which people will build,” said Kohli.

To operate such facilities efficiently and reliably, businesses will need more than just trained manpower.

Butler and sorter

Kohli, 30, began building robots in high school. The tinkering got a lot more serious after he entered the Birla Institute of Technology and Science in Pilani. Of the five years at Pilani, Kohli spent half outside campus, mostly at robotics contests. It helped that the engineering school didn’t have a minimum attendance requirement.

Buoyed by some strong performances at international competitions, and work experience placements in the US and Korea, Kohli and his college-mate Akash Gupta founded GreyOrange. The company, now based in Singapore, was named that way because initially the two weren’t sure about what exactly they wanted to build. Going with colours, they figured, was safe: Grey for wisdom (and grey hair), and orange for creativity and fun.

Advertisement

By the end of 2011, they had decided to zero in on the warehousing industry, focusing on streamlining the process of retrieving and sorting items in a facility. “When you’re running the operations in a very traditional manner, the predictability becomes very tough,” Kohli explained. “Let’s say 50% of the goods may get out in 15 minutes but some goods might predictably get out in two hours. Some will get out in 14 hours. It can go up to as much as two days.”

For businesses, the clearest cost benefit of using GreyOrange’s robots at scale is leaner inventory.

One part of GreyOrange’s solution for this mess is the Butler. The boxy robot ferries shelving units to a human operator—who either picks up items from the shelves, or puts things back in—before moving them back to their assigned spot inside a warehouse. The Butler moves at a little over a metre per second (around 4.3 kilometres an hour) and can lift 500 kilograms. It may seem slow but the robot can do far more than the 14 kilometres that a human warehouse worker usually walks in day.

Butler works in tandem with GreyOrange’s Pick-Put-to-Light (PPTL) system, where a set of light-based signals guide human operators to pick, or place, items on a shelving unit brought to them by the robot. A barcode-based scanning process also tracks items being moved in or out of a shelving unit. The final piece in GreyOrange’s warehousing troubleshooter is the Sorter (the Linear Sorter to be precise), which helps segregate packages on the basis of destination, volume, weight, or other parameters.

Advertisement

Kohli assures that all this technology drastically improves reliability, while reducing the time taken to process an order. For instance, if an e-commerce company would normally ship out 10,000 items an hour, most of those products would typically be ready for despatch in two hours. “We can actually, for 99% (of items), get it to 15 minutes,” he said.

For businesses, the clearest cost benefit of using GreyOrange’s robots at scale is leaner inventory. The inability to reliably despatch goods, Kohli described, can force companies to have five different warehouses to service a single area like the National Capital Region. “They’re duplicating, or triplicating, or having five times the inventory on stock,” he said. “They just need what’s actually consumed.”

Drawn by the need for greater efficiency and reliability, more than 55 warehousing facilities nationwide currently use GreyOrange robots, and business is doubling every year. On its list of clients are logistics firms like DTDC and Delhivery; e-commerce companies, including Flipkart, Myntra, Jabong, and Pepperfry, and large fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) players (which it didn’t name).

But the firm, which has raised at least $35 million so far and is near break even, is on to bigger things. Only 30% of its business comes from India at the moment, with Japan and Europe being its biggest global markets. It entered the Latin America region last month, and is poised to mark its presence in the Asia-Pacific region this year.

Advertisement

Forklift conundrum

At neighbouring Hi-Tech Robotic Systemz, there’s a different approach to improving Indian warehouses.

Founded in 2004 by Anuj Kapuria, an engineer who dropped out of a PhD programme at Carnegie Mellon, the company spent its early years focusing on autonomous vehicle technology. Kapuria wasn’t entirely an outsider to the industry; his father, Deep, is chairman of Hi-Tech Gears, an automotive component maker that supplies to Daimler and Honda, among others. After a few years of developing the technology platforms, Kapuria entered the warehousing industry in 2011 with solutions primarily for material movement.

Hi-Tech has three main offerings. The Novus Carry, an autonomous industrial vehicle that can be configured for multiple functions, including pulling trolleys or carrying materials to and from conveyor belts. Then there’s the Novus Omnistore, which allows for vertical stacking of storage units using multiple robots.

