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Plans in China to build 100,000 industrial robots p.a. by 2020
 Industrial robots 'dance' at a booth at the China International Industry Fair at National Exhibition and Convention Center in Shanghai. VCG | VCG | Getty Images

About four years ago Jeff Burnstein attended his first China International Robotics Show, the annual Shanghai-based expo now in its seventh year. At the time, Burnstein, president of the Robotic Industries Association, a Michigan-based trade group, wasn't impressed. He said he walked around the show and thought many of the robots on display looked like copies of what American companies were already doing. In today's China a different picture is taking shape, courtesy of a blueprint known as the Made in China 2025 plan. Announced in 2015, the initiative is China's massive government-backed push to be a world leader in a number of high-tech industries, such as medical devices, aerospace equipment and robotics — the key piece of the country's desire to automate sectors of its economy: automotive manufacturing, food production, electronics and more.

But to do that, China needs more robots. In addition to the Made in China 2025 plan, the government has also released the Robotics Industry Development Plan, a five-year plan to rapidly expand the country's industrial robotics sector. By 2020, China wants to be able to manufacture at least 100,000 industrial robots annually. The country is racing full steam ahead to a robot-powered future in a push to not only remake its own economy but also to transform into the world's robot capital — overtaking Japan, Germany and the United States in the process. "The Chinese are the fastest-growing and largest user of robotics in the world by now," said Burnstein. "The 2025 plan will only accelerate it." According to the International Federation of Robots, China is already home to the biggest share of robots, a global market worth about $30 billion. It is currently ranked the No.1 sales market for industrial robots, with the United States coming in at No. 4. (South Korea and Japan are two and three, respectively.)

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While the United States is arguably the worldwide leader in automation in vehicle manufacturing, China is quickly making gains to outstrip the U.S. and other global competitors. Over the first half of this decade, China installed 90,000 industrial robots, or one third of the world's total, compared to 80,000 industrial robots installed between 2010 and 2015 elsewhere in Asia, Europe and the United States combined.

A heated race

"To reduce the threshold of innovative entrepreneurship, the government provides appropriate financial subsidies for rent, broadband access and public software for new businesses," said John Rhee, general manager of the Los Angeles office for UBTECH, a Chinese robotics company headquartered in Shenzhen City that makes humanoid robots for the home.

Fast-forwarding market domination

UBTECH is one such company currently benefiting from the Made in China 2025 plan. In April the company signed a "strategic cooperation agreement," Rhee said, with the municipal government of Kunming City in the southwestern province of Yunnan, which will aid the company in robot building and developing artificial intelligence capabilities in Yunnan province for the purpose of making Kunming and other municipalities A.I.-enabled "smart" cities. But how quickly China can get itself up to speed in the globally competitive robotics field is still a question, as is the overall effectiveness of the Made in 2025 plan on growing China's robotics industry. "China can manufacture simple robots but nothing complicated, like the six-axis ones by Japan, Germany and the U.S.," said Zi Yang, a China analyst at the Washington, D.C.-based Jamestown Foundation. "It's hard to close the gap due to several reasons, mainly because of China's lack of innovativeness due to its weak intellectual property laws and government-led projects that focus on quantity over quality." Indeed, that push for quantity is one of the aggressive goals China has set for itself in its Made in 2025 plan. By the end of next decade, the country wants to be producing 400,000 industrial robots annually. That's a tall order, considering just a little more than 250,000 industrial robots were sold the world over in 2015 alone, according to the IFR. Some Chinese companies are actively buying the expertise in robotics that has been developed elsewhere. One such company, Midea, closed a $4 billion deal earlier this year to acquire Germany-based Kuka AG, a leading, global robotics supplier for plant and automotive robots with a research and development center in Austin, Texas.

