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Input:
World Bank to stop financing oil and gas after 2019
 The World Bank will end its financial support for oil and gas extraction within the next two years in response to the growing threat posed by climate change.

In a statement that delighted campaigners opposed to fossil fuels, the Bank used a conference in Paris to announce that it “will no longer finance upstream oil and gas” after 2019.

The Bank ceased lending for coal-fired power stations in 2010 but has been under pressure from lobby groups also to halt the $1bn (£750m) a year it has been lending for oil and gas in developing countries.

The Bank said it saw the need to change the way it was operating in a “rapidly changing world”, adding that it was on course to have 28% of its lending going to climate action by 2020. At present, 1-2% of the Bank’s $280bn portfolio is accounted for by oil and gas projects.

In exceptional circumstances, the Bank said it would consider lending for oil and gas projects in the very poorest countries but only where it helped the poor get access to energy and the project did not conflict with commitments to reduce greenhouse gases made in the 2015 Paris climate change accord.

The announcement was made at the One Planet Summit, convened by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, the World Bank president, Yim Yong Kim, and the UN secretary general, António Guterres, to mark the two-year anniversary of the agreement.

The Greenpeace International climate campaigner Gyorgy Dallos said: “The end is clearly coming for the oil and gas industry as the pace of change accelerates.”

Dallos said the Bank had sent a damning vote of no confidence in the future of the fossil fuel industry. “The world’s financial institutions now need to take note and decide whether their financing is going to be part of the problem or the solution,” he said.

Stephen Kretzmann, an executive director of the Washington-based advocacy group Oil Change International, said: “It is hard to overstate the significance of this historic announcement by the World Bank.

“Environmental, human rights, and development campaigners have been amplifying the voices of frontline communities for decades in calling for an end to World Bank financing of upstream oil and gas projects. [Now] the World Bank has raised the bar for climate leadership by recognising the simple yet inconvenient truth that achieving the Paris agreement’s climate goals requires an end to the expansion of the fossil fuel industry. It is time for all of the institutions, countries, investors and individuals who are still in the Paris agreement to stop funding fossils – once and for all.”

The World Bank announcement came as the Bank of England’s governor revealed that there was growing global support for a new initiative designed to help pave the way for a low-carbon economy by persuading companies to come clean about their exposure to climate change risks.

From left: Michael Bloomberg, Mark Carney and Axa chief executive Thomas Buberl at the One Planet Summit. Photograph: Philippe Lopez/AFP/Getty Images

Speaking at the Paris summit, Carney said 237 companies with a combined market capitalisation of $6.3tn (£4.7tn) were now backing the scheme.

Britain’s six leading banks – Lloyds, Barclays, HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland, Santander and Standard Chartered – have all supported the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures, set up by Carney in his role as chairman of the Financial Stability Board, an international body charged with preventing a repeat of the 2008 banking crisis.

Under the plan, companies pledge to use their financial reports to disclose their direct and indirect exposure to global warming under a range of different scenarios. Banks are obliged to say how much they have lent to companies with climate-related risks.

Carney said 20 of the 30 globally systemically important banks and eight out of 10 of the largest asset managers and leading insurance companies were committed to informing investors. Leading construction, consumer goods, transport, mining and energy companies have also signed up.

“Markets need the right information to seize the opportunities and mitigate the risks that are being created by the transition to a low-carbon economy,” Carney said. “This solution, of the market and for the market, is truly entering the mainstream.”

UK sources said that London was becoming a hub for climate change-related finance, with green bonds issued in more than 40 different currencies, including the Indian rupee and the Chinese yuan.

Michael Bloomberg, the chair of the taskforce, said: “Climate change poses both economic risks and opportunities. But right now, companies don’t have the data they need to accurately measure the risks and evaluate the opportunities.”

The article was amended on Thursday 14 December to better reflect the World’s Bank’s decision to end financial support for both exploration and extraction.

Output: The World Bank will stop providing financial support for oil and gas exploration within two years. The bank made the statement at the One Planet Summit in Paris, which marked the second anniversary of the Paris Climate Accord. The bank, which stopped lending for coal-fired power plants in 2010, currently lends $1bn per year for oil and gas in the developing world. At the summit, Bank of England governor Mark Carney announced that 237 companies with a joint market capitalisation of $6.3tn were now supporting the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Forests may not grow back after wildfires, according to US study
 Bigger, hotter wildfires are ravaging forests and burning them to the ground more frequently as the climate gets hotter and drier. Now a new study shows that in some places in the U.S., those forests may never grow back.

That adds to evidence that amid climate change, some forest landscapes — including those in Canada — can change dramatically after being burned.

The new U.S. study looked at 1,500 forest sites affected by 52 wildfires in five states in the U.S. Rockies between 1985 and 2015. It found overall decreases in the amount of tree regrowth since 2000 compared to before 2000 due to warmer, drier conditions.

After 2000, no seedlings were growing back at about one third of sites, compared to 15 per cent of sites that burned before 2000, said Camille Stevens-Rumann, lead author of the study published today in the journal Ecology Letters.

The forest failed to regrow following the Buffalo Creek fire of 1996. Researchers say that some areas have grown warmer and drier over the past 30 years and may no longer have suitable conditions for the growth of some tree species. (Monica Rother)

That complete lack of regrowth happened most frequently at lower-elevation sites that have become measurably warmer and drier in the past 30 years, said Stevens-Rumann, an assistant professor in the Department of Forest and Rangeland Stewardship at Colorado State University. Those areas may no longer have suitable conditions for the growth of tree species that were there before and may become other types of ecosystems, such as grasslands.

Sped-up climate effects

"We often think about climate change as something that we're going to feel the effects of in the future. The truth is wildfires are facilitating those changes happening sooner," Stevens-Rumann told CBC News. "And I think that was a really big surprise to all of us to see it even over just a 30 year period."

And it's not just a matter of giving those forests a little more time to grow back. Stevens-Rumann said most seedlings sprout in the first three years after a fire, and that the number there after that time is a strong predictor of how dense the regrown forest will be.

Few surviving trees remain in the changed landscape located in the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness Area in Idaho after a forest fire in 2007. No seedlings were growing back at all at a third of sites that burned since 2000. (Camille Stevens-Rumann)

She said the findings of the study — funded by the U.S. government — suggest that, going forward, replacement trees may need to be planted at higher elevations than before. And at lower elevations? "We need to just start accepting that they're not going to become forests again, unfortunately," said Stevens-Rumann.

The permanent loss of forests after a fire could have many effects on local ecosystems.

In addition, large patches where the trees don't grow back could pose a greater hazard if another fire erupts, said Stevens-Rumann. That's because the dead, fallen trees provide ample fuel for fires that are harder to control in an open landscape.

Carbon release

This lack of regrowth may also reduce the amount carbon taken up by trees and increase the amount released into the atmosphere: "That's a big shift in carbon and carbon storage, definitely."

What is happening in the U.S. Rockies won't necessarily happen everywhere. In southern California, where huge flames from several wildfires continue to tear across the landscape after destroying more than 680 homes and forcing thousands of people to flee, huge, intense fires have been frequent for thousands of years, Stevens-Rumann said.

"They resprout very quickly after a fire and will likely continue to do so even with these large fire events."

CalFire works in Ventura County as efforts continue against the Thomas Fire in Ojai, Calif., Dec. 9, 2017. In southern California, intense fires have been frequent for thousands of years, and vegetation tends to grow back quickly. (John Cetrino/EPA-EFE)

In Canada, researchers say some forests here could also fail to grow back after fires in drier areas.

They have also seen some changes in the way the northern boreal forests of Canada and Alaska respond to fires as the climate changes.

According to Natural Resources Canada, climate change during this century is expected to result in more frequent fires in many boreal forests, potentially doubling the amount of area burned by 2100 compared to recent decades.

And the fires are also expected to get larger and more intense, says University of Guelph researcher Merritt Turetsky, who holds a Canada Research Chair in Integrative Ecology.

Turetsky has studied boreal forest sites in Alaska burned by a huge fire in 2004, and said about five per cent of those have no regrowth.

"It looks like a different planet," she told CBC News.

Smoke and flames from the wildfires erupt behind a car on the highway near Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada, May 7, 2016. According to Natural Resources Canada, climate change could potentially double the amount of northern boreal forest burned by 2100 compared to recent decades. (Mark Blinch/Reuters)

The fire was so intense in some places that it burned up all organic matter needed to help the soil retain nutrients and moisture required for trees to grow.

