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Major tech companies biggest threat to banking sector: WEF
 Much has been made of the rise of fintech—the whizzy startups seeking to upend the banking business. While they’ve helped make the industry more innovative, such firms generally haven’t captured much market share so far, according to a report by the World Economic Forum (WEF). Traditional banks are more vulnerable to competition from another source: tech giants like Amazon, Facebook, and Google.

Financial firms like insurers and Wall Street banks rely on these technology behemoths for “strategically sensitive capabilities,” which could backfire if they eventually end up in direct competition, said Jesse McWaters, lead author of the WEF study. In areas of rapid technological advances—cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and “big data” analytics—the likes of Google, Amazon, and Facebook have far more experience than most banks. It would be difficult for the financial industry to catch up with its own capabilities, if it came to that.

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Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud computing business, is already becoming the backbone for financial services (paywall), with companies like Capital One, JPMorgan, and market-data startup Xignite relying on it for data storage and processing, according to the report. (AWS is even sponsoring a derivatives industry event, suggesting just how far it has come from selling books.) Other banks have Facebook apps that let users do routine transactions and use the social network’s data analytics to target customers.

If they go head to head with the banks, big tech companies would probably leverage their rich data sets while exploiting the incumbents’ dependence on them, McWaters said. Amazon already offers credit to merchants on its platform, using sales data to measure risk, according to the WEF report. (It can cut sellers off from its platform in the event of a loan default.) It has made more than $3 billion of loans, and is widening the offering.

For now, big tech companies have mostly stayed at the edges of finance. Wading in more deeply would expose them to heavy amounts of regulation. The WEF report points out that it would also raise thorny questions for policymakers about monitoring anticompetitive behavior and the appropriate use of personal data. Customers themselves could also become a hurdle: They may not want a handful of big tech companies to become even more entrenched in their daily lives.

Output: Technology businesses like Amazon, Google and Facebook are the biggest competitive threat to the banking industry, as they dominate the market for cloud, artificial intelligence and big data services, according to a World Economic Forum report. In contrast, fintech firms have driven innovation but only account for a small share of the financial services market. Major financial companies already rely on Amazon Web Services, for example, and some banks have apps that let customers perform routine transactions on Facebook. Tech giants could exploit the financial sector's reliance on them and leverage their own huge data sets, the report noted.


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Soaring prices of parking spaces in China drive up home costs
 HONG KONG • The cost of carparking spaces in new apartment projects in some Chinese cities is soaring as developers roll out their latest secret weapon to counter home-price caps imposed by the municipal authorities.

As if contending with sky-high homes prices wasn't enough, some buyers are now forced to fork out as much as one million yuan (S$210,000) for carparking spaces in major second-tier cities such as Tianjin, Xiamen, Hangzhou, Nanjing and Suzhou. They are sold with an apartment worth as little as 2.4 million yuan, in bundled deals that make it compulsory for residents to purchase the parking space.

"There's a price cap on apartments, but not on parking spaces, so we're bundle-selling them with apartments to compensate," said a Shanghai-based developer, who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the issue.

"Recently we sold parking spaces in Xiamen for over one million yuan each. Last year one cost only less than 200,000 yuan," he said, referring to spaces in the port city in Fujian province in south-east China.

To fend off speculators and defuse a housing bubble, major cities across China have slapped a series of restrictions on property markets, including imposing limits on developers' selling prices.

That has prompted property companies to find ways to ride out the tightening measures or skirt them, including delaying the launch of new home sales in the hope that when the authorities relax some rules, buyers will jump back into the market and they can release more supply at higher prices.

Top-tier cities such as Shanghai and Beijing have seen a surge in carpark prices in the past three to five years, with some asking prices over one million yuan, mostly due to a massive shortage. But second-tier cities are catching up in the past year, and this time driven by bundle-selling, property agents said.

As China's carpark marketplace is not active and transparent, it is unclear exactly how much average prices have gained in different cities in the past few years.

"In almost every city with a price- cap policy in place, if they allow developers to bundle-sell carpark spaces, it is happening," said Mr Clement Luk, CEO for eastern China at realtor Centaline. "In the past, in cities like Nanjing and Suzhou, many carpark spaces were below 100,000 yuan, but now many cost over 300,000. Is this a natural price appreciation? Definitely not."

He said the bundling had been adopted to skirt price-cap policies and manipulate selling prices.

The authorities in Hangzhou, Nanjing and Tianjin did not reply to e-mails for comment. Officials in Xiamen and Suzhou could not be reached by e-mail or phone.

A woman surnamed Tian, who does not own a car, told Reuters she bought an apartment last month in the second-tier city of Hangzhou for 3.4 million yuan. She had no choice but to pay an additional 500,000 yuan for a parking space.

"The sales person said I could buy an apartment only if I also bought a carpark space, otherwise it's impossible," said Ms Tian, who declined to give her full name due to the sensitive issue. She also declined to give the name of the developer.

"Of course I think bundle-selling is not reasonable, but what can I do? There's a shortage of apartments; developers are the boss."

Ms Tian said she may buy a car or would consider sub-letting or selling the space if that was an option.

REUTERS

Output: Property developers in China are using the sale of car parking spaces to get around caps on property prices imposed by local authorities. Buyers in a number of municipalities including Tianjin, Xiamen, Hangzou, Nanjing and Suzhou are faced with being forced to pay extra for parking spaces, with prices up to CNY1m ($151,586). Whilst a number of authorities impose caps on sale prices for apartments, there is no such restriction on spaces, leading some developers to introduce 'bundle-selling' to inflate the overall prices for buyers.


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Regus IWG announces plans for six co-working centres in India
 International Workplace Group, which operates co-working office spaces Regus and Spaces in India, will open six centres in the next 7-8 months under the brand Spaces.

At the launch of a Spaces facility in Chennai, Harsh Lambah, Country Manager, Regus, said the company will launch Spaces in Mumbai next, and will expand to Bengaluru, Pune, Hyderabad and Kolkata subsequently. The firm has a facility in New Delhi.

The Chennai facility, that can be availed at ₹14,000 and ₹10,000 per month, has 421 work station and 60 private offices.

In a survey the company conducted, it was found that over 55 per cent of desks are empty at any point of time in a company. “This is a huge opportunity for us,” Lambah said.

He said, with work becoming more cloud-based, people are now willing to look at alternatives.

Co-working spaces are cheaper than leasing a place for years together, gives them the flexibility to sign up for a shorter time.

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Output: International Workplace Group, which operates the Regus office-space company, is planning to open six new centres in India under its Spaces brand. After setting up a facility in Chennai, the company will open sites in Mumbai, Bengaluru, Pune, Hyderabad and Kolkata, in addition to its existing one in New Delhi. The Chennai facility has 60 private offices and 421 work stations that can be hired for as little as INR10,000 ($156) per month. The company said people are increasingly willing to look at flexible office options, with 55% of traditional office desks empty at any given time.


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Explosions expected at Texas chemical plant in wake of Harvey
 CROSBY, Texas — Two explosions shook a flooded chemical plant near Houston early Thursday, sending a plume of black smoke into the air and triggering an intense fire that continued to burn.

Authorities warned that further blasts were likely to occur on site since chemicals weren't being stored at the appropriate temperatures after the facility lost power following Hurricane Harvey.

Residents in a 1.5-mile radius of the Arkema Inc. plant were first evacuated Tuesday, and the water levels there remain too dangerous for workers to assess the situation from the ground, officials added.

"That's why we want people to respect [the] radius. It's not over. This is very serious and we know that," Richard Rennard, of Arkema Group, said at a news conference.

He added that the explosions were not massive, and that the pressure building up inside the containers where the chemicals are located eventually produces a "popping sound."

The smoke that was emanating from the facility irritated the eyes and throats of more than a dozen law enforcement officers who were monitoring the scene, said Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez. Some of them went to the hospital out of precaution.

"It's basically like standing over a barbecue pit or something like that, where you get smoke in your eyes," he added.

The plant in Crosby, Texas — about 20 miles northeast of Houston — was inundated by more than 40 inches of rain from Harvey and has been without electricity since Sunday.

The plant manufactures organic peroxides commonly used in everyday products like kitchen countertops, industrial paints, polystyrene cups and plates, and PVC piping. The materials must be kept very cool, otherwise there is "the potential for a chemical reaction leading to a fire and/or explosion within the site confines," Arkema said.

#Breaking Just saw plume of smoke over flooded chemical plant in Crosby, TX. Firefighters evacuating us @nbc6 pic.twitter.com/9pN8drDCcq — Julia Bagg (@JuliaNBC6) August 31, 2017

Without power or backup generators running at the site, the organic peroxides stored inside nine containers — described as 18-wheeler box vans — warmed to dangerous levels, officials said. Arkema Group, one of the world's largest chemical companies, had warned Wednesday that the plant would catch fire at some point — adding that there was nothing to stop it.

The fire on Thursday morning from one of the containers sent a plume of smoke about 30 to 40 feet into the air, authorities said. It was not immediately clear how long it would take for the chemicals in the remaining containers to degrade.

When asked if the fumes coming from the plant are toxic, Rennard told reporters that the smoke itself is what's potentially dangerous.