The Indian warehousing industry is currently operating with a 15% shortfall in skilled forklift drivers.

Advertisement

“Also, we are converting existing forklifts or pallet trucks, which are already there in the warehouses,” said Vijay, an engineer who worked in the IT industry before moving into robotics. “So, you just have to give the pick points and drop points, and the whole material movement within a warehouse or a manufacturing facility will happen (automatically).”

Hi-Tech’s interest in turning conventional forklifts into autonomous vehicles is partly the result of a human resource crunch. The Indian warehousing industry is currently operating with a 15% shortfall in skilled forklift drivers, according to Vijay, a problem that’ll worsen as facilities become bigger and increasingly clustered around strategic locations after the GST kicks in. “People are looking outside to manage those large warehouses,” he said. “Specifically, when they are located at a single location, there will also be (a) limitation of skilled labour (availability).” A promised 30% reduction in operating cost over three years is also helping draw customers.

With 150 of its robots deployed across the manufacturing and warehousing industry, including at Volvo, Eicher Motors, Ford, and online furniture seller Urban Ladder, Hi-Tech has gained traction in the market. But the GST will allow it to shift up a gear or two.

Already, customer enquiries have more than doubled, Vijay estimated, even as Hi-Tech’s marketing team works to make inroads into the FMCG and e-commerce segments. “In the last couple of months, we have done multiple pilots in various geographies for the top four-five FMCG companies,” he said, declining to reveal names. “And within two-three months, we’ll be getting not only specific orders but we will be actually signing papers with them for long-term deployment across geographies.”

Advertisement

Emboldened by the GST, the robots are coming.

Goods & Services Tech: This is the second in a series of articles on technology-driven startups that could benefit from India’s biggest tax reform, the Goods & Services Tax.

Output: India's Goods and Services Tax (GST) is being updated. Previously each of the country's 29 states and seven union territories had its own GST structure, but the changes will create a single national regime. Warehousing logistics is one of the many sectors that will be impacted. Until now, retail logistics companies have had to maintain state-specific warehouses, to avoid paying duplicate state taxes on the same goods when moving them around. The new national tax structure will allow for the consolidation of warehousing and therefore much larger installations and inventories, calling for a highly scaled robotics system to service them.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Verso Learning raises $1.5m for teacher development
 Melbourne edutech startup Verso Learning, which looks to assist teachers both in the classroom and with their own professional learning and development, has raised a $2 million Series A round led by Ken Lowe, cofounder of Canberra Data Centres.

Launched in 2014 by Colin Wood, having evolved out of his previous company Learnology, Verso previously raised a seed funding round, as well as innovation funding from the Victorian Government.

The startup’s platform looks to give educators analytical insights into their students’ work, allowing them to create data-driven teaching strategies to best engage all types of learners. It also enables teachers to connect and share their strategies.

Lowe, who spent almost two decades as a high school teacher, said, “Verso Learning disrupts the traditional teacher training model by providing teachers with ongoing, timely feedback and the tools they need to teach at their best every day.”

With Verso currently used by over 40,000 teachers in over 12,000 schools globally, the fresh funding will go towards further scaling the company’s offering and tailoring it to different markets, particularly in the US, where it’s being used in California, New Jersey, South Carolina, and Texas.

According to Wood, the platform has taken hold as schools increasingly seek alternatives to the “expensive, disruptive, and often ineffective” traditional training exercises like seminars and training days.

He said, “For less than the cost of sending one teacher to a half day of traditional training, Verso can deliver a full year of ongoing, continuous professional development.”

In Australia, the startup’s platform has been used in Victoria and NSW, where it was recently awarded NESA accreditation by the NSW Department of Education to allow teachers to use Verso as part of their professional learning requirements.

Also looking to assist teachers in better engaging with students is Sydney-founded Smart Sparrow, which in April raised a $5.3 million Series C round, led by OneVentures, to help further expand into the US.

Founded in 2008 by Dror Ben-Naim, a researcher at the University of New South Wales, Smart Sparrow offers teachers and university professors an online platform where they’re able to design their own online course content to create an interactive and ‘adaptive’ learning experience for students.

