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India exploring green alternatives to air conditioning
 When Rutam Vora was growing up in Vadodara, a city of about 2 million people near the western coast of India, his parents kept cool each summer by drenching bedsheets in water and hanging them in the windows of their house. When the scorching westerly wind known as the loo swept in and hit the sheets, the evaporating water absorbed the brunt of the heat. White chalk spread on the roof reflected the sun and dropped the temperature further. They were old methods of coping with the heat, like drinking lassis or chaas when “struck by the loo,” and they were effective.

But the weather, already hot, has been getting hotter. In the summer of 2015, it hit 114 degrees Fahrenheit in nearby Ahmedabad, where Vora works as a correspondent for The Hindu. The next summer, it passed 122 degrees, a record. It’s not uncommon for people to wrap their faces in wet cloth when venturing onto the furnace-like streets, and the wind is so hot it feels heavy. “For about a decade, the temperature has been going up,” Vora said. “But now, the last couple summers have been extreme, going beyond normal, bearable conditions.”

Earlier this year, Vora’s mother came down with a bacterial infection, and part of the doctor’s prescription was to stay cool. When the meteorological department warned of yet another punishing summer on the way, Vora decided it was time to buy an air conditioner.

“The last couple summers have been extreme, going beyond normal, bearable conditions.”

Across India, millions of people are making similar calculations. The share of Indians with air conditioning is still small, roughly 5 percent, but it’s growing fast. Rising incomes are making air conditioners more attainable, while rising temperatures are making them a necessity. “There are hundreds of millions of people for whom air conditioning doesn't seem like a luxury good,” said Michael Greenstone, director of the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago. “It can mean the difference between life and death.”

The cooling industry has found a ready market in Ahmedabad, the largest city in the state of Gujarat. The city bakes each summer until the monsoon comes, at which point temperatures drop into the 90s and the humidity rises to stifling levels. Above the city’s winding streets, crowded with fleets of auto rickshaws and mopeds, billboards declare that every home deserves Hitachi cooling. Elsewhere, Panasonic ads extol the speed at which its “life conditioners” can cool a room. Apartment ads list AC first among amenities offered, and restaurants promise relief from the heat. Appliance shops along the roadside display the industry’s major players in big letters on their windows: Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Blue Star, Panasonic, General — the King of Cool, etched in glass with a crown — Daikin, Carrier.

The world is on track to add 700 million new ACs by 2030, and 1.6 billion by 2050, largely in hot, developing countries like India and Indonesia. But the AC boom threatens to worsen the crisis it’s responding to, and widen the divide between those who can afford to stay cool and those left out in the heat.

Air conditioners use refrigerants, and some of the most common types — hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs — are powerful greenhouse gases, with thousands of times the warming potential of carbon dioxide. If HFC use continues to grow at its current pace, these chemicals could make up as much as 19 percent of emissions by 2050. International initiatives are set to phase down the worst offenders, but air conditioners contribute to climate change in a second way: they consume a tremendous amount of electricity. Handling the growing load will require adding thousands of new power plants to the grid.

The AC boom threatens to worsen the crisis it’s responding to

Air conditioners may be a double-edged tool, but some way of adapting to the rising heat will have to be found. High temperatures are already interfering with people’s ability to work, making people sick, and outright killing thousands. If heating is considered a basic requirement in Western countries, said Satish Kumar, executive chairman of the New Delhi-based Alliance for an Energy Efficient Economy, it’s time to start thinking about cooling the same way. “We are saying that a basic level of thermal comfort in order to be productive, in order to sit comfortably in your home during the night, it should not be a question. Everybody should have access to that level of comfort.”

Vora recalls the first time his family turned on their AC. His father announced that “from now onwards, the summer has gone from our life.” His mother asked the mechanic what temperature to keep it at to minimize electricity bills. “We survived so many decades, my father, and the people of his age, they would have hardly used AC,” Vora said. “But mine, and I imagine the next generation, they can’t live without it.”

A drink vendor on a hot day in New Delhi.

One of the dangerous things about heat is the way it can sneak up on you. We deal with hot days all the time, and generally, they’re uncomfortable at worst. We wear light clothes, stand in the shade, fan ourselves, and commiserate. Our bodies work to stay at around 98.6 degrees: blood vessels dilate to move heat to the skin where it can be radiated into the air. If that’s not enough, we produce sweat, and heat gets absorbed turning it to vapor. But the effects of heat are nonlinear, and the line between discomfort and danger can be hard to detect. When the air becomes hotter than the body, skin stops radiating heat and starts to absorb it. If humidity is high, sweat can’t evaporate into the already saturated air. If you exert yourself, your core temperature will start to climb, and your body will struggle to bring it down.

Discomfort turns into fatigue, nausea, disorientation — symptoms of a fever, which is what it is. Skin turns bright red and sweat pours out as the body’s cooling systems go into overdrive. The heart starts to pound as it struggles to pump thickening blood, muscles spasm, sweat runs dry. At that point, the body is uncontrollably overheating. If its temperature isn’t brought down by ice baths and intravenous fluids, the cells’ mitochondria start to break down, organs fail, and death follows.

Seemingly small increases in global average temperatures hide a crucial shift in the extremes. What were uncomfortably hot days are becoming dangerously hot, dangerously hot days are becoming deadly ones. This shift is already perceptible in India: the mean summer temperature has risen less than a degree since 1960, but heat waves that kill more than a hundred people have become more than twice as likely.

“Our choices now are between bad and terrible.”

By the end of the century, almost half the people on Earth will face deadly heat and humidity for more than 20 days a year, according to a study by Camilo Mora, a researcher at the University of Hawaii. And that’s the best-case scenario, with drastic reductions in carbon emissions. If emissions continue on their current trajectory, three-quarters of humanity will face deadly heat. Regions in the Persian Gulf, Bangladesh, and northeast India may become so hot and humid that, in the words of another recent study, they pass the “upper limit on human survivability,” deadly to anyone who ventures outside for more than a few hours. “Our choices now are between bad and terrible,” Mora said.

For the past century, the best technology we’ve had for coping with heat has been the air conditioner. Air conditioners run refrigerant through coils in a loop. The refrigerant absorbs heat from inside a room as it turns from liquid to gas, then deposits heat outside as it’s condensed into liquid again. Because cooler air holds less moisture, water vapor condenses on the conditioner’s coils, lowering the humidity. (That condensate is the liquid that drops on city-dwellers’ heads in the summer.)

Though primarily thought of as a comfort appliance, ACs also save lives. As air conditioning spread through movie theaters, offices, and homes in the 20th century United States, heat-related deaths plummeted. (Without AC, heat and humidity in places like Florida can quickly become deadly, as became clear when several residents died at a nursing home after Hurricane Irma.) Air conditioning enabled the growth of hot cities like Phoenix and Houston, but it eventually became standard even in temperate regions, finding its way into 87 percent of US homes.

“AC has become a necessity, like a fan.”

Now air conditioning is spreading in India. Indians bought about 5 million room ACs last year, according to Frost and Sullivan, and the market is growing at 10 to 12 percent annually, with some of the more aggressive companies expanding far faster. International vendors are vying for a share of the market. General, a joint venture between Japan’s Fujitsu and the Emirati company ETA, is selling a “hyper tropical” line meant for temperatures up to 125 degrees, which it unveiled with a Bollywood performance. The Japanese company Daikin opened a factory in Rajasthan that’s pumping out half a million units a year and plans to double production. The industry is well aware that rising temperatures are juicing demand. (The tagline for this year’s air-conditioning exhibition in New Delhi was “witness global cooling.”) “Beyond a status symbol, AC has become a necessity, like a fan,” said Gaurav Mehtani, divisional manager at Daikin’s New Delhi office.

Electrical wires in New Delhi.

For the salesmen and mechanics on the frontlines of the boom, summer can be a grueling time. Sundresh Nambiar has worked in the business for eight years, though he bought his first AC just this summer. (Like Vora, it was out of concern for his parents’ health.) His shop, and the two that sit next to his beneath a pizza place by the side of a busy road, is typical of many in Ahmedabad: a narrow room, fluorescent lit, its walls entirely covered with AC units.

As the temperature climbs, Nambiar’s days grow longer, starting at 7:30AM and stretching past midnight. Customers get irate if their ACs can’t be installed immediately, and sometimes they try to bribe their way to the front of the line. Nambiar proudly said it’s first come, first served, except in cases of medical emergencies. The heat that’s driving sales is brutal to work in: Nambiar’s mechanics drench their clothes in water and spray down their tools to avoid searing their hands. It’s happened to Nambiar before.

Mechanics spray down their tools to avoid searing their hands

Temperatures in Ahmedabad sometimes get so high that older ACs stop functioning, and repairmen like Dinesh Sata have found a lucrative business in keeping them running. “Because of climate change, machines break with overheating,” he said. Five years ago, it was just him and a couple employees. Now he has a staff of 14 and runs them like a fire department, dispatching teams of two as calls come in. In the summer, they work from 7:30 in the morning to 3AM, each duo taking as many as 20 calls a day. They move through the city on mopeds, so as to better weave through Ahmedabad’s snarled traffic. The repairmen, Sata said, “don’t even have time for food — just small snacks.”

Access to cooling falls along class lines, and Sata can read the affluence of a neighborhood by its air conditioners: older, probably secondhand units on one end, brands like Samsung and LG in the middle, and Mitsubishi and General at the top.