"They're noxious, certainly," he said. "I don't know the composition of the smoke."

Gonzalez also downplayed any immediate threat.

"It is not anything toxic," he said. "It is not anything that we feel is a danger to the community at all."

Brock Long, administrator for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said at a separate news conference Thursday that evacuations are based on "plume modeling," which is used to predict the geographic extent of a hazard area from an explosion.

"By all means, the plume is incredibly dangerous," Long said of what's occurring in Crosby.

In a statement issued early Thursday, the France-based company confirmed they had been notified by authorities of the blasts at around 2 a.m. local time (3 a.m. ET).

A map showing the location of the Arkema chemical plant in Crosby, Texas. Google Maps

"We want local residents to be aware that product is stored in multiple locations on the site, and a threat of additional explosion remains," the statement said. "We have been working closely with public officials to manage the implications of this situation."

It added: "As agreed with public officials, the best course of action is to let the fire burn itself out."

The firm said it made extensive preparations for Harvey, but "the plant has never experienced flooding of this magnitude before."

Related: Hurricane Harvey Has Left Houston, but the Flooding Continues

Shawn Hawthorn, a senior firefighter for the Crosby Volunteer Fire Department, said Wednesday that the plant was difficult to reach because streets in the area were under several feet of water.

Earlier, Arkema spokeswoman Janet Smith told The Associated Press that a blaze was inevitable and any fire "will be explosive and intense in nature."

Several deputies who had been close to the plant had complained of "headaches and dizziness."

In total, 15 law enforcement officers were being observed at the hospital, Bob Royall, an assistant chief with the Harris County Fire Marshal's Office, told TODAY. They were later released.

Royall said at a news conference that the air is being monitored to try to determine where the smoke might go.

"Right now, our 1.5-mile-safety zone around this is more than adequate, and until something changes, we're going to continue our same posture," he added.

The Federal Aviation Administration closed air traffic near the site late Wednesday. The National Guard was on the scene, and the Department of Homeland Security set up a command post near the site.

The incident raises memories of the devastating explosion at a West Fertilizer Co. facility in West, Texas, in April 2013. Fifteen people were killed, and more than 160 others were injured.

Speaking before the explosions occurred, Richard Rowe, chief executive of Arkema's North America operations, said the fire at the chemical plant wasn't expected to "pose any long-term impact."

Julia Bagg reported from Crosby, Texas. Alex Johnson reported from Los Angeles and Jason Cumming reported from London.

Output: A blaze at a chemical plant near Houston, due to flooding caused by Hurricane Harvey, was described as inevitable and likely to be explosive, according to owner, Arkema Group. The plant has been without electricity since 27 August and cooling is needed to stop chemical reactions in the plant. The surrounding area was evacuated ahead of several small explosions reported on 31 August and people have been reminded to respect a 1.5-mile radius around the facility. An explosion at a Texas fertiliser plant in 2013 killed 15 people and destroyed 500 homes.


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Heating bio-plastic paves way for commercial-scale production
 Fibers of a corn-derived, biodegradable plastic developed at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Nebraska researchers and their colleagues have demonstrated a new technique for improving the properties of bio-plastic that could also streamline its manufacturing, making it more competitive with petroleum-based counterparts. Credit: Craig Chandler, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Introducing a simple step to the production of plant-derived, biodegradable plastic could improve its properties while overcoming obstacles to manufacturing it commercially, says new research from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Jiangnan University.

That step? Bringing the heat.

Nebraska's Yiqi Yang and colleagues found that raising the temperature of bio-plastic fibers to several hundred degrees Fahrenheit, then slowly allowing them to cool, greatly improved the bio-plastic's normally lackluster resistance to heat and moisture.

Its thermal approach also allowed the team to bypass solvents and other expensive, time-consuming techniques typically needed to manufacture a commercially viable bio-plastic, the study reported.

Yang said the approach could allow manufacturers of corn-derived plastic—such as a Cargill plant in Blair, Nebraska—to continuously produce the biodegradable material on a scale that at least approaches petroleum-based plastic, the industry standard. Recent research estimates that about 90 percent of U.S. plastic goes unrecycled.

"This clean technology makes possible (the) industrial-scale production of commercializable bio-based plastics," the authors reported.

Not Easy Being Green

The approach uses polylactic acid, or polylactide, a component of biodegradable plastic that can be fermented from corn starch, sugarcane and other plants. Though most plastics are made from petroleum, polylactide has emerged as an environmentally friendlier alternative.

Yet polylactide's susceptibility to heat and moisture, particularly during the manufacturing process, has limited its use in textiles and other industries. In searching for ways to address the issue, researchers long ago discovered that mixing mirror-image polylactide molecules—generally referred to as "L" and "D"—could yield stronger molecular interactions and better performance than using just the L or D alone.

Nebraska researchers (from left) Wei Li, Yiqi Yang and Bingnan Mu have collaborated with colleagues in China to develop a more robust, biodegradable plastic fiber derived from corn starch. Credit: Craig Chandler, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Conventionally prepared bioplastic fibers before (top left) and after (bottom left) being exposed to moisture, as compared with thermally treated fibers before (near right) and after (far right) the same process. Credit:

But there was another catch. Convincing a reasonable proportion of the L and D molecules to permanently pair up is difficult, often forcing researchers to concoct costly and complicated matchmaking schemes. Some of the most common involve the use of solvents or other chemical agents whose disposal can cause environmental issues of their own.

"The problem is that people couldn't find a way to make it work so that you could use it on large scales," said Yang, Charles Bessey Professor of biological systems engineering and of textiles, merchandising and fashion design. "People use nasty solvent or other additives. But those are not good for continuous production.

"We don't want to dissolve the polymers and then try to evaporate the solvents, and then have to consider reusing them. That's just too expensive (and) not realistic."

Heating Up

Yang and his colleagues decided to pursue another approach. After mixing pellets of the L and D polylactide and spinning them into fibers, the team rapidly heated them to as hot as 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

The resulting bio-plastic resisted melting at temperatures more than 100 degrees higher than did plastics containing only the L or D molecules. It also maintained its structural integrity and tensile strength after being submersed in water at more than 250 degrees, approximating the conditions that bio-plastics must endure when being incorporated into dyed textiles.

The textile industry produces about 100 million tons of fibers annually, Yang said, meaning that a feasible green alternative to petroleum-based manufacturing could pay off both environmentally and financially.

"So we just used a cheap way that can be applied continuously, which is a big part of the equation," Yang said. "You have to be able to do it continuously in order to have large-scale production. Those are important factors."

Though the team has demonstrated continuous production on a smaller scale in Yang's lab, he said it will soon ramp up to further illustrate how the approach might be integrated into existing industrial processes.

More information: Gangwei Pan et al, Complete stereo-complexation of enantiomeric polylactides for scalable continuous production, Chemical Engineering Journal (2017). DOI: 10.1016/j.cej.2017.07.068

Output: Heating plant-derived, biodegradable plastic to several hundred degrees Fahrenheit during production and allowing it to slowly cool improves its resistance to heat and moisture. It also enables manufacturers to bypass the use of solvents and to produce the bio-plastic at a commercial scale equal to petroleum-based plastic, research from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Jiangnan University showed.


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Graphene reduces friction of non-liquid lubricant
 A new type of non-liquid lubricant containing graphene reduces friction and wear under conditions found applications including air compressors to missile systems, claim researchers in the US.

Developed by researchers at Purdue University, the new liquid-free composite is made from a slurry of graphene, zinc oxide, and the polymer polyvinylidene difluoride.

“It [graphene] has superior thermal conductivity, high strength and provides ultralow friction,” said Vilas Pol, an associate professor of chemical engineering at Purdue University.

The nanosize zinc-oxide particles allow the lubricant to stick to the metal surface, and the polymer binds the whole mixture together, said chemical engineering graduate student Arthur Dysart.

Solid lubricants are needed for numerous applications such as air compressors, equipment used in the food industry, space vehicles, gear-and-chain mechanisms, fasteners found in high-temperature environments, and missile systems.

“The fundamental causes of mechanical failure are friction and wear, so reducing these factors improves the performance and lifetime of many mechanical systems,” said Farshid Sadeghi, Purdue’s Cummins Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering. “Despite recent advances, liquid lubricants cannot be used in situations of high temperature or low pressure such as a vacuum environment, so dry solid-state lubricants are a viable alternative to their liquid counterparts in extreme operating environments.”

Makeup & performance of a new non-liquid lubricant

Researchers tested stainless-steel surfaces coated with the new lubricant. “We tested it under worst-case scenarios,” said mechanical engineering graduate student Abdullah A. Alazemi. Findings were detailed in a research paper published on July 11 in Carbon.

“The durability and resilience of this adhesive coating suggest exceptional potential as a dry lubricant for high load-bearing applications,” Pol said.

The researchers found that the composite lubricant sets up a film that significantly improves friction and wear reduction. Raman spectroscopic analysis of wear scars revealed this persistent protective film on contact surfaces.