That could happen more in the future as the peat covering much of the north — including the floor of the boreal forest — dries out more and burns more frequently, making fires more intense.

Aspen win

Ellen Whitman, a PhD candidate at the University of Alberta and the Canadian Forest Service, is studying the regrowth of boreal forest after fires in Wood Buffalo National Park in the Northwest Territories.

In most cases, the forests are growing back as they were before, she said.

But in some cases, the dominant black spruce and white spruce are being replaced by deciduous trees such as aspen. That's especially the case for forests that burned less than 80 years ago, where trees haven't yet had time to develop fire-resistant seed cones. Spruce trees are also outcompeted in drier areas, suggesting climate may also play a role, Whitman said.

Aspen trees show their bright yellow fall colours near Nederland, Colo., Sept. 22. Under some conditions, aspen are outcompeting spruce and dominating after wildfires in Canada's northern boreal forest, researchers say. (Rick Wilking/Reuters)

"Those forests that were there previously were in part the product of the previous climate," she added, "so when we do see these shifts, it's quite likely that it's due to [climate change]."

The shift from a coniferous to a deciduous forests could have wide ranging effects on northern ecosystems, including wildlife. For example, it may benefit moose and deer that do well in deciduous forests and could have a negative impact on woodland caribou in some places, as they're thought to prefer older conifer forests.

Interestingly, Whitman said, the shift could also make forests more fire resistant, as deciduous trees don't burn as easily as spruce.

Output: Some US and Canadian forests may never grow back after wildfires, due to the increasing heat and dryness of the general climate, according to research by US scientists. The study examined the impact of 52 wildfires on 1,500 sites in five states in the Rockies, between 1985 and 2015. Findings showed that seedlings were not regrowing at approximately one third of these sites after 2000, up from 15% prior to that date. Permanent forest loss could raise the risk of further fires and increase the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere.


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Wells Fargo sued for $50m by Navajo Nation
 The Navajo Nation has sued Wells Fargo, saying its citizens were targeted by workers trying to meet the bank’s aggressive sales quotas.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in federal court in Albuquerque, alleges many of the same practices that led to last year’s $185-million settlement between Wells Fargo and regulators, including the creation of unauthorized banking accounts, credit cards and other products.

But the lawsuit also goes further, alleging that the San Francisco bank targeted particularly vulnerable members of the Navajo Nation, including minors, the elderly and those who do not speak English. It also alleges that Wells Fargo lied to the tribe when, in a letter sent early this year, it said no tribal members were harmed by the bank’s sales practices.

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“This shows a specific targeting of an ethnic community in the United States and, within that, subgroups of vulnerable Navajos,” said John Hueston, a Los Angeles attorney representing the tribe. “It’s a level of exploitation of a vulnerable community that has not surfaced in other cases to date.”

The nation is seeking damages, fines and penalties of more than $50 million, Hueston said.

Wells Fargo spokesman Jim Seitz said in a statement that the bank could not comment on ongoing litigation, but he reiterated steps the bank has taken to compensate consumers and change practices in the wake of last year’s accounts scandal.

“Over the past year we have taken significant steps to make things right for our customers, including members of the Navajo Nation, who may have been affected by unacceptable retail sales practices,” he said.

The bank has eliminated the sales goals that, along with pressure from managers and lax oversight from top executives, were blamed for pushing workers to open sham accounts and credit cards for customers. It has also agreed to pay $142 million in a class-action settlement that will be open to all customers who had unauthorized accounts opened in their names since 2002.

Wells Fargo is the only major bank that has locations within the Navajo Nation, Hueston said.

A former Wells Fargo worker in Arizona said in a sworn statement — part of another lawsuit filed this year — that workers pushed credit cards and bank accounts on Native Americans seeking to cash tribal checks.

james.koren@latimes.com

Follow me: @jrkoren

Output: Wells Fargo has been sued for over $50m in the US by the Navajo Nation, which alleges that bank employees targeted its citizens in order to fulfil sales targets. The lawsuit, filed in Albuquerque on Tuesday, cites many practices, such as the opening of unauthorized accounts, that led to last year’s $185m settlement by the bank with US regulators. The case also claims that Wells Fargo targeted vulnerable Navajo citizens, including the elderly, minors and those who did not speak English, and lied to the tribe when it claimed no members had been harmed by its practices.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Arctic sea ice melting fastest for 1,500 years
 Permafrost in the Arctic is thawing faster than ever, according to a new US government report that also found Arctic seawater is warming and sea ice is melting at the fastest pace in 1,500 years.

The annual report released on Tuesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showed slightly less warming in many measurements than a record hot 2016. But scientists remain concerned because the far northern region is warming twice as fast as the rest of the globe and has reached a level of warming that’s unprecedented in modern times.

The Arctic has traditionally been the refrigerator to the planet, but the door of the refrigerator has been left open Jeremy Mathis

“2017 continued to show us we are on this deepening trend where the Arctic is a very different place than it was even a decade ago,” said Jeremy Mathis, head of NOAA’s Arctic research program and co-author of the 93-page report.

Findings were discussed at the American Geophysical Union meeting in New Orleans.

“What happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic; it affects the rest of the planet,” said acting NOAA chief Timothy Gallaudet. “The Arctic has huge influence on the world at large.”

Permafrost records show the frozen ground that many buildings, roads and pipelines are built on reached record warm temperatures last year nearing and sometimes exceeding the thawing point. That could make them vulnerable when the ground melts and shifts, the report said. Unlike other readings, permafrost data tend to lag a year.

Preliminary reports from the US and Canada in 2017 showed permafrost temperatures are “again the warmest for all sites” measured in North America, said study co-author Vladimir Romanovsky, a professor at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks.

Arctic sea ice usually shrinks in September and this year it was only the eighth lowest on record for the melting season. But scientists said they were most concerned about what happens in the winter – especially March – when sea ice is supposed to be building to its highest levels.

Arctic winter sea ice maximum levels in 2017 were the smallest they’ve ever been for the season when ice normally grows. It was the third straight year of record low winter sea ice recovery. Records go back to 1979.

About 79% of the Arctic sea ice is thin and only a year old. In 1985, 45% of the sea ice in the Arctic was thick, older ice, said NOAA Arctic scientist Emily Osborne.

New research looking into the Arctic’s past using ice cores, fossils, corals and shells as stand-ins for temperature measurements show that Arctic ocean temperatures are rising and sea ice levels are falling at rates not seen in the 1,500 years. And those dramatic changes coincide with the large increase in carbon dioxide levels in the air, the report said.

This isn’t just a concern for the few people who live north of the Arctic circle. Changes in the Arctic can alter fish supply. And more ice-free Arctic summers can lead to countries competing to exploit new areas for resources. Research also shows changes in Arctic sea ice and temperature can alter the jet stream, which is a major factor in US weather.

This is probably partly responsible for the current unusual weather in the United States that brought destructive wildfires to California and a sharp cold snap to the south and east, according to NOAA scientist James Overland and private meteorologist expert Judah Cohen.

“The Arctic has traditionally been the refrigerator to the planet, but the door of the refrigerator has been left open,” Mathis said.

Outside scientists praised the report card.

“Overall, the new data fit with the long-term trends, showing the clear evidence of warming causing major changes,” in the Arctic, said Pennsylvania State University ice scientist Richard Alley.

Output: Arctic sea ice is melting at the fastest rate in 1,500 years, while seawater in the region is also warming, according to the annual report by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Last year, areas of permafrost reached record high temperatures, sometimes exceeding the thawing point. Winter sea ice levels this year were the lowest recorded since records began in 1979, marking the third consecutive year of record lows for winter recovery. Jeremy Mathis, a co-author of the report, described the Arctic as “the refrigerator to the plant” adding “the door of the refrigerator has been left open”.


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Input:
Electrochaea uses CO2 from wastewater to make natural gas
 Copenhagen, Denmark

Sometimes, there can be too much of a good thing.

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Every so often, from California to Germany, there’s news of “negative electricity prices,” a peculiar side effect of global efforts to generate clean energy. Solar farms and wind turbines produce varying amounts of power based on the vagaries of the weather. So we build electrical grids to handle only the power levels we expect in a given location. But in some cases, there’s more sun or wind than expected, and these renewable energy sources pump in more power than the grid can handle. The producers of that power then have to pay customers to use up the excess electricity; otherwise, the grid would be overloaded and fail.

As we build more and more renewable-power capacity in efforts to meet the emissions-reduction goals of the Paris climate agreement, these situations will become more common. Startups led by entrepreneurs who see this future on the horizon are now looking for ways to make money off the inevitable excess clean electricity.

