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Scientists in Pakistan overcome issues of walnut shell waste

 A team of scientists from IISER processed walnut shells to obtain high-quality carbon that can be used in batteries.

If you think that walnuts only help in improving brain functioning, think again!

A team of scientists from the Indian Institute of Science, Education and Research (IISER) , led by Satishchandra Ogale, may soon have a solution for Kashmir’s greatest organic waste problem — the nutshells of walnuts.

One of the researchers, Wahid Malik, came up with a unique idea of using walnut covering, during one of his visits to his hometown in Kashmir, about nine months ago.

These researchers processed the nutshell, an abundantly grown dryfruit found in Kashmir, to obtain high-quality carbon, meant to be used in the anode part of the sodium-ion battery. These batteries are basically similar to the commonly used Li-ion batteries, but are expected to be much cheaper due to the few thousand-fold higher abundance of sodium over lithium in nature. Battery systems are central to all renewable energy resource management and usage, including grid-based set ups, electric vehicles, and biomedical or handheld devices.

When asked about this novel idea, Malik stated, “It is one of the greatest issues for farmers back home, to deal with the hard and nutty shell of dry fruits, especially that of walnut. That is when, while thinking of his proposal for CSIR-800 mission as a doctoral student, it was ideated and worked upon.”

According to the study team, 63,000 hectares of land is under cultivation of walnuts in Kashmir. Of the total 36,000 tonnes of organic waste generated from the farm produce, 15,000 tonnes is contributed by walnut shells alone.

The crushed shells are first cleansed using acids and then subjected to pyrolysis process, where it is heated at temperatures as high as 1,000 degrees Celsius for about 4 to 5 hours. Later, the carbon chunks are extracted within the specially created inert atmosphere, before it is powered or converted into a paste form, the researchers explained. One of advantages of using this nutshell, according to Ogale, is its natural composition. He said, “The foliage of the shell perfectly suits the requirements once it is treated chemically, giving an edge over other natural resource substances.”

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“These Na-ion batteries are expected to be at least five-times cheaper than the lithium batteries and can make the overall setups affordable,” Malik claimed.

If this is technique becomes commercially viable, farmers in the valley can have an additional source of income, added Malik. Currently, the leftover organic waste is used in making packaging products. “But, that too is limited to just 5 – 10 per cent of the waste, while the rest lay unattended causing serious concerns to the cultivators, who otherwise burn it further resulting to air pollution,” he added.

At the lab testing stage, the scientists were able to extract about 300 – 400 mg of battery grade carbon from one gram of power obtained from the shell.

Output: Scientists at Pakistan's Indian Institute of Science, Education and Research have discovered that chemically treated and burned walnut shells can provide high-quality carbon for use in the anode of sodium-ion batteries. If the method can be scaled and commercialised, it could not only provide a source of carbon for Na-ion batteries, which are cheaper than their lithium-ion equivalents, but also provide an income for local farmers. Kashmir currently cultivates 63,000 hectares of walnuts, producing 15,000 tonnes of shell waste.


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UK study finds India, US more important than EU for tech labour
 Flickr/Andrew Eland https://www.flickr.com/photos/andreweland/1393811350/in/photolist-38aDyb-38aD2Y-qxcwT-eeShQ1-eeLLD4-g4Wrwk-g4X6Gg-g4Wywm-g4WrEg-g4WzQ3-g4WEv5-eeLnLM-eeSv85-g4WuRs-g4XaAP-ea798n-g4WwMv-g4WwA9-eeSj8J-ea79Li-g4WB7o-ea79AK-eacNLf-g4X5KB-g4WBks-eeSoLU-g4Wwwv-g4WtZ6-g4WsDa-ea79FX-g4XcnV-g4WycJ-g4WAnY-g4WB4A-3863Be-eeLBJB-eeSnWJ-g4WBt5-g4WxMh-eeSst1-eeS9p9-bsDnNA-3oVL78-ea7996-ea792Z-eeSbFW-eeLkcX-g4X9C6-ea79LM-g4WA5S

More skilled tech workers came to the UK from India, the USA, and Australia in 2016 than from the top five EU countries, according to LinkedIn data.

The data — touted in a Tech City UK study on Friday — shows that India provided 12% of all the skilled tech workers migrating to the UK in 2016, while the US provided 10%. European neighbours Spain and France provided 6% each, while Italy provided 5%, Ireland 5%, and Germany 3%.

Technology founders and investors in the UK have raised concerns that their businesses could suffer if Brexit makes it harder for them to hire engineers and software developers from across the EU. A report from policy group Coalition for a Digital Economy (Coadec) in February suggested Brexit will leave the UK short of 800,000 digital workers by 2020. But the LinkedIn data suggests that the UK technology sector may not be as reliant on skilled EU workers as it thinks it is.

Tech City UK is a publicly-funded organisation responsible for growing the UK tech sector. Its leaders were in favour of remaining in the EU but now the UK has voted to leave, the organisation is trying to focus on the positives.

Gerard Grech, Tech City UK CEO, said in a statement: "There is a skills crisis looming in the digital tech sector and competition for talent is fierce and global. By understanding exactly where skilled tech workers come from we can plan for the future and invest where it is necessary. The insights that LinkedIn have shared with us also allow us to build up a bigger picture than ever before of the skills each UK region has."

Output: The UK isn't as reliant on the European Union for skilled technology labour as the sector thinks it is, according to data from LinkedIn published by Tech City UK. Digitally focused workers from India and the US outweigh those from Spain, France, Italy, Ireland and Germany combined, it found.


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‘Digital skills gap’ emerging in UK SMEs in run up to Brexit: FSB
 The Federation of Small Businesses has warned that UK productivity growth will continue to stall unless action is taken to tackle the digital skills deficit in small businesses.

FSB research has found that over a quarter of business owners in England lack confidence in their basic digital skills and more than a fifth believe a lack of basic digital skills among their staff is holding them back from increasing their digital and online presence.

The business group says small firms will be left behind unless the National Retraining Scheme, announced in the Budget to boost digital capability, is designed with them in mind. However, 25 per cent of small firms do not consider digital skills to be important to the growth of their business. The FSB says that demonstrating the benefits of digital to these firms will be critical.

Mike Cherry, FSB national chairman, said: “Firms risk being left behind unless they have the skills to take advantage of technology to remain competitive and responsive to their customers. We need to highlight the benefits of going digital and then make sure that small businesses and their staff can access basic digital skills training that meet their needs. If we can harness the digital potential of small firms, we stand a real chance of creating more world-beating businesses and boosting growth.”

The digital skills gap is part of a wider skills challenge hitting small firms. The research finds that 30% of small businesses in England have struggled to find workers to fill roles because of acute skills shortages in the past year.

“Productivity is being hampered by nagging skills shortages which are making recruitment a nightmare for small firms,” said Mike Cherry. “As the UK moves towards Brexit, a technical skills black hole threatens the economy. Small firms tell us that technical skills are crucial to the future growth of their businesses. The clock is ticking to tackle the ever-widening skills gap.”

The findings of the research also show that nearly half of all SMEs don’t have a formal training plan or budget. Small firms say the main barriers to training are the fact that their employees are too busy, training is too expensive or the type of training needed is not available locally.

Cherry added: “Small firms clearly recognise the value of providing training for themselves and their staff, but it can be a struggle to find the time and money, and in some cases even to find the right training locally. All Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) should ensure that there is relevant, accessible training available to meet the needs of small businesses and the self-employed.”

Output: A "black hole" in technical skills is threatening the economy as the UK heads for Brexit, the chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) has warned. Mike Cherry, FSB national chairman, was commenting on FSB research which claims more than one in four business owners in England are not confident in basic digital skills. The research also finds that over one in five small firms believes it is being held back online by staff with weak digital literacy.


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Help for mortgage payers in financial difficulties to be reduced
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A new report has revealed the extent to which help for home owners facing financial difficulty has been scaled back over the past decade.

Following the 2008 financial crisis the Government strengthened the safety net for mortgage borrowers, but most of this support has now been withdrawn.

Key findings of the report, Challenges for our Home Ownership Safety Net, UK and International Perspectives, commissioned by trade body UK Finance, include:

Support will be further reduced next April when the Government is due to stop paying Support for Mortgage Interest as a grant and replace it with a new and less generous form of support – Loans for Mortgage Interest. This will be repayable when the house is sold.

By 2022 help for home owners in financial difficulty will be limited mainly to loans to those who do not work. For people with a job, even in part-time or low-paid employment, the system will rely largely on what individual home owners can do for themselves, supported by lenders operating within the legal and regulatory safeguards.

The report is the work of three of the UK’s leading housing academics. Their analysis explores how the safety net for borrowers in financial difficulty has been eroded in the UK and compares it with other countries.

It reveals that, while many nations do not provide support specifically for mortgage borrowers, in some cases this is because they already have more generous income support measures in place.

In countries where mortgage markets have suffered badly because of the financial crisis and subsequent recession, governments have often responded with emergency policies to reduce evictions, modify mortgage terms, transfer homes into the rental sector and provide other support.

There has also been regulation to reinforce economic stability and limit risks posed by financial institutions.

Commenting on the research, UK Finance’s head of mortgage policy June Deasy said: “As this research highlights, there have been significant changes in the benefit system affecting home owners.

“It is important that they are aware of these changes and how they may be affected.”

