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Proptech course launched by Oxford University Business School
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A new programme by Oxford University’s Said Business School promises to “equip participants with the ability to identify opportunities for disruption in the financial services sector”.

While the course is entitled the “Oxford Fintech Programme”, it dedicates a whole module to ‘Proptech and real estate innovation’.

For industry stalwarts it may seem laughable that proptech can be taught – but with so much money at stake, surely sharing ideas and exploring innovation in a classroom setting (albeit online) could be the way to avoid expensive mistakes.

easyProperty and Countrywide serve as a reminder of how much money can be spent plotting a proptech path.

It looks like the course will focus on generating ideas rather than the typical MBA route of looking at past case studies – of which Purplebricks, Rightmove and Zoopla would be key positive candidates.

Examples of what-not-to-do are often heralded by incumbent voices but nevertheless proptech’s graveyard is littered with many an effort to disrupt estate agency.

My wife gave me this awesome stat: on average a 4-year-old child asks 437 questions a day.

Whether true or not it makes you think that children learn because they ask and explore. How many estate agents think about the future, let alone ask questions about the shape of their services?

Well, for £2,500, agents can take this Oxford University course delivered in partnership with Get Smarter, an online learning platform.

Beyond proptech, the course covers wider fintech topics including marketplaces, the future of money, and regtech (regulation technology).

The core focus is disruption, with the first three modules culminating with ‘Tools for disruptors’.

It makes you think about all the comments at the bottom of EYE articles stating ‘facts’ about property transactions and that ‘outsiders’ with no experience couldn’t possibly succeed.

On the other side of the argument you have venture capitalists citing examples of file sharing and Apple iTunes disrupting the music publishing industry, websites disrupting travel agencies and the upcoming artificial intelligence disruption of legal services.

The best defence for estate agents surely has to be better than tens of years of experience doing what they do.

Estate agents, being perennially at the bottom of trusted profession league tables, haven’t traditionally made a good fight of defending themselves.

While Purplebricks cites Trustpilot scores, traditional high street estate agents display no auditable proof of customer satisfaction.

And yet, surely that is exactly what high street agents have: years of successfully selling homes locally for the best prices.

In producing this data disclosure on a constant basis, it would be fairly easy to point fingers and say a company merely listing on Rightmove can’t possibly offer a comparable service.

Or on the other hand, it might prove the opposite.

In any look to the future, having a better handle on answering questions with irrefutable facts and data would put estate agents in a stronger position when others come along looking to “deduce possible future trends in proptech”.

Details of the Oxford University course can be found here:

Output: Oxford University’s business school has launched an “Oxford Fintech Programme” with a module dedicated to proptech and real estate innovation. The course will be delivered in partnership with Get Smarter, an online learning platform and aims to equip participants with the ability to identify opportunities for disruption in the financial services sector. Alongside proptech, the course will cover wider fintech topics such as marketplaces, the future of money and regulation technology.


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UK homes will have to last 2,000 years at current building rate
 Broken housing market means cost of repairs as steep as new builds

Councils have once again sent warnings about the sluggish rate of housebuilding in England as it was revealed that the average new home will have to last 2,000 years if the current rate of housebuilding and replacement continues.

In new analysis published by the LGA, it was found that due to this lack of new builds, existing homes must house more people and last for longer, leading to the country spending nearly as much on repair and maintenance of existing homes as it does building new ones. In 2016, for example, £27bn was spent repairing existing homes while £35bn was spent on new builds.

The LGA went on to explain that one in 10 new homebuyers are dissatisfied with the quality of their home, and that one in six would not recommend their housebuilder to a friend.

Local authority leaders also raised concern about the private rented sector, where 28% of homes are not in a decent state. Council-run homes, however, are in a better state, with 85% meeting the decent homes standard – a considerable increase from 70% in 2008.

As a result, the LGA once again called for a “national renaissance” in council housebuilding in order to solve the housing shortage and improve the quality of new homes.

“Our country’s failure to build enough homes over the past few decades is putting huge pressure on our existing housing stock,” said Cllr Judith Blake, the association’s housing spokesperson.

“Families are having to spend more on rent or mortgages every month and deserve a decent home that is affordable,” she argued. “But as costs are rising, so is dissatisfaction with the standards of new homes.

“Councils need to be able to ensure quality through the planning system, and to encourage high standards in rented and owned properties across the board.”

She also reiterated calls to the government to enable councils to borrow cash in order build new homes and meet requirements in their area.

“To spark a desperately-needed renaissance in council housebuilding, councils also need to able to borrow to build new homes and keep all receipts from any homes they sell to reinvest in building new homes that are of a good quality and affordable,” Cllr Blake concluded.

Top Image: Duncan Andison

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Output: UK councils have warned that the sluggish rate of housebuilding in the country means that existing homes must house more people and last longer, leading to the country spending nearly as much on repair and maintenance of existing homes as it does on building new ones. In 2016, £27bn ($34.5bn) was spent repairing existing homes while £35bn was spent on new builds. Analysis by the Local Government Association (LGA) revealed that the average new home will have to last 2,000 years if the current rate of housebuilding and replacement continues.


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Regus Soho Estates to offer co-working space in Old Compton Street
 T he property empire built up by the late porn baron Paul Raymond on Thursday unveiled plans to enter the trendy co-working offices market, after profits surged.

Developer Soho Estates has agreed a deal that will allow space at 58 Old Compton Street to be used by budding entrepreneurs. They will pay low rents ahead of the building being redeveloped in around six years’ time.

Boss John James, Raymond’s son-in-law, said: “This will be our first creative hive with shared office space that can be let to London’s fashion, media and tech start-ups at discount rates. We want to support entrepreneurs, particularly as Brexit negotiations get under way.”

The 8500 square feet will be let to entrepreneur Nick Hartwright for a new shared workspace project.

It will be let to him at around £25 per square foot. Typical office rents in Soho are closer to £70 per square foot.

West End redevelopments helped boost the value of the property empire by nearly 40% to £915.9 million in the year to March 31.

Profits jumped to £182.6 million from £83.2 million.

"King of Soho” Raymond died in 2008, leaving a chunk of the estate to granddaughters Fawn and India.

He had amassed swathes of London real estate using profits from magazines such as Razzle. Soho Estates today owns flats, shops, offices and bars.

Output: Developer Soho Estates is expanding into the co-working sector with a deal that allows 58 Old Compton Street, central London to be rented out to entrepreneurs. The company will charge low rents as the building is awaiting redevelopment in about six years' time. The value of Soho Estates's portfolio increased by nearly 30% to £915.9m for the 12 months to 31 March, thanks to £66m of acquisitions and a favourable revaluation of its portfolio. Profits increased to £182.6m from £83.2m.


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Israel army develops AI to predict rocket attacks from Gaza Strip
 The operational research unit of the Military Intelligence Unit — the software unit of the Israeli army’s J6/C4i Directorate’s Lotem Unit — doesn’t look like the kind of place where state-of-the art artificial intelligence is being put to work.

There are no espresso machines, brightly colored couches or views of Tel Aviv from the top floors of an office tower. The unit conducts its work in the backwater of Ramat Gan and has the look and feel of any other army office.

But the unit is engaged in the same kind of AI work that the world’s biggest tech companies, like Google, Facebook and China’s Baidu are doing in a race to apply machine learning to such functions as self-driving cars, analysis of salespeople’s telephone pitches and cybersecurity — or to fight Israel’s next war more intelligently.

Maj. Sefi Cohen, 34, is head of the unit, which in effect makes him the army’s chief data officer. As he explains it, his unit’s mission is to provide soldiers in the field data-based insights with the help of smart tools. “We embed these capabilities in applications that help commanders in the field,” he said.

One example is a system for predicting rocket launches from the Gaza Strip. “After Operation Protective Edge we developed an app that learns from field sensors and other data we collected what are the most likely areas launchers will be set up and at what hours. That enables us to know in advance what will happen and what areas should be attacked in order to fight them more effectively,” he explained.

In one project the unit built a system based on neural networks whose purpose is to extract from a video a suspicious object and describe it in writing. “It won’t replace human observers, but instead of looking at five cameras, it will be able to be responsible for dozens,” said Cohen.

Cohen said the amount of data at his disposal from the army is “endless, reaching into petabytes (one million gigabytes) in some areas. It also makes use of data from outside sources and the apps it develops use open-source code. “We return to the world things that we use, “Cohen says,” Models that are operational obviously do not go out.”

Cohen got his start in combat signals corps. Near the end of his compulsory service he completed a course in Lotem and spent another 10 years at its command and control systems unit. “I’ve always loved algorithms. I was already involved with them in high school and worked in the field. When I saw drafted I wanted to combine the technology with a combat,” he recalls.

Cohen set up the unit he now leads with the help of local high-tech executives. “I convinced my commanders that we could use machine learning in combat, and from there I started to bring in more and more people,” he said. The unit now comprises about 20 officers, all of them in the career army and holding advanced degrees in computer science, focusing on AI.

The unit’s only female member left recently, so for the moment it’s an all-male team. Cohen says most are graduates of the army’s elite Talpiot program; the one who isn’t has a master’s from the Technion Israel Institute of Technology. “Everyone who’s here is the tops. I learn a lot from them,” he said.