The research is ongoing, and future work is planned with industrial partners. The researchers applied for a patent through the Purdue Research Foundation’s Office of Technology Commercialisation.

https://www.theengineer.co.uk/graphene-metamaterial/

Output: Researchers at Purdue University have developed a non-liquid lubricant that uses graphene to significantly reduce friction. The composite is made up of zinc oxide, graphene and a polymer, polyvinylidene difluoride. Graphene has good thermal conductivity and offers ultralow friction, said Vilas Pol, who worked on the project. Raman spectroscopic analysis of wear scars showed that the dry lubricant offered persistent protection for the stainless-steel surfaces it was tested on.


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Global warming affecting Antarctic seabed’s biodiversity
 Marine life on the Antarctic seabed is likely to be far more affected by global warming than previously thought, say scientists who have conducted the most sophisticated study to date of heating impacts in the species-rich environment.

Growth rates of some fauna doubled – including colonising moss animals and undersea worms – following a 1C increase in temperature, making them more dominant, pushing out other species and reducing overall levels of biodiversity, according to the study published on Thursday in Current Biology.

The researchers who conducted the nine-month experiment in the Bellingshuan Sea say this could have alarming implications for marine life across the globe as temperatures rise over the coming decades as a result of manmade greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Gail Ashton of the British Antarctic Survey and Smithsonian Environmental Research Center said she was not expecting such a significant difference. “The loss of biodiversity is very concerning. This is an indication of what may happen elsewhere with greater warning.”

Sub-zero conditions near the south pole mean there are comparatively few species on the usually frozen land, but below the ice, the relative lack of pollution, traffic and fishing has left an abundance of marine life that divers and biologists compare to coral reefs.

Previous studies of warming impacts have focused on single species, but the latest research examines an assemblage of creatures.

Twelve identical 15cm sq heat plates were set in concrete on the seabed. Four were warmed by 1C, four by 2C and four left at ambient temperature as a control.

At 1C, a species of bryozoan moss (Fenestrulina rugula) became utterly dominant on the four plates. Within two months it reduced the evenness and diversity of the species spread. The researchers also found the marine worm Romanchella perrieri grew an average 70% larger than those under ambient conditions.

At 2C, the results from different plates varied with different growth rates of different species. The researchers speculate that this may be because the higher increase in temperature had a greater shock impact.

Warming by 1°C drives species and assemblage level responses in Antarctica’s marine shallows.

Photograph: Courtesy Current Biology

Ashton said further longer-term studies should be conducted but the overall trend was already clear. “The indication of change being more than anticipated is fairly reliable. This is the best data we have to date.”

Until recently, most of the coverage of temperature rises has focused on the north pole, where the shrinking of arctic ice has been most visibly dramatic. But concerns are growing about the impact of global warming on the far bigger southern ice cap.

Earlier this year, the United Nations weather agency announced that temperatures in the Antarctic recently hit a record high.

An Argentine research base near the northern tip of the continent recorded a balmy 17.5C in March 2015, the World Meteorological Organisation revealed.

The vast continent contains 90% of the world’s fresh water, most of it locked in ice that is several kilometres thick. The effects of climate change are not uniform, but concerns grew in July when a trillion tonne block of the Larsen C ice shelf collapsedinto the sea.

The region is also steadily turning greener due to the increased growth of surface moss. UK-based scientists published a paper in May showing that growth rates of moss have accelerated more than fourfold since 1950.

The latest study suggests the trend could become more evident on the sea bed as well as the land surface.

Output: Marine life on the Antarctic seabed, an area known for its rich biodiversity, is more influenced by climate change than previously suspected, according to the most complex study of the area to date. Researchers, who conducted a nine-month investigation in the Bellingshuan Sea, discovered that a 1C increase in temperature led to a doubling of growth rates of certain fauna. This threatened other, less dominant, species and led to an overall reduction in biodiversity. The scientists argue that this could have damaging implications for the world's marine life if global warming continues.


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World’s largest tuna fishery 'betraying' customers
 Consumers of tuna from the world’s biggest fishery are are being “betrayed” over its sustainability, according to a coalition of scientists, retailers, politicians and campaigners, including Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.

The vast Western and Central Pacific fishery provides about half of the world’s skipjack tuna, the type most commonly found in cans on supermarket shelves. Some is certified as sustainably caught by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) and carries the group’s “blue tick” logo. But the same boats can also use, at other times, unsustainable methods to catch uncertified fish, a contradiction seen as unacceptable by the new On The Hook coalition.

“MSC are betraying the trust of consumers and duping them into purchasing what they believe is truly sustainable tuna,” said Prof Callum Roberts, a leading fisheries expert at the University of York and part of the coalition. Polling by the group showed that 77% of UK consumers who were aware of the MSC believe that vessels that caught MSC labelled products should meet MSC requirements at all times.

Roberts praised the MSC’s past work on tackling overfishing but likened the tuna issue to rewarding a criminal for the days on which he does not commit a burglary: “The situation is intolerable. The MSC has lost its moral compass.”

Fearnley-Whittingstall said: “I rely on the MSC to provide sustainable fish for my restaurants, and so do my customers, and if I am not convinced their certification is reliable I will have to reconsider. It’s time to see some real reform.”

Another coalition member and a former UK fisheries minister, Richard Benyon MP, said: “Like many, I have long held the MSC in very high regard. That reputation has been hard won around the world but it is squandered quickly. The MSC must urgently review their standard to prevent MSC-certified products being caught alongside unsustainable methods of fishing.”

The Western and Central Pacific fishery covers the waters of eight island nations, including Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and the Marshall Islands. The use of nets to catch free swimming tuna in the region was certified sustainable by the MSC in 2011 and is set to be renewed this year, according to an independent technical report.

But the same vessels can also at other times use fish aggregating devices (FADs) – floating mats that attract life in the open ocean. The MSC’s website says: “It’s an easy way to fish, but it’s largely a wasteful and destructive one, as many young tuna are caught before they can reproduce, with other species ending up as bycatch.”

Roberts said: “These things are a magnet for all kinds of things, so there is a whole community of animals [including turtles and sharks] and all of these get caught when the net goes around it.”

Claire Nouvian, president of ocean conservation NGO, Bloom, said: “It is clear that MSC, by certifying certain parts of a fishery are creating an illusion of sustainability.”

The MSC said a strict chain of custody requirements ensures that certified and non-certified catch are clearly segregated. On the issue of whether fisheries should be allowed to catch both certified and non-certified fish, the MSC will launch a formal consultation on Friday, with a recommendation going to the MSC board in January.

However, standard practice means that fisheries are normally given three years to adapt to new standards, meaning the Western and Central Pacific tuna fishery is very likely to have a new five-year certification before any changes can be made.

“As a global not-for-profit, we remain committed to our vision for the world’s oceans to be teeming with life, and seafood supplies safeguarded for this and future generations,” said David Agnew, MSC science and standards director. “The MSC works tirelessly to understand and unite a complex set of often differing views among our stakeholders – fisheries, retailers, brands, NGOs, scientists, and of course consumers – and galvanise them all in pursuit of a shared goal that all can benefit from, regardless of their differences.”

Pacifical, the marketing company for the Western and Central Pacific tuna fishery tuna, defended its operation in a letter to the MSC on 29 August, in which it said managed FAD fishing could be sustainable and that it aimed aim to get MSC certification for this within five years.

Princes, a major tuna brand, sources MSC-certified tuna from the Western and Central Pacific fishery and a spokesman said: “MSC is widely recognised as the world’s most robust standard for sustainable fishing. As such, Princes fully supports the MSC and its certification programme.”

Output: The Western and Central Pacific fishery, which provides around 50% of the world’s most common tuna, has been accused of betraying the trust of customers by a coalition of campaigners, retailers and scientists. The On the Hook coalition argues that while some of the fishery’s skipjack tuna is certified as sustainably caught by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), the same boats are used to catch uncertified fish through unsustainable methods which can trap other marine species. Professor Callum Roberts, a fisheries expert, accused the MSC of having “lost its moral compass”.


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US natural gas project may be axed as energy storage prices fall
 Pushback against the proposed Puente natural gas plant in California now hinges on whether energy storage could do the job instead.

The first whack at the question, in a study by the California Independent System Operator, found that storage could provide the needed local reliability, but at 2.7 times the cost.

A GTM analysis of CAISO's calculations, though, found that they rely on lithium-ion cost projections from 2014, which makes them just about ancient history in terms of the fast-moving storage industry. Battery costs keep falling faster than predicted, and in 2014 the industry was barely getting started.

CAISO doesn't have access to proprietary cost data; the grid operator's study makes clear the numbers are more of a ballpark calculation. It's up to the California Energy Commission to decide whether to allow NRG to build its Puente gas plant in Oxnard for 2020, or whether more up-to-date cost data on alternative solutions would be helpful.

"At a minimum, the prices assumed for energy storage and solar in the CAISO study are not reflective of today's market for either technology," said Shayle Kann, head of GTM Research. "It's always hard for regulators to keep up with markets that are adapting as fast as both solar and storage are, but in particular storage costs are falling fast enough that using data from 2014 is like relying on gas prices from before the shale revolution."

Environmentalists have rallied to squash Puente, arguing the plant perpetuates a history of Oxnard as a "sacrifice zone for polluting power plants," even though alternatives now exist. The city itself opposes the plant and called it "expensive, obsolete before it is open" in comments on the draft of CAISO's study.