Educators are able to integrate tutorials, interactive content, simulations and media into their course, which can be edited at any time. Course creators are then able to view student’s progress in real-time and visualise course data.

Image: the Verso team. Source: Supplied.

Output: Australian edtech start-up Verso Learning has raised AUD2m ($1.5m) for helping teachers both in the classroom and with their own professional development. Melbourne-based Verso seeks to provide teachers and educators with analytical insights into their students' work, letting them create and share data-driven teaching strategies. The series A funding round was led by Ken Lowe, co-founder of Canberra Data Centres.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
UK drivers take more risks in the summer, finds telematics firm
 The driving behaviour of over 18,000 motorists with telematics policies, covering 106 million miles over a two year period was analysed, [2] and results showed:

68% of drivers have better driver scores in winter than in summer

On average people drive 14% more miles in summer than in winter

After adjusting for mileage, the average driver will, in summer compared to winter:

Hard brake 30% more

Speed on motorways 25% more

Speed on local roads 7% more

Drive on weekday nights 25% more Comparing summer versus winter driving, LexisNexis Risk Solutions, based on analysis of telematics data, has found that speeding and hard braking increase in the summer months. Hard braking is a strong indicator of inappropriate speed, driver distraction, aggression and lack of road sense so the significant increase along with more frequent speeding in the summer months should be a serious concern. LexisNexis Risk Solutions defines hard braking as a change in speed of 6.5+ mph over a 1-second time period, which is enough to propel a bag on the passenger seat into the footwell. This information coincides with Government data[3] which shows that more pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists are involved in road accidents in the summer months. New analysis suggests that the driving behaviour of motorists deteriorates severely during June, July and August – thus creating a lethal combination of factors impacting road safety. LexisNexis Risk Solutions recently enhanced its proprietary road speed database which provides scoring accuracy to insurers for rating telematics policies and visual proof of road speed limits in near real-time to support customer communications in cases of excessive speed[4]. Selim Cavanagh, VP of Insurance, UK and Ireland, for LexisNexis Risk Solutions said: “Telematics insurers have a unique insight into the driving behaviour, and therefore risk, of their policy holders. As such, these insurers will be utilising this information to communicate with the customer in order to discourage future speeding, and to take appropriate action if improvement is not seen. “Our new process for automated and manual verification of speed limit information means the insurer has access to accurate data which can be used as evidence in the event of collision or to cancel a policy if deemed necessary. “Of course, insurers with this insight also have the opportunity to make the roads safer, by educating those found to be speeding and encouraging drivers to slow down in future for their own safety, as well as the safety of other road users. “Government data[5] shows that around 1 in 4 road accident fatalities has speed as a contributory factor but we believe this is vastly understated. Inappropriate speed affects driver judgement and vehicle control and when you look at all the main contributory factors for road traffic accidents, the vast majority have one or both of these issues in play. Considering that our analysis is of drivers with telematics policies who you would expect to be more conscious of their driving behaviour, speeding is clearly a significant issue for our roads. It serves to reinforce our continued investment in market changing innovations to help the sector take telematics to the mass market.”

Output: Speeding and hard braking increase in the summer, according to data from telematics device provider Wunelli. Analysis of driving behaviour showed 68% of drivers have better scores in winter than in summer. Drivers also hard brake 30% more during the summer months, as well as speed on motorways 25% more, the analysis of 18,000 motorists showed. Hard braking is a strong indicator of inappropriate speed and aggressive driving. The figures could be used by insurers to discourage policy holders from speeding, said Selim Cavanagh, VP of insurance, UK and Ireland, for LexisNexis Risk Solutions.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Accenture pitches real-time, AI-enhanced videos based on user
 Accenture Interactive, Accenture’s agency arm, is pitching publishers and brands on a product that uses AI to automatically overlay product placements on streaming video content.

The way it works is, for example, if an online streaming service serves a video ad featuring a moving plane to two people, one in the U.S. and the other in France, the former will see the plane with, say, the Delta logo on it, while the latter will see the same plane with the Air France logo instead.