The houses of the very wealthiest are lavishly cooled. “I installed one in a kitchen,” Sata said, incredulously. “And in the toilet.” The house, an old mansion owned by diamond dealers, had 29 ACs in total. Most people, of course, have none at all. “The poorer people,” he said, “they are suffering the most.”

Sata himself has no AC, but by choice. His work entails spending long hours in scorching heat, and he’s seen how dependent people become on ACs once they’re exposed to them. “If I get used to AC, I won’t be able to work.”

Sata can read the affluence of a neighborhood by its air conditioners

All the new ACs set to be installed from India to Brazil have added urgency to the race to make them less damaging to the climate. Last year in Kigali, Rwanda, negotiators from 197 countries amended the Montreal Protocol to phase down use of the most potent greenhouse gas refrigerants, a measure that’s projected to avoid almost a degree of warming by 2100. India has until 2028 to start its reductions, but several companies active there have already begun switching to less-damaging chemicals.

Meanwhile, India has begun programs meant to reduce the tremendous energy demand the AC boom will bring. It has a five-star rating system meant to encourage people to purchase more efficient ACs, and the shops in Ahmedabad display the stars with large stickers on each device. Several companies have released lines of 5.8-star ACs. Godrej, a New Delhi-based company, uses climate-friendly, though flammable, propane as a refrigerant; it boasts it’s broken the scale with a six-star AC. In order to drive down the price for consumers, earlier this summer, the Indian government arranged the bulk purchase of 100,000 superefficient ACs from Panasonic and Godrej, and is planning to order half a million more.

Even with increasing efficiency and better refrigerants, however, the energy demand will still be immense. The ACs India alone is expected to install by 2030 will be the equivalent of adding several new midsize countries to the global grid. With air conditioners already accounting for up to 60 percent of the summertime electricity use in cities like New Delhi, simply meeting the demand — and meeting it without burning huge amounts of fossil fuels — will be a challenge. “This AC load should be kind of taken with the same level of seriousness as renewable energy policies are taken,” said Nikit Abhyankar, a researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, pointing out that even incremental improvements in efficiency will greatly reduce energy use.

In Ahmedabad, health officials worry that all the new ACs are pumping heat out into the streets, raising the temperature for anyone who can’t afford an AC of their own. If air conditioners become the only way of dealing with rising temperatures, the same dynamic risks playing out on a global scale.

Professor Rajan Rawal, executive director at CEPT University’s Centre for Advanced Research in Building Science and Energy.

In late July, on the leafy campus of Ahmedabad’s CEPT University, Professor Rajan Rawal stood outside his lab, drinking chai with his students, sheltering from a monsoon rain that was flooding the city. Tall, with short gray hair and dark mustache, he speaks with patrician weariness about the folly of the world of cooling.

Refrigerated cooling first caught on as a way to preserve food, then to control humidity in factories. Finally it was used to cool people, but, Rawal said, it’s a blunt instrument, and shouldn’t be the only one. “You can’t simply take one pill and cure everything, or just take a fighter jet and win a war. You need various kinds of weapons and various medicines, in same way you need various strategies for buildings.”

Some examples lay strewn about his lab: a segment of brick wall on a wheeled rack, meant to study heat absorption; a model building surrounded by lights on arcing tracks, meant to observe shade as the sun’s position changes; in the basement, a climate-controlled chamber where students sometimes sit to test the effectiveness of various cooling technologies.

Air conditioning is “the modern building’s iron lung”

The proliferation of air conditioning enabled building designs that were wholly dependent on air conditioning. Age-old cooling tricks like courtyards, crossbreeze-promoting corners, eaves, porches, and other architectural features were dispensed with. Developers, eager to capitalize on cheap designs and interior floor space that would’ve been stiflingly hot previously, turned to solid office blocks, glass towers, and boxy, mass-produced tract homes, relying on air conditioning to make them habitable. Air conditioning, writes Gail Cooper in Air-Conditioning America, “was the modern building’s iron lung.”

As India urbanizes, the CEPT team sees an opportunity to take a different path when it comes to cooling, one with a smaller role for the air conditioner. “Do we go the route of the US and Western countries, not worry about efficiency, just whatever provides the cooling?” Yash Shukla, another researcher in Rawal’s program, asked me. “The climate impact of that is significant. If we can find a better approach to have the same level of comfort, why not do it the better way?”

Compressors for split ACs in Ahmedabad.

Their research took them somewhere esoteric: thermal comfort standards. When figuring out what sort of HVAC equipment to put in a building, engineers use models that attempt to predict what temperature and humidity levels occupants will be happy with. It’s a necessarily difficult attempt to quantify something subjective. One of the widest-used thermal comfort standards, the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) Standard 55, acknowledges thermal comfort is “a condition of mind” before setting out on a valiant effort to model everything from the metabolic rate of someone typing to the insulation factor of calf-length socks.

ASHRAE dictates a comfortable temperature in the range of 67 to 82 degrees, depending on the season and other variables, yet it’s become a widely acknowledged problem that air-conditioned buildings are too cold. Figuring out exactly why — whether the standard is resulting in overpowered AC systems, building managers are overcooling so men can wear suits in summer, or some other reason — is “the holy grail,” in the words of one researcher, and the subject of ongoing research.

There are big gains to be had in raising building temperatures. In 2005, Japan launched an energy-saving initiative called Cool Biz, setting office thermostats at 82 and encouraging workers to forgo ties and heavy business suits. After the 2011 nuclear meltdown, the program became Super Cool Biz: jackets came off, and polos, even aloha shirts were encouraged. If you needed sartorial guidance, Uniqlo published recommendations, and the Environment Ministry sponsored a fashion show where men demonstrated how to pull off a blazer with shorts. By 2010, the latest year for which data is available, Japan estimated that the program cut as much CO2 as almost 4 million households would emit in a month.

The CEPT researchers felt India’s standards needed revising, too. Most of the international comfort standards were developed by institutions in the global north, based largely on surveys of people unaccustomed to India’s heat. “The premise was that occupants in buildings in India are very different from occupants in Europe or the US, which is where the international standards come from,” said Sanyogita Manu, who led the study. “We didn’t have a thermal comfort model of our own.”

“We didn’t have a thermal comfort model of our own.”

Manu traveled to office buildings from humid Chennai in southern India to mountainous Shimla in the Himalayan foothills, wielding monitors to test the temperature, humidity, and airspeed, and asking workers whether they were comfortable.

She found that Indians are indeed comfortable at slightly higher temperatures than existing models would predict, particularly when in buildings that aren’t sealed up and air conditioned. Previous research has shown that in buildings without AC, people are comfortable at higher indoor temperatures the hotter it is outside; they don’t expect refrigerated coolness, they wear lighter clothes, they open windows, they use fans, and their bodies adjust to the heat. The mere feeling of control over things like windows and fans also makes people feel more comfortable, even if the temperature remains the same. The models that reflect this are called “adaptive,” but they’re typically only used for buildings that aren’t air conditioned at all. The CEPT team found that the same phenomenon also applied to mixed-mode buildings — buildings that switch on the AC when it gets hot — and that people were comfortable in environments up to almost 88 degrees. Last year, the Indian government adopted their model in the national building code. It’s expected to reduce energy spent to cool a building by a third.

Cooling equipment beneath CEPT’s laboratory.

The expanded threshold opens up new options for cooling. As we walked through the CEPT lab, Rawal pointed out the ceiling tiles: pipes of cold water run through them, emanating cool air downward on the researchers below. Ceiling fans stirred the air, and tower fans were scattered about, available for anyone dissatisfied with the office climate. Clamped to each researcher’s desk was a monitor, testing the temperature, humidity, and airspeed. Nestled in the trees of the campus, positioned to minimize direct sun exposure, and equipped with a suite of various cooling technologies, the building is able to coast without air conditioning until the heat gets extreme. With solar panels on the roof, the building produces more energy than it uses over the course of the year. The air inside felt slightly damp, but cool.

Rawal and his team say buildings like this are the way forward for India, but they’re well aware of the challenges to widespread adoption. Buildings like CEPT’s require bespoke design, whereas air-conditioned buildings can be mass-produced and are cheap to make, if not to keep cool. “You get a bad building, you still buy it because a split AC can make it habitable,” Rawal said. “Hence people are making it because they know you’ll find a way to make it habitable.”

Rawal is particularly intrigued by one technology in particular: the evaporative cooler. It uses far less electricity than an air conditioner, and doesn’t use refrigerants. Instead, a fan blows on a wetted pad, cooling hot air through evaporation. Also known as an air cooler or swamp cooler, it’s an electric version of the drenched sheets Vora’s parents used. One such machine sits in the lab’s thermal comfort chamber, amid fans and thermometers and a sensor-filled manikin dressed in a beige kurti, sitting at a desk.

Control panel for CEPT’s cooling systems.

The world’s largest cooler manufacturer, Symphony, is based in Ahmedabad, in a conspicuously modern concrete building sitting amid trees and empty lots off the highway. Founded in 1988, the company is now worth over a billion dollars and has made its founder and chairman, Achal Bakeri, one of the country’s richest people.

Bakeri, the scion of a prominent real estate family, offers a classic startup origin story for the company’s founding. Home after completing an MBA at the University of Southern California, he was sitting in his parents’ living room when he was struck by the ugliness of their air cooler. “It worked really well, but the product was aesthetically very bad and made a lot of noise,” he said. He took it apart and started learning how it worked. Seeing an opportunity, he put a small team together to design a better version. They set up shop in the parking garage of one of his family’s construction sites and built the first Symphony air cooler. Their first run sold out within a week.