Output: Assistance to UK mortgage borrowers who encounter financial difficulties is being stripped back by the government, according to a report. Three academics who specialise in housing policy were commissioned to look at the issue by finance trade body UK Finance and found support has been reduced since the financial crash of 2008. They also highlighted how such reductions will continue, until by 2022 assistance will be limited to measures for people out of work, with those on low incomes having to rely on existing statutory safeguards imposed on their lenders.


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NCR, CoinHub to introduce bitcoin-enabled ATMs in UAE
 NCR has teamed up with UAE cryptocurrency exchange CoinHub to enable users to make cash withdrawals from their bitcoin accounts at the ATM.

NCR says the execution of the cryptocurrency transaction is as simple as any other at the cashpoint - a withdrawal begins with authenticating the user either by scanning a standard ATM card or via cardless access with a mobile device.

Similar to the selection of current or savings accounts, the user can opt to withdraw funds from their linked CoinHub cryptocurrency account.

Panicos Demetriades, vice president, professional services, NCR Financial Services, says: “When we first showcased this solution to mark the 50th anniversary of the ATM last year, the positive feedback from our leading financial institution customers in the UAE helped guide our decision to bring this to market.”

Output: US cash machine company NCR is partnering with cryptocurrency exchange CoinHub to allow customers in the UAE to make cash withdrawals from their bitcoin accounts. The technology was demonstrated by NCR last year to mark the 50th anniversary of the ATM, and the positive reaction persuaded them to introduce it commercially. Customers will make the transactions in the usual way, authenticating themselves either using their card or mobile device and opting to withdraw from their linked CoinHub cryptocurrency account.


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Nuggets building ID verification blockchain in FCA sandbox
 Podcast

Holy Trinity Baptist Church Federal Credit Union has about $24,000 in assets, making it one of the smallest credit unions in the U.S. But it has survived and thrived over the past 50-plus years with low overhead and a small but loyal membership.

Output: London-based firm Nuggets is developing a blockchain and biometric identity system within the Financial Conduct Authority's FCA Innovate sandbox. Nuggets co-founder Alastair Johnson said the decentralised system, which uses facial recognition technology and stores no personal data, would be available to banks and businesses via an API, while consumers would use an app. The planned launch is for Q1 2018. Nuggets was invited to participate in the sandbox by the regulator, which aims to encourage innovation in fintech.


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Uber rival Ola acquires food delivery firm Foodpanda India
 The country’s largest home-grown ride-hailing firm, Ola, has acquired food delivery company Foodpanda’s India business from its German parent, Delivery Hero. It announced the all-stock deal today (Dec. 19) in a press release, though it did not disclose the cost of the acquisition.

Ola will invest $200 million (Rs1,282 crore) into Foodpanda India.

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Saurabh Kochhar, the current CEO of Foodpanda India, has decided to move on, the release said. The company will now be headed by Ola’s founding partner Pranay Jivrajka, it added.

“Foodpanda India will benefit from Ola’s scale and efficiencies as a platform, also having leveraged learnings from Delivery Hero’s global best practices,” a press release from Ola said. “Ola and Delivery Hero will continue to collaborate on building the online food delivery ecosystem in India.”

This will be Ola’s second outing in the food delivery space. In 2015, the company entered the market organically with a service called Ola Cafe in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad. However, it discontinued the service after a year as it reportedly failed to meet targets.

Meanwhile, rival Uber has been running its meal order and delivery platform UberEATS in India since May this year. The service is available in six cities, according to a company press release issued last week.

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With this acquisition, Ola will now have access to Foodpanda’s delivery network across over 100 cities, which includes menus from over 15,000 restaurants.

While Uber and Ola have established themselves as leaders in the online ride-hailing space in India, this will be a different game altogether. The food delivery segment in India is currently crowded with several strong players such as Swiggy and Zomato, who themselves have been struggling to make money.

Output: Indian ride-hailing firm Ola has made a second bid to enter the country's competitive food delivery space, with the all-stock acquisition of Foodpanda India from German parent firm Delivery Hero. Ola is set to invest $200m in the business, as it takes on rival company Uber and its subsidiary UberEATS India, as well as Swiggy and Zomato. The acquisition gives Ola access to menus from more than 15,000 restaurants across over 100 cities. In 2015, Ola launched Ola Cafe in Delhi, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Mumbai, but the initiative folded after a year.


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Ordnance Survey explores roof detector software
 Britain's map maker is demonstrating that machine learning isn't all hot air – but has discovered just how much donkey work is involved.

The Ordnance Survey set up an ML experiment to identify roofs from its remote sensing data (satellite and aerial imagery), and found the trial reached 87 per cent accuracy within a week, from a standing start. That's still less accurate than humans (at 95 per cent), but that's not the point – it could process thousands in the time it takes a human to do one.

"Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to classify this roof..." [Source: Ordnance Survey]

"It does have the potential to revolutionise our operations," an OS spokesman enthused. The week-long prototype isn't ready for deployment because it isn't yet accurate enough, but it promises to accelerate visual data analysis.

Roofs fall into three main categories – gabled, hipped, or flat – although there are some that are fantastically rare, such as the saddle roof. You may wonder why anyone would care. Insurance people do: they use OS data to determine insurance levels. The laborious process of labelling 20,000 roofs was crowdsourced to OS employees. In all, five separate data sources were used and thrown into the mix.

The challenge was one of classification rather than identification, OS research scientist Charis Doidge told us.

"We already have the polygons from our data," she said. That meant the model wasn't struggling to identify roofs all over the map. "Segmentation is an issue," Doidge agrees. One discovery she found was that removing the extraneous pixels around the polygon sharply improved recognition.

It isn't the first time OS has used ML to augment its pattern recognition. The agency adopted a similar, practical approach when giving ML a spin before.

Suck it and see

One OS dataset is used by the Rural Payments Agency to determine subsidies. One particular subsidy rewards farmers for planting and maintaining hedgerows – and this data is mapped by the OS. Analysts look for changes in the hedgerows, as this can likely mean changes in payments. So automating and flagging up changes can be a boon.

Potentially, at least. The OS and RPA ran three experiments with mixed results: some promising, some not.

Source: Ordnance Survey

"The results prove that automatically identifying changes to certain types of Land Parcel Boundaries – especially, drains/ditches/dykes, walls, or fences (which are smaller than the spatial resolution of the input imagery data) – is very difficult even using specialist edge detection tools such as those employed within this work," the RPA's postmortem concluded.

"These types of features have the lowest change detection accuracy and have a detrimental impact on the overall change detection accuracy."

The analysis found that a lot of pre-processing was required to make the data suitable for the ML algorithms. The algorithms were then confused by lighting (the angle of the Sun) and the time of year the source data was taken. But this illustrates a dilemma for anyone deploying state-of-the-art AI today, when the paint isn't dry on the art: you don't know whether it's going to work until you've tried it.

To illustrate how early days it is, the "Father of Deep Learning", Geoffrey Hinton, recently revealed a radical approach to pattern recognition using neural networks. In the 1980s, Hinton had pioneered the theoretical application of backpropagation techniques to neural nets. This is an approach which, when allied to large data sets, has finally borne some practical fruit in recent years.

Hinton declared that backpropagation was no longer sufficient to take AI forward, and revealed what he says is a superior technique – capsules. The approach has been welcomed as taking AI researchers "out of a rut". Hinton's new approach assumes the pattern being sought is already in the image, "[using] neural activities that vary as viewpoint varies rather than trying to eliminate viewpoint variation from activities". (Human-readable PDFs here and here.)

Right now Hinton's focus is on 3D objects, so it isn't directly useful to the OS.

It's early days in pattern recognition, and what's emerging is the need for cleanly labelled data. But for mappers, whose raw data is visual, the prospect of speeding up the work seems promising. ®

Output: The UK's publicly-owned mapping company Ordnance Survey is experimenting with machine learning (ML) software that can detect the type of roof on a building from satellite and aerial images. The classifications are used by insurance companies, amongst others, and have previously been completed manually by OS employees. Within a week of being introduced, the new software achieved an accuracy rate of 87%, and was able to process the data thousands of times faster than human analysts. The technology could have other applications, such as for detecting changes in farm hedgerows to work out entitlements for agricultural subsidies.


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UK Land Registry may record sales made in bitcoin
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The Land Registry which lists homes sold and bought across England and Wales has said it “may” record payments for homes that are not made in the UK’s sterling currency.

However, in a woolly statement, it says that this is ‘not a recognition’ of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.

EYE has asked for further clarification.

The Land Registry last night said that its own payments, made to it by the likes of property owners and conveyancers registering title, must not be in currency such as bitcoin. However, it has not seemed to deny that it will register house sales in bitcoin.

The ‘clarification’ came after EYE asked for further information on our story yesterday that a small property firm – whose activities include an estate agency as well as a new homes developer – claimed a first in selling a property whose price would be recorded by the Land Registry in bitcoins.

After queries that this was ‘fake news’, EYE asked the Land Registry a straightforward question: does it record sales in bitcoin?

Last night, in a statement the Land Registry told us: “In land and property transactions, we record when the price paid, or value, is declared. If the price paid is not in pounds sterling then we may record it.

‘This is not a recognition of the validity of the payment made but rather a record of the transaction.

“Our registration fee is payable on the pound sterling equivalent of the value of the property and this is declared to us by the conveyancer.

“We do not accept cryptocurrency for any forms of payment for our products or services.

“We register the ownership, interests and mortgages against land and property in England and Wales, regardless of the method of payment.”

