Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Health Bill Appears Dead as Pivotal G.O.P. Senator Declares Opposition
 WASHINGTON — A last-ditch attempt by President Trump and Senate Republicans to dismantle the Affordable Care Act appeared to collapse on Monday as a pivotal senator announced her firm opposition to the latest repeal plan, virtually ensuring that Republicans would not have the votes they need for passage.

The announcement by the senator, Susan Collins of Maine, effectively dooms what had been a long-shot effort by Republicans in the Senate to make one more attempt at repealing the health law after failing in dramatic fashion in July.

The demise of the latest repeal push means that Republicans are now all but certain to conclude Mr. Trump’s first year in office without fulfilling one of their central promises, which the president and lawmakers had hoped to deliver on quickly after Mr. Trump took office.

For seven years, Republicans have said they would repeal President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement and replace it with a new health care system more palatable to conservatives. But they were never able to formulate a replacement that was both politically and substantively viable.

Output: A last-ditch attempt by President Trump and Senate Republicans to dismantle the Affordable Care Act appeared to collapse on Monday as a pivotal senator announced her firm opposition to the latest repeal plan, virtually ensuring that Republicans would not have the votes they need for passage.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
States warn latest Obamacare repeal plan ‘impossible’ to set up
 The last-ditch repeal plan from Sens. Lindsey Graham and Bill Cassidy would eliminate Obamacare’s insurance subsidies and Medicaid expansion and replace the funding with block grants shared among states beginning in 2020. Governors and state legislatures would be charged with designing coverage schemes for the 27 million people insured through private Obamacare plans or Medicaid expansion — with as much as $107 billion less over a decade, according to estimates. That’s on top of hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts the bill, H.R. 1628 (115), makes to the traditional Medicaid program, which would be transformed from an open-ended entitlement into a budgeted program.

Ten Republican governors, mostly from Medicaid expansion states, have objected to a plan that could cost them billions of dollars. Health insurers, who largely remained neutral throughout the GOP’s months-long repeal effort, condemned Graham-Cassidy “unworkable” and “impossible.” The board of Medicaid directors issued a searing indictment of the plan, a rare rebuke from a group that represents states ranging from deep red Texas to blue-as-they-come California.

“Honestly, I am really struggling to figure out how we would respond,” said Teresa Miller, Pennsylvania’s acting secretary of human services, at the Senate’s lone hearing on the repeal plan Monday afternoon. Miller testified that it’s “highly unlikely” Pennsylvania would be able to build a functioning insurance marketplaces by the bill’s 2020 deadline.

The Graham-Cassidy plan, which as of Monday was still struggling to earn enough Republican support, would result in funding cuts to 35 states, particularly those that had the greatest success enrolling people under Obamacare, according an analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation. The states that would receive more funding are predominately those that resisted Obamacare and may lack the health care expertise – and desire – to build new coverage systems.

A revised version of the bill released Monday morning offers new funding for states represented by GOP senators skeptical of the effort: Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, John McCain of Arizona, and Rand Paul of Kentucky. But their states would still see overall funding cuts, and none of the holdouts have been swayed by the changes ahead of a Sept. 30 deadline to pass a repeal bill with just GOP votes.

Republican lawmakers supporting Graham-Cassidy have brushed off concerns about abruptly shifting responsibility for the nation’s health care system to the states, most of which – unlike the federal government – are constrained by requirements to balance their budgets each year.

“I have complete confidence in [state] policymakers that they can come up with plans, that they know the state better than the federal government does,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), whose home state expanded Medicaid to more than 400,000 poor adults last year.

The Senate plan would allow states to scrap many of Obamacare’s insurance regulations and protections that Republican critics say drive up the cost of insurance, in hopes of winning over conservative Sens. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee.

However, the plan would give states limited time to solve the politically fraught policy dilemmas that have stumped congressional Republicans for years, such as how to ensure affordable coverage for people with expensive medical conditions. State legislatures typically meet only a few months each year, and gubernatorial elections in 36 states next year could slow efforts to develop new health care plans. That means newly elected governors could have less than a year to develop, pass and implement a statewide insurance system.

If a state fails to agree on a plan by 2020, it would lose out on all federal block grant funding for the year, leaving low-income residents without government aid to obtain coverage.

Though the latest bill revisions give some states, including Alaska, more money to cover people, it doesn’t provide additional financial help to study and set up new health care systems. The plan designates just $2 billion to help states implement new systems over two years. That’s about half the time and federal money spent on the run-up to the Obamacare marketplaces’ disastrous debut in fall 2013.

Texas, which has the nation’s highest uninsured rate, is expected to be the biggest beneficiary under Graham-Cassidy, gaining an estimated $34 billion over a decade, according to the Kaiser analysis. Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, on Monday said he welcomed the plan’s new flexibility for states.

But the state’s legislature isn’t scheduled to meet again until January 2019, likely setting back efforts to devise a coverage system. Committee chairs said if Graham-Cassidy becomes law, they would call interim hearings to work out key details.

“I think we take the ball and run with it as fast and furious as possible,” said state Sen. Charles Schwertner, an orthopedic surgeon who chairs a key health care committee.

Graham-Cassidy’s boosters argue the plan’s enhanced funding for states refusing Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion will nudge them to broaden access to insurance.

Texas, however, already has a laundry list of health care issues to address, including a spike in maternal mortality rates, crumbling mental health hospitals and Hurricane Harvey recovery. Texas state Rep. Garnet Coleman, a Democrat, said he expects the Republican-controlled Legislature is just as likely to trim eligibility for health programs and cut payments to Medicaid providers.

The state already has one of the country’s stingiest Medicaid programs — three-quarters of recipients are children — and Coleman said Texas could potentially use the additional leeway from the federal government to slash state spending on Medicaid.

“I don’t think all of the sudden the state is going to get generous,” he said.

It’s a dilemma that would play out across the nation, particularly in conservative states that have long criticized the Affordable Care Act’s coverage expansion as unaffordable and deferred much of its implementation to the federal government.

In the meantime, insurance experts expect the uncertainty that’s wracked the Obamacare markets this year would only get worse, potentially driving more insurers out of a marketplace they know will be defunct in a couple years.

“It’s really hard to wrap your head around this,” said Jennifer Tolbert, the director of state health reform for the Kaiser Family Foundation. “Insurers have spent the last seven years basically adjusting to this new market with these standardized rules, and then you’re moving backwards to how things were prior to the ACA.”

Output: State officials are warning they face a daunting, near-impossible task of rebuilding their health care systems from the ground up in just two years under the GOP’s latest Obamacare repeal plan.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Using technology to help older adults keep their independence
 Story highlights Researchers at Georgia Tech are turning houses into smart homes to help keep older adults safe One expert uses a Fitbit to keep track of her aging mother, and robots can help, too

CNN —

A charming three-story home trimmed in white sits at the corner of 10th and Center streets on the Georgia Institute of Technology campus in Atlanta.

From the outside, the 5,000-square-foot abode appears just like any other home, but inside, Georgia Tech researchers are testing and developing cutting-edge devices to determine which can make the home safer – and smarter – for older adults.

The house is actually a living lab, called the Aware Home, and research conducted there has revealed some of the top home-related concerns among older adults, said Brian Jones, director of the Aware Home and a senior research scientist at Georgia Tech.

“Some of the concerns they had were around unattended cooking,” he said, adding that the No. 1 cause of fires in older adults’ homes is cooking equipment.

“If you forget that you have turned on the water to draw a bath or to wash the dishes, that can cause significant damage in the home,” he said. “TVs left on was another … and then door locks.”

Now, some in-home technologies are in development – or on the market – to address those concerns.

What the future holds for older adult care

A stove at the Aware Home has been equipped with sensing and a large colored-light system that blinks to alert you when the oven has been left on unattended, which can be helpful if you are nearby. If you are leaving the house, a photo frame placed by the front door blinks and plays sound to notify you that the stove is unattended and left on.

Devices of the future are expected to collect and use data to become much more personalized, said Elizabeth Mynatt, a professor and executive director of the Institute for People and Technology at Georgia Tech.

“They will learn more about your habits, your likes, your dislikes, your routines, when you’re most likely to forget to take your medication, what are the aspects of your health that need the most attention,” she said. “They will become as personalized to you that you just can’t even imagine living without them.”

For instance, a long hallway in the Aware Home is equipped with gait-sensing technology through which the walking patterns of someone strutting by are screened, collected and analyzed.

Those personalized data could be used to track that individual’s health. The data even could be programmed with an algorithm to alert a caregiver if any potentially harmful changes emerge in the gait pattern.

“To track how someone is doing … is very important,” Mynatt said.

“It’s important for the daughter who wants to know that her mom is doing OK. It’s important for someone who might need to respond to a health emergency, and it is important for health professionals who might need to see those slight declines or trends over time,” she said. “Perhaps a person is less steady going up those steps than they were three months ago. That would be an important indicator to maybe make some changes in the house before a fall or something else occurs.”

Jones, director of the Aware Home, said that while such technologies can help monitor an older adult’s health, he doesn’t think they would entirely eliminate the need for care facilities. Rather, “it might also help in informing a family when someone may need a caregiver,” he said.

Mynatt agreed that at some point, the human body may need more constant care, and so there still may be a need for care facilities.

“What we will hopefully see is that older adults will live the majority of their lives in the setting of their choice,” she said. “Only in times of acute medical crisis or only at the very, very end of life would you have to move out of this setting.”