Today, the company is focused on air coolers and air coolers only, and it’s expanding into markets abroad — markets that climate change is helping open. In 2010, Russia was hit by an unprecedented and deadly heat wave, with temperatures in Moscow passing 100 degrees. Soon after, Symphony began getting inquiries from dealers in Russia interested in carrying their products.

“Not even in our wildest of dreams did we consider that a market.”

“Not even in our wildest of dreams did we consider that a market,” said Rajesh Mishra, vice president of sales. “But we realized that heat is relative. In Russia, the moment it touches 35 [95 Fahrenheit] people just go crazy. Four or five years back, temperatures in the UK touched about 27 [80.6 Fahrenheit] and everybody jumped into the lake,” he said, laughing. (He sets his AC to 80 Fahrenheit.) “There were photographs of people stripping off their shirts, jumping in fountains.” Now the UK is buying Symphony coolers, too.

Mishra sees a unique opportunity for Symphony in the extreme and unpredictable heat waves brought on by climate change. Coolers are cheap and use little power, making them affordable to many for whom ACs are out of reach. They’re also relatively easy to set up — you just need to fill them with water and plug them in. In a generally temperate place like Germany, it wouldn't be worth the hassle and expense of installing an AC, Mishra said, but a cooler would be easy to roll out of the closet in the event of a freak heat wave.

The major drawback of coolers is that they don’t work when it’s humid, for the same reason sweating loses its effectiveness. If the air is nearly saturated with moisture already, water won’t evaporate off the pad, the air won’t cool, and the device will function more like fan that makes the room even muggier. But in hot and dry regions, they work very well. In addition to India, Symphony’s core markets are arid countries in the Middle East and Africa. In 2009, they scooped up IMPCO, a Phoenix-based company that has been producing coolers since the 1930s. Its manufacturing facilities in Mexico have opened up new markets in Latin America, and eventually perhaps the American Southwest.

Symphony’s biggest project so far — the biggest air cooler project anywhere so far — is Mecca

Coolers can also do something air conditioners can’t: because they lower the temperature of the air that passes through them, rather than removing heat from a sealed room, they can cool people in huge open spaces and even outdoors. Symphony’s biggest project so far — the biggest air cooler project anywhere so far — is Mecca. In 2006, Symphony installed 200 giant coolers on the Jamarat Bridge, which millions of pilgrims cross each year, and 50,000 units in the residential section, where cooler intakes jut up from each tent like chimneys.

Cavernous factories, warehouses, outdoor restaurants, and amusement parks will be growing markets for coolers, Mishra said, especially as temperatures rise. In 2015, Symphony bought the Chinese cooler company Keruilai, and is now cooling automobile factories and train maintenance yards there. “As the temperature goes up, working conditions will become harsher in factories,” Mishra said. “The demand for air coolers will be enormous.”

Mishra recognizes climate change as a threat, and a business opportunity. “It looks bright!” he said, laughing, when I asked him about the future of the cooling industry. “Because of the changing climate, unfortunately. This is an irreversible process, and now with the great Mr. Donald Trump pulling out of the treaty, things will become even worse,” he said, smiling grimly.

A neighborhood on the northern edge of Ahmedabad.

During the summer of 2010, Tejas Shah, a deputy health officer with the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation, noticed a strange increase in deaths. “Between the 19th of May and 23rd, the number of deaths each day were somewhere around 300, which is three times the normal,” Shah said, sitting at a desk strewn with folders and maps of his jurisdiction. The city first suspected there was an unknown epidemic, but found no outbreaks. Then they checked the temperature. “In these four or five days, the temperature was beyond 45 [113 Fahrenheit]. There was no other obvious reason.”

Despite being among the deadliest natural disasters, heat waves often escape notice. They’re largely invisible when they happen, and leave no wrecked buildings behind. They frequently kill indirectly, by fatally stressing existing health conditions, so their full toll is only evident much later, statistically. And they kill the most vulnerable and overlooked: the elderly or already sick; the socially isolated, who have no one to check in on them; and the working poor, who have to risk laboring in the heat or go without food.

A tailor working in a tin-roofed house in northern Ahmedabad.

After the 2010 heat wave became apparent, Ahmedabad began formulating a plan for coping with extreme temperatures. Working with the Natural Resource Defense Council, Georgia Tech, and other institutions, Ahmedabad developed an early-warning system and a strategy for mobilizing the city in advance of impending heat waves. Shah is now the coordinating heat officer for the city of five and a half million, in addition to other emergency management duties that result in an unending barrage of calls, texts, and knocks at the door, which he greets with wry forbearance.

When extreme heat is forecast, Shah sends out WhatsApp alerts to health officers, hospital liaisons, the fire department, the police, the parks department, and other officials. Color-coded heat warnings are announced in newspapers, on television, and through social media. Phone companies send out SMS warnings. Social workers go into slums, where these warnings might not reach, and hand out rehydration packets and pamphlets on heat safety. Hospitals prepare ice packs and heat wards, water stations are set up on street corners, and temples, mosques, and malls double as cooling centers. It’s proven effective: in 2015, when heat waves killed over 2,500 people across India, Ahmedabad reported fewer than 20 heat-related deaths. The model is now being copied by Nagpur, Gondia, and 15 other Indian cities.

“If it remains for a month? It would be a natural disaster.”

But rising temperatures will strain the system the city has put in place. While hospitals in Ahmedabad have been building out heat wards, they would run out of space if a heat wave stuck around for long. And while members of the growing air-conditioned class can shelter in cooled offices and homes, the poor must go out to work on construction sites, build roads, and sell wares on baking streets.

“Suppose for a day or two or three the temperature is between 47 and 48 [116–118 Fahrenheit],” said Bhavin Solanki, Ahmedabad’s chief health officer. “We can control the situation. But if it remains for a month?” he said, pausing. “It would be a natural disaster.”

The scale of what cities will need to do to truly adapt to the heat is daunting. Simply waiting for people to get cooling appliances isn’t enough — too many would be left behind. Public health programs like Ahmedabad’s save many lives, but as temperatures rise, more drastic measures will be needed.

A roof in Ahmedabad painted white to deflect the sun.

The climate researcher Vimal Mishra, who teaches in nearby Gandhinagar, described India’s situation as a race against temperature. He ran through some of the measures needed to beat the heat; as the list grew, it gradually took on the feel of science fiction. People will have to run air conditioners constantly, and new energy sources will have to be built to power them. There will have to be air-conditioned transit because people won’t be able to bike in the sweltering streets. Working hours will have to be shifted to avoid the hottest parts of the day. New buildings will have to be designed that can stay cool with less energy. Maybe, he said, those buildings will have to be prefabricated in cooled warehouses to minimize time spent outdoors. Maybe workers will have to wear personal cooling gear, like the solar-powered cooling hardhats Qatar is experimenting with. Heat kills animals, too, so livestock will have to be brought inside and cooled.

This is the good scenario, one where carbon emissions are curtailed. The other, where temperatures pass the threshold of human survivability, would entail mass migration, or as Jonathan Buzan, a researcher who works with Mishra put it, fantastical infrastructure projects, citing the Isaac Asimov novel The Caves of Steel, where humanity shelters in climate-controlled domes. It’s a tug-of-war, Mishra said, between rising temperatures and our ability to adapt. “Who, will win? Probably, I would go for humans,” he said, optimistic but hedging.

“Who, will win? Probably, I would go for humans.”

Adapting will be expensive. With every degree of warming that gets locked into the climate system, the more it will cost to maintain something resembling normal life, and the more people there will be who are unable to afford it. The particular problem posed by heat isn’t that it’s impossible to adapt to, it’s that it’s difficult to adapt to equitably and in a way that doesn’t make the problem worse. Like mitigating climate change overall, any cooling solution will require collective action, in the form of international agreements like the Kigali Amendment, efficiency regulations, subsidies, technological advances, new building designs, and civic programs.

This year, Ahmedabad added an element to its heat action plan designed not just to cope with extreme heat, but reduce it. A quarter of the city’s population lives in the slums ringing the city, jammed together in small concrete boxes with tin roofs that turn them into solar ovens. The city has begun painting these roofs white, and covering public buildings with reflective white mosaic tiles. It’s a modest adaptation, but it can drop the indoor temperature by several degrees. “The fact is that the gap between the rich people and the poor people is increasing,” Shah said. “It is going to be very difficult. They are going to be more vulnerable, they are going to face more problems.”

Shah has his own list of immediate adaptations the city needs to make. More trees need to be planted, he said, to lower the city’s temperature. There need to be more cooling centers installed, and mass transit should be expanded so all the internal combustion engines stop heating the streets. There will need to be new regulations around working hours for jobs like construction, so laborers don’t die of heatstroke. The city is looking for ways to build awnings that can shade whole intersections, so vendors and traffic police can get shelter from the sun. Piece by mundane piece, through new appliances and public works, the city will have to reconfigure itself to survive in the changing climate.

Output: Rising temperatures are increasing the number of air conditioning (AC) units in the world, with 700 million units expected to be added to the global total by 2030 and 1.6 billion units to be added by 2050. Hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) refrigerants used in such units produce greenhouse gases that are thousands of times more warming than carbon dioxide. At current rates, HFCs could be responsible for 19% of all emissions by 2050. AC units also consume huge quantities of electricity. Developers in India are exploring alternative cooling methods, including building design and energy efficient coolers that use evaporation rather than refrigerants.


