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Diageo pulls ads from Snapchat over fears about under-18s viewing
 Diageo is starting the new year with a resolution not to advertise on Snapchat — at least not until it can be sure of the social network’s ability to keep its ads away from users under the legal drinking age.

The alcohol advertiser has stopped all advertising on Snapchat while it tries to understand how its ads may have inadvertently reached the social network’s youngest users. Diageo has not taken “sufficient” care to prevent its ads from reaching kids and teenagers, the Advertising Standards Authority concluded after an investigation, the results of which were announced on Jan. 3. The ASA banned Diageo from running a sponsored lens for its Captain Morgan rum brand ever again.

While the lens debuted last summer without sparking any complaints from the public, the ASA decided it needed to be investigated due to concerns it appealed to people under the legal drinking age. The regulator wanted to set a “precedence” in this space, revealed an ASA spokesman, who added Captain Morgan is the first branded Snapchat lens to be banned in the U.K.

The rationale behind the decision was simple enough. By adding a beard and a pirate hat to a user’s face, the lens broke strict alcohol advertising rules on targeting kids, specifically on how ads must not use real or fictitious characters who are likely to encourage kids and teenagers to drink.

The ruling relies on the assumption that a significant portion of Snapchatters claim to be over 18 when they are not.

Diageo, however, stressed it bought the lens, which typically cost between $500,000 (£368,000) and $1 million (£736 million) per day, last year based on assurances Snapchat had given it. At the time Diageo ran the campaign, Snapchat had not launched the interest-based targeting it has since claimed allow brands to supplement age with behavioral data to infer the ages of potential audiences. Those updates are currently being discussed between the platform and the alcohol advertiser.

Captain Morgan took “all reasonable steps to ensure the content we put on Snapchat was not directed at under 18s,” said a spokeswoman for the brand. Diageo has now stopped all advertising on Snapchat globally, the spokeswoman added.

Any future investigations could stunt Snapchat’s plans to win over more alcohol advertisers. The social network has been trying to convince alcohol brands they have nothing to fear about marketing on the teen-friendly app but announcements like the ASA’s ruling threaten to undermine those efforts. Snapchat may have age-gating restrictions not to dissimilar to rivals Facebook and Instagram, and yet its status as a kid-friendly app potentially leave it open to greater scrutiny.

For example, Instagram does not ask for age. Instead, the social network pulls the age from a person’s Facebook profile if they have connected accounts. If not, Instagram prompts users for their age but does not use additional signals to determine whether the figure given is true, making it potentially less secure than Snapchat.

The issue with age verification on social media platforms is that if people want to circumnavigate it, they can and will, said Norm Johnston, chief digital officer at Mindshare Worldwide. “Brands that operate with age restrictions around advertising, whether that is alcohol, gambling or something else, always have the potential to run into this kind of trouble,” added Johnston.

Output: Drinks company Diageo has withdrawn all its advertising from Snapchat, following a ruling by the UK Advertising Standards Authority that it did not do enough to ensure a campaign for Captain Morgan's rum, using a pirate lens, did not reach users below the legal drinking age. The Captain Morgan lens has become the first Snapchat lens to be banned in the UK. Diageo and Snapchat are said to be discussing updates to interest-based targeting that allow brands to infer user age, which were only applied by the social media site after the campaign.


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Hong Kong property site GoHome.com.hk gets user interface remake
 HONG KONG, Jan. 3, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- For an even better property searching experience, GoHome.com.hk, part of REA Group, has recently launched a new website with refined functionalities and layout improving the user experience.

People can now can search for their dream property and find out the latest property insights about the area, property prices and information about the property through one simple click. The new website has a new search result page and property details page which offers:

A new property and serviced apartment section

Comprehensive secondary property listings

Responding to Hong Kong consumer demand, GoHome.com.hk's has introduced a new mobile responsive function which allow layouts to be automatically fitted for multiscreen devices such as desktops, tablets and mobile devices, meaning the search for an ideal home is now even easier when you're on the go.

Ms. Kerry Wong, Chief Executive Officer, Greater China Region, REA Group, said "GoHome.com.hk is the place that people use to find their perfect home. We've focused on improving the experience so people can now effortlessly explore and search for their ideal properties using specific criteria anywhere and anytime they want to."

"By providing comprehensive and timely property information, we're changing the way our customers and consumers better understand property insights and trends by giving them access to the latest information in addition to searching for the perfect property through the one portal," said Ms Wong.

Across its global network, REA Group's purpose is to change the way people experiences property through delivering the best property insights and information on their websites and creating the most engaging consumer experience to help people find their perfect place more quickly and easily.

For media queries, please contact:

REA Group (Hong Kong) Vis Communications Consultancy Limited Ms. Hermia Chan Mr. Felix Poon Tel.: +852 3965 4326 / + 852 9386 0166 Tel.: +852 2804 2388 / +852 9202 2885 Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected]

About GoHome.com.hk

GoHome.com.hk is Hong Kong's leading online property platform. Since 1999, GoHome.com.hk has been focused on providing value-added search experiences for the property-related industry and market in Hong Kong, Greater China and ASEAN.

GoHome.com.hk was named "Property Portal of the Year" by Marketing Magazine in 2011, 2012 and 2013, "Best Property Developer Partner – Most Comprehensive Property Website" by Capital Magazine in 2013, 2014 and 2015, as well as "Outstanding Online Property Information Platform" at the Hong Kong Digital Brand Awards by Metro Broadcast Corporation Limited and CHKCI in 2017.

About REA Group Limited

REA Group Limited ACN 068 349 066 (ASX:REA) ("REA Group") is a multinational digital advertising business specialising in property. REA Group operates Australia's leading residential and commercial property websites, realestate.com.au and realcommercial.com.au, Chinese property site myfun.com and a number of property portals in Asia via its ownership of iProperty Group. REA Group also has a significant shareholding in US based Move, Inc and PropTiger in India.

Within Hong Kong, REA Group Asia operates GoHome.com.hk, squarefoot.com.hk and SMART Expo. The brands aim to provide consumers with extensive local and overseas property news, listings and investment opportunities while offering property and home-related advertisers with a one-stop, multi-platform solution.

SOURCE GoHome.com.hk, part of REA Group

Output: Hong Kong online property platform GoHome.com.hk, part of REA Group, has overhauled its website to improve its customer experience. As well as featuring a new search result and property details page, the site now includes a property and serviced-apartment listings section, and automatically adapts to whatever device is being used to access it.


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Engineers convert fossil fuels to power without emitting CO2
 L.S. Fan, Distinguished University Professor in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at The Ohio State University, holds samples of materials developed in his laboratory that enable clean energy technologies. Credit: Jo McCulty, The Ohio State University.

Engineers at The Ohio State University are developing technologies that have the potential to economically convert fossil fuels and biomass into useful products including electricity without emitting carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.

In the first of two papers published in the journal Energy & Environmental Science, the engineers report that they've devised a process that transforms shale gas into products such as methanol and gasoline—all while consuming carbon dioxide. This process can also be applied to coal and biomass to produce useful products.

Under certain conditions, the technology consumes all the carbon dioxide it produces plus additional carbon dioxide from an outside source.

In the second paper, they report that they've found a way to greatly extend the lifetime of the particles that enable the chemical reaction to transform coal or other fuels to electricity and useful products over a length of time that is useful for commercial operation.

Finally, the same team has discovered and patented a way with the potential to lower the capital costs in producing a fuel gas called synthesis gas, or "syngas," by about 50 percent over the traditional technology.

The technology, known as chemical looping, uses metal oxide particles in high-pressure reactors to "burn" fossil fuels and biomass without the presence of oxygen in the air. The metal oxide provides the oxygen for the reaction.

Chemical looping is capable of acting as a stopgap technology that can provide clean electricity until renewable energies such as solar and wind become both widely available and affordable, the engineers said.

"Renewables are the future," said Liang-Shih Fan, Distinguished University Professor in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, who leads the effort. "We need a bridge that allows us to create clean energy until we get there—something affordable we can use for the next 30 years or more, while wind and solar power become the prevailing technologies."

Five years ago, Fan and his research team demonstrated a technology called coal-direct chemical looping (CDCL) combustion, in which they were able to release energy from coal while capturing more than 99 percent of the resulting carbon dioxide, preventing its emission to the environment. The key advance of CDCL came in the form of iron oxide particles which supply the oxygen for chemical combustion in a moving bed reactor. After combustion, the particles take back the oxygen from air, and the cycle begins again.

The challenge then, as now, was how to keep the particles from wearing out, said Andrew Tong, research assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Ohio State.

While five years ago the particles for CDCL lasted through 100 cycles for more than eight days of continuous operation, the engineers have since developed a new formulation that lasts for more than 3,000 cycles, or more than eight months of continuous use in laboratory tests. A similar formulation has also been tested at sub-pilot and pilot plants.

"The particle itself is a vessel, and it's carrying the oxygen back and forth in this process, and it eventually falls apart. Like a truck transporting goods on a highway, eventually it's going to undergo some wear and tear. And we're saying we devised a particle that can make the trip 3,000 times in the lab and still maintain its integrity," Tong said.

This is the longest lifetime ever reported for the oxygen carrier, he added. The next step is to test the carrier in an integrated coal-fired chemical looping process.

Another advancement involves the engineers' development of chemical looping for production of syngas, which in turn provides the building blocks for a host of other useful products including ammonia, plastics or even carbon fibers.

This is where the technology really gets interesting: It provides a potential industrial use for carbon dioxide as a raw material for producing useful, everyday products.