For now, Mynatt and her colleagues are analyzing how such technologies may change the future. However, you don’t have to wait: Some technologies are assisting older adults today.

Smart home technologies on the market

Mynatt has connected her smartphone to her mother’s Fitbit in order to keep track of her health and safety, despite living about a three-hour drive away, she said.

“If I’m wondering how she’s doing, I can just check on her steps,” Mynatt said. “I know that on Friday, she volunteers in the hospital and there’s going to be a lot of steps, and I know what Sunday’s going to look like, and I know what her routine is. So that little bit of information actually tells me quite a bit that she’s doing alright.”

As the 65-and-older population in the United States is projected to nearly double by the year 2050 – reaching 83.7 million – more and more smart technologies have appeared on the market for older adults.

One new device called Inirv React, currently in beta testing, connects your stove to a sensor in your home and a smartphone app. The sensor will automatically turn the stove off if it no longer detects motion around the appliance after a long period of time. You can also turn the stove off using your smartphone.

LifeAssist Technologies has developed the Reminder Rosie, a clock that allows you to record personalized messages and reminders that will be broadcast at scheduled times for whomever is in the home. A reminder could be to take medication or that the grandchildren will be coming over for dinner.

Then there’s MedMinder, a collection of automatic medication dispensers. The dispensers first flash to remind users to take their medication. They then beep if the medicine’s still not taken. Next, they call the user. After a certain period of time, a caregiver or family member will be notified.

There are robots on the market for older adults, too. The Paris-based company Bluefrog Robotics has developed Buddy, a companion robot that can act as a calendar reminder and alarm clock, and connect with home security systems.

With any technology, “most people ask that question, ‘How invasive is it?’ … But what we hear from older adults is that they value the security and the safety that the technology provides for them,” Mynatt said.

“When we’ve talked to older adults about robots that could help them in the home, they’ll tell us that they would rather have a robot than a human caregiver in some cases, because robots don’t gossip,” she said. “They don’t look through their things. Robots don’t judge. So if a robot could help them day in and day out then, and a human could come in as needed, they would love that combination.”

‘Being independent is foremost in the mind’

While many older adults worry about losing their independence, 75-year-old Albert Bolet of Atlanta thinks most older adults are typically receptive to bringing technology into their homes.

Follow CNN Health on Facebook and Twitter See the latest news and share your comments with CNN Health on Facebook and Twitter.

“People have the misguided impression that seniors are adverse to technology. I don’t think that that is true at all,” said Bolet, who has participated as a subject in research at Georgia Tech’s Aware Home with his wife, Margarita.

“We do know what routers are, we do understand wireless technology, and we understand how these things will make things easier. People will always tend to use things that are simple and will eliminate problems in their life,” he said. “Being independent is foremost in the mind of anybody that gets to be our age or older.”

As technologies develop, researchers hope that they continue to improve independence and provide more options for older adults in the future.

Output: A charming three-story home trimmed in white sits at the corner of 10th and Center streets on the Georgia Institute of Technology campus in Atlanta. From the outside, the 5,000-square-foot abode appears just like any other home, but inside, Georgia Tech researchers are testing and developing cutting-edge devices to determine which can make the home safer -- and smarter -- for older adults.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Caregiver startup CareLinx acquired by Generali Global Assistance
 Generali Global Assistance, the US division of Europ Assistance Group, has acquired CareLinx, a seven-year-old digital health startup that offers a matching service for families and caregivers. The terms of the deal were undisclosed.

“From the Generali perspective, we really believe we’re acquiring a unique asset with a competitive advantage of the nationwide caregivers as opposed to the traditional model,” Chris Carnicelli, CEO of Generali Global Assistance, said in a statement. “And all the dynamics are perfect for growing this business and helping the senior market evolve. So it’s not just that seniors want to stay at home, the dynamics and the economics are pushing the market toward the lower cost environment, which is the home, and we think the CareLinx model provides a unique opportunity because it’s perfectly positioned to deliver those sorts of opportunities.”

Generali has several assistance-related businesses in the US and overseas, including a travel assistance and roadside assistance business. CareLinx will be incorporated as its own elderly assistance business and will retain its full team, office, and brand.

“We’re super impressed with what Sherwin [Sheik, CEO of CareLinx] and his team have built, not only with the team but also the brand,” Carnicelli said. “So we’re very happy to keep the full team and the brand.”

CareLinx is one of a handful of VC-backed companies focused on connecting families with home caregivers — others include Honor, HomeTeam, and HomeHero, which was forced to shut down its business earlier this year and now operates in a new space under the name Harvey. While all those companies focused on the same problem, CareLinx approached it differently — which, Sheik says, helped attract the attention of not only Generali but a number of the company’s health plan and provider customers.

“The main difference between our model and their models is we’re a marketplace, whereas they are traditional agencies with their own tech staff. They basically employ all these caregivers, which is very costly and makes the unit economics hard to operate,” he told MobiHealthNews. “[At CareLinx,] we set up families as the direct employer of record and then, similar to ADP, we manage all the payroll, taxes, W2 issuance, on behalf of the patient and the caregiver. That allows us to have a nationwide network of 200,000 caregivers on our platform versus competitors who are struggling with about 1,000 caregivers on staff. Unless you are an employer on the scale of Cisco Systems it’s hard to compete with CareLinx’s model.”

That struggle of employing so many caregivers is exactly what forced HomeHero to shut down after a change in California’s labor laws. Sheik says CareLinx ended up taking on a lot of HomeHero’s clients in the aftermath, with the blessing of HomeHero cofounders Kyle Hill and Mike Townsend.

CareLinx has also been moving recently toward offering tools for payers and providers in addition to families. And the technology has grown to include digital care plans and remote patient monitoring, not just a matching service for caregivers and patients.

“Instead of relying on self-reporting of patients with chronic conditions, […] what we’re doing is we’re really helping health systems to better take care of their patients post-discharge,” Sheik said. “So we have a caregiver that’s basically given a digital care plan that’s customized by disease state and it tells the caregiver exactly what to do. When we’re in the home we capture discreet, relevant, clinical information that we use algorithms to send to care management teams to identify points for early intervention.”

Generali has resources, including a 24-hour nurse call line and doctors on staff, that will allow CareLinx to expand some of these new offerings even further. Also, because the company is international, the plan is to eventually facilitate an expansion of CareLinx overseas as well.

“The main takeaway here is Generali and CareLinx really believe that more and more of healthcare delivery is going to be transitioning from the facility-based, inpatient setting to — given physician shortages not just in the US but globally — to a lot more healthcare [being] delivered into the home,” Sheik said. “Really what we’re doing with the backing of Generali is building that ability for insurance companies and providers to extend beyond the facility walls and really provide healthcare into the home, which they currently can’t do.”

Output: Generali Global Assistance, the US division of Europ Assistance Group, has acquired CareLinx, a seven-year-old digital health startup that offers a matching service for families and caregivers. The terms of the deal were undisclosed.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Vision and Hearing Loss Are Tied to Cognitive Decline
 Now and then I hear someone (myself included) proclaim “my brain is on overload.” This is not surprising given the myriad complex tasks the brain performs, among them enabling you to learn, plan, remember, communicate, see, hear and smell.

Perhaps also not surprising, a growing number of studies have linked compromised sensory functions like poor vision and hearing to a decline in cognitive abilities. The brain, it seems, can do only so much, and when it must struggle to make sense of the world – from reading the words on a page to understanding the spoken word – it may be less able to perform other important tasks.

While a cause-and-effect relationship has yet to be established, evidence is gradually increasing to suggest that uncorrected deficits in vision and hearing can accelerate cognitive decline.

National statistics demonstrate the importance of this relationship. The number of Americans with poor vision, often undetected among older adults, is expected to double by 2050; hearing loss – mostly untreated or undertreated – afflicts nearly two-thirds of adults over 70; both vision and hearing impairment occur in one person in nine age 80 and older (fewer than one in five have neither), and the prevalence of dementia is now doubling every 20 years.

Output: Now and then I hear someone (myself included) proclaim “my brain is on overload.” This is not surprising given the myriad complex tasks the brain performs, among them enabling you to learn, plan, remember, communicate, see, hear and smell.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
How Juniper’s Care Model Could Save Medicare $15 Billion Annually
 Senior living providers might have the secret sauce to save the Medicare program more than $15 billion each year.

That’s the message from Bloomfield, New Jersey-based Juniper Communities, which provides assisted living and memory care services at 22 communities in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Colorado and Florida.

Likely thanks to the company’s Connect4Life integrated care model, Juniper’s high-acuity residents are hospitalized far less often than similarly frail seniors in the general Medicare population, according to research findings released last spring. A new independent analysis shows what this means for Juniper in dollars and cents, and how those cost savings might translate to the U.S. health care system at large.

Advertisement

Juniper has been able to achieve a hospitalization rate of 0.30 events per person per year for a population of 471 medically frail seniors, all of whom participate in Connect4Life. That compares to a hospitalization rate of 0.65 events per person per year for a population of 3.42 million Medicare beneficiaries who have a similar profile to the Juniper residents, according to the analysis done by Anne Tumlinson Innovations (ATI). Washington, D.C.-based ATI was founded by Anne Tumlinson, a health care and aging services expert who previously was a vice president with research and business intelligence firm Avalere.