China's Midea recently acquired Germany-based Kuka AG, a global robotics supplier for plant and automotive robots with a research and development center in Austin, Texas. Source: Kuka Industries

Output: China wants to go from being a "low-cost labour source to a high-tech labour source", thanks to its Made in China 2025 initiative and the Robotics Industry Development Plan. By 2020 the country wants to manufacture 100,000 industrial robots annually and it is already the world's largest market for them. By 2019, 40% of total worldwide robot sales are forecast to be in China, up from 27% in 2015. The country is increasing investment into the sector, as well as offering subsidies, low-interest loans and rent-free land to Chinese robotics companies.


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Redrow Redrow becomes official partner of Worcester Warriors rugby team
 Midlands Business Jon Robinson

Housebuilder Redrow has become the official partner of Premiership rugby side Worcester Warriors.

The new deal comes after the club revealed that it was seeking new investment to help support its shareholders.

Redrow supported the club by sponsoring their mascots last season.

Sales director for Redrow Homes (Midlands), Pauline Turnbull, said: "We've built hundreds of homes across Worcestershire in recent years and are currently selling homes at The Orchards in Droitwich and Maple Gardens in Evesham. Clubs like Warriors play a vital role in the local community and so we were keen to team up.

"We believe children of all backgrounds should be able to enjoy the fantastic experiences of a rugby matchday so we're looking forward to being able to give local youngsters that opportunity through the schemes we'll be running with the club."

Warriors head of commercial, Leyton Williams, added: "We are delighted to secure yet another major, successful organisation to the growing family of Warriors partners.

"We already have an excellent working relationship with Pauline and her team and this new partnership will help to raise the profile of Redrow Homes even further."

Output: UK housebuilder Redrow has been named the official sponsor of the Worcester Warriors, following the news that the Premiership club was seeking additional investment. Last year, Redrow sponsored the club's mascots. The company is "keen to team up", said Sales director for Redrow Homes Pauline Turnbull, adding that clubs like the Warriors played a "vital role in the local community".


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Limitations in processes to detect chemicals in oilfield wastewater
 By Sara Jerome,

@sarmje

Methods to assess chemicals in oilfield wastewater may not be sufficient, researchers say.

A new study from researchers at the Colorado School of Mines highlights limitations in chemical detection processes used in the oil sector. Published in Trends in Environmental Analytical Chemistry, this area of study is significant to drinking water utilities, advocates, and regulators who seek to understand the ways that energy industry activity may pose a threat to drinking water.

“We assessed current trends and emerging technologies in analytical chemistry and reviewed their applicability to flowback and produced waters. In addition, we propose under-utilized approaches that may serve as potential solutions to address the issues created by the complex matrices inherent to flowback and produced waters,” the study said.

The Environmental Defense Fund explained the meaning of the findings in a blog post.

“Oilfield wastewater is extremely salty and can contain multiple combinations of many potentially harmful chemicals (approximately 1,600 on a national basis). However, most standard or approved analytical methods available to regulators were designed to work with fresh water. Because oil and gas wastewater is so salty — sometimes 10 times saltier than seawater or more — chemists often have to dilute wastewater samples to manage the high salt content,” the blog said.

Diluting the samples may also be diluting chemicals, the blog explained.

Benzene, a cancer-causing petroleum byproduct, is one example.

“It has a drinking water standard of 5 parts per billion — that’s 5 cents in 10 million dollars. It really doesn’t take much dilution of a sample to lose that level of precision,” the blog said.

The upshot is that flawed methods for analyzing chemicals in oilfield wastewater make it difficult to understand what impact it may have on source waters.

The United States Energy Association, in its materials, notes that the oil and gas industry plays a major role in the global energy sector. Advocates point out that the industry is a major employer.

For similar stories visit Water Online’s Produced Water Treatment Solutions Center.

Output: Chemical detection processes commonly used by the oil industry are not designed to work with fresh water, researchers at the Colorado School of Mines have found. In order to manage wastewater's high salt content, chemists have to dilute the sample. But by doing so, they may also be diluting chemicals. It's therefore difficult to understand the impact of harmful chemical byproducts from wastewater, such as benezene, on source waters. The researchers propose using several "under-utilised approaches" to manage the complexity of analysing flowback and produced waters.