Alex Naressi, managing director of Accenture Interactive’s research and development unit, said that the software uses machine learning — a specific field of artificial intelligence that looks for patterns in large data sets to identify patterns and make decisions — to learn from and simulate human vision. In this way, he said, it can run simulated eye-tracking to create attention heat maps for any video automatically, then decide what the viewer is paying attention to and place a product in the corresponding area in real time.

Naressi said the platform also combines automatic semantic analysis with human insights and moderation to ensure brand safety and contextual relevance.

Accenture Interactive launched the ad format at Cannes Lions but hasn’t tested it with any brands or publishers or decided how it would charge clients for it, as patents are pending.

Naressi said he envisioned the video solution as an “interruption-free native inventory” that’s immune to ad blocking.

Brandon Purcell, senior analyst for Forrester Research, said he hasn’t seen the solution firsthand, but that based on Digiday’s description of it, he thinks it looks like a better implementation of AI than the chatbots that are most organizations’ first foray into AI.

“This solution is incredibly interesting to me, as it dynamically changes the content for an individual not just based on gender or geolocation but also on behavioral factors,” he said. “This approach can be applied to other marketing areas like email and even dynamic display advertising in-store. Lots of AI algorithms today are open-source, so the true differentiator is the data that an organization uses to train the machine. If Accenture has its own human eye movement data, it will be very powerful.”

Output: Accenture Interactive is pitching real-time, artificial intelligence (AI) enhanced videos based on the user to publishers and brands. The product uses AI to overlay product placements on streaming video content. For example, a video ad featuring a plane could be viewed by a US viewer with a Delta logo on it, while a French viewer would see the plane with Air France branding. Accenture Interactive launched the ad format at the Cannes Lions festival but has not tested it with any brands as patents are still pending.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Photobucket replaces free image hosting with subscription model
 Amazon and eBay have found themselves shorn of thousands of product images after photo-sharing platform Photobucket ended support for free picture hosting, demanding that users sign up to a $400 per year subscription plan to keep their services.

The abrupt move saw images de-listed from an array of websites, forums and blogs to be replaced by a ‘ransom demand’ graphic urging users to upgrade their plan to continue to enable third party hosting.

This follows an update to the company’s terms of service last week which caught many unawares, prompting a social media backlash from irate users angered at the sudden removal of their images – many of which were used to illustrate product listings but with hobbyists and personal accounts also affected.

Up till now Photobucket had relied on advertising income to support its services but is now attempting to adopt a subscription model to diversify its income. The manner in which this has been done however, burying the change in a lengthy legal document with little notice, has angered many.

In a blog post digital marketing specialist Aqueous Blue wrote: “There were no announcements, no emails warning people that it was about to happen and more importantly, no explanation.

"Bulletin boards across the globe are being crippled as previously vibrant threads with detailed images are disappearing.

"People who have used Photobucket for hosting these images successfully for over 10 years are finding that they will have to literally start again with what for some, amounts to a lifetime's work.”

Photobucket's self-inflicted PR disaster is likely to be mana from heaven for rivals such as Camerama and Flickr

Output: Photobucket has ended free image hosting and shifted towards a subscription service, leaving Amazon and eBay without thousands of product images. Images have disappeared from various websites, and have been replaced with a "ransom demand" graphic urging users to sign up to Photobucket's $400 yearly subscription plan to continue third-party hosting. Photobucket previously depended on advertising revenue, but is now seeking to diversify its income through the subscription model. The move follows an update to the firm's terms of service last week, which sparked a social media backlash over the abrupt removal of images.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Facebook investigated in Germany over users' personal data
 Facebook has been targeted by the German authorities for allegedly using over-complicated small print to trick users into handing over personal information.

The vast amount of personal information Facebook collects on its two billion members is used to generate billions in advertising revenue, but is at the centre of the latest high-profile European antitrust investigation to be carried out against a major technology company.

This one is being headed up by Germany’s Federal Cartel Office, essentially looking into whether Facebook uses language that users may not understand to trick them into agreeing to terms and conditions.

Facebook probe

The practice, the agency claims, is “extorting” personal data from users.

“Whoever doesn’t agree to the data use, gets locked out of the social network community,” said German lawyer Frederik Wiemer. “The fear of social isolation is exploited to get access to the complete surfing activities of users.”