Yesterday, the property firm involved in what it said were the first two homes to be sold in bitcoin, stuck firmly to its guns in saying that the Land Registry has agreed to record one of those sales in bitcoin.

Estate agent Edward Casson, of Go Holdings, told us: “Essentially the Land Registry have said that whatever the contract completes on – xx bitcoin, that’s what they will record.”

He said of the fake news claims: “You will always get doubters on areas like this because it is new and most can’t understand its concept … yet.”

Last night, after the Land Registry issued its statement, Casson said: “Essentially they can record it in any format but our conveyancing contracts are in BTC (bitcoin) for these sales, and the legal teams will advise the Registry so.

“Interestingly there have been lots of other buyers who have come forward today [yesterday] also wishing to purchase some of our property with BTC. Good to see so many potential buyers in a tough market.”

EYE understands that the Government is considering the impact of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin across all its departments, and that news media – including The Times, Telegraph and EYE – may be seen to have ‘jumped the gun’.

Output: The UK Land Registry has hinted that it will record payments made in bitcoin and other non-sterling transaction methods, though it made it clear that this was not an endorsement of cryptocurrencies. It clarified that payments made to the land registry for its services must still be made in pounds. Moreover, a spokesperson for the land registry merely records the transaction, ownership, interests and mortgages on the land, and if the price paid was made in an alternate currency then they may record it.


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Ad company Prism granted membership status by IAB
 The IAB UK has granted membership status to Prism, the ad company that emerged from ad blocking software firm Shine Technologies. Launched in 2015 as a controversial network-level ad blocker, the company has since shed senior management, re-engineered its solution and rebranded to Prism Platform. The company was also briefly known as Rainbow while the new management workedd on repositioning the company.

Prism makes use of first-party data gathered by consumer opt-in for targeting solutions and behavioural insights, and works with advertisers and publishers to ensure that served ads meet ad industry standards, including the IAB’s LEAN principles which were established to fight back against the rise of ad blocking by ensuring non-invasive, light-weight ads.

Advertisers and publishers are able to get ads verified before they are served to the end consumer, a service the firm offers free of charge, and publishers are provided with an early warning system for non-compliants ads, enabling them to be replaced before they are served.

“Relaunching the company as Prism Platform is a firm and final departure from the legacy of Shine, a company known for its negative and irresponsible rhetoric more than for its action,” said James Collier, chief revenue officer and co-founder of Prism. “Rainbow was an intermediate step for us on our journey to reposition the company.

“We have now redeveloped the ad compliance technology into a trusted and brand-safe platform that is designed to work with all the key stakeholders of the digital content and advertising industry to provide targeting solutions for brands and publishers, open revenue streams for carriers, give insights into human behaviour and ensure a relevant, engaging ad experience for consumers.”

Addressing Prism’s entry into the IAB, Tim Elkington, chief digital officer at the IAB UK said: “Prism has changed and because of that, we can accept them as members. Like any member, we hope they’ll take part in the Gold Standard (the IAB’s recently-unveiled pledge for higher ad quality) to help build a sustainable future for digital advertising.”

“We are delighted to become members of the IAB UK, who are an important fixture in the fight for better brand and consumer ad experiences,” said Collier. “We fully support the IAB in their efforts to reverse and stop the continued growth of ad-blocking; as a technology company focused on keeping the internet free, we work to enable all stakeholders gain a better experience from digital advertising.

“Our mission is to enhance the experience of every stakeholder involved in digital advertising, with consumers, brands, advertisings and publishers able to reach the best audiences in a transparent way, without supplementing the end consumer experience. Our membership with the IAB speaks to this – we have firmly placed increased trust and transparency at the centre of our activity, and hope to encourage all stakeholders to adhere to IAB guidelines and best practices.”

Output: The IAB UK has added ad company Prism Platform to its members. Prism Platform, which launched from ad blocking software company Shine Technologies in 2015, uses first-party data to offer targeted solutions and behavioural insights to advertisers and publishers. The company uses data gathered through consumer opt-in facilities to create non-invasive ads that meet IAB standards. Ads are verified free of charge, with early warnings given to non-compliant ads before they are served.


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Walmart invests in online systems for drive-through service
 Missed the GamesBeat Summit excitement? Don't worry! Tune in now to catch all of the live and virtual sessions here.

(Reuters) — As Amazon.com looks to upend the U.S. grocery market with home delivery, some veteran supermarket operators are betting on a different strategy: curbside pickup. Americans have long loved the convenience of drive-through service for burgers and coffee. Kroger Co and Walmart Inc are tweaking that formula for groceries.

The companies have invested heavily in online systems that allow customers to order ahead from their neighborhood store. Workers pick and pack the products, then run them out to shoppers in the parking lot, the grocery version of carry out pizza. For the retailers, the service is cheaper than delivery, because customers do the driving. For shoppers, it means skipping crowds and queues at their local market, and no worries about missing packages or melted ice cream if they are not at home to meet the delivery guy.

Tony Sacco, who lives in the Los Angeles beach community of Playa Del Rey, is a regular user of the service at a nearby Ralphs supermarket, owned by Cincinnati-based Kroger. Each pickup costs $6.95, but the time-crunched married father of three says it is worth it.

“This is easy. Time is money,” said Sacco, 47, as a worker loaded bags into his SUV on a recent morning.

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Retaining customers like Sacco is critical for traditional grocery retailers as they battle an array of upstarts bent on turning groceries into the next home-delivery juggernaut.

New entrants such as meal-kit company Blue Apron and organic food seller Thrive Market are peeling off coveted slices of their business. Amazon, the nation’s largest online retailer, has amassed an 18 percent share of the $12.6 billion U.S. online grocery market mainly through the sale of packaged goods such as pasta and diapers. It is the largest player in a sector that is expected to grow to $41.7 billion by 2022, according to market research firm Packaged Facts.

But even mighty Amazon has struggled with the trickiest part of the trade: delivering fresh produce, meat, dairy and other perishables. Its AmazonFresh service started more than a decade ago, but has yet to make a major mark.

Amazon is making another run at it with its $13.7 billion purchase of upscale grocery chain Whole Foods earlier this year. Amazon has said little about its plans. But analysts expect it will use Whole Foods’ 450 locations as distribution hubs for home delivery, opening a new front in its campaign to disrupt the $700-billion U.S. grocery industry.

Old-line players are responding with some new moves of their own. Kroger and Walmart are experimenting with delivery. But they are wagering that pickup is the true sweet spot in the industry’s online evolution. Both are rolling out the service in thousands of their stores.

“The way people are going to shop for groceries is going to be curbside, not delivery,” said Jason Goldberg, a senior vice president at digital marketing firm SapientRazorfish.

Amazon, too, is eyeing that channel. AmazonFresh has already tested pickup in Seattle and analysts expect Whole Foods to do the same.

Nevertheless, researcher Packaged Facts says traditional retailers can win with real estate: “Companies such as Walmart and Kroger have the advantage, because they already have stores all over the country in both urban and rural settings,” it said in a recent report.

Click and Collect

Kroger bought its way into pickup with its 2014 purchase of southeast grocer Harris Teeter, which had an established program.

That same year, Kroger debuted its own offering, known as ClickList, adding features such as coupons and promotions based on detailed customer data.

Pickup is now available at 1,000 of the chain’s 2,800 stores and the company is adding the service at 400 to 500 locations a year, according to Matt Thompson, the vice president of ClickList.

He said curbside customers spend 40 percent to 60 percent more than traditional shoppers, because they tend to stock up on bulky items such as bottled water. Users pay $4.95 to $6.95 for each order depending on their location. Kroger would not disclose how many shoppers use ClickList. It promotes the service in stores and online, while customers spread the word through social media.

Users log into ClickList online. They put items into digital carts, pay and reserve a pickup time at least four hours in advance.

The order is sent to a terminal in a store’s dedicated ClickList room, where “pickers” are dispatched with handheld devices that tell them exactly where to find each item. These workers bag the products and put them into labeled bins; perishables are kept in a nearby freezer or fridge. When customers pull into designated pickup parking spaces, they are directed to call a number to alert a ClickList staffer, who wheels the bags to their cars.

Kroger gave Reuters a tour of its ClickList operation at a Ralphs supermarket in Los Angeles’ Westchester neighborhood in late November.

Miguel Lopez, who leads the ClickList team there, said it takes about 30 minutes to pick a $100 order; a $400 order takes an hour. The team tracks progress on a white board that showed weekly progress since the service debuted in January. The number of daily orders ranged from 13 to 36. Sales for the week Reuters visited, which included Thanksgiving Day, were on pace to hit a record of more than $12,000.

Analysts say typical Kroger stores have annual sales of around $30 million, excluding gasoline. Deutsche Bank analyst Shane Higgins said pickup already accounts for over 5 percent of sales in some locations.

Kroger declined to comment on the overall performance of ClickList but acknowledged costs are initially higher for pickup orders because of the additional labor involved. Company executives said increasing sales and efficiency can virtually eliminate that gap in as little as three years.

Another challenge to profitability is that pickup customers are not tempted by in-store impulse items. But the biggest risk, analysts say, is to do nothing and let customers drift to competitors that offer the service.

Shopper Kimberlee Isaacs says ClickList has kept her loyal to the Westchester Ralphs, where she drops $800 a month on groceries for her family of three.

“We use it every single week. I don’t go into the store unless I forgot something,” Isaacs, 50, said.