Today, when carbon dioxide is scrubbed from power plant exhaust, it is intended to be buried to keep it from entering the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas. In this new scenario, some of the scrubbed carbon dioxide wouldn't need to be buried; it could be converted into useful products.

Taken together, Fan said, these advancements bring Ohio State's chemical looping technology many steps closer to commercialization.

He calls the most recent advances "significant and exciting," and they've been a long time coming. True innovations in science are uncommon, and when they do happen, they're not sudden. They're usually the result of decades of concerted effort—or, in Fan's case, the result of 40 years of research at Ohio State. Throughout some of that time, his work has been supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and the Ohio Development Services Agency.

"This is my life's work," Fan said.

His co-authors on the first paper include postdoctoral researcher Mandar Kathe; undergraduate researchers Abbey Empfield, Peter Sandvik, Charles Fryer, and Elena Blair; and doctoral student Yitao Zhang. Co-authors on the second paper include doctoral student Cheng Chung, postdoctoral researcher Lang Qin, and master's student Vedant Shah. Collaborators on the pressure adjustment assembly work include Tong, Kathe and senior research associate Dawei Wang.

The university would like to partner with industry to further develop the technology.

The Linde Group, a provider of hydrogen and synthesis gas supply and plants, has already begun collaborating with the team. Andreas Rupieper, the head of Linde Group R&D at Technology & Innovation said that the ability to capture carbon dioxide in hydrogen production plants and use it downstream to make products at a competitive cost "could bridge the transition towards a decarbonized hydrogen production future." He added that "Linde considers Ohio State's chemical looping platform technology for hydrogen production to be a potential alternative technology for its new-built plants".

The Babcock & Wilcox Company (B&W), which produces clean energy technologies for power markets, has been collaborating with Ohio State for the past 10 years on the development of the CDCL technology - an advanced oxy-combustion technology for electricity production from coal with nearly zero carbon emissions. David Kraft, Technical Fellow at B&W, stated "The CDCL process is the most advanced and cost-effective approach to carbon capture we have reviewed to date and are committed to supporting its commercial viability through large-scale pilot plant design and feasibility studies. With the continued success of collaborative development program with Ohio State, B&W believes CDCL has potential to transform the power and petrochemical industries."

More information: Mandar Kathe et al. Utilization of CO2 as a partial substitute for methane feedstock in chemical looping methane–steam redox processes for syngas production, Energy & Environmental Science (2017). DOI: 10.1039/C6EE03701A Cheng Chung et al. Chemically and physically robust, commercially-viable iron-based composite oxygen carriers sustainable over 3000 redox cycles at high temperatures for chemical looping applications, Energy & Environmental Science (2017). DOI: 10.1039/C7EE02657A Journal information: Energy & Environmental Science

Output: Scientists at Ohio State University are creating new technologies that will convert fossil fuels into products, such as electricity, without emitting CO2. The engineers have developed a process through which shale gas is turned into methanol and gasoline, all while consuming carbon dioxide. Under the right conditions, the technology is capable of consuming all the CO2 in the process, and the researchers have found a way to make the process commercially viable.


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Regus Two new business centres opened in Liverpool
 North West Property Richard Frost

A typical Regus workspace

Workspace provider Regus has opened two new business centres in Liverpool, meaning that it now has three locations in the city.

The centres are located on Merchants Court on Derby Square and 1 Mann Island.

Regus also has a site in Exchange Flags.

Richard Morris, UK chief executive of Regus, said: "Demand for flexible workspace in Liverpool is booming so the city was a natural choice for our expansion plans.

"The city is well-connected and offers excellent value and it's increasingly attracting investment and visitors from across the world.

"We expect our new centres to be popular with a wide range of users including local small businesses, start-ups and remote workers as well as national firms opening satellite offices and global businesses establishing a footprint in the area."

Output: Shared office provider Regus has added two new business centres to its portfolio in Liverpool. The new sites are located at Merchants Court, on Derby Square, and at 1 Mann Island, alongside the docks – both close to its Exchange Flags city-centre offices. Regus UK Chief Executive Richard Morris said the expansion is in response to growing demand for flexible office space in Liverpool, which is attracting investors from around the world.


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Policy setback hits legal cannabis market in US
 Credit: CC0 Public Domain

The legal cannabis sector is expected to generate $40 billion and more than 400,000 jobs by 2021 in the United States, according to a study released Tuesday.

The estimate by consulting firm Arcview includes direct purchases by consumers of $20.8 billion and indirect revenue for growers and various subcontractors as well as money spent with businesses not affiliated with the sector, such as supermarkets.

The projection would represent a rise of 150 percent on the $16 billion revenue recorded in 2017, according to the study, released the day after recreational use of marijuana became legal in California.

Arcview and its partner in the research, BDS Analytics, expect $4 billion in taxes to be generated within three years.

The new regime will lead to the creation of nearly 100,000 cannabis industry jobs in California by 2021, about a third of the nationwide figure and 146,000 jobs overall when indirect effects are considered.

Customers and operators in California have complained however about the punitive sales taxes to be applied to cannabis and its derivative products, which can hit 35 percent when state, county and municipal levies are taken into account.

California, the most populous US state, became the largest legal market for marijuana in the world on Monday, and public reaction to the law change has been enthusiastic, with long lines and stock shortages reported at clinics already licensed and open.

Berkeley mayor Jesse Arreguin hailed the reforms at a ceremony on Monday at Berkeley Patients Group, one of the oldest dispensaries in the United States.

"I'm stoked about this historic moment, not just for Berkeley, but for the state of California," Arreguin said, praising the state for "embracing this new economy."

Cannabis possession remains illegal under federal law, and Arcview's Tom Adams said fewer than 100 out of the 3,000 outlets and delivery services operating in California were ready to go with the required local and state permits.

"Those that were generally report doing multiples of their typical day's business with a far more diverse and less experienced customer base that need a lot of hand-holding and educating from their bud-tenders," he added.

"We were very cautious in projecting revenue growth from $3 billion to $3.7 billion in this first year of adult-use legality in California, but we'll have to revise that upwards if, as now appears likely, San Francisco and Los Angeles are going to get permits issued more quickly than we expected."

© 2018 AFP

Output: US Attorney General Jeff Sessions has announced he is dismantling recent policies that help states legalise recreational cannabis, causing pot stocks to plunge, just as California began cannabis sales on 1 January. The legal cannabis market in the US had been predicted to be worth $40bn and to create over 400,000 jobs by 2021. That figure was made up of $20bn in direct sales and the same amount in indirect revenues for growers and others. Last year the market was worth $16bn.


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Redrow Second phase of Sandbach development to go before planning committee
 The second phase of a development by Anwyl and Redrow Homes, providing 151 homes off Middlewich Road in Sandbach, is set to be discussed by Cheshire East’s Southern planning committee next week.

Anwyl and Redrow have made two applications on the site: a reserved matters application for 126 homes, and a full planning application for 25 houses at the site’s southern end.

The wider 39-acre site was granted outline planning permission for up to 280 homes, alongside public open space and highways improvements, in 2012, and a reserved matters planning application for the first phase of 154 houses was approved in 2015.

The latest reserved matters application includes a mix of 74 four-bedroom homes; 26 three-beds; 21 two-beds; four one-beds; and one five-bed house. The four-bed units are expected to vary in price between £264,000 and £475,000.

Recommending the application for approval, Cheshire East planning officers said the proposals would “much needed affordable housing provision” and “would help in the Council’s delivery of five-year housing land supply”.

Cheshire East planning officers have stipulated that 30% of the homes – around 38 units – should be provided as affordable homes under the application’s Section 106 agreement.

A contribution of £514,000 towards education services was already secured as part of the outline planning permission, secured in 2012.

The recommendation to approve has been put forward despite objections from Sandbach Town Council, which argued the housing was “far too dense” in the second phase, and that it offered “no green space of any significance”.

The Town Council also criticised the application for not providing any bungalows “for older residents who wish to downsize”.

However, planning officers said the development’s open space was already covered under the outline application, which provides a six-acre park on the site.

Cheshire East planners also recommended the full planning application, covering 25 homes, for approval.

The homes on designated open countryside land are in addition to the 280 houses approved as part of 2012’s outline planning application.

These will provide a mix of 17 four-bed homes; four three-beds; three two-beds; and a single five-bedroom house, with prices for a four-bed house expected to be in a similar range as for the wider development.

Planning officers said the additional homes would “not have a detrimental impact upon residential amenity” in the area, and recommended the scheme for approval, subject to agreeing affordable homes on the site, as well as a £120,000 provision towards local education provision.

The professional team for the development includes Astle Planning & Design.

Output: The second phase of a development by UK housebuilder Redrow Homes and Anwyl in Sandbach, Cheshire is set to be examined by Cheshire East’s Southern planning committee. The latest reserved matters application, covering 126 homes, has been recommended for approval by Cheshire East planning officers, but Sandbach town council has complained about the lack of green space and inadequate provision for downsizers.


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Regus Regus opens doors to second Redhill business centre
 Regus’ second Redhill centre opens for business.

Global workspace provider Regus has opened the doors to its second Redhill business centre in response to the increased demand for workspace on flexible terms from local professionals.

The centre occupies the fifth, sixth and seventh floors of Kingsgate House, located at the southern end of Redhill High Street. It houses over 180 workstations and offers a range of flexible working options including co-working space, offices of varying sizes and layouts, Virtual Office services, meeting rooms and hot desks.