With average spending per hospitalization calculated to be $10,399, Juniper is saving the Medicare program between $3.93 million and $6.04 million each year by reducing hospitalizations, according to the new ATI analysis. If the larger population of similar Medicare beneficiaries had the same hospitalization rates as the Juniper residents, the aggregate savings would be between $10 billion and $15.3 billion annually.

Throughout the passage and implementation of the Affordable Care Act, and in the ongoing debate about how to refine or replace the ACA, legislators and policymakers have been seeking ways to improve health outcomes while reducing spending. These new findings show that senior housing can help achieve these elusive twin goals, Juniper CEO Lynne Katzmann told Senior Housing News.

Advertisement

Incentivizing connected care

Connect4Life is about integration and coordination. One part of the program is on-site primary care, therapy, pharmacy, and labs; Juniper also has hired medical concierges to ensure that these services are working smoothly together and meeting the needs of residents and their families. A shared technology platform—the PointClickCare EHR—facilitates communication and teamwork among all these stakeholders.

In light of the new research findings, senior living providers obviously might want to consider implementing similar programs, Katzmann said. While there are costs associated with starting and running Connect4Life, it has not only decreased hospitalizations but increased resident length of stay, Juniper has found. It also helped differentiate Juniper from competitors.

There’s the potential for additional financial benefits down the road, Katzmann believes.

“The magnitude of the savings we created suggests there are other ways of capturing ROI beyond length-of-stay and product differentiation,” she said. “When you look at the data we’re releasing, you see massive savings, but under the model we use right now, we don’t get those [dollars]. They accrue to the government and Medicare, not to us.”

Katzmann sees a few potential ways to change this situation. For instance, senior living providers could negotiate with an accountable care organization (ACO) to help manage its patient population, and receive payments from the ACO for hitting cost benchmarks.

Medicare Advantage presents another opportunity. These are Medicare insurance plans run by private sector organizations such as UnitedHealthcare. MA plans are growing in popularity and they have some latitude in defining their scope of benefits, so this could be a logical starting point for greater senior housing involvement.

“What the government needs to do quickly is allow MA plans the flexibility to cover some of the services we provide,” Katzmann said.

Some senior care organizations have begun to offer their own MA plans, and this is something that Juniper might do down the road, she added.

Tumlinson also sees potential referral benefits for providers that can achieve outcomes like Juniper.

“If I’m in charge of population health, in charge of a managed care plan or special needs plan, or a program focused on managing a high-cost population, I should be going, ‘Hey, which assisted living facility has invested in technology, in care coordination?’” she said. “If they’ve done that, I’m going to bring the primary care to them. I’m going to bring them residents, because I want my population living there.”

Not a medical model

While senior housing can and should coordinate with other the larger ecosystem of medical providers, this does not mean the industry needs to “medicalize” its operational model, Katzmann emphasized. Juniper still operates on nearly a 100% private-pay basis, and it maintains a hospitality-forward look and feel.

“If you were to come to our buildings today, you would not see a medical model,” she said. “Everybody [in the industry] has rehab, pharmacy services, allows home care aides to come in if residents need it. We do the same, except that we integrate it electronically and through an individual, our concierge, who does not walk around in a nurse’s uniform.”

Tumlinson rejects the notion that senior living needs to focus on hospitality more than health care, or vice-versa.

“I think this whole hospitality/health care split is false,” she said. “The residents are at the center, their needs should be met, and there’s growing acuity in assisted living. If you’re being rushed to the hospital every time something happens, and you’re 95, you can have all the most wonderful hospitality you want, but your resident is still not having good quality of life.”

Acuity is not only growing in assisted living, but in independent living, in skilled nursing, and in the aging U.S. population at large, Tumlinson emphasized. It’s this large-scale shift in health care needs that really has her attention, and Katzmann’s, as they look toward the evolving role of senior housing.

“Society as a whole is thinking about curative medicine, and it needs to be thinking about enriched housing,” Katzmann said. “When you link service-enriched housing with chronic care management, and deal with functional impairment, you can avoid very high-cost interventions like hospitalization. These findings say senior housing has the potential to solve some of the big, intractable issues leading to the explosion in health care costs.”

Written by Tim Mullaney

Output: Senior living providers might have the secret sauce to save the Medicare program more than $15 billion each year. That’s the message from Bloomfield, New Jersey-based Juniper Communities, which provides assisted living and memory care services at 22 communities in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Colorado and Florida.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Superhydrophilic water filter could bring down cost of fracking
 A new superhydrophilic filter has proven able to remove greater than 90 per cent of hydrocarbons, as well as all bacteria and particulates from contaminated water produced by hydraulic fracturing (fracking) operations at shale oil and gas wells, according to researchers at the Energy Safety Research Institute at Swansea University in collaboration with researchers at Rice University.

The work by Prof Andrew R Barron and his colleagues turns a ceramic membrane with microscale pores into a superhydrophilic filter that "essentially eliminates" the common problem of fouling.

The researchers determined one pass through the membrane should clean contaminated water enough for reuse at a well, significantly cutting the amount that has to be stored or transported.

The work is reported in Nature's open-access Scientific Reports.

The filters keep emulsified hydrocarbons from passing through the material's ionically charged pores, which are about one-fifth of a micron wide, small enough that other contaminants cannot pass through. The charge attracts a thin layer of water that adheres to the entire surface of the filter to repel globules of oil and other hydrocarbons and keep it from clogging.

A hydraulically fractured well uses more than 5 million gallons of water on average, of which only 10 to 15 per cent is recovered during the flow back stage, Barron said.

"This makes it very important to be able to re-use this water"

Not every type of filter reliably removes every type of contaminant, he said.

Solubilized hydrocarbon molecules slip right through micro filters designed to remove bacteria. Natural organic matter, like sugars from guar gum used to make fracking fluids more viscous, require ultra- or nanofiltration, but those foul easily, especially from hydrocarbons that emulsify into globules. A multistage filter that could remove all the contaminants isn't practical due to cost and the energy it would consume.

Frac water and produced waters represent a significant challenge on a technical level. If you use a membrane with pores small enough to separate they foul, and this renders the membrane useless. In our case, the superhydrophilic treatment results in an increased flux (flow) of water through the membrane as well as inhibiting any hydrophobic material - such as oil - from passing through. The difference in solubility of the contaminants thus works to allow for separation of molecules that should in theory pass through the membrane.

Barron and his colleagues used cysteic acid to modify the surface of an alumina-based ceramic membrane, making it superhydrophilic, or extremely attracted to water. The superhydrophilic surface has a contact angle of 5 degrees.

The acid covered not only the surface but also the inside of the pores, and that kept particulates from sticking to them and fouling the filter.

In tests with fracking flow back or produced water that contained guar gum, the alumna membrane showed a slow initial decrease in flux -- a measure of the flow of mass through a material -- but it stabilized for the duration of lab tests. Untreated membranes showed a dramatic decrease within 18 hours.

The researchers theorized the initial decrease in flow through the ceramics was due to purging of air from the pores, after which the superhydrophilic pores trapped the thin layer of water that prevented fouling.

"This membrane doesn't foul, so it lasts," Barron said. "It requires lower operating pressures, so you need a smaller pump that consumes less electricity. And that's all better for the environment."

"Fracking has proved highly controversial in the UK in part as a result of the pollution generated from produced waters", co-author Darren Oatley-Radcliffe, an associate professor, at Swansea University, said, "However, with this new super-hydrophilic membrane we can clean up this waste produced water to a very high standard and recycle all of the materials, significantly improving the environmental performance of the fracking process."

###

Rice alumnus Samuel Maguire-Boyle is lead author of the paper. Co-authors are Rice alumnus Joseph Huseman; graduate student Thomas Ainscough at Swansea University, Wales; and Abdullah Alabdulkarem, of the Mechanical Engineering Department, and Sattam Fahad Al-Mojil, an assistant professor and environmental adviser, at King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Barron is the Sêr Cymru Chair of Low Carbon Energy and Environment at Swansea and the Charles W. Duncan Jr.-Welch Professor of Chemistry and a professor of materials science and nanoengineering at Rice.

The research was supported by the Welsh Government Sêr Cymru Program, FLEXIS, which is partially funded by the European Regional Development Fund, and the Robert A. Welch Foundation.

Notes

Read the abstract at http://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-12499-w

For more information about ESRI go to http://www.esri-swansea.org/en/. Follow ESRI via Twitter @ESRI_Swansea

Swansea University is a world-class, research-led, dual campus university. The University was established in 1920 and was the first campus university in the UK. It currently offers around 350 undergraduate courses and 350 postgraduate courses to circa 20,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students.

The University's 46-acre Singleton Park Campus is located in beautiful parkland with views across Swansea Bay. The University's 65-acre science and innovation Bay Campus, which opened in September 2015, is located a few miles away on the eastern approach to the city. It has the distinction of having direct access to a beach and its own seafront promenade. Both campuses are close to the Gower Peninsula, the UK's first Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

Swansea is ranked the top university in Wales and is currently The Times and The Sunday Times 'Welsh University of the Year' for 2017. It is also ranked within the top 300 best universities in the world in the Times Higher Education World University rankings.

The results of the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014 showed the University has achieved its ambition to be a top 30 research University, soaring up the league table to 26th in the UK, with the 'biggest leap among research-intensive institutions' (Times Higher Education, December 2014) in the UK.