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More than 5,000 ads from fake accounts identified by Facebook
 Amid ongoing concern over the role of disinformation in the 2016 election, Facebook said Wednesday it found that more than 5,000 ads, costing more than $150,000, had been placed on its network between June 2015 and May 2017 from "inauthentic accounts" and Pages, likely from Russia.

The ads didn't directly mention the election or the candidates, according to a blog post by Facebook's chief security officer Alex Stamos, but focused on "amplifying divisive social and political messages across the ideological spectrum---touching on topics from LGBT matters to race issues to immigration to gun rights." Facebook declined to discuss additional details about the ads.

Facebook says it had given the information to authorities investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election. "We know we have to stay vigilant to keep ahead of people who try to misuse our platform," Stamos wrote in the post. "We believe in protecting the integrity of civic discourse, and require advertisers on our platform to follow both our policies and all applicable laws."

Speculation has swirled about the role Facebook played spreading fake news during the 2016 election. Senator Mark Warner, vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has gone so far as to wonder whether President Trump's tech and data team collaborated with Russian actors to target fake news at American voters in key geographic areas. “We need information from the companies, as well as we need to look into the activities of some of the Trump digital campaign activities," Warner said recently.

Brad Parscale, digital director of the Trump campaign, has agreed to an interview with the House Intelligence Committee, and maintains he is "unaware of any Russian involvement in the digital and data operations of the 2016 Trump presidential campaign."

Wednesday's revelation is a new wrinkle in the ongoing Russia investigations. In July, Facebook told WIRED it had found no indication of Russian entities buying entities during the election.

In the larger context of political ad spending, even $150,000 is a nominal amount. According to a report by Borrell Associates, digital political-ad spending totaled roughly $1.4 billion in 2016. And yet, this finding exposes what seems to be a coordinated effort to spread misinformation about key election issues in targeted states.

Facebook is remaining tight lipped about the methods it used to identify the fraudulent accounts and Pages that it has since suspended. One search for ads purchased from US internet addresses set to the Russian language turned up $50,000 worth of spending on 2,200 ads. Facebook said about one-quarter of the suspect ads were geographically targeted, with more of those running in 2015 than 2016. According to The Washington Post, some accounts may be linked to a content farm called Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg.

Facebook said it is implementing changes to prevent similar abuse. Among other things, it's looking for ways to combat so-called cloaking in which ads that appear benign redirect users to malicious or misleading websites once people click through. That allows bad actors to circumvent Facebook's ad review process.

But while Facebook may be able to limit what people can and can't buy on its platform, it doesn't change the fact that social media has created a stage for anyone looking to spread false information online, with or without ads. As the $150,000 figure indicates, this finding is but a small fraction of a much larger problem.

Output: More than 5,000 ads designed to "amplify divisive social and political messages" were placed on Facebook’s network over a two-year period ended May 2017, according its chief security officer, Alex Stamos. Worth around $150,000, the ads, 25% of which were said to be geographically targeted, likely came from "inauthentic accounts" and Pages linked to Russia. Neither the 2016 US presidential election nor candidates were directly mentioned in the ads, Stamos said. Facebook is looking to crack down on “cloaking”, whereby ads redirect users to other sites, as part of its bid to prevent abuse and tighten ad review processes.


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PIMCO raises fees on fast-growing active fund
 PIMCO Income Fund, the fastest-growing actively managed U.S. mutual fund, is raising fees at a time most money managers are racing to slash costs paid by investors.

The $92 billion fund will increase its fees 5 cents per $100 on Oct. 2 for most share classes, according to a filing Thursday, bringing expenses for the institutional-class shares to 50 cents per $100. The change in supervisory and administrative fees is attributed in part to the cost of managing dividends for the growing fund, which has about 5,500 securities in numerous countries and currencies, said Pacific Investment Management Co. spokesman Michael Reid.