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New York Mayor plans to reduce energy use in large buildings
 Mayor Bill de Blasio on Thursday said that he wants to force landlords to retrofit old buildings — including apartment houses, office buildings and warehouses, with more than 25,000 square feet of space — to make them more energy efficient.

The plan, which could affect as many as 23,000 buildings in New York City, called for strict standards in place by 2030, as part of a push to fight global warming.

But as the mayor began to field questions about the proposal, it became apparent that certain details were unclear, and that critical support for the plan had not yet been lined up.

The mayor needs the City Council to pass legislation to carry out the proposal, yet no Council member was at the announcement, on the Brooklyn waterfront, with the glass towers of Lower Manhattan in the background. There were also no representatives of landlord or real estate groups, although some environmental activists turned up.

Output: New York City mayor Bill de Blasio has announced plans to force landlords to retrofit apartments, offices and warehouses in order to improve energy efficiency. The proposals could affect up to 23,000 buildings in the city. Implementation of the plan, which has not yet been finalised, would require legislation by the City Council. Such legislation would outline the maximum levels of energy use permitted in relation to affected buildings, with most required to reduce consumption by around 25%.


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Input:
Google faces class action lawsuit on gender discrimination
 Google systematically pays women less than men doing similar work, according to a class action-lawsuit accusing the technology company of denying promotions and career opportunities to qualified women who are “segregated” into lower-paying jobs.

The complaint, filed Thursday on behalf of all women employed by Google in California over the last four years, provided the most detailed formal accounts to date of gender discrimination and pay disparities at the company after months of criticisms and a growing chorus of women publicly speaking out.

“We’ve been talking about these issues for a long time, and it hasn’t really changed,” Kelly Ellis, a former Google employee and a lead plaintiff on the case, told the Guardian in her first interview about the suit. “There’s been a lot of PR and lip service, but ... this is going to be one of the only ways to get these companies to change how they hire and compensate women.”

The claim that Google is violating labor laws by paying women less than men for “substantially similar work” comes at a time when the male-dominated tech sector is reeling from complaints about sexual harassment, discrimination and a glaring lack of diversity. The US Department of Labor (DoL) first accused the corporation of “extreme” pay discrimination in April as part of a lawsuit seeking to force Google to hand over salary records for a government audit.

The new lawsuit could have widespread ramifications, especially considering that Google has publicly insisted it has eliminated its gender pay gap and is a leader in the industry. Google also became ground zero for an international debate about diversity last month after it fired a male engineer who wrote a memo criticizing affirmative action and suggesting that white men have become victims of “discrimination” in tech.

Plaintiffs allege ‘sexist culture at Google’

The class-action complaint, filed in San Francisco, included three named plaintiffs who offered specific stories of Google “assigning and keeping female employees in lower compensation levels than male employees with similar skills, experience, and duties”.

Google disputed the central claims of lawsuit on Thursday, saying it had “extensive systems in place to ensure that we pay fairly”.

When Ellis was hired in 2010 as a software engineer for Google Photos, the company placed her into a “Level 3” position typically assigned to new college graduates, according to the suit.

We’ve been talking about these issues for a long time, and it hasn’t really changed Kelly Ellis, software engineer

Several weeks later, Google hired a male software engineer, who graduated the same year as Ellis, into a “Level 4” position on her team, the complaint said. Level 4 engineers “receive substantially higher salary and opportunities for bonuses, raises, and equity”, her lawyers wrote.

“I was so excited just to be there. I really wanted to give Google the benefit of the doubt,” Ellis said in an interview.

But other male software engineers who were less qualified than Ellis or at the same level were promoted into Level 4 and higher positions, according to the suit. Google initially denied Ellis a promotion, despite “excellent performance reviews”, claiming she hadn’t been at the company long enough, the suit said. By the time she advanced, she said, she was far behind her male counterparts who had better opportunities from the start.

Echoing a broader complaint in the tech sector, Ellis said she also observed that male software engineers occupied most of the higher-paying “back-end” roles while female software engineers were assigned to “front-end” positions, which design what users see and are considered less prestigious.

Ellis, who has a degree in applied mathematics and a minor in computer science, had experience in back-end development. But “Google assigned her to an occupationally-segregated frontend engineering role”, the suit said. She quit in July 2014 due to the “sexist culture at Google”, according to the complaint. Ellis previously made headlines in 2015 when she tweeted about harassment at Google.

Another plaintiff, Holly Pease, was hired in 2005 and advanced to a senior manager role overseeing about 50 software engineers and product managers across multiple teams. Although she had more than 10 years of experience as a network engineer before Google, she was placed into a “non-technical” career track while the engineers she managed and the other senior manager in her group, a man, were all in “technical” roles, which come with higher compensation rates, the complaint said.

Google headquarters in Mountain View, California. The new lawsuit claims Google is violating labor laws by paying women less than men for ‘substantially similar work’. Photograph: JasonDoiy/Getty Images

Pease later coached non-technical employees on how to pass interviews to transition to technical jobs, helping many get promotions, including a male manager a level below her who had performed poorly, according to the suit.

But Pease herself was denied a promotion to a technical position, the complaint said: “Ms Pease’s two interviewers, both men, did not ask her any technical questions, and one interviewer did not even bother to take notes of the meeting with her.”

Google claimed she “lacked technical ability” despite her technical background, according to the suit. She resigned in 2016 due to the “lack of technical and engineering opportunities available to her and other women”.

James Finberg, one of the civil rights attorneys who filed the suit, told the Guardian that more than 90 women who previously worked or currently work at Google have contacted him about the class action.

“We’ve heard from a lot of women about stereotypes and perceptions that women can’t do coding,” he said. “It’s frustrating and demoralizing.”

We’ve heard from a lot of women about stereotypes and perceptions that women can’t do coding. It's demoralizing James Finberg, attorney

The third plaintiff, Kelli Wisuri, joined in 2012 when Google acquired her company. Despite three years of sales experience, she was placed into a “Level 2” role, considered the “lowest level available to permanent, full-time employees”, the suit said. Men with comparable qualifications started at Level 3 or higher, according to the complaint.

Wisuri was also placed on a lower-paying career track, in which about 50% of employees were women, according to the suit. She said nearly all the sales employees she encountered in a higher sales track were men.

Despite doing very similar work to men in the higher tier, she was not promoted and resigned in 2015 due to “lack of opportunities for advancement for women”, the suit said.

Fears of retribution

Google did not respond to detailed inquiries about the plaintiffs, but a spokeswoman, Gina Scigliano, contested the allegations.

“Job levels and promotions are determined through rigorous hiring and promotion committees, and must pass multiple levels of review, including checks to make sure there is no gender bias in these decisions,” she said in a statement to the Guardian. “But on all these topics, if we ever see individual discrepancies or problems, we work to fix them, because Google has always sought to be a great employer, for every one of our employees.”

Finberg said that several current Google employees considered being named plaintiffs, but backed out due to concerns that they could face retribution from the company, which has repeatedly been accused of silencing critics and whistleblowers with strict confidentiality policies.

A US labor department official involved in the audit told the Guardian in April that the “government’s analysis at this point indicates that discrimination against women in Google is quite extreme, even in this industry”. Currently, men occupy 80% of tech jobs at the company.

This month, the New York Times obtained an internal Google spreadsheetthat showed that women on average were paid less than men within the same job levels and tended to receive lower bonuses.

Google, which faced similar allegations in 2015, claimed to the Times that the spreadsheet was not representative and did not take into account factors like job performance and whether employees were in higher-paying technical roles.

Ellis recalled how disappointing it was to see no women making presentations at the first all-hands engineering meeting she attended at Google.

“There definitely was a lack of role models,” she said. “It made me feel like I could never get to the level where these guys are.”

Ellis added that she hoped the suit would put other tech firms on notice: “They have to treat everyone fairly. Otherwise, we are going to take action.”

Contact the author: sam.levin@theguardian.com

Output: Google is systematically paying female employees less than their male peers for similar work, according to a class action-lawsuit filed in California on Thursday. The suit, which was filed on behalf of all women employed by the company in the US state over the past four years, also accuses the firm of failing to promote female workers and of having “segregated” them into lower-paid positions. The suit claims that Google’s pay procedures are in breach of labour laws and comes in the wake of a series of allegations about sexual harassment and discrimination in the tech sector.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Row over AI that can predict your sexuality from your face
 Voters have a right to keep their political beliefs private. But according to some researchers, it won’t be long before a computer program can accurately guess whether people are liberal or conservative in an instant. All that will be needed are photos of their faces.

Michal Kosinski – the Stanford University professor who went viral last week for research suggesting that artificial intelligence (AI) can detect whether people are gay or straight based on photos – said sexual orientation was just one of many characteristics that algorithms would be able to predict through facial recognition.

Using photos, AI will be able to identify people’s political views, whether they have high IQs, whether they are predisposed to criminal behavior, whether they have specific personality traits and many other private, personal details that could carry huge social consequences, he said.

Kosinski outlined the extraordinary and sometimes disturbing applications of facial detection technology that he expects to see in the near future, raising complex ethical questions about the erosion of privacy and the possible misuse of AI to target vulnerable people.