The University has ambitious expansion plans as it moves towards its centenary in 2020, as it continues to extend its global reach and realising its domestic and international ambitions.

Output: UK researchers have developed a system for filtering water from fracking operations more effectively, helping to reduce pollution and waste. The scientists from the University of Swansea created a superhydrophilic filter that has a ceramic membrane with microscale pores, which uses ionic charges to prevent fouling. Just one pass through the membrane was able to clean contaminated water enough for it to be reused at a well, and the filter can operate at lower pressure, making the process substantially more efficient and environmentally friendly. Hydraulically fractured wells use large amounts of water, of which only about 10% to 15% is normally recoverable.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Connecticut accelerator offers insurtech start-ups $25,000 grants
 Startupbootcamp Launches InsurTech Accelerator in Hartford

Startupbootcamp today announced the launch of its new InsurTech Accelerator in Hartford, designed specifically to rapidly scale insurance-focused technology startups. The InsurTech Accelerator, which is now accepting applications, has been established to attract new talent and technology to Hartford, one of the world’s leading insurance centers, and will provide entrepreneurs with the support, resources, and industry and investor connections they need to help grow their business.

Founding local partners of the InsurTech Accelerator are Cigna, The Hartford, Travelers, and CTNext. Additional corporate partners include USAA and White Mountains. The InsurTech Accelerator is part of Hartford InsurTech Hub, an initiative that was conceived of by a diverse set of executives from Hartford-area insurance carriers and other related firms, City of Hartford staff, and several other community stakeholders. Opportunities to help spur more InsurTech innovation activity in the region were identified by this group, and action against these goals was catalyzed by investment from CTNext: Connecticut’s Innovation Ecosystem.

Each year, 10 to 12 startups will be accepted into the three-month intensive accelerator program in Hartford, and will receive an initial cash grant of $25,000, co-working space for each startup team, and access to Startupbootcamp’s global network of mentors and investors. To be eligible for the program, entrepreneurs must have a working prototype and have secured startup funding from other sources ranging from $150,000 to $500,000.

“Startupbootcamp is a global brand name in innovation and entrepreneurship, and their decision to launch their first InsurTech accelerator in North America here in Hartford is really significant for our City and for the State of Connecticut,” said Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin. “Today’s announcement is the direct result of the strong partnership we’ve been building between our insurance companies, our educational institutions, and the City of Hartford. Working hand in hand with the private sector, our goal is to make Hartford the capital of insurance innovation, and the launch of this InsurTech accelerator is a big part of that strategy. Our focus on InsurTech is just one part of a broader effort to make Hartford a center of innovation, not only in the insurance sector, but also in advanced manufacturing and healthcare – areas where the Greater Hartford region has tremendous strength. I’m grateful to all of the partners who came together to make today’s announcement possible.”

The program will reach beyond Connecticut and leverage Startupbootcamp’s global network, including resources in New York City and Miami, where Startupbootcamp FinTech and Digital Health programs reside. Entrepreneurs participating in the InsurTech Accelerator will also benefit from the experience that Startupbootcamp has gained through its globally-respected InsurTech Accelerator in London.

Sabine VanderLinden, CEO, Startupbootcamp InsurTech, said: “I am thrilled to support a unique initiative in Hartford that brings together ecosystem development, startup acceleration and corporate engagement. We are fortunate to be working with some of the most renowned insurance brands in the United States to continue building entrepreneurial talents within the insurance and technology space. During the past two years, we have seen increased and speedier engagements between fast-moving insurers and those startups that have propositions clearly aligned to corporate entities’ needs. Our goal is to reflect on our learning, select international ventures that can foster an innovation spirit within the City of Hartford’s new InsurTech hub and build a spirit of collaboration and the entrepreneurial community in a City that has so many insurers gathered in one place.”

“USAA is always looking for opportunities to work with innovative companies, entrepreneurs and organizations. Our goal is to learn, test and implement new products so we can better serve our members,” said Jon-Michael Kowall, assistance vice president of innovation, USAA. “We are excited to see what can come out of this relationship and what types of problems we can solve for our members.”

“New technologies and applications are creating significant opportunities for the insurance industry,” said Brian MacLean, President and Chief Operating Officer of Travelers. “We’re focused on innovation, advancing our digital agenda and making investments in technology, products, people and partnerships. The InsurTech Accelerator is one of those investments, and we’re proud to be a part of the city’s initiative to support economic growth and help attract new talent and businesses to the area.”

“Cigna is investing in the InsurTech Accelerator to connect us with local technology start-ups and entrepreneurs who can help us drive innovation that advances our mission for improving the health, well-being and sense of security for our more than 95 million customer relationships around the globe,” said Cigna Executive Vice President and Global Chief Information Officer Dr. Mark Boxer. “To put a new turn on an old phrase, we’re innovating locally to serve our customers globally.”

Devi Mohanty, vice president of Strategy and Innovation for The Hartford said: “As an insurer based in Hartford for more than 200 years, we are pleased to be part of the team bringing this innovation to Greater Hartford. Technology continues to change the way insurers engage with customers and underwrite and price risk. The InsurTech Accelerator will enable us to embrace the new technologies and continue to advance our industry.”

“This is exactly the type of public-private partnership we wanted to catalyze through our Innovation Places program," said Glendowlyn Thames, Executive Director of CTNext. "We are thrilled to see the East Hartford/Hartford Innovation Place Initiative, one of the winning communities, so quickly leverage the program’s resources and work in partnership with the private sector to ultimately create new jobs, grow tax revenue and establish itself as a next-generation hub of innovation within the insurance industry."

Output: Startupbootcamp has launched the InsurTech Accelerator, an incubation programme for insurtech companies based in Hartford, Connecticut. The programme was established in partnership with insurers Cigna, The Hartford, and Travelers as well as Connecticut entrepreneur support company CTNext. The InsurTech Accelerator will offer successful applicants a three-month programme including a $25,000 grant and a co-working space. Eligible applicants must already have a prototype of their product and funding from other sources.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Investors trapped as hyperinflation fears return to Zimbabwe
 Harare

Dejection, hopelessness and desperation are written over the faces of the majority of Zimbabweans as they queue up for fuel and foodstuffs that have become scarce across the country amid fears that the country has started to slide back into the 2008 hyper-inflation era.

Advertisement

Even bitcoin rates, which some ordinary Zimbabweans have turned to as a storage of value, has started to soar on a local Zimbawean exchange Bitcoinfundi. It was up to $5,600 for a bitcoin versus $4080 per bitcoin on the Coinbase global index. The discrepancy is caused by the difficulty Zimbabweans will have in cashing out their bitcoins locally.

President Robert Mugabe on Monday (Sep.25) promised to deal with the current wave of foodstuff and fuel shortages in double quick time. He blamed “economic saboteurs” for the sudden worsening of the economic situation, ordering retailers to speedily reduce prices or face action from the government.

This has however brought little cheer to crisis weary Zimbabweans who are faced with further cuts to drug supplies, electricity and other commodities thanks to forex shortages despite the government asking platinum and chrome miners to surrender about three quarters of their forex earnings to the central bank. Anglo Platinum and Impala Platinum—the world’s biggest miners of the precious metal—will be affected by this although they are in negotiations with the government over this.

Advertisement

Investors in Zimbabwe’s economy are also trying to run for cover as they empty their portfolios. But others are stuck in Zimbabwe as they cannot repatriate funds out of the country, with British American Tobacco and Delta Corporation being the notable affected companies.

The justification is that it is better to use cash resources now than hold onto them and watch them lose value. Zimbabwe introduced local bond notes last year which initially traded at par with the US Dollar but these have been losing value fast in the past few weeks.

Zimbabwe is expecting economic growth of 2.7% this year, driven by a better agricultural season, stronger mining production and improving tourist arrivals but economists say the current wave of uncertainty and constraints being faced by businesses will stiffle growth.

But it is not just the bigger investors and established businesses that have been affected by Zimbabwe’s falling economy. Pensioners and workers have also been affected as they have to do with being turned away from banks because lenders frequently run out of cash and have instituted daily withdrawal limits of $50 when the cash is available.

Advertisement

“It has become very difficult for the public to access cash from banks. People are not even accessing their salaries and the worst scenario is that pensioners, some as old as 80 are sleeping outside banks,” Peter Mutasa, president of trade union, Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) said on Tuesday.

Zimbabwe’s unemployment has ballooned to over 80% and the ZCTU says continued value loss in the bond notes and foreign currency shortages will “condemn more than 90% of the population which survives on informal activities into destitution”.

“The avenging spirit of 2008 needs to be exorcised before it wipes out our dignity. The country is in this predicament largely because of fiscal indiscipline that is being driven by a culture of consumerism by a broke and clueless government,” underscored Mutasa.

