Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Global car rental market expected to grow 13.55% annually until 2022
 Country -Select Country- Afghanistan (Islamic Republic of Afghanistan) Åland Islands (Åland Islands) Albania (Republic of Albania) Algeria (People's Democratic Republic of Algeria) American Samoa (American Samoa) Andorra (Principality of Andorra) Angola (Republic of Angola) Anguilla (Anguilla) Antarctica (Antarctica (the territory South of 60 deg S)) Antigua and Barbuda (Antigua and Barbuda) Argentina (Argentine Republic) Armenia (Republic of Armenia) Aruba (Aruba) Australia (Commonwealth of Australia) Austria (Republic of Austria) Azerbaijan (Republic of Azerbaijan) Bahamas (Commonwealth of the Bahamas) Bahrain (Kingdom of Bahrain) Bangladesh (People's Republic of Bangladesh) Barbados (Barbados) Belarus (Republic of Belarus) Belgium (Kingdom of Belgium) Belize (Belize) Benin (Republic of Benin) Bermuda (Bermuda) Bhutan (Kingdom of Bhutan) Bolivia (Plurinational State of Bolivia) Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba (Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba) Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosnia and Herzegovina) Botswana (Republic of Botswana) Bouvet Island (Bouvetøya) (Bouvet Island (Bouvetøya)) Brazil (Federative Republic of Brazil) British Indian Ocean Territory (Chagos Archipelago) (British Indian Ocean Territory (Chagos Archipelago)) British Virgin Islands (British Virgin Islands) Brunei Darussalam (Brunei Darussalam) Bulgaria (Republic of Bulgaria) Burkina Faso (Burkina Faso) Burundi (Republic of Burundi) Cabo Verde (Republic of Cabo Verde) Cambodia (Kingdom of Cambodia) Cameroon (Republic of Cameroon) Canada (Canada) Cayman Islands (Cayman Islands) Central African Republic (Central African Republic) Chad (Republic of Chad) Chile (Republic of Chile) China (People's Republic of China) Christmas Island (Christmas Island) Cocos (Keeling) Islands (Cocos (Keeling) Islands) Colombia (Republic of Colombia) Comoros (Union of the Comoros) Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) Congo (Republic of the Congo) Cook Islands (Cook Islands) Costa Rica (Republic of Costa Rica) Cote d'Ivoire (Republic of Cote d'Ivoire) Croatia (Republic of Croatia) Cuba (Republic of Cuba) Curaçao (Curaçao) Cyprus (Republic of Cyprus) Czech Republic (Czech Republic) Denmark (Kingdom of Denmark) Djibouti (Republic of Djibouti) Dominica (Commonwealth of Dominica) Dominican Republic (Dominican Republic) Ecuador (Republic of Ecuador) Egypt (Arab Republic of Egypt) El Salvador (Republic of El Salvador) Equatorial Guinea (Republic of Equatorial Guinea) Eritrea (State of Eritrea) Estonia (Republic of Estonia) Ethiopia (Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia) Falkland Islands (Malvinas) (Falkland Islands (Malvinas)) Faroe Islands (Faroe Islands) Fiji (Republic of Fiji) Finland (Republic of Finland) France (French Republic) French Guiana (French Guiana) French Polynesia (French Polynesia) French Southern Territories (French Southern Territories) Gabon (Gabonese Republic) Gambia (Republic of the Gambia) Georgia (Georgia) Germany (Federal Republic of Germany) Ghana (Republic of Ghana) Gibraltar (Gibraltar) Greece (Hellenic Republic of Greece) Greenland (Greenland) Grenada (Grenada) Guadeloupe (Guadeloupe) Guam (Guam) Guatemala (Republic of Guatemala) Guernsey (Bailiwick of Guernsey) Guinea (Republic of Guinea) Guinea-Bissau (Republic of Guinea-Bissau) Guyana (Co-operative Republic of Guyana) Haiti (Republic of Haiti) Heard Island and McDonald Islands (Heard Island and McDonald Islands) Holy See (Vatican City State) (Holy See (Vatican City State)) Honduras (Republic of Honduras) Hong Kong (Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China) Hungary (Hungary) Iceland (Republic of Iceland) India (Republic of India) Indonesia (Republic of Indonesia) Iran (Islamic Republic of Iran) Iraq (Republic of Iraq) Ireland (Ireland) Isle of Man (Isle of Man) Israel (State of Israel) Italy (Italian Republic) Jamaica (Jamaica) Japan (Japan) Jersey (Bailiwick of Jersey) Jordan (Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan) Kazakhstan (Republic of Kazakhstan) Kenya (Republic of Kenya) Kiribati (Republic of Kiribati) Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) Korea (Republic of Korea) Kuwait (State of Kuwait) Kyrgyz Republic (Kyrgyz Republic) Lao People's Democratic Republic (Lao People's Democratic Republic) Latvia (Republic of Latvia) Lebanon (Lebanese Republic) Lesotho (Kingdom of Lesotho) Liberia (Republic of Liberia) Libya (Libya) Liechtenstein (Principality of Liechtenstein) Lithuania (Republic of Lithuania) Luxembourg (Grand Duchy of Luxembourg) Macao (Macao Special Administrative Region of China) Macedonia (Republic of Macedonia) Madagascar (Republic of Madagascar) Malawi (Republic of Malawi) Malaysia (Malaysia) Maldives (Republic of Maldives) Mali (Republic of Mali) Malta (Republic of Malta) Marshall Islands (Republic of the Marshall Islands) Martinique (Martinique) Mauritania (Islamic Republic of Mauritania) Mauritius (Republic of Mauritius) Mayotte (Mayotte) Mexico (United Mexican States) Micronesia (Federated States of Micronesia) Moldova (Republic of Moldova) Monaco (Principality of Monaco) Mongolia (Mongolia) Montenegro (Montenegro) Montserrat (Montserrat) Morocco (Kingdom of Morocco) Mozambique (Republic of Mozambique) Myanmar (Republic of the Union of Myanmar) Namibia (Republic of Namibia) Nauru (Republic of Nauru) Nepal (Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal) Netherlands (Kingdom of the Netherlands) New Caledonia (New Caledonia) New Zealand (New Zealand) Nicaragua (Republic of Nicaragua) Niger (Republic of Niger) Nigeria (Federal Republic of Nigeria) Niue (Niue) Norfolk Island (Norfolk Island) Northern Mariana Islands (Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands) Norway (Kingdom of Norway) Oman (Sultanate of Oman) Pakistan (Islamic Republic of Pakistan) Palau (Republic of Palau) Palestine (State of Palestine) Panama (Republic of Panama) Papua New Guinea (Independent State of Papua New Guinea) Paraguay (Republic of Paraguay) Peru (Republic of Peru) Philippines (Republic of the Philippines) Pitcairn Islands (Pitcairn Islands) Poland (Republic of Poland) Portugal (Portuguese Republic) Puerto Rico (Commonwealth of Puerto Rico) Qatar (State of Qatar) Réunion (Réunion) Romania (Romania) Russian Federation (Russian Federation) Rwanda (Republic of Rwanda) Saint Barthélemy (Saint Barthélemy) Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha (Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha) Saint Kitts and Nevis (Federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis) Saint Lucia (Saint Lucia) Saint Martin (Saint Martin (French part)) Saint Pierre and Miquelon (Saint Pierre and Miquelon) Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (Saint Vincent and the Grenadines) Samoa (Independent State of Samoa) San Marino (Republic of San Marino) Sao Tome and Principe (Democratic Republic of Sao Tome and Principe) Saudi Arabia (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) Senegal (Republic of Senegal) Serbia (Republic of Serbia) Seychelles (Republic of Seychelles) Sierra Leone (Republic of Sierra Leone) Singapore (Republic of Singapore) Sint Maarten (Dutch part) (Sint Maarten (Dutch part)) Slovakia (Slovak Republic) (Slovakia (Slovak Republic)) Slovenia (Republic of Slovenia) Solomon Islands (Solomon Islands) Somalia (Federal Republic of Somalia) South Africa (Republic of South Africa) South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands (South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands) South Sudan (Republic of South Sudan) Spain (Kingdom of Spain) Sri Lanka (Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka) Sudan (Republic of Sudan) Suriname (Republic of Suriname) Svalbard & Jan Mayen Islands (Svalbard & Jan Mayen Islands) Swaziland (Kingdom of Swaziland) Sweden (Kingdom of Sweden) Switzerland (Swiss Confederation) Syrian Arab Republic (Syrian Arab Republic) Taiwan (Taiwan, Province of China) Tajikistan (Republic of Tajikistan) Tanzania (United Republic of Tanzania) Thailand (Kingdom of Thailand) Timor-Leste (Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste) Togo (Togolese Republic) Tokelau (Tokelau) Tonga (Kingdom of Tonga) Trinidad and Tobago (Republic of Trinidad and Tobago) Tunisia (Tunisian Republic) Turkey (Republic of Turkey) Turkmenistan (Turkmenistan) Turks and Caicos Islands (Turks and Caicos Islands) Tuvalu (Tuvalu) Uganda (Republic of Uganda) Ukraine (Ukraine) United Arab Emirates (United Arab Emirates) United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland (United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland) United States Minor Outlying Islands (United States Minor Outlying Islands) United States of America (United States of America) United States Virgin Islands (United States Virgin Islands) Uruguay (Eastern Republic of Uruguay) Uzbekistan (Republic of Uzbekistan) Vanuatu (Republic of Vanuatu) Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela) Vietnam (Socialist Republic of Vietnam) Wallis and Futuna (Wallis and Futuna) Western Sahara (Western Sahara) Yemen (Yemen) Zambia (Republic of Zambia) Zimbabwe (Republic of Zimbabwe)

Output: The global car rental market is expected to reach $124.56bn by 2022, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.55% between 2017 and 2022. The US accounted for 44.6% of market share in 2016, with economy cars accounting for approximately 33.1% of the global market. International tourism is the leading factor in the growth of the car rental market, along with rapid industrialisation in India, China and Japan.