"PIMCO Income Fund has delivered strong performance yet its total expense to investors remains lower than its peer group averages," Mr. Reid said in an email. PIMCO Income's peer funds average fees are $1.01 per $100 in assets, according to data on the Morningstar website.

Investors have been moving money to low-fee, passively managed index funds, raising pressure on money managers to compete by reducing costs. Shareholders added a net $703.4 billion to passively run mutual and exchange-traded funds while withdrawing $214.5 billion from active funds in the 12 months through July, according to Morningstar.

The average fee paid by investors fell to 57 basis points in 2016 from 61 in 2015 and 65 three years earlier, according to a May report by Morningstar.

On the passive investing side, big providers such as BlackRock, Vanguard Group, Fidelity Investments and Charles Schwab have cut fees on index funds and exchange-traded funds to as low as 3 or 4 cents for every $100 invested.

PIMCO CEO Emmanuel Roman has said his firm's strategy is to provide benchmark-beating risk-adjusted returns through active management, while charging "the right level" of fees.

PIMCO Income, managed by Dan Ivascyn and Alfred Murata, has added $23.5 billion in new investments in the past 12 months, more than any other actively managed U.S. fund, Morningstar estimates. It has returned an average of 7.6% annually over the past five years, outperforming 99% of its Bloomberg peer group.

PIMCO is increasing the Income Fund's Class D fees 11 basis points, according to the filing. The firm is also boosting fees by 5 basis points for Class D shares of the All Asset Fund and the All Asset All Authority Fund.

At the same time, the firm is lowering fees 11 basis points across share classes on its Unconstrained Bond Fund and 5 basis points on its Emerging Markets Corporate Bond Fund, Emerging Markets Full Spectrum Bond Fund and Global Advantage Strategy Bond Fund. For the PIMCO Total Return Fund, fees are being cut 5 basis points on Class A shares and increased 5 basis points on Class D shares.

Output: PIMCO is raising the fees on its Income Fund, bucking the trend of asset managers slashing expense ratios for their fund products. The fund has been the fastest growing US active product over the last 12 months. In general, passive funds are still taking in assets at the expense of their active counterparts, pulling in more than $703bn in the US over the past year.


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Africa urged to seek broad-based economic empowerment in China ties
 China has catapulted from being a relatively small investor in the continent to becoming Africa’s largest economic partner. Africa-China trade is poised to grow 20% year on year making it seem like dragons are the new king of the African jungle.

Investment in Africa has however been structured around Chinese ownership, with roughly 90% of firms either majority controlled or owned outright by Chinese nationals. There are estimated to be over 10,000 Chinese firms in Africa that have created work for several million Africans. This economic stimulus continues to have significant economic impact in communities riddled with historic economic disparities.

Output: China is now the largest investor in Africa, writes Johan Hanekom, an expert on strategy, innovation and growth. However, Hanekom points to the fact Chinese nationals own 90% of the firms receiving investment. For the China-Africa partnership to thrive, and prevent economic colonisation, corruption and violence must be tackled, language and cultural barriers addressed, and better wealth distribution sought. He urged African countries receiving aid from China to develop political and economic structures and strategies that ensure broad-based economic empowerment, which will in turn promote political development and better international trade relations, he said.


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Wind turbine makers partner with energy storage companies
 Danish company Vestas Wind Systems is one of the biggest makers of wind turbines in the world, recently surpassing GE’s market share in the US. But as the wind industry becomes more competitive, Vestas appears to be looking for ways to solidify its lead by offering something different. Now, the company says it’s looking into building wind turbines with battery storage onsite.

According to a Bloomberg report, Vestas is working on 10 projects that will add storage to wind installations, and Tesla is collaborating on at least one of those projects. Vestas says the cooperation between the two companies isn’t a formal partnership, and Tesla hasn’t commented on the nature of its work with Vestas. But the efforts to combine wind turbines with battery storage offer a glimpse into how the wind industry might change in the future.