Output: Israel’s Military Intelligence subsidiary, the J6/C4i Directorate Lotem Unit, is dedicated to providing soldiers with data-based knowledge gleaned from smart tools. For example, the unit has created software that predicts rocket launches from the Gaza Strip, using the petabytes of information it has garnered from the army’s smart equipment. The unit works in similar artificial intelligence fields to major tech firms such as Google, Baidu and Facebook, but is using machine learning to enable more intelligent warfare and defence.


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Biotech start-ups moving out of US cities due to prices
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(Reuters) — The biotech industry is facing high rents and tight lab space in Boston, New York and San Francisco, forcing companies into the suburbs in a sign the “live, work and play” movement into big cities may have hit a roadblock.

For example, Modern Meadow, a biotech start-up poised to commercially manufacture leather from synthetic animal protein, was looking at a prohibitive $200 million cost to build its own lab in New York City.

Instead, it found existing lab space at the former U.S. headquarters of Swiss drug-maker Roche in Nutley, New Jersey, a scant 12 miles (19 km) from Midtown Manhattan.

Modern Meadow also secured $32.2 million in New Jersey tax credits at ON3, as the former Hoffman-La Roche site has been named by its new owner, Prism Partners.

The start-up’s search for adequate facilities is shared by other biotech firms that are encountering tight lab availability in New York, San Francisco and Boston, which attract the lion’s share of biotech venture capital funding.

Tight spaces, big expectations

Cities, especially those with powerhouse educational institutions that excel in sciences, are attractive to biotech companies because they provide better collaboration and transition from classroom to commercial production.

The issue with lab space in these cities is that real estate is very expensive, both to build and operate, said Andras Forgacs, chief executive of Modern Meadow.

“We don’t have the time and we don’t have the capital to be in the real estate development business in New York City. That’s not what our investors asked for,” said Forgacs, whose firm has raised $53.5 million from Sequoia Capital and Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund Temasek Holdings, among others.

“For start-ups especially it is important to have existing inventory that is virtually move-in ready,” Forgacs said.

His firm plans to spend $20.8 million in new construction and equipment and grow its workforce from more than 60 employees to 263 at the 116-acre ON3, where Prism envisions a mixed-use “streetscape” to replace razed buildings and empty lots.

Biotech labs require costly safety features to isolate dangerous agents, exacerbating existing space and cost constraints.

Exosome Diagnostics moved to Waltham, Massachusetts from Cambridge two weeks ago, a shift that will reduce rent by three to four times, said Dan Baughman, the firm’s marketing director.

“It was a no-brainer. It’s infinitely less expensive,” he said.

Waltham also attracted Dragonfly Therapeutics Inc, which looked at more than 40 sites in Cambridge, where it started in 2015. Demand for space was high and the quality low, said Maura McCarthy, Dragonfly’s director of market development.

The lower cost of housing for employees was a benefit too, she said.

Triple net leases, where the tenant pays taxes, insurance and maintenance, are $78.50 a square foot in Cambridge and drop to $47 in Boston’s inner suburbs, $31 along Route 128 north and west of Boston and then $15 in the outer ring, brokerage Cushman & Wakefield said.

Boston has outpaced the combined number of deals and funding involving pharmaceutical firms in New York, San Francisco and Silicon Valley since 2014, said tech data provider CB Insights.

Funding this year through Wednesday for pharmaceutical firms in Boston is $1.08 billion, compared to the $570.7 million raised for companies in the three other areas.

Urban real estate owners need to understand the burgeoning life sciences industry and be creative when they redevelop sites, said Bill Hartman, a commercial broker at Cushman who helped Modern Meadow relocate.

“For the foreseeable future life science start-ups and R&D organizations requiring labs will have to look far afield with a creative eye,” Hartman said.

(Reporting by Herbert Lash; Editing by Daniel Bases and Paul Simao)

Output: Rising rents and limited lab space are forcing biotech start-ups to move out of US cities and into the suburbs. Modern Meadow, which makes leather from synthetic animal protein, has secured lab space in Nutley, New Jersey, and $32.2m in state tax credits after facing a $200m bill to build in central New York City. Exosome Diagnostics, which aims to deliver biofluid-based diagnostics, relocated to Waltham, Massachusetts from Cambridge, to cut its rent by three to four times.


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Belize coral restoration threatened by tourism and oil
 Just below the surface of the turquoise sea, coral flutters majestically amid schools of puffed up porcupinefish and fluorescent blue and yellow angelfish.

The gangly staghorn and fanning elkhorn corals are thriving in swimming distance of Laughing Bird Caye, a tiny Caribbean sandy islet in southern Belize, thanks to a restoration project that is yielding striking results.

More than 90,000 corals grown in sea nurseries have been planted in shallow reefs, increasing coral cover in these southern warm waters by 35%. Marine creatures are reproducing, and about 90% have survived natural and manmade pressures for almost a decade.

Hailed as the most impressive coral reef restoration effort in the Caribbean, its success is linked to a grassroots movement uniting fisherman, tour guides, scientists and environmentalists working to conserve the 700-mile Mesoamerican Reef (MAR) – the second largest barrier reef in the world.

For the past decade this interconnected reef – which stretches from Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula to the Bay Islands of Honduras – has been monitored by the Healthy Reefs for Healthy People Initiative (HRI). At more than 300 sites in Mexico, Belize, Honduras and Guatemala, scientists measure coral cover, fish stocks and fleshy macroalgae – a nuisance seaweed which competes for space with coral.

And despite the huge threats posed by pollution and climate change, a forthcoming HRI report will reveal steady improvements in the overall health of the MAR. Coral cover has risen from 10% to 17.5% since 2006 – far from great, but much healthier than many other reefs.

“This is a David versus Goliath battle in which we haven’t yet been squashed,” said HRI founder Melanie McField with the Smithsonian Institution. “Working at a targeted local and regional level has helped the MAR hold its own and withstand major threats outside our control.”

But the HRI report, to be published next month, also reveals challenges threatening the reef. In particular, fleshy macroalgae is flourishing at the expense of coral due to rising contamination and dwindling fish stocks.

In Belize – once regarded as a visionary in marine management – the reef is threatened by hotel resorts, inadequate law enforcement and oil extraction.

Unesco declared Belize’s barrier reef system a World Heritage site in 1996. Its diverse ecosystem hosts more than a thousand low-lying islands, the Blue Hole – a pristine 144-metre (472ft) sinkhole surrounded by coral reef – and 1,400 species of flora and fauna.

Conservation is crucial for this tiny central American country, as around half the population, or 180,000 people, depend on tourism from diving, snorkelling and fishing. The reef generates around 15% of Belize’s GDP.

But the unbridled sell-off of cayes within so-called marine protected areas, the destruction of mangroves, overfishing and agricultural runoffs have seriously damaged the Belize reef, which has been on the world heritage danger list since 2009.

Laughing Bird Caye lies 12 miles from the southern tip of the scenic Placencia Peninsula, a long land strip which snakes between the sea and a huge lagoon. The vistas, however, are blighted by densely packed hotels, holiday homes, and half-built lodgings abandoned when foreign investment ran dry.

Visitor numbers have surged in recent years, and the toilets on Laughing Bird Caye cannot always cope, so human waste spills into the sea.

“In a marine protected area in a world heritage site; surely waste management should be a priority,” said marine biologist Lisa Carne from Fragments of Hope, which leads the coral restoration project.

A couple of miles south of the peninsula is Harvest Caye, an island sold to a Norwegian cruise line company which drops off thousands of passengers every month.

The sale went through despite the government’s own guidelines warning against megaprojects in the area. Environmentalists blame increased boat traffic for a spike in manatee deaths.

The supreme court ruled that the environmental impact assessment was flawed and community consultations inadequate. The ruling set an important legal precedent – but came too late to stop the cruise island.

Increasing tourist numbers to Laughing Bird Caye is putting pressure on the tiny island’s sanitation services. Photograph: Nina Lakhani

According to Nadia Bood, the World Wildlife Fund’s reef scientist in Belize, too many tourism projects are approved contrary to environmental regulations.

“We’ve got some good laws, which aren’t implemented, and some very outdated ones, where fines for infractions are too low, and there is too much self-monitoring …to protect the Belize reef system the current development pattern has to change,” she said.

Non-compliance is a recurring theme: in 2009, Belize was praised for laws designed to tackle overfishing. These created no-take and no-fishing zones in biodiversity hot spots and a complete ban on fishing grazers like the brilliantly coloured parrotfish. Grazers eat the fleshy macroalgae, so when numbers decline, so does coral cover.

But the law is not universally enforced.

The central section of the Belize reef is the only MAR zone rated “critical” by HRI, largely on account of dangerously low fish stocks. In the southern reef, which includes Laughing Bird Caye, commercial and grazer fish stocks are twice the regional average as no-fishing rules are better enforced.

But environmentalists fear that Placencia Peninsula is repeating mistakes made on San Pedro town on Ambergris Caye – widely regarded as an example of how not to develop.

Reached by ferry from Belize City, San Pedro has morphed from a sleepy fishing village into the country’s most popular tourist destination where holidaymakers descend to dive, snorkel, fly fish and party. There are no cars on the island, but the grumble of golf buggies is loud and constant.

Visitors produce too much rubbish and waste for the island’s inadequate infrastructure to handle. Consequently, a third of the reef here is covered in fleshy macroalgae – the worst rate in the MAR; cover coral is only 12%.