“The face is an observable proxy for a wide range of factors, like your life history, your development factors, whether you’re healthy,” he said.

Faces contain a significant amount of information, and using large datasets of photos, sophisticated computer programs can uncover trends and learn how to distinguish key traits with a high rate of accuracy. With Kosinski’s “gaydar” AI, an algorithm used online dating photos to create a program that could correctly identify sexual orientation 91% of the time with men and 83% with women, just by reviewing a handful of photos.

Kosinski’s research is highly controversial, and faced a huge backlash from LGBT rights groups, which argued that the AI was flawed and that anti-LGBT governments could use this type of software to out gay people and persecute them. Kosinski and other researchers, however, have argued that powerful governments and corporations already possess these technological capabilities and that it is vital to expose possible dangers in an effort to push for privacy protections and regulatory safeguards, which have not kept pace with AI.

Kosinski, an assistant professor of organizational behavior, said he was studying links between facial features and political preferences, with preliminary results showing that AI is effective at guessing people’s ideologies based on their faces.

This is probably because political views appear to be heritable, as research has shown, he said. That means political leanings are possibly linked to genetics or developmental factors, which could result in detectable facial differences.

Kosinski said previous studies have found that conservative politicians tend to be more attractive than liberals, possibly because good-looking people have more advantages and an easier time getting ahead in life.

Michal Kosinski. Photograph: Lauren Bamford

Kosinski said the AI would perform best for people who are far to the right or left and would be less effective for the large population of voters in the middle. “A high conservative score … would be a very reliable prediction that this guy is conservative.”

Kosinski is also known for his controversial work on psychometric profiling, including using Facebook data to draw inferences about personality. The data firm Cambridge Analytica has used similar tools to target voters in support of Donald Trump’s campaign, sparking debate about the use of personal voter information in campaigns.

Facial recognition may also be used to make inferences about IQ, said Kosinski, suggesting a future in which schools could use the results of facial scans when considering prospective students. This application raises a host of ethical questions, particularly if the AI is purporting to reveal whether certain children are genetically more intelligent, he said: “We should be thinking about what to do to make sure we don’t end up in a world where better genes means a better life.”

Some of Kosinski’s suggestions conjure up the 2002 science-fiction film Minority Report, in which police arrest people before they have committed crimes based on predictions of future murders. The professor argued that certain areas of society already function in a similar way.

He cited school counselors intervening when they observe children who appear to exhibit aggressive behavior. If algorithms could be used to accurately predict which students need help and early support, that could be beneficial, he said. “The technologies sound very dangerous and scary on the surface, but if used properly or ethically, they can really improve our existence.”

There are, however, growing concerns that AI and facial recognition technologies are actually relying on biased data and algorithms and could cause great harm. It is particularly alarming in the context of criminal justice, where machines could make decisions about people’s lives – such as the length of a prison sentence or whether to release someone on bail – based on biased data from a court and policing system that is racially prejudiced at every step.

Kosinski predicted that with a large volume of facial images of an individual, an algorithm could easily detect if that person is a psychopath or has high criminal tendencies. He said this was particularly concerning given that a propensity for crime does not translate to criminal actions: “Even people highly disposed to committing a crime are very unlikely to commit a crime.”

He also cited an example referenced in the Economist – which first reported the sexual orientation study – that nightclubs and sport stadiums could face pressure to scan people’s faces before they enter to detect possible threats of violence.

Kosinski noted that in some ways, this wasn’t much different from human security guards making subjective decisions about people they deem too dangerous-looking to enter.

The law generally considers people’s faces to be “public information”, said Thomas Keenan, professor of environmental design and computer science at the University of Calgary, noting that regulations have not caught up with technology: no law establishes when the use of someone’s face to produce new information rises to the level of privacy invasion.

Keenan said it might take a tragedy to spark reforms, such as a gay youth being beaten to death because bullies used an algorithm to out him: “Now, you’re putting people’s lives at risk.”

Even with AI that makes highly accurate predictions, there is also still a percentage of predictions that will be incorrect.

“You’re going down a very slippery slope,” said Keenan, “if one in 20 or one in a hundred times … you’re going to be dead wrong.”

Contact the author: sam.levin@theguardian.com

Output: Sexual orientation is just one characteristic that can be predicted through facial recognition software and artificial intelligence, according to a US academic whose research on the subject caused controversy recently. Michal Kosinski of Stanford University used an algorithm to analyse online dating photos and was able to predict sexual orientation with 91% accuracy for men and 83% for women. He has now suggested that traits such as intelligence, political beliefs and predisposition to commit crime could be similarly detected. There have been warnings that the future use of such technology would present serious ethical and human rights concerns.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Premier Oil agrees to sell Wytch Farm for $200m
 An error occurred. Please try again.

Premier Oil has entered into a sale and purchase agreement to sell its entire interests in the Wytch Farm field to Verus Petroleum SNS Limited for a cash consideration of $200 million.

In addition, the operator will be able to release letters of credit totaling approximately $75 million which have been issued in relation to future decommissioning liabilities that are now being transferred to Verus.

The effective date of the Disposal is 1 July 2017.

Wytch Farm is an onshore oil field located in Dorset, United Kingdom that has been producing since 1979.

Verus is a UK-focused independent E&P company backed by HitecVision, a Norway based private equity investor focused on the upstream offshore oil and gas industry.

Premier’s board believes that the disposal is in the best long-term interest of the company and its stakeholders.

The firm said the sale represents an “excellent opportunity” to realise an attractive valuation well in excess of the implied valuation from the most recent transaction in Wytch Farm.

The disposal will generate proceeds to accelerate deleveraging of the balance sheet.

Wytch Farm is non-operated, onshore and with fewer near-term growth prospects than elsewhere in Premier’s portfolio.

Wytch Farm is a large onshore oil field although a significant area extends offshore.

The field has been developed with 11 well sites linked to a central onshore gathering station and is operated by Perenco UK Limited.

Production is exported via pipeline to the Hamble terminal near Southampton for tanker loading.

Premier acquired a 12.4% interest in the Wytch Farm field in 1984.

In December 2011, Premier completed the acquisition of an additional 17.7% interest from Perenco UK Limited and in July 2017 announced an agreement to acquire a further 3.7% from Maersk Oil North Sea UK Ltd, taking its total interest to 33.8%.

As of 31 December 2016, the estimated 2P reserves in Wytch Farm net to Premier were 14.91 mmboe.

For the 12 months ended 31 December 2016, Wytch Farm generated profit before taxation of approximately $23.42 million and as at 30 June 2017 had gross assets of approximately $90.22 million.

Disposal proceeds will be used to pay down Premier’s existing debt.

In addition, Verus will assume all of the abandonment liabilities and associated decommissioning security.

Tony Durrant, chief executive, said: “The disposal will allow for a significant reduction in Premier’s net debt and generates material value for shareholders.

“This is the latest in a series of disposals in line with Premier’s strategy of realising value for shareholders at the appropriate stage of an asset’s life cycle and at an attractive valuation.”

Output: Premier Oil is to sell its entire stakes in licenses PL089 and P534, which contain Wytch Farm field, to Verus Petroleum for $200m. Premier will be able to release letters of credit totalling  about $75m, issued in relation to future decommissioning liabilities that are now being transferred to Verus.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Apple supplier Foxconn plans $5.7bn smartphone factory in China
 TAIPEI -- Hon Hai Precision Industry will pour more than 37.5 billion yuan ($5.74 billion) into a smartphone plant and other investments in the Chinese city of Nanjing, under a deal achieved by Wednesday, as the Taiwanese company aims to strike a balance after announcing a major U.S. investment in July.

Hon Hai, better known as Foxconn Technology Group, is the world's biggest contract electronics maker and a major Apple supplier. The group's Chinese unit reached a general agreement with the Jiangsu Province city that also includes possible investments such as a liquid crystal display TV plant, a research and development site, chipmaking facilities and a logistics center. Nanjing may provide financial support as well as help with land and other infrastructure.

Output: Taiwanese supplier Foxconn Technology, also known as Hon Hai Precision Industry, will invest over CNY37.5bn ($5.75bn) into a smartphone factory, an LCD TV plant, chip manufacturing facilities and more in Nanjing, China, after making significant investments in the US in July. The company is the world's largest contract electronics maker and is a major manufacturer for Apple. The group's Chinese arm has made an agreement with Jiangsu province city officials that may result in Nanjing providing financial and infrastructure support. As well as making iPhones Foxconn is understood to want to capture a larger share of the Chinese smartphone market.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Israel makes deal with China to provide high-tech vegan meat
 China this week inked a deal with Israel that stands to give high-tech vegan meat companies an opening into the world’s most populous country.

“It is a colossal market opportunity,” says Bruce Friedrich, head of the The Good Food Institute (GFI), which supports and lobbies on behalf of meat alternative interests. ”This could put [lab-made] meat onto the radar of Chinese officials who have the capacity to steer billions of dollars into this technology.”

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The $300 million trade agreement, announced on Sept. 11, will give Chinese firms the opportunity to partner with Israeli tech companies to tackle issues relating to emissions. It’s yet another signal that China is serious about tapering the amount of greenhouse gases it emits; the Chinese government last week (Sept. 9) said it was joining the UK, France, and India in taking steps to decrease the number of petroleum-powered cars sold in the country. That decision goes hand-in-hand with a new policy the government handed down last year, in which it committed to nudging its citizens to eat less meat and eggs. The animal agriculture industry is a major contributor to global emissions, and a growing problem in China.