The news about Vestas is just one datapoint in a summer of news about wind and storage projects. In August, offshore wind developer Deepwater Wind announced that it would pair a 144MW offshore wind farm planned for the coast of New Bedford, Massachusetts, with a 40MWh battery storage system from Tesla. Construction on that project is set to end sometime in 2022. According to GreenTechMedia, Spanish wind power company Acciona recently connected two Samsung lithium-ion batteries to a 3-megawatt turbine in Spain, Dong installed a battery on the UK coastline in June to store some offshore wind energy, and Statoil will include a 1MWh lithium-ion battery in its designs for a floating offshore wind farm that will be completed in late 2018.

The idea of onsite batteries isn’t new—GE’s renewables arm introduced short-term batteries integrated with wind turbines in 2013, and Vestas itself experimented with tying storage to wind turbines in 2012. But turbine manufacturers seem to be more willing to branch out of their wheelhouse lately and contact battery specialists instead of pushing to build batteries on their own.

The appeal of batteries seems self-explanatory at first glance: the cost of wind-generated electricity is falling fast, leading energy companies to install wind capacity at record rates in the US as well as in China and the EU. Although government subsidies for renewable energy have played a part in the wind boom, developers are just starting to submit proposals for wind projects that don’t need subsidies to be profitable. But in order for wind to become even more competitive, it needs to make up for one glaring drawback: wind turbines can’t generate electricity on demand.

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That’s where batteries come into play. Installations from AES Energy Storage and Tesla have already hit grids in California, but those systems aren’t tied to a specific renewable resource—they store electricity from coal plants and solar panels alike. But proposing a wind farm with onsite storage might make a grid operator consider that proposal a more reliable source of energy.

Still, the limiting factor is the price of storage. A post from the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) explains why storage hasn’t been a big part of the equation historically.

The reality is that, while several small-scale energy storage demonstration projects have been conducted, the US has been able to add more than 60,000MW of wind power to the grid without adding any commercial-scale energy storage. Similarly, European countries like Denmark, Spain, Ireland, and Germany have successfully integrated very large amounts of wind energy without having to install new energy storage resources. In the US, numerous peer-reviewed studies have concluded that wind energy can provide 20 percent or more of our electricity without any need for energy storage.

That’s because, the AWEA says, flexibility in the form of fast-ramping gas plants or hydroelectricity already exists on most large grids, and “it is almost always much cheaper to use this flexibility than to build new sources of flexibility like energy storage facilities.”

But the economics of storage may be changing, or at least companies forecast enough of a change in the next five years to justify getting their feet wet on special projects like these. According to Lazard’s 2016 Levelized Cost of Storage report, forecasts show capital costs of chemical battery construction getting much cheaper out to 2020, while more traditional methods of storage, like compressed air and pumped storage, essentially stay flat.

And in a statement to Bloomberg on Friday, Vestas said as much, commenting that the impetus for its 10 projects was to find “sustainable energy solutions that can lower the cost of energy.”

Output: Wind turbine manufacturer Vestas Wind Systems' tie up with Tesla to add on-site energy storage to future wind installations is the latest example of wind energy companies looking to add storage to their developments. Deepwater Wind announced last month it was adding a 40 MWh battery storage system from Tesla to a planned offshore wind farm off New Bedford, Massachusetts. Acciona recently connected two Samsung lithium-ion batteries to a 3 MW turbine in Spain; Dong installed a battery on the UK coastline in June to store some offshore wind energy, and Statoil will add a 1 MWh lithium-ion battery to a floating offshore wind farm that will be completed in late 2018.


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Drinks industry misleading public over cancer links
 The drinks industry is misleading the public by downplaying and misrepresenting the link between alcohol and cancer – especially breast cancer – in a bid to protect its profits, new research claims.

Alcohol firms and “responsible drinking” bodies they fund are denying that drink causes cancer and distorting the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, in information they provide to consumers, according to the British-led team of international experts behind the findings.

Despite portraying themselves as socially responsible, many drinks producers are also trying to distract attention from alcohol’s well-established role as a key cause of cancer, confuse consumers and blame other factors, it is claimed.