The whole project originated in response to California's policy to phase out old power plants that use ocean water for once-through cooling.

Southern California Edison selected NRG's bid for the project back in 2014. NRG bills it as a flexible asset to fire up as needed to balance intermittent renewables. It still needs approval from the CEC; an evidentiary hearing to discuss the CAISO study is set for September 14.

It's not clear that storage will be cost-competitive with the plant. CAISO calls for a mix of short-duration batteries, as well as sizable 9-hour duration systems, a form factor that has not been developed widely.

What is clear is that up-to-date cost projections show storage as cheaper than the CAISO study's analysis, and the actual cost of the gas plant could be different from the generic 2014 cost used in those calculations.

With more accurate cost comparisons, this could become the clearest case yet of storage challenging a gas peaker head-to-head.

The view from 2014

The CAISO study calculates a massive price differential to ensure local reliability in the face of impending plant closures: $299 million for a 262-megawatt combustion turbine, $805 million for a combination of distributed and front-of-the-meter storage.

The grid operator, though, admits that it has constrained insight into battery pricing.

"As the ISO does not conduct resource procurement, the ISO’s access to cost information is limited to publicly available sources," the study notes. As such, it developed "very high level estimates" from public documents as a starting point for discussion.

The storage cost estimates come from a July 2016 study conducted by Navigant for the California Energy Commission. The report forecasts the 2024 installed cost of lithium-ion batteries for four-hour peak shifting applications as $1,940 per kilowatt-AC (see Table 21 on page 41 of study).

Navigant arrived at those numbers via its "research publications and internal assumptions." The exact methodology is not disclosed, but the $1,940 per kilowatt number comes from an earlier Navigant study published in Q3 2014.

Accurately forecasting battery price declines has proven notoriously difficult; prices keep falling faster than expected. Forecasts need to be updated to ensure continued relevance.

Part way through 2014, the storage industry's empirical record looked substantially different than it does today: In the whole previous year, the U.S. deployed only 46 megawatts, compared to an expected 395 megawatts this year, by GTM Research's count. Construction on Tesla's Gigafactory had barely begun. Few utilities were considering storage for large-scale deployment, and long-duration storage was all but unheard of.

The CAISO study converts the outdated $1,940 per kilowatt-hour rate from Navigant's 4-hour duration storage estimate into $485 per kilowatt-hour, and uses that rate to price out storage solutions with 0.5-hour, 2.5-hour, 4-hour and 9-hour durations.

Pricing rates do not necessarily hold constant across different durations. A 0.5-hour battery's design and pricing structure may look entirely different from a 10-hour battery. In fact, it's not clear whether any grid-scale 10-hour batteries have been deployed yet. The economics of such a system could well demand an alternative technology to lithium-ion, like flow batteries.

The study also assumes a capital cost for solar at $2.65 per watt in 2020, when California prices are below $1.50 per watt today. That inflates the expense of solar-plus-storage included in the roster of alternatives to the gas plant.

More current estimates predict cheaper storage pricing than the 2014 estimations used in the CAISO study. That still leaves the question of whether storage, even with more accurate price forecasts, can compete with the gas plant.

Can storage compete?

A preliminary analysis of the CAISO study by GTM Research suggests that storage would need aggressive cost declines in order to match the gas peaker, but not so aggressive as to be out of the range of possibility.

"By our calculation, the energy storage would have to come in around $175 per kilowatt-hour on average in order to beat the estimated cost of Puente," Kann said. "Factoring in its status as a preferred resource and additional values, storage may only have to come within range in order to be considered."

The black line represents local capacity alternative costs using the CAISO study's anachronistically high cost of solar; the solid blue line represents those costs using a conservative estimate of all-in solar costs in California in 2020.

GTM contacted the developers of the largest Aliso Canyon storage facilities to see if they felt capable of competing at this cost threshold. AES Energy storage declined to comment on its internal pricing trajectory. Tesla and Greensmith did not respond in time for publication.

GTM Research predicts an average $277 per kilowatt-hour cost for 4-hour storage systems in 2020. If SCE pursues the storage alternative laid out by CAISO, which totals a whopping 260 megawatts/1,522 megawatt-hours, it would likely come in lower than the average price.

"This would be a big procurement," Kann said. "You would expect developers to bid aggressively, and so I would anticipate costs would come in below what we expect benchmark pricing to be. Similar to Aliso Canyon and South Australia, this would be a landmark procurement."

Additional savings could come through scale.

"As you scale up the duration, there are some economies of scale that you can derive with respect to the balance of plant," said Kiran Kumaraswamy, market development director at AES Energy Storage.

Storage would be able to perform other valuable services when it isn't managing local capacity needs, Kumaraswamy added. CAISO looked at capacity value, but accounting for revenue streams like ancillary services and soaking up solar overgeneration, and social values like air pollution and greenhouse gas emission avoidance, could close the cost gap with Puente.

"You need to factor in all those benefits when you do the comparison between the two resources," he said.

Unknowns remain

Several factors make it hard to draw firm conclusions at this stage.

For one thing, the gas plant cost that CAISO uses, and that GTM used in the preliminary analysis, is not specific to Puente.

It's from a 2014 CEC report on estimates of energy system pricing. It's entirely possible that the "state-of-the-art LEED-certified facility" NRG wants to build would cost more than the generic cost cited from that report (Table 51, page 138). A deeper analysis would need to consider labor and construction costs specific to the Oxnard location as well.

The 9-hour storage raises another uncertainty. Grid storage today encompasses half-hour through 4- and sometimes 5-hour storage, with a limited number of longer-duration projects popping up. There is simply no database of 9-hour storage development costs from which to extrapolate.

The CAISO study could kick off more research into these topics. Simply running the feasibility comparison with storage deserves praise, Kumaraswamy said. The exercise of comparing gas generation resources with storage technology is still pretty novel and sets a good precedent for future grid decisions.

"I personally haven't seen a similar study that considered other types of resources in manner as detailed as what the ISO has done here," he said.

With storage deemed a feasible alternative, the next battleground will be appropriately defining its cost.

Output: Estimates of the cost of energy storage used by the California Independent System Operator (Caiso) are based on outdated calculations, according to analysis by GTM Research. The finding is significant in the context of the proposed Puente natural gas plant, which is attracting criticism from environmentalists and requires approval from the state's energy commission to proceed. Caiso's projection estimated that storage would cost 2.7 times more than the gas plant, but GTM found its figures were based on outdated 2014 prices, which have rapidly fallen since. It also suggested the costings for the gas plant could be too low.


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Indian government raises $1.4bn from share sale in energy company
 Govt raises $1.4 bn from NTPC stake sale

Credit: Shah Junaid/VCCircle

The Indian government has raised 91.36 billion rupees ($1.4 billion) from a share sale in state-run utility NTPC Ltd, according to Reuters calculations based on stock exchange data.

The share sale was part of New Delhi’s asset sales programme to raise funds by paring stakes in state-run and private sector companies to help meet its fiscal deficit target.

It aims to raise a total 725 billion rupees from such sales during the current financial year to March.

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The government, which owned nearly 70 percent of NTPC before the share sale, initially aimed to sell an up to 10 percent stake, or a total of 824.5 million shares.

However, it had received bids for about 548 million shares by the end of the two-day auction on the stock exchanges, with institutional investors subscribing to 463.5 million of those.

The cut-off price per share was set at 168 rupees. Retail investors are being offered a 5 percent discount on the cut-off price.

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Output: The Indian government has raised $1.4bn from the sale of some of its shares in power generator NTPC. The government received bids for 548 million shares by the close of the second and final day of the auction, short of its 824 million goal. It had been seeking to sell up to a 10% stake. Retail investors are being offered a 5% discount on the cut-off price of INR168. The government is trying to reach fiscal deficit targets by selling stakes in state-owned assets.


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Use of silicon in oil and gas industry creates poisoning risk
 Over the past several years, silicon has become much more prevalent in the oil and gas industry. Before, refineries relied on silicon compounds in the delayed coking unit to prevent foaming in coker drums. Now, upstream companies are starting to favour silicon for its lubricating ability, which allows companies to move oil quickly through pipelines, as well as load and unload ships faster.

While pipeline lubricant applications benefit upstream companies by improving short-term profits and efficiencies, the use of silicon compounds also comes with inherent performance risks for refineries downstream.

Silicon is a contaminant that, when found in crude oil, can work its way into previously unexpected places in the refinery, adversely affecting the units it enters. The result is shorter catalyst cycle lengths, which lead to more frequent reloads and more overall downtime for the unit – all of which lead to increased expenses and decreased profits.

Silicon: origin and destination in the refinery

Silicon-containing compounds, like polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), are great anti-foam agents in the coking unit’s coker drums, and refineries have known how to effectively plan for its impact on downstream processing. With increased upstream usage, however, silicon is now entering refineries in the crude oil, affecting many more units and types of hydrotreaters, refinery-wide. The presence of silicon in crude oil negatively impacts the whole refinery.

Figure 1 highlights the historical source of silicon in the refinery (the coker), as well as the negative impact of refinery-wide silicon presence. Unless the units (particularly hydrotreaters and hydrocracking units) can be properly defended, catalysts will lose their activity and see a decreased life span.