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Input:
Silvertown Quays will feature on-site factory for 850 homes
 O nce a forlorn little east London corner, Silvertown is poised for stardom thanks to a regeneration programme that will create the capital’s first factory-built town.

A factory will be built on-site to construct the components for 850 new homes as part of a £3.5 billion masterplan. Residents should be moving in by 2020.

Their new homes will be part of an architectural and retail scheme that is promised strictly to be free of skyscrapers and chain stores.

"We see it as a vibrant 24-hour area. And we are obsessed with design. We won’t build homes that are just boxes with no character or identity"

Right now there are few clues that Silvertown, stranded on a sliver of land between the Thames Barrier, London City airport and Pontoon Dock, is being put on the map.

A few small developments were thrown up on disused industrial sites in the Eighties and Nineties but work fizzled out, leaving the new locals stranded.

Buying a pint of milk is still a challenge in Silvertown, and if you plan on going out locally to eat or drink, you can forget it: there is nothing here but old, abandoned mills.

GIANT PROJECT

Olaide Oboh is spokeswoman for the Silvertown Partnership, a consortium of three developers — Chelsfield Properties, First Base and Macquarie Capital — leading the regeneration.

Pre-fabulous: no tall towers and no chain stores at Silvertown, which will eventually have 3,000 new factory-built homes / Silvertown Partnership

“We see it as a vibrant, 24-hour area,” she says. “And we are obsessed with design. We won’t build homes that are just boxes with no character or identity. They will work well and be beautiful to look at.”

The regeneration of Silvertown has been considered for years.

There has been a lengthy preparation period, part of which was taken up with obtaining planning permission for the project from Newham council.

Stripping out a ton of dangerous asbestos from the Millennium Mills, a hulking Art Deco former flour mill which will eventually become the centrepiece of the 62-acre site, was a mammoth task. But over the next few months the pace will pick up.

Poised for a decision: TfL plans a new Silvertown to Greenwich road tunnel

Later this year a “container city” of up to 250 shipping containers will be installed, providing affordable temporary workspace for small businesses. By the new year the ambitious first phase of this giant project will get under way.

THE POTENTIAL TO BE SPECTACULAR

The restoration of the potentially spectacular Millennium Mills, which will feature shops, bars, and restaurants plus workspace for start-up firms, will be completed by about 2019, and simultaneously a new bridge will be installed over Royal Victoria Dock, giving pedestrian access to the new super-fast Crossrail links to the City and West End when they begin next year from nearby Custom House station.

Transport for London, meanwhile, is pursuing plans to dig a new road tunnel beneath the Thames from Silvertown to the Greenwich Peninsula. A government decision on whether to allow the £1 billion project is expected within days. An opening date of 2022 or 2023 has been pencilled in.

Connection: a curved new Royal Victoria Dock footbridge will give access to Crossrail at Custom House / Alamy

Eventually there will be about 3,000 new homes, ranging from one to five bedrooms — a mixture of private, affordable, shared ownership and built to rent.

Whatever their tenure, all of Silvertown’s new homes will be prefabricated, their components created on-site in the purpose-built new factory. This process will be faster than regular housebuilding, and roughly 20 per cent cheaper.

This saving will not be passed on to buyers, as pricing will be based on local values. However, Olaide Oboh promises other benefits. “We want to deliver 100 per cent snag-free homes.

"Don’t think about the old idea of a prefabricated home, built like a cross between a shed and a bungalow. Prefabricated homes are now a sophisticated and universally used way of providing beautiful and well-designed, long-lasting homes. We are going to make this area look beautiful.”

On the water: sport and leisure will be in the mix at the docks’ new town

The partnership is working with a seriously impressive 20-strong design team of internationally recognised architects including David Adjaye, David Chipperfield, Rem Koolhaas, Richard Rogers and AHMM, which designed the Saatchi Gallery. The first detailed designs will be revealed next year.

AMBITIOUS PLANS

Award-winning practice Stanton Williams has drawn up the plans for the new Silvertown Bridge, a wide concrete boardwalk curving across Royal Victoria Dock, with an opening section to allow boats and barges to sail below.

The other ambitious promise made by the Silvertown Partnership is that it will not create a town just for people who work in the City and Canary Wharf but cannot afford to live there, but a self-sufficient urban town.

As well as independent shops, cafés, bars and restaurants, Roundhouse, based in Camden Town, is planning to open up in Silvertown.

How cool is that?: Roundhouse plans a music/education venue in Silvertown

Like its north London counterpart Roundhouse East will be a music venue and education space.

Silvertown will also have a new school, a health centre, and there’ll be plenty of job creation — both during the construction and also in the new businesses that will be able to take space at the site.

The drawback is that the project will take “at least 20 years” to complete, and residents will have to live through the building process. And its proximity to London City airport means flight path noise is inevitable: some homes will need quadruple soundproofing.

The bright side is the convenience of having an international airport just half a mile away, says Olaide Oboh, while plane takeoff paths will ensure there are no high-rise buildings at Silvertown.

“Millennium Mills is our tallest building at 12 storeys,” she says. “We are going to show you can do high-density housing without having to go high rise.”

WHAT YOU CAN BUY NOW

£500,000: a two-bedroom flat at the Barrier Point Road scheme in E16. Purple Bricks (0121 396 0867)

Homes close to London’s major regeneration zones have historically tended to outperform in terms of property price growth.

So buyers keen to get in on the ground and reap the benefits of Silvertown right now could buy a two-bedroom purpose-built flat close to the river for about £350,000, or a home with river views for about £550,000.

There are some more glamorous townhouses to be had south of North Woolwich Road — but don’t expect bargains.

Output: A new housing development in East London will be built with components produced at an on-site factory. The Silvertown Quays development is part of the £3.5bn ($4.61bn) redevelopment of a 62 acre site, alongside London City Airport and the Thames Barrier, being led by a consortium of three developers. The plans include the use of a purpose-built factory at the site to produce prefabricated components for up to 3,000 houses, with 850 being built in the first phase. The method will be faster than traditional construction and up to 20% cheaper.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Modi held bilateral talks with Trump, discussed trade and relations
 Prime Minister Narendra Modi met US President Donald Trump on Monday afternoon on the sidelines of the the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit in Manila in the Philippines.

The leaders held bilateral talks with terrorism and trade being at the top of their agenda of discussion.

Modi, at a press conference with Trump, said the relations between India and the United States are growing.

"Relations between India and US are growing. Our relations go beyond, we are working for future interests of Asia and humanity," Modi said.

#WATCH: Prime Minister Narendra Modi meets US President Donald Trump in Manila, holds bilateral talks #Philippines pic.twitter.com/aW6dlkgfwe — ANI (@ANI) November 13, 2017

Modi reached Manila on Sunday to attend the 15th ASEAN-India summit and the 12th East Asia summit on November 14. He was accompanied by National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar and a few other top diplomatic and security officials.

ASEAN Summit: PM Narendra Modi holds bilateral talks with US President Donald Trump in Manila, Philippines pic.twitter.com/BSGjLhpLI1 — ANI (@ANI) November 13, 2017

The bilateral meeting comes just three days after the US President commended India and Modi for the country's "astounding growth". He made the statement on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Vietnam on Friday.

"Since India opened its economy, it has achieved astounding growth and is a new world of opportunity for its expanding middle class," Trump had said.

"Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been working to bring that vast country and all of its people together as one, and he's working at it very, very successfully, indeed," he added.

Output: Modi and Trump held a meeting on Monday 13th November, addressing terrorism and trade at this year's ASEAN Summit. Trump commended Modi on India's "astounding growth", and opportunities for its expanding middle class. Although trade was at the top of their discussion, Modi added: "We are working for future interests of Asia and humanity".


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Arrival of car rental counter at Goa airport sparks protest
 VASCO: The yellow black taxi cab operators under the banner of United Taximen Union on Wednesday opposed the car rental counter by bringing their families to the Dabolim airport to protest.

The family members of 350 yellow black cab operators protested the move of the Airport Authority of India to open the car rental counter which they claim to be approved by the Ministry of Tourism, Government of India.

Speaking to reporters during the protest, UTU president Sanjay Naik said that the Airport Authority of India bypassed the state government by opening the car rental service counter at Dabolim airport. “We have heard from the four legislators of Mormugao taluka that there was no permission granted by the state government or by the department of transport to open the car rental counter at Dabolim airport”.

“We therefore urge Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar to intervene in the matter and give justice to the families of the yellow black taxi cab operators who are operating at Dabolim airport for the last four decades”, said Naik.

When contacted airport director Bhupesh Chand Hans Negi was not available for his reaction on the car rental counter.

Meanwhile, the Minister for Panchayat Mauvin Godinho on Wednesday said that he had discussed the matter pertaining to the opening of a new car rental service counter with the Minister for Transport Ramakrishna Dhavalikar. Godinho said that the Transport Minister has claimed that no permission has been obtained or issued from the transport department or by any agency to commission the taxi counter at Dabolim airport.

Godinho disclosed that there are no legal standings with the opening of the car rental counter and there was no consultation with the state government on the matter. “I have directed the airport director to shut the car rental service counter till the issue is sorted out”, said Godinho

“The state government will take a decision in consultation with the concerned minister and local legislators, whether the new taxi counter could be functional within the framework of law by legally examining the matter”, added Godinho.