Output: Companies including JPMorgan, Franklin Templeton, British American Tobacco, Delta and Allan Gray are being prevented from repatriating funds from Zimbabwe even as residents pour money into the local stock market, amid fears another bout of hyperinflation may be imminent. President Robert Mugabe's government has begun printing hundreds of millions of new bond notes, evoking memories of the collapse of the country's currency a decade ago, when inflation hit 500 billion per cent. Zimbabweans seeking to preserve their capital are investing in gold, property and shares, and bitcoin rates are soaring on local exchange Bitcoinfundi.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
China Mobile in talks to buy Brazilian telecoms operator Oi
 Get the free newsletter

Subscribe for top news, trends, and exclusive discounts on our events

Output: China Mobile is in early talks to buy struggling Brazilian telecoms operator Oi and has met regulator Anatel to discuss this and other options for further investments in Brazil, sources have said. Oi filed for bankruptcy protection in June last year and so far it has been unsuccessful in agreeing a recovery plan with creditors. China Mobile, on the other hand, is now the world's biggest mobile operator, with a local customer base of 873.73 million as of the end of August. Oi has a 23% market share for fixed line broadband, the third biggest in Brazil, and a 17.4% share of mobile customers.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Ping An Technology targets 50% of sales from external business
 In May, Ping An Insurance announced the appointment of Jonathan Larsen, former head of retail banking and mortgages at Citigroup, as its chief innovation officer. Photo: Jonathan Wong

Output: China-based Ping An Technology, a subsidiary of Ping An Insurance, is hoping half of its business can be represented by external companies making use of its data and technology offerings. The subsidiary was established as an in-house technology provider in 2008 and has since developed services such as facial recognition technology, which the firm uses for offerings like its wealth management and online-lending platform Lufax. Roughly a quarter of its current business for facial recognition technology is derived from external clients.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
BMW to roll out wireless charging pads for 530e hybrid
 BMW is close to rolling out wireless charging on one of its cars — and this time, it doesn’t involve phones. That feature is already there, but being able to wirelessly charge your car is new.

It really is a big charging pad for a 530e iPerformance plug-in hybrid. The BMW pad connects to a 220-volt outlet, then the sensors on the car show you where to steer so the vehicle can communicate with the charger, as shown in this video.

According to BMW, the 9.4kWh battery in the 530e can be charged in about 3.5 hours at 3.2kW of power, or close to the level you’d get if you just plugged the car in with a cord.

A BMW North America spokesperson told The Verge in an email that the technology depicted in the video is still in the testing and evaluation phase for the US and Canada. It still needs UL approval, too.

In other countries, BMW plans to launch the wireless charging system early next year, but only on the 530e iPerformance plug-in hybrid sedan. Other iPerformance PHEVs —which include the 330e, 740e, and X5 — as well as the i3 and i8 electric vehicles are set to be offered with the system later.

While it’s still a few years away from being even available here, and there’s no word on what it might cost when it does arrive, BMW is still about to be one of the first manufacturers offer wireless vehicle charging from the factory on a model.

Output: BMW is to launch a wireless charging system for its 530e iPerformance plug-in hybrid. The charging pad connects to a 220-volt outlet and BMW said the car's 9.4 kWh battery can be charged within 3.5 hours at a rate of 3.2 kW. The technology is not yet available in North America as it requires safety certification but BMW is planning to launch the pads in other countries next year.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Houston geophysics conference showcases exploration technologies
 The Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG) International Exposition and 87th Annual Meeting in Houston provides an avenue to showcase and share new technical insights and business developments across multiple disciplines of the geosciences sector. The following is a sampling of some of the new technologies and products that will be showcased at the conference this year.

Editor’s note: The copy herein is contributed from service companies and does not reflect the opinions of Hart Energy.

Digital seismic system receives upgrade

Designer and manufacturer Avalon Sciences Ltd. (ASL) delivers borehole seismic technology with a specific focus on vertical seismic profiling and downhole microseismic equipment. At booth 2320 at the SEG conference ASL will be presenting the latest hardware, including an update on the new 3-component downhole fiber-optic system (BOSS) and the new X-Series modular upgrade to the Geochain system. The X-Series will deliver tool functionality enhancements to clients’ existing Geochain inventory, namely upgrading the downhole tool temperature rating to 196 C (385 F), along with improved telemetry performance and integrated high-side indicators to give real-time tool roll and inclination values within every satellite. Combined with the company’s new ultrahigh-pressure 35,000-psi Advanced Seismic Receiver, the new X-Geochain is designed to be one of the most robust wireline seismic tools for operation in the most hostile of well environments. avalonsciences.com

FWI, least-squares migration a focus at SEG

At SEG 2017 CGG will showcase some of its latest imaging technologies including reflection-based full-waveform inversion (RFWI) and least-squares migration (LSM). Both technologies have been applied to some of CGG’s most recent JumpStart integrated multiclient geoscience programs, including Encontrado in the Southern Gulf of Mexico. In complex areas FWI provides significant uplift in velocity model accuracy, particularly in the shallow sediment section. Recent advances using RFWI have delivered significant improvement in deeper sections below complex structures such as mobile shales or massive salt bodies. CGG also has made extensive advances in LSM technology, which can provide substantial improvements to both image quality and amplitude fidelity. For more information, see the six CGG papers on RFWI and LSM in the SEG 2017 technical program. cgg.com

RFWI enhances the imaging of the complex Perdido fold belt structures and underlying reservoirs in the Encontrado program. (Source: CGG Multi-Client & New Ventures)

Transforming end-user geoscience

As the oil and gas industry embraces increased digitalization across the hydrocarbon value chain, the geoscience community needs more computing power at its disposal to manage the exponential increase in captured seismic and operational data but without the burden of being forced to locate teams where the computing power traditionally is. Geoscience benefits greatly when workflows are executed in close proximity to the field, and this is accomplished using three end-user computing modes: 1) regional geoscience, where teams share computing resources through high-visualization virtual desktop infrastructure; 2) remote operations, where offshore and environmentally challenged locations require computing through self-contained appliances; and 3) enhanced immersive geoscience, where virtual and augmented reality technologies increase the level of data interaction, understanding and geoscience collaboration in a practical, material way. Dell EMC is demonstrating end-user geoscience transformation at SEG 2017 booth 1101 using its Petrotechnical IT Solution Suite. dellemc.com

Triple-combo log suite categorizes porosity components

It is commonly recognized that unconventional reservoir systems have mixed wetting—both a water-wet fraction and an oil-wet fraction. Analysis of rock samples has been used for many years to measure reservoir wetting (Kumar et al. 2015). However, there are no available petrophysical techniques for wetting categorization using readily available logging suites. In 2016 (AAPG, Las Vegas) using triple-combo logs Digital Formation presented data from a number of unconventional reservoirs categorizing the porosity component that is water-wet and recognizing another component that is oil-wet. The oil-wet component is organic porosity generated from the total organic carbon during the thermal maturation process. This organic porosity has not been previously calculated in standard petrophysical analysis. The approach has very significant applications to the study of flow characteristics of unconventional reservoirs. The amounts of porosity that are oil-wet and water-wet can be quantified level by level. Each component will have markedly different flow characteristics to derive a combined response for the total system. digitalformation.com

Visualize, manipulate and interpret data within single software platform

How are you figuring out which zones your competitors’ wells are landing in and producing from? How are you measuring well interference? Are you using geoscience and engineering data to predict and optimize future results? Imagine a tool that could use deviation surveys and gridded geologic surfaces to precisely locate horizontal wellbores and calculate geometric attributes for each, such as distance to nearest fault, percent in zone and more in minutes. Or imagine a tool that allowed quick but sophisticated identification and quantification of interfering well pairs or perhaps a tool that was customdesigned to integrate geology, geophysics and engineering data in a rigorous multivariate analytics workflow to predict the best “recipe” for wells in a specific area. With DI Transform these tools are a reality. With 3-D visualization and functionality to solve today’s challenges DI Transform is designed to help companies throughout the oil patch deliver better answers and results. info.drillinginfo.com

DI Transform’s geoscience and engineering tools help users meet today’s resource play development challenges. (Source: Drillinginfo)

System improves depth penetration and resolution

EMGS has completed the development of the next-generation electromagnetic (EM) source system. Deep Blue was developed within a joint industry project (JIP) with Shell and Statoil with the goal of significantly improving the depth penetration and resolution compared to existing EM systems. The new deep-towed source can operate in water depths up to 4,000 m (13,123 ft), and the depth of penetration will increase up to 1.5 km (.93 mile) in most geological settings. Deep Blue not only impacts deep exploration targets but also near-field exploration and field appraisals, where resolution and sensitivity requirements are higher. Following a successful technology trial offshore Norway, which confirmed improvements in data quality and prospect imaging, the JIP partners entered a commercialization agreement. The first commercial survey using the next-generation EM source system was recently completed in an area offshore Norway. emgs.com

The EMGS Deep Blue source (left) is shown being deployed for its first commercial survey offshore Norway. The EMGS conventional source is shown on the right. (Source: EMGS)

Import data, co-visualize information

Canopy Geoscience is a software platform for building geoscience applications using Python. The platform provides tools to import geoscience data and co-visualize information spanning multiple disciplines such as geophysics, petrophysics and reservoir engineering. This eliminates the limitations of domain-specific solutions and accelerates the delivery of innovative data analysis workflows to oil and gas companies. The Python scientific software ecosystem provides a wide range of tools to rapidly take research ideas from the whiteboard to deployed applications. Leverage existing geoscience toolkits including seismic processing, geostatistics and reservoir simulation. Incorporate the latest artificial intelligence techniques and machine learning models using scikit-image, TensorFlow, Keras and more. Users can give their existing Python scripts a custom user interface and deploy easy-to-use applications to their team. Canopy Geoscience is extensible, and plugins can be written to extend the capabilities of the application. Enthought builds custom software for oil and gas companies that are deployed on Canopy Geoscience. enthought.com