Figure 1. Silicon origins and destinations in the refinery.

The chemistry of silicon

Silicon compounds interact with the alumina base of hydrotreating catalyst. The reaction creates a strong chemical bond, which is difficult to break. This is why silicon is considered a permanent poison.

Instead of interacting with the active metal sites on the hydrotreating catalyst directly, over time the buildup of silicon impedes and prevents access to these active sites. This is what causes a permanent loss in the catalyst’s ability to remove sulfur and nitrogen.

Written by Peter Piotrowski, Honeywell UOP, USA, and Austin Schneider, Crystaphase.

This article was originally published in the September 2017 issue of Hydrocarbon Engineering. To read the complete article, please sign in or register for a free trial subscription.

Output: The oil and gas industry's reliance on silicon as a lubricating material is creating a risk of poisoning, as the chemical contaminant can adversely affect refinery units both upstream and downstream. Research has found that catalysts in hydrotreaters and hydrocracking units that are undefended from silicon have a shorter lifespan, while the chemical bond made by silicon with the alumina base of hydrotreating catalyst is difficult to break, resulting in long-term poisoning.


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Senate panel to begin bipartisan hearings on stabilizing health insurance market
 WASHINGTON – Senators looking for ways to stabilize the individual health insurance market will hear from governors and state health insurance commissioners at their first bipartisan hearings next month.

The hearings, set for Sept. 6-7, will focus on stabilizing premiums and helping people in the individual market in light of Congress’ failure to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare.

“Eighteen million Americans, including 350,000 Tennesseans – songwriters, farmers, and the self-employed – do not get their health insurance from the government or on the job, which means they must buy insurance in the individual market,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander, the Tennessee Republican who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

“My goal by the end of September is to give them peace of mind that they will be able to buy insurance at a reasonable price for the year 2018,” Alexander said.

Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the committee’s top Democrat, said the path to making health care work better for patients and families “isn’t through partisanship or backroom deals.”

“It is through working across the aisle, transparency, and coming together to find common ground where we can,” she said.

The attempts at a bipartisan approach to fixing health care mark a change in strategy after the failure last month of Republican efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare. The GOP bill was pieced together behind closed doors by a small group of Republican senators, with no input from Democrats and no public hearings.

Alexander has said lawmakers must find a way to stabilize the individual insurance market because millions of Americans will be unable to buy insurance unless Congress acts.

More:With Obamacare repeal stalled, Senate panel to focus on stabilizing insurance market

More:Senate Republicans failed to pass Obamacare repeal. Now what?

More:White House: Government to make health law payments this month

At the hearings, the committee will hear from state insurance commissioners and governors because they are closest to the problem and can suggest steps that Congress can take to help make insurance available at affordable prices, Alexander said.

“Any solution that Congress passes for a 2018 stabilization package will have to be small, bipartisan and balanced,” he said.

It also should give states more flexibility in approving insurance policies and fund the cost-sharing reduction payments to help stabilize premiums for 2018, he said.

Murray said it’s important for the committee to hear from state leaders because they “understand full well the challenges facing health care today, and many have been outspoken about how the uncertainty caused by this administration has impacted the individual insurance market and therefore families’ premiums for 2018.”

Output: Senators will listen to state health insurance commissioners and governors in bipartisan hearings for the individual health insurance market, concentrating on stabilizing insurance premiums and helping those on the individual market. Following a lack of progress on the repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act, the individual market’s future may be the reasonable, viable alternative. The bipartisan approach could help to stabilize the individual market, given that many Americans will be unable to purchase insurance outside of Obamacare or their workplaces. The hearings should help the committee to gain insight from those closest to state citizens to ensure insurance is given at an affordable price. States will likely gain further flexibility to approve insurance policies, being given cost-sharing reduction payments to balance premiums for the next year.


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Home Health Care: Shouldn’t It Be Work Worth Doing?
 Do you know who is going to care for you when you are old and frail? By current standards, it’s likely to be a middle-aged immigrant woman, with maybe a high school education and little if any training, making $20,000 a year.

And that’s if you are lucky. If you live in rural America, you may already have a hard time finding somebody to look after you. Paul Osterman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management calculates that if nothing is done to draw more workers into the field, there will be a shortage of at least 350,000 paid care providers by 2040.

This, I’m sure you’ll agree, makes little sense.

How to provide long-term care for a fast-aging population poses one of the more convoluted challenges of the American labor market. Care providers — home health aides, personal care attendants and certified nursing assistants, in the government’s classification — are expected to be among the nation’s fastest-growing occupations. The Department of Labor’s economists expect about a million more will be added from 2014 to 2024.

And yet despite their critical importance to the well-being of tens of millions of aging Americans, one-fourth of these aides live in poverty. The jobs are so unappealing that it is hard to keep workers in them: four in 10 leave the occupation entirely within a year. Many prefer the fast-food business.

Output: The problem of providing long-term care for the rapidly aging US population will require far more workers than is currently predicted. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management has found that if home health care work is not made more appealing as an employment choice, there will be a minimum shortage of 350,000 paid care workers by 2040.


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Comitt's downhole tool revitalises old wells with new fractures
 “Our analysis helps our customers find what levers drive production.”—Leen Weijers, VP of Engineering for Liberty Oilfield Services

After The Oil & Gas Conference® wrapped up in Denver last week, EnerCom hosted the debut of Oilfield Tech & Innovation Day, where the latest technologies for the E&P industry were the focus.

The day was designed for both VCs and majors who invest in extraction technologies and for companies who have commercialized technologies that are already improving recoveries and are available for operators now. This story is Part 4 of a recap of Oil & Gas 360®’s coverage of Oilfield Tech & Innovation Day.

Liberty Oilfield Services

Liberty Oilfield Services is a Denver-based oilfield service company focused on stimulation services to optimize well production. It offers hydraulic fracturing design and execution services. It uses real data to optimize field development and increase production. Liberty Oilfield Services is currently working in the Permian, DJ, Williston, and Powder River basins.

Liberty Oilfield Services has developed multiple technologies such as PropX®—to reduce dust, noise, and truck traffic; Quiet Fleet® to reduce noise from fracture activities; and the Spirit Fluid System® to place more proppant with less gel.

Liberty’s presentation during EnerCom’s Oilfield Tech & Innovation Day gave information on multi-variate analysis for completion optimization and minimizing the cost per barrel of oil equivalent. The company’s examples were based in the Williston area in North Dakota where it is currently working with a new slick water design, larger volumes, and larger pump rates. Liberty’s services ultimately focus on increasing its clients’ EUR and reducing the clients’ costs.

In its services, Liberty offers completion optimization tools, some of which involve big data visualization, big data statistics, and calibrated fracture and reservoir modeling.

The company’s analytical focus utilizes petro-physics, completion, and production data sourced from both public and private data sources. The company ultimately incorporates this data into multivariate analysis. The multivariate analysis tool is called Liberty Frac Trends, and can be used to predict production as a function of stage spacing, proppant concentration, average proppant loads, and treatment rates.

The predictive technology was designed with the intent of allowing Liberty’s clients to optimally design completions and evaluate how changes to any completions parameter might impact the ultimate recovery from that well.

View the Liberty presentation webcast here.

Belgrave Oil & Gas Corp.

Belgrave Oil & Gas Corp. is a private petroleum development company. The company’s primary focus is on the development and application of high impact improved/enhanced oil recovery (IOR/EOR) technology to increase oil and gas production, improve recovery, and prove additional reserves. The company has operated in Canada, China, Colombia, India, Russia, and Trinidad.

The company believes that conventional primary and secondary recovery methods will only produce about one-third of the oil discovered and that potentially tens of billions of barrels of additional oil remain to be recovered in North America alone.

During its presentation, Belgrave Oil and Gas spoke about the potential for air injection EOR, which is often also called fire-flooding or in-situ combustion. The premise of air injection is that air is injected into mature conventional reservoirs to push residual oil towards a producing well. When air is injected into deep, conventional reservoirs hydrocarbons in place are often ignited and heated. The heavier components of the hydrocarbons burn, heating residual oil and allowing it to be pushed out of pore spaces.

When coupled with water injection, the combusting oil is pushed both by air, steam and water, and further mobilized towards a producing wellbore. The company believes that utilizing air injection in mature conventional reservoirs will allow companies to reactivate reservoirs that were previously considered uneconomic.

Belgrave said that experiments and field applications for air injection have been successful, and that the technology may have broader applications in other reservoirs. The company compared the new technology to other EOR methods, such as CO2 or surfactant injection, and noted how air injection is less capital intensive and much easier to control.

View the Belgrave presentation webcast here.

Comitt Well Solutions

Commit Well Solutions is a downhole tool company that builds technologies oriented towards revitalizing wells. The company said that its primary goals are to maximizing the EUR of existing wellbores, optimize the deployment of operators’ resources, and reduce the use of personnel.

During its presentation at EnerCom’s Oilfield Tech & Innovation Day, Comitt spoke about pin-point placement of hydraulic fractures and perforations using its downhole tool, the Excite System.