San Pedro also illustrates another dangerous consequence of unchecked development: mangrove destruction.

Mangroves, coastline woody shrubs and miniature trees, are complex ecosystems in their own right and vital for healthy reefs. The long snaky roots support and buffer sandy shores, and act as giant nurseries for young fish.

Almost no mangroves remain around San Pedro as developers cull the amphibious forests to leave sandy beaches. The island is fenced by artificial sea walls, rebuilt increasingly higher to try shield it from big waves.

New regulations promised in March to restrict mangrove clearance on private and public lands promised have yet to appear.

“Development has gone way beyond the island’s capacity,” said Billy Leslie, president of national tour guides association. “The government either doesn’t have the right experts, or the experts are telling them what they want to hear.”

The MAR last suffered a major bleaching event in 1998, but it remains a constant threat. In addition, a new, potentially catastrophic threat hovers over Belize: oil.

In 2015, leaked documents revealed that offshore oil exploration licences affecting several marine protected areas were secretly issued a few years earlier.

The government subsequently promised to introduce a ban protecting the Unesco site and a 1km buffer around the reef, a proposal widely derided as unworkable given it would only cover a seventh of the sea. The closest clean-up equipment in Jamaica would take three days to reach an oil spill here.

But even this half-hearted ban hasn’t been implemented; the temporary moratorium could be lifted at any moment.

“Oil and healthy reefs are not compatible,” said McField from HRI. “A spill would be an onslaught on conservation and restoration efforts, the risk is so not worth it.”

For more information on the reef condition in Belize look for the upcoming 2017 Mesoamerican Reef Report Card at www.healthyreefs.org in late September

Output: A coral reef restoration off the Caribbean island of Belize is under threat due to oil extraction, tourism and poor law enforcement. The reef was declared a Unesco World Heritage site in 1996, and 15% of the country’s GDP derives from the organic structure. However, the sale of caves within marine protected areas, overfishing and agricultural waste have been responsible for damage which saw the reef added to the world heritage danger list in 2009. A report next month from the Healthy Reefs for Healthy People Initiative will show that rising contamination and falling fish stocks are threatening the coral.


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Faketoken malware reported to be targeting ride-hailing services
 Trojan “Faketoken” has resurfaced which is able to steal credentials from popular taxi applications and ride-sharing apps. Trojan “Faketoken” has resurfaced which is able to steal credentials from popular taxi applications and ride-sharing apps.

A new modification of notorious mobile banking Trojan “Faketoken” has resurfaced which is able to steal credentials from popular taxi applications and ride-sharing apps, Moscow-based cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab said on Friday.

“The new version of ‘Faketoken’ performs live tracking of apps and, when the user runs a specified app, overlays this with its phishing window to steal the bank card details of the victim,” Kaspersky Lab said in a statement.

The trojan virus has an identical interface, with the same colour schemes and logos, which creates an instant and completely invisible overlay.

Output: Trojan virus Faketoken is exploiting ride-hailing and ride-sharing apps to steal the credentials of some Russian users, Moscow-based cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab has said. The trojan overlays a phishing window on certain live apps and then records a user's keystrokes. The modification steals incoming SMS messages, such as one-time verification passwords sent by a bank, by redirecting them to its command and control servers. Kaspersky's researchers have also found Faketoken attacks on travel and hotel booking apps, Android Pay and Google Play Market.


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CMS' olefins separation tech uses less energy
 Compact Membrane Systems (CMS) has unveiled Optiperm™, a membrane-based olefin paraffin separation technology, with a pilot system at the Delaware City Refining Company site in Delaware City, Delaware, US.

CMS claims that the technology represents a significant step in improving the way plastics and chemical precursors are produced and separated, saving energy and creating less waste.

The aim of the technology is to enable refiners and petrochemical companies to separate and concentrate olefins, and achieve significant return on investment (ROI) by removing bottlenecks, eliminating waste, and creating new value from existing streams, all while capturing energy savings and reducing carbon footprint.

CMS is working in collaboration with DCRC to test and demonstrate this new technology. DCRC has agreed to host CMS' Optiperm Technology Test at the Delaware City Refinery as part of DCRC's ongoing support of the Delawarebusiness community.

Output: Industrial materials company Compact Membrane Systems has unveiled a way to separate and concentrate olefins that it says represents a significant step in improving the way plastics and chemical precursors are produced and separated, saving energy and creating less waste. A pilot of the system is in use at the Delaware Refining Company site in Delaware City in the US.


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Researchers develop new material for membrane in carbon capture
 Some 5,000 years ago when the people of ancient Mesopotamia discovered that smelting tin and copper could produce a material better than either alone, it was the start of a new historical era.

Metals too soft for any practical purpose could now be transformed into a material both malleable when hot and hard when cooled. Animal bones and chipped flint were quickly replaced by new tools and weapons, and the Bronze Age was born.

It’s a discovery that Easan Sivaniah, researcher at Kyoto University’s Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (ICEMS) cannot help but mention when he discusses his work in the carbon capture and storage (CCS) field.

The carbon super filter

Using nano-sized additives – pioneered by Japanese scientist Susumu Kitagawa – and a polymer called PIM-1, Sivaniah’s research team has developed new ‘super filters’ which he claims could make CCS more affordable and more selective than ever before.

“Like the Mesopotamians, we’ve taken two materials which by themselves are okay but together create a much more powerful combination,” he says.

These super filters differ from the ones commonly used in CCS to separate CO 2 from other gases produced during the combustion process. “You could just capture everything and stick it underground,” Sivaniah explains, “but that would mean putting 80% nitrogen beneath the surface, which is pointless. What you want is a technology that can purify carbon dioxide by up to 100%.”

“Like the Mesopotamians, we’ve taken two materials which by themselves are okay but together create a much more powerful combination.”

In current CCS technology, “the filters are so slow”, Sivaniah says, “which means you need to have a lot of them and a large area in order to deal with the amount of gas that is coming out of the power station. You are talking about millions of meters squared of filter area.”

Instead of simply adding more filters, Sivaniah says the industry should use one that is much quicker. “Let’s say you want to make a cup of coffee for yourself,” he says, as an example. “If you have a coffee filter and you boil the hot water, you have a cup. But let’s say you want to make a cup for ten people. Now you have a choice. You can either get ten filters that all work at the same speed. This will increase your cost by ten. Or you can get one filter which is ten times faster and makes ten cups of coffee in the same amount of time.”

The new membrane Sivaniah and his team have created promises to drastically speed up the CCS process without compromising the filter’s ability to separate materials. “With most filters, the faster something goes through a material the less good it is at separating stuff out,” he explains. “What we’ve got is a fast material that can deal with a lot of gas at the same time, but that is still good enough to separate carbon dioxide from nitrogen.”

Capturing carbon dioxide on the cheap

The key advantage of this, Siavana adds, is cost. “If you can make your filter ten times or a hundred times faster, that means you don’t need a million meters squared. You need one hundred thousand meters squared, for example. This means you can cut the cost down by a factor of ten just by using a faster sheet of material.”

As things stand, expense is a major factor turning people away from CCS, and from several aspects. “In the average-sized power station, which is roughly about 1,000MW, a single stripping unit is going to cost about $2bn,” Siavana says. “If you times that by all the power stations in the world, what you end up with is a number that is something like half of the gross domestic product of the entire world.”

This money, Siavana continues, is being used to glean a by-product that companies can’t even sell. “You are talking about absorbing or cleaning up a material that nobody actually wants,” he says. “It’s not like you are cleaning the water of gold particles which you can sell on somewhere. There is a cost involved but you don’t get a direct payback as a company.

Additionally, consumers don’t want their energy bills to rise. “When you spend more on getting this carbon dioxide out you are increasing the price of electricity,” he says, adding that, “Consumers obviously don’t want to see the price of their electricity go up however much they want to see a reduction in CO 2 .”

Overcoming the ‘Valley of Death’

Put together, these challenges have led many CCS projects into the dreaded ‘Valley of Death’ over the past two to three decades. “There was a recent article in Nature Energy which looked at the history of CCS,” says Siavana. “The conclusion was that there was a lot of enthusiasm for this stuff. People built their pilot facilities and spent a lot of money. But it never panned out. Everything would get so far but never be implemented to the next level.”

Past failures carrying hefty price tags are creating scepticism over CCS technologies and, while Siavana is confident that his team has an answer to affordable CCS, he accepts that this will mean fighting the growing caution. “You have an experience factor where people say ‘we’ve done this and it didn’t work and we’re not prepared to try it again with a different technology’. People’s fingers have been burnt on this.”

Still, while the market may be hesitant for now, Siavana will not be deterred, and as the research team prepares to test this new matrix membrane in the real world, he makes a final clear assertion: “I’m going to set up my own company and make sure it happens.”

Output: Scientists from Kyoto University, London's Imperial College and City University of Hong Kong have developed a mixed matrix membrane that can make carbon capture and storage (CCS) more affordable. The scientists used nano-sized additives and a polymer called PIM-1 to construct filters that they claim could make CCS more selective, bringing down its cost.


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Small-scale solar to displace $2bn of US generation by 2025
 This article first appeared on the BNEF mobile app and the Bloomberg Terminal.