Regus Redhill’s central location places it close to various local amenities and transport links. It is situated just five minutes’ walk from Redhill Station, which has direct rail links to London, Croydon, Guildford and Reading. The centre can also be accessed internationally via Gatwick Airport which is just a 20 minute drive away.

Richard Morris, UK CEO, Regus, said: “Redhill is already a popular location with insurers, banks, oil companies and publishers. Combined with its excellent transport links, this makes the town a great location for Regus. We expect the new centre to be popular with a wide range of users including those based in Redhill and those visiting for business”

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Output: Flexible office space provider Regus has opened its second centre in Redhill, Surrey. The company has leased the fifth, sixth and seventh floors of Kingsgate House, offering co-working space, meeting rooms, virtual office services and more than 180 workstations and hot desks. UK CEO Richard Morris said Rehill was a popular location for insurers, banks, oil companies and publishers.


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Renewables dominates Britain's 2017 electricity production
 British wind farms generated more electricity than coal plants on more than 75% of days this year, an analysis of energy figures has shown.

Solar also outperformed coal more than half the time, the data provided by website MyGridGB revealed.

Overall, renewables provided more power than coal plants on 315 days in 2017, figures up to 12 December showed. Wind beat coal on 263 days, and solar outperformed the fossil fuel on 180 days.

Between April and August inclusive, coal generation exceeded solar on only 10 days.

In total, renewables generated more than three times the amount of electricity as coal over the year to 12 December.

The figures – provided by BM Reports and Sheffield University – reflect a year in which a number of green records have been set for the power sector, including the first full day without any coal power in the system, record solar generation and tumbling prices for new offshore wind farms.

The government has committed to phasing out coal power that does not have technology to capture and permanently store its carbon emissions by 2025, as part of efforts to meet targets on greenhouse gases.

The focus now turns to gas, with daily output from wind outstripping gas on only two days of the year, and renewables overall – including wind, solar, biomass and hydropower – beating the fossil fuel on just 23 days.

Dr Andrew Crossland from MyGridGB and the Durham Energy Institute said: “The government has focused on reducing coal use which now supplies less than 7% of our electricity. However, if we continue to use gas at the rate that we do, then Britain will miss carbon targets and be dangerously exposed to supply and price risks in the international gas markets.

“Clearly, refreshed government support for low-carbon alternatives is now needed to avoid price and supply shocks for our heat and electricity supplies.”

Emma Pinchbeck, executive director at industry body RenewableUK, said the decision to phase out coal was being made possible by a homegrown renewables industry “coming into its own”.

She added: “We want to see more boldness from the Conservative government. In 2018, the government should move to allow onshore wind, now the cheapest form of power for consumers, to be developed in parts of the UK where it is wanted, and agree an ambitious sector deal with the offshore wind industry.

“The new year could be the first in a golden age for UK renewables.”

Output: The UK had its greenest ever year in electricity production in 2017, breaking 13 different renewable energy records. Figures from BM Reports and Sheffield University showed that renewables produced more electricity than coal power stations on 315 days last year, and April saw the first day with no coal-fired power used in the UK. Coal now supplies less than 7% of the UK's electricity, and the government has a target to phase it out by 2025. The UK has halved carbon emissions in electricity production since 2012, and the increase in renewable power is expected to continue in 2018.


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FarmWise raises $5.7m to commercialise AI-driven weeding robot
 FarmWise, an agricultural robotics and IoT startup has raised a $5.7 million seed round to commercialize the company’s automated weeding robot.

FarmWise has developed a weeding robot that uses computer vision to identify weeds and robotics to remove them from vegetable farms without herbicides. While removing weeds with a mechanical motion similar to a garden hoe, the robot also gathers data about the plants.

“The machine can drive itself through the field and use cameras and computer vision to understand the field. It can analyze each plant, gathering info such as size, health status, and growth stage,” FarmWise founder and CEO Sebastien Boyer told AgFunderNews.

The round was led by hardware-focused VC Playground Global with Felicis Ventures, Basis Set Ventures, and food, agriculture and health investor Valley Oak Investments also participating.

“Farmwise is using the latest advances in computer vision and deep learning to build an autonomous platform that not only gathers crop-level data but also carries out actual tasks such as precision weeding and thinning, which are crucial to sustainable organic farming. The confluence of data-sensing, machine intelligence, and robotic actuation being smartly applied to an agricultural setting by a fantastic pair of entrepreneurs is what got us excited about partnering with them,” said Mario Malave of Playground Ventures.

Boyer said that he and his cofounder and CTO Thomas Palomares became interested in weeding because it is at the intersection of the farm labor crisis and moving away from chemical applications in agriculture.

Palomares has a family history of farming in France and he and Boyer have been working with growers in California for a year to hone their user interface.

‘We want to have a user interface as simple as a washing machine. On the inside, we want the machine to be as smart as possible. On the outside, it should be as simple as possible,” said Boyer.

The only element that needs to be entered by the user is a GPS “geofence” so that the machine does not go beyond the field it is supposed to be weeding. The rest of the robot’s activities are self-directed.

“One of the things that got us excited was that this is something that farms need to do throughout the year multiple times. so there’s always a use case as opposed to a picking robot,” Niki Pezeshki, vice president at Felicis Ventures.

Pezeshki said that finding a pesticide-free and cheaper method of weeding could be a game-changer for organic growers and consumers.

“Taking out herbicides really resonated with us too. If you can crack that nut in a scalable way that won’t make organic food more expensive, even better,” said Pezeshki.

Boyer is confident that the economics will work in growers’ favor sooner rather than later in part due to targetting vegetable farmers, who generally benefit from higher profit margins and suffer from higher labor costs — setting FarmWise further apart from well-known automated “see and spray” weeding robotics startup Blue River Technologies, which was acquired by John Deere earlier this year.

“The cost of weeding for vegetables on a per acre basis is between two and five times higher than for commodities. That makes our solution more economical at the beginning,” said Boyer, who anticipates selling the robots as a service, at least initially.

FarmWise investor Valley Oak Investments is also invested in Farmers Business Network, biological crop input company Marrone Bio Innovations, food delivery startup Caviar, dairy management software platform Farmeron, ag biotech company Hazel Technologies, and food waste reduction software Spoiler Alert.

Bruce Leak, inventor of QuickTime and cofounder of WebTV has joined FarmWises’s board of directors.

Farmwise is currently signing pilot contracts with some of the largest vegetable growers in CA beginning in summer 2018, according to Boyer.

Photo: FarmWise

Output: California-based agriculture technology start-up FarmWise has raised $5.7m to bring its weeding robot to the market. The technology uses computer vision and artificial intelligence (AI) to identify and remove weeds from vegetable farms and gather data about crops. Users simply set the boundaries for the machine, and it gets on with its work. The funding comes from venture capital companies Playground Global, Felicis Ventures, Basis Set Ventures and Valley Oak Investments. The robot can be used throughout the year and can make organic food more affordable by reducing the use of pesticides, the company said.


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China estimates space lab Tiangong-1 will crash to Earth in March
 China’s first space lab will crash down to earth in the coming months, but don’t worry: The odds of any debris hitting a person are astronomically small.

The Aerospace Corporation, a California nonprofit, estimates the Tiangong-1 will enter the atmosphere in mid-March. Sent up in 2011, the “Heavenly Palace,” as it’s also known, has witnessed a number of milestones as China races to become a space superpower. For example in 2012 the country sent its first female astronaut, Liu Yang, as part of the team behind the first successful manual docking with the lab.

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The station was designed with a two-year lifespan, but authorities extended its service life by two and a half years to conduct more experiments.

In September 2016, China’s Manned Space Engineering Office announced that the Tiangong-1 would re-enter the atmosphere around the latter half of 2017, which many interpreted to mean the lab had fallen into an uncontrolled orbit. (Satellite trackers suggest the lab has been that way since at least June 2016, notes the Aerospace Corporation.)

The agency said most of the lab would burn up in the fall, adding that it would release its updated forecasts of the descent, internationally if necessary.

Although it’s hard to predict where surviving pieces might land, based on Tiangong-1’s inclination, the Aerospace Corporation estimates the station will re-enter somewhere between the latitudes of 43° N and 43° S, an area largely covered by ocean, but also traversing countries including the US, Brazil, and China itself. According to the latest available trajectory data (link in Chinese), the Tiangong-1 is orbiting at an average height of 287 km (178 miles), about 100 km lower than it was in September 2016.

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Though it’s not uncommon for spacecraft and satellites to re-enter the atmosphere, rarely does it lead to injury or destruction of property. The largest manmade object to re-enter was Russia’s Mir space station, with surviving fragments falling into the Pacific east of New Zealand in 2001. Whereas the Tiangong-1 weighs 8,500 kg (18,739 lbs), the Mir weighed 120,000 kg.

The Mir, though, was still under control when it entered the atmosphere. Letting objects enter uncontrolled is not considered a best practice.

One (still remote) danger from the Tiangong-1, according to the Aerospace Corporation, is that someone will find and pick up a piece of its debris that’s covered in a corrosive substance.

While the odds of getting hit by space debris are absurdly remote, it happened to at least one woman. In 1997 Lottie Williams was strolling through a park in Tulsa, Oklahoma when a piece of light metal measuring about 6 inches (15.2 cm) glanced off her shoulder. NASA later confirmed the timing and location were consistent with the re-entry and breakup of a second-stage Delta rocket, the main wreckage of which was found a few hundred miles away in Texas. Williams wasn’t injured, but she’s thought to be the only person ever hit by space debris.

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You won’t likely become the second.

Correction: An earlier version of this story stated the Mir space station re-entered the atmosphere in 2013 instead of 2001.