On a mildly chilly day in April, with the smell of poo in the air, I met one of these startups at a sewage-water treatment plant in Copenhagen, Denmark. Electrochaea takes carbon dioxide produced during the process of cleaning wastewater, and converts it into natural gas. That alone would be impressive enough; if we want to stop global warming in its tracks, we need to do everything we can to keep CO2 from entering the atmosphere. But Electrochaea has also figured out a way to power the whole enterprise with the excess green energy produced during particularly sunny and windy days that otherwise would have gone to waste, because there would have been no way to store it.

In other words, when scaled up, Electrochaea’s process could be an answer to one of the biggest problems of the 21st century: energy storage, while also making a dent in cutting emissions.

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This article is part of The Race to Zero Emissions series investigating carbon-capture technology. You can also read our feature laying out the case for using the technology to fight climate change.

The battery problem

The biggest problem with wind and solar energy is that they’re intermittent. There might be violent winds one day, and calm skies the next; broiling sunshine on Monday and 100% cloud cover on Tuesday. Some argue this problem is easily overcome by storing any excess energy in batteries until it’s needed at a later time. Further, battery advocates say, even though the bookcase-sized batteries required to store solar energy for a small home are expensive today, prices are falling and will continue to fall for some time.

Except it’s not that easy. The batteries on the market for these applications are, essentially, large versions of the lithium-ion batteries found in mobile phones. They can only store energy for a certain amount of time—weeks, at most. As soon as the charging source is removed, they start to lose the charge.

That’s not a problem if the batteries are for ironing out the peaks and troughs of daily use. The trouble is that humanity’s energy demand is skewed based on local seasons, which requires sometimes drawing on every available source, and sometimes not using much energy at all. Mumbai’s peak energy demand is during the hottest days of summer, when people run air conditioners to survive. London’s peak energy demand comes during the coldest days of winters, when people burn natural gas to heat their homes and offices.

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Peak energy demand, whether for heating or cooling, can be as much as 20 times the energy consumed on an average day. Today, we shovel more coal or pump more natural gas into fossil-fuel power plants on those high-demand days. Some places, like Bridgeport in Connecticut, have old fossil-fuel plants, often coal, that they keep shut down most of the year and fire up only during peak demand. Obviously, that won’t work in a future powered by renewable energy.

There are two solutions on the table for inter-seasonal energy storage, and they both involve massive investment in infrastructure: First, you could build so many solar panel fields or so many wind turbines that you could produce much more than 20 times the power of an average day. The upshot: you’d have much more excess energy on a low-demand day, but would at least be able to fill demand on peak-demand days. The second option is to get so many batteries that they can store up enough excess energy that, even as they lose their charge, there’s still enough power to get the grid through peak-demand days.

Even if both renewable generation and storage were affordable enough for these plans—and they’re not, yet—there’s still another economic wall that might be impossible to traverse: Most of the time, your new gigantic power plant and fleet of batteries would be useless, because peak demand happens only a few times each year. No government can waste the money needed to build something with so little utility.

Store it another way

Beyond batteries, there are other mechanical ways to store energy. One is to pump water into elevated lakes. Another is to compress air with excess energy. Yet another is to store energy in the form of a high-speed rotating disk. But, like batteries, none of these options can store energy between seasons.

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There is one option for the inter-seasonal problem called underground thermal-energy storage. It works on a simple principle: no matter the temperature above ground, at a depth of about 15 meters, temperature in most places on Earth is about the same: 10°C (or 50°F). The planet’s soil provides natural insulation, and, in theory, we could use that insulation to store energy.

There have been successful pilot projects around the world showing you can set up solar panels that, after filling the grid, use any excess electricity to heat gravel, heat-carrying chemicals, or water stored in tanks deep underground. With enough insulation, the heat could be stored for months, until it’s needed in homes nearby, and delivered to them via pipes and heat pumps. (This heat energy can also be converted to run air conditioners, where cooling is needed instead of heating.)

There are just two problems when it comes to scaling up: First, it’s expensive to build. Even if the cost of construction and management were to come down, if cities and towns haven’t already planned for underground reservoirs (and most haven’t), then it can be prohibitively exorbitant to find and secure the space. Second, the solution only works at a local scale, because transporting heat comes with natural losses. So the farther you need to move it from the storage site, the more loss you have to deal with.

Electrochaea provides another option, where renewable energy could be stored indefinitely and transported without losses.

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The green goo

If you don’t mind the smell, wastewater treatment plants are fascinating. The Copenhagen plant takes in all the water sent down toilets, bathrooms, and kitchen sinks, and puts out H2O that’s nearly clean enough to drink—just one more step would be required, the plant operator told me. But since the city has no shortage of water, the treatment plant dumps its clean, but non-potable water into the North Sea.

Before that, the water goes through dozens of steps, including one where organic matter is allowed to settled to the bottom of large, open tanks. This sludge, rich in carbon-containing molecules, is transferred to a sealed bioreactor where microbes filtered from local soil are added. If this were done in the open tanks, the microbes would break the matter down slowly to produce carbon dioxide. But, in the bioreactor, in the absence of oxygen, a different set of microbes springs into action. They produce methane—the primary component of natural gas—instead.

The facility takes the methane (and any remaining sludge that can’t be broken down) and then burns it in a biomass power plant. “We produce more energy than we consume to clean up the water coming into our plant,” says Dines Thornberg, a manager at Biofos, the part-government-owned company that operates the treatment plant.

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That may be true. But the process still does pollute, since some chemical degradation happens independent of microbes and creates carbon dioxide. To help Denmark hit its Paris agreement goals, Biofos wants to cut its own carbon footprint. That’s why the company gave Electrochaea valuable space at its plant to build the pilot-scale chemical plant that completes the job that Biofos’s microbes couldn’t do: convert the carbon dioxide released in the bioreactor into methane. To achieve this amazing transformation, Electrochaea gets help from microbial life called archaea.

Archaea are the oldest of the three branches of life, which include bacteria and eukaryotes (consisting of all other more advanced organisms including humans). Their ancient survival skills include one that us humans now can put to good use: an ability to naturally take in CO2 and turn it into methane.

Most scientists believe life on Earth was formed in hydrothermal vents, created by underwater volcanoes. The temperatures there can reach 400°C (750°F), far higher than that of boiling water. But the water in the vents doesn’t boil and the gases the vents release—including carbon dioxide and hydrogen—don’t explode thanks to the tremendous pressure applied by miles of seawater above. Some archaea that live in the vents have learned to use carbon dioxide as food, combining the carbon (C) from carbon dioxide (CO2) with hydrogen (H2) to form and release methane (CH4). Humans do the reverse, consuming carbon-rich food and combining it with oxygen—both readily available on land—to make and expel carbon dioxide.

Electrochaea’s pilot plant on Biofos’s premises takes up an area the size of a tennis court. As usual for a chemical factory, there’s a tangle of stainless steel pipes with sensors and control valves. The pipes all lead to a big cylindrical bioreactor, about 10 meters (30 ft) tall, kept at 60°C (140°F) and eight times the atmospheric pressure. Through a small glass window at the bottom of the bioreactor, I can see a bubbling mixture the color of an avocado milkshake. That’s Electrochaea’s proprietary species of archaea, cultured and bred to efficiently combine carbon dioxide and hydrogen to produce methane.

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The gases injected into the bioreactor come from two sources. The wastewater-treatment plant sends a mixture of carbon dioxide and methane. Meanwhile, two shipping container-sized electrolyzers use renewable electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. The oxygen is sent off into the atmosphere, and the hydrogen to the Electrochaea bioreactor.

The microbes are so effective that in the time the mixture of gases travels from the bottom of the bioreactor to its top, 99 out of every 100 molecules of carbon dioxide and hydrogen are converted into methane, water, and heat. The heat is useful: it helps keep the temperature inside the reactor steady. Meanwhile, as the archaea consume the CO2 and H2, they multiply. Because they are naturally occurring species, extra archaea can be simply dumped into sewers, flushed out by the water also created in the process.

The valuable product from the reaction is methane. In fact, the stuff created through this process is even more valuable than typical methane. It’s “renewable methane” or “biomethane,” because the gas was produced from non-fossil-fuel sources and without any fossil-fuel power. This methane can be used to run boilers in homes, power plants, and even cars or buses. It’s a cleaner fuel than coal and oil, producing the fewest emissions for each unit of energy released. Methane can also be very easily stored. In fact, across Europe, there are large underground stores, connected by pipes that can safely transport the gas.