These kinds of moves have caught the attention of companies racing to get lab-made meat—the kind being produced fiber-by-fiber in laboratories—to market. Right now, eight companies in the world are working to produce a scalable version of this high-tech, vegan meat and three of them are in Israel.

While the Israeli companies—SuperMeat, Future Meat Technologies, and Meat the Future—may get the first clear shot at the Chinese lab-made meat market, their competitors see the deal as an opportunity, too. Chinese meat imports were valued at more than $10 billion in 2016, according to the International Trade Centre, which means there’s a lot of room for meat alternative products to nip away at market share.

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The Israeli government’s Israel Innovation Authority and the Israel Export Institute both took part in making of the deal with China. Both are interested in lab-made meat and were involved in the world’s first lab-made meat conference in Haifa, Israel earlier this year.

Israel’s tech economy is considered by some to be second only to Silicon Valley, which is home to several high-tech meat alternative companies, including Impossible Foods and Hampton Creek—both of which have received investment from Chinese billionaire Li Ka-shing.

“[China’s] version of Bill Gates is already backing these companies,” says Josh Balk, an animal-protection policy leader at the Humane Society of the United States. “I think all this runs into a pretty good theory that clean meat and other non-live animal protein sources will become bigger in China.”

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On Tuesday (Sept. 12), the state-run China Science and Technology Daily published an article (in Chinese) that discussed embracing lab-made meat for reasons that included food safety, food security, and environmental reasons. “Imagine the future,” the article states. “You have two identical products, one is that you have to slaughter the cattle to get. ‘The other’ is exactly the same, and cheaper, no greenhouse gas emissions, no animal slaughter, which one would you choose?”

Output: The Israeli government has signed a $300m trade agreement with China that aims to tackle issues relating to emissions, and offers three companies developing vegan meat a glimpse of what could be a "colossal market opportunity". Israel-based SuperMeat, Future Meat Technologies, and Meat the Future are working to develop scalable versions of the high-tech vegan foodstuff to market, and take a slice of China's meat imports sector, valued at more than $10bn in 2016. Lab-made meat involves "no greenhouse gas emissions and no animal slaughter", according to an article in China Science and Technology Daily.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Norwegian banks to offer instant P2P payment service with Vipps
 Nordic payments processor Nets is to enable instant P2P payments to customers of all Norwegian banks who use the Vipps mobile payments app.

Users of Norwegian bank, DNB, primary stakeholder of Vipps, are already benefitting from instant payment transfers enabled by Vipps’ payment app.

The partnership with Nets will enable the extension of this real-time payment service to customers of the other 100 banks in the country partnered with Vipps, representing 40% of the total userbase of the mobile wallet.

DNB, the SpareBank 1 alliance, the Eika alliance, Sparebanken Møre and the 15 independent savings banks which also are co-owners of Frende Forsikring signed a letter of intent in February, to jointly acquire a 48% stake in the mobile payment service. Under the deal, DNB will retain a 52% controlling interest in Vipps, which is to be spun off as an autonomous joint venture.

Rune Garborg, CEO of Vipps, comments, “Using the common infrastructure for instant payments will eventually make it possible to transfer money in real-time for consumers in all Norwegian banks. In this first phase, the 100 banks involved in the Vipps partnership will have this opportunity.”

He says both parties have already begun adjustments to their systems to make the service available in the popular mobile wallet, with real-time payments expected to go live for some of Vipps’ additional bank partners before the end of the year.

Jeppe Juul-Andersen, SVP and head of Domestic Card Schemes across Nets adds: “ We will reuse most of the existing infrastructure we have already delivered with both efficiency and stability for several years, and make the necessary adjustments to accommodate for future needs.”

Output: Payments processor Nets will provide an P2P payment service to Norwegian bank customers who use the Vipps mobile payment app. The instant transfer service will be available to customers of approximately 100 banks in the Nordic area, which represent 40% of the mobile wallet’s user base. The SpareBank 1 alliance, the Eika alliance, Sparebanken Møre and 15 independent savings banks will take a 48% stake in Vipps, with DNB retaining a 52% share, with Vipps set to become an independent joint venture.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Alipay expands into retail in the United States
 BI Intelligence

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Major Chinese mobile wallet Alipay has partnered with luxury fashion retailer Rebecca Minkoff to enable Chinese tourists in the US to make purchases at all Rebecca Minkoff retail locations — including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and online — using Alipay, according to Payment Week.

This partnership — which was announced prior to Rebecca Minkoff's New York Fashion Week show on September 9 — continues Alipay's effort to expand its massive network of 520 million active global users. In the last year alone, the mobile wallet expanded into Europe, Asia, Australia, South Africa, and the US.

This partnership continues the series of expansion efforts by Alipay to target Chinese tourists globally.

Alipay is catering to the growing population of Chinese tourists in the US. Approximately 2.97 million Chinese tourists traveled to the US in 2016, compared to 2.59 million in 2015, creating an opportunity for Alipay to extend its platform to different industries and serve the growing tourist market. And given that China has the highest percentage of outbound tourism in the world — roughly 122 million Chinese tourists traveled in 2016, and an estimated 700 million trips are planned for the next five years — it’s likely that trips to the US will become more frequent.

Approximately 2.97 million Chinese tourists traveled to the US in 2016, compared to 2.59 million in 2015, creating an opportunity for Alipay to extend its platform to different industries and serve the growing tourist market. And given that China has the highest percentage of outbound tourism in the world — roughly 122 million Chinese tourists traveled in 2016, and an estimated 700 million trips are planned for the next five years — it’s likely that trips to the US will become more frequent. Chinese tourists are spending less on shopping than they used to. The number of Chinese tourists who listed shopping as the main reason to travel dropped from 68% in 2016 to 33% in 2017, according to a study by Hotels.com. This change in consumer travel spending has caused Alipay to forge partnerships in different industries. It's still building out its services to shoppers, though, as demonstrated through this new partnership. Launching with a higher-end fashion retailer during New York Fashion Week, which gets a lot of media coverage, could be a good move for Alipay, allowing it to target a new demographic and further round out its industry offerings to support even more purchasing opportunities.

Digital disruption is rocking the payments industry. But merchants, consumers, and the companies that help move money between them are all feeling its effects differently.

For banks, card networks, and processors, the digital revolution is bringing new opportunities — and new challenges. With new ways to pay emerging, incumbent firms can take advantage of solid brand recognition and large customer bases to woo new customers and keep those they already have.

And for consumers, the digital revolution is providing more choice and making their lives easier. Digital wallets are simplifying purchases, allowing users to pay online with only a username and password and in-store with just a swipe of their thumb.

Dan Van Dyke, senior research analyst for BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service has written a detailed report that explores the digital payments ecosystem today, its growth drivers, and where the industry is headed. The report also:

Traces the path of an in-store card payment from processing to settlement across the key stakeholders.

Forecasts growth and defines drivers for key digital payment types through 2021.

Highlights five trends that are changing payments, looking at how disparate factors, such as surprise elections and fraud surges, are sparking change across the ecosystem.

To get the full report, subscribe to an ALL-ACCESS Membership with BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report AND more than 250 other expertly researched deep-dive reports, subscriptions to all of our daily newsletters, and much more. >> Learn More Now

You can also purchase and download the report from our research store.

Output: Chinese mobile wallet provider Alipay has joined forces with luxury US fashion brand Rebecca Minkoff. Under the partnership, Chinese tourists in the US will be able to make payments in Rebecca Minkoff stores using their Alipay account. Alipay currently has 520 million users across the world, and is specifically targeting Chinese tourists. The digital wallet company is working on partnerships to raise their profile and target new demographics.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
US hurricanes prompt Lloyd's to urge reform
 By William Shaw (September 13, 2017, 10:46 AM BST) -- U.S. Congress must allow private insurers to play a greater role in flood coverage following the devastation wrought by hurricanes Harvey and Irma, according to Lloyd's of London....

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Output: In the wake of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, Lloyd's of London is urging the US Congress to allow private insurers to play a greater role in providing flood insurance to US property owners. The US National Flood Insurance Program needs to be unburdened significantly in the face of changing weather patterns, said Lloyd's CEO Inga Beale. Allowing greater private insurance would also provide home and business owners with a greater number of options for coverage.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
BlackRock, Goldman strategies added to Betterment robo platform
 Betterment, the largest independent online investment advisor, will now offer two new portfolio strategies: a smart beta portfolio strategy and an income portfolio strategy. Betterment has selected the portfolio strategies from BlackRock and Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM) designed to meet users diverse needs and financial circumstances. Betterment currently manages more than $10 billion in assets for more than 270,000 customers.

Jon Stein, founder and CEO of Betterment, explained that Betterment has an increasingly diverse customer base that have different needs;

“Adding these options to our existing portfolio strategies will help us deliver on our promise to provide customers with a personalized investment plan tailored for their individual needs and preferences,” said Stein.

Blackrock Target Income Portfolio Strategies

Betterment has selected BlackRock’s income portfolio as it was created for clients averse to stock market risk, but who seek to target higher levels of income than cash savings accounts deliver. The portfolio invests 100% of assets in U.S. bonds and international bonds issued in U.S. dollars. The portfolio strategy prioritizes capital preservation and aims to generate cash income.