Output: The families of 350 taxi drivers demonstrated at Dabolim Airport, Goa, against the arrival of a car rental counter. The drivers claim that the the Ministry of Tourism, has bypassed the state government and Department of Transport - and insist no permission has been granted by these bodies. The counter has been shut down until the issue has been resolved.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Estate agents sitting on 'goldmine' of consumer data
 Post navigation

Estate agents are sitting on a data goldmine worth an absolute fortune – yet most won’t be aware of the value of the information they collect.

Recently, I was offered the email data for 5m UK addresses – but it came with a hefty half a million pound price tag!

So how much is your database worth? And how are you going to monitor it?

We are at the start of the data ecosystem, since people come to us and give us their contact details.

But what information do you store (with their permission and complying with data protection regulations)? And once you’ve got it, what do you do with it?

I’m told many agents are dropping up to a fifth of all leads from portals because they are not correctly capturing data from prospective customers!

It’s often been said that data is king – it is in fact the new gold rush.

But how do you create value once you have got that database? How regularly do you contact people on your database and ask if they are still looking for a property or wish to receive information?

Do you even have a contact strategy and how often do you clean up the data to ensure it is accurate?

With so many different ways to keep in touch, what’s your email strategy, your text strategy, your social media strategy, your video strategy?

If you were to calculate the cost of a lead, you may find you are wasting tens of thousands of pounds worth of data if you don’t capture the information fully.

I know the cost of every lead we register, based on how we have gathered that information. I know it’s a lot cheaper to have an email address than it is to gain a prospect through newspaper advertising or direct mail.

Many agents just don’t realise how valuable their database is – and should be included in any valuation when selling your business. If you buy a business without a database, what are you actually buying?

We even use advanced propensity modelling on our data, combining it with other data sets, to establish how likely a person is to move. It’s an extremely successful way of obtaining new leads.

Looking to the future, people will be going to their local estate agent for the full moving package, including white goods and carpets or finding a plumber, so the value of that database is going to be huge.

Are we going to give it up to other parties like portals, just like we’ve done with our stock?

We’ve got an opportunity now to gain the upper hand by registering everyone who comes through our physical or virtual door.

Let’s ensure that when they are knocking, we do let them in – and then provide them with the right information that will ensure they are customers for many years to come.

What does the future of estate agency look like?

When you reflect on the incredible changes that have taken place in estate agency over the past 20 years, you can’t help wonder what the next two decades will be like.

The digital world has transformed all our businesses – whether it’s promoting our properties on our own websites or portals, or using social media or email to communicate, or even using digital screens on our shopfronts or using mobile phones and tablets to take photos and videos.

It’s hard to imagine what the next wave of technology will do for our businesses and whether the public will embrace it in a way that makes it cost effective for us to implement. Take, for example, virtual reality headsets.

Will genuine prospective purchasers really want to sit in their living rooms and take a virtual tour through someone else’s property – or will they want to see the local neighbourhood for themselves, hear the railway line at the end of the garden or enjoy the view?

Surely it will always be important to get people to a property to see it for themselves – one of the reasons that open house days remain so popular.

What better way is there for local agents to meet people in the flesh who are interested in buying – and potentially selling their own properties?

That’s not to say that new digital technologies won’t work or gain support.

There will be agents who specialise in certain forms of technology, encouraging visitors to stick around on their websites by using games or augmented reality, enabling people to see what a property would look like with different furniture, colour schemes or appliances – and then offering those items for sale.

Imagine if you can completely gut a home and add in a new kitchen and bi-fold doors – and see the associated costs in the process. Then buy them through your website!

It’s a concept I trialled 20 years ago – the total moving experience (TMX), but it was ahead of its time!

That time is here. Amazon may have started with books – but now look what they sell. Almost everything. They’ve already teased that they may start to sell property. That could land us all in trouble if it proves to be true.

Future generations will be completely tech savvy. They will expect far more from their agents. Will those agents who don’t embrace digital change be here in 20 years’ time? I somehow doubt it, don’t you?

Chancellor needs to address Stamp Duty concerns

Speculation is mounting that the Chancellor, Philip Hammond, will cut Stamp Duty for first-time buyers in the Autumn Budget. It’s critical he heeds calls from us all to go through with this.

As house prices have continued to rise, with the average cost of a home now £11,000 more than it was this time last year, so has unaffordability.

Stamp Duty is holding back a whole generation of young people already struggling to save for a deposit, and it is time to bring this injustice to an end.

The recent interest rate rise could mean a further surge, as buyers fight over limited stock in the run-up to Christmas, and look to lock down a cheap fixed rate mortgage before the new rate makes home-buying even harder .

For hard-working individuals who have to borrow for the basic cost of living, saving for both Stamp Duty and a deposit to own their own home is a far-flung reality, especially as our branch data shows first-time buyer deposits are up 6% on the month, outpacing inflation.

We’ve also seen a 68% drop in the number of investors wanting buy-to-let properties, as the Government has taxed them into oblivion.

Hammond needs to see that the landlord is not the enemy and savvy investors are realising they are getting better returns on the stock market, so share prices are on the up – and we’ll have another crash!

Which incidentally would make the heavily indebted Countrywide and other listed agents ‘bust’ businesses!

Come on, Chancellor, address these concerns – or the housing crisis will continue to worsen.

Output: UK estate agents are unaware of the value the data they collect holds, according to an op-ed on propertyindustryeye.com. Estate agents who don't fully capture all information about a lead are wasting "tens of thousands of pounds worth of data", wrote columnist Paul Smith. In the future, estate agents making the most of the information in their databases could offer an all-in-one service to people moving house, he said, and warned against handing data over to online portals.


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Input:
The ultra-thin glass market will be worth estimated $17bn by 2022
 The report "Ultra-Thin Glass Market by Manufacturing Process (Fusion, Float), Thickness (<0.1mm, 0.1-0.5mm, 0.5 - 1.0mm, 1.0 - 1.2mm), Application (Semiconductor Substrate, Touch Panel Displays, Fingerprint Sensors), End-Use Industry, Region - Global Forecast to 2022" published by MarketsandMarkets™, the market is estimated to be USD 9.73 Billion in 2017 and is projected to reach USD 16.99 Billion by 2022, at a CAGR of 11.8% from 2017 to 2022. The growth of this market can be attributed to the increasing demand for ultra-thin glass from the consumer electronics industry.

Browse 102 Market Data Tables and 55 Figures spread through 161 Pages and in-depth TOC on "Ultra-Thin Glass Market"

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/ultra-thin-glass-market-40947094.html

Early buyers will receive 10% customization on this report

Based on application, the touch panel displays segment is projected to lead the Ultra-Thin Glass Market during the forecast period

The touch panel displays segment led the Ultra-Thin Glass Market in 2016. The growth of this segment can be attributed to the increasing use of ultra-thin glass in consumer electronics. Features such as high electrical conductivity and sensitivity of ultra-thin glass make it preferable to be used for display and sensor applications.

Get PDF Brochure @ http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownload.asp?id=40947094

Based on end-use industry, the consumer electronics segment is projected to lead the Ultra-Thin Glass Market during the forecast period

The consumer electronics segment led the Ultra-Thin Glass Market in 2016 and is expected to lead in the coming years. The growth of the consumer electronics segment can be attributed to the increasing use of ultra-thin glass in various applications, such as smartphones, wearable devices, notebook, and TVs.

Asia Pacific is the largest market for ultra-thin glass

The Asia Pacific region led the Ultra-Thin Glass Market in 2016, and is expected to continue its dominance in the near future. Increasing e-commerce activities is fueling the growth of ultra-thin glass in Asia Pacific. The high demand for this glass from the consumer electronics industry in countries, such as China and Taiwan, are key factors driving the growth of Ultra-Thin Glass Market in the Asia Pacific region.

Key players operating in the Ultra-Thin Glass Market are Corning (US), Asahi Glass (Japan), Nippon Electric Glass (Japan), CSG Holding (China), SCHOTT (Germany), Nippon Sheet Glass (Japan), Central Glass (Japan), Xinyi Glass (China), Nittobo (Japan), Luoyang Glass (China), Changzhou Almaden (China), Air-Craftglass (Netherlands), Emerge Glass (India), AviationGlass & Technology (Netherlands), AEON Industries (China), Suzhou Huadong Coating Glass (China), Taiwan Glass (Taiwan), China National Building Materials (China), Hilgenberg (Germany), Noval Glass (China), HOYA USA (US), and AvanStrate (Japan).

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Output: The ultra-thing glass sector will be worth $16.99bn by 2022 thanks to demand from the consumer electronics industry, according to a forecast by MarketsandMarkets. The market is predicted to be worth $9.73bn this year alone, as high sensitivity and electrical conductivity make the glass suitable for applications such as smartphones and wearables. Key industry players include Japan's Asahi Glass, Chinese firm CSG Holding and US company Corning.


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Bosch generates €1bn from agtech sales
 (GERMANY)

Bosch is making a big impact in the rapidly growing agriculture technology (agtech) industry.

The company has bagged €1 billion in agtech sales, as its sensor and connectivity platforms show themselves to be suited to smart farming – as well as automotive – applications.

“Bosch can do more than cars and cordless screwdrivers. We are bringing high tech to farms, opening up a market worth billions,” explained Dr Markus Heyn, member of the Robert Bosch GmbH board of management.

With a growing global population adding to the mounting pressures being placed on arable land, which is already facing huge threats from climate change, smart farms can be one of the solutions for getting more from less.