Cartel Office president Andreas Mundt said the case tackles “central questions ensuring competition in the digital world in the future” adding that he wants the investigation’s initial results to be presented this year.

While other tech companies have been hit with fines following antitrust probes, the Facebook investigation currently rules out the possibility of a financial penalty, with any confirmed breach of antitrust rules more likely to results in technical changes.

The same cannot be said for Google, which just last week was slapped with a record-breaking 2.4 billion euro (£2.1bn) fine by the European Commission for manipulating search results related to its shopping comparison service.

Google has also been ordered by antitrust regulators to stop forcing Android manufacturers to install its software, as the EC has looked to clamp down on how technology companies operate.

But Google isn’t the only firm to have faced the wrath of regulators. Authorities hit Apple with a €13 billion (£11bn) tax bill after the Irish government was ordered to recover the “illegal tax benefits,” despite the government claiming the money was “state aid”.

And Facebook itself is no stranger to regulators, following investigations over its data-sharing policies with messaging service WhatsApp.

Test your knowledge of European tech pioneers: Try our quiz!

Output: Germany's Federal Cartel Office is investigating whether Facebook uses overly complicated language to encourage users to give the company personal information. Facebook exploits users' fear of social isolation to gain access to their browsing history, alleged Frederik Wiemer, a German lawyer. The investigation may result in Facebook having to make technical changes to its platform but the regulator has ruled out a financial penalty.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Tribunal rules in favour of OnTheMarket in property portals case
 The full decision runs to 168 pages but the summary of this afternoon’s judgement, issued by the CAT, is:

3) a rule requiring members to promote only OnTheMarket and not any other property portal (the “Exclusive Promotion Rule”).

2) a rule restricting membership of Agents’ Mutual to full-service office-based estate or letting agents, as opposed to agents operating only online (the “Bricks and Mortar Rule”); and

1) a rule by which an estate agent member may list its properties on no more than one other portal (the “One Other Portal Rule”);

Gascoigne Halman further contended that the One Other Portal Rule formed part of a wider arrangement between Agents’ Mutual and others collectively to boycott Zoopla and/or Rightmove, contrary to the Chapter I prohibition.

For the reasons given in the Judgment, the Tribunal held that the Competition Issues be determined against Gascoigne Halman. More specifically, the Tribunal held that:

1. As regards the One Other Portal Rule:

(a) The rule did not infringe the Chapter I prohibition by object.

(b) The rule did not infringe the Chapter I prohibition by effect.

(c) The rule was, in any event, objectively necessary to the “Arrangements” (the various rules which bind members of Agents’ Mutual, namely the listing agreement, articles of association and membership rules) as a whole, which were pro-competitive.

(d) The rule did not form part of a wider concerted practice to “boycott” Zoopla and was not invalid on that account.

(e) The rule was not an exempt agreement within the meaning of section 9 of the CA.

(f) If, contrary to the Tribunal’s conclusions, the rule did infringe the Chapter I prohibition, the Tribunal found that it was not severable from the Arrangements.

2. The Bricks and Mortar Rule did not infringe the Chapter I prohibition by object. If, contrary to the Tribunal’s conclusion, the rule did infringe the Chapter I prohibition, the Tribunal found that it was severable from the Arrangements.

3. The Exclusive Promotion Rule did not infringe the Chapter I prohibition by object. If, contrary to the Tribunal’s conclusion, the rule did infringe the Chapter I prohibition, the Tribunal did not consider it to be objectively necessary. The Exclusive Promotion Rule was severable from the Arrangements.

Because the Competition Issues were determined within the broader context of proceedings in the Chancery Division, the Tribunal made no further order beyond the determinations set out above.

Output: The Competition Appeal Tribunal has found in favour of property website OnTheMarket, deeming its "one other portal" rule, which restricts agents to promoting listings on its site and either Rightmove or Zoopla, did not infringe competition law. The tribunal hearing, which concluded in February but the findings were released this week, was brought about when Cheshire-based estate agents Gascoigne Halman, a former member of OnTheMarket, claimed the rule was anti-competitive. OnTheMarket is owned by a consortium of estate agents, Agents' Mutual that includes Savills, Chestertons and Knight Frank.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Marketers must make use of AI to get closer to mobile users
 David Black, MD, branding & consumer markets at Google UK, considers the impending changes in digital marketing, and how brands need to adapt.