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When the system runs at full capacity, the archaea produce about 50 cubic meters of natural gas per hour. For every unit of energy of electricity fed into the system, it produces about 0.75 units of energy stored in the form of methane, according to Doris Hafenbradl, Electrochaea’s chief scientist. That’s not as good as lithium-ion batteries, which can reach near 100% efficiency. But unlike the energy stored in batteries, once methane is produced it can be stored indefinitely, because it doesn’t spontaneously degrade into other chemicals. If this process could be scaled up, it could solve renewable energy’s inter-seasonal storage problem.

Electrochaea’s plant does not need to be close to solar farms or wind turbines, because excess electricity can be extracted from anywhere on the grid. The limitations on location come based on access to CO2. Water treatment plants are fair game and so are ethanol producers (such as beer and liquor factories). Exhaust gases from power plants could be used, but they will need to be cleaned to remove sulfur and particulate emissions, which could harm archaea.

Solving problems at scale

The Copenhagen plant is one of three where Electrochaea has successfully installed its technology. The US National Renewable Energy Laboratory has one installation on its campus in Boulder, Colorado, and the last is part of a European Commission-funded project in Solothurn, Switzerland. Ultimately, Electrochaea’s core business model is to license the technology. The company is currently courting a Hungarian power company that wants to build a plant 10 times the size of the one in Copenhagen. It would be the startup’s biggest yet. And the carmaker Audi has shown interest in Electrochaea’s technology as a way to use biomethane in its natural-gas-powered cars.

Electrochaea is one of a growing number of players in the “power-to-gas” industry. ITM Power and Hydrogenics, for example, make electrolyzers that convert excess renewable energy into storable hydrogen. But hydrogen is not as widely used as natural gas. That’s why companies such as Electrochaea, MicrobEnergy, and ETOGas are betting that it’s worth the extra step of turning that hydrogen into methane. MicrobEnergy, as the name suggests, uses microbes for the conversion, just like Electrochaea. ETOGas, a Hitachi-supported startup, uses metal catalysts.

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Doing it this way also gives these companies a potential second business model: Because these processes all involve injecting carbon dioxide into the system, it could turn out to be the case that they are hired to install their power-to-gas systems simply to reduce a facility’s CO2 emissions, whether it has an excess of renewable energy or not.

Electrochaea hasn’t secured a carbon-capture customer yet. And to be sure, its technology is carbon-capture and recycling—not storage or removal. The methane produced in the process will eventually be burned again, and that will put carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. In other words, it simply delays the production of greenhouse gases, instead of eliminating them.

That said, there is some value in delaying emissions. Every CO2 molecule not dumped in the atmosphere right now is a CO2 molecule that doesn’t absorb and retain sun’s heat. If nothing else, Electrochaea and companies like it may do their part in saving the planet simply by helping change the conversation around carbon dioxide, from treating it as a byproduct to considering it as a feedstock.

You can sign up to our newsletter for more stories on the challenges and opportunities of low-emissions technology. The reporting was supported by a fellowship from the McGraw Center for Business Journalism at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism.

Output: Electrochaea has transformed carbon dioxide from wastewater into natural gas, using the excess green energy from wind turbines or solar panels that would otherwise be wasted. The solution could be scaled to create multi-seasonal energy storage, something that most batteries are not capable of, the company said.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
UK chemical and pharma industries appeal to remain within EU
 Following last week's announcement that a deal had been reached between the UK and EU on phase one of Brexit negotiations, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) called for a cooperation agreement between the UK and EU on medicines.

“It is now crucial that the regulation and supply of medicines for UK and EU patients is prioritised. A cooperation agreement between the UK and the EU on medicines is the best way to ensure that there is no disruption to 500m patients receiving the medicines that they need,” the ABPI said.

Pharmaceutical expert Catherine Drew of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com, said the ABPI statement reflected the industry’s continued pressure for a pragmatic solution to medicines regulation post-Brexit.

Meanwhile, in a letter to environment secretary Michael Gove seen by Out-Law.com, the Chemical Industries Association (CIA) asked for continued membership of the EU Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) regulation, to enable its members to retain market access to the EU.

CIA chief executive Steve Elliott said in the letter that because 60% of all chemical exports from the UK were destined for the EU, and 75% of all chemical imports came from the EU, continued engagement with REACH and the European Chemicals Agency was “the most cost-effective way of securing the competitiveness of our sector”.

Elliott said a “no deal” scenario or exclusion from REACH would mean registrations and authorisations would become non-existent on the day the UK leaves the EU. “Duplicating registration costs would obviously affect the competitiveness of UK products and create a significant drain on resources in order to simply stay where we are today,” Elliott said.

The CIA letter conceded REACH was “far from perfect” but said the best way of minimising disruption to supply chains was by staying within the regime and under the remit of the European Chemicals Agency.

The calls from the ABPI and CIA echoed similar statements from pharmaceutical giants AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Merck and Roche, which submitted their views on the potential impact of Brexit to a UK parliamentary inquiry last week.

Output: The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) and the Chemical Industries Association (CIA) have asked for a continued membership of EU Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) regulation. This will enable both industries to keep market access to the EU. In a letter to Michael Gove, the Environment Secretary, the CIA said 60% of all chemical exports from the UK were destined for the EU, and 75% of all chemical imports came from the EU - meaning that staying in REACH was the "most cost-effective" solution.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Uber license decision will not be heard until spring 2018
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Minicab app firm Uber’s appeal against Transport for London’s decision not to renew its licence in the city will not be heard until spring 2018.

Both sides of the dispute appeared before Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London on Monday, for a case-management hearing. Chief magistrate Emma Arbuthnot said that a hearing as to whether the GMB union and the Licensed Taxi Drivers’ Association could become interested parties in the case would take place on Tuesday and Wednesday next week. A full appeal hearing on the case, though, would not be happen until either May or June next year. An exact date is yet to be set.

TfL announced its decision to scrap Uber’s operating licence in the capital in September, sparking a fierce battle between the company, unions, politicians, rival services and customers.

Recommended Sheffield suspends Uber licence over management questions

The transport authority had accused the Silicon Valley giant of lacking corporate responsibility in relation to issues around public safety and security.

In October, Uber chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi met with TfL and apologised to Londoners for some of the company’s past practices. Both sides described those talks as constructive but details of progress in negotiations have been sparse since.

Uber employs around 40,000 drivers in London, servicing an estimated 3.5 million people, which makes the capital one of its most important international markets. However, it has been under severe fire from a growing army of UK critics over the past year.

Some have claimed that the privately owned company unfairly skews competition, while other have accused it of not doing enough to crack down on incidents of violence involving drivers.

Beyond London, Uber’s licence was recently also suspended in Sheffield after the company reportedly failed to respond to official requests about its management.

In Brighton its licence was renewed in early November, but only for a period of six months.

In London, Uber can continue servicing its London passengers until the appeals process is exhausted, which some experts have said could take several years.

In a statement on Monday, a spokesperson for Uber said that the company had filed the appeal “so that we can continue serving millions of riders and tens of thousands of drivers in London”.

The spokesperson added that discussions with TfL around resolving the issue were still “constructive”.

“As our new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has said, we are determined to make things right.”

Output: Ride-sharing app Uber is to appeal the loss of its London private hire licence in spring next year. Uber and Transport for London appeared at Westminster Magistrates' Court for a case management hearing on Monday. A hearing as to whether the Licensed Taxi Drivers' Association and the GMB union could be interested parties in the case will take place next week. An exact date for a full appeal hearing has yet to be set. TfL scrapped Uber's operating licence in September, accusing it of lacking corporate responsibility over issues around public safety.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
City will lose 10,500 jobs on day one of Brexit: EY
 City firms plan to move 10,500 jobs out of the UK on “day one” of Brexit, with Dublin and Frankfurt the financial centres most likely to benefit from the UK’s departure from the EU.

The job tracker compiled by the accountants EY, which counts job announcements to the end of November, found that the number of roles likely to be affected had fallen from estimates of 12,500 a year ago. But it also concluded that the jobs being affected by Brexit were not just the “back office” ones initially forecast, but “front office” staff who deal directly with clients.

Omar Ali, EY’s UK financial services leader, said Friday’s announcement of a first-stage deal, allowing talks to move on to trade, had sent “a wave of relief across the City”.

“It signalled an intention to agree a transitional period as early as possible next year and the starting point for negotiations on future trade deals, both of which are fundamental to avoid adding any additional risks to the system and for the future strength of the UK financial services industry,” said Ali.