Connected farms can harness sensor technologies to provide real-time information, easily accessible via smartphone apps. This improves monitoring capabilities, without the need for physical inspection, in turn leading to better field management and higher yields. The Bosch IoT Cloud also enables machinery to communicate potential problems, allowing for early action to avert expensive and costly repairs.

Bosch is also working with Bayer on ‘smart spraying technology’ that can – in ‘lightning speed’ – tell the difference between crops and weeds – using camera sensors, meaning pesticides only target weeds.

“Smart spraying sustainably clears fields of weeds. This safeguards yields while minimizing environmental impact,” Heyn added.

And this is an important factor, as agriculture leaders need to advance innovations, such as smart spraying tech, that are climate-friendly, to reduce the industry’s carbon footprint.

In September Deere & Company recognised this by moving for precision agriculture startup, Blue River Technology, in a deal worth $305 million. The young American firm uses machine learning and artificial technologies to identify the exact amounts of spray plants and crops require – reducing fertiliser use by up to 90%.

Another interesting proposition, from the Earth Institute at Columbia University, is that an extra 825 million people could be fed by swapping around where crops are grown globally.

Output: US manufacturer Bosch has made €1bn ($1.18bn) from sales of agricultural technology (agtech) systems, such as sensor and connectivity platforms, as high-tech farming methods are increasingly adopted. Its IoT (Internet of Things) Cloud platform can be used to create "connected farms" where crop data can be monitored remotely and analysed to improve crop yields. The company has also helped to create "smart spraying" systems which use sensors to differentiate between crops and weeds, making the use of pesticides more efficient.


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Greece announces smart farming push
 The Greek government aims to use Copernicus, Europe’s earth-monitoring system, to maximise the potential of smart farming, which will help the country ensure its position in the post-crisis era, Greece’s digital policy minister told EURACTIV.com.

Speaking in Thessaloniki at the “Greek farming growth” event organised by Gaia Epixeirein, a consultancy which brings together farmers, the IT and banking sector, Nikos Pappas pointed out now that the country gets out of the bailout programme it has to enhance its digital skills in order to turn the page toward fair and sustainable growth.

“Smart farming can create all the necessary conditions to improve production and the product itself as well as create new jobs in several sectors,” he said, adding that Greek products won’t be competitive in the global market if they continue to be produced the way they do today.

A close ally of Greek premier Alexis Tsipras, Pappas also emphasised the government’s initiative to establish a Space Agency, which will interconnect as a hub with major Greek and international research centres. He also promised that the country would soon have its own micro-satellite system, which will be created exclusively by Greek universities.

“We want the technology of tomorrow, today available for all,” the minister added.

By giving farmers access to cutting-edge digital technology, the European Commission’s grand ambition is to make farming more competitive, reduce its environmental impact, cut food prices and better inform consumers about the food they eat.

Broadband access

But despite the widespread support it enjoys in Brussels, digital farming is struggling to enter the mainstream, hampered by an ageing farming population and patchy broadband coverage in rural areas.

Digital skills and 5G centre stage as precision farming vies to enter mainstream Farmers, digital experts and representatives from the agricultural technology industry joined forces in Brussels on Thursday (12 October) to urge policymakers to bring precision farming into the mainstream in the EU.

“To reap the full benefits of digital farming, the EU needs to devise supportive, coherent and forward-looking policies,” said Richard Markwell, president of the European trade association of the agricultural machinery industry (CEMA).

Broadband infrastructure in Greece’s rural areas is poor and Pappas vowed to put an end to “digital exclusion”. Via the “Rural Broadband Internet” project, which is co-funded by the EU, the government aims to provide remote areas with 50Mbps internet speed.

The European Commission is putting pressure on the member states to improve broadband infrastructure in Europe’s rural areas. But each country and region is responsible for its own timetable for broadband roll-out and therefore nothing more can be done at EU level.

“The fact that we still have white spots in rural areas where no broadband connection exists is unacceptable,” EU Agriculture Commissioner Phil Hogan told EURACTIV in an interview.

Hogan: Data ownership should not weaken farmers’ position Data ownership and access should be organised in such a way that farmers’ competitiveness is improved, EU Agriculture Commissioner Phil Hogan told EURACTIV.com in an exclusive interview.

The role of Copernicus

Speaking on the sidelines of the event, Pappas told EURACTIV that the role of Copernicus would be substantial in the country’s new national strategy.

“The Greek government stands ready to take full advantage of Copernicus to maximise the potential of smart farming and speed up the introduction of new technologies in the farming sector,” he said, citing a number of pilot projects, which have already been launched in the country.

The Copernicus programme is designed to support the implementation and monitoring of European policies, such as the CAP, at national or regional level. It provides indicators such as land take, high nature value farmland, and landscape fragmentation between natural and semi-natural land.

The official cited data collected by the Copernicus Sentinel satellites is provided for free once per week across the EU.

EU mulls incentives for space technologies in farm controls The European Commission is considering new proposals to encourage the use of technologies to monitor farm parcels receiving subsidies from the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), an EU official told EURACTIV.com.

‘GaiaSense’

A project that uses Copernicus for smart farming purposes is “GaiaSense” developed by Neuropublic IT company.

The GaiaSense project provides smart farming advisory services and uses satellite data to measure critical parameters at parcel level.

Through this, a farmer can be aware of the slightest detail of a parcel, ranging from soil condition to plant vitality, and therefore, be able to make decisions based on real data for a farm.

“It is a lighthouse project showing that the EU Earth Observation service industry is able to capitalise on the public investments of Copernicus and Galileo.

Both programs support SMEs like ours to provide qualitative and low-cost smart farming advisory services to EU farmers by combining scientific knowledge and data coming from Internet of Things infrastructures and EO platforms,” Neuropublic’s Director of R&D Panagiotis Ilias commented.

Read more with EURACTIV

Output: The Greek government is investing in smart farming to cut food prices and reduce farming's environmental impact. The move is being supported by the European Commission and makes use of the EU's Copernicus Earth-monitoring system, which provides detailed information on land use in the country that can then be analysed to make agriculture more efficient. The government also hopes smart farming technology will provide new jobs and make Greece's agricultural products more competitive globally.


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Paypal launches Money Pools to help people manage shared spending
 PayPal has launched a new feature that lets people club together to track and share the costs of spending on group activities or personal goals.

PayPal says that Money Pools is not a crowdfunding platform because it is "not intended to facilitate fundraising for activities such as product development and organizers agree not to offer perks, rewards, or other incentives in return for contributions".

The company is rolling out the service in 17 countries via a new 'Your Pools' link on user accounts.

Customers can personalise the page with details of spending plans and funding timelines and share the link via text, e-mail, Facebook or Twitter. Contribution may be anonymous or posted publicly in the timeline.

Output: Paypal users can now join with each other to share costs, using a new Money Pools feature of the service. Customers can contribute funds and track spending on joint activities, using a personalised page, which they can then share on social media or by email. The company is rolling out the feature to 17 countries and said it is not intended to be a crowdfunding platform, as users will not be able to offer rewards or incentives to those contributing pooled funds.


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Asean countries band together to foster fintech advances
 National financial technology organisations from six Asean countries have banded together to form a network designed to foster collaboration and boost the region's position as a fintech hub.

Bodies from Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam make up the Asean Fintech Network.

The Asean region is seen as rife for fintech disruption, with over 620 million people across 10 countries, with a shared GDP of $2.5 trillion and a rapidly growing online population yet low banking penetration - more than 300 million citizens do not have bank accounts.

The network has identified four priorities: training of the fintech workforce; boosting accessibility of investment capital; creating global market access; and deepening the availability of cutting-edge technology.

Singapore Fintech Association president Chia Hock Lai says: "the AFN is a strong platform to promote cross-border collaboration among members and help promote fintech in the region."

Output: Financial technology organisations from six Asean countries have formed a network to encourage collaboration and develop the region as a hub for the sector. The Asean Fintech Network joins together organisations from Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. The region has a growing online population but poor access to banking, with 300 million people not having accounts. The new network will work to promote training of the fintech workforce, increase global market access, boost the accessibility of capital and improve availability of new technology.


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Hydro storage tech could reduce greenhouse gas emissions
 In pumped hydro storage there is a tried-and-tested technology that not only fits the bill for future energy needs but has been doing the job for well over a century. Andrew Wade reports

It’s often assumed that to mitigate the worst effects of climate change we need an energy revolution incorporating a raft of new ideas. However, the core technologies needed to decarbonise the power sector already exist in the form of renewables, with wind and solar now the fastest-growing sources of new generation.

One major problem, as critics are quick to point out, is intermittency. If that problem could be solved, the energy sector could be transformed within a few short decades. And, as it happens, several countries are betting that we already have the answer.

The upper reservoir at Glyn Rhonwy, with views across Snowdonia

In pumped hydro storage there is a tried-and-tested technology that not only fits the bill but has been doing the job for well over a century. First employed in the 1890s, pumped hydro makes up 97 per cent of energy storage worldwide, with around 168GW currently installed. Excess off-peak grid power – theoretically from renewables – is used to pump water uphill, where it’s stored as gravitational potential energy. When electricity demand is high, water is released downhill to power turbines, the elevated reservoirs essentially acting as giant batteries to help balance the grid.