Their “denial, distortion, distraction” tactics closely resemble those cigarette companies used to limit exposure of tobacco’s role as a main cause of cancer. They are being deployed in particular on bowel and breast cancer, two of Britain’s most common and most lethal forms of the disease, the academics allege.

“The alcohol industry appears to be engaged in the extensive misrepresentation of evidence about the alcohol-related risk of cancer. These activities have parallels with those of the tobacco industry”, according to a study by Professor Mark Petticrew, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and colleagues.

They analysed the accuracy of information about alcohol and cancer carried on websites and in publications produced by 26 drinks producers and “social aspects and public relations organisations” worldwide they use to advise consumers about alcohol and health. Many were guilty of manipulation of evidence, they concluded.

The Portman Group and Drinkaware, two UK bodies financed by the alcohol industry, are among those accused of being involved in what the researchers say is systematic “denialism” of the heightened risks of cancer from drinking.

“It’s extremely worrying that the UK public are not being given independent, honest information about the health risks associated with drinking,” said Katherine Brown, chief executive of the Institute of Alcohol Studies, a thinktank.

For example, of the 26 sources of material analysed by researchers, 20 either did not discuss alcohol’s role in causing breast cancer, or did so but included inaccurate or misleading information about the link.

More than 100 studies since 2007 have shown that alcohol, even in moderate amounts, increases the risk of breast cancer. Despite that, the research highlights how information published on Drinkaware’s website last December pointed to a range of other factors as possible causes, including a woman’s gender, age and family history, in what the authors say was a bid to deflect attention from alcohol’s role in increasing cancer risk.

The industry may be using such tactics because it hopes to increase the amount of alcohol drunk by women and does not want the public to learn about its link with the disease, suggest the authors, whose findings are published in the journal Drug and Alcohol Review.

IARC, the World Health Organization’s cancer arm, and the UK government’s committee on carcinogenicity have both said the evidence showed alcohol increased the risk of cancers of the mouth and throat, larynx, oesophagus, upper aerodigestive tract, breast and liver as well as the colon, rectum and pancreas.

The findings also claim that both Drinkaware and the Portman Group have sought to play down alcohol’s potentially damaging role in causing cancer by claiming that risk only applies to heavy or binge drinking; confusing the relationship between alcohol and cancer by highlighting a range of other risk factors; and also by stressing the complexity of risk to suggest that there is little evidence of risk, when the opposite is true.

For example, the brewer SAB Miller’s talkingalcohol.com website “states inaccurately that there is no link between alcohol and most cancers except for ‘mainly cancers of the upper aerodigestive tract’ and the liver,” the paper says. Similarly, the Portman Group says that “the vast majority of cancer types are not associated with alcohol consumption”.

While there are more than 200 types of cancer, alcohol is recognised by key medical authorities as a cause of two of the commonest: breast and bowel cancer, which between them result in almost 100,000 new diagnoses a year in the UK alone.

The Portman Group denied the academics’ claims that it had misrepresented the evidence on alcohol and cancer in its response to the government consultation on updated safe drinking guidelines, unveiled in January last year. They promote responsible drinking and responsible marketing of alcohol, they said.

“It is vital that academic research and commentary about lifestyle risks is presented fairly, accurately and in context so that people can make rational and informed choices in their everyday lives.

“In the UK, producers and retailers support many charities and organisations that provide consumers with practical and evidence-based information about alcohol and their health and have a long history of promoting responsible drinking messages,” said John Timothy, its chief executive.

Drinkaware, which aims to educate the public about drinking and reduce alcohol harm, also rejected the claims made about it. “The Drinkaware website carries extensive information about alcohol and health, all of which has been approved by Drinkaware’s medical advisory panel, which is made up of senior and independent experts,” a spokesperson said.

“[The panel’s] recent review of Drinkaware’s cancer information, which is extensive, has confirmed that the information we are providing accurately reflects the most recent research evidence.”