Major City firms have started to announce how they will respond to the UK’s exit from the EU after being told by the Bank of England to present contingency plans for all eventualities, including a “hard” Brexit. Last month Sam Woods, a deputy governor of the Bank, warned that 10,000 jobs could leave the City on “day one” after reviewing these plans.

Ali said firms’ contingency plans had become more detailed over the past year. “The extent of broader strategic restructurings and relocation plans will of course ultimately depend on the specifics of any long-term UK deal with the EU, but a drop in the volume of jobs moving will be welcome news for the City.”

EY said that since the July 2016 referendum 31% of the 222 companies it was tracking have said they are considering or have confirmed the movement of some of their operations and/or staff out of the UK.

Goldman Sachs, for instance, has begun to implement contingency plans by taking the top eight floors of a 37-storey block under construction in Frankfurt, even though it is building a new European headquarters in London. It has not said how many of its 6,000 roles in London will be impacted.

EY’s tracker puts Dublin and Frankfurt ahead of other alternative centres in the EU, attracting 14 and 12 companies, respectively.

Analysts at the Japanese bank Nomura are also tracking the potential for job moves and said: “Depending on whether we get a transitional deal, 10,000 jobs spread over a one- to three-year period is a relatively small number, but for markets it’s the long- term impact of Brexit that we find adds up to 35-40,000 that will matter more.”

Output: Using a job tracker which counts job announcements by City companies, EY has predicted that 10,500 jobs will move away from London on the first day the UK departs from the EU. The number of roles affected has fallen from the 12,500 predicted a year ago, however the nature of the roles has changed to more so-called "front room" staff - those dealing with clients, not just administrative roles as originally predicted.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Brexit could leave UK vulnerable to global monopolies
 We live in a world of corporate goliaths and the trend to gigantism is accelerating. The new era of hi-tech data capitalism has an embedded proclivity to monopoly. The bigger the network, whether Facebook or Google, the more valuable it is to be connected. Big is good in the digital universe, while even bigger is better.

Meanwhile, analogue capitalism, confronted by the challenge of the new, is reacting by consolidating and merging into ever larger entities. Unless they do, comes the reply to any challenge from national competition authorities, they won’t have the heft and scale to meet the new competition. Increasingly, we are surrounded by the most awesome concentration of corporate power in the history of capitalism. In every industry, reported the Obama administration last year, the market power of the biggest companies has been growing and mark-ups and profit margins with them. America’s era of the robber barons in the late 19th century had nothing on this.

Last week came another small milestone, in Britain. Hammerson, a property company few will have heard of, swooped on its rival, Intu, even less well known, in a £3.2bn bid. Yet the outcome will affect us all. Many major shopping malls – London’s Brent Cross, Birmingham’s Bullring, Manchester’s Trafford Park, Oxfordshire’s Bicester Village – will be owned by the same company. Hammerson will be the arbiter of how we shop: what stores are positioned where, in what mall and at what rent; it can even determine the restrictions on forms of permissible public activity in its private spaces.

Hammerson will argue that it had no choice. So much shopping is online that the mall is looking increasingly like a late 20th-century phenomenon, outdated and outmoded. E-shopping is booming and, with the advent of virtual reality, you can go beyond browsing online to “handling” the goods you plan to buy. Hammerson’s only option is to buy up its competitors and try to hold the digital invaders at bay. You can see its point, but its monopolistic grip on the market will be such that it is better empowered to resist declines in rent and will take any opportunity to lift them. Our competition authorities stand idly by, helpless onlookers rather than proactive interveners.

Birmingham’s Bullring shopping centre is now owned by Hammerson after its takeover of Intu. Photograph: Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Meanwhile, the digital invaders are getting bigger. One of the laws of economics, itself an analogue discipline teaching doctrines far removed from the realities of today’s markets, used to be that as companies grow they start to lose control of their capacity to be efficient and unit costs rise. This is called decreasing returns to scale. In this way, or so the theory went, we could trust a free market not to produce corporate goliaths because they become inefficient, the ideology that Brexiters so blindly believe. But one of the features of data capitalism is exactly the opposite: increasing returns to scale. One of the attractions of Facebook, Spotify, Uber, Amazon or Airbnb is their very size. Their managers don’t lose control of their operations as they grow. Indeed, computerised techniques allow costs, from wages to the organisation of production lines, supply chains and warehouses, to be ever more efficiently managed.

From the users’ point of view, the bigger the network and search engine the more efficient it is to use: Google is the search engine of choice because of its scale; similarly, Uber, the ride-hailing app; Facebook, the communication channel, and Airbnb, the means to find a room. In every case, the sheer size of their network means we get the best results. On top of this, they take over rivals. Facebook has bought WhatsApp, Microsoft owns LinkedIn, and Google acquired YouTube, along with a host of small companies destined to be potential challengers but that were devoured. Thus today’s capitalism: corporations are growing ever bigger in the new and old economy alike. In the new economy, they hold more and more personal information and data about consumers; in the old, they hold ever more market power. Profits as a share of GDP in advanced industrial economies are rising and, with them, share prices and directors’ remuneration; wages and job security are declining. Globalisation has become a universe of monopoly, oligopoly and shadow cartels. Prices are not fixed in smoke-filled rooms: the market leader in whatever global industry sets a reference price that everybody follows tacitly – or faces dire consequences.

This is a far cry from the imagined world of Brexiters, where supranational authorities and regulations, especially EU regulations, are “shackles”. National competition authorities are all that are needed to ensure free and fair competition; virtuous global enterprise is rewarded and policed by the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the fabulously effective and universally revered global trade referee. All Britain has to do is champion free trade outside the sclerotic EU under WTO rules and it will be blessed with a new age of growth and prosperity. In reality, competition and anti-monopoly authorities are no match for the behemoths and the WTO is systematically gamed and undermined by the two economic superpowers. The US, the Brexiters’ great buddy, is refusing to nominate judges to the WTO’s appeal court; instead, it takes on China unilaterally for alleged trade abuses. The WTO is weak and getting weaker.

International trade is not a game of cricket between equally matched teams, only disturbed by Brussels Eurocrats, as Jacob Rees-Mogg, Boris Johnson et al imagine, waiting for a Britain, energised by leaving the EU, to further stimulate it. It is a dog-eat-dog world in which the choice for a medium-size country is to make common cause with one of the three economic blocs capable of challenging the new monopolists and cartels – China, the US or the EU – or roll over and be plundered. Britain alone has no chance of challenging the West Coast tech giants over their policies on anything from tax to data or challenge any of the analogue goliaths over their stance, say, on diesel emissions or plastic packaging.

You don’t have to be a Marxist to worry about where today’s capitalism is heading – both the Bank of England and the Economist magazine share the concerns. But it is curious that Labour’s allegedly leftwing leadership is so quiet. Far from a capitalist plot, EU membership is one of Britain’s few available defences. Trade unions understand this well: it is time for Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell to find their voice. Leaving the EU can and must be stopped.

Output: Brexit could leave the UK unable to challenge US technology giants over their policies on data and paying tax or to tackle traditional industries on, for example, diesel emissions or plastic waste, argues economist and writer Will Hutton. The tendency of digital capitalism is towards monopoly, with companies such as Facebook and Google defying traditional economic analysis to become more rather than less efficient as they grow. Regulators such as the World Trade Organisation are becoming weaker as corporate power grows, leaving the UK in a weaker position when negotiating deals with major trading nations post-Brexit.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Neural networks learning to forget useless information
 That’s an important skill. The world provides a never-ending source of data, much of which is irrelevant to the tricky business of survival, and most of which is impossible to store in a limited memory. So humans and other creatures have evolved ways to retain important skills while forgetting irrelevant ones.

Neural networks are now being taught how to forget.

The same cannot be said of machines. Any skill they learn is quickly overwritten, regardless of how important it is. There is currently no reliable mechanism they can use to prioritize these skills, deciding what to remember and what to forget.

Today that looks set to change thanks to the work of Rahaf Aljundi and pals at the University of Leuven in Belgium and at Facebook AI Research. These guys have shown that the approach biological systems use to learn, and to forget, can work with artificial neural networks too.

The key is a process known as Hebbian learning, first proposed in the 1940s by the Canadian psychologist Donald Hebb to explain the way brains learn via synaptic plasticity. Hebb’s theory can be famously summarized as “Cells that fire together wire together.”