Currently, the UK has four operational plants. When the youngest – Dinorwig in Snowdonia – was built over 30 years ago, it was the largest civil engineering contract ever awarded by the government. Today, just up the road in Glyn Rhonwy, a new pumped storage venture is being developed by private company Snowdonia Pumped Hydro (SPH). With 99.9MW of output and 700MWh of storage capacity, it won’t solve the climate change problem singlehanded. However, the process behind its selection also threw up hundreds of other viable UK sites. By exploiting just a handful of these, pumped hydro could be the last missing piece of the UK's clean energy puzzle.

“We basically started with a few databases of lakes, mines, quarries and so on, and we wrote a little algorithm that would compare them, to see how close they were and try and make matches,” explained Dave Holmes, managing director of Quarry Battery Company (QBC), the parent firm behind SPH.

“We got down to maybe 1,000 sites, or potential pairs, and then we cruised around the country on Google Earth having a look at them all and trying to figure out which ones were the best.”

The dual bodies of water ideally need to be similar in size, with a suitable disparity of altitude, or head. As well as identifying sites that were technically desirable, the team had to consider other factors such as planning risk, proximity to the grid and nearby areas of conservation. Glyn Rhonwy’s two disused slate mines ticked a lot of boxes.

“There were a few things in its favour,” said Holmes. “It’s pretty close to the National Grid transmission system. The length of the tunnel that you need in comparison to the head; it’s a very steep site, which means the tunnel we’re building isn’t too long. The gradient is actually quite a challenge. It’s 19 per cent… and we’re looking to go in a single slope all the way to the top.”

The site also happened to be owned by the local council, which had plans to develop the lower reservoir into an industrial estate. Accommodating SHP’s powerhouse would not be a huge departure.

“We see it as recycling the land rather than using some new land for the site,” said Holmes.

Glyn Rhonwy gained approval for a 49.9MW plant several years ago, but changes in the energy market prompted SPH to rethink the design. The revised plan for the 99.9MW facility was greenlit in March 2017. According to Holmes, the only significant change was the inclusion of two 49.9MW turbines instead of the original pair of 24.95MW devices.

Excess electricity is used to create gravitational potential energy

“We found there was more capacity there than we first understood, and it would have been a waste of that capacity to not have a more powerful turbine on it,” he explained.

The National Grid’s capacity mechanism also helped incentivise the change. Despite having 600MWh of storage in the original plans, SPH would have been rewarded only for its 49.9MW output. By doubling that to 99.9MW, the project will double the income it earns via the mechanism. The revised 700MWh capacity will be enough to supply 200,000 homes with electricity for seven hours a day. Although construction costs will increase from £140m to £160m, Holmes believes the payback period on the investment should be halved to under 10 years – a fraction of the plant’s projected 125-year operational lifetime.

“It’s a very exciting time because we can see a light at the end of the tunnel,” he said. “We’re hoping to break ground sometime next year, but it could be early the year after.”

As construction gets under way in Glyn Rhonwy, a pumped hydro plant of an altogether different breed will be nearing completion some 8,000km away. Located just to the north of Beijing, the Fengning Pumped Storage Power Station will have an installed capacity of 3,600MW, making it the largest pumped hydro facility in the world. Its generators will be fed by an upper reservoir holding nearly 49 million cubic metres of water – enough to fill about 19,500 Olympic pools. By comparison, each of Glyn Rhonwy’s reservoirs will hold just over 1 million cubic metres.

The $1.87bn (£1.42bn) Fengning plant will be equipped with 12 x 300MW pump turbines in a single cavern. Ten of these will be fixed-speed units contracted from local suppliers. The final two will be variable-speed pump turbines provided by Andritz, the Austrian engineering giant with a long history in hydro power.

“The major difference is in a completely different generator design,” Alexander Schwab, Andritz SVP of market management, explained to The Engineer. “With conventional synchronous generators, the number of poles and the frequency of the grid are defining the rotational speed of the unit. That defines the design speed of the turbine/pump. Consequently, for pump turbines it is necessary to find a compromise between optimal turbine and optimal pump.”

According to Schwab, the variable turbines will allow operation ranges for pumping and generating to be designed individually. This should enable Fengning to better manage its output and provide more grid flexibility.

Andritz is supplying variable-speed pump turbines for China’s Fengning project

Andritz has previously installed the technology at Germany’s Goldisthal pumped storage facility, but this is the first time variable speed units will be used in China’s ever-expanding hydro sector. “Taking all the facts into consideration, it will be a project needing the utmost attention from the Andritz side,” said Schwab.

When Fengning comes online, China will have three of the four biggest pumped storage facilities in the world. The technology is seen as increasingly vital if the country is to wean itself off the coal that has powered the industrial progress of recent decades. Air pollution across China, particularly around Beijing, has reached such worrying levels that it is no longer simply a public health issue. Speaking recently, the country’s environment protection minister, Li Ganjie, admitted that air quality had become a matter of social stability. Although it remains the world’s biggest polluter, China has committed to reducing CO 2 emissions by 60-65 per cent before 2030. If this is to be achieved, massive expansion of renewables, coupled with pumped storage, will need to play a key role.

Back in the UK, plans are afoot for another major project. While not on the same scale as Fengning, the Coire Glas pumped hydro plant will boast an output of 1,500MW. It will lie to the east of Fort William, in the Great Glen of the Scottish Highlands. Using Loch Lochy as the lower body of water, developer SSE plans to build an upper reservoir 500m above, with a relatively steep incline delivering good energy efficiency.

The project received planning permission several years ago for a smaller 600MW plant but, similarly to Glyn Rhonwy, those plans have had to be scaled up in a bid to make the project more commercially attractive. In May 2017 SSE submitted a scoping report for the revised scheme, and a decision from the Scottish government is expected in the near future. Importantly, Coire Glas will have the capacity to store a massive amount of energy – around 30GWh – more than all existing UK storage capacity combined, according to SSE. The firm says this will help provide the flexibility required for integrating more renewables, as well as the changing usage patterns expected from the growth in electric vehicles.

“SSE considers there to be clear benefits in the delivery of new pumped storage projects in the UK,” Coire Glas project manager Andy Gregory told The Engineer. “It’s a proven technology that can be deployed at the tens of GWh scale, with a short response time and the ability to provide a number of important services to the system.”

Across the UK there are hundreds of potential pumped hydro sites, with the low-hanging fruit adding up to around 50GWh. According to QBC’s Holmes, these are mainly in Scotland and Wales due to topography.

“Our best guess at how much is economic already or will be economic soon is around 50GWh,” he said.

Some of these sites are similar in nature to Glyn Rhonwy and Coire Glas, where dual bodies of fresh water would work in tandem. Other sites, however, are less conventional. QBC has been awarded funding to explore the viability of non-standard sites around the UK, looking at seawater, drinking water and lower-head opportunities.

Seawater, in particular, presents both a unique opportunity as well as unique challenges. Using the sea as the lower ‘reservoir’ unlocks a host of locations that would previously have been overlooked as, in theory, all that’s required is elevated land close to the coast. But seawater brings complications such as fouling and corrosion, and using the open sea can impact on marine life, and have unwanted effects on the coastal profile.

To date, just a single seawater project has been commissioned – Japan’s Okinawa Yanbaru Seawater Pumped Storage Power Station. Built in 1999, it featured a striking octagonal upper reservoir set into the lush coastal vegetation. Instead of steel, the penstock was made of fibre-reinforced plastic to avoid corrosion and barnacle fouling, and the pump turbine included stainless steel to improve seawater resistance. Although widely hailed as an engineering success, the plant was shut down in 2016 as it no longer fitted local power demands.

Despite just one pilot project, seawater pumped storage is being explored in several countries, including the UK. South Australia’s proposed Cultana plant could generate 225MW of electricity with eight hours’ storage. The region already supports renewables, but arid conditions make traditional pumped hydro tricky. Combining existing solar and wind generation with coastal storage plants promises to be an innovative solution.

Elsewhere in Australia the planned Snowy Hydro 2.0 project will look to add pumped storage to the long-established hydro generation already in place. If completed, it will add generation capacity of 2,000MW and a massive 350GWh of storage. This year, a government-backed study by the Australian National University (ANU) into other viable locations identified 22,000 sites, the bulk of which are on the more densely populated east coast. Combined, these could provide around 67,000GWh of storage.

“We need to build only about one or two dozen to support a 100 per cent renewable electricity grid,” Andrew Blakers, a professor of engineering at ANU and one of the report’s authors, said recently.

“Pumped hydro, high-voltage DC interconnectors between the states, wind, batteries and demand management can do the whole job. Not just for electricity, but the whole job for energy: electrifying land transport, electrifying heating and cooling. You can have 75 per

cent cuts in Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions by electrifying nearly everything, and I think this is what’s going to happen over the next 15 to 20 years.”

The UK’s topography may not be as rich as Australia’s in terms of potential sites but there are ample resources to exploit. If tidal lagoons finally get the green light, they could also include a pumped hydro element, as well as help balance the grid via their natural geographic dispersion. And, with wind and solar costs still tumbling, there’s no reason why the UK couldn’t fully decarbonise over the next two decades. The fact that the Aussies are already in the race can only bring added incentive.

For more stories on renewable energy and its application, click here

Output: Australia could reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by two thirds if can develop just a handful of 22,000 potential sites into pumped hydro facilityes. The UK, which currently has four operational facilities, also has a wealth of similar resources it could tap. The country has hundreds of potential pumped hydro sites which could provide up to 50 GWh if given the green light, said Dave Holmes, managing director of Quarry Battery Company. Pumped hydro, which uses excess energy to pump water uphill to a reservoir, before being released to turn turbines, was first developed in the 1890s.