Chris Snowdon, head of lifestyle economics at the Institute of Economic Affairs, accused the authors of cherry-picking quotes that did not fairly reflect scientific evidence. “This is a diatribe disguised as a study that seeks to create a false narrative in which businesses always lie and anti-alcohol campaigners always tell the truth,” he said.

The Department of Health rejected the academics’ suggestion that ministers should stop trusting alcohol bodies to inform the public about alcohol and cancer because the findings showed such large-scale distortion and omission of key facts.

“We are clear on the links between excessive alcohol consumption and cancer, supported by the UK CMOs’ [chief medical officers’] guidelines. Public Health England regularly promotes the message that you can reduce your risk of cancers by making lifestyle changes through national campaigns like One You,” a spokesman said.

Output: The alcoholic drinks industry is misrepresenting the links between alcohol and cancer, according to a UK-led study by international researchers. The report claims that alcohol firms and the “responsible drinking” bodies funded by them, including the Portman Group and Drinkaware, are misleading the public through tactics of “denial, distortion, distraction” that parallel those used by cigarette firms. Such tactics are particularly used in relation to bowel and breast cancer, two of the most common and lethal forms of the disease in the UK.


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Fossil fuel trade associations sue Illinois over subsidies
 Two trade associations have filed a joint amicus brief in a federal appeals court in Chicago, arguing that the Illinois Zero Emissions Credit (ZEC) program unlawfully discriminates against natural gas and undermines competitive wholesale power markets.

On Tuesday, the Natural Gas Supply Association (NGSA) and the American Petroleum Institute (API) urged the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit to reverse a lower court ruling to dismiss a legal challenge to block Illinois from implementing the ZEC program.

Specifically, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Electric Power Supply Association, Dynegy Inc., NRG Energy Inc. and Calpine Corp.

The plaintiffs argued that the ZEC program infringes on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s exclusive authority to regulate wholesale power markets.

“If allowed to stand, the district court’s decision would allow Illinois and other states to enact laws that change the wholesale rates received by electric generation suppliers participating in organized wholesale electricity markets, favoring uncompetitive in-state nuclear generators with subsidies, while discriminatorily depressing the prices received by other suppliers, with the express intention of protecting in-state industry and favoring one fuel source over another,” NGSA and API said in their joint filing.

The associations said Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania were considering enacting programs similar to ZEC. “The district court’s decision would throw open the door to an ever-growing patchwork of discriminatory intervention in wholesale markets.”

NGSA CEO Dena Wiggins said the ZEC program “is not only discriminatory, it would have serious adverse consequences for the efficient and unbiased functioning of the nation’s energy markets.”

Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner signed the Future Energy Jobs Act (FEJA) into law last December. FEJA authorized the Illinois Power Agency to award ZECs to electric utilities.

Output: Two fossil fuel trade associations are pursuing a legal battle to have the Illinois Zero Emissions Credit (ZEC) ruled unlawful. The Natural Gas Supply Association and the American Petroleum Institute claim the state's programme infringes on the authority of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and unfairly favours in-state nuclear generators with subsidies, discriminating against other suppliers. Other states such as Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania are reportedly looking at introducing programmes similar to ZEC, which the trade associations claim would have adverse consequences for the unbiased functioning of the US energy market.


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Iberdrola issues €750m bond to finance Baltic Sea power project
 Spanish energy group Iberdrola SA (BME:IBE) on Wednesday issued a EUR-750-million (USD 895.5m) green bond on the Euromarket to finance and refinance wind power project investments.

More specifically, the proceeds will go for investments in onshore wind farms in the UK and in the 350-MW Wikinger wind farm in the German Baltic Sea. The offshore wind park is under construction with more than half of the 70 Adwen turbines installed already.

Demand for the green bond surpassed EUR 2.2 billion in the initial phase, which allowed Iberdrola to boost its size by 50% from the initially planned EUR 500 million. More than 150 investors will be taking part in the issue, including a large share of Socially Responsible Investors (SRI).