Solar on U.S. homes and businesses will grow 10% a year

Ratio of small-scale solar and battery capacity to total installed capacity

Source: Bloomberg New Energy Finance

By 2025, over $2 billion worth of U.S. electricity production will change hands from traditional generators to small-scale generation assets. Worldwide, the small-scale solar photovoltaic capacity operated by homes and businesses is predicted to grow consistently as depicted by Bloomberg New Energy Finance in the New Energy Outlook 2017. In countries like the U.S. which face stagnant electricity demand growth, the growth in distributed electricity production will take sales from generators in the wholesale markets and regulated power regions.

Clients can access the full report here.

BNEF Shorts are research excerpts available only on the BNEF mobile app and the Bloomberg Terminal, highlighting key findings from our reports. If you would like to learn more about our services, please contact us.

Output: US energy production worth $2bn is predicted to transfer from traditional sources to small-scale solar generators in homes and businesses by 2025. The lack of growth in overall energy demand in the US and other countries means the increase in distributed electricity production will be at the expense of wholesale markets, according to the projection by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Small-scale solar energy capacity is also projected to grow consistently across the rest of the world.


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JPay offers educational rehabilitation within US prison system
 Education has proven to be the key to rehabilitating incarcerated individuals and reducing recidivism, and the first tablet-based education initiative within the correctional system is reporting that it’s been a great success.

Corrections-related service provider JPay has seen more than 70,400 inmates enroll and over 32,000 college credits earned through its unique digital prison education program Lantern since it was launched in early 2016.

Lantern offers college credits for incarcerated individuals through the use of tablets to provide them with “the opportunity for educational attainment, creating a better chance of success upon release, thereby reducing recidivism,” the company says.

Currently in prison facilities in Georgia, Ohio, Louisiana, and West Virginia, more than four million education course files have been downloaded onto JPay tablets, which is a subsidiary of Securus Technologies, a US-based prison technology company. JPay offers three tablet size options: seven inches, 4.3 inches (which is designed and priced for inmate ownership), and 10 inches.

“We believe education is the key to rehabilitation and post-release success. So when we realized we could leverage our extensive network to dramatically expand access to education, it was a no-brainer – we had to pursue it,” Errol Feldman, CEO of JPay, says in an Aug. 16 press release. “And while the program’s success to date has been gratifying, our goal is to extend the digital education revolution to the entire incarcerated population.”

Within the Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC), for example, Lantern has contributed to a 456 per cent increase in graduation rates. The GDC was the first to implement a state-wide digital education initiative using Lantern, giving JPay tablets to more than 50,000 incarcerated individuals. The organization has seen its inmate population in 44 facilities access more than 100 GED prep courses.

And in Ohio, the first three inmates to earn their associate’s degree recently graduated this year from the state’s Ashland University using the Lantern platform.

“JPay’s Lantern created digital education opportunities that never existed,” says Jerry McGlone, interim director of the Gill Center at Ashland University. “Leveraging a virtual classroom platform, thousands of incarcerated students have taken basic courses, earned college credits and received college degrees. These students have real hope and can even continue their education with Ashland University once released, an invaluable advantage in the reentry process. We couldn’t have reached these milestones without a transformative program such as Lantern.”

Output: Technology company JPay, which specialises in services to the US prison system, has reported successful results for its digital education initiative for inmates. The Lantern programme was launched in 2016 and provides education courses that can be downloaded onto the company's own tablet devices. Over 70,000 prisoners have enrolled in the courses, earning more than 32,000 college credits, with more than four million course files downloaded. The programme is aimed at reducing reoffending rates by increasing opportunities for prisoners upon release.


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HelioBioSys patents biofuel-producing single cell organisms
 LIVERMORE, Calif.--You might not cook with this sugar, but from a biofuels standpoint, it's pretty sweet. A Bay Area company has patented a group of three single-celled, algae-like organisms that, when grown together, can produce high quantities of sugar just right for making biofuels. Sandia National Laboratories is helping HelioBioSys Inc. learn whether farming them on a large scale would be successful.

The demand for clean, domestically produced, renewable energy has resulted in a lot of research on algae. Algae is a desirable biofuel source because it doesn't compete with food crops for land, water or other resources. The water used to grow algae is not usually suitable for agriculture. Typically, algae farms aim to produce large quantities of biomass, so they can then be harvested and converted into fuels, chemicals or other bio-based products.

By contrast, HelioBioSys is working with organisms called cyanobacteria. Until the early 1900s, they were mistaken for algae. Like algae, colonies of cyanobacteria grow in water and have incorrectly been referred to as "blue-green algae." But unlike algae, these marine cyanobacteria excrete sugars directly into the water where they grow. A lot of it.

According to Sandia biochemist Ryan Davis, a typical algae operation might grow 1 gram of biomass per liter (0.04 ounces per quarter gallon). Small-scale testing on these cyanobacteria shows they can produce 4 to 7 grams of sugar per liter of biomass (up to 0.25 ounces per quarter gallon) -- an improvement in concentration of up to 700 percent. Therefore, growing cyanobacteria for sugars is more efficient than growing biomass.

Filtering sugar from water is a much simpler and therefore less expensive process than extracting lipids from large quantities of algae mass. Sugar is easy, compared to biomass, to convert into a wide variety of chemicals and fuels. Furthermore, cyanobacteria do not require additional fertilizer to make their sugars. These cost savings could make biofuels competitive with petroleum.

But first, this group of cyanobacteria's phenomenal sugar production needs to be better understood so it can be maximized. "In other words," Davis explains, "we're trying to deconstruct the magic sauce in this cyanobacteria consortium and learn what conditions are optimal for large-scale growth."

From the lab to large-scale farming in Sandia's open raceway test beds

HelioBioSys founders Rocco Mancinelli and David Smernoff say they chose to grow a community of three cyanobacteria rather than focus on a single organism (which is common in algae cultivation) because communal systems more closely resemble nature. Mancinelli and Smernoff say cyanobacteria in communities are stronger and more likely to survive changes in the environment, contamination and predation. Sandia is helping them test this idea.

The cyanobacteria have already proved successful in closed, controlled, sterile laboratories. Sandia researchers are now growing the cyanobacteria in large raceway systems that resemble long bath tubs. Though the raceways are indoors they are open to the air, so predation could prove a much bigger challenge.

Davis explains, "Giant bowls of sugar water generally don't last long in nature." However, this is where Sandia's expertise in algae cultivation could be helpful, he said. "We can understand where we can prevent bacterial overload, and stop the sugars from being consumed by things we don't want to grow."

Unlike true algae, cyanobacteria have the remarkable ability to "fix" nitrogen from the atmosphere, which helps support their growth. This means cyanobacteria can literally pull their own fertilizer out of the air, eliminating the need for costly additional fertilizers.

Davis and his team are trying to understand whether each of the three cyanobacteria primarily performs a specific function for the consortium, such as fixing the nitrogen or producing most of the sugars. Even though the cyanobacteria require sunlight for growth, Davis thinks one of the cyanobacteria could be primarily responsible for acting like a sunscreen, protecting the group against light levels that get too high.

Sandia also is evaluating other attributes, such as micronutrient requirements or whether there are certain triggers for sugar production that could be controlled.

If the work at Sandia is successful, the next step is to test the cyanobacteria outdoors in larger ponds. After proving the technology outdoors, HelioBioSys hopes to license or sell the technology.

Special Department of Energy program makes collaboration possible

Mancinelli and Smernoff are both microbiologists with unusual backgrounds. They were colleagues at NASA, where they worked on systems that could support human life extraterrestrially. With HelioBioSys, they're now working on clean energy systems that could have positive environmental impacts that support human life here on Earth.

Despite their impressive history and mission, they say that without the Department of Energy's Small Business Vouchers program, getting cyanobacteria-based sugars to market would be unlikely. "Raising the funds for us to do the research that Sandia can do, with their equipment and facilities and expertise, would otherwise be impossible," Smernoff said. "So to have this program and let a small company like ours access those resources is invaluable."

As a result of the program, HelioBioSys has also partnered with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The laboratory has agreed to deploy their tangential flow filtration unit in Sandia's test beds. The unit is essentially a box with a porous membrane that only allows molecules of a certain size to pass through it. This will allow Sandia to quickly separate and extract sugars from the marine water.

Additionally, the Berkeley laboratory is studying the viability of these sugars for conversion to biofuels. In addition to biofuels, sugars produced by marine cyanobacteria have the potential to be used as the source material for a long list of products that are currently derived from petroleum. These include plastics, pharmaceuticals, fabrics, nylon, adhesives, shoe polish, asphalt, roof shingles and more.

As this project draws to a close by year's end, the country could be closer to a sweet future powered by the oldest of microorganisms.

###

Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory operated by National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration. Sandia Labs has major research and development responsibilities in nuclear deterrence, global security, defense, energy technologies and economic competitiveness, with main facilities in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Livermore, California.

Output: California-based company HelioBioSys has patented a cluster of three individual single-celled organisms. These cyanobacteria produce high quantities of sugar suitable for creating biofuels when cultivated together. Sandia National Laboratories is now working with HelioBioSys to help scale up production. Although the cyanobacteria have thrived in controlled environments, Sandia researchers are testing their hardiness in large open-air systems.


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Samsung develops Relúmĭno AR for the visually impaired
 If Samsung Electronics has anything to say about it, those with visual impairments will soon be able to use their smartphones to make things a bit clearer. Samsung is launching Relúmĭno, a visual aid application that works in conjunction with the Gear VR.