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Schlumberger expands lab for advanced fluid analysis oil services
 Schlumberger today inaugurated the newly expanded reservoir rock and fluid analysis laboratory located in Houston, Texas. The state-of-the-art lab enables petrotechnical experts to better leverage physical and digital rock and fluid analysis for comprehensive reservoir characterisation.

The Houston Reservoir Laboratory features a leading portfolio of Schlumberger reservoir characterisation technologies, which span downhole rock and fluid data and sample acquisition through wellsite and lab analysis. Integration of data and insight from field and lab measurements in the DELFI cognitive E&P environment enhances collaboration across exploration and production teams to realise the full potential of all available data and science in optimising oil and gas assets.

“Digital technology is fundamentally changing the way the E&P industry works,” said Hinda Gharbi, president, Reservoir Characterization Group, Schlumberger. “The expansion of the Houston Reservoir Laboratory accelerates our customers’ access to our proprietary technologies, digital models and petrotechnical domain expertise to overcome technical challenges across the life of the field.”

The 123 000 ft2 facility is staffed by scientists, engineers and technicians working across the spectrum of reservoir rock and fluid analysis. They employ innovative technologies for characterising the reservoir to improve hydrocarbon production and recovery, including Maze microfluidic SARA analysis, unique Fluid Inclusion Technologies (FIT), Malcom interactive fluid characterisation software and CoreFlow digital rock and fluid analytics services.

As part of the Schlumberger global network of rock and fluids analysis laboratories, the Houston lab also houses the Schlumberger Production Technologies Center of Excellence for conducting research, formulation and testing of production chemicals.

Output: Oil services giant Schlumberger has expanded a Texas laboratory dedicated to advanced reservoir rock and fluid analysis. The Houston Reservoir Laboratory uses innovative technologies, including CoreFlow digital rock and fluid analytics and fluid inclusion technologies, to examine oil reservoirs and improve hydrocarbon production and recovery. The 123,000 sq ft unit is also home to Schlumberger's Production Technologies Center of Excellence, which researches, formulates and tests production chemicals.


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75% of IoT projects are failing due to lack of interconnectivity
 Three quarters of all Internet of Things (IoT) projects are "failing", according to Cisco's Australian CTO Kevin Bloch, primarily because they have been designed to solve individual problems, and have become siloed and unsupported as a result.

"The inaugural phase of IoT is characterised by numerous point solutions from a multitude of new -- often startup -- vendors. Typically, these solutions have been designed to solve a particular societal problem such as lighting or parking. In each case, a complete IT stack needs to be built in support of the solution," Bloch explained.

"Eventually, customers find themselves with multiple siloes from multiple vendors that don't interoperate, are not cybersecure, use different protocols, and generate more complexity at greater cost."

According to Bloch, this is why Cisco is constructing an "IoT Phase 2" foundation, which consists of a platform that is able to cope with multiple different sensors, vendors, applications, and data interchanges.

The CTO added that IoT projects are also failing due to a lack of cybersecurity, qualified skills by those running them, project definition, governance, and support.

Released alongside nine other axioms on the IoT landscape, Bloch said Cisco hopes to aid other companies in launching successful connected solutions by discussing both pitfalls and successes.

The lack of cybersecurity made up a second of his axioms, with Bloch saying that if something is not secured, it should not be connected.

"Cybersecurity crime is already at an all-time high and negatively impacting global economies by upwards of 1 percent of GDP," he said.

"We are becoming more mobile, we are using more cloud services, and we are expanding IoT deployment to tens of billions of connected things, thereby expanding exploitation and attack opportunities. Our situation will inevitably get worse if we don't take the right precautions.

"If you don't secure it, don't connect it."

Again, Bloch said that most of the new IoT solutions being brought to market are being developed by companies or startups without any experience -- including experience in security.

As a result, he said Cisco is continuing to invest billions of dollars into cybersecurity solutions for IoT, mobility, and cloud. One such product was Cisco's IoT Threat Defense solution launched in June in an effort to mitigate and solve common security issues threatening the deployment and operation of connected devices, with the networking giant at the time saying many vendors and companies strip security mechanisms out of devices in order to keep them at low cost.

Cisco IoT CTO Shaun Cooley in June explained that as many devices also don't have the power to protect themselves, network-side security must be emphasised, along with improving processors, enforcing the better labelling of devices, and requiring a notification and approval process prior to allowing connectivity.

The IoT Threat Defense suite is also enabled by Cisco's network intuitive, which combines the technologies Cisco has been working towards for the past few years: Software-defined networking, software-defined access, network function virtualisation, APIs, and intelligent WAN capabilities.

A third axiom saw Bloch argue that IoT is about collecting data and about the data itself -- not about connecting things, with Cisco predicting that connections will cost nothing within a decade.

Under this axiom, Bloch said there are two main components needed to be able to "measure" the physical world and enable automation: Sensing via a camera, sensor, or processor; and connectivity, or the transferring of data measurements to a computer.

"Sensing and connectivity provide data that enable a product to externalise its capabilities and provide a range of new opportunities and services," he explained.

Another of Bloch's IoT axioms argued that the key is having the right data, knowing what to ask of the data, and knowing how to find the answers -- with the CTO correlating this to another assumption: That by 2025, 40 percent of all data will never make it to the cloud.

"While amassing data may seem important, the critical question to ask is 'what do you need the data for?'" he said.

"Most organisations already have more data than they can manage, yet most often don't have the right data. If they did, would they know what to ask of the data? If they are able to formulate the problem, how would they go about finding the answers needed within the data?"

The key for organisations is finding the answers to those three questions by utilising a combination of compute, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, he argued.

Cisco has been focused on providing IoT solutions globally, in June announcing its Kinetic IoT operations platform with a focus on managing connections, "fog" computing, and the delivery of data, which "streamlines the capability of companies bringing their IoT initiatives to market".

"It's really a platform for getting data off of your devices," Cisco SVP and GM of IoT and Applications Rowan Trollope said at the time, adding that it will complement Cisco's Jasper IoT platform.

"We're extending from the edge all the way onto the device to provide an amazing platform to get way more data."

According to Trollope, trillions of terabytes of data is "locked up" on unconnected devices across the world, which Cisco Kinetic could help extract. It will also speed up the time between proof of concept and implementation for customers.

Related Coverage

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Internet users win a small victory over the Internet of Things.

WA government awards research grant for investigation of internet-connected toys

The positive and negative implications of internet-connected children's toys will be examined by Western Australia's Edith Cowan University.

Video: How the cloud and IoT are transforming energy delivery systems (TechRepublic)

Marc Overton of Sierra Wireless explains how end-to-end IoT solutions and real-time metering data lower delivery cost and improve consumer agency.

IoT devices are an enterprise security time bomb

The majority of enterprise players cannot identify IoT devices on their networks -- but that's only the beginning.

Why preventing IoT attacks isn't just the responsibility of security experts (TechRepublic)

Cisco's Anthony Grieco explains how enterprises need to take a deeper look at how they handle Internet of Things cybersecurity.

Output: A lack of interconnectivity is to blame for the failure of 75% of all Internet of Things (IoT) projects, according to the chief technology officer of Cisco's Australian division. Kevin Bloch said too many IoT solutions are being designed only to solve one particular problem, resulting in multiple systems with different protocols which do not work together and generate more complexity. He also highlighted the problem of poor cyber security, often resulting from start-ups with no experience of developing secure systems.


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Bosch partners with SwarmFarm for autonomous farming robots
 Jocelyn Bate, co-founder and director of SwarmFarm said while the partnership would move them to the next level, they would retain the advantage of the development team being based on-farm in Central Queensland.

Output: After agreeing a partnership with engineering firm Bosch, Australian tech firm SwarmFarm expects to see its autonomous farming SwarmBot platform ready for commercial roll out next year. The start-up, which has a development team based on a farm in Central Queensland, aims to help farmers adopt new farming systems, including the use of intelligent mobile robots to automate select tasks. Its SwapNostics system is aimed at making the technology simple, so farmers can diagnose and fix machines themselves, keeping the technology working.


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Poorly-written old code puts corporates at risk from hackers
 Old and sloppily written code is exposing businesses to hackers, new research has warned, with the financial sector at the highest risk.

After reviewing more than 278 million lines of code in 1,388 applications worldwide, researchers have found 1.3 million weaknesses which could allow hackers to take advantage of corporate systems.

Research by software company CAST found that financial services institutions had the worst code, according to a benchmark called the Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE).

CWE is a repository of known security weaknesses hackers could take advantage of and covers software architecture as well as the code itself.

Software in the financial sector has the most coding mistakes and non-secure coding practices for every thousand lines of code in its applications - its CWE density.

The report said: "Applications installed in 2012 are more than due for a health check. Applications between five and 10 years old have the greatest potential for security flaws."

It added: "Poor coding is likely due to the fact 37% of developers are not graded on code quality."

Dr Bill Curtis, the chief scientist at CAST, said: "We found that overall, organisations are taking application security quite seriously. However, there are clear outliers to this broad finding that put companies and their customers at significant risk."

He added: "Without a clear understanding of existing application security vulnerabilities, organisations are not addressing some of the biggest software risks that pose a threat to their business."

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The telecommunications sector also performed poorly compared to other areas of industry. Also ranking quite high for errors was the IT consulting sector.

Some of the worst code was written with Microsoft's .NET framework, although applications developed in Java that were released more than six times per year had the very highest CWE densities.

The manufacturing, energy, and pharmaceuticals sector had the least vulnerable code.