In other words, the connections between neurons grow stronger if they fire together, and these connections are therefore more difficult to break. This is how we learn—repeated synchronized firing of neurons makes the connections between them stronger and harder to overwrite.

So Aljundi and co have developed a way for artificial neural networks to behave in the same way. They do this by measuring the outputs from a neural network and monitoring how sensitive they are to changes in the connections within the network.

This gives them a sense of which network parameters are most important and should therefore be preserved. “When learning a new task, changes to important parameters are penalized,” say the team. They say the resulting network has “memory aware synapses.”

They’ve put this idea through its paces with a set of tests in which a neural network trained to do one thing is then given data that trains it to do something else. For example, a network trained to recognize flowers is then shown birds. The researchers then show it flowers again to see how much of this skill is preserved.

Output: A team of researchers at the University of Leuven, together with Facebook AI Research, is aiming to improve machine learning by training artificial neural networks to learn and forget skills akin to how humans absorb information. Researchers have developed a way for these networks to employee Hebbian learning - the idea neurons work better when they "fire" together. If an action is perceived as correct, or useful, it can be reinforced while incorrect, or less useful, actions can be discarded.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
China open to global partnerships for space station project
 SHENZHEN, China – “After the Belt and Road Initiative, I think China has a space initiative in mind. China has invited developing nations to conduct experiments on its space station planned to be on the orbit in 2022, has signed an agreement with the UN, and does not neglect any possibility to conclude an agreement with countries that have expertise on the peaceful use of the outer space. For instance, in July 2017, it signed a memorandum of understanding with Romania, which possesses such expertise, and, geopolitically, it falls along the route of the Belt and Road Initiative,” said Dumitru-Dorin Prunariu, a Romanian cosmonaut and diplomat.

As an annual delegate to COPUOS, Prunariu is very familiar with China’s space achievements: “China is strikingly advanced in space activities and focused on manned human space flights. I felt from the beginning China’s huge potential in space. When I was still the president of the Association of Space Explorers, I personally insisted to have Chinese astronauts become members of ASE and to hold the ASE congress in Beijing in 2014, to start getting to know each other better. The first Chinese astronaut, Yang Liwei, was elected as a member of ASE Board. Time showed indeed that China is promoting space activities and open to develop space projects as well as advanced technology and science, with the purpose to ensure national security and to gain its place, prestige and recognition on the global stage, as a strong space-faring nation with a high level of technology.”

Wu Ping, Deputy Director General of China Manned Space Agency, presented the project to the 59th session of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) at the UN in Vienna in June 2016. Under the agreements, UNOOSA and CMSA will work together to enable United Nations member states, particularly from developing countries, to conduct space experiments on board China’s space station, and to provide flight opportunities for astronauts and payload engineers. China and the UN will promote international cooperation in human space flight and other space activities, increased awareness of the benefits of human space technology and its applications, and capacity-building activities in space technology.

The Chinese space station, Tiangong 3, is currently under development and is expected to be operational around 2022. It will have a core module and two experimental modules, and can be expanded further. The modules are scheduled to be sent into space between 2020–2022. It will be capable of accommodating three full-time astronauts and up to six during rotation periods. The station will also accommodate the Chinese future Xuntian space telescope.

With its advanced technology and multi-purpose onboard facilities, the station could provide opportunities for UN member states to conduct microgravity experiments on physics, biology, and life science as well as Earth observation.

The UN signed several agreements with various Chinese institutions ranging from disasters management and emergency response, the use of space-based data, and the infrastructure of disasters management and emergency response, as well as cooperating in exploration and innovation. Prunariu stresses that “only cooperation in various fields, including space, can make nations know each other better, remove suspicion and gradually build mutual trust.”

The CMSA hopes for broadened collaboration with other countries and international organizations under the framework of the agreement, on the principle of peaceful uses of outer space, equality and mutual benefit, and joint development.

It is unlikely that there will be cooperation between China and the US for the moment. In 2011, Rep. Frank Wolf inserted a clause into the US spending bill to prevent NASA or the OSTP (White House Office of Science and Technology Policy) from using federal funds “to develop, design, plan, promulgate, implement or execute a bilateral policy, program, order, or contract of any kind to participate, collaborate, or coordinate bilaterally in any way with China or any Chinese-owned company.”

However, Jeffrey Manber, CEO of NANORACKS, a private commercial company that provides hardware for the International Space Station, explains that there is always a way where there is a will: “The Canadians, Russians and Americans would have worked with the Chinese on the ISS but this law forbids it. When we started to work, we felt this amendment does not apply to us because we are a commercial company, we are not using tax-payers’ money. We have customers from 30 nations who pay us for services. We went to Obama administration and asked to engage the Chinese, and they gave us permission. Charles Bolden, administrator of NASA at the same, wrote a letter to the Congress saying this complies with the Wolf amendment, NASA was not involved, no technology transfer.”

China is gradually achieving excellence in its space programs and it has the capabilities to implement outstanding space projects. The wide range of programs, the long term planning and the openness to international cooperation makes it a unique space-faring country.

Output: The Chinese government is planning to increase its activities in space exploration, according to Romanian diplomat and cosmonaut Dumitru-Dorin Prunariu. The country is building a space station called Tiangong 3, which is expected to be in orbit by 2022, and has signed an agreement with the United Nations to allow developing countries to use the facility to conduct space experiments. Co-operation with other advanced countries is also thought likely, although the United States is prevented by a clause in a 2011 bill from collaborating with China on space projects.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Visa to reassure consumers with 'sensory branding' for payments
 In an ever-expanding universe of connected, payments-enabled devices, Visa is looking to reassure consumers (and promote itself) with a "sensory branding" programme that will use sound, animation and haptic cues to signify completed transactions.

With research showing that up to 71% of people think that the Visa logo signifies that a website is secure, the company is bidding to find new ways to evoke the same emotions in the digital and physical world.

To this end, the card scheme has developed short sound, animation and haptic (vibration) cues that it will make available as a software development kit on the Visa Developer Platform, and through the Visa Ready program, next year.

While the plans may seem gimmicky, 83% of people polled by Visa say that the sound or animation cues positively impacted their perception of the firm's brand, while 81% say the features would make them have a more positive view of merchants.

With this in mind, a national merchant and POS hardware vendors have agreed to pilot programmes for 2018.

Meanwhile, Visa is hoping to take advantage of haptic technology's ability to incite feelings of happiness and excitement with a global advertising campaign ahead of the Olympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018.

Lynne Biggar, chief marketing and communications officer, Visa, says: "As payments become increasingly embedded in commerce, the notion of ‘Everywhere You Want To Be’ takes on even greater meaning for our brand. As new payment experiences continue to take shape in the world, this suite of sensory branding elements will give consumers the assurances we know they want every time they use Visa."

Output: Visa is exploring using "sensory branding" to help signal completed and secure transactions. Seven in 10 people think the Visa logo shows that a website is secure and the company wants to expand this sense of security with a software development kit that can create animation, sound and haptic (vibration) clues, which it will make available on the Visa Developer Platform and through the Visa Ready programme. While the move may appear novel, some 81% of consumers polled by Visa said the features would make them view merchants more positively. Pilot programmes are being planned for next year.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Euclid develops combination of materials for expandable proppants
 Over the years, proppant technology has evolved from sands to engineered, high-strength proppants, cured and partially cured resin-coated proppants to prevent fines, lightweight and deformable proppants, and coated walnut shells for improved transportation and reduced embedment.

The latest in the line-up could be expandable proppants, which are nearing commercialisation from a technology developer in the US.

“We’re working to understand the in-situ application of force in the fracture network to control and manage development of that network,” says Andy Sherman, president and chief executive of Euclid, Ohio-based Terves.

Output: Composite manufacturer Terves' expandable proppant technology, which allows hydraulic fractures to remain open by swelling and applying force to the fracture network, is close to commercialisation. The XO Prop product has been added to the Terves Exalon rigid expandable product range, and uses semi-permeable expandable rigid polymer beads in a soon-to-be-patented formula. The proppant expands over one to two days, and comes in a rod or sphere shape between 20 and 100 mesh in size.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Scientists attempt to convert space debris into IoT devices
 Chinese scientists have devised an innovative way to utilize a spent rocket in space as a smart application platform. They are now working on a plan to fit intelligent chip systems in the final stage of their space-bound rockets to turn them into an orbital Internet of Things (IoT). In this way, these rockets can be used as a communication and experiment platform rather than being discarded as space junk after sending a satellite into orbit.