Output: China's space lab Tiangong-1 is estimated to crash to Earth in March, with the Aerospace Corporation predicting it will re-enter between the latitudes of 43°N and 43°S. Although the area is largely covered by ocean, the US, Brazil and China also traverse it. China said it will release updated forecasts of the craft's descent; the expectation is that some debris will hit Earth, while the rest will burn up on re-entry. As we previously noted, many believe China's space authority lost control of the 8.5-tonne lab and are allowing it to enter Earth's atmosphere "naturally".


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UK group that backs diversity in VC firms to launch in US
 A British campaign group set up by young venture capitalists to boost diverse representation in VC is expanding to the US.

Diversity VC will be backed in the US by partners and associates at Female Founders Fund, Entrepreneur First, and financially by law firm Cooley.

2017 was a shocking year for US venture capital, with high-profile figures such as Uber investor Shervin Pishevar, 500startups founder Dave McClure, Binary Capital cofounder Justin Caldbeck and many others accused of sexual harassment.

A British initiative set up to tackle venture capital's monoculture will launch in the US, where the industry is currently reeling from multiple sexual harassment scandals.

Diversity VC was set up by five young venture capitalists in March to highlight the fact that most British venture capital investors are middle-class white men, with a knock-on effect on which startups get funding. It released a landmark report in May showing that almost half of British VC firms had no women on their investment teams.

Diversity VC founder and investor Check Warner told Business Insider that the group had decided to expand to the US after multiple requests from venture capital associates.

"What's been lacking in conversations in the US is that basis in fact, [research into] why we have such a big problem," Warner said. "There wasn't anything comparable to what we had done.

"People got in touch to say 'It would be great to have something like this, a system and process to start uncovering this.'"

Warner and her cofounders set up Diversity VC only a few months before a wave of harassment scandals hit US venture firms. Six women accused Binary Capital cofounder Justin Caldbeck of inappropriate behaviour, resulting in his leave of absence from the firm. Subsequent scandals engulfed Uber investor Shervin Pishevar, 500 Startups founder Dave McClure, and Tesla investor Steve Jurvetson.

"It's been interesting to see these things come out," said Warner. "It's reflective of the culture not including people, and having this sense of entitlement. You don't have checks and balances on behaviour.

"The lack of female diversity around the table is a contributing factor to people getting away with what they got away with."

Like its UK counterpart, the US chapter of Diversity VC will promote greater diversity in venture capital through four initiatives, including helping underrepresented groups build a VC network, getting minority interns into VC firms, and publishing data about diverse representation.

The group has backing from Female Founders Fund partner Sutian Dong, Insight Venture Partners associate Juliet Bailin, and Entrepreneur First's US head of funding Matt Wichrowski. Law firm Cooley is giving financial backing.

Output: Diversity VC, a UK initiative established last year by five young venture capitalists to tackle the lack of diversity within their industry, is set to launch in the US. The group released a report in May that revealed almost 50% of UK venture capital firms had no women working on their investment teams. Diversity VC in the US will get financial backing from law firm Cooley and support from Insight Venture Partners, Entrepreneur First and Female Founders Fund. Diversity VC said the US launch was in response to requests from workers in the US industry.


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Amazon reportedly close to investment in Indian insurtech Acko
 Online retail and e-commerce giant Amazon is reportedly on the verge of making its first investment in an insurtech start-up, with the company said close to finalising an investment in online-only insurance start-up Acko.

Acko wants to disrupt India’s insurance industry through a digital-only platform, having raised $30 million and recently received in-principal approval from the financial market regulators in India.

Amazon and Indian rival Flipkart had both been pursuing investing in Acko, it has been reported widely, but at this stage it is now thought that Amazon is close to signing a term-sheet for the investment and a partnership deal with Acko.

It’s said that the arrangement will see Amazon acting as an online distributor for Acko’s insurance products, selling a range of financial products.

The potential for Amazon to enter the insurance space has been much-discussed in recent months, including in our article from November, Incumbents could be relegated, if tech giants come for re/insurance.

Now it appears Amazon is close to taking a sensible step of investing in and partnering with an insurtech start-up, in order to gain the ability to add insurance products to its retail offering, seeing the firm stepping into the sale of financial products for the first time.

Targeting India first is also a smart move, as the burgeoning financial services market there has a strong focus on technology and take-up rates of insurance products are rising all the time.

If Amazon can crack selling insurance online to the Indian market, it will stand it in good stead to break into more established markets such as the United States and Europe.

Of course, if Amazon does move into insurance meaningfully it will likely only be a matter of time before other tech giants such as Google follow suit with their own integrated e-commerce offerings.

It’s also been reported that Flipkart is readying its own entry into insurance sales online, with the establishment of a new entity to focus on financial services and venture investing.

Also read: Incumbents could be relegated, if tech giants come for re/insurance.

Output: Amazon is reportedly finalising an investment in Indian insurtech firm Acko. The arrangement would see Amazon acting as a distribution platform for the online-only insurer. Amazon's biggest rival in India, Flipkart, was also reportedly considering an investment in Acko. The start-up has raised $30m to date and has provisional approval to operate from India's financial markets regulator.


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Nuritas raises $16m for its AI-powered solutions to diabetes
 The latest round of funding, led by Chicago-based Cultivian Sandbox Ventures, takes the total invested in Nuritas to date to around €25 million since the firms’ launch in 2014.

Emmet Browne, CEO of Nuritas told NutraIngredients the new funding will allow it scale the business and ‘grasp the huge opportunity’ that its unique platform has created.

“Predominantly we will use the funds to triple our workforce, progress our research and development and improve our rate of prediction,” said Browne – adding that it will allow the company to create the capacity “to deal with the huge levels of customer demand that is building up for what we do.”

Nuritas, founder and chief scientific officer Dr Nora Khaldi added that the investment will not only help it accelerate routes to market, explore new disease areas and grow its team, “but it will also push us even further in extracting the great potential of what our technology is capable of creating.”

Nick Rosa, managing director of Cultivian Sandbox and Co-founder of Sandbox Industries, which led the latest round of investment, said the company’s unique platform delivers ‘truly life-changing health benefits’

“We are very pleased to be involved in its growth – it’s a brilliant team and such an exciting technology,” he said. “We expect Nuritas to quickly emerge as one of the most innovative companies in the world, effecting real change.”

‘Huge opportunity’

Nuritas’ platform combines DNA analysis and artificial intelligence (AI) to predict, unlock, and validate peptides from natural sources. The Irish firm have grown rapidly and gained much attention in recent years, with a list of awards and big-name backers – with initial seed investments from Singapore-based New Protein Capital (NPC) and Silicon Valley investor Ali Partovi and further funding coming from Irish rock legends Bono and The Edge in December 2016.

Headed-up by ex-Nestlé regional president Emmet Browne, Nuritas was recently given a €3 million EU grant to continue working on an unnamed peptide said to be 'a major breakthrough' for diabetes prevention, and has entered into collaboration with international ingredients giant BASF for the discovery and commercialisation of functional peptides.

“In an effort to expand our health solutions, we searched the globe trying to find such an innovative discovery technology and we eventually found it with Nuritas,” commented Michael De Marco, Global Head, Research & Development Human Nutrition and Pharma Solutions, BASF SE.

Looking to 2018 … and beyond

The partnership between Nuritas and BASF will see its first commercial launch in 2018 as a new anti-inflammatory ingredient is launched into the US market. Nuritas CEO Browne said the launch of the anti-inflammatory ingredient will be ‘pivotal’ for the firm in the next year.

“What is so exciting is that the inflammation ingredient launching in the U.S. next year is actually the first healthcare ingredient that has been fully discovered through the use of Artificial intelligence,” added Khaldi.

Meanwhile, BASF’s De Marco said the launch of the ingredient into the US market ‘is only the beginning’.

“Our collaboration is progressing and on track to yield more groundbreaking products in the future.”

Another key area of focus for Nuritas is diabetes. According to the International Diabetes Federation, an estimated 352 million individuals globally are living with pre-diabetes which is considered an early warning sign for the condition.

“Bioactive peptides are known to play a role in managing diabetes and many other areas, but the current methods of identifying those that may work is time-consuming, inefficient and expensive,” said Browne – noting that when compared to traditional discovery methods, the Nuritas platform has been shown to identify peptides ten times faster and 500 times more accurately while significantly reducing costs.

“Our artificial intelligence platform has already disrupted this antiquated process by targeting, predicting and unlocking peptides that can positively impact in conditions like pre-diabetes while reducing the cost and time needed to find them,” he said.

Commenting on the possibility of further investment and financing rounds, the CEO told NutraIngredients that Nuritas will continue to grow and expand, but that the ‘huge’ round of investment that has just closed will provide a good runway to operate from.

“We are now focussed firmly on using it to maximise the many opportunities before us,” he said.

However, Browne added that the company is also “fortunate that we already have a number of different options identified when it comes to bringing in new funding if and when the need may arise.”

Output: A Dublin-based biotech firm has raised €16m ($19.2m) in a series A funding round to support its work in discovering and making use of bioactive peptides to assist in the treatment of diseases. Nuritas, whose CEO is former Nestlé executive Emmet Browne, has now received a total of €25m since its launch in 2014, including $3m from the European Union for a project that explores using artificial intelligence (AI) to help to prevent diabetes. Bioactive peptides play a role in managing the condition, and the AI technology used by Nuritas speeds up the process of identifying those which may help.


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Japanese hospital to deploy night-shift delivery robots
 A hospital in Japan will use robots to help out the night shift Four bots will ferry medicine and supplies between floors.