In re-fracturing mature wells, the Excite System is meant to create new fractures and apply new completions designs to old wells. The Excite system targets legacy assets that have lost production gradually. By re-fracturing those assets and applying new, better understood completions methods such as increased stages and higher proppant concentrations, Comitt hopes to introduce new production to old wells.

View the Comitt presentation webcast here.

GroundMetrics

GroundMetrics is an oilfield service-company that has designed products and services allowing operators to better characterize their reservoirs. The company provides surveys using its electric field sensors to build an oil saturation profile on a field-wide scale.

During its presentation, GroundMetrics spoke about how its sensors and survey technologies can benefit operators and how its technology differs from historic oilfield practices.

By utilizing an operator’s cased wellbore as a conductor, the company can create an electric field within the reservoir. The manner in which that electric field interacts with the fluids in the reservoir, once detected by the company’s electronic field sensor, can grant an operator an insight into where the most significant amounts of oil remain.

Instead of finding resistivity and saturation profiles along the wellbore alone, GroundMetrics has the ability to do so on a scale that can provide an operator with a better understanding of uncontacted, unproduced zones, flow barriers, and general fluid saturation within the field as a whole.

This insight into the reservoir saturation profile can help operators with reservoir characterization, offshore characterization, and hydraulic fracturing. The company’s technology can also be utilized for casing diagnostics.

View the GroundMetrics presentation webcast here.

Output: Comitt Well Solutions has developed a downhole tool named the Excite System, which aims to revitalise old wells that have lost production. Comitt refractures mature assets with improved accuracy and applies new completion methods, such as increasing stages and higher proppant concentrations.


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Trump halts reporting on gender and race pay gaps
 The White House says it will halt a rule that would make businesses report how much they pay workers of different genders and races.

The announcement takes aim at a major plank of President Barack Obama's equal pay legacy. His administration expanded the scope of the equal employment opportunity survey to include the requirements through an executive action last year.

The hope was that the change would help illuminate systemic wage discrimination against women and minorities, a problem that persists in part because of limited available data.

But businesses immediately complained of the administrative strain the regulation would put on their operations and questioned whether the information would be useful or securely handled.

As was widely expected, Donald Trump's administration sided with them. The memo directing the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to stay the rule called it "unnecessarily burdensome," claimed the data lacked "practical utility," and cited privacy and confidentiality concerns, according to the Wall Street Journal(opens in a new tab).

"I do hope that this decision will prompt a discussion of other more effective solutions," said a statement from Victoria Lipnic, acting chair of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, the regulatory budgeting group that wrote the memo.

The government has collected information on the gender and ethnic composition of the American workforce through the survey in question for decades. But companies have never been asked to include corresponding salaries and wages until Obama's executive order.

Only businesses with 100 or more employees and certain smaller companies with federal contracts are required to submit it.

Advocates of the policy say it would go a long way toward shining a light on entrenched wage gaps and the patterns necessary to understand them, instead of forcing them to rely on anecdotes that don't always tell the whole story.

"We’d learn about a pay-discrimination problem because someone saw a piece of paper left on a copy machine or someone was complaining about their salary to co-workers,” said Obama-era EEOC head Jenny Yang at a recent law conference, according to the Journal.

The White House's decision comes as discussion around gender discrimination has come to a head in Silicon Valley, where women and people of color remain scarce, and company cultures and investment structures are often stacked against them. Google currently faces a labor department probe for "extreme" systemic gender gaps, and Uber CEO Travis Kalanick was forced to step down after widespread allegations of rampant sexual harassment within the company.

Output: Donald Trump’s administration is to halt the introduction of a rule requiring companies with 100 employees or with federal contracts to report their gender and race pay gaps. The rule, proposed as part of President Obama’s equal pay programme, was designed to expose systematic wage discrimination. Firms resisted the move, citing administrative difficulties and security issues. The Trump administration backed such concerns in the memo directing the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to cancel the rule, claiming that it was “unnecessarily burdensome” and without “practical utility”.


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Google Assistant to expand integration with household appliances
 Join top executives in San Francisco on July 11-12, to hear how leaders are integrating and optimizing AI investments for success. Learn More

Google Assistant today announced integrations with a series of products due out soon, from smart speakers to a smart washing machine, dryer, and vacuum.

Smart speakers that will soon be able to speak with Google Assistant include the Zolo Mojo by Anker, TicHome Mini by Mobvoi, and the GA10 by Panasonic. Each is due out later this year and will be available in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the U.S., and the U.K.

The announcements were made ahead of IFA, an international consumer electronics show to take place Sept. 1-6 in Berlin. Additional smart speakers and appliances to adopt Google Assistant will be announced in the days to come.

“Starting later this year, with manufacturers like LG, you’ll be able control your appliances, including washers, dryers, vacuums, and more from your Assistant on your smart speaker, Android phone or iPhone,” Google Assistant senior director Abhi Taneja said in a blog post announcing the news.

Event Transform 2023 Join us in San Francisco on July 11-12, where top executives will share how they have integrated and optimized AI investments for success and avoided common pitfalls. Register Now

The products will utilize the Google Assistant software development kit to speak with the AI assistant through devices or issue commands like “OK Google, start vacuuming” or “OK Google, wash my clothes.”

In addition to appliances announced today, Google is reportedly planning to release a smaller version of the Google Home to compete with Amazon’s Echo Dot at a hardware debut event in October.

The news comes on the same day as Microsoft and Amazon announced a partnership to provide access to Alexa in Windows 10 PCs and to Cortana through the Echo, Echo Dot, and Echo Show.

Output: Google Assistant is to offer integration with a range of products including smart washing machines, vacuum cleaners and smart speakers. The products will be able to be controlled via Google Assistant, as will smart speakers such as Anker's Zolo Mojo, Panasonic's GA10 and Mobvoi's TicHome Mini. The speakers will be released later this year in the UK, the US, Canada, France, Germany and Australia. The integration will allow household appliances to be controlled by voice commands, such as "Google, start vacuuming."


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Panasonic to launch hi-fi speaker to rival Google Home
 At IFA 2017 Panasonic has launched a hi-fi speaker armed with Google Assistant. The Panasonic SC-GA10 aims to supplant the Google Home by, well, sounding better.

There are two 20mm soft-dome tweeters placed at 45 degrees, which gives a full 180-degree sound field. The 8cm woofer is armed with dual voice coils for more robust bass, as well as a long reflex port. There are even manual and preset EQs. Basically, the Panasonic SC-GA10 claims to put a lot more focus on sound than the Google Home does.

Related: Amazon Echo review

It should be just as smart as the Google Home too, as it is fully compatible with Google Assistant. It supports major music streaming apps such as Spotify, Google Play and TuneIn Radio.

You can also perform basic web searches, make to-do lists, control smart home devices, and enjoy multi-room audio with other Chromecast-integrated speakers. Alternatively, you can get two Panasonic SC-GA10 units and use them in stereo configuration via Bluetooth.

The Panasonic SC-GA10 will go on sale in early 2018. No price has been announced as yet.

Could the GA10 be your ideal home companion? Let us know on Twitter @trustedreviews

Output: Panasonic has launched a smart speaker at the technology trade show IFA 2017 in Berlin that aims to compete with Google Home by putting more emphasis on sound quality. The SC-GA10 hi-fi smart speaker supports major music streaming apps such as Google Play and Spotify and has two 20mm soft-dome tweeters that give a full 180-degree sound field. The speakers are fully compatible with Google Assistant, allowing the user to perform basic web searches, create to-do lists and control other smart home devices. The Panasonic SC-GA10 will go on sale in early 2018 with its price to be confirmed.


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Huadian Fuxin buys parent's assets and targets EM renewables projects
 Left to right: Huadian Fuxin Energy vice president Sun Tao; chairman Huang Shaoxiong; and chief financial officer of the Fujian branch Lin Maoji. Photo: Jonathan Wong

Output: China's Huadian Group is in talks to sell its solar and wind farms to its renewable energy unit Huadian Fuxin Energy by the end of this year or the beginning of next. The latter company recently posted a modest 0.6% year on year rise in net profits to CNY1.45bn ($218m), and revealed wind power wastage in the Gansu province and Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region was down from 23% last year to 16%. Fuxin has also invested in renewable projects in Indonesia and Bangladesh, which it said offer more attractive returns relative to projects in China.


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iPhone accepts WeChat Pay in China for App Store, Music purchases
 In a statement sent to multiple Chinese media outlets today, Apple said iPhone and iPad users in China can now use WeChat Pay as a payment method for App Store and Apple Music purchases.

"We are glad to offer users in mainland China the option of WeChat Pay for their favorite mobile app or Apple Music products. We continue to be dedicated to provide multiple simple and convenient payment methods for customers within the Apple ecosystem," Apple said in an official statement today.

WeChat Pay is the second most popular mobile payments service in China, with an estimated 39.5 percent market share as of the first quarter of 2017, according to Beijing-based research firm Analysys. By comparison, Apple Pay's market share was estimated to have been just one percent in the first quarter.

WeChat itself is an incredibly popular app in China that allows users to pay for services, chat, hail a cab, watch videos, play mini games, and more. Since the app can be installed on Android, some analysts believe WeChat is a threat to Apple by way of reducing the iPhone's competitive advantage in China.