Canopy Geoscience integrates data input/output and visualization in a Python environment for building innovative geoscience applications. (Source: Enthought)

Flexibility, scalability and safety in OBN acquisition

FairfieldNodal has extended its ZNodal Technology portfolio to include ZXPLR, an ocean-bottom node (OBN) capable of dual-mode deployment. New efficiencies in deployment and node handling will create more cost-effective opportunities to acquire the long-offset, full-azimuth and densely sampled data characteristic of OBN acquisition. In a deepwater configuration ZXPLR is designed to significantly improve node deployment, recovery and HSE exposure by increasing high-speed loader (HSL) payloads, employing mid-water docking and active heave controls on HSL and ROV systems. In shallow-water configuration ZXPLR features automated retrieval and deployment with safe and efficient handsfree rope connection and disconnection. Overall survey and back deck management systems have been improved, and onboard data quality control has been largely automated, enabling onboard processors to quickly and consistently verify node data. fairfieldnodal.com

Marine vibrator generates seismic energy equivalent to airguns

The environmental impact of subsea noise can be significant— high-amplitude impulsive sources can mask animal calls and may cause temporary hearing loss or changes in animal behavior. The Geokinetics AquaVib marine vibrator is a towable marine source that generates seismic energy equivalent to airguns at significantly reduced sound pressure levels and at frequencies below the hearing range of most marine species. The AquaVib subarray consists of two Triton vibrators and one lower frequency Subton, each with different response characteristics and resonant frequencies. Advanced controller systems enable precision acoustic output while providing real-time feedback to ensure high levels of acoustic quality control. AquaVib is designed for water depths as little as 1 m (3.28 ft), delivering performance and reliability in challenging transition zones, lakes and shallow-water OBN surveys. geokinetics.com

Technology results to be featured at conference

Geophysical Insights will be showcasing the application of two important results that are the product of applying Paradise machine learning technology on multiple seismic attributes simultaneously at single sample resolution: discrimination direct hydrocarbon indicators (DHIs) and identifying thinbeds below classic seismic tuning at SEG 2017. DHIs are seismic anomalies due to the presence of hydrocarbons and caused by changes in rock physic properties. The accurate interpretation of DHI characteristics has proven to significantly improve the success rates of drilling commercial wells. Paradise incorporates attribute generation and multi-attribute analysis using self-organizing maps. Likewise, the identification of features below classic seismic tuning (thinbeds) is enabled by multi-attribute analysis and is not restricted to resolution limits of conventional amplitude data. Both of these capabilities have profound consequences on interpretation, which will be addressed in presentations at the company’s booth 301 and are described in recent papers. geoinsights.com

Self-organizing maps enable interpreters to clearly identify thinbeds and edge effects associated with DHI characteristics such as hydrocarbons contacts, transition from hydrocarbon to brine portions of the reservoir and even more accurate hydrocarbon volumetric calculations. (Source: Geophysical Insights)

Producing multiple possible geological realizations

Ikon Science will be releasing a new stochastic version of RokDoc Ji-Fi technology. The flagship joint impedance and facies inversion technology (Ji-Fi), which requires no low-frequency background model, generates multiple equi-probable realizations of facies and elastic properties from seismic and geological input data. This new release delivers a host of statistical analysis features to assess rock and hydrocarbon volumes along with facies and rock property uncertainty. RokDoc Ji-Fi brings 21st century seismic data analysis to subsurface teams working in exploration, near-field, development and production drilling. Other enhancements to RokDoc Ji-Fi this fall include spatially varying wavelet and noise fields and a new, more intuitive and user-friendly interface. Furthermore, the 2017 software supports high-performance computing solutions on both large-scale cluster and cloud computing environments. ikonscience.com

Stochastic inversion allows uncertainty in reservoir properties to be taken into account, producing multiple possible geological realizations. (Source: Ikon Science)

Collaboration leads to nodal acquisition system

A collaboration between INOVA Geophysical and Innoseis has enabled development of a new, fully featured autonomous nodal acquisition system. The system leverages iX1 command and control software from INOVA and Tremornet from Innoseis to create a new system called Quantum. iX1 provides hardware and software functionality for all types of onshore seismic operations plus nodal data download and management and in-field operational tools. iX1 also provides integrated source control and is compatible with INOVA’s existing cable and cableless acquisition ground equipment facilitating a single system infrastructure for hybrid deployments. Quantum is the industry’s lightest and lowest power nodal sensor enabling fast, cost-effective seismic recording. These attributes make dense receiver deployment economically feasible resulting in a higher resolution seismic image. The Quantum system provides users with a new acquisition technology, supported worldwide by INOVA, that is designed to deliver lower costs, greater operational flexibility and improved image quality. inovageo.com

Accelerate development of web-based data visualization

INT offers the only digital framework—IVAAP—which unlocks significant value for E&P with a modern, cloudbased platform to help companies achieve the lowest TCO and highest operational performance. IVAAP’s modular and scalable microservices architecture accelerates the development of data visualization and analysis solutions so users can replace outdated legacy platforms quickly and easily. IVAAP aggregates and streams multiple data sources in real time, including WITSML, and the HTML5 client uses GeoToolkit libraries—the industry standard—to build powerful visualizations, including well logs, histograms, schematics, 2-D/3-D and more. With no installation needed, users can set up and analyze their data in minutes. Cloud-enabled and network-secure, IVAAP allows teams to collaborate remotely and helps companies optimize their E&P processes. int.com

IVAAP is a digital framework that accelerates the development of web-based data visualization and analysis solutions for upstream E&P users. (Source: INT)

New technique for thin layer interpretation, hydrocarbon detection

Lumina’s PhaseDecomp is a direct hydrocarbon and sweet spot indicator that offers a new technique for thin layer interpretation and hydrocarbon detection by making subtle amplitude effects highly visible. By separating the seismic trace amplitudes into unique phase components (akin to spectral decomposition’s frequency components), phase attributes that accentuate otherwise subtle amplitude anomalies are produced. Lateral changes in lithology, porosity and fluid content all affect amplitude and phase of the seismic data. Amplitude anomalies become more recognizable when interpreted on individual phase component volumes. Hydrocarbon effects are commonly separated on the -90 phase component, while water contacts could be more readily observed in the 180 phase component. With this improved seismic interpretation technique, hydrocarbon volumetrics and reserves calculation is more precise, and exploration risk is reduced. luminageo.us/v2

The left image is a stacked seismic section, and the right is the -90 phase component showing bright amplitudes at hydrocarbon accumulations. (Source: Lumina Geophysical)

Real-time notification of seismicity

Nanometrics’ developments in processing and noise-suppression techniques fully utilize the power of broadband seismometers, which allow cost-effective passive fracture imaging, giving users fracturing diagnostics at a fraction of the price of costly and riskier downhole monitoring. The company operates the largest private arrays in the world by which operators can share installation costs while maintaining state and provincial regulatory compliance. Real-time risk management is best accomplished through dense monitoring arrays (private or shared), allowing operators to monitor themselves. Nanometrics will be at SEG at booth 1909. nanometrics.ca

Improving asset team effectiveness

At SEG Paradigm will feature some of the advanced technologies in its Paradigm 17 release, designed to improve asset team effectiveness and results. These include incorporating machine learning into the interpretation platform for facies classification. Another workflow presented lets users realize the full value of chronostratigraphic modeling by combining chronostratigraphic interpretation and modeling without approximations. The company will present broadband deghosting in a high-resolution seismic processing, imaging and inversion workflow. Paradigm will also show the value of in situ full-azimuth imaging for different geologic regimes and demonstrate how to improve field decisions through precision depthing with travel time-preserving tomography. Advanced SKUA-GOCAD technologies will be presented, including stochastic refinement and inversion for better vertical resolution and probabilistic outcomes, the use of integrated reservoir modeling to improve horizontal well placement, and other new offerings. Finally, the company will show how Paradigm software running on the cloud provides an optimal solution to the demanding requirements of the oil and gas E&P industry. pdgm.com

Seismic vector array used to characterize, monitor subsurface

At SEG Paulsson Inc. will showcase a borehole vector-seismic all-optical array consisting of a small-diameter drillpipe- based deployment system that includes a hydraulic clamping mechanism for the sensor pods, an optical sensor pod design, a fiber-optic seismic vector sensor, distributed temperature sensors, distributed acoustic sensors and optical pressure sensors. In combination, these technologies allow the deployment of an ultralarge number of 3-component seismic sensor pods and distributed optical sensor arrays in vertical, deviated or horizontal wells. Laboratory and field tests of the fiber-optic seismic vector sensors have shown that the optical borehole seismic sensor technology can generate high vector fidelity data with extremely large bandwidth—0.01 Hz to 10,000 Hz. Benefits include a proven capability to record micro-seismic data at magnitudes much smaller than M-4.0 at frequencies more than 2,000 Hz at temperatures more than 300 C (572 F). paulsson.com

The Paulsson team deploys an all-optical vector seismic and distributed optical sensor array into a deviated borehole drilled into a Michigan reef to monitor a CO 2 flood. (Source: Paulsson)

Geoscience application software increases efficiency

SeisWare and Recon software is an integrated geophysical and geological interpretation package used by geophysicists and geologists. SeisWare International Inc. developed a patented technology called Cascade Technology. Any changes to interpretation immediately update within the company’s interactive windows while re-gridding all of the user’s structural surfaces on the fly. This is designed to greatly reduce the time it takes for geologists to do quality control and increases efficiency and accuracy of interpretation. seisware.com