Output: The financial sector is most at risk from hackers thanks to outdated and poorly-written code, according to research by software company CAST. Using a Common Weakness Enumeration benchmark, researchers identified 1.3 million weaknesses; Microsoft's .NET framework and Java were cited as the worst codes. The telecoms and IT consulting sectors were rated the second and third most at-risk industries. Dr Bill Curtis, chief scientist at CAST, said: "Without a clear understanding of existing application security vulnerabilities, organisations are not addressing some of the biggest software risks".


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Fixflo celebrates history of collaboration with Qube
 Continuing our ongoing series, in which we celebrate the amazing proptech proponents that are now integrated with Fixflo, we are proud to announce our new partnership with MRI QUBE Software.

Fixflo & MRI Qube Software: a history

MRI Qube Global Software is one of the world's biggest suppliers of property management software. With more than 10,000 international users, it has a strong track record of inspiring loyalty amongst its customers. Over 30% of MRI Qube customers have used the service for a decade or more, demonstrating both its quality and ease of use. The software’s key features include 24/7 self service, streamlined data management and powerful accounting capabilities.

Fixflo first partnered with MRI Qube Software in 2014, initially integrating with the MRI Qube SLM (Sales, Lettings and Management) product before adding our services to the business's MRI Qube PM product, which focuses on block management. This latest integration allowed MRI Qube to include Fixflo's seamless repair reporting software within its systems, meaning the software can now provide a more rounded and comprehensive offering to its customers.

We were delighted to partner up with MRI Qube Software in 2014, and three years down the line, that delight hasn't abated. Both of groups are dedicated to improving the way in which property managers work on a daily basis, as well as improving the lives of tenants throughout the UK. We're more than confident that, moving forward, our professional relationship will continue to bring a level of service to our mutual clients that is better than that provided by any other platform on the market.

Click here to find about more about our property management software integration

Output: UK property repair and maintenance company Fixflo has marked its three-year partnership with Qube Global Software. In a blog post, Fixflo cited the two firms' shared history, which led to Fixflo integrating its services into the Qube PM product. Qube has more than 10,000 international users, with almost one third having used its services for a decade or more.


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Record levels of fossil fuels burned in 2017
 The burning of fossil fuels around the world is set to hit a record high in 2017, climate scientists have warned, following three years of flat growth that raised hopes that a peak in global emissions had been reached.

The expected jump in the carbon emissions that drive global warming is a “giant leap backwards for humankind”, according to some scientists. However, other experts said they were not alarmed, saying fluctuations in emissions are to be expected and that big polluters such as China are acting to cut emissions.

Global emissions need to reach their peak by 2020 and then start falling quickly in order to have a realistic chance of keeping global warming below the 2C danger limit, according to leading scientists. Whether the anticipated increase in CO2 emissions in 2017 is just a blip that is followed by a falling trend, or is the start of a worrying upward trend, remains to be seen.

Much will depend on the fast implementation of the global climate deal sealed in Paris in 2015 and this is the focus of the UN summit of the world’s countries in Bonn, Germany this week. The nations must make significant progress in turning the aspirations of the Paris deal into reality, as the action pledged to date would see at least 3C of warming and increasing extreme weather impacts around the world.

The 12th annual Global Carbon Budget report published on Monday is produced by 76 of the world’s leading emissions experts from 57 research institutions and estimates that global carbon emissions from fossil fuels will have risen by 2% by the end of 2017, a significant rise.

“Global CO2 emissions appear to be going up strongly once again after a three-year stable period. This is very disappointing,” said Prof Corinne Le Quéré, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the UK’s University of East Anglia and who led the new research. “The urgency for reducing emissions means they should really be already decreasing now.”

“There was a big push to sign the Paris agreement on climate change but there is a feeling that not very much has happened since, a bit of slackening,” she said. “What happens after 2017 is very open and depends on how much effort countries are going to make. It is time to take really seriously the implementation of the Paris agreement.” She said the hurricanes and floods seen in 2017 were “a window into the future”.

The new analysis is based on the available energy use data for 2017 and projections for the latter part of the year. It estimates that 37bn tonnes of CO2 will be emitted from burning fossil fuels, the highest total ever.

The main reason for the rise is an expected 3.5% increase in emissions in China, the world’s biggest polluter, where low rains have reduced low-carbon hydroelectric output and industrial activity has increased. India’s rise in emissions was modest compared to previous years at 2%, while the US and EU are both on track for small falls.

2017 is likely to be the hottest year ever recorded in which there was no El Niño event, a natural global cycle that temporarily nudges up global temperature. The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere also saw a record jump in 2016, and other greenhouse gases such as methane and nitrous oxide from agriculture and industry are also rising.

“The news that emissions are rising after the three-year hiatus is a giant leap backwards for humankind,” said Amy Luers, executive director of Future Earth, a global research initiative. “Pushing the Earth closer to tipping points is deeply concerning. Emissions need to peak soon and approach zero by 2050.”

However, climate economist Prof Nicholas Stern, at the UK’s London School of Economics, said: “I would not be alarmed. There will be some fluctuations, for example around poor rains and hydro. We should also remember that the methods used to calculate emissions will have their own errors.”

He said there is strong climate action in China: “It has a very clear strategy, particularly on coal and energy efficiency and they are getting, and will get, results.” But Stern said it remains vital that all countries ramp up the ambition of their emissions pledges and that richer countries support action across the world.

Climate scientist Prof Michael Mann, at Penn State University in the US, said the research was authoritative but also urged caution, noting that the 2% projected rise in emissions is small relative to the overall uncertainties in the data. “It seems to me they are over-interpreting the 2017 numbers and jumping the gun a bit. Can’t we wait until the actual numbers are in to do a post-mortem?”

The ability to monitor emissions quickly and accurately is of growing importance. The Paris agreement is based on voluntary cuts by nations, and without verification that pledges have been fulfilled, the trust that underpins the deal could be eroded. “This puts immense pressure on the scientific community to develop methods that can truly verify changes in emissions,” said Le Quéré.

Output: An estimated 37bn tonnes of carbon dioxide will be emitted globally by burning fossil fuels this year, the highest total ever, according to the 12th annual Global Carbon Budget, published on Monday. The 2% increase in emissions follows three years during which they remained static. The main reason for the increase is an anticipated 3.5% growth in emissions from China, the world’s leading polluter. It is unclear whether the increase is a blip or part of a trend. In order to keep global warming below the dangerous 2C limit, emissions must begin to fall quickly after 2020.


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Visa sets up unit to spread contactless transit payments globally
 Visa is looking to accelerate the adoption of contactless payments on the world's subway, rail and bus networks through the launch of a dedicated transit programme.

Contactless ticketing has proved a huge hit in London, where 40% of pay-as-you-go journeys on the tube and buses are now made using tap and pay cards or mobile devices. New York recently vowed to follow suit in the next few years.

To help other cities looking to make the move, Visa has set up a global transit programme that will offer consulting services from a team of specialists, comprised of a central group in London and regional experts around the world.

The card giant has also created a Mass Transit Transaction model back-office framework to manage contactless payments regardless of transit operators' size or fare structure, and has also expanded its Visa Ready programme to include technologies available to operators.

Visa claims a switch to contactless could result in major benefits for operators. The firm's recent Cashless Cities report found that transit agencies spend an average of 14.5 cents of every physical dollar collected, compared to only 4.2 cents for every digital dollar.

Michael Lemberger, head of products, Visa in Europe, says: "Visa played an important role in partnering with Transport for London (TfL). We are applying the expertise which has led to more than one billion Visa contactless journey on TfL to help mass transit operators around the world move away from cash and tickets to contactless payments on buses and trains."

Output: Visa plans to offer its successful contactless payments systems to transport authorities around the world, following the popularity of the scheme in London. The card company has brought together a team of specialists to offer consulting services as part of a global transit programme, and has developed a Mass Transit Transaction back-office framework to facilitate contactless payments, regardless of an operator's size or fare system. In a recent report, Visa revealed transit agencies spent 4.2 cents for every digital dollar, compared with 14.5 cents for every physical dollar.


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Chinese online education forecast to exceed 110 million users
 China's online education market is forecast to reach 194 billion yuan ($29 billion) this year, with the number of active users set to surpass 110 million, according to a report released on Sunday.

More than 90 million people accessed online courses via Chinese platforms last year, and the scale is expected to rise at an annual rate of at least 20 percent, the report suggests.

The survey was conducted by Xuetangx - a website run by Tsinghua University that provides online courses (mostly free) - and iResearch, a consulting firm focusing on internet data. Participants were aged 18 to 30, with 58 percent male and more than 70 percent undergraduates.

The report was based on a survey of 1,440 students who have used Xuetangx services or those of similar platforms during the past year.

It said half the people who access online courses are in large metropolitan areas - mostly Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong province - although it added that the market is expected to expand to smaller cities.

Courses in languages and vocational skills, such as IT training, management and businesses, are in the greatest demand. The most common reasons for choosing online courses are flexibility, diversity of subject matter and access to well-known teachers, according to the report.

Li Chao, CEO of Xuetangx, said despite the rapid development of online education, traditional education will not be replaced completely because both online and offline learning have their advantages.

"Traditional education triumphs in its face-to-face communication, which makes it easy for teachers to track a student's learning outcome, whereas online education triumphs in its flexibility and convenience," Li said.

He noted a growing acceptance of online education among both users and colleges.

"When online open courses first became available on the internet, no students received credit for attending in their bedrooms. But now some colleges have incorporated online courses into their teaching," Li said.

"Now we are turning individual credit online courses into a degree program."

Output: More than 110 million users are forecast to access China's online education services this year, boosting its market value to more than CNY194bn ($29bn), according to a report by Tsinghua University's Xuetangx website. More than 90 million people accessed courses in 2016, a figure that's forecast to rise 20%, the report said. About half of users live in large metropolitan areas such as Beijing, Shanghai and southern Guangdong province, but uptake is predicted to expand in smaller cities, with languages and vocational courses the most popular, the report added.