Goldman Sachs Smart Beta Portfolio Strategies

To help meet the preferences of investors seeking long-term outperformance of Betterment’s core portfolio strategy and who can accept periods of underperformance (IE Volatility), Betterment is now offering a smart beta strategy from GSAM.

The Goldman Sachs Smart Beta portfolios are globally diversified across stocks and bonds, but are weighted by economically intuitive factors rather than a pure passive market cap strategy based on market capitalization. This portfolio strategy tends to be more heavily allocated to emerging markets, as well as small cap stocks in both the U.S. and developed countries. The strategy also incorporates REITs and proportionally invests more in high-yield bonds with longer durations, compared to Betterment’s core portfolio strategy.

Alex Benke, CFP and VP of Financial Advice and Investing at Betterment, said the new options were added due to customer demand.

Output: Robo-adviser Betterment has added exchange-traded fund portfolio strategies managed by BlackRock and Goldman Sachs Asset Management to its platform. The portfolio strategies consist of an income-focused offering and a smart-beta strategy. The goal of adding these strategies is providing Betterment clients with greater options for a personalised investment plan via its robo-adviser platform, according to a company statement.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
ThinkMarket adds cryptocurrencies to CFD services
 Multi-asset provider ThinkMarkets has become the latest brokerage to extend its contracts-for-difference (CFD) offering to Cryptocurrencies Cryptocurrencies By using cryptography, virtual currencies, known as cryptocurrencies, are nearly counterfeit-proof digital currencies that are built on blockchain technology. Comprised of decentralized networks, blockchain technology is not overseen by a central authority.Therefore, cryptocurrencies function in a decentralized nature which theoretically makes them immune to government interference. The term, cryptocurrency derives from the origin of the encryption techniques that are employed to secure the netw By using cryptography, virtual currencies, known as cryptocurrencies, are nearly counterfeit-proof digital currencies that are built on blockchain technology. Comprised of decentralized networks, blockchain technology is not overseen by a central authority.Therefore, cryptocurrencies function in a decentralized nature which theoretically makes them immune to government interference. The term, cryptocurrency derives from the origin of the encryption techniques that are employed to secure the netw Read this Term. The extension of its trading suite is the result of the growing demand for such products in the retail space as cryptocurrency trading heats up across the industry.

Register now to the London Summit 2017, Europe’s largest gathering of top-tier retail brokers and institutional FX investors

Brokers from around the retail industry have been increasingly warming to cryptocurrency CFDs in recent months, with Bitcoin and Ethereum each recently trading near record highs. Other industry players such as Admiral Markets and ADS Securities, among others, have each made similar inroads into this area, following demand from their respective client bases.

Nauman Anees, CEO and co-founder of ThinkMarkets, commented on the launch: “Bitcoin CFDs are a natural extension of our vast portfolio of financial instruments that include; major currencies, stock indices, precious metals and commodities. The recent surge in volatility has triggered investor interest in the alternative digital asset class and we are well positioned to service virtual currency traders with unmatched trading conditions.”

Nauman Anees

ThinkMarkets will be expanding its CFD trading to include Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Ripple (XRP) and Litecoin (LTC) CFDs, which will be made available on its MetaTrader 4 and recently integrated Trade Interceptor trading platforms.

Cryptocurrency trading is at a key juncture, with Bitcoin and other altcoins recently reaching all-time highs. The massive range of volatility exhibited in these instruments creates an ideal environment for investors in CFDs, many of whom are looking for ways to not only buy into cryptos but also bet against their rapid ascension.

ThinkMarkets’ offering will feature 24/7 leveraged trading across all four of the aforementioned CFDs. “The surge in Bitcoin, driven by market volatility, gives traders the opportunity to take advantage of daily price spikes. That’s why Bitcoin and digital currencies are set to become a key market for day traders,” explained Faizan Anees, Managing Director and co-founder.

Who wins and who loses if Bitcoin drops off a cliff: https://t.co/yFMPRv8OSMpic.twitter.com/QPkfxlwVvt — Forbes (@Forbes) September 13, 2017

“The Trade Interceptor app offers some of the most advanced and sophisticated analysis tools. The platform has over 550,000 downloads and we expect global Bitcoin investors to benefit from our tight spreads, stable pricing and swift order execution, coupled with the most in-depth selection of charting and Analytics Analytics Analytics may be defined as the detection, analysis, and relay of consequential patterns in data. Analytics also seeks to explain or accurately reflect the relationship between data and effective decision making. In the trading space, analytics are applied in a predictive manner in an attempt to more accurately forecast the price. This predictive model of analytics generally involves the analysis of historical price patterns that are used in an attempt to determine certain price outcomes. Analyt Analytics may be defined as the detection, analysis, and relay of consequential patterns in data. Analytics also seeks to explain or accurately reflect the relationship between data and effective decision making. In the trading space, analytics are applied in a predictive manner in an attempt to more accurately forecast the price. This predictive model of analytics generally involves the analysis of historical price patterns that are used in an attempt to determine certain price outcomes. Analyt Read this Term exclusively available on mobile”, he added.

“Looking at the current momentum, I still hold the target of 5,500 per Bitcoin by the end of this year. The current pull back is confirming that many investors are not ready to sell, therefore, this could be an opportunity to come join the trend,” reiterated ThinkMarkets’ Chief Market Analyst, Naeem Aslam, who remains bullish on Bitcoin.

Output: Online broker ThinkMarkets has launched bitcoin, ethereum, ripple and litecoin contracts-for-difference (CFD) on its MetaTrader 4 and Trade Interceptor platforms, as it seeks to meet growing retail-sector demand of cryptocurrency trading. The extension follows similar moves by Admiral Markets and ADS Securities into the fast-moving sector. "The surge in bitcoin, driven by market volatility, gives traders the opportunity to take advantage of daily price spikes," said Faizan Anees, ThinkMarkets managing director. "That’s why digital currencies are set to become a key market for day traders.”


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South Korea's regulatory reform could open commercial drone use

Gov’t plans to allow drone delivery

Drone deliveries could become a reality in Korea as the government is considering removing the regulations that currently restrict the unmanned vehicles from traveling long distances or at night.The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport on Wednesday announced that it is considering reforming the regulations that currently restrict drones from being used commercially. The ministry will canvass public opinion on the issue until Oct. 2.Under current regulations, parcel companies are barred from using drones to make deliveries as the unmanned vehicles can only travel distances that are within the view of the person piloting them. Additionally, drones are prohibited from flying after dark.But the new reform bill allows for long-distance travel and night flying if a drone meets several safety requirements, including the addition of a fail-safe that allows the drone to land safely or return its starting point if there is a problem such as a system failure, low battery or communications disruption. The drones will also have to have a system that can automatically detect obstacles installed and a first-person view camera that allows the pilot to monitor the flight in real-time.To fly after dark the unmanned vehicles must include a crash prevention system that recognizes obstacles that are 5 kilometers away. These drones will have to operated and monitored by at least two people and the landing pad used at night has to be lit with search lights.Companies will be able to get approval to fly drones over long distances or at night for a maximum of six months, after which they will have to reapply.After canvassing public opinion on the changes and consulting with industry experts, the Transport Ministry is hoping to implement the new regulations in November.The Moon Jae-in administration has agreed to actively lift regulations that are thought to block the entry of new businesses. A cabinet meeting earlier this month hosted by Prime Minister Lee Nak-yeon concluded that actively easing regulations on autonomous vehicle, customized health care and drones can create new job opportunities, particularly among young people.The global race to using drones for commercial deliveries has been intensifying. Last month Flytrex, a company based in Tel Aviv, Israel, partnered with Iceland-based restaurant and retailers platform company AHA to officially launch the world’s first food delivery service via drones in Reykjavik, Iceland.Other global companies are already testing drone delivery. Amazon in December delivered a television streaming device and a bag of popcorn through a drone to a customer in the U.K.BY LEE HO-JEONG [lee.hojeong@joongang.co.kr]

Output: The South Korean government is considering repealing regulation that prevents commercial use of drones, as it restricts long-distance and night-time use. The country's current regulation stipulates that unmanned aerial vehicles must remain within sight of their operator and can only be flown during daylight hours. Proposed changes could allow parcel delivery companies to use drones to make deliveries, provided they meet certain safety requirements, such as obstacle detection, crash prevention systems, and real-time camera viewing.


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Lack of transparency seen distorting supply-side platform pricing
 Header bidding is unloading a symphony of destruction on ad tech, and supply-side platforms are adjusting by jacking up their price floors in hidden ways.

Rather than setting price floors as a flat fee upfront, some SSPs are setting high price floors after their bids come in as a way to squeeze out more money from ad buyers who believe they are bidding into a second-price auction, which is where the second-highest bid determines the price the impression gets sold for. The reason price floors are critical is because they determine the minimum value that an impression can be won for. While sell-side platforms have been known to mislabel the type of auction they run, this tactic is different since it allows SSPs to technically run a second-price auction while charging ad buyers as if the highest bid is winning the impression.

In a second-price auction, raising the price floors after the bids come in allows SSPs to make extra cash off unsuspecting buyers who thought they could secure an impression with a high bid but end up paying a much lower price. This practice persists because neither the publisher nor the ad buyer has complete access to all the data involved in the transaction, so unless they get together and compare their data, publishers and buyers won’t know for sure who their vendor is ripping off.

“With the onset of header bidding, these games kicked into full force,” said a demand-side platform exec requesting anonymity. “SSPs are trying to differentiate themselves to publishers based on yield, and they get that yield by ripping off the buy side.”