Improving subsalt images in the GoM

New long-offset and dual wide-azimuth (WAZ) acquisitions combined with a geologically sound velocity modeling strategy provides unprecedented insights into the subsalt of the Mississippi Canyon region of the Gulf of Mexico (GoM). Salt structures can be complicated but, once they are built, can simplify the geologic model. Completely reworking some salt tectonic structures enhances the image, particularly in the Mesozoic section. It is critical that concepts are tested and proven successful for the resulting migrated image. Certain types of improvements stand out. Refinement of the shallow salt shape and especially of shallow overhangs uplifts the local subsalt image. Salt-stock geometries are addressed, and in some cases shapes are simplified. Salt wings and early Miocene canopy structures are reevaluated. The common hourglass shape of vertical stocks is simplified, widening the “waist,” vastly improving the base-salt image at the Louann level and permitting presalt imaging. tgs.com

Salt interpretation for velocity model building using long-offset multi-WAZ data improves the subsalt image in the eastern Mississippi Canyon in the GoM. (Source: TGS)

Onshore seismic data acquisition enhanced

Wireless Seismic has enhanced and expanded the industry’s only fully scalable wireless seismic recording systems with realtime data transmission. The RT2 system now features new hardware developed to significantly reduce the wireless recording unit power consumption, resulting in less capex and greater efficiencies. One fully charged standard six-cell battery now operates a wireless recording unit for 25-plus days. Wireless Seismic is also a collaboration partner with Total E&P Research & Development and Geokinetics for the next-generation land seismic acquisition and processing system Multiphysics Exploration Technology Integrated System (METIS). Wireless Seismic provides the real-time seismic recording infrastructure that supports the 150,000-plus real-time channels required by METIS deployments; the high-speed, real-time radio telemetry system based on its next-generation radio technology; and the seismic recording channel called Downfall Air Receiver Technology (DART) deployed from aerial drones. wirelessseismic.com

Output: A range of new geoscience and exploration technologies are to be showcased at a forthcoming event being organised by the Society of Exploration Geophysicists in Houston, Texas. This includes DI Transform’s geoscience and engineering tools, which allow users to precisely locate horizontal well bores and calculate geometric attributes for them, using deviation surveys and gridded geologic surfaces. Also highlighted at the event is electromagnetic source system EMGS Deep Blue, which is capable of operating at depths of 4,000 metres and has a depth of penetration of up to 1.5 km.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Price comparison site investigated over contracts with insurers
 Video report by ITV News Consumer Editor Chris Choi

A price comparison website is to be investigated by the competition watchdog over its contractual arrangements with insurers that could be resulting in consumers paying more for home insurance.

The unnamed site may be stopping the insurer's products being made available more cheaply on other comparison sites, restricting competition and causing higher prices, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) suspects.

It also warned that it will take "enforcement action" against firms that break the law.

In its final report into the use of price comparison sites, the antitrust watchdog's wider findings include setting clear "ground rules" for all online comparison tools.

This includes communicating how they plan to use people's personal data, and clearly displaying important information like price and product description.

The principle recommendations of the CMA's report demands that all sites should be clear about how they make money, how many deals they're displaying and how they are ordering the results.

It should also be made as "easy as possible" for people to make effective comparisons or use different sites, the CMA said.

Andrea Coscelli, CMA chief executive, added: "Our study has found that most people in the UK have used a comparison site at least once, so it is vital that everyone gets the benefits they deserve.

"The good news is that more than 90% of the people we surveyed were very or fairly satisfied with the sites they used.

"But we have also found that improvements are needed to help people get even better deals."

Output: The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is investigating an unnamed insurance comparison site over concerns about its contractual arrangement with certain insurance providers. It is possible agreements between the comparison site and insurers may be obstructing policies appearing on other price comparison sites at a cheaper price. This potentially is causing UK consumers to pay more for their home insurance policies. The CMA has also noted the need to lay out ground rules for comparison sites, including transparency about pricing and how customer data is treated.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
India's Reliance Capital explores uses for blockchain
 Home

News

Agencies

Reliance Capital to launch standalone health insurance arm

Reliance Capital to launch standalone health insurance arm

Mumbai, Sep 26 (PTI) Reliance Capital, the financial services arm of the Anil Ambani-led Reliance Group, is planning to launch a standalone health insurance venture.The company already offers health i

Mumbai, Sep 26 (PTI) Reliance Capital, the financial services arm of the Anil Ambani-led Reliance Group, is planning to launch a standalone health insurance venture.

The company already offers health insurance products and the move to have a standalone offering is to increase retail presence in the already cluttered mediclaim segment.

You may like to read

Addressing the shareholders at his maiden annual general meeting here today, Jai Anmol Ambani, who is an executive director of the company, said the move is aimed at creating a retail focused entity in this space.

“To create retail focus we are setting up a standalone health insurance company. We have already received round one approval from the regulator IRDAI. We expect to become operational beginning early next year,” Ambani said.

He also said the company is actively exploring new age technologies like blockchain and artificial intelligence in this financial services verticals and the company has already deployed IoT (Internet of Things) solutions across few use cases and are seeing great results.

“Digital is going to help us bridge the gap between customers’ expectations and service delivery. We will not only match their expectations but surpass and delight them,” he said.

On Reliance Home Finance, which was listed last week, he said the focus going forward will be on affordable housing.

He said the public issue of Reliance General Insurance is on course, having received the IRDAI approval for the same.

The listing will take place in the current financial year itself, he added.

Claiming that Reliance Capital is in a leadership position across all its business, Ambani said the aim is to be ranked in the top 3 within their respective industries in the near future.

He said Reliance AMC is already the No.1 asset manager in the country with an asset under management (AUM) of around Rs 3.5 trillion and has one of the highest retail AUMs amongst mutual funds.

This is published unedited from the PTI feed.

For breaking news and live news updates, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter and Instagram. Read more on Latest News on India.com.

Output: Reliance Capital, the financial services affiliate of India-based Reliance Group is exploring the possibility of using blockchain technology, according to Jai Anmol Ambani, an executive director at the company. The firm is also looking at making use of artificial intelligence, Ambani said during the firm's annual general meeting. The firm already makes use of the internet of things across its product and services lineup.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Green bond issuance to jump 35% in 2017: BNEF
 This article first appeared on the BNEF mobile app and the Bloomberg Terminal.

Over $96 billion of green bonds have been issued this year

Another $39 billion of green bonds are expected by year-end

Annual green bond issuance by issuer/bond type

Source: Bloomberg New Energy Finance

Annual green bond issuance will hit triple digits for the first time this year. Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s most recent Green Bond analysis finds $96 billion in issuance so far this year, and expects another $39 billion in new green bonds before the end of the year. That $135 billion annual total would be a 36% increase in issuance from 2016. Bonds are tagged on the Terminal according to Bloomberg’s green bond criteria, which assesses the use of bond proceeds against international green principles. Southern Company subsidiary Southern Power Co is the largest U.S. issuer to date, having sold over $3 billion worth of green notes to fund investments in power generation since 2015.

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: The annual value of green bonds issued is predicted to pass the $100bn mark for the first time this year, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. The company has recorded $96bn of the bonds issued so far in 2017, and expects another $39bn to be issued by the end of the year. The total of £135bn would represent a 35% increase on last year, with the largest single issuer in the US being Southern Power, which has sold over £3bn since 2015.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Human involvement may mean less regulation for robo-advisers
 Latest News OPINION: Do Robo-Advisors Need Regulation?

There is nothing like new technology to overturn the apple cart of precedent-based regulation.

US legislators and regulators have spent more than 75 years developing a framework in which investment advisers act as fiduciaries who give personalized investment advice based on the best interests of their clients.

It was only a matter of time with the advancements in artificial intelligence and cloud computing that the advent of robo advisors would eventually test the flexibility of the existing regulatory framework.

Not surprisingly, changing the framework, which incorporates the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, the Investment Adviser Act of 1940, the Investment Company Act of 1940, and the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, is daunting, noted Melanie L. Fein, the author of four recently published white papers regarding the regulation of robo advisors.

Fein found that regulators need to clarify their fiduciary standards regarding robo advisers as well as the standards for “suitability” and “best interest” as well.

However, does this boil down to semantics? Many people in the financial services industry bandy about “robo advisers” as if everyone has agreed upon its definition.

Under Section 203 of the Investment Adviser Act, an investment adviser is “any person who, for compensation, engages in the business of advising others, either directly or through publications or writings, as to the value of securities or as the advisability of investing in purchasing, or sell securities, or who, for compensation and as apart of a regular business, issues or promulgates analyses or reports concerning securities…”

Current robo advisor offerings do not tick every box of the definition, especially the “for compensation,” portion.

The term itself, robo advisor, makes one think that it would replace living breathing investment advisers lock, stock, and barrel.

Current robo advisor offerings are tools that automate portions of an investment advisor workload, such as onboarding clients, offering what-if analysis for client portfolios, and fielding client inquiries. In other areas of financial services, insiders would call it straight-through processing.

One could argue that once a particular portion of an investment advisor’s functions is automated than those aggregated tools would be equivalent to an investment advisor. It would require some overly prescriptive regulations, something from which most regulators have been loathed to do historically.