Coming on Strong

Meanwhile, Walmart, the nation’s top grocery seller, aims to add free curbside pickup at 1,000 stores next year, bringing the total to 2,100 of its 4,700 U.S. locations. It declined to discuss profitability of the service. But spokeswoman Molly Blakeman said the company decided to expand it quickly based on encouraging results. Pickup is winning converts such as Hudson, Florida shopper Steve Mondock, who had previously shunned Walmart.

“I hated the crowds, I hated the parking,” said Mondock, 55, who now buys most of his basics there.

Virtually every food retailer is now testing or adding pickup, including Publix, HEB, Meijer and Safeway. Target Corp, which just bought delivery company Shipt, is testing drive up for non-perishable groceries and other items.

“That’s why you want to be early so you can capture someone else’s customers,” said Loop Capital analyst Andrew Wolf.

Output: Walmart is looking to challenge rival Amazon by using a drive-through style service for kerbside pickups, enabling customers to order products ahead of time for pickup outside the store. The service will reduce delivery costs delivery for retailers, while also providing convenience for customers. Walmart is rolling out the service across 1,000 shops next year.


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Volkswagen to construct 2,800 EV charging points across US
 Volkswagen has committed to building an EV charging network in the US. By 2019, VW's Electrify America division plans to install 2,800 charging stations in 17 of the country's biggest cities, according to Reuters. It'll cost the automaker some $2 billion, with California getting almost half of the investment. That might sound like a lot of money, but for context, Volkswagen had paid out over $20 billion for its diesel emissions scandal as of this February.

For comparison, in April Tesla said by year's end it would have 10,000 Supercharger stations in place by year's end. It took the company almost five years to install 5,400 of those. The company also promised to boost the number of normal-speed charging stations (Destination Charging) from 9,000 locations to 15,000 this year. Tesla's first Supercharger rest stops started going online in November.

Tesla has its own woes as well: the company can't produce its $35,000 Model 3 sedans fast enough to keep up with pre-orders.

Output: German automaker Volkswagen has announced plans to install 2,800 electric vehicle charging points across the United States, in 17 of the country's largest cities. VW aims to complete the project by June 2019, with 75% of these charging points installed at workplaces. The remainder will be multifamily residential buildings. The plan is part of VW's $2bn nationwide agreement to enhance clean car infrastructure following revelations of its diesel emissions cheating.


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Global poultry market forecast to continue growing in 2018
 Consumer demand for poultry will continue to grow in all regions except for China for the first six months of the year and possibly longer.

The Rabobank Outlook report says global prices for chicken have remained strong, particularly for whole chicken and breast meat, but dark meat prices have declined.

However, the report cautions against over-optimism, arguing that a disciplined supply growth strategy will be needed, particularly as uncertainties are rising, such as the possible return of avian influenza in the northern hemisphere this winter and the rising supply of competitive meat proteins, like pork and beef.

Global poultry trade is likely once again to be hit by volatility, due not only to AI but also exchange rate fluctuations and changes in traders’ procurement strategies in response to earlier trade scandals. New suppliers will continue to enter the market so supply discipline will be important, the report adds.

Global Highlights

Nan-Dirk Mulder, Rabobank senior analyst animal protein, said the fastest growing global regions would be South East Asia and Eastern Europe.

“South East Asia will remain very bullish in the next year, within ongoing growth of more than 5% in most countries like Indonesia, India, the Philippines and Thailand being driven by strong local demand and Thailand’s clear leadership when it comes to global trade.

“However, recent expansion of the industry, at 7%, has probably occurred a bit too fast, when taking the current margin pressure into account.”

Europe

The EU poultry industry will continue to perform relatively well, based on a favourable supply/demand balance due to AI restricting production growth and animal welfare/environmental regulations preventing substantial expansion.

Eastern Europe, particularly Poland, will keep growing fast and will become a major trade hub.

US

The US poultry industry is also likely to perform well, driven by ongoing local market conditions and improved exports, combined with a predicted record-high US corn and soybean harvest, which is set to push feed prices lower.

South America

The report says that the Brazilian industry is recovering from the “weak flesh” scandal, and exports have returned to 2016 levels after substantial drops in quarters two and three. However, the risk of Brazilian imports being substituted by new suppliers remains.

Loser

The report argues that the largest loser in the next few months will be China. Mr Mulder said: “China’s industry is struggling, with winter rapidly approaching and many wet markets yet to be closed.

“This situation could negatively affect prices and global trade. The industry needs to further reduce supply in order to rebalance supply and demand.”

Output: Worldwide demand for poultry will continue to grow next year, with the price of chicken remaining strong. Analysts from the Dutch-based Rabobank predict the market will grow in North and South America, Europe and southeast Asia, with only China facing problems as its poultry industry struggles with oversupply. Despite the generally positive outlook, Rabobank warned that there are increasing uncertainties in the market, with the threat of avian influenza returning and currency fluctuations contributing to volatility in prices.


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Self-healing polymer could end cracked screens
 Japanese researchers say they have developed a new type of glass that can heal itself from cracks and breaks.

Glass made from a low weight polymer called “polyether-thioureas” can heal breaks when pressed together by hand without the need for high heat to melt the material.

The research, published in Science, by researchers led by Professor Takuzo Aida from the University of Tokyo, promises healable glass that could potentially be used in phone screens and other fragile devices, which they say are an important challenge for sustainable societies.

While self-healing rubber and plastics have already been developed, the researchers said that the new material was the first hard substance of its kind that can be healed at room temperature.

“High mechanical robustness and healing ability tend to be mutually exclusive,” wrote the researchers, saying that while some hard but healable materials have been developed, “in most cases, heating to high temperatures, on the order of 120°C or more, to reorganise their cross-linked networks, is necessary for the fractured portions to repair.”

The new polymer glass is “highly robust mechanically yet can readily be repaired by compression at fractured surfaces”.

The properties of the polyether-thioureas glass were discovered by accident by graduate school student Yu Yanagisawa, who was preparing the material as a glue. Yanagisawa found that when the surface of the polymer was cut the edges would adhere to each other, healing to form a strong sheet after being manually compressed for 30 seconds at 21°C.

Further experimentation found that the healed material regained its original strength after a couple of hours.

Yanagisawa told NHK that he didn’t believe the results at first and repeated his experiments multiple times to confirm the finding. He said: “I hope the repairable glass becomes a new environment-friendly material that avoids the need to be thrown away if broken.”

This is not the first time a polymer has been suggested as a healable screen for devices such as smartphones. Researchers at the University of California proposed the use of polymer that could stretch to 50 times its original size and heal breaks within 24 hours.

Smartphone manufacturers have already used self-healing materials in devices. LG’s G Flex 2 shipped in 2015 with a coating on its back that was capable of healing minor scratches over time, although failed to completely repair heavier damage.

According to research commissioned by repair firm iMend in 2015, over 21% of UK smartphone users were living with a broken screen, with smashed displays being one of the biggest issues alongside poor battery life.

Output: Purely by accident, a student at the University of Tokyo stumbled across a new type of glass that can 'heal' itself. Researchers say the technology could be easily replicated and mass produced for phone screens. The material is made from a polymer called 'polyether-thioureas' and can be "repaired by compression at fractured surfaces" without the need for high temperatures to reshape the material. Recent research shows that billions of dollars are wasted on phone repairs, and the technology could save consumers from having to pay for phone repairs in the future.


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Dell spearheads NextWave coalition to tackle ocean-bound plastic
 Today, Dell announced that it will work with several of the world’s leading brands to develop what it describes as the world’s first commercial-scale, ocean-bound plastics supply chain. Companies like Adidas might quibble with that claim, but we see it as good news all around.

Beyond simply collecting plastic, this program includes an education program that seeks to heighten awareness about the dangers plastic impose on oceans and marine life. In addition, each company participating in this initiative, named NextWave, has pledged to reduce its plastic footprint while reducing or eliminating consumption of single-use and non-recyclable plastics.

Brands participating in NextWave include General Motors, Herman Miller, Interface and Trek Bikes. UN Environment and the NGO Lonely Whale are also participating in this initiative.

For Dell, this program builds upon the several years of work it has invested in creating more sustainable and recyclable packaging, as well as striving to achieve a more closed-loop system within its supply chain.

On its own web site, Dell has projected statistics that suggest over 86 million tons, or 5 trillion pieces of plastic, are currently in the world’s oceans. Estimates suggest about 8 million tons of plastic waste wash up in oceans – an amount that could increase to 150 million tons by 2025. By mid-century, there could be more plastics in the world’s oceans than fish.

The organizations coalescing around the NextWave initiative suggest that if their plan succeeds, they could prevent 3 million pounds of plastics from entering the oceans by 2023 – the equivalent of eliminating 66 million water bottles from ending up at sea. That is a relatively small drop in the morass of ocean plastic that is ruining oceans, but if similar efforts can continue to launch worldwide, marine ecosystems may actually stand a chance in the long run.

Dell says the origin of this program lies into the relationship it developed with Lonely Whale back in 2015. That partnership eventually led to an ocean plastics recycling program the company started in February. For that pilot project, salvaged ocean plastic has been blended with other recycled plastic resins to mold trays used for shipping. The company concluded that during 2017, this program will prevent 16,000 pounds of plastic from entering oceans.

These programs are additional steps Dell says is it taking with a goal to only use 100 percent sustainable packaging by 2020. According to the company, Dell is the only computer hardware manufacturer to offer computers and monitors made out of both recycled e-waste plastics and carbon fiber.