OpenX recently teamed up with an unnamed DSP so they could get data from both the buy and sell sides to study how auction mechanics are being gamed. Across several SSPs, they found that even when buyers bid as high as $50 on an impression, the SSPs would set their price floors at 95 percent of what the highest price was. The chart below shows how this would work to the SSPs’ advantage.

Drew Bradstock, svp of product at Index Exchange, said that before header bidding allowed SSPs to simultaneously bid on the same inventory, SSPs were more likely to have unique inventory, and they could make money by simply selling the inventory they had access to and taking a cut. But with header bidding, several SSPs are bidding on the same inventory, and only the one that wins the auction will make any money.

So to make sure they win the auction, these SSPs want a high clearing price, and one way to make sure there is a high clearing price is to set high price floors so the highest bid (rather than the second-highest bid) gets passed to the ad server. Bradstock stressed that there are good reasons to have first-price auctions or raise price floors, but that this information should be transparent to ad buyers because their bidding strategies will be influenced by what type of auction they think they’re in.

When header bidding started gaining traction, SSPs that were losing auctions adapted by increasing the cut they took for each impression that they won, said the DSP exec. But following the Guardian-Rubicon Project lawsuit, publishers started purging high-margin vendors, which has made SSPs hesitant to raise their fees. In response, SSPs turned to raising price floors incognito since that could benefit their publisher clients in the short term by increasing the CPMs they get.

Changing the price floors after the bids come in is like changing the rules of a game that is already underway. SSPs pull this off by inserting code into their auction that automatically raises the price floor just before the publisher’s timeout, the DSP exec said.

For example, a publisher might give SSPs 0.5 seconds to respond to ad calls before moving on without them. The SSP will collect whatever bids come through in 0.49 seconds, and then just before the auction closes, it will set the price floor to 95 percent of whatever the highest bid happens to be.

Buyers could spot seedy vendors if they compared their transaction data against publishers’ data. But meeting with individual publishers is only worth buyers’ time if they make large buys on those particular websites. However, the ad supply chain is engineered to have as deep a pool of publishers and advertisers as possible, which leads ad buyers to purchase inventory from thousands of sites for a single campaign. For the majority of those sites, the buyer won’t have time to set up meetings to compare data, which helps shady vendors remain hidden.

Using deceptive price floors is hardly the only questionable tactic SSPs use. They also misstate which publishers they represent and resell inventory without publisher authorization. And DSPs are guilty of their own sins for using misleading definitions of clearing price and sneaking in audience segments with unclear markup.

At some point, the shenanigans become overwhelming for ad buyers.

“We don’t know how prevalent [the tricks] are or who is guilty of it, as we don’t see that level of transparency,” said an ad buyer requesting anonymity.

Output: A lack of transparency is preventing ad buyers from finding out whether supply-side platforms (SSPs) are raising price floors during header bids simply to increase revenue. The practice has reportedly been adopted by some SSPs following the Guardian-Rubicon Project lawsuit, as a means of ensuring a high clearing price and a successful auction. Drew Bradstock, SVP of product at Index Exchange, said that while sometimes price floors were raised for good reason, it needed to be done transparently so that ad buyers could adapt their bidding strategies accordingly.


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Promise of deal-making robots comes with some reservations
 A bot might someday take your job, but perhaps it can help you negotiate a nice severance package, too.

A recent research paper (PDF) suggests that AI agents could do all sorts of useful haggling, providing they become a little bit smarter, and users can be persuaded to trust them.

The authors envision a world where an AI agent negotiates on your behalf, like buying a house or working out the details of a pay raise. And they write that such technology could allow negotiations in new areas like figuring out the terms of an energy-sharing deal with your neighbor, or the amount of money you should receive for giving up some privacy information to a mobile app. The team has experimented with an Android app that lets you do just that, in fact.

In an interview with Science, one of the authors, Tim Baarslag from Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica in Amsterdam, says the key challenges are giving such systems deep understanding of a particular domain, like real estate or energy, as well as enabling some sort of long-term perspective, so that it can negotiate with an entity that it’s dealt with before.

AI agents are, in fact, already used for all sorts of more narrow negotiations, like figuring out the correct price for an online ad, or the right bid for a stock. But it’s fascinating to imagine them taking on more human areas of deal-making. Perhaps AI may someday play a vital role in future standoffs like the one between the U.S. and North Korea?

One interesting observation from the researchers’ paper, however, provides a little pause for thought. “People may show less regard for fairness and ethical behavior when negotiating through a third (human) party,” the authors write. “This raises the question as to whether agents should similarly lie on behalf of a user, for example by using argumentation and persuasion technology. Analogous to recent research on ethical dilemmas in self-driving cars, people may claim that negotiation agents should be ethical, but sacrifice these ideals if it maximizes their profits.”

Output: The increased use of artificial intelligence to negotiate deals on behalf of users will create a number of technological, societal and ethical challenges, according to a new study. Researchers from the Netherlands, US and the UK have examined applications for autonomous negotiators, from standard tasks such as salary settlements and property transactions to emerging areas including energy-sharing deals between neighbours. The authors concluded that key challenges include ensuring the software develops relevant expertise and long-term perspective. They also identified a need to resolve questions of trust in negotiation agents and decide how ethical they should be when striking deals with others.


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Vemo Education raises $7.4m for higher-ed financing platform
 Edtech startup Vemo Education announced the close of $7.4 million in seed financing, led by University Ventures and NextGen Venture Partners. Route 66 Ventures, Third Kind Venture Capital, Haystack Fund, and Task Force X Capital also participated in the offering.

Vemo works with higher education institutions to develop and deploy income-based financing programs that align the cost of a student’s education with its value. The company’s goal is to provide thoughtful, consumer-friendly alternatives to high-cost and burdensome student loans, changing the way students pay for higher education. According to the company, Vemo Education facilitated $23 million of income share agreements, including Purdue University’s “Back a Boiler” program, during the 2016 to 2017 academic year.

In its announcement, the company said the funding will allow Vemo Education to hire for growth, accelerate investment in its technology platform, and expand market development.

Output: Edtech start-up Vemo Education has raised $7.4m in a seed-funding round, with the money earmarked for hiring new team members, increasing investment in its technology and extending market development. Vemo develops income-based financing programmes for higher education; it claimed to have facilitated $23m worth of agreements in the 2016-17 academic year. University Ventures and NextGen Venture Partners led the investment round, which also saw participation from Haystack Fund, Route 66 Ventures, Third Kind Venture Capital and Task Force X Capital.


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South Asia faces annual flood costs of $215bn by 2030
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Output: South Asia, home to 25% of the global population, could be facing annual flooding costs of up to $215bn by 2030, according to the World Resources Institute. Analysts warn that such floods will affect not only local businesses, but global firms that source products and raw materials from the region. Over 41 million people in South Asia have recently been affected by floods and displacement, with at least 1,200 deaths last month alone. Last year, Asia saw losses of $87bn, $77bn of which were uninsured, from 320 natural disasters, according to Munich Re.


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Video ad spend forecast to overtake TV ad spend in China by 2021
 In China, advertisers’ increased focus on mobile, along with investments in video and social, will continue to boost overall digital ad spend, according to eMarketer’s latest forecast.This year, eMarketer’s forecast estimates overall digital ad spend in China will reach US$50.31 billion — of which 72.0% will go to mobile channels. Video is the fastest growing ad format within digital, and by 2021 it expects it will overtake spending on traditional TV, accounting for 13.4% of all media ad expenditures.“Advertising on digital video is growing at a faster rate than overall display ads, and strong content is a key driver for this growth as brands are willing to spend more money to appear alongside the most popular content,” said eMarketer forecasting analyst Cindy Liu. “As well as investing in original content, video platforms are looking to establish exclusive partnerships. For example, iQiyi, Baidu’s on-demand video streaming service, recently announced a deal with Netflix to license some of their premium content.”Thanks to their continued innovations in mobile and high-profile partnerships, the BAT companies — Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent, will continue to dominate the digital ad market in China. According to eMarketer’s latest forecast, the BAT companies combined will take in 64.1% of digital ad expenditures in China this year. Within the BAT companies, Alibaba will capture more than 35% of China’s digital ad spending in 2017, followed by Baidu with an 18.4% share and Tencent with a 10.4% slice.By 2019, Alibaba’s digital ad revenues will reach US$28.93 billion, accounting for 38.0% of all digital ad spend in China.“Alibaba continues to outperform expectations and is once again the strongest performer in terms of net digital ad revenues in China,” Liu said. “By incorporating social and video elements into its mobile shopping app - Taobao, Alibaba is able to capture more consumer time and thus attract more advertising spend. Meanwhile, Tencent, which is the fastest growing company in terms of net digital ad revenues, will fall short of Alibaba and Baidu through 2019, as the company errs on the conservative side when it comes to unloading its ad inventory.”

Output: Video is the fastest growing digital ad format in China, with spend predicted to overtake TV ad spend by 2021, reaching a 13.4% share of all ad spend, according to eMarketer. This year, TV ad spend is estimated to reach $16.88bn and digital video $7.94bn. Overall digital ad spend in the country is forecast to hit $50.31bn this year, with 72% of that being spent on mobile. The leading digital companies in China, search engine Baidu, e-commerce company Alibaba and internet services firm Tencent will represent 64.1% of ad expenditures in digital for 2017.