In Nagoya, Japan, a city that once held an entire museum dedicated to robotics, a hospital will soon add robots developed by Toyota to its medical staff. No, they won't be scrubbing in for surgery: In February, the Nagoya University Hospital will deploy four bots to ferry medicine and test samples between floors for a year.

Nagoya hospital to use robots for deliveries of drugs, materials：The Asahi Shimbun：The Asahi Shimbun https://t.co/bhlkzM0Rnp — Asahi Shimbun AJW (@AJWasahi) January 1, 2018

The robots are essentially mobile refrigerators with a 90-liter capacity that rely on radar and cameras to zoom through the hospital. Should they run into humans, they're programmed to dodge them or politely voice 'Excuse me, please let me pass,' according to The Asahi Shimbun. Staff can summon the robots and assign a destination for their medical payload using a tablet.

Nagoya built the robot system in partnership with Toyota Industries, a subsidiary of the automaker that produces auto parts and electronics. The trial run will run the robots between 5pm and 8am during the night shift when fewer people are walking the floors. Should the trial go well, the facility may choose to deploy more units.

Output: A hospital in Japan is deploying robots to deliver supplies around the building. The Nagoya University Hospital is to use four of the devices to run during the night shift from 5pm to 8am, when there are fewer people using the corridors. The robots have been developed in partnership with Toyota industries, and use radar and cameras to guide themselves around the hospital. They contain mobile refrigerators to carry medical supplies and staff can use a tablet device to summon them and set their destination.


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NASA considers allowing staff on commercial suborbital flights
 NASA's Flight Opportunities program is already flying experiments on Blue Origin's New Shepard vehicle, but researchers and companies alike want NASA to also fund experiments with people on board.

BROOMFIELD, Colo. — As commercial suborbital vehicles capable of carrying both payloads and people prepare to enter service, NASA officials say they're willing to consider allowing agency-funded researchers to fly on those vehicles.

In an interview after a speech at the Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference here Dec. 19, Steve Jurczyk, NASA associate administrator for space technology, said the agency would be open to allowing researchers funded by NASA's Flight Opportunities program to fly on suborbital spacecraft to carry out their experiments.

"As principal investigators propose, both internal to NASA and external, we'll do the same kind of process that we do with Zero G," he said, referring to the company that performs parabolic aircraft flights. Zero G flies investigations as part of the Flight Opportunities program, with researchers flying on the aircraft with their experiments. [Watch Blue Origin's New Shepard 2.0 Spacecraft Soar in 1st Test Flight]

Zero G's aircraft, a Boeing 727, is regulated by the Federal Aviation Administration. Jurczyk said that, in addition to the FAA oversight, NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center performs an evaluation of the aircraft for investigations selected by the Flight Opportunities program for flights on it. "It just ensures that our grantees and contractors are safe to fly, and then we allow them to go fly," he said in a speech at the conference.

A similar procedure is not yet in place for suborbital vehicles, but Jurczyk said the agency would be open to finding some process analogous to that used for Zero G. "Moving forward, as these capabilities start coming online, we’ll figure it out," he said in the interview.

His comments come four and a half years after another agency official opened the door to flying people on commercial suborbital vehicles through the Flight Opportunities program. Speaking at the same conference in June 2013, Lori Garver, NASA deputy administrator at the time, said that past prohibitions about flying people would be lifted.

"We absolutely do not want to rule out paying for research that could be done by an individual spaceflight participant — a researcher or payload specialist — on these vehicles in the future," Garver said then. "That could open up a lot more opportunities."

That announcement took the program by surprise, with the program's managers saying at the time they had yet to craft a policy for allowing people to fly with their experiments. Development of such a policy suffered years of delays, in part because of Garver's departure from NASA just a few months after her announcement as well as extended delays in the development of commercial suborbital vehicles capable of carrying people.

"It mostly resulted in a bunch of ostriches sticking heads in the sand for a few years," said Erika Wagner, business development manager at Blue Origin, during a panel discussion at the conference Dec. 18.

Blue Origin's New Shepard vehicle is already carrying research payloads, including for Flight Opportunities, but without people on board. However, the vehicle will be able to support missions carrying payloads and people in the future. Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo vehicle will also fly research payloads accompanied by a payload specialist.

Wagner said she has seen some progress as both companies' vehicles advance through flight testing. "The heads are back out. They're looking around trying to understand what really are the barriers, what is the liability regime."

Those liability issues today, she said, prevent NASA civil servants from flying on the Zero G aircraft, even though outside researchers whose experiments are funded by NASA are able to do so. Jurczyk, in his speech at the conference, said that’s because they would have to sign a liability waiver to do so. "Right now, that’s just NASA policy. We don't have a strong mission need to do that," he said. "That's current policy. I’m not saying it's going to be policy forever and ever." [In Photos: Blue Origin's New Shepard 2.0 Aces Maiden Test Flight]

Scientists who would like to fly experiments on suborbital vehicles argue that such missions are analogous to fieldwork — oftentimes hazardous — performed in other fields. "Marine biologists and marine geologists get to put themselves in that very same operationally risky environment by going to the bottom of the ocean, to a deep sea vent," said Dan Durda, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute, during the Dec. 18 panel. "These vehicles offer us, as space scientists, that opportunity to get into the field the way that biologists and geologists do."

Advocates of commercial suborbital research, such as the Commercial Spaceflight Federation’s Suborbital Applications Research Group, have been pushing to allow NASA to fund human-tended experiments.

"They're working quietly to get the word out that there are very definite needs for human-tended payloads," said Steven Collicott, a Purdue University professor, in a conference speech Dec. 19. "We've heard some encouraging words and we’re working quietly to try and move that ahead."

Others at the conference noted a decades-old precedent that suggests existing barriers to flying NASA-funded researchers on commercial suborbital vehicles can be overcome. In the 1980s, several payload specialists flew on the space shuttle, including Charles Walker, a McDonnell Douglas engineer who was part of three shuttle missions.

Walker, in the Dec. 18 panel discussion, noted that on those shuttle missions he and his family signed liability waivers. He supported similar approaches to allow researchers to fly on commercial suborbital vehicles.

"The environments opened up by suborbital flight and, at a greater scale, orbital flight, are laboratory environments," he said. "You should be there to maximize the answers that are coming out of the conduct in that environment."

This story was provided by SpaceNews, dedicated to covering all aspects of the space industry.

Output: NASA is looking at allowing researchers from the agency on board commercial suborbital flights, according to Steve Jurczyk, NASA associate administrator for space technology. Blue Origin's New Shepard craft and Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo are among the vehicles that could carry researchers on suborbital flights. Liability issues on the relatively dangerous missions have so far deterred NASA from allowing staff aboard them.


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US and China set to launch Mars mission for sample retrieval
 The best way to study martian rocks and soil would be to do it on Earth. While spacecraft-mounted instruments—such as the Curiosity rover's ChemCam that vaporizes surface material with a laser and then uses a spectrometer to determine the chemical composition—are invaluable to planetary scientists, they are no replacement for a sample in the lab. The amount of compositional and absolute age data that scientists can obtain with a laboratory full of state-of-the-art equipment and chemicals to test sample materials is unparalleled, as evidenced by research conducted on meteorites (including from Mars) and Apollo moon samples.

To continue this work, scientists need a pristine sample of martian rock and soil, which would help build a Rosetta Stone to unlock the history of the solar system. The potential knowledge to be obtained from such a sample ranges from the formation of Mars to the nature of the planet's ancient surface waters to possible habitability in the red planet's past, and in turn, perhaps the secret to the origin of life on Earth.

With so much to gain, both NASA and the Chinese national space agency are designing missions to retrieve a sample from Mars before the end of the 2020s. The missions are ambitious, incomplete, and reliant on yet-to-be developed technologies. They both start, however, with flights to Mars in 2020.

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Scouting the Red Planet

Self-portrait of NASA’s Curiosity rover, taken at Namib Dune on January 19, 2016. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Both American and Chinese Mars sample-return ambitions require preliminary missions to scout the planet and locate the best place to drill into the rock and core out a sample. NASA plans to do this with the Mars 2020 rover, slated to launch on an Atlas V rocket in July of that year and land on Mars in February 2021. The Chinese National Space Science Center (NSSC), meanwhile, is planning an orbiter, as well as a lander that will deploy a small rover, known as the Mars Global Remote Sensing Orbiter and Small Rover, to launch on a Long March 5 rocket in July or August of 2020.

Both start with flights to Mars in 2020.

NASA's Mars 2020, a car-sized twin to the Curiosity rover with an upgraded instrument suite, will not only locate the best places to collect a sample, but will also core the sample into a receptacle tube and deposit it on the surface to be picked up by a later mission. The Mars 2020 team is still considering three possible landing sites: Columbia Hills in Gusev Crater, a mineral-rich region near the Spirit rover's old exploration site; Jezero Crater, where surface water is thought to have flooded and receded at least twice in the past; and NE Syrtis, an area once characterized by volcanic activity and hot spring flows.

The Mars 2020 team will continue to analyze surface composition data from orbiters such as the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) to ultimately select one of these sites based on mineralogy and the potential for habitability. Once Mars 2020 arrives, however, where to sample will be determined on the fly.

"We'll be exploration driven once we get on the surface, so we'll have to make decisions," Katie Stack Morgan, deputy project scientist for Mars 2020, told Popular Mechanics during a visit to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in August. "Okay, here's a rock outcrop, where would be the best place to sample? Or should we pass on this one and go to the next one?"