The organizations participating in NextWave insist their cooperation can help move industry closer to a circular economy.

“I am so proud to see our partnership with Dell continue to grow and inspire companies across industries to use their capabilities to address ocean health,” said Adrian Grenier, founder of Lonely Whale. “This is no individual company’s problem; this impacts every human being and company, and it is incredible to see these industry leaders coming together.”

Image credit: Dell/Flickr

Output: Dell is bringing together a group of major brands to tackle the problem of plastic polluting the marine environment. The program titled NextWave has been developed in partnership with incubator Lonely Whale and involves brands including General Motors and Herman Miller. NextWave seeks to develop a supply chain that reduces ocean-bound plastics at scale. It will also run an education programme. Dell estimates that there are 86 million tonnes of plastic in the ocean and the initiative hopes to prevent 3 million pounds of plastic from entering the ocean by 2023, the equivalent of 66 million plastic water bottles, but still a relative drop in the ocean.


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US military to test 3D-printing drones in the field
 US Military tests system for on-demand 3D-printed drones Pick out parts or a whole UAV customized for the mission from a tablet-based catalog.

The US military has used drones in combat zones for over a decade to scout and support infantry. Now they're testing a way to give ground troops another edge: The capability to build UAVs themselves. What's more, the US Army is partnering with the Marine Corps on a test project that lets troops 3D-print particular drone parts from a tablet-based catalog, which could eventually lead to manufacturing UAVs customized to the mission.

The concept is promising, and so is the flexibility: The software catalog setup lets military units print out an unmanned aircraft system for specific missions. The Army Research Laboratory expects the turnaround time to create UAV parts to be anywhere from minutes to hours, rather than days or weeks.

This won't be the Marine Corps first experiment with 3D-printed drones. Last year, the Corps held an internal program called the Logistics Innovation Challenge that sought ideas from within its ranks. Among the winning submissions was a fixed-wing drone called the Scout, designed by a 26-year-old Corporal that costs $600 and fits in a standard Marine backpack.

Output: The US military is experimenting with a system to allow troops in the field to create bespoke drones using 3D printers. The US Army and the Marine Corps are collaborating on the project, which would enable military units to choose from a catalogue of options for different unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). As well as the ability to customise the drone to the type of mission required, 3D printing would also reduce supply times from days or week to hours or minutes.


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BMW partners with Solid Power on solid-state batteries
 BMW is jumping into the solid-state battery game and it's doing so by teaming up with battery-developer Solid Power. The company is a spin-out from the University of Colorado Boulder and has been developing solid-state rechargeable batteries since 2012. BMW is partnering with Solid Power to bring its battery technology to electric vehicles. "Since the company's inception, the Solid Power team has worked to develop and scale a competitive solid-state battery paying special attention to safety, performance and cost," Doug Campbell, founder and CEO of Solid Power, said in a statement. "Collaborating with BMW is further validation that solid-state battery innovations will continue to improve electric vehicles."

Solid-state batteries offer a few advantages over the lithium-ion batteries largely in use today including greater energy density and, therefore, increased driving range when used in EVs, less chance of fire or explosion and rapid recharging. The benefits of solid-state batteries are why so many companies, including Fisker, Toyota and Google, are looking to develop the technology and ultimately incorporate them into their products.

Batteries that limit EVs' driving ranges will certainly keep these types of vehicles from becoming mainstream. So technology that can stretch those driving distances and make EVs as convenient as traditional gas-powered cars will be a must when it comes to expanding their use and, therefore, the environmental benefits they afford.

Output: BMW is partnering with US battery developer Solid Power to utilise its knowledge of solid-state cells as the German automaker develops its electric vehicles. Solid-state batteries offer greater energy density in comparison with lithium-ion batteries, meaning increased driving range, accelerated charging rates and increased safety.


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Net neutrality shutdown may hit US universities
 In an age of Donald Trump, research funding cuts and debates about free speech on campus, “net neutrality” has struggled to reach the top of the US higher education debate.

However, universities have warned that the decision by the Federal Communications Commission to repeal the Open Internet Order – allowing private internet providers to control the speed of data delivery – will infringe on free speech and create barriers to higher education.

The shift, proposed by FCC chairman Aji Pai last month, will roll back a 2015 decision by the Obama administration that classified internet services as a “Title II” public utility, similar to landline telephones and electricity.

Under the proposal, which was passed in a vote by the commission on 14 December, an internet service provider will be allowed to prioritise content by controlling access speeds. Higher education stakeholders have criticised the policy, saying that it will result in an internet controlled by corporate interests and one that is no longer an open public space.

“Net neutrality is critical to preserve an open internet and the modern form of the town square where everyone has an equal voice,” said Krista Cox, director of public policy initiatives at the Association of Research Libraries (ARL).

A repeal gives ISPs the ability to discriminate against some content while favouring corporate affiliated content, she argues. “Those who can pay for prioritisation will be heightened and others diminished,” she said.

The ARL is part of a group of higher education organisations including the American Council on Education (ACE) and the American Association of Universities (AAU) that have called on the FCC to ban blocking, degradation and paid prioritisation of internet content by service providers or broadband mobile providers.

At risk is free speech, the group argued. “The current proposal would allow corporations to allow that there are types of content that are too controversial,” said Jon Fansmith, director of government relations at ACE. “There’s a very real possibility of suppression of free speech and limitations on what kind of speech is acceptable.”

The private networks that universities use to access the internet will be unaffected by the decision, however, with just five companies serving 80 per cent of internet customers, many students may struggle to switch to an alternative service provider off-campus.

Complicating the ability to access fast internet is the patchy broadband infrastructure in the US in general. According to the FCC’s 2016 broadband report, one in 10 Americans nationwide lacks access to acceptable internet speeds.

It also found that more than 39 per cent of Americans living in rural areas lack access to advanced telecommunications capability, compared with 4 per cent of Americans living in urban areas.

Any disruption to speeds could deeply affect the quality of education that students receive off campus, stakeholders argue.

Megan Kocher, a science librarian at the University of Minnesota, said that the repeal “could be devastating” to the quality of distance-education that the institution’s rural-based students receive.

“Waiting for pages to download isn’t a luxury that everyone has,” she said. “It’s discriminatory to accept that only people on campus will get it; it’s objectively a worse education for people in rural areas.”

Other critics have said that the repeal threatens to disrupt online exams and creates barriers to students forming online communities.

With the growing use of flipped classrooms, the day-to-day operations of higher education pedagogy will be also affected by the repeal, said Jessica Sebeok, associate vice-president and counsel for policy at the AAU.

“The demographic of undergraduates has changed – 50 per cent of students are non-traditional and live off campus. Distance learning is a big part of their ability to obtain their goals,” she said.

Community outreach, an important mission that universities use to engage with local and state-wide communities and disseminate their research, could also be at risk.

Ms Kocher said that the University of Minnesota’s community extension programmes are vital to its land grant mission to “provide education throughout the state”. The initiatives connect Minnesotans to the institution’s research and experts in fields such as tourism, and health and wellness.

“Especially in agriculture, we have to have a strong partnership to get research to farmers. It is important that people think of the University of Minnesota as a partner and as their resource,” she explained.

“Without net neutrality, it puts us in danger of not being able to reach users across the state.”

The biggest impact of the repeal, however, will be cost, and educators believe that the move will ultimately push up already soaring tuition fees.

Chris Millet, director of learning design operations at Pennsylvania State University’s World Campus, said that the proposal creates a major barrier to students accessing videos that are central to online course material.

The majority of the online school’s 16,000 students would be impacted if the university’s online content is defaulted to an internet slow lane, he said.

“We want to offer educational opportunities to all students but the repeal would potentially introduce new costs [for] that model to contend with,” he said.

In addition to using online services to facilitate classroom instruction or to provide distance learning, universities use cloud-based services such as Microsoft Office 365 and Google apps, explained Mr Fansmith at ACE.

“We have massive research networks for collaborating and sharing information; we have libraries that store and share huge amounts of data off-site or on cloud-based servers,” he said. “If all of those services that we employ are required to shift their pricing model based on prioritisation, or throttling, those costs get transferred to us and we can’t simply swallow them.

“When you do something that adds significant costs to institutions, you’re effectively pricing out low-income students.”

Supporters of the repeal, however, argue that net neutrality is a form of government regulation that could signal the beginning of tighter internet restrictions overall.

“You can’t believe what’s on the [net neutrality] tin,” said William Dutton, director of Michigan State University’s Quello Center, which researches communication technologies, industries and consumer choices. “This opens the internet up to the threat of greater policy constraint.

"It invites additional content regulations and legitimises content regulation by the government, which could undermine an open internet."

The best thing for the internet is to focus on competition and fostering more search and video platforms, he argued.

The campaign to maintain the Open Internet Order won’t end with the 14 December vote. “Immediate litigation is expected to follow,” said Mr Fansmith.

“I think there would be a variety of parties that would be pursuing that,” he said, but added that ACE would likely avoid the court process to focus its efforts on influencing potential congressional action.

Similarly, Ms Cox of the ARL said that the organisation will continue to advocate for net neutrality. “As we have in the past, we will continue our advocacy through all channels, including through amicus briefs in the courts and in Congress, which may be searching for a legislative solution,” she said.

sara.custer@timeshighereducation.com

Local rules on the worldwide web

Despite the intentions of the internet’s creators to provide an open platform to share and access information across geographical boundaries, global net neutrality principles do not exist.