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AI-powered LinkedIn resume assistant arrives on Word
 We're starting to see more results from Microsoft acquiring LinkedIn last year, like the new employment information features brought over to Outlook.com members. Now the company that build Office is bringing AI to your job search with a new LinkedIn-powered feature in Word called Resume Assistant.

Microsoft claims that more than 80 percent of resumes are updated in Word, which could make this new assistant super useful to a ton of people, many of whom change roles and jobs much faster than in the past. Resume Assistant brings in examples from other people in your chosen field to help you describe your work experience on your own resume. You can also see the most prominent skills from LinkedIn to help you know what terms to include in your resume, kind of like keywords for jobs.

The assistant will also help you customize your resume based on actual job postings, get professional help via LinkedIn's freelance platform, ProFinder, for help with writing resumes, interviewing and career coaching. You'll also be able to tell recruiters on LinkedIn that you're open to a new job without alerting your current bosses from within Word.

These updates are rolling out this week to English Office 365 users in the Office Insiders program. It will be available to those in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Japan, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, New Zealand, the UK and the US first, then to more platforms and markets during the coming months.

Output: Microsoft-owned LinkedIn is launching a CV tool called Resume Assistant in Word. The tool, backed by artificial intelligence (AI), uses example CVs from a chosen field to help users tailor their CVs and enables documents to be customised to suit job adverts. Users in need of professional help can access ProFinder for resume writing or interview coaching. Resume Assistant is rolling out to users of English Office 365 in the Office Insiders scheme, and will initially be available in several countries including the US, UK, China and Australia.


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Clothes made with 3D-printed fibre developed to keep wearers cool
 Nov 10, 2017 | By Julia

As global temperatures continue to rise, air conditioning becomes much more than a luxury; for many, it’s essential to everyday wellbeing. Yet in addition to its often prohibitive cost, air conditioning remains a key purveyor of greenhouse gas emissions, one of the primary agents linked to climate change. It’s a vicious cycle, and an expensive one at that.

But that could be all about to change: researchers at the University of Maryland College Park (UMCP) are hard at work developing a new textile that could, one day, don as our own personal cooling unit, without the need of any external energy source for power. Recently published in the American Chemical Society’s journal ACS Nano, the study, titled “Three-Dimensional Printed Thermal Regulation Textiles” investigates the potential of 3D printing in manufacturing high-tech fabrics designed to keep you cool.

The UMCP research builds on the growing trend of functionalized clothes seen around the world. Think moisture-wicking workout wear, smell-proof athletic gear, and outfits that block ultraviolet rays via chemical coatings. Despite the rise of such functionalized textiles, however, clothes that help cool us down have been much harder to achieve. Previous attempts have resulted in materials that are too bulky, require lots of energy, or are too high in cost. So, the UMCP team, based out of the University’s Materials Science and Engineering Department, wanted to find a more practical solution.

As outlined in the study, the researchers combined boron nitride, a material known for its excellent heat transferal capabilities, with polyvinyl alcohol. The result was a completely new nanocomposite fiber that can be 3D printed, and woven into different kinds of fabric. Extensive tests that simulated the high-tech material on human skin showed it to be 1.5 times more efficient than pure polyvinyl alcohol at sucking heat away from the body. Compared to cotton fabrics, the UMCP composite is twice as efficient at cooling down the wearer. In other words, clothes made with this 3D printed nano-composite thread could help keep wearers cool and comfortable, reducing the need for traditional air conditioning methods.

Of course, it may be some time before you can start buying personalized cooling sweaters off of store racks. As far as corporate applications go, a published scientific paper is still a ways off from fully-fledged prototypes or ready-to-wear retail. But as our global temperatures continue to soar, you can bet everyone from Nike to Spalding will want a piece of the pie.

The UMCP study was funded jointly by the U.S. Office of Naval Research - Young Investigator Program, the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), the U.S. Department of Energy, and the China Scholarship Council. Read the abstract in full here.

Posted in 3D Printing Application

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Output: A 3D-printed fibre woven into clothes that can cool down wearers has been developed at the University of Maryland College Park. Researchers are working on the new textile, which could act as a personal cooling unit, without any need for an external energy source. They combined boron nitride with polyvinyl alcohol to develop the nanocomposite thread, which is twice as efficient at cooling down wearers as cotton fabrics. The fabric could reduce the need for air-conditioning and so contribute to lowering greenhouse gas emissions.


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UN urged to speed the outlawing of killer robots, drones
 The movie portrays a brutal future. A military firm unveils a tiny drone that hunts and kills with ruthless efficiency. But when the technology falls into the wrong hands, no one is safe. Politicians are cut down in broad daylight. The machines descend on a lecture hall and spot activists, who are swiftly dispatched with an explosive to the head.

The short, disturbing film is the latest attempt by campaigners and concerned scientists to highlight the dangers of developing autonomous weapons that can find, track and fire on targets without human supervision. They warn that a preemptive ban on the technology is urgently needed to prevent terrible new weapons of mass destruction.

Stuart Russell, a leading AI scientist at the University of California in Berkeley, and others will show the film on Monday during an event at the United Nations Convention on Conventional Weapons hosted by the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots. The manufacture and use of autonomous weapons, such as drones, tanks and automated machine guns, would be devastating for human security and freedom, and the window to halt their development is closing fast, Russell warned.

“The technology illustrated in the film is simply an integration of existing capabilities. It is not science fiction. In fact, it is easier to achieve than self-driving cars, which require far higher standards of performance,” Russell said.

The military has been one of the largest funders and adopters of artificial intelligence technology. The computing techniques help robots fly, navigate terrain, and patrol territories under the seas. Hooked up to a camera feed, image recognition algorithms can scan video footage for targets better than a human can. An automated sentry that guards South Korea’s border with the North draws on the technology to spot and track targets up to 4km away.

While military drones have long been flown remotely for surveillance and attacks, autonomous weapons armed with explosives and target recognition systems are now within reach and could locate and strike without deferring to a human controller. Opponents believe that handing machines the power over who lives and dies crosses a clear moral line.

“Pursuing the development of lethal autonomous weapons would drastically reduce international, national, local, and personal security,” Russell said. Scientists used a similar argument to convince presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon to renounce the US biological weapons programme and ultimately bring about the Biological Weapons Convention.

Because AI-powered machines are relatively cheap to manufacture, critics fear that autonomous weapons could be mass produced and fall into the hands of rogue nations or terrorists who could use them to suppress populations and wreak havoc, as the movie portrays.

A treaty banning autonomous weapons would prevent large-scale manufacturing of the technology. It would also provide a framework to police nations working on the technology, and the spread of dual-use devices and software such as quadcopters and target recognition algorithms. “Professional codes of ethics should also disallow the development of machines that can decide to kill a human,” Russell said.

In August, more than 100 of the world’s leading robotics and AI pioneers called on the UN to ban the development and use of killer robots. The open letter, signed by Tesla’s chief executive, Elon Musk, and Mustafa Suleyman, the founder of Alphabet’s Deep Mind AI unit, warned that an urgent ban was needed to prevent a “third revolution in warfare”, after gunpowder and nuclear arms. So far, 19 countries have called for a ban, including Argentina, Egypt and Pakistan.

Noel Sharkey, the emeritus professor of AI at Sheffield University and chair of the International Committee on Robot Arms Control, warned about the dangers of autonomous weapons 10 years ago. “The movie made my hair stand on end as it crystallises one possible futuristic outcome from the development of these hi-tech weapons,” he said. “There is an emerging arms race among the hi-tech nations to develop autonomous submarines, fighter jets, battleships and tanks that can find their own targets and apply violent force without the involvement of meaningful human decisions. It will only take one major war to unleash these new weapons with tragic humanitarian consequences and destabilisation of global security.”

Criminals and activists have long relied on masks and disguises to hide their identities, but new computer vision techniques can essentially see through them. Earlier this year, Indian government-funded scientists worked with Cambridge University on an algorithm to identify people who obscured their faces with hats and sunglasses, fake beards and scarves. It remains a hard technical problem, but face recognition is only one way to identify people. “A balaclava does not hide one’s gender or age or ethnicity. And it could easily become the ‘norm’ that the weapons will also attack those deemed to be preventing identification or classification by covering up face and body,” Russell said.

In 2015, the UK government opposed an international ban on killer robots. The Foreign Office said it saw no need for the prohibition as international humanitarian law already regulated the area. “The UK is not developing lethal autonomous weapons systems, and the operation of weapons systems by the UK armed forces will always be under human oversight and control,” a Foreign Office spokesperson said at the time.

But according to the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, a number of nations, including the US, China, Russia, Israel, South Korea, and the United Kingdom are moving toward systems that would give “greater combat autonomy” to machines.

“The UN moves at iceberg pace and actors with vested interests put obstacles in the path at every turn,” Sharkey said. “But the campaign continues to move forward with massive support from the scientific community. We must succeed because the alternatives are too horrifying.”

Output: Lobbyists aim to persuade the United Nations to speed up efforts for a pre-emptive ban on the use of killer drones, as the US, China and UK argue for more autonomous combat machines. In August, Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Alphabet DeepMind boss Mustafa Suleyman signed an open letter to the UN calling for a halt to the development of killer drones. Noel Sharkey, chair of the International Committee on Robot Arms Control, said: "The UN moves at iceberg pace and actors with vested interests put obstacles in the path at every turn."