Nevertheless, Apple CEO Tim Cook recently said WeChat's creator Tencent is one of its most important developers.

"I see Tencent as one of our biggest and best developers," said Cook, speaking on a conference call in early August. "They've done a great job of implementing iOS features in their apps, and we're looking forward to working with them even more to build even greater experiences for our mutual users in China."

Apple has also accepted Alipay, the most popular mobile payment service in China with 53.7 percent market share, since October 2016.

Output: Apple has announced that iPhone and iPad users in China can now use WeChat Pay as a payment method for App Store and Apple Music purchases. WeChat Pay is the second most popular mobile payments service in China, after Alipay, with an estimated 39.5% market share, compared with Apple Pay's 1% for the first quarter of 2017, according to Beijing research firm Analysys. Despite suggestions WeChat threatens Apple by reducing the iPhone's competitive advantage, Apple CEO Tim Cook said he is “looking forward to working with [Tencent, WeChat's creator] even more to build experiences for our mutual users in China".


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Poundland used jobless for unpaid work through government scheme
 Poundland has been criticised for employing jobseekers, without pay, for up to two months under a deal with the government.

Several of those who have worked on the scheme told the Guardian they had worked up to 30 hours a week for at least three weeks stacking shelves in Poundland. They were told that the work experience was voluntary but one said: “I had no say in it really.”

It’s not clear how many jobseekers have been used by Poundland under the scheme as the government said it did not collect information centrally and the work experience was managed locally by jobcentres across the country. However, one store in Bolton has taken on 21 placements since last August, according to information provided in response to a freedom of information request by the Boycott Workfare pressure group.

“Considering it is supposed to be work experience you’d think they would teach you how to work the till. But we have just been stacking shelves all day,” one person on the scheme told the Guardian.

More than one work experience participant in Bolton said that their local jobcentre had provided a bus pass to cover travel expenses and suitable clothing – of black trousers and a polo shirt. Poundland paid no wages and made no other contribution. Participants said they were not provided with any paperwork to record the time they had spent in a store.

All the participants contacted by the Guardian said they had been told they needed to do work experience by a “work coach” at their local jobcentre. The coach selected Poundland from a list of potential employers.

Poundland said it had signed a deal in January with the Department for Work and Pensions, which oversees the Jobcentre Plus work experience programme, to take jobseekers on work experience on condition that this was voluntary and not part of any benefit assessment.

It said the programme was designed to “help provide a taste of the world of work” largely for 18- to 24-year-olds with placements lasting between two and eight weeks and for between 25 to 30 hours a week. Those taking part continue to receive their benefits and store managers had been explicitly briefed that volunteers could not replace any paid employment.

“This is not work experience, this is work – and Poundland should pay for it,” said Tanya de Grunwald of the Graduate Fog website, which first revealed the existence of the Poundland work experience scheme.

A spokesman for the retailer said Poundland did not participate in work programmes such as workfare that could lead to benefits being withheld from participants. It said a number of work experience workers had been given a permanent job, but could not say exactly how many.

In 2013, the chain was at the centre of a legal action against the government by Cait Reilly, a geology graduate, who won a case arguing that it was unlawful to force her to work for free at the budget chain as a condition of her claiming jobseeker’s allowance.

A spokesman for Poundland said: “We’re sorry some of the people you spoke to felt their time with us wasn’t worthwhile. Our stores try hard to make it a positive experience and we know it has been for many. We’re always open to being told directly how to make it better.”

A spokesperson for the Department for Work and Pensions said: “It’s important that all opportunities – including those in the retail sector – are made available to jobseekers to help them move towards permanent work. Work experience is entirely voluntary and gives people the chance to increase their skills and gain vital on-the-job experience, something that businesses really value.”

It said that, ideally, claimants should complete only one work experience opportunity, although it is not clear whether this happens in practice.

Output: Poundland, the UK discount store, has been accused of employing unpaid jobseekers for up to two months under the government’s Jobcentre Plus initiative. The scheme was designed to provide work experience, but participants told The Guardian that they spent up to 30 hours a week stacking shelves. All participants interviewed by the paper claimed they had been told they needed to complete work experience by a jobcentre “work coach”. In 2013, graduate Cait Reilly won a case against the government arguing that it was unlawful to force her to work without pay at Poundland in order to claim jobseeker’s allowance.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Bahrain refinery uses GE system to desalinate sea water
 To save as much water as possible in the production of oil and eliminate the need to deliver water via tanker truck, the Bahrain Petroleum Company B.S.C. (Bapco) is using GE's advanced mobile water technology to convert seawater into usable, highly pure source water at the Awali refinery.

Bapco refines more than 260 000 bpd of crude oil, which is then exported throughout the Middle East, India, the Far East, Southeast Asia and Africa.

Using GE Water & Process Technologies’ mobile water technology gives Bapco a cost-effective solution for on-site desalination.

Yousif Ahmed, Acting Manager, Power and Utilities, Bapco, said: “GE’s mobile water solutions enabled Bapco to convert seawater into high-purity boiler feedwater for refinery use […] Availing mobile water solutions ensure a continual water supply instead of relying on tank truck deliveries.”

Previously, the limited in-house distillate water production from the desalination units prompted Bapco to import water using tank trucks to fill up the shortage. This mode of delivery would cause gridlock on refinery roads, and there were associated risks involved in having unusual numbers of tankers inside the refinery operating area.

GE Water & Process Technologies provided a turnkey operations and maintenance solution for this project, with a total of 13 mobile water units including six mobile seawater multimedia filter containers, five mobile seawater reverse osmosis containers, two mobile brackish water reverse osmosis containers and four diesel-operated electrical generators. GE also supplied all mobile pumping skids, tanks and interconnecting piping and cabling. The mobile water fleet started its operation in May 2017 and will continue to produce Bapco’s desalinated water requirements for one year.

Kevin Cassidy, Global Leader, Engineered Systems — GE Water & Process Technologies, said: “For the Bapco refinery, GE’s mobile water technology produces 136 m3/h of water, which meets the refinery’s high-quality standards […] Our mobile solutions allow Bapco to desalinate the water on-site and immediately use it for oil refining.”

Output: In order to reduce the amount of water used in the production of oil, and to reduce the need to deliver water to the facility, Bahrain Petroleum Company (Bapco) has adopted GE's mobile water solutions. Bapco had previously delivered fresh water using tanker trucks as its in-house distillate water production was too slow. GE’s mobile water technology produces 136 m3/h of water for the facility, allowing "Bapco to desalinate the water on-site and immediately use it for oil refining”, according to Kevin Cassidy, global leader of engineered systems at GE Water & Process Technologies.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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USA Today tests personalised design based on user habits
 The USA Today Network is taking a page out of Facebook’s playbook by reformatting its digital properties to give users more personalized webpages.

Since April, USA Today has tested a personalized design on its mobile website that serves users different content depending on whether they regularly visit the site or not, landed on an article organically or via search, their location and their viewing habits. Last week, all of USA Today’s mobile web users received the new layout after it was initially only available to 25 percent of users.

Users who got the new site design spent about 45 seconds on each article they read, while users with a traditional design spent about 25 seconds on each article, said Jason Jedlinski, USA Today Network’s head of digital product. Users with the new design were also more likely to scroll completely through an article, which led them to click through its internal circulation widget at the bottom of its articles about 5 percent more often than users with the old design, according to the publisher. USA Today wouldn’t provide raw numbers and said it doesn’t track visit duration.

As people continue to flock to social media for their news and information, USA Today wanted to adopt what works on social platforms by serving content in a way that is “sort of tailored and gets smarter the more you interact with it,” Jedlinski said.

USA Today’s attempt to boost engagement through personalized webpages comes at a time when social platforms are taking up people’s attention. Users spend more than 35 minutes per day on both Facebook and YouTube, according to influencer agency Mediakix. Meanwhile, most publishers are happy when users spend five or six minutes in their app per day.

Session length is also becoming increasingly important for publishers as high time spent on-site has become associated with premium offerings. To keep users glued to their properties, publishers are experimenting with various tactics. Bleacher Report got people to spend more than five minutes per day in its app by introducing a tab for Vine-like video loops. The Outline increased time spent per session by 30 percent by embedding 3-D objects into articles. Forbes increased its average session length by nearly 40 percent by redesigning its mobile site to include Snapchat-like cards.

One example of how USA Today’s new webpages work is that users who rarely visit the site and are referred to it from search have their homepage organized by trending topics like North Korea’s missile test and Hurricane Harvey, while users who regularly visit the site receive a more traditional layout organized around topics like news, sports and money. Another example: A user who regularly reads articles about the same sports team will see articles about that particular team on the homepage more often.

The new layout was created using the open-source JavaScript library Polymer, which was built by Google developers. Polymer allowed USA Today’s tech team to code elements of its webpages as separate components so that they can be reconfigured on the fly in endless combinations to suit a specific user’s tastes. For about 90 days, a team of 10 developers and engineers spent 60-80 percent of their time working on the launch of this product, Jedlinski said. That same team then spent another four months testing and monitoring the product’s features.