Mobile has changed everything. The power that smart devices give us to manage our lives and to make decisions is staggering. We use mobile throughout the day to find inspiration or help to complete a task, to buy goods and services, influence our decisions and satisfy our curiosity.

Brands understand this, of course. A quick look at the latest IAB stats reveals that investment in mobile now accounts for 38 per cent of all digital ad spend in the UK. Mobile continues to rewrite the rules and transform our lives at such a dramatic rate that it is a challenge for marketers to keep up.

The mobile industry’s next big revolution is the addition of machine learning, and brands must adapt their thinking and navigate the speed of change effectively. It is essential that rapidly-evolving technology boosts rather than damages their bottom line.

Think smarter

The difficulty for brands it that we now expect them to be in our lives at the exact moment we need them to serve our requirements. They must not only be useful, but be seen as useful, by delivering fast, relevant and assistive experiences.

With this in mind, marketers must become smarter with how they collect and use data. Machine learning represents a strategic move in marketing that will affect how brands react today and what will be expected of them from now on. The difficulty for marketers is that data and machine learning becomes ever more sophisticated in the way it enhances the user experience.

The behaviours we see on mobile today will only multiply as devices become even smarter. It is already becoming natural to want to interact with a phone or tablet using, for example, our voice. The brands that succeed will be the ones that incorporate these data-driven technologies into their mobile offering to meet a consumer’s frictionless needs in the moment.

The harsh reality is that friction equals failure.

However, the beauty of data and increasingly sophisticated machine learning is that brands can benefit from these enhanced experiences consumers are enjoying on mobile. Brands need to be assistive and react to how technology such as AI is affecting consumer attitudes towards them. After all, we not only expect relevant, personalised and assistive experiences, we demand them.

Keeping ahead

Mobile has always been a game changer to help savvy brands stay one step ahead of the consumer. Successful marketers have an assistive mindset and a deep understanding of their customers at every encounter. Marketers that use data and technology correctly can take advantage of the huge opportunities mobile provides to engage with consumers and convert them into buyers.

Take the example of popular US retailer Macy’s, which used an at-home music festival to reach millennials in the moments that matter for festival fashion. The store wanted to make a splash in the ever growing ‘festival fashion’ market, while enticing those shoppers to become Macy’s customers. To achieve this it launched its Summer Vibes campaign through a YouTube channel which featured professional influencers. It also ran TrueView Discover video ads to deliver its message to the right audience.

Macy’s used music to reach hundreds of thousands of millennials in a spectacular way and turn their ‘I need some ideas’ moments into’ I want to buy it’ moments. The online festival was viewed more than 4m times on YouTube. The activity also produced a lift in festival product consideration of more than 60 per cent after it aired and a 15 per cent rise in searches for Macy’s on Google and YouTube in the month after the festival.

The omni-shopper

This is the age of the omni-shopper, and traditional bricks-and-mortar retailers and other brands can struggle to adapt to the mobile age and meet the needs of modern day consumers.

Machine learning can help marketers to embrace omnichannel assistance and ensure there is a seamless bridge between the online and offline experience that every customer has on the path to purchase.

In order to begin to work with mobile in an efficient way marketers need to have faith in the technical experts, as they can help you learn and apply the possibilities of mobile to your business. It’s up to them to grow confidence, and prove that they will deliver solutions to make it easier to scale relevant messages and experiences across all devices at key moments in people’s lives, thus fully harnessing the power of mobile.

David Black is MD, branding & consumer markets, at Google UK

Output: The next step in mobile will be the addition of machine learning and, as the technology changes quickly, it is essential for brands and marketers to keep up so they can be in customers' lives just when they are needed. Potentially data can provide valuable insights into consumers and can create more customers and buyers as a result of understanding them properly. Brands must also make sure their interactions with the public are frictionless or they risk failure. Investment in mobile now accounts for 38% of UK digital ad spend.