The European Union introduced strict net neutrality measures to its Telecoms Single Market regulations in 2016. India also recently introduced binding net neutrality rules.

Meanwhile, Australia presents a potential model of where the US may be headed. It has no net neutrality regulations and any anticompetitive behaviour is addressed by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

Discussion of the topic of net neutrality is heating up, however, as the country tries to implement a national broadband network – an idea introduced by the government in 2009.

Like the US, Australia faces significant challenges to provide high-speed broadband internet across large swathes of land.

“The digital divide is a profound problem,” said Matthew Rimmer, professor of intellectual property and innovation law at Queensland University of Technology. “The difference is between the cities and regional and rural areas but also in terms of a question of wealth [and] in terms of who has access to what internet speeds.”

One of the great hopes of the national broadband network is that it would enable distance education, Professor Rimmer explained. “It would be one of the ways to overcome the tyranny of distance,” he said.

However, plans to roll out the broadband network have been delayed by shifting national political agendas.

“In many ways, Australia is in a weaker position than the US,” said Professor Rimmer. “We don’t have network neutrality protections. We don’t necessarily have proper protection in relation to freedom of speech; we only have an implied freedom of political communication.”

Output: The ending of net neutrality in the US could disadvantage university students seeking to access study materials remotely, campaigners have warned. The Federal Communications Commission voted this month to repeal the Open Internet Order implemented by the Obama administration in 2015, which required internet service providers to provide the same level of service for all traffic. Allowing them to discriminate against certain types of content and prioritise others is a threat to free speech, according to a group of higher-education organisations who oppose the change.


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Cyber attack shuts down industrial plant
 Update: In a statement on the extent of the data breach disclosed last month, Western Digital said it has control of its digital certificate infrastructure and is "equipped to revoke certificates as ...

Output: Internet security consultants believe hackers shut down an industrial plant by mistake after targeting it with malware. Researchers at FireEye reported that the cyber attack used a virus called Triton, which is designed to affect industrial control systems.They believe it was an attempt to gather intelligence on how to cause physical damage to the plant, which accidentally shut down its operations. Neither the location of the plant nor the suspected perpetrators have been confirmed, but other industry figures believe it is likely to have been in Saudi Arabia, making Iranian state hackers the prime suspects.


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Over 60% of brands to bring media buying in-house by 2022: survey
 The majority (62%) of brands will bring their media buying in-house by 2022 according to an Adobe poll, which has also dubbed 2018 as a “watershed year” for automated media buying, as such technologies are increasingly used to advance TV advertising.

More than half of brands believe that programmatic media buying is more important to their advertising strategy than broadcast

Adobe published the findings today (December 19) stating that 86% of brands and 89% of agencies plan to spend more on programmatic ad-buying in 2018, with all marketers vowing to take greater control of their online media buying.

In fact, of those marketers participating in the study, 62% said they would take all of their programmatic media buying in-house by 2022, while the remaining 38% said they will “take some” in-house within the next five years.

Additionally, 78% of agency participants agreed that some elements of programmatic ad-buying will move in-house; the consensus among participants was that they need to collaborate more effectively to understand their roles in this new paradigm.

The survey also identified programmatic TV as a clear priority among participants, with 38% of marketers and 56% of agency professionals citing it as a priority in 2018, with better cross-screen measurement of media performance also cited as a key priority.

Additionally for brand respondents, 2018 will also see access to data for personalization becoming their focus (33%); whereas for agencies effective measurement will be their more pressing goal (33%).

Meanwhile, 52% of brand respondents and 56% of agency respondents believe programmatic advertising will overtake TV as the most important part of their advertising strategy in three-to-five years. In fact, 14% of marketers participating in the study claimed that it already was, suggesting that online audiences are more important to such brands’ KPIs that broadcast media.

Philip Duffield, managing director of Adobe Advertising Cloud, EMEA, said the findings demonstrate that one-size-fits-all advertising campaigns are becoming obsolete in the opinion of all tiers of the market.

He added: “Customers are increasingly moving from platform to platform; channel-to-channel. This creates countless opportunities to interact with your brand. To maximize these opportunities however – whether you are a brand or an agency – automated optimization of campaign performance is vital.

The findings are based on an Adobe poll of 60 brand and agency clients in the UK, France, Germany, Benelux and the Nordics conducted earlier in December 2017, with the findings closely echoing those expressed in a similar study from the US trade body for marketers published earlier this week.

The findings from Association of National Advertisers (ANA) asserted that more than 35% of brands have expanded their in-house programmatic media buying capabilities as marketers demand greater transparency.

Earlier this year Adobe unveiled its Experience Cloud a full-suite of marketing tools, including enhanced programmatic media buying capabilities enabled by its 2016 purchase of video specialist demand-side platform (DSP) TubeMogul.

Output: Increasing numbers of brands in the UK and northern Europe are taking their media buying in-house, according to a survey by Adobe. An estimated 62% are to do so by 2022, while 78% of agency participants would move "some elements" in-house. In addition, the study marked 2018 as a standout year as marketers are set to increase their control of online media spend, with 86% of brands and 89% of agencies planning to spend more on programmatic, regarded by more than half of both groups as more important than TV. However, programmatic TV also emerged as a priority.


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Stake sale raises funds to expand Indian weather watcher Skymet
 The company, however, did not disclose the deal size. Ernst & Young LLP acted as the exclusive financial advisor to Skymet for this transaction.

InsuResilience Investment Fund, formerly known as Climate Insurance Fund, is backed by KfW, a German government-owned development bank based in Frankfurt and is managed by Swiss-based impact investment manager BlueOrchard Finance.

The transaction saw two of Skymet’s existing investors Omnivore Capital and UK-based DMGT group partially sell their stakes. Omnivore is an impact venture fund and invests in startups from India developing breakthrough technologies for food, agriculture and the rural economy. DMGT manages a multinational portfolio of companies, with total revenues of almost £1.5 billion and has invested close to Rs25 crore in Skymet in 2014. Omnivore Partners, which invested Rs4.5 crore in the Series A round of funding for a 33% stake in the company in August 2011, also participated in the funding round of 2014.

Skymet has one of India’s largest network of automatic weather stations (currently 6,000 AWS units) and provides lightning detection network, which allows users to track thunderstorms in real time. The company said the latest round of funding will help it to expand its AWS network and secure new business in weather data, crop measurement, climate analytics and disaster management, thereby extending its outreach. Skymet is one of India’s largest weather monitoring and agri-risk solutions company, with expertise in measuring, predicting and limiting climate risk to agriculture. Skymet provides climate, weather and crop analytics to insurance companies, banks, agribusinesses and public sector institutions in India.

Skymet was started by its founder and CEO Jatin Singh in 2003 as a weather data service provider to television news channels and newspapers, which remained the company’s only business till 2006. The company has since then forayed into providing data to power companies and crop insurance claim settlement service. Crop insurance data has grown to be one of the biggest revenue earners for the company that is used for both claim settlement and other services. In a 2015 interview to Mint, Jatin Singh had shared plans to raise at least $20 million (about Rs127 crore) to go global with the company’s operations.

Output: The German government’s InsuResilience Investment Fund has bought a 26.8% stake in Indian weather monitoring provider Skymet Weather Services. Skymet investors Omnivore Capital and DMGT sold partial stakes in the agri-risk solution provider for an undisclosed sum and will plough the proceeds back into the firm. The company manages one of India's biggest networks of automatic weather stations, presently numbering 6,000 AWS units, and can detect thunderstorm patterns in real time. Proceeds will be used to expand the network and to find new business in the climate analytics, weather data, crop measurement and disaster management sectors.


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Ireland to remove height curbs, parking rules for new city homes
 Minister for Housing Eoghan Murphy is to announce a number of changes to planning guidelines largely in relation to apartment buildings. Photograph: Gareth Chaney/Collins

Height restrictions on residential buildings are to be altered to allow for easier construction of high-rise developments in cities across the State.

Minister for Housing Eoghan Murphy is to announce a number of changes to planning guidelines largely in relation to apartment buildings including the removal of a requirement to have car-parking spaces.

He also intends to increase the cap on the number of units that can be on a floor for every lift or staircase from eight to 12. The necessity for apartments to be dual-aspect, meaning they must have windows on two different walls, will also be changed.

Mr Murphy said the measures would address a number of challenges including making it more cost-effective to build apartments.

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The most significant change is the removal of the height restrictions. Currently residential developments in low-rise areas of inner-city Dublin can be only six storeys (about 24m high), with lower limits in the suburbs.

The Minister intends to remove that cap and instead use the suitability of the site as a guiding principle.

“It was clear to me upon taking office that we had a particular problem in this area. While there might be plenty of cranes across the skyline of Dublin for example, the vast majority are building offices, not homes. We need to turn this around,” he said.

Parking spaces

The restrictions have been widely criticised by business leaders and developers who believe they hindered apartment supply. The requirement to have a car-parking space per apartment was also widely condemned and it has been claimed by the Construction Industry Federation that this can add up to €100,000 to the cost of building a unit. Under the revised guidelines, developers would have to justify the need for car-parking in central city areas.

The Department of Housing has insisted there will be no change to principal quality safeguards, including internal space standards for one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments; floor-to-ceiling heights; or the storage and amenity space requirements. The updated provisions will offer greater flexibility in relation to apartment type mix, to allow more studios and different types of one-bedroom accommodation.