The app processes images from videos projected through the rear camera of a smartphone, and makes the images a little more friendly for the visually impaired. Specifically, its major features include magnifying and minimizing the image; highlighting the image outline; adjusting color contrast and brightness; reversing color; and screen color filtering.

The end effect is that Relúmĭno enables visually challenged people to see images more clearly when they are reading a book or viewing an object.

“Relúmĭno will be the life-changer for 240 million of the visually impaired people around the world and we promise a firm and continuing support,” said Jaiil Lee, vice president and head of the Creativity and Innovation Center at Samsung, in a statement.

For those suffering from a blind spot in their vision, or tunnel vision -- the loss of peripheral vision with the retention of central vision -- Relúmĭno works by remapping unseen images and placing them in the parts of the eye capable of seeing them.

When users set the sizes of a blind spot or tunnel vision for the first use, the app automatically places the blind point in the visible surrounding parts and puts images within the “tunnel,” or visible range, thereby helping users who have a visual field defect to see things better. Other visual aids offer similar quality, but Samsung is promising that Relúmĭno will be far less expensive that the competition.

Selected as a C-Lab project last May, Relúmĭno was first designed to help the visually impaired enjoy daily activities such as watching TV and reading books. (C-Lab is a startup business program that nurtures a creative corporate culture and innovative ideas among Samsung employees.) While most C-Lab projects are completed within a year, Relúmĭno will be an ongoing project of sorts, with plans to develop glasses-like products that are perhaps a bit more subtle.

In Latin, “Relúmĭno” means “light up again.”

Output: Samsung is to launch a visual aid application that works in conjunction with its virtual reality headset Gear VR to help those with visual impairments see more clearly. The Relúmĭno app processes images from videos projected through the rear camera of a smartphone, with its major features including magnifying and minimising images, highlighting image outline, adjusting contrast and brightness, reversing colour, and screen colour filtering. It can also fill in users' blind spots. “Relúmĭno will be the life-changer for 240 million visually impaired people around the world,” commented Jaiil Lee, the head of the Creativity and Innovation Center at Samsung.


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Syngenta exporting toxic pesticide to poor countries from UK
 A highly toxic weedkiller not authorised for use in the EU is being exported to developing countries from a UK factory.

Paraquat, a pesticide so lethal that a single sip can be fatal, has caused thousands of accidental deaths and suicides globally, and was outlawed by EU states in 2007.

But Swiss pesticide manufacturer Syngenta is exporting thousands of tonnes of the substance to other parts of the world from an industrial plant in Huddersfield.

Campaigners have condemned the practice as an “astonishing double standard”, while a UN expert said it was deeply disquieting that the human rights implications of producing a substance for export that is not authorised in the EU were being ignored.

“The fact that the EU has decided to ban the pesticide for health and environmental reasons, but they still export it to countries with far weaker regulation and far weaker controls, is shocking to me,” said Baskut Tuncak, the UN special rapporteur on toxic wastes.

Syngenta is responsible for 95% of Europe’s exports of paraquat, which it sells under the brand name Gramoxone. The substance can be absorbed through the skin and has been linked with Parkinson’s disease.

Syngenta has exported 122,831 tonnes of paraquat from the UK since 2015, an average of 41,000 tonnes a year, according to export licensing data analysed by the Swiss NGO Public Eye and shared with the Guardian.

Since 2015, when a facility in Belgium stopped exporting paraquat, all EU exports of the pesticide have come from Syngenta’s UK base, according to Public Eye.

Almost two-thirds of these exports by volume – 62% – go to poor countries, including Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, Guatemala, Venezuela and India. A further 35% is exported to the US, where paraquat can only be applied by licensed users.

Syngenta has been manufacturing paraquat at its Huddersfield plant for two decades. In 2014, the company was fined £200,000 after more than three tonnes of the chemical was spilled in an industrial accident.

A Syngenta spokesman described the Huddersfield spill as a source of regret, but pointed out that nobody had been injured and said there had been no risk to the environment or public.

To subject countries to pesticides known to cause major health damage or fatality is a clear human rights violation Laurent Gaberell, Public Eye

“Paraquat has for half a century been among the world’s most effective and environmentally beneficial herbicides,” said the spokesman. “It has helped millions of farmers stay productive and competitive.”

He added that the herbicide is authorised for use in countries with “some of the most demanding regulatory systems”, including the US, Australia and Japan.

But Tuncak called for tighter controls on the pesticide, which he said is most widely used in developing countries.

“The impact is often felt outside the countries where companies implicated are headquartered,” Tuncak said. “It’s a double standard and an example of the need for global controls.“While the UK has played a leading role in tackling modern slavery, it has turned a blind eye to the human rights impacts of UK business regarding their toxic supply and value chains.”Laurent Gaberell of Public Eye said: “Paraquat causes thousands of poisonings every year in developing countries. The UK bears an enormous responsibility … To subject individuals of other countries to pesticides known to cause major health damage or fatality is a clear human rights violation.”

Nick Mole of the Pesticide Action Network described the practice of exporting chemicals deemed too dangerous to be used within the EU as an “astonishing double standard”.

The EU is not the only region vulnerable to such accusations: China, the world’s largest producer, is in the process of phasing out its use, Mole said.

“There’s no reason for it to carry on whatsoever,” he added. “It’s a massive failing in the regulatory system: if a pesticide is banned, it shouldn’t be exported for use in other countries.”

The industry argues that paraquat is among the most effective herbicides, has few alternatives, and is safe providing it is used properly.

But Mole said: “There are plenty of real alternatives – otherwise we wouldn’t have phased it out in the EU. People can do without it, but it might dent the profits of Syngenta, and they will fight tooth and nail for those profits.”

The Syngenta spokesman argued that paraquat was not banned by the EU, but said its registration for use in the bloc was annulled by a 2007 European court of justice ruling. “Neither the decision, nor the commission’s interpretation of it, constituted a ban,” he said. “The court was not qualified or empowered to – and did not – reach any conclusion that paraquat was inherently unsafe or dangerous.”

The ruling found that a 2003 decision to permit the use of paraquat did not “satisfy the requirement of protection of human and animal health”.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Farming and Rural Affairs said the UK is a signatory to the Rotterdam convention, which regulates transfers and labelling of pesticides and other hazardous chemicals.

“The UK supports global action on hazardous substances which meet the scientific criteria for listing under the Rotterdam convention such as paraquat dichloride,” she said.

Other countries are understood to have blocked the proposal.

Output: Syngenta, the Swiss pesticide firm, is exporting thousands of tonnes of highly toxic weedkiller paraquat, which was banned in the EU in 2007, to developing countries from an industrial plant in the UK. Paraquat, also known by brand name Gramoxone, has been responsible for thousands of accidental deaths and suicides across the world. According to Swiss NGO Public Eye, Syngenta, which is responsible for 95% of Europe’s paraquat exports, has exported 122,831 tonnes of the weedkiller from the UK since 2015. Almost two thirds of the exports go to developing countries, including Brazil, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Mexico and Venezuela.


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Hackers targeting e-wallets using stolen phone numbers
 NEW YORK (NYTIMES) - Hackers have discovered that one of the most central elements of online security - the mobile phone number - is also one of the easiest to steal.

In a growing number of online attacks, hackers have been calling up Verizon, T-Mobile US, Sprint and AT&T and asking them to transfer control of a victim's phone number to a device under the control of the hackers.

Once they get control of the phone number, they can reset the passwords on every account that uses the phone number as a security backup - as services like Google, Twitter and Facebook suggest.

"My iPad restarted, my phone restarted and my computer restarted, and that's when I got the cold sweat and was like, 'OK, this is really serious,'" said Mr Chris Burniske, a virtual currency investor who lost control of his phone number late last year.

A wide array of people have complained about being successfully targeted by this sort of attack, including a Black Lives Matter activist and the chief technologist of the Federal Trade Commission.

The commission's own data shows that the number of phone hijackings has been rising. In January 2013, there were 1,038 such incidents reported; by January 2016, that number had increased to 2,658.

But a particularly concentrated wave of attacks has hit those with the most obviously valuable online accounts: virtual currency fanatics like Mr Burniske.

Within minutes of getting control of Mr Burniske's phone, his attackers had changed the password on his virtual currency wallet and drained the contents - some US$150,000 (S$204,120) at today's values.

Most victims of these attacks in the virtual currency community have not wanted to acknowledge it publicly for fear of provoking their adversaries. But in interviews, dozens of prominent people in the industry acknowledged that they had been victimised in recent months.

"Everybody I know in the cryptocurrency space has gotten their phone number stolen," said bitcoin entrepreneur Joby Weeks.

Mr Weeks lost his phone number and about US$1 million worth of virtual currency late last year, despite having asked his mobile phone provider for additional security after his wife and parents lost control of their phone numbers.

The attackers appear to be focusing on anyone who talks on social media about owning virtual currencies or anyone who is known to invest in virtual currency companies, such as venture capitalists. And virtual currency transactions are designed to be irreversible.

Accounts with banks and brokerage firms and the like are not as vulnerable to these attacks because these institutions can usually reverse unintended or malicious transactions if they are caught within a few days.

But the attacks are exposing a vulnerability that could be exploited against almost anyone with valuable emails or other digital files - including politicians, activists and journalists.

Last year, hackers took over the Twitter account of Mr DeRay Mckesson, a leader of the Black Lives Matter movement, by first getting his phone number.