A report published in Xinhua News talks about a program being conducted at Fudan University in Shanghai. Chinese scientists working under this program installed smart chips on the final stage of a Long March 4C rocket that was used to send the Fengyun-3D satellite into space last month. Zheng Lirong, the lead scientist of the project, told Xinhua News that fitting smart chips on that rocket enabled scientists to establish the preliminary stage of an in-orbit IoT. This smart chip system has been named “Xinyun” in Chinese, which literally means the cloud of chips.

“With these intelligent chips attached, space debris can be transformed into a low-cost science experiment and communication platform,” Lirong said.

According to NASA, more than 500,000 pieces of space junk are currently orbiting the Earth at speeds up to 17,500 miles per hour (28,300 kilometers per hour). Scientists recognize orbital junk as a serious threat to space missions as even a small piece of space debris can damage spacecraft, satellites, and even the International Space Station (ISS). The majority of this orbital junk includes rocket sections that were discarded during space launches. NASA already has an established set of procedures and guidelines on how to avert a potential collision with orbital junk in space.

A program carried out installed several #intelligent chips on the final stage of the Long March 4C #rocket, which sent the Fengyun-#3Dsatellite into orbit in November. https://t.co/S7WEowqk7Y — CGTN Radio (@CGTNRadio) December 8, 2017

According to Xinhua News, Chinese scientists have been working on this project for the past two years and during these two years, they successfully developed the functional modules to create “nanosatellites” able to work in space.

IoT is a concept discussed by technology companies for decades. It is all about connecting different devices over the internet and enabling them to communicate with humans, with other applications, and with each other as well. The concept not only talks about connected devices and smart homes but also offers a vision of smart cities and industries. IoT solutions are already being employed in our daily lives, ranging from smart, wearable gadgets and GPS-tracked grazing to connected, driverless cars.

According to Xinhua News, the new Chinese technology is still in testing phase, and scientists are currently studying the path of orbiting debris. The IoT system has been in space for more than 430 hours, and the communication between the space nodes and the ground networks is currently stable. The system is receiving commands from the ground staff and is sending them the data from space. Further tests will let scientists verify the energy self-sufficiency, fault tolerance, and other functions of the intelligent chip system in space.

Output: Chinese scientists are seeking to turn discarded rocket sections into internet of things (IoT) devices. Researchers at Shanghai's Fudan University are installing smart chips in the final stages of space-bound rockets so they can be used as low-cost experiment and communication platforms, rather than becoming yet more space debris. The system, which is still at a test stage, is being called Xinyun, which means "cloud of chips" in Chinese. More than 500,000 pieces of space junk are thought to be orbiting Earth at up to 17,500 mph, according to NASA.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
VC investment in AI totals $7.6bn through first 9 months of 2017
 TWO letters can add up to a lot of money. No area of technology is hotter than AI, or artificial intelligence. Venture-capital investment in AI in the first nine months of 2017 totalled $7.6bn, according to PitchBook, a data provider; that compares with full-year figures of $5.4bn in 2016. In the year to date there have been $21.3bn in AI-related M&A deals, around 26 times more than in 2015. In earnings calls public companies now mention AI far more often than “big data”. At the heart of the frenzy are some familiar names: the likes of Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft. A similar, though less transparent, battle is under way in China among firms like Alibaba and Baidu. Several have put AI at the centre of their strategies. All are enthusiastic acquirers of AI firms, often in order to snap up the people they employ. They see AI as a way to improve their existing services, from cloud computing to logistics, and to push into new areas, from autonomous cars to augmented reality (see article). Many observers fear that, by cementing and extending the power of a handful of giants, AI will hurt competition. That will depend on three open questions, involving one magic ingredient.

AlphaGone

The tech giants certainly have big advantages in the battle to develop AI. They have tonnes of data, oodles of computing power and boffins aplenty—especially in China, which expects to charge ahead. Imagine a future, some warn, in which you are transported everywhere in a Waymo autonomous car (owner: Alphabet, parent of Google), pay for everything with an Android phone (developer: Google), watch YouTube (owner: Google) to relax, and search the web using—you can guess. Markets with just a handful of firms can be fiercely competitive. A world in which the same few names duke it out in several industries could still be a good one for consumers. But if people rely on one firm’s services like this, and if AI enables that firm to predict their needs and customise its offering ever more precisely, it will be burdensome to switch to a rival.

That future is still a long way off. AI programs remain narrowly focused. Moreover, the ability of the incumbents to perpetuate their advantages is made uncertain by three questions.

The most important is whether AI will always depend on vast amounts of data. Machines today are usually trained on huge datasets, from which they can recognise useful patterns such as fraudulent financial transactions. If real-world data remain essential to AI, the tech superstars are in clover. They have vast amounts of the stuff, and are gaining more as they push into fresh areas such as health care.

A competing vision of AI stresses simulations, in which machines teach themselves using synthetic data or in virtual environments. Early versions of a program developed to play Go, an Asian board game, by DeepMind, a unit of Alphabet, were trained using data from actual games; the latest was simply given the rules and started playing Go against itself. Within three days it had surpassed its predecessor, which had itself beaten the best player humanity could muster. If this approach is widely applicable, or if future AI systems can be trained using sparser amounts of data, the tech giants’ edge is blunted.

But some applications will always require data. How much of the world’s stock of it the tech giants will end up controlling is the second question. They have clout in the consumer realm, and they keep pushing into new areas, from Amazon’s interest in medicine to Microsoft’s purchase of LinkedIn, a professional-networking site. But data in the corporate realm are harder to get at, and their value is increasingly well understood. Autonomous cars will be a good test. Alphabet’s Waymo has done more real-world testing of self-driving cars than any other firm: over 4m miles (6.5m kilometres) on public roads. But established carmakers, and startups like Tesla, can generate more data from their existing fleets; other firms, like Mobileye, a driverless-tech firm owned by Intel, are also in the race.

The third question is how openly knowledge will be shared. The tech giants’ ability to recruit AI expertise from universities is helped by their willingness to publish research; Google and Facebook have opened software libraries to outside developers. But their incentives to share valuable data and algorithms are weak. Much will depend on whether regulations prise open their grip. Europe’s impending data-protection rules, for example, require firms to get explicit consent for how they use data and to make it easier for customers to transfer their information to other providers. China may try to help its firms by having negligible regulation.

The battle in AI is fiercest among the tech giants. It is too early to know how good that will be for competition, but not to anticipate the magic ingredient that will determine the outcome: the importance, accessibility and openness of data.

Output: Artificial intelligence (AI) received $7.6bn in venture capital (VC) investment between January and September, more than the $5.4bn for all of 2016, according to data provider PitchBook. AI-related merger and asset deals amounted to $21.3bn this year. Big names such as Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet are putting AI at the heart of their strategies, seeing the technology as a way to better their existing services and to push into new areas such as augmented reality and self-driving cars.


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Made In Space to create optical fibres in orbit
 Made In Space has partnered with the New Jersey company Thorlabs on a project to produce ZBLAN optical fiber in orbit. This machine, which is a bit bigger than a microwave, is scheduled to launch toward the International Space Station abroad a SpaceX Dragon capsule on Dec. 12, 2017.

A bold plan to rev up off-Earth manufacturing is about to get a big test.

A small, privately built machine designed to make optical fiber is launching toward the International Space Station (ISS) aboard SpaceX's Dragon cargo capsule tomorrow (Dec. 12).

If all goes according to plan, this little factory — which is owned by California-based startup Made In Space — will churn out stuff that's good enough to sell here on Earth, opening up space to greater commercial use. [3D Printing: 10 Ways It Could Transform Space Travel]

"We believe that we're really on the verge of something truly amazing here, with kind of using space for industrial purposes for some of the very first times," Made In Space CEO Andrew Rush said during a news conference in late November.

Made In Space is no stranger to the ISS. In 2014, a 3D printer built by the company made it to the orbiting lab, as part of a pilot project with NASA that aimed prove out the technology's use in space. That machine performed well, so the company launched a commercial version, known as the Additive Manufacturing Facility (AMF), to the station in 2016. The AMF continues to produce stuff for a variety of customers today. (NASA owns the 3D printer that launched in 2014.)

The machine that will launch tomorrow, which Rush said is a bit bigger than a microwave, is more specialized. It will produce a type of exotic optical fiber known as ZBLAN, which Made In Space representatives said is difficult to make on Earth: The high-gravity environment here causes tiny crystalline flaws to emerge in the fiber.