"That will be something we'll figure out on the surface."

Once the rover has collected multiple samples in storage tubes, it will deposit the samples in a "depot cache" to be picked up by a yet-to-be-determined future mission. "We will have a couple different, probably at least two, drop-off spots," says Morgan. As to what exactly Mars 2020 will sample, "that will be something we'll figure out on the surface."

Geological layers examined by NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mount Sharp, taken January 24, 2017. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

The NSSC's mission, on the other hand, will do most of the planet-scouting with China's first spacecraft to orbit Mars, or Huoxing in Chinese, meaning "fire star." Using data gathered from orbit, Chinese scientists plan to select a location for a follow-up sample return mission that could return to Earth before 2030.

According to Andrew Jones of the Planetary Society, who specializes in Chinese space program coverage, the current plan is to launch a large spacecraft that can carry out all phases of the mission, including atmospheric entry, descent and landing (EDL), sample collection, ascent from Mars, rendezvous in Mars orbit, and a flight back to Earth. Such a mission would require the super-heavy-lift Long March 9 rocket, which is to enter development in the near future, targeting a first flight in 2025.

Chinese Mars lander and rover concept. The country’s National Space Science Center hopes to launch the two spacecraft, as well as an accompanying orbiter, to Mars in 2020. Xinhua

The Chinese sample return mission has yet to receive formal approval, but national space officials and the NSSC's primary contractor, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), which is building the 2020 Mars spacecraft, have been discussing the mission publicly, according to Jones. In addition, China published a white paper in 2016 that discusses "key technological research on the bringing back of samples from Mars."

While the 2020 missions to Mars are approaching final preparations, aiming to launch in just over two years, the sample return missions to follow are still in early planning stages, and a number of questions about the missions have yet to be addressed. As 2020 looms, however, we could see the space agencies of the two global powers start to drill down exactly how they plan to bring home the most valuable scientific sample ever collected.

Fourth Rock from the Sun

ESA/MPS/Rosetta OSIRIS Team

The sample caches deposited by the Mars 2020 rover will be one of the most significant aspects of that mission, but NASA has yet to figure out how to pick them up. "All options are on the table," says Morgan. "One concept is a fetch rover."

"The question we're going to have to ask is, how important is that sample return?"

Thomas Zurbuchen, head of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, discussed possibilities for fast tracking the sample return mission at a National Academies space studies board meeting in August. In the meeting, Zurbuchen proposed a mission to launch as soon as 2026 to send a multi-phase mission to collect the samples. A lander would touch down on Mars and deploy a fetch rover to collect the samples and return to deposit them in the lander. Alternatively, the Mars 2020 rover could deliver samples directly to the lander.

NASA concept of a Mars sample return mission. NASA/JPL

Once secured in the lander, a small rocket called the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) would launch to carry the samples to a rendezvous with another spacecraft in Mars orbit. That orbiting craft would then return to Earth with the rocks from Mars, or possibly fly to an orbit in cislunar space between Earth and the moon to be picked up by a future lunar mission.

To expedite the Mars sample return mission, however, NASA would likely need to postpone a new Mars telecommunications and reconnaissance orbiter, already funded by Congress and currently planned for a 2022 launch. Postponing the launch of a new Mars communications relay satellite would require NASA to figure out how to use existing orbiters to continue support for surface missions, possibly by changing the orbit of the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission (MAVEN) and repurposing that atmospheric science spacecraft to serve as a telecommunications link.

"At the end, the question we're going to have to ask is, how important is that sample return?" Zurbuchen said. "Do we want to tunnel-vision focus on that piece, because of the fact that we think it's so critical?"

While NASA's challenges establishing a sample return mission are largely logistical—deciding which method is best and figuring out how to fund the mission among a multitude of high-priority interplanetary missions—the NSSC's challenges are mostly technical. The global success rate for missions to Mars is only about 50 percent, and to date, just one institution has successfully landed on the red planet: NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Overview of NASA’s proposed Mars sample return mission. NASA

China's first attempt to launch an orbiter to Mars, Yinghuo-1, was lost after the Russian spacecraft it was hitching a ride with failed to conduct two engine burns to fly to Mars. The two craft were stranded in Earth orbit in late 2011 and burned up in the atmosphere a couple months later.

While NASA's challenges are mostly logistical, China's are mostly technical.

However, China's series of successful lunar missions provides reason to believe the country could pull off its ambitious Mars mission in 2020. Chinese missions Chang'e 1 and Chang'e 2 successfully orbited the moon in 2007 and 2010, respectively. Chang'e 3 successfully landed on the moon and deployed a small rover called Yutu (Jade Rabbit) in 2013, similar to the lander/rover design China plans to send to Mars.

The Chang’e 3 lander photographed by the small Yutu rover that it deployed. A blurred reflection of the rover is visible in the reflective surface of the lander. Chinese Academy of Sciences

The Chinese space program's next big test will come in 2018, when the People's Republic plans to launch Chang'e 4 to land and deploy a rover on the far side of the moon, a feat that has yet to be accomplished by humanity. Putting a lander and rover on the far side of the moon will require a telecommunications relay satellite to launch to an orbit beyond the moon about six months prior. The Chang'e missions will culminate with 5 in late 2018 or early 2019, the first lunar sample return mission since the Soviet's Luna 24 in 1976.

Racing to Mars and Back

A Long March 5 rocket at Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Center in June 2017. 篁竹水声/Wikimedia

The completion of the Chang'e program will be a vital test for crucial technologies required for both the Chinese 2020 Mars mission and a Mars sample return mission to follow. However, the biggest question mark on the Chinese schedule to Mars sample return is certainly the Long March 9 rocket. A Chinese Long March 5 heavy-lift rocket failed after launch earlier this year, postponing the Chang'e 5 mission. The even larger, more powerful Long March 9, which is still in early planning phases, will undoubtedly present a significant challenge to the Chinese space program. Rockets of this size and power, such as NASA's Space Launch System (SLS), are notorious for running up against schedule delays and high cost overruns.

If China pushes ahead with plans for a Mars sample return mission to launch on one rocket, it will need the Long March 9. However, it seems possible that the country could pivot to a multi-phase mission using the Long March 5, similar to NASA's current sample return mission outline.

The technical, logistical and budgetary challenges for either country to pull off a Mars sample return mission before 2030 are significant and manifold. The first step for both is successfully launching a flagship mission to Mars in 2020.

Diagram of science instruments on NASA’s Mars 2020 rover. NASA

However, at the breakneck pace that China's space program has been advancing, with multiple space stations and lunar missions launched in the past decade, the wealthy and powerful nation is clearly committed to aggressively advancing space sciences. As for NASA, you have to wonder how long the agency's scientists will be able to bear having martian samples carefully drilled out and stored in a receptacle on the surface of the planet, just waiting to be picked up.

If the two nations are starting to feel pressure to beat one another in the race to return home with a tantalizing sample of red planet rock, good. Getting a sample of Mars material into the hands of laboratory scientists on Earth could lead to some of the most profound scientific discoveries in the history of humankind. It's time to kick Mars sample return into high gear and bring that red dirt home.

Output: NASA and China's national space agency are both aiming to retrieve samples from Mars for study on Earth by 2030. NASA's preliminary mission starts with the launch of its Mars 2020 rover, set to land in February 2021. The rover will core a sample, place it in a tube and leave it on the surface for collection by a later mission. Meanwhile, China's National Space Science Centre will scout the planet with its first spacecraft to orbit Mars. It will then use the data gathered from orbit to select a site for a follow-up sample return mission.


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Tiny Cubesat exploration satellites could 'swarm' across space
 CubeSats, low-cost, bite-sized satellites inspired by the tubes used to hold Beanie Babies, were invented in 1999 as educational tools. Their creators — engineering professors Bob Twiggs and Jordi Puig-Suari — hoped building satellites the size and shape of Rubik’s Cubes would help students of all ages how to design and engineer efficiently.

Now, aerospace suppliers and governments across the globe see the tools as the future of space commercialization and deep space exploration. They want to turn CubeSats into tools for low Earth orbit activities like telecommunications and reconnaissance. Companies like SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, Boeing and Airbus, for instance, want to create a space internet — a network of thousands of CubeSats that provide high speed broadband to remote parts of the world.

And people like Paulo Lozano, director of the Space Propulsion Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, say sending the tiny satellites to asteroids could help improve space research (or even save the planet from an asteroid attack, he said).

“Instead of going to an asteroid every five, 10 years the traditional way, release a fleet of these tiny little CubeSats and visit 100 asteroids because it’s so cheap,” he said. “Because some of these asteroids, especially the very small ones, have the potential to collide with the Earth. Detecting them in time is important [for stopping them], but also knowing their composition.”

Over the first decade of the CubeSat era, universities dominated the landscape, sending two of every three devices into space. Today, commercial companies and militaries have taken over, launching 70 percent of CubeSats in the last five years.

But there’s still one big problem: CubeSats can’t move once they’re in space — which limits their survival to months or years and makes them dangerous.

“One of the big limitations in CubeSats is that they are launched as secondary payload. Once they are in space, they cannot move,” Lozano said.

Of the 750 or so CubeSats sent into space so far, almost all have lacked their own propulsion systems. The tiny satellites are transported alongside regular cargo, and then flung into space.

But without their own rockets, the CubeSats cannot maneuver on their own. Most fall slowly back to Earth, but some remain in orbit for years, where they join the other 100 million pieces of space debris that are at risk of colliding with other satellites and space stations.