As long as a registered investment advisers review the performance of their automated tools and can press the big red button if something goes wrong, there’s no need to regulate the tools of advisers if they are regulated themselves.

Output: Human oversight of robo advisers should negate the need for excessive regulation, according to Rob Daly of Markets Media. While there are concerns about what sort of fiduciary duty robo advisers should be held to, and whether new regulation should be established to safeguard clients of these services, human advisers still hold authority, argued Daly. As long as these overseers are able to intervene if things go wrong, they can still be held accountable for the "performance of their automated tools", he said.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Man in coma for 15 years shows signs of awareness after implant
 A 35-year-old man who had been in a persistent vegetative state (PVS) for 15 years has shown signs of consciousness after receiving a pioneering therapy involving nerve stimulation.

The treatment challenges a widely-accepted view that there is no prospect of a patient recovering consciousness if they have been in PVS for longer than 12 months.

Since sustaining severe brain injuries in a car accident, the man had been completely unaware of the world around him. But when fitted with an implant to stimulate the vagus nerve, which travels into the brain stem, the man appeared to flicker back into a state of consciousness.

He started to track objects with his eyes, began to stay awake while being read a story and his eyes opened wide in surprise when the examiner suddenly moved her face close to the patient’s. He could even respond to some simple requests, such as turning his head when asked – although this took about a minute.

Angela Sirigu, who led the work at the Institut des Sciences Cognitives Marc Jeannerod in Lyon, France, said: “He is still paralysed, he cannot talk, but he can respond. Now he is more aware.”

Niels Birbaumer, of the University of Tübingen and a pioneer of brain-computer interfaces to help patients with neurological disorders communicate, said the findings, published in the journal Current Biology, raised pressing ethical issues. “Many of these patients may and will have been neglected, and passive euthanasia may happen often in a vegetative state,” he said. “This paper is a warning to all those believing that this state is hopeless after a year.”

The vagus nerve, which the treatment targeted, connects the brain to almost all the vital organs in the body, running from the brain stem down both sides of the neck, across the chest and into the abdomen. In the brain, it is linked directly to two regions known to play roles in alertness and consciousness.

In surgery lasting about 20 minutes, a small implant was placed around the vagus nerve in the man’s neck. After one month of vagal nerve stimulation, the patient’s attention, movements and brain activity significantly improved and he had shifted into a state of minimal consciousness.

Recordings of brain activity also revealed major changes, with signs of increased electrical communication between brain regions and significantly more activity in areas linked to movement, sensation and awareness.

Similar stimulation has already been shown to help some patients with epilepsy and depression.

Sirigu and her team now hope to apply the same technique to patients with less serious brain injuries, where even more substantial improvements might be possible. There may even be patients, she said, whose cortex (the part of the brain used for cognitive tasks) is intact, but who have brain stem injuries that have led to limited awareness or consciousness.

The findings offer hope to the families of patients in PVS that it may one day be possible to re-establish some basic form of communication. However, some might also question whether such patients would wish to be made more acutely aware of being in a severely injured state.

“I cannot answer to this question,” said Sirigu. “Personally I think it’s better to be aware, even if it’s a bad state, to be conscious of what’s happening. Then you can have a decision if you want to go on or if you want [euthanasia].”

Damian Cruse, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Birmingham, described the findings as “pretty exciting”, adding that in future it might be possible to combine vagal nerve stimulation with other forms of rehabilitation.

“If you can just push the patient over the threshold so they can start responding to external stimulation you can maybe help them follow speech therapy and get them to a level where they can start to communicate,” he said.

During the past decade, scientists have made major advances in communicating with “locked in” patients using various forms of brain-computer interface.

These have allowed paralysed patients, some of whom had been assumed to be in PVS, to answer “yes” or “no” to questions to let their family and friends know their wishes and their state of wellbeing.

Output: A nerve implant has restored signs of consciousness to a man who has been in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years. The pioneering therapy challenges the previous belief that there was no chance of a return to consciousness after 12 months in a vegetative state. The procedure involved attaching an implant to stimulate the vagus nerve and, although still paralysed and unable to speak, the 35-year-old was then able to respond to simple requests. The next stages of the trials undertaken by the scientists at the Institut des Sciences Cognitives Marc Jeannerod in Lyon will be to treat patients with less severe brain injuries.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Passive investing outperforms active managers, finds S&P report
 Index funds are still beating actively managed funds like a piñata at a 10-year-old’s birthday party, according to Standard & Poor’s. But the American Funds says advisers can avoid some truly awful funds with a few simple, additional screens.

The mid-year S&P Indices vs. Active (SPIVA) scorecard shows that actively managed funds are routinely clobbered by index funds.

“Over the one-year period, 56.6% of large-cap managers, 60.7% of mid-cap managers and 59.6% of small-cap managers underperformed the S&P 500, the S&P MidCap 400 and the S&P SmallCap 600, respectively,” said the report, which covered performance through June 30. Growth managers fared better than their core and value counterparts, reflecting the strong returns from technology stocks such as Amazon and Netflix.

Surprisingly, the one-year SPIVA results were stronger for active funds than the report six months earlier. But long-term results remain sadder than a rodeo clown in an elephant stampede.

Over the past five years, 82.4% of large-cap managers, 87.2% of mid-cap managers and 93.8% of small-cap managers lagged their respective benchmarks.

The SPIVA report is adjusted for funds that either merge or liquidate. In the past 15 years, 58% of U.S. stock funds and 55% of international stock funds have been shuffled off to Palookaville.

Steve Deschenes, product management and analytics director at Capital Group, thinks the SPIVA methodology has some important flaws. For one thing, most passively managed funds don’t beat their index, either: They lag by the amount they charge in expenses. For example, the Vanguard 500 Index fund investor share class has lagged its benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index by 0.13 percentage points a year — a figure that’s almost entirely due to its 0.14% annual expense ratio.

Mr. Deschenes argues that two simple screens can help advisers choose funds more likely to beat their benchmarks:

• Low expenses. Fund managers have a tough enough time beating their benchmark, and doing so with a 1.5% expense ratio is a Herculean feat.

• High management ownership. Not surprisingly, managers whose lifestyle depends on their funds’ performance tend to do better than those who don’t invest in their own fund.

Capital Group, managers of the actively managed American Funds, looked at 20 years’ worth of performance and found that funds in the top quartile of both criteria tended to outperform over the long term. (U.S. funds with an expense ratio below 0.98% and foreign funds with expense ratios below 1.08% qualified for the lowest quartile in expenses. For management ownership, the top quartile included firms that had 55% or more assets in the fund family complex in which at least one portfolio manager had invested a minimum of $1 million.)

U.S. large-cap funds in both quartiles, on average, outpaced the S&P 500 index in 72% of rolling five-year periods and 86% of rolling 10-year periods. International large-cap funds in both quartiles outpaced the MSCI All Country ex USA Index in 84% of the five-year periods and 87% of the 10-year periods.

“The two criteria combined improves the success rate in every time period and asset class,” Mr. Deschenes said.

Todd Rosenbluth, senior director of ETF and mutual fund research at CFRA, noted that while the American Funds is a low-cost active manager, the research has merit.

“I agree with the premise that you shouldn’t buy any average fund. Being cheaper is going to help a fund outperform its peers,” he said. “Large fund companies can keep costs down and deal better with manager turnover.”

Output: Passive investments continue to provide better returns than actively managed portfolios, according to S&P's latest Indices vs Active study. Over the past year, the S&P 500 outperformed 56.6% of large-cap active managers, while the S&P MidCap 400 and S&P SmallCap 600 outperformed 60.7% and 59.6% of mid and small-cap managers, respectively. Taking the past five years into account, 82.4% of large-cap managers, 87.2% of mid-cap managers and 93.8% of small-cap managers were outperformed by their benchmarks.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
China doubles EV production target to 600,000 by 2020
 A man charges an electric car at an electric-car rental service bay in Liuzhou, Guangxi province, July 31, 2017. [Photo/VCG]

China will double its new energy cars development goal by 2020 as it reaches its target ahead of schedule.

Cai Tuanjie, an official of the China's Ministry of Transport said, the number of new energy cars in China's transportation sector is expected to break 300,000 units by the end of this year, three-year ahead of target that was established in 2014.

Therefore, the new energy cars development goal in transportation sector, which includes city buses, taxies and logistics vehicles, will be increased to 600,000 unites by 2020.

The move will have a positive impact on China's efforts to combat air pollution.

At present, the fossil-fuel powered cars maintain dominant position in Chinese auto market. According to official data from China's Public Security Ministry's Traffic Management Bureau, the country had 205 million registered cars at the end of June, and the registered new energy cars had surpassed 1 million units at the end of August.

Critics said the exhaust from fossil-fuel powered cars is making air pollution worse. Sina news website citing environmental protection bureaus in some Chinese cities said, PM2.5 (small particle) pollution in these cities mainly comes from cars exhaust.

At an auto industry forum this month, Xin Guobin, vice-minister of industry and information technology, said that the country had started research on a timetable to phase out production and sales of fossil fuel cars.

Output: China will have produced more than 300,000 electric vehicles (EVs) by the end of 2017, according the Ministry of Transport, with 600,000 targeted for completion by 2020 -- double the original goal set in 2014. The push to embrace EVs comes as China attempts to reduce air pollution, much of which is emitted in the exhaust fumes of fossil-fuel vehicles. Of the 205 million cars registered in China this summer, about 1 million were electric.