In a number of cases involving digital money aficionados, the attackers have held e-mail files for ransom - threatening to release naked pictures in one case, and details of a victim's sexual fetishes in another.

The vulnerability of even sophisticated programmers and security experts to these attacks sets an unsettling precedent for when the assailants go after less technologically savvy victims. S

Security experts worry that these types of attacks will become more widespread if mobile phone operators do not make significant changes to their security procedures.

"It's really highlighting the insecurity of using any kind of telephone-based security," said Mr Michael Perklin, chief information security officer at the virtual currency exchange ShapeShift, which has seen many of its employees and customers attacked.

Mobile phone carriers have said they are taking steps to head off the attacks by making it possible to add more complex personal identification numbers, or PINs, to accounts, among other steps.

But these measures have not been enough to stop the spread and success of the culprits.

After a first wave of phone porting attacks on the virtual currency community last winter, which was reported by Forbes, their frequency appears to have ticked up, Mr Perklin and other security experts said.

In several recent cases, the hackers have commandeered phone numbers even when the victims knew they were under attack and alerted their mobile phone provider.

Mr Adam Pokornicky, a managing partner at Cryptochain Capital, asked Verizon to put extra security measures on his account after he learned that an attacker had called in 13 times trying to move his number to a new phone.

But just a day later, he said, the attacker persuaded a different Verizon agent to change his number without requiring the new PIN.

A spokesman for Verizon, Mr Richard Young, said that the company could not comment on specific cases, but that phone porting was not common.

"While we work diligently to ensure customer accounts remain secure, on occasion there are instances where automated processes or human performance falls short," he said. "We strive to correct these issues quickly and look for additional ways to improve security."

Mr Perklin and other people who have investigated recent hacks said the assailants generally succeeded by delivering sob stories about an emergency that required the phone number to be moved to a new device - and by trying multiple times until a gullible agent was found.

"These guys will sit and call 600 times before they get through and get an agent on the line that's an idiot," Mr Weeks said.

Coinbase, one of the most widely used bitcoin wallets, has encouraged customers to disconnect their mobile phones from their Coinbase accounts.

But some customers who have lost money have said the companies need to take more steps by doing things like delaying transfers from accounts on which the password was recently changed.

"Coinbase looks like a bank, stores millions of dollars like a bank, but you don't realise how weak its default protections are until you are robbed of thousands of dollars in minutes," said virtual reality developer Cody Brown, who was hacked in May.

Output: Hackers are stealing phone numbers to gain access to victims' e-wallets. By phoning banks and duping call agents into transferring control of a victim's phone number to their device, hackers are able to reset passwords on any account that uses a phone number as a security backup. Hackers target those who reveal that they own virtual currencies on social media and known investors to virtual currency companies. Bitcoin wallet Coinbase has advised customers disconnect their mobile phones from their Coinbase accounts.


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UK edtech Sumdog eyes US expansion of its game-based learning
 Whether you're a public sector partner who wants to help local businesses, or a private sector organisation with valuable experience to share, we can help you make a real difference.

We don’t operate a one-size-fits-all solution. Talk to us about your objectives and we'll tailor our support to suit your needs.

Output: Edinburgh-based edtech firm Sumdog is looking to expand its services, having raised £1.4m ($1.8m) in funding. Sumdog's gamified programme has helped three million children in the UK and the US boost their performance in maths and English. Having secured the funding from Nesta Impact Investments and the Scottish Investment Bank, the firm hopes to have helped 15 million children by 2022.


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Scientists develop more accurate liquid biopsy technique
 A collaborative project between scientists in the U.S., Denmark, and The Netherlands has developed a way of spotting bits of DNA in blood that derive from tumors deep in the body. The technology may allow for early detection of cancers before any symptoms arise and earlier than any other existing approach.

Though the fact that tumors shed chunks of DNA has been well known, it’s been difficult to know what mutations to look for in individual patients. False positives can be much too common if one doesn’t look specifically for tumor-related mutations, as benign mutations are way too frequent.

The team employed a technique called targeted error correction sequencing that scanned through lots of DNA fragments in the blood of a couple hundred individuals with and without cancer. It’s able to figure out which mutations are more probable to be associated with a cell being cancerous and which will probably not cause out of control cellular growth. The investigators were able to identify 62% of 138 patients with stage I and II breast, lung, ovarian, and colorectal cancers.

Though this capability would be much welcome in the clinic, the sequencing and computational requirements to do so are still much too expensive for wide adoption and the technique still has to be proven in wider studies. Nevertheless, the cost of sequencing and computing continues to drop rapidly.

Here are some of the findings from the study published in Science Translational Medicine:

“[A]mong 42 people with colorectal cancer, the test correctly predicted cancer in half of the eight patients with stage I disease, eight of nine (89 percent) with stage II disease, nine of 10 (90 percent) with stage III and 14 of 15 (93 percent) with stage IV disease. Of 71 people with lung cancer, the scientists’ test identified cancer among 13 of 29 (45 percent) with stage I disease, 23 of 32 (72 percent) with stage II disease, three of four (75 percent) with stage III disease and five of six (83 percent) with stage IV cancer. For 42 patients with ovarian cancer, 16 of 24 (67 percent) with stage I disease were correctly identified, as well as three of four (75 percent) with stage II disease, six of eight (75 percent) with stage III cancer and five of six (83 percent) with stage IV disease. Among 45 breast cancer patients, the test spotted cancer-derived mutations in two of three (67 percent) patients with stage I disease, 17 of 29 (59 percent) with stage II disease and six of 13 (46 percent) with stage III cancers.”

Study in Science Translational Medicine: Direct detection of early-stage cancers using circulating tumor DNA…

Via: Johns Hopkin…

Output: Researchers have developed a technique to identify cancers by detecting mutated strands of DNA. Scientists from the US, Denmark and the Netherlands developed the screening process, known as targeted error correction sequencing, which scans DNA fragments in the blood of patients and works out which mutations are likely to cause cancerous growth. In the team's experiments, the test identified 62% of 138 patients with stage I and II breast, lung, ovarian and colorectal cancers. However, the technique is currently too expensive to be adopted widely and has yet to be proven in wider studies.


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There's an unforeseen benefit to California's physician-assisted death law
 California’s physician-assisted death law has an unforeseen benefit. (Aug. 21, 2017) (Sign up for our free video newsletter here http://bit.ly/2n6VKPR)

Some doctors in California felt uncomfortable last year when a new law began allowing terminally ill patients to request lethal medicines, saying their careers had been dedicated to saving lives, not ending them.

Many healthcare systems designed protocols for screening people who say they’re interested in physician-assisted death, including some that were meant to dissuade patients from taking up the option.

But physicians across the state say the conversations that health workers are having with patients are leading to patients’ fears and needs around dying being addressed better than ever before. They say the law has improved medical care for sick patients, even those who don’t take advantage of it.

“One doctor said we should be able to order the End of Life Option Act without the drugs,” said Dr. Neil Wenger, director of the UCLA Health Ethics Center. “It really has created a new standard for how we ought to be helping people at the end of life.”

California last year became the fifth state to allow people with terminal illnesses to request pills from their doctors to end their lives. In the first six months the law was in effect, 111 terminally ill patients ended their lives that way, state officials said.

The law requires that two doctors agree that the patient has an incurable illness with no more than six months to live and has the mental capacity to make such a decision. Many health systems set up additional protocols for patients who express interest in the law.

Anne Coscarelli, clinical psychologist and director of Simms/Mann-UCLA Center for Integrative Oncology, heads the team of health workers that meets with patients seeking medicines to end their lives. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times) (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

At UCLA, they’re required to talk to psychologists or social workers, which often reveals concerns that weren’t being addressed, said Anne Coscarelli, a clinical psychologist who heads the team of health workers that meets with these patients.

The health workers ask patients a variety of questions: what scares them, how they’re feeling, what they’re worried about, what defines their quality of life.

Sometimes doctors end up adjusting patients’ medicines or treatments because patients hadn’t before expressed how much pain they were in. Some patients decide to go on hospice earlier than they would have otherwise.

“Not everyone who’s talking about this is saying, ‘I want this medication.’ They’re saying, ‘I’m suffering’ or ‘I’m worried about suffering’ and that becomes the conversation starter ... and it might not come up in any other way,” Coscarelli said.

First 6 months of aid-in-dying in California 191 people prescribed lethal medications

111 died from taking lethal medications

Of the 111, 87% were at least 60 years old

96% had health insurance

84% were receiving hospice or palliative care

59% had cancer Sources: California Department of Public Health

Approximately 100 patients at UCLA began the process to receive a prescription in the first 12 months the law was in effect, but only about a quarter ended up getting prescriptions, Wenger said.

Coscarelli said psychologists and social workers have also helped patients come to terms with dying. For some, it can be as simple as getting their legal or financial affairs in order.

Others have confronted the question of what legacy they will leave behind. Some record video messages for their loved ones. One woman put together a folder for each of her children and grandchildren filled with stories about them and stories about her, Coscarelli said.

“That becomes something that we can introduce people to in these conversations, whereas they might not have ever thought about it,” she said.

Doctors have sometimes struggled to talk about dying with patients. According to a 2015 Kaiser Family Foundation survey, 89% people believe doctors should discuss end-of-life care with patients, but only 17% had had such a conversation with their health care provider.