The shared accommodation initiative will see the construction of high-rise developments catering for hundreds of people, with shared services offered to tenants. In the individual apartments, residents would have their own bedroom and ensuite, but would have communal kitchen and livingroom facilities.

"They'll allow for 'shared living' options which I believe will be very attractive to our multinational sector with its young and mobile workforce," Mr Murphy told The Irish Times. "We'll see the right types of homes being built, with more studios and one- and two-bed apartments."

Output: The Irish government is to relax planning regulations to make it easier for developers to construct high-rise buildings. The changes to be unveiled by housing minister Eoghan Murphy will scrap limits that prevent the construction of buildings higher than six storeys in some parts of central Dublin. Other measures include raising the cap on the number of permitted units per floor from eight to 12 and removing the obligation for them to have windows on two different walls and provide a parking space for every flat.


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UK’s modern slavery strategy a failure: National Audit Office
 MPs and rights groups have criticised Theresa May’s flagship strategy to tackle modern slavery, after a damning report by the public spending watchdog found it had failed victims.

A National Audit Office report said the Home Office had limited means of tracking the strategy’s progress, an “incomplete picture” of the crime, victims and perpetrators, and that prosecution rates last year remained “very low”.

The report warned: “Until the government is able to establish effective oversight of the modern slavery system as a whole, it will not be able to significantly reduce the prevalence of modern slavery or show that it is achieving value for money”.

Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office, said that while the strategy had helped to establish the scale and international nature of the issue, a stronger grasp of the problem was required. “To combat modern slavery successfully,” said Morse, “government will need to build much stronger information and understanding of perpetrators and victims than it has now.”

In 2016, there were 80 prosecutions under the Modern Slavery Act for 155 offences, the report found.

The government announced the modern slavery strategy three years ago, and the prime minister introduced the Modern Slavery Act in 2015 to combat slavery, servitude, forced labour and human trafficking, and to protect victims.

There are an estimated 10-13,000 potential victims in the UK, most frequently subjected to labour or sexual exploitation, or domestic servitude.

Diane Abbott, the shadow home secretary, described the Home Office as dysfunctional and said the NAO report painted a damning picture of the government’s strategy to end modern slavery.

She said: “It is clear that the government doesn’t have a true picture of the scale of the problem, or the perpetrators or the victims.

“The NAO also takes the Home Office to task for failing to get a grip on the effectiveness of its spending, or even how much money is spent overall. Overstretched police forces also have highly uneven responses to cases of modern slavery.

“Theresa May’s warm words about modern slavery are not enough. The government needs to take strong, coordinated action based on firm evidence.”

The NAO report said the Home Office does not know how much money is being spent, or whether services meet care quality standards. It called into question measures taken to support victims. Safe houses for potential victims are not subject to care quality inspections or standards, and there remains “much more to do” to ensure they are protected, said the authors.

Rights groups said the government’s lack of coherence meant victims were too afraid to come forward, as they could not be guaranteed support.

Kate Roberts, of the Human Trafficking Foundation, said: “It’s frustrating that the higher-level rhetoric is not filtering down to an adequate service that victims can trust. If you are trying to gain the confidence of a victim you need to tell them what they can expect from the system, not that they might get support and might not. It’s very difficult for advocates to get the victims’ trust.”

The NAO report highlighted shortcomings in the national referral mechanism (NRM), the framework for identifying victims of human trafficking or modern slavery and facilitating appropriate support. The authors found that delays in determining individual cases caused “distress and anxiety” to vulnerable people.

Professor Kevin Bales of the University of Nottingham, co-founder of Free the Slaves, said: “I don’t see this as a failing report card, I see it as a check-up.”

“Compared to virtually everyone else, the UK is ahead of the game. The difficulty for the government is not estimating the numbers but determining how you measure progress. It need a joined-up methodology, with built in evaluation and monitoring.”

In a separate development on Monday, MPs called on the government “to be brave enough” to stand up for modern slavery victims. A report by the work and pensions committee found “inexcusable failures” by the UK left victims destitute while their abusers go free.

Commenting on the government’s response to the report, Frank Field, the committee’s chairman, said it failed to measure up to the prime minister’s leadership on the issue.

“The government should be brave enough to stand up for the victims of modern slavery, people made so vulnerable by such evil behaviour,” he said.

The independent anti-slavery commissioner, Kevin Hyland, welcomed the report. He said significant progress had established the UK as a “world leader” in the fight against modern slavery, but that more needed to be done.

“The Home Office has begun to address a number of the issues raised, including plans to significantly improve support for victims by reforming the NRM,” said Hyland. “I look forward to the government intensifying action following the findings and recommendations of this report.”

Additional reporting by Rod Austin

Output: The UK’s modern slavery strategy, launched three years ago, has been labelled a failure by a report from the country’s National Audit Office (NAO). The study found that the Home Office had an “incomplete picture” of how the crime operated and warned that progress was unlikely “until the government is able to establish effective oversight of the modern slavery system as a whole”. In 2016, there were just 80 prosecutions for 155 offences under the 2015 Modern Slavery Act. There are estimated to be as many as 13,000 potential victims of slavery in the UK.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
UK’s modern slavery strategy a failure: National Audit Office
 Until the government is able to establish effective oversight of the modern slavery system as a whole, it will not be able to significantly reduce the prevalence of modern slavery or show that it is achieving value for money.

Until the government is able to establish effective oversight of the modern slavery system as a whole, it will not be able to significantly reduce the prevalence of modern slavery or show that it is achieving value for money, according to today’s report from the National Audit Office.

The Home Office has an incomplete picture of the crime, the victims and the perpetrators. Accountability within the modern slavery strategy is unclear, oversight of victim support is inadequate and few cases have led to prosecution. The NAO also finds that the Home Office has limited means of tracking its progress and there remains much more to do to ensure victims of modern slavery are identified, protected and supported effectively.

The Modern Slavery Strategy was introduced by the Home Office in 2014 and aimed to significantly reduce the prevalence of modern slavery. The 2015 Modern Slavery Act made provisions for slavery, servitude, forced labour and for human trafficking, including for the protection of victims and for an Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner.

The Home Office has laid some important foundations for achieving its goal to significantly reduce modern slavery. Annual adult referrals of potential victims to the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) have increased substantially between 2014, when the Modern Slavery Strategy was introduced, and 2016, showing that more potential victims are being identified. It has introduced new legislation requiring businesses to report what they are doing to prevent human trafficking in their supply chains and published a typology of modern slavery offences and offenders in the UK in October 2017.

The Strategy does not include measures of success for its objectives nor a definition of what success looks like and accountability for delivering the modern slavery strategy is unclear. There are a wide variety of public sector organisations delivering the modern slavery strategy, alongside NGOs, and a number of governance boards with different oversight responsibilities. The Home Office does not know how much is spent on tackling modern slavery across government, or how effectively this money is spent. The Home Office is not able to instruct how other departments use their resources but has a role in helping them prioritise.

The Home Office found in its 2014 review that the NRM support system needed to be redesigned, but it has not yet made any changes. However, it did set up pilots of changes to the NRM in August 2015 and published its evaluation and announced reforms in October 2017.The NAO analysis of NRM data revealed multiple errors, making it difficult to use it to understand modern slavery crime. The Home Office is aware of these problems and is currently digitising the system in order to improve accuracy.

It is taking the National Crime Agency and Home Office longer than they expect to decide whether people referred to the NRM are victims of modern slavery, causing further distress and anxiety to vulnerable people. The Home Office has not put in place a robust, independent inspection regime to check the quality of care and support provided in safe houses to potential victims and has no way of evaluating the quality of care provided. There are currently no minimum care standards for safe houses that support potential victims.

Police forces’ approach to tackling modern slavery and the number of NRM referrals made varies significantly by region. There has been increasing use of the Modern Slavery Act to prosecute defendants, but there have been few prosecutions and convictions for modern slavery offences. However, as modern slavery cases take a long time to build and it is likely to be at least one year until the increased focus of law enforcement organisations is reflected in a higher number of prosecutions.

“The campaign to drive out modern slavery is in the early stages. So far it is helping to establish the scale and international nature of this issue. To combat modern slavery successfully, however, government will need to build much stronger information and understanding of perpetrators and victims than it has now.” Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office

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ISBN: 9781786041654 [Buy a hard copy of this report]

HC: 630, 2017-19

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Output: The UK’s modern slavery strategy, launched three years ago, has been labelled a failure by a report from the country’s National Audit Office (NAO). The study found that the Home Office had an “incomplete picture” of how the crime operated and warned that progress was unlikely “until the government is able to establish effective oversight of the modern slavery system as a whole”. In 2016, there were just 80 prosecutions for 155 offences under the 2015 Modern Slavery Act. There are estimated to be as many as 13,000 potential victims of slavery in the UK.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Ad spend on programmatic in the UK jumped 23.5% during 2017
 Colm is the editor of MarketingTech, with a mission to bring the most important developments in technology to both businesses and consumers.

According to the latest forecast by eMarketer, spending on programmatic ads have showed strong growth in the UK, despite a stream of negative press.

According to the date, by the end of the year advertisers will have spent an estimated £3.39 billion on programmatic trading. This is a 23.5% rise from the year before. Programmatic spend now equates to 79% of all UK digital ad spend.

eMarketer predicts that this proportion will continue rising to 84% by 2019.

Mobile is still the main force driving the growth of programmatic in the UK, currently making up 78% of the total 2017 programmatic display ad spending. This growth, however, is balanced by the continuing decline for desktop. 22% of programmatic spend went to desktop in 2017 (around £743 million), with a predicted fall to 13.5%, or £609 million, in 2019.