"In space, ZBLAN optical fiber can be produced without these crystals, providing superior data-transmission capabilities compared to both Earth-produced ZBLAN and traditional silica-fiber optic lines," Made In Space representatives wrote in a description of the project. "This microgravity-produced fiber has numerous applications, including trans-Atlantic telecommunications, high-speed internet [and] lasers, as well as enhancing technologies in space."

The Made In Space machine will produce at least 330 feet (100 meters) of ZBLAN on this trial run, pulling the material like taffy from heated feedstock material. The fiber will then come back to Earth (aboard the same Dragon that took the feedstock up) for study and characterization, with the aid of project partner Thorlabs, a New Jersey-based company.

If the space-made ZBLAN looks good, Made In Space will aim to sell it, Rush said. And that will be just the beginning.

"We do intend to develop this into a commercial product that we sell in large quantities," he said. "The progression of that will be kind of a step-by-step approach."

Launching raw materials to space is expensive, but ZBLAN is the sort of high-value product that makes on-orbit manufacturing economically feasible, Rush has said. And the company can make a lot of the material from a relatively small launch mass — about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) of fiber per 2.2 lbs. (4 kilograms) of ZBLAN "preform," Rush said during the news conference.

There's a lot of other cool stuff going up on the Dragon tomorrow as well: for example, a super-sensitive space-junk sensor, an experimental new bone adhesive, and an instrument that will measure the amount of energy going into and out of the Earth system with incredible precision.

And the launch itself will be a milestone in SpaceX's quest to develop reusable spaceflight systems, a key priority of the company's founder and CEO, Elon Musk. The Dragon flying tomorrow already has one space mission under its belt, as does the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket that will carry the capsule aloft.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

Output: Made In Space has launched into space a machine that prints optical fibres in orbit. The device, which is about the size of a microwave, was sent towards the International Space Station on board a SpaceX Dragon capsule. If successful, Made In Space's machine will make items good enough to sell on Earth, opening up space to greater commercial and industrial use.


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Amazon Alexa voice purchases up 13.5% this quarter
 The Echo Plus looks premium, and almost identical to the original

Amazon 's Alexa voice technology is helping consumer brands sell more, according to a recent study, underscoring its potential as a major marketing platform.

The study, run by Linc Global and Rakuten, shows that Echo owners increased their purchases of consumer products, like diapers, by 13.5% in the third quarter of 2017, up from the 7.5% jump seen in the second quarter of this year. Those companies also saw an unusually high 60% upsell rate, meaning the consumers bought more products from the same brand after their Echo purchase.

"This study indicates that voice search has a positive impact on sales of standardized products," James Lee, an analyst at Mizuho Securities wrote in a note published Wednesday.

The broader takeaway, according to Lee, is that Alexa's voice technology could turn into a major marketing platform for consumer brands. For example, the note says Pamper diapers could build an Alexa app that recommends re-orders of previous purchases or new products based on past shopping history.

Amazon is also testing a new service that would potentially let customers order products from the consumer brand's Alexa app and pick up at local retailers, according the Mizuho note.

"Alexa's voice platform provides a powerful marketing channel for brands to sell direct," Lee wrote in the note.

Related: If Apple is serious about Siri, it needs to compete on Amazon's turf

Output: Amazon Alexa users bought 13.5% more products using the device's voice technology in Q3 2017 than in Q2, figures show. The figure increased 7.5% in the previous quarter of this year, according to a study by Linc Global and Rakuten. The same companies also showed a surprisingly high 60% upsell rate, with consumers buying more items from the same brand after their initial Echo purchase. The statistic indicates that Alexa could prove a key marketing platform, said James Lee, an analyst at Mizuho Securities.


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Amazon Alexa voice purchases up 13.5% this quarter
 BII

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Echo owners have been increasing their voice purchases of consumer products in Q3 2017, according to a study by Linc Global and Rakuten cited by CNBC.

The study found that Amazon Echo users increased their voice purchases of consumer products, like diapers and paper towels, by nearly 14% in Q3 — much steeper growth than the 7.5% increase in Q2. Moreover, shoppers who bought items through the Echo continued to make additional voice purchases from the same brands, which boosted upsell rates by 60%. However, Amazon offers voice-only deals that may be enticing these shoppers to buy more products.

Voice shopping still has a ways to go before consumers start using it regularly for nonconventional purchases. A separate survey by SAP Hybris found that 28% of voice device owners weren’t confident that their devices could provide them with suitable gift recommendations. Twenty percent of respondents stated that smart speakers are limited because they can't determine the visual quality of products, while 19% felt that speakers require too much guidance to make shopping through them worthwhile.

This means that the shopping experience still isn’t robust or frictionless enough for customers to widely adopt it beyond repeat purchases — customers will likely continue to buy the same household items via voice, for example, because they know the brand and quality of the items they'll receive.

Home devices with a screen — such as the Echo Show — may help increase voice shopping. Providing a screen could help customers better evaluate products if they need to. Additionally, voice assistants could use AI to power product recommendations for voice shoppers, which could help boost purchasing beyond consumer products. Amazon is especially well poised to do this, as it has a surfeit of customer data from its online shoppers, and is known for its product recommendations.

However, Google is also known for its AI capabilities, and retailers could take advantage of a partnership with the company by allowing it to access their customer data. With voice-enabled speakers estimated to be in about 55% of US households by 2022, retailers should be developing strong strategies on this channel now to benefit from the growing adoption of these devices.

A revolution in payments and banking is beginning as virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa gain the abilities of cashiers, personal shoppers, and bank tellers.

Already, Siri can help users make peer-to-peer (P2P) transfers with Venmo, Alexa can pay off Capital One credit card bills, and Google Assistant can let users shop with their voice from nearby stores.

This is just the beginning. Today, 18 million US consumers have made a voice payment, and BI Intelligence projects that figure will quadruple over the next five years.

Dan Van Dyke, senior research analyst for BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has compiled a detailed report on voice payments that:

Shares current and projected adoption of voice payments.

Outlines voice payments and banking integrations on the market.

Examines growth drivers and barriers to consumers' voice payments adoption.

Provides strategies for successfully deploying voice interfaces.

To get the full report, subscribe to an ALL-ACCESS Membership with BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report AND more than 250 other expertly researched deep-dive reports, subscriptions to all of our daily newsletters, and much more. >> Learn More Now

You can also purchase and download the report from our research store.

Output: Amazon Alexa users bought 13.5% more products using the device's voice technology in Q3 2017 than in Q2, figures show. The figure increased 7.5% in the previous quarter of this year, according to a study by Linc Global and Rakuten. The same companies also showed a surprisingly high 60% upsell rate, with consumers buying more items from the same brand after their initial Echo purchase. The statistic indicates that Alexa could prove a key marketing platform, said James Lee, an analyst at Mizuho Securities.


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Nuvo introduces AI-driven robo-adviser
 Nuvo describes itself as an “artificially intelligent digital broker powered by chatbot technology”, offering financial advice through a combination of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and an in-house team of experts.

The FCA-regulated platform uses AI technology to learn about its customers and show them financial products suited to their needs and spending behaviour, positioning itself as something between a financial advisor and a comparison site.

Nuvo charges no fee for usage, and instead makes a profit by charging banks and insurers a commission fee.

According to CEO and co-founder Richard Hayes, Nuvo can field thousands of concurrent conversations and recall user data to avoid repetition when fulfilling new quotes. It also runs regular analysis to ensure customers are always receiving the best deal for their circumstances, providing notifications when users come out of an introductory period or a new price is on offer.

For more complicated products like mortgages, Nuvo has a team of financial experts on board to provide personalised expertise to customers.

The news comes as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanely alum Ramya Joseph launched AI-powered ETFs platform Pefin last week, charging $14 a month with no minimum investment.

Speaking to the FT Adviser, Hayes said: “"It's the advice and understanding that places the customer at the centre of recommendations that is currently missing. Cheapest is not always best for the customer.

“This is where Nuvo comes in, to provide free, impartial advice that ensures customers get the right option for them. Nuvo recommends the right product at the right price."

This article first appeared on http://www.digitalwealth.news/

Output: Cheshire-based start-up Nuvo is offering customers tailored financial advice via a free platform employing artificial intelligence and chatbots. According to CEO Richard Hayes, the platform learns about its customers' habits and requirements using AI, while the chatbot offers a range of tailored financial products. Nuvo is positioning itself somewhere between a robo-adviser and a comparison site, earning revenue through commissions from asset managers and insurers rather than fees paid by customers. Human advisers are also available to discuss more complex issues, according to the firm.