But now, physicians say patients are curious about the law and asking about it, which provides them an opportunity to have these frank discussions.

A study from Oregon, which legalized aid-in-dying 20 years ago, found that though only 1 of 640 terminally ill patients took lethal medications, 1 of 50 talked to their physician about it and and 1 in 6 talked to their families about it.

“There’s a lot of need for talk, and talk is something that’s bigger and broader than the actual aid-in-dying itself,” Coscarelli said.

Dr. Bob Uslander, who specializes in palliative and hospice care, said that at a recent speaking event in San Diego, he fielded dozens of questions about not just physician-assisted death but also other end-of-life care options.

He said he thinks the unprecedented interest spurred by the law will lead to more thoughtful planning around death, such as the creation of more advanced care directives.

“We’ll get more people to actually make their wishes known and document their wishes,” Uslander said.

The law still faces heavy opposition from some corners. Many doctors still don’t want to write the prescriptions. A group of doctors has also filed a lawsuit saying that the law essentially decriminalizes assisted suicide and strips terminally ill patients of their protections under state law. A judge ruled earlier this summer that the case would be allowed to go to trial.

Doctors aren’t required to participate in the law and health systems can opt out. At Catholic and church-affiliated hospitals, which make up 13% of all acute care hospitals in the state, doctors are not allowed to prescribe such medications.

But even at those institutions, requests for the medicines have sometimes helped identify issues that health workers can assist with, said Lori Dangberg, vice president of the Alliance of Catholic Health Care. Patients fear they’ll be a burden on their families, or are scared of what’s to come, she said.

The Catholic and church-affiliated hospitals have also begun a collaboration with local dioceses to hold workshops on end-of-life matters, she said. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles now offers a workshop on end-of-life care including ethics, palliative and hospice care as well as pastoral care at the end of life.

“I think what this new law has done, it’s really a reminder we need to do a much better job with caring for people through the end of life,” Dangberg said.

Dr. Stephen Lockhart, chief medical officer for Sutter Health, said that before the law went into effect, doctors received training in how to talk about aid in dying, but also in other end-of-life options. They had their questions answered by medical ethicists.

He said that more patients are broaching the topic with their physicians than before. Even patients who have wills or advanced care directives had not always planned out their end-of-life wishes with their families.

“It takes a certain amount of courage to step into those conversations and ... we have people now stepping into those conversations and they now have the support to move through them,” he said.

ALSO

She watched her ex-husband end his life under California's new right-to-die law. 'I felt proud'

One child, a $21-million medical bill: How a tiny number of patients poses a huge challenge for Medi-Cal

111 terminally ill patients took their own lives in first 6 months of California right-to-die law

Output: Some doctors in California felt uncomfortable last year when a new law began allowing terminally ill patients to request lethal medicines, saying their careers had been dedicated to saving lives, not ending them.


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San Diego Seniors Plan Protest Of Proposed Medicare Cuts
 The House Republicans' proposed budget would cut Medicare by $487 billion over 10 years.

A group of San Diego seniors called the Senior Action Movement says no way.

The group plans to demonstrate Aug. 23 during the afternoon rush hour near the corner of Genesee Avenue and Nobel Drive in La Jolla.

Group member Aaron Starobin said he doesn’t want to see cuts to Medicare or any other program for seniors.

Starobin said he expects more than 50 group members to protest Wednesday.

“We are trying to empower seniors throughout the country, to be able to have a voice, to have dignity, and to influence Congress," he said.

The House plan would boost military spending and make deep cuts in so-called non-defense discretionary spending.

The House Freedom Caucus wants to make even deeper cuts than the House leadership.

Output: The House Republicans' proposed budget would cut Medicare by $487 billion over 10 years. A group of San Diego seniors called the Senior Action Movement says no way. The group plans to demonstrate Aug. 23 during the afternoon rush hour near the corner of Genesee Avenue and Nobel Drive in La Jolla.


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New bundled payment models will switch power from hospitals to physicians, Altarum says
 New bundled payment models will shift power from hospitals to physicians, according to the Altarum Institute's vice-president and director of the Center for Payment Innovation.

This week, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released a proposed rule cancelling mandatory programs for care coordination for certain episode payments and for cardiac rehabilitation. Both were scheduled to start on Jan. 1.

[Also: Voluntary participation in bundled payments will continue after CMS cancels mandatory initiatives, experts say]

CMS also made hospital participation in the Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement model voluntary in 33 of the 67 mandatory areas.

Francois de Brantes, vice-president and director of the Center for Payment Innovation at Altarum, said he expects CMS to release more voluntary bundled programs by the end of the year.

These programs will focus on paying physicians for outpatient care, said de Brantes, who has written against the bundled payment for care improvement initiative in Health Affairs because, in part, he believed it was hospital centric.

For one thing, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, MD, is a physician who has been an outspoken opponent of mandatory bundles, de Brantes said.

[Also: Trump administration, HHS stepping away from Affordable Care Act promotion, bundled payments]

For another, with the elimination of joint replacement and cardiac mandatory bundles, physicians only have accountable care organizations left to qualify for advanced alternative payment model bonuses under MACRA, the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act.

"For hospitals, this does have potentially significant implications," de Brantes said. "The focus of the prior administration was on hospitals, CEOs controlling the bundle."

Episode payments are currently triggered by inpatient stays.

New government models are expected to follow what commercial payers are already doing and pay for bundled reimbursement for care provided outside of the hospital setting, de Brantes said.

[Also: Bundled payment models for cardiac care, joint replacement, delayed]

"Physician-focused does not require a hospitalization," he said. "It creates a complete shift in the dynamic of who controls and who is the supplier."

Currently, the physician is the supplier because hospitals choose which physicians with which to work.

Under a physician-focused model, the facility becomes the supplier.

"What that means for facilities is they better get mean and lean quickly to compete," he said.

In this type of model, hospitals and physicians will collaborate to save money on surgical supplies such as blood units because all members of the care team will have an incentive to cut back on cost.

Currently, after the 90-day post discharge episode ends, hospitals have no incentive to avoid readmissions, he said.

"The hospital makes money on crash and burn in the ambulatory sector. There's a counter incentive," he said. "The different dynamic is a conscious policy decision."

Hospitals will still take on voluntary bundles as they save money and there's evidence they improve care, according to de Brantes.

[Also: Bundled payment models for cardiac care, joint replacement, delayed]

Medicare bundled payments have reduced joint replacement costs, with one system reporting cost reductions of more than 20 percent, according to an August 14 Advisory Board report.

The cancellation of the mandatory bundles is credit positive for nonprofit hospitals, according to Moody's Investors Service. This is because it gives them more time to prepare for risk-bearing, value-based reimbursement models.

Twitter: @SusanJMorse

Output: New bundled payment models will shift power from hospitals to physicians, according to the Altarum Institute's vice-president and director of the Center for Payment Innovation.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Inactivity Toll Worst for Frailest Elders
 Sedentary living seems to take its greatest toll among the frailest older adults, but regular activity may offset those effects, a study published online August 21 in CMAJ has found.

The mortality risk associated with sedentary behavior, defined as hours spent sitting, was significantly greater for the frailest individuals than for their counterparts who were not as frail, Olga Theou, PhD, from the Division of Geriatric Medicine, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, and colleagues write.

However, sedentary time "was associated with a higher risk for death only in vulnerable or frail people who did not meet the weekly recommendation for 2.5 hours of moderate physical activity," Dr Theou said in a news release.

For people who met that activity requirement and for those who reported engaging in just 10 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity during the previous 30 days, there was no significant interaction between frailty and sedentary behavior, and sedentary time was not associated with mortality.

Dr Theou urged physicians to "stress the harms of inactivity with all patients, similar to the harms of smoking, to encourage movement. Even something as simple as getting up and walking around the house with a walker or cane can benefit frailer people."

Calculating Frailty

The prospective study used data from the 2003 to 2004 and 2005 to 2006 cohorts of the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. The researchers included 3141 participants who were at least 50 years of age at baseline, had a valid score on a 46-item frailty index, and wore an activity monitor (accelerometer) for at least 10 hours a day on 4 separate days. They were followed until their death or the conclusion of the study on December 31, 2011 (mean, 6.5 years; standard deviation, 1.6 years).

Participants were divided into four groups according to the frailty index score: 0.1 or less (least frail; n = 766), 0.1 to 0.2 or less (n = 1121), 0.2 to 0.3 or less (n = 681), and more than 0.3 (most frail; n = 573).

The researchers defined low sedentary behavior as sitting for fewer than 7 hours per day during waking hours, intermediate as sitting for 7 to 10 hours per day, and high as sitting for more than 10 hours per day. In addition, the subjects reported if they had engaged in 2.5 hours per week of moderate to vigorous physical activity, or in any vigorous activity for at least 10 minutes during the last 30 days.

The researchers analyzed the relationship among frailty, activity level, and mortality according to regression models that controlled for a long list of covariables, including age, sex, body mass index, and smoking status, among others.

Frailty, Activity, and Mortality

There were 550 deaths during the study period. Mortality increased with frailty, from 42 in the least frail group (weighted percentage dead at follow-up, 2.8) to 215 among the most frail (weighted percentage dead at follow-up, 35.3; P < .001).