The U.S. Air Force, whose Joint Space Operation Center monitors more than 23,000 orbiting objects larger than four inches in diameter, issues about 700,000 of these collision warnings to satellite owners per year. Imagine what would happen if thousands of CubeSats were added to the fray.

What CubeSats need to stay in space are mini boosters, and scientists like Lozano are racing to build them.

Moving with static

Lozano’s early work focused on big chemical rockets — the kind that you see strapped to space shuttles or on SpaceX missions. He knew these conventional rockets require huge fuel tanks — too big to be carried by CubeSats. Meanwhile, government standards limit how much chemical propellant can be carried by secondary cargo like CubeSats in order to prevent accidental explosions.

“You don’t have a lot of leeway in what you’re allowed to bring up because if your satellite blows up and you’re the secondary payload, the primary people are going to be really angry,” said Kristina Lemmer, a mechanical and aerospace engineer at Western Michigan University, who isn’t involved with Lozano’s research.

So, Lozano needed an alternative. His inspiration: static electricity and tiny drops of salt water.

Static electricity is caused by an imbalance between positive and negative charges in an object. Rub a balloon on your sweater, and its rubber surface becomes covered in negative charge (electrons). Place the balloon near your positively charged hair, and it tugs on the strands until you have a misshapen mohawk.

Lozano’s team designed a set of mini thrusters that rely on the same principle. The devices create an electric field that tugs on the charged particles in salt water until they peel off. The result is a spray made of charged molecules called ions.

This ion spray doesn’t create a lot force. It’s always less than a millinewton, which is akin to the force produced when a mosquito lands on your arm. But the spray moves very fast, and even a small action creates a reaction in the frictionless vacuum of outer space. Use this to move ions in one direction, and a CubeSat will move uber fast in the other.

By launching a fleet of CubeSats, scientists could learn the chemical compositions of asteroids, which could be the key to destroying or redirecting them.

Lozano said the best chemical rockets produce a fiery exhaust that moves at about 9,000 miles per hour. His electrospray thrusters can go more than 111,000 miles per hour, he said.

The thrusters, which look like computer microchips, are the size of quarters. The chips contain a grid of 500 needles — each a custom-built nozzle for spewing ions. His team tests them inside a large vacuum chamber at their lab in Boston.

“In an ideal situation, all of the ions would have the same energy, but the physics of these ion beams makes it so that some ions have less energy than others,” said Catherine Miller, an MIT doctoral and NASA Space Technology Research Fellow. By studying how energy is distributed among the ion beams, she can calculate and standardize how each thruster will perform.

Leading the space charge

Only three propulsion boosters for CubeSats have had successfully demoed in space, Lemmer said. Lozano’s system was one of them, through a partnership with the Aerospace Corporation in 2015. But Lemmer, who published a comprehensive review of CubeSat propulsion systems last year, said Lozano’s ion engines stand out because each one can produce so much thrust.

“Dr. Lozano’s system is probably the frontrunner for the possibility for deep space missions,” Lemmer said. “In order to go interplanetary, you’re going to have to have an electric propulsion system because they are so much more efficient.”

Folks like NASA have counted on the high efficiency of ion engines in the past, such as with the Dawn mission to the asteroids Vesta and Ceres. That journey would have been impossible without the Dawn’s high velocity ion engine. But the Dawn mission cost half a billion dollars. Commercial CubeSats can cost as little as $100,000 — and this price is dropping. Even children are building CubeSats at their elementary schools.

While Lozano’s electrospray thrusters don’t work exactly like the Dawn’s ion engines, Lemmer said the advantages are the same. You can carry less propellant — Lozano’s fuel tanks are the size of sugar cubes — but move more efficiently.

What’s next?

With another demonstration scheduled in early 2018, Lozano is dreaming big. He hopes his tiny thrusters can help CubeSats reach Mars or send them on asteroid scouting voyages. “Since they are so small, you can actually land on the asteroid with these rockets and take off again,” Lozano said.

Though nobody over the last 1,000 years has died because of an asteroid strike, as far as anyone knows, the chances are still disturbing. Your odds of being killed by an asteroid in your lifetime — one in 700,000 — rival death by flood or earthquake in the U.S.

By launching a fleet of CubeSats, scientists could learn the chemical compositions of asteroids, which could be the key to destroying or redirecting them. An asteroid made of silicon, for instance, would be much tougher to stop than one made of iron. Lemmer said CubeSats with propulsion could also provide a cheaper way to test new space technologies.

“Right now, if you want to put a new technology on a NASA satellite, it’s years in the making to run sufficient tests,” Lemmer said. Instead, “if you launch a new technology on a CubeSat and show that it works in space without bad things happening, then you can more easily translate into a NASA mission down the road.”

Output: Engineers are racing to create a propulsion method to allow Cubesats, 10 cm-sided satellite cubes, to move independently and in large numbers through space, enabling cheaper exploration of asteroids and planets. Among the projects is Paulo Lozano's chemical propulsion system, which uses electricity and tiny drops of salt water to create speeds of 111,000 mph. The device from Lozano, who is the director of the Space Propulsion Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will undergo another demonstration in the coming months and is one of three to have been tested in space.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Genes in Space-3 team identifies microbes on space station
 Sarah Wallace (L), NASA microbiologist and Genes in Space-3 principal investigator, and Sarah Stahl (R), microbiologist, are seen in their Johnson Space Center lab with the in-flight sample from the Genes in Space-3 investigation. Credit: Rachel Barry

Being able to identify microbes in real time aboard the International Space Station, without having to send them back to Earth for identification first, would be revolutionary for the world of microbiology and space exploration. The Genes in Space-3 team turned that possibility into a reality this year, when it completed the first-ever sample-to-sequence process entirely aboard the space station. Results from their investigation were published in Scientific Reports.

The ability to identify microbes in space could aid in the ability to diagnose and treat astronaut ailments in real time, as well as assisting in the identification of DNA-based life on other planets. It could also benefit other experiments aboard the orbiting laboratory. Identifying microbes involves isolating the DNA of samples, and then amplifying - or making many copies - of that DNA that can then be sequenced, or identified.

The investigation was broken into two parts: the collection of the microbial samples and amplification by Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), then sequencing and identification of the microbes. NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson conducted the experiment aboard the orbiting laboratory, with NASA microbiologist and the project's Principal Investigator Sarah Wallace and her team watching and guiding her from Houston.

As part of regular microbial monitoring, petri plates were touched to various surfaces of the space station. Working within the Microgravity Science Glovebox (MSG) about a week later, Whitson transferred cells from growing bacterial colonies on those plates into miniature test tubes, something that had never been done before in space.

Once the cells were successfully collected, it was time to isolate the DNA and prepare it for sequencing, enabling the identification of the unknown organisms - another first for space microbiology. An historic weather event, though, threatened the ground team's ability to guide the progress of the experiment.

"We started hearing the reports of Hurricane Harvey the week in between Peggy performing the first part of collecting the sample and gearing up for the actual sequencing," said Wallace.

When JSC became inaccessible due to dangerous road conditions and rising flood waters, the team at Marshall Space Flight Center's Payload Operations Integration Center in Huntsville, Alabama, who serve as "Mission Control" for all station research, worked to connect Wallace to Whitson using Wallace's personal cell phone.

With a hurricane wreaking havoc outside, Wallace and Whitson set out to make history. Wallace offered support to Whitson, a biochemist, as she used the MinION device to sequence the amplified DNA. The data were downlinked to the team in Houston for analysis and identification.

NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson performed the Genes in Space-3 investigation aboard the space station using the miniPCR and MinION, developed for previously flown investigations. Credit: NASA

"Once we actually got the data on the ground we were able to turn it around and start analyzing it," said Aaron Burton, NASA biochemist and the project's co-investigator. "You get all these squiggle plots and you have to turn that into As, Gs, Cs and Ts."

Those As, Gs, Cs and Ts are Adenine, Guanine, Cytosine and Thymine - the four bases that make up each strand of DNA and can tell you what organism the strand of DNA came from.

"Right away, we saw one microorganism pop up, and then a second one, and they were things that we find all the time on the space station," said Wallace. "The validation of these results would be when we got the sample back to test on Earth."

Soon after, the samples returned to Earth, along with Whitson, aboard the Soyuz spacecraft. Biochemical and sequencing tests were completed in ground labs to confirm the findings from the space station. They ran tests multiple times to confirm accuracy. Each time, the results were exactly the same on the ground as in orbit.

The Genes in Space-3 team worked throughout Hurricane Harvey to ensure operations continued on the space station. Pictured are Aaron Burton, Kristen John, Sarah Stahl and Sarah Wallace as they watch NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson work within the Microgravity Science Glovebox (MSG) during part one of the investigation. Credit: Sarah Wallace

"We did it. Everything worked perfectly," said Sarah Stahl, microbiologist.

Developed in partnership by NASA's Johnson Space Center and Boeing, this National Lab sponsored investigation is managed by the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space.

Genes in Space-1 marked the first time the PCR was used in space to amplify DNA with the miniPCR thermal cycler, followed shortly after by Biomolecule Sequencer, which used the MinION device to sequence DNA. Genes in Space-3 married these two investigations to create a full microbial identification process in microgravity.

"It was a natural collaboration to put these two pieces of technology together because individually, they're both great, but together they enable extremely powerful molecular biology applications," said Wallace.