“The programmatic ecosystem is growing because it’s maturing,” eMarketer senior analyst Bill Fisher said.

“This maturation is leading to better practices, better behaviour and better transparency. Making everybody in the chain accountable is the next step in cleaning up programmatic’s image further. For example, the recent Ads.txt initiative from IAB Tech Lab is one such step. This tool essentially allows publishers to publicly declare the companies they authorize to sell their digital inventory.”

Trust issues

The continued growth in programmatic spend comes amidst a range of issues surrounding trust and the potential for fraud. Marketers have to balance these risks against the siginifcant benefits that the medium can bring them, namely more targeted and effective ads that seek out the right audience, at the right time, right across the web.

QueryClick interviewed 150 heads of marketing at major UK brands and found that 70% were planning to match or increase their programmatic spend over the next year. This was despite the fact that 41% said that they had lost trust in the format due to the risk of becoming victims of advertising fraud.

“Recent studies have put the cost of digital advertising fraud as high as $31 billion in the US alone. That makes digital ad fraud not just more costly than any form of cybercrime, but more costly than offline crimes such as counterfeit goods and payment card fraud,” QueryClick managing director, Chris Liversidge, said.

“Technology may also be a driver of fraud. The large agencies that buy up the digital ad space also own most of the ad buying platforms (DSPs) whose weaknesses and lack of transparency enable fraud to continue. Many in fact offer minimal to no reporting on individual ad buys, only offering rolled-up reporting which obscures where any particular ad was shown. It would seem advertisers are waking up to this however. Nine out of ten brands to us that they believe the lack of transparency in their programmatic ad campaigns is because the ad buying platform is owned by their advertising agency.”

Other figures that emerged from the QueryClick survey show that 40% of the major advertisers reported being confident that more than half of their online ads were being seen by people. However, only 7% thought that the proportion viewed by humans rather than bots was 80% or more.

“Many brands operate in sectors where they are under pressure to perform in volatile market conditions and competition is rife such as eCommerce, travel and finance,” continued Liversidge.

“If they can solve their programmatic problems, there is an opportunity for these brands to out-compete much larger incumbent brands with lower marketing spends.

“They can also take steps to protect themselves. First, where possible, they should separate their programmatic campaigns so they are given the consideration – and performance measures – their growing size warrants. Secondly, they should unbundle their agency relationship from the programmatic platform, to enable them to seek out independent providers that offer true transparency and protection from the risks of current programmatic campaigns.”

85% of respondents thought that that trade bodies such as the IAB should have greater powers to monitor and penalize those that knowingly commit ad fraud.

“There will be more initiatives to come, and as they come online, greater levels of trust will be placed in trading digital display inventory via programmatic pipes,” said Fisher.

Output: UK advertisers will have spent an estimated £3.39bn ($4.53bn) on programmatic ads by the end of the year, with 78% of it going on mobile ads, according to forecasts from eMarketer. It revealed 79% of all UK digital ad spend is on programmatic, a 23.5% rise on 2016, and the figure is predicted to rise to 84% by 2019, thanks to "better practices, better behaviour and better transparency", said eMarketer analyst Bill Fisher. A recent survey by QueryClick found 70% of UK brands would match or increase their programmatic ad spend during 2018, despite 41% having reservations about fraud.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
World's first fully solar-powered train unveiled in Australia
 A World's First

On December 16, a fully solar-powered train took a short but groundbreaking journey in New South Wales, Australia. The company behind the train, the Byron Bay Railroad Company, brought the vintage passenger vehicle back to life to prove that solar power can actually work for transportation.

The train runs solely on clean energy — solar panels on its roof and at pit stops provide all of the power needed for its 3 kilometer (1.9 miles) route.

The train originally had two diesel engines, of which one has been replaced by batteries and an electric motor. The other will serve as a backup in case of emergency, although the train will keep going under a cloudy sky, too, thanks to a 77kWh battery.

The fully solar-powered train holds 100 seated passengers, with room for others to stand, and completes one round-trip journey every hour.

Short Distance, Big Implications

Powering cars with solar energy is a challenge that engineers have yet to nail. Cars require a lot of energy, zig-zag between sunlight and shadow, and start and stop all the time. Small vehicles are heavy, and the surface suitable for installing solar panels is too small to produce sufficient power.

Trains, on the other hand, travel on a fixed route and can be quickly recharged at each stop using electricity generated by static solar panels. For that reason, they have been the target of several renewable energy projects.

Since January 2017, a fleet of wind turbines have provided all the electricity needed to power the Dutch national railway. In July, Indian Railways debuted trains with solar panels on their roofs to power on-board services such as lights and fans.

The United Kingdom is also looking into using solar to power its rail transport. A report by Imperial College London and 10:10 Climate Action estimates that solar energy could power 10 percent of the country's routes currently running on direct current.

The Byron Bay train's short route makes it more of a proof of concept than a fully realized transportation revolution, but on a local level, it can deliver real benefits by decreasing traffic and getting the public interested in clean energy. One small step for this humble new train means a big step forward for the sector by proving that transport systems can be fully powered by the Sun.

Output: Australia's Byron Bay Railroad Company has retrofitted a disused passenger train with solar panels that are capable of powering the vehicle over its 1.9-mile route. The train is fitted with an electric motor and a 77 KWH battery to assist the vehicle on cloudy days.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Gene editing brings GMO crops to shops
 The 4,000 bushels McHenry and I were sitting in, however, represent a new type of plant that’s been modified using gene editing. A startup had employed the technology to introduce changes in two genes involved in fatty-acid synthesis, so that oil pressed from the beans is more like olive oil than typical soy oil.

McHenry first heard the pitch for the beans last December, at a hotel near the cooperative of South Dakota soybean processors. “We have something new and exciting,” a salesman told the farmers. “You’ve heard about the ban on trans fats?” Soybean oil has been losing market share since the U.S. government banned unhealthy fats created when soy oil is partially hydrogenated and turns to a solid (think Crisco). Those fats have been killing people. They’re bad food.

Oil from the gene-edited beans could solve that problem, because it doesn’t need to be processed in the same way. Any farmer who agreed to plant the beans, McHenry heard, would be part of the wave of innovation filling store shelves with Greek yogurts, green packaging, and healthy ingredients. What’s more, it would mean a few quarters more per bushel. “You make a little more money, you have a great experience, and you are part of a revolution,” said the pitchman, Thomas Stoddard, a lanky biologist turned seed seller who visited McHenry’s farm with me.

To McHenry, a farmer just starting out with his own acres, his own debts, and his own decisions, the pitch made sense. The Roundup-resisting beans his father still plants are expensive. What’s more, the tumbleweeds have evolved to survive spraying and grow as high as your waist. “Looking at the market as a whole, Europe and China are questioning GMOs,” McHenry says. “You have to keep your finger on what the consumer wants, and as a farmer, you have to differentiate yourself. If you are looking at a market that could be gone, you have to think about alternatives.”

Jason McHenry on the South Dakota land where he grows soybeans created with gene editing.

The new beans are the creation of a startup called Calyxt, located 300 miles away, near Minneapolis, where Stoddard works, and nearly a straight shot east on Highway 90 from McHenry’s farm. At the company’s greenhouses, thousands of plants are being altered with gene editing every week. The virtue of the technology is that it lets scientists create designer plants that don’t have foreign DNA in them. The technique, which adds or deletes snippets of genetic information, is similar to what could be achieved through conventional breeding, only much faster. In essence, if there’s some quality about a soybean that you like, and if you know the genetic instructions responsible, gene editing can move them to another bean in a single molecular step.

To many scientists, the potential of gene editing seems nearly limitless, offering a new way to rapidly create plants that are drought-resistant, immune to disease, or improved in flavor. A supermarket tomato that tastes good? That could happen if scientists restore the flavor-making genes that make heirloom varieties delicious. What about a corn plant with twice as many kernels? If nature allows it, scientists believe, gene editing could let them build it.

Until now, every successful GMO on the market has had as its objective increasing the yield from each acre of farmland. Marketing “healthier” food made from GMOs has been a taller order. But if gene-edited plants can avoid the stigma of GMOs, that could change.

There is another reason gene editing is causing excitement in industry. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has concluded that the new plants are not “regulated articles.” The reason is a legal loophole: its regulations apply only to GMOs constructed using plant pathogens like bacteria, or their DNA. That means Calyxt can commercialize its beans without going through the process of permits, inspections, and safety tests required for other genetically modified crops. It’s counting on that to cut at least half the 13 years and $130 million that companies have, on average, invested in order to create a new GMO and get it into farmers’ hands.

To GMO opponents, the new, unregulated plants are a source of alarm. For years, they have argued that GMOs should be opposed because they might be unsafe. What if they cause allergies or poison butterflies? Now the battle lines are shifting because companies like Calyxt can create plants without DNA from a different species in them. They can argue that gene editing is merely “accelerated breeding technology.”

Output: Minneapolis-based start-up Calyxt is set to make history by selling oil made from soybeans that were genetically edited using its proprietary TALEN system. The company has already received confirmation from the US Food and Drug Administration that six of the 19 plants it has engineered will not be classed as genetically modified organisms, and therefore not subject to regulation. While some farmers are ready to embrace foods offering improved yield and profit margins, critics have warned that not enough has been done to study the effects of gene-edited crops on the wider environment.