Among the least frail, mortality did not vary appreciably according to low, intermediate, or high sedentary behavior: the weighted percentages of those dead at follow-up were 2.9, 2.8, and 2.4, respectively. However, among the frailest individuals, the respective weighted percentages were 20.4, 30.1, and 49.6, respectively (P < .001).

On Cox regression analysis, "we found that for those who met the moderate-to-vigorous physical activity requirements and for those who reported vigorous physical activity, there was no significant interaction between frailty and sedentary behaviour, and sedentary time was not associated with mortality," the authors write.

"Thus, among people who are inactive and vulnerable or frail, sitting time increases mortality risk, but among those who are nonfrail or active, sitting time does not affect the risk of mortality," they add.

Among the study limitations was that the researchers were missing activity monitor data for nearly one third of the participants, "and these participants seemed to have higher levels of frailty," the authors write. The missing data reduced the sample size substantially, especially among the frailest group, they explain.

"Future studies will need to examine the effect of sedentary behaviours on people with higher levels of frailty using other data sets." Other limitations included a lack of information on alcohol consumption and income within the cohort, and the possibility of overestimating sedentary time among the frailer individuals.

These findings show that "the effect of sedentary behaviours on mortality differs across levels of frailty among people who are physically inactive, with people who are most frail experiencing the greatest impact," they conclude. Emphasizing the drawbacks of sedentary behavior, as well as the benefits of exercise, "is an important public health message that should be part of a larger promotion of the importance of healthy lifestyle behaviors."

Dr Rockwood reports being a founder and director of DGI Clinical Inc, attended a Roche advisory board meeting regarding outcome measurement for Alzheimer disease, and has received speaker's fees from Nutricia. The remaining authors have disclosed no relevant financial relationships.

CMAJ. Published online August 21, 2017. Full text

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Output: Sedentary living seems to take its greatest toll among the frailest older adults, but regular activity may offset those effects, a study published online August 21 in CMAJ has found.


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Ethanol production facility opens in Brazil
 The brazilian biofuels industry has welcomed a new player with a grand opening signalling the start of operations at FS Bioenergia, a US$115 million corn-only ethanol production facility located in Lucas do Rio Verde, Mato Grosso. FS Bioenergia is the first large-scale corn ethanol production plant in Brazil and is the result of an international collaboration between Brazilian agribusiness Fiagril and US-based Summit Agricultural Group.

In its initial phase of operations, FS Bioenergia will annually process 22 million bushels of corn and produce more than 60 million gal. of corn ethanol, 6200 t of corn oil and 170 000 t of valuable feed rations for Brazil's growing livestock industry. By 2018, FS Bioenergia's second phase of operations will increase corn processing and ethanol production two fold.

FS Bioenergia will employ roughly 150 full time workers. In addition to ethanol and co-products for livestock feed, the ethanol facility will generate 60 000 megawatts of electricity to the local power grid.

FS Bioenergia's corn ethanol operation is considered a landmark project in Brazil that will deliver immediate value to the country. First, the plant will offset the country's increasing demand for domestic ethanol, which can't be met by the existing sugarcane ethanol production. Second, the facility will introduce to Mato Grosso valuable fibre and protein co-products known as dried distillers' grains (DDGs), which will serve as high-value feed for the expanding Brazilian livestock industry.

"This is a transformative moment for both agriculture and the renewable fuels industry in Brazil,” said Marino Franz, founder of Fiagril. "FS Bioenergia will not only meet Brazil's growing demand for ethanol but it sets the stage for Mato Grosso to become a global leader in the production of corn ethanol."

Brazil began sugar cane ethanol production in mid-1970s and today produces approximately 25% of the world's ethanol. Bank of America estimated that annual ethanol sales in Brazil could reach 13.5 billion US gal. in 2022, two-thirds greater than the 8.1 billion gal. estimated in sugar cane ethanol production in 2016. The Mato Grosso region's substantial corn production – both proven and potential – make corn-derived ethanol the most viable option to complement existing sugar cane ethanol production and fulfill an annual multi-billion gallon shortfall.

Output: Brazilian agribusiness Fiagril and US firm Summit Agricultural Group have opened FS Bioenergia, a large-scale corn ethanol production plant in Mato Grosso, Brazil. The $115m facility will initially process 22 million bushels of corn, outputting more than 60 million gallons of corn ethanol. Within a year, FS Bioenergia will double production to meet growing demand for domestic ethanol. The facility will employ about 150 full-time workers and generate 60,000 MW of power for the local grid.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Markel opens trade credit office in Chicago
 REGULATORY DISCLAIMER: This website is owned and operated by Markel Capital Holdings Limited on behalf of the group of the UK-based businesses within Markel International which is the London-based operation of the Markel Group Inc.

Markel International Insurance Company Limited is authorised by the Prudential Regulation Authority and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority. Financial Services Register Number 202570. The company is registered in England and Wales No: 00966670. VAT number 245 7363 49. Registered address, 20 Fenchurch Street, London EC3M 3AZ. Markel Group Inc. is the ultimate holding company for Markel International Insurance Company Limited.

Output: Markel is opening a trade credit and political risk operation in Chicago. Christen Mizell is transferring from New York to take on trade credit and political risk underwriting responsibility for the Midwestern states, with a special focus on developing strategic broker relationships, supporting existing clients and winning new customers. The opening of Markel's Chicago operation followed the company's recent trade credit expansion into Canada.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Blockchain could have prevented Dutch egg contamination problem
 As many as 15 European countries have been affected by the Dutch egg contamination, as well as others around the world. The Food Standard Authority (FSA)’s investigation is currently working hard to remove all contaminated products from UK supermarkets. Initially thought to have affected 21,000 eggs, this figure has now ballooned to over 700,000.

The grocery supply chain is broad and complex, characterised by many players frequently holding potentially inefficient, manual records. As a result, it is often extremely difficult to map the paths of goods, and supermarkets have a hard task on their hands to unearth the foods and products that are tainted from the infected Dutch eggs.

>See also: Blockchain: separating hype from reality

However, blockchain could provide the solution for future scenarios. It is already being used by food suppliers and retailers to prove authenticity and increase consumers’ trust in their brand. But it can also be used to provide complete transparency across a product’s end-to-end supply chain journey. Not only will this help prevent the spread of contaminated goods, but it can also cut down food fraud which is estimated to be worth $40 billion.

Proving authenticity and driving quality

The secure (encrypted) digital ledger provides a level of transparency that most record systems cannot support. The blocks of information are secured by complex algorithms that are hard to hack and cannot be erased or manipulated.

Tie this authenticity ‘stamp’ to a smart tag and retailers have a quick reference of where the product started and where it has ended up. Minimising risk for the consumer and potential damage to a brand’s reputation.

Proving goods’ authenticity is just the tip of the iceberg for how blockchain could be used in the grocery sector. Combining the technology with IoT can help brands track the provenance of goods.

For example, a consignment of mange-tout originating from a Kenyan farm bound for the UK may get ‘bumped’ from a direct flight from Nairobi to Heathrow and go via Dubai where it spends time on the tarmac during transition between flights. It may hit Heathrow at 10°C and then spend four hours in a blast chiller getting it back to 4°C, which will still allow it to pass supermarket quality control.

>See also: Internet of things and blockchains: help or hindrance?

Blockchain, combined with IoT, has the capability to track temperature throughout the chill chain, with each set of readings linked to each other in chronological order and with non-editable timestamps. This helps improve the quality of goods hitting the shop shelves.

Cutting costs in the supply chain

Another of the major benefits of blockchain for food suppliers is not having a need for a third-party payment authentication across the supply chain without losing users’ trust.

It creates a frictionless and faster process upstream and downstream, lowers costs and significantly and reduces fraudulent interactions. For suppliers in the grocery sector, such as farmers, this means they can directly trade with brands, which will help cut down supplier difficulty. It also removes unnecessary costs paid to banks, making the end cost to brands and consumers more palatable in a very typically low-margin industry.

Building a blockchain strategy

As blockchain is a relatively new technology, there will naturally be some initial teething problems. While a global standardisation for the technology is under way, it would still need to be cleared by the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO).

Once in effect, it would likely impact long-term trade agreements. At a company level, implementation costs, filling the talent gap internally and externally, and conflict management among business partners (as blockchain demands full transparency and smart contracts), are challenges that will likely have to be overcome.

>See also: Blockchain: Helping secure digital identities

For food suppliers, the long-term benefits of proving the authenticity of products, improving the quality of food and cutting down costs along the supply chain, should outweigh the obstacles.

Businesses should be exploring blockchain options now, calling on expert help to see how it can fit into supply chain operations. To accelerate adoption, they will also need to establish internal blockchain champions and identify immediate opportunities that boost confidence in the technology and show quick results.

With consumer expectations for quality and authenticity only set to rise, building a blockchain strategy will be key for maintaining brand reputation, minimising contamination and fighting fraud, as well as boosting margins.

Sourced by Scott Clarke, VP and chief digital officer for Retail, Consumer Goods, Travel and Hospitality, Cognizant

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Output: The recent contamination of Dutch eggs could have been prevented with the use of blockchain technology. The contamination of as many as 700,000 eggs, which affected up to 15 European countries, has been blamed on the complex grocery supply chain that often relies on inefficient manual records, making it difficult to map the progress of goods. Blockchain technology, already in use by some food suppliers and retailers, offers the potential for complete transparency across the supply chain, helping to prevent the spread of contaminated goods as well as reducing food fraud.