More information: Sarah L. Castro-Wallace et al. Nanopore DNA Sequencing and Genome Assembly on the International Space Station, Scientific Reports (2017). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-18364-0 Journal information: Scientific Reports

Provided by NASA

Output: Scientists on the International Space Station (ISS) have successfully identified microbes in the first-ever sample-to-sequence process on board the ship. NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson worked with the Houston-based Genes in Space-3 team to collect microbial samples from around the ISS, before a MinION device was used to sequence the samples' DNA, enabling it to be identified. Back on Earth, the results were retested and proved to exactly match the ISS outcomes. Being able to identify microbes on the ISS would assist in diagnosing illnesses and infections among astronauts.


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Chocolate may disappear due to effect of climate change on cacao
 Maybe start hoarding now. Photo: Diana Miller/Getty Images/Cultura Exclusive

Here’s some climate-change news that President Trump will have trouble ignoring: Earth’s junk food is in danger of losing a crucial ingredient. Scientists now predict that chocolate — which POTUS will sometimes eat to celebrate making important military decisions — could become impossible to grow in the coming decades because of hotter temperatures and less rain in regions where cacao plants are cultivated. The year 2050 is when they predict that people will be forced to satisfy a sweet tooth with toffee or caramels seasoned with tears.

Like coffee plants and wine grapvines, cacao is a finicky tree. It only grows well in rain-forest land that’s within 20 degrees of the equator. Half of the world’s chocolate is produced in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, where the plants thrive at around 300 to 850 feet above sea level and under dependably humid weather conditions. But by 2050, researchers say that rising temperatures could push the optimal cultivation zone “uphill,” to as high as 1,500 feet.

Thankfully, a team from UC Berkeley is working on a possible fix. It’s actually part of a new partnership that Mars announced last year. The M&M’s and Snickers maker is investing $1 billion into a variety of efforts to fight climate change, and the scientists in a plant-genomics program at Berkeley hope to develop hardier cacao plants that won’t wilt or rot at their current altitude.

Berkeley’s gene-editing technology, called CRISPR, has been in the works for a while, though when it gets attention, it’s almost always for the potential to eliminate genetic diseases or (sort of on the extreme end of this) build “designer babies.” But creator Jennifer Doudna tells Business Insider that the “most profound” application will likely be saving food.

Output: Chocolate could disappear by 2050 because of higher temperatures and less rainfall in regions where cacao trees are grown, according to the US's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Cacao plants only grow well in rainforest regions that are near the equator, with half of the world's chocolate being produced in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana at up to 850 ft above sea level. Rising temperatures are pushing growing regions to about 1,000 ft above sea level and into mountainous terrain. UC Berkeley is working with Mars to generate new strains of cacao plants using CRISPR gene-editing technology.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Netherlands introduces tradeable phosphate rights for dairy cattle
 The system came into effect January 1, 2018.

The measure has been introduced to improve water quality in the country by limiting phosphate production from dairy cattle manure and promote a shift to land-based farming.

The EC said that given the high density of dairy cattle in the Netherlands, the phosphate contained in dairy cattle manure represents a significant environmental concern.

In addition to the main environmental objectives, the system also provides support for young farmers and is intended to have a positive effect on grazing and grassland.

Trading rights

Dairy farms will be awarded phosphate rights for free and will only be allowed to produce phosphate from dairy cattle manure corresponding to the phosphate production rights they hold. At the end of each calendar year, farms will be required to demonstrate that they have sufficient phosphate rights to justify the amount of phosphate produced by their dairy cattle manure.

Dairy farms, including new entrants, can acquire phosphate rights on the market, as phosphate rights will be traded.

When a transaction occurs, 10% of the traded rights will be withheld and kept in a ‘phosphate bank.’

This is intended to encourage the development of more land-based dairy farming by providing temporary, non-tradable rights to "land-based farms," which can fully absorb on their land all the phosphate from their own manure production.

Based on the environmental objectives the system aims to achieve, the European Commission concluded that the system is in line with the EU rules for environmental State aid.

Output: The European Commission has given the go-ahead to a trading system for phosphate rights for dairy cattle in the Netherlands, aimed at improving the country's water quality by limiting phosphate production from dairy cattle manure and encouraging a move to land-based farming. Dairy farmers will receive phosphate rights for free and will be obligated each year to prove they have sufficient rights to justify the quantity of phosphate produced by their manure. Phosphate rights can be obtained on the market, with 10% of the traded rights held back to promote the development of more land-based dairy farming.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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3,000-metre high Chinese salt lake holds vast lithium deposit
 GOLMUD, China -- The world is on the brink of an electric vehicle revolution. The widespread use of electric cars will depend on the availability of lithium, which is crucial for electric vehicle batteries. China is the world's second-richest country in lithium reserves, after Chile.

Countries are now scrambling to secure supplies of the valuable metal, but where is it found? I visited a remote area of China, about 3,000 meters above sea level, that is one of the world's largest lithium-producing areas and which the Chinese government considers a strategic region. "Huge amounts of capital are rapidly flowing into the town," a local resident said.

Output: A remote salt lake in the Chinese inland province of Qinghai is home to 83% of the country's lithium deposit. The metal is crucial for the development of electric vehicle (EV) batteries and China is the second richest country in terms of reserves, after Chile. The majority of its lithium can be found within salt sediment on the floor of Chaerhan Salt Lake. Companies such as major Chinese EV maker BYD have begun setting up factories in the area after securing a concession for recovering lithium.


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Publishers prepare for Facebook feeds without news
 Publishers have a lot to gripe about when it comes to Facebook, from the platform choking off their referral traffic, dominating digital advertising and giving them whiplash with its constantly changing video strategy. But what if it got even worse?

In 2018, Facebook could take a step further and separate news from the news feed. It’s not a crazy idea. The platform tested a newsless news feed, called the Explore Feed, in six countries outside the U.S., causing a major publisher freakout. (Facebook said it didn’t expect to roll out the test further.) In the past year, Facebook also launched Watch, a TV-like video tab; and prioritized Facebook Groups, communities for people who share interests or characteristics — also underscoring the idea of separating user interaction from other media content.

Other platforms have made moves to separate users’ messages from media and brands’ content. Snapchat redesigned its app to separate users’ feeds from brands’ content. Instagram is testing a private messaging app, which would take peer-to-peer chat out of the main app. Twitter has its Moments tab, a dedicated home for news and entertainment stories.

Fundamental to the success of platforms like Twitter and Facebook is keeping users happy, and as such, they’re always running experiments to see if changes will get people to return more often and stay longer. Given a lot of news is negative or controversial, a feed with no news (unless it’s shared by a user) could be less contentious and more enjoyable for users. And another group that likes less controversy, of course, is another important Facebook constituency: advertisers.

“Sometimes people get really annoyed and confused when they’re reading about their cousin’s bar mitzvah or whatever and they see a very serious story afterward,” said Andrew Montalenti, CTO and co-founder of web analytics firm Parsely. “All of the platforms, what they’re really concerned about with fake news is that I think you kind of draw on a bank account of trust with the user. If you come across that stuff too much, you declare it to be a problem, and you stop using it. So they have to play this delicate balance — ‘We can’t show you too many ads or show you too much spammy content.’”

Another factor is the fake-news imbroglio that blew up in Facebook’s face in the past year, leading lawmakers to threaten regulation. Facebook responded by trying to police fake news, which has proved to be a challenge. Further de-emphasizing news or taking it out of the feed altogether is one way to deal with the problem.

As to the Explore test, Facebook said: “There is no current plan to roll this out beyond these test countries or to charge pages on Facebook to pay for all their distribution in News Feed or Explore.” That was cold comfort to those publishers who depend on the news feed to reach audiences, though. As much as Facebook has declined in reach, it’s still a significant source of traffic for many publishers, which have already seen their direct traffic from Facebook decline in recent months, if not years, as Facebook has prioritized users’ posts and video content in the news feed.

Some publishers whose audience strategy is closely tied to Facebook and follow the company closely are starting to consider the possibility of a newsless news feed. An executive at a traditional publishing company said this is “definitely on our minds” given the company gets a “ton of traffic from Facebook,” and it’s a risk the company has to think about in the next few years. “It would be seismic shift,” said another publishing exec.

“There’s good reason to be concerned if publishers’ content becomes separated out of the main news feed,” said Vivian Schiller, a former Twitter news executive. “Their criteria [for the Explore test] was about user experience. That’s their business. But it’s hard to imagine this not having a deleterious effect on publishers.”

There are other reasons for Facebook to go in this direction. Facebook could make an exception for publishers and other commercial content providers that pay to be in the news feed, which could mean more revenue for Facebook. Separating news from the feed also could give Facebook a way to test a potential new product, similar to how it took Messenger out of the site and made it its own app, Schiller said.

Of course, none of this is a fait accompli. There’s good reason to think Facebook will keep news in the feed. Scrolling through the news feed is the core daily habit for most Facebook users. It’s what Facebook uses to promote its many other products, like the Watch video tab and Marketplace. It’s hard to get people to toggle from the news feed to other places on Facebook.

That said, even if a newsless news feed doesn’t materialize, publishers have to adapt. Facebook, and Google, are here to stay, and Facebook has proven time and time again that it’s not always going to act in publishers’ interests. Publishers have to take matters into their own hands, and take advantage of other audience and revenue opportunities.

Output: Online publishers are considering strategies for a future in which Facebook removes news stories from its main pages, called newsfeeds. The social network last year experimented with a separate newsfeed called Explore in six countries outside the US, but said it didn't plan to roll this out further. However, a number of other online platforms including Twitter and Snapchat have separated news stories from user-generated content to some degree, leading to speculation Facebook will follow suit. Publishers have already seen their direct traffic from Facebook decline in recent months as user content and videos have taken precedence.