In the next six months, the company plans to roll out the product to all users across desktop and mobile for not just USA Today but also its local newspaper affiliates like the Detroit Free Press and The Des Moines Register.

“Our goal is really to build a foundation for experimentation and for an adaptive experience that isn’t one-size-fits-all,” Jedlinski said.

Output: USA Today is introducing more personalised web pages, which give users different content depending on the frequency of their visits, location and viewing habits. The new layout has been launched on its mobile web services, and is being rolled out over the next six months across all its desktop and mobile platforms, including its local newspaper affiliates. In trials earlier this year, the new design, created using Google's Javascript library Polymer, led to increased visit durations, with an average of 45 seconds per article, compared to 25 seconds on the previous layout.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Financial institutions' de-risking puts 700 million at risk
 Photo: Ted Aljibe/AFP/Getty Images

The current era of political unrest and uncertainty, coupled with the rise of terror and cyberattacks, means that financial institutions have had to adhere to increasingly strict policies to minimize their risk of being involved in money laundering or funding terrorism.

The regulations and legislation in place work to prevent the cross-border flow of money to criminal groups, creating a more secure financial sector. However, the consequence of these policies can have a far-reaching costly effect on people in poor countries and has given rise to an inadvertent practice known as “de-risking.”

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an intergovernmental policymaking organization aimed at combating money laundering and terrorist financing, defines de-risking as “the phenomenon of financial institutions terminating or restricting business relationships with clients or categories of clients to avoid, rather than manage, risk in line with the FATF’s risk-based approach.”

Since 2008, banks and businesses working within the finance sector have been required to use a risk-based approach to financial crime; we should be vigilant at identifying and assessing the risks that we are presented with and then developing ways to manage them.

De-risking is the act of removing banking services from customers who are deemed “high risk” under the Anti-Money laundering (AML) and Terrorist Financing (TF) legislation. Since these policies were introduced, an increasing number of money transfer operators (MTOs), also known as remittance firms, have closed.

A World Bank study, undertaken at the request of the G20, in 2015 on the de-risking issue noted that “[t]he number of accounts being closed appears to be increasing; both MTOs and banks report an increased trend of closed and/or restricted number of accounts between 2010 and 2014; 46 percent of MTO respondents have received notifications from their banks about the upcoming closure of their accounts.”

A 2016 Dow Jones survey of 812 financial services found that 40 percent of the respondents acknowledged that their companies were de-risking, having closed down a full business line or segment in the past year due to regulatory risk. Another third of the respondents said they were planning or investigating exiting a business line or segment within the next year. “The main reasons for leaving involve [that] the organization is no longer willing to assume the segment risk and the cost of compliance making the segment unprofitable,” the survey says.

The FATF notes that the de-risking issue is a complex one, driven by factors such as “profitability; reputational risk; lower risk appetites of banks; and regulatory burdens related to the implementation of anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CFT) requirements, the increasing number of sanctions regimes, and regulatory requirements in [the] financial sector.”

The UK government’s Anti-Money Laundering Action Plan acknowledges that the total cost of financial core compliance is 5 billion pounds ($5.86 billion) a year.

De-risking isn’t just affecting small firms. A growing trend has been noticed whereby large global banks are not only limiting, but terminating their relationships with correspondent banks. Between 2014 and 2015, 50 percent of local banks reported a decline in correspondent banking relationships, and 75 percent of international banks admitted that they were scaling back their banking operations. The new conservative approach has seen not only firms, but entire market segments and countries being deprived of financial services; rather than judging each client or case on its individual merit, a broad approach is being taken.

“De-risking that leads to the loss of correspondent banking services is bad news for all of us. It could: undermine financial system resilience; hinder competition; create obstacles to trade; cause financial exclusion; and promote underground financial channels which will be misused by criminals or terrorists,” said FATF Executive Secretary Mr. David Lewis.

Vulnerable Individuals

While it’s easy to understand why de-risking is being largely executed, it’s also just as easy to forget that there are segments of a global society that will directly experience the negative impact of the strategy.

In its study of the de-risking issue, the World Bank said: “Remittances contribute to sustaining the welfare of about 700 million people globally and they often represent the only source of income to provide food, healthcare, housing, and education to migrants’ families.”

My previous article touched on the enormous figure of remittances sent home by migrants, what the number meant with regards to GDP, and the difference between living and surviving.

Those living in post-disaster situations and relying on humanitarian assistance from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and charities are also being affected. NGOs and charities have reported that they, too, have experienced difficulties in being able to provide financial assistance due to de-risking efforts that resulted in their accounts being closed, because it has been deemed that they fall outside of the firm’s increasingly narrow risk appetite. Fourteen percent of respondents in the Dow Jones survey said they were considering exiting their business relationships with NGOs and charities.

SMEs in Small or Developing Countries

Firms in small and developing nations rely on their local banks having connections with international financial institutions to supply them with credit to drive their businesses forward.

These institutions are withdrawing services from local banks in such countries; it’s been previously reported that Caribbean countries have been severely affected by de-risking. These small nations and their industries, such as tourism and agriculture, are export-orientated and rely on correspondent services to serve as channels for revenue generated in other countries, as international money transfers also contribute to the payments these businesses receive—a decline would in turn lead to increased borrowing. However, the Central Bank of Barbados reported that their accounts had been closed by banks in the EU, United States and Canada; Belize and Jamaica have also reported similar circumstances.

As a result of these account terminations, local firms are unable to pay for services or invest in foreign projects, severely hindering economic development.

Law Enforcement

In my previous article, I also touched on the fact that a vast amount of remittance is being sent through unofficial channels, and that it is hard to provide the accurate amount that is sent each year. De-risking is only adding to the problem.

MTOs are being forced to use less transparent methods and avenues, such as bulk exchanges—this threatens economic stability. “This is a serious concern … to the extent that de-risking may drive financial transactions into less/non-regulated channels, reducing transparency of financial flows and creating financial exclusion, thereby increasing exposure to money laundering and terrorist financing (ML/TF) risks,” according to the FATF.

The financial industry must pay closer attention to methods of expanding the use of digital technology such as blockchain, the secure public ledgers that distribute funds in a decentralized way almost instantly, provide transparency and are low cost. These ledgers store sender details securely and have built-in facilities for smart contracts and fundraising for businesses.

Strengthening the risk-based approach with technology, coupled with increased sharing of information, would enable financial businesses and banks to facilitate low-cost and more secure customer identification and due diligence checks.

“We believe a solution to this issue requires dialogue between countries, regulators and banks, and increased information exchange. This can help clarify regulatory expectations, build trust, facilitate capacity building and highlight best practices,” said Mr. Tao Zhang, deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund.

The IMF notes that some banks are setting the pace for tackling the de-risking issue:

Standard Chartered, a UK bank with a large presence in Asia, established a correspondent banking training program to help its clients, local banks, and the clients’ clients comply with anti-money-laundering and terrorism financing rules. The program is active in 23 countries. Mexico, a major emerging market economy also affected by the loss of correspondent banking relations, has been active on several fronts. In some countries, privacy laws forbid subsidiaries of the same global bank to exchange information about clients’ risk profiles. So Mexico amended its legal framework to facilitate this cross-border information sharing. It also established a domestic U.S. dollar payment system and uses the central bank’s correspondent banking relations to facilitate transfers.

Clear risk rewards are needed, along with a focus on developing innovative solutions that ensure firms are compliant and that individuals in need of financial support, in whichever capacity that may be, are provided with it.

Output: Financial institutions’ de-risking to reduce risk of exposure to money laundering and terrorist financing is depriving market segments and even countries of financial services, including remittances, which around 700 million people rely on globally as a source of income to provide food, healthcare, housing and education.  A total 46% of remittance firms have received notifications from their banks about the closure of their accounts since the Financial Action Task Force's introduction of anti-money laundering and terrorist financing laws in 2010, a World Bank study found.


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Researchers create renewable catalyst from palladium and bacteria
 In Illinois, fuels that are produced from nonpetroleum-based biological sources may become greener and more affordable, thanks to research performed at the University of Illinois’ Prairie Research Institute that examines the use of a processing catalyst made from palladium metal and bacteria. Published in the journal Fuel, their findings point to a cheaper, more environmentally friendly and renewable catalyst for processing that uses common bacteria and the metal palladium, which can be recovered from waste sources such as discarded electronics, catalytic converters, street sweeper dust and processed sewage.

The bio-oil produced in the lab from algae contains impurities like nitrogen and oxygen, but treating it with palladium as a catalyst during processing helps remove those impurities to meet clean-air requirements, Sharma said.

For the palladium to do its job, the bio-oil needs to flow past it during processing. Previous studies have shown that allowing the oil flow through porous carbon particles infused with palladium is an effective method, but those carbon particles are not cheap

Output: Scientists in Illinois have developed a renewable fuels catalyst made from the metal palladium and common bacteria. The materials can be recovered from waste sources such as discarded electronics, catalytic converters and processed sewerage, and in tests the catalyst was used to refine bio-oil made from algae. The new method uses the bacteria as a 'biologic scaffolding' for the palladium catalyst in place of commercially-produced carbon particles, which are more expensive. The findings open the possibility of a cheaper and more sustainable process for refining renewable and other fuels.