The bond matures in September 2027 and bears a coupon of 1.25%.

The Spanish company has an installed power capacity of 48 GW, of which 28.3 GW is from renewable energy sources.

(EUR 1 = USD 1.19)

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Output: Spanish utility Iberdrola has issued a €750m ($896m) green bond on the Euromarket to finance the 350 MW Wikinger wind farm in the German Baltic Sea as well as onshore wind farms in the UK. Demand for the bond topped €2.2bn in the initial phase. More than 150 companies, including several socially responsible investors, are expected to take part in the issue. The bond matures in September 2027 and bears a coupon of 1.25%.


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Sustainable clothing that expands as child grows wins Dyson award
 An origami-inspired range of children’s clothing made from a durable pleated fabric that expands to fit growing babies and toddlers has won its 24-year-old designer a prestigious James Dyson award.

Ryan Yasin devised the material using scientific principles he studied for his aeronautical engineering degree, after noting the lack of sustainability in the clothing industry and being frustrated by how quickly his baby niece and nephew outgrew garments he bought for them.

The London-based postgraduate student aims to make so-called Petit Pli “the most advanced kids’ clothing in the world”. It is made from distinctive pleated lightweight fabric which is waterproof, machine washable and recyclable, with all garments fitting the three-month to three-year age group.

Most children grow by seven sizes in their first two years, and (according to a recent survey by Aviva) parents spend an average of £2,000 on clothing before their child reaches the age of three. As well as the high cost and limited lifespan, mass production of garments places huge pressure on the environment through waste, water consumption and carbon emissions.

Ryan Yasin, designer of Petit Pli clothing range that grow with your child. Photograph: Paul Grover/James Dyson Award

Yasin set out to combine technology with textiles in order to fashion durable and practical garments for youngsters to take them through their initial “growth spurt”. The babygrow, trousers and tops he has so far created resemble junior versions of sought-after clothing by legendary Japanese designer Issey Miyake.

Petit Pli works by employing the so-called negative Poisson’s ratio, which Yasin studied while at London’s Imperial College. When stretched, materials that have this ratio – known as auxetics – become thicker and can expand in two directions at the same time. The phenomenon is already used in stents and biomedical implants. Yasin has to date developed more than 500 prototypes for Petit Pli and plans to use his £2,000 prize money to continue discussions with potential investors and expand the business. Yasin says he is in talks with a major UK retailer and hopes the first clothing will go on sale in the UK within months.

The clothes are made to stretch to fit children as they grow between three and 36 months old. Photograph: Courtesy of Petit Pli

“It’s just great to have that backing and recognition of my solution,” he said. “The prize money is an added bonus, but I know how I will use it. In addition to supporting my R&D, it will help me form an interdisciplinary team of experts to take Petit Pli to the next level: putting it in the hands of parents worldwide and making a tangible difference to the way we consume resources in the fashion industry.”

Yasin has captured auxetic properties in Petit Pli through the use of permanent pleating. The pleats move in both directions, either folding together or expanding, and allowing the garment to move with the child. Heat treatment fixes these properties permanently in place, even through the wash cycle; the garments are designed to be long-lasting and can fold down small enough to tuck in your pocket.

Yasin says he will aim to keep the garments at a competitive price while ensuring everyone along the supply chain is paid ethically.

His invention will now be entered into the international running for the final leg of the James Dyson Award – announced in October – which will give the overall worldwide winner a further £30,000 in prize money.

The James Dyson award operates in 23 countries, and is open to university level students and recent graduates studying product design, industrial design and engineering. It recognises and rewards imaginative design solutions to global problems with the environment in mind.

Output: A range of sustainable children’s clothing inspired by origami, which expands as babies and toddlers grow, has won an international James Dyson award. Ryan Yasin, a 24-year-old designer based in London, used principles he learned during his aeronautical engineering degree to create the Petit Pli range, which is made from lightweight, pleated fabric and is machine washable, recyclable and waterproof. Each garment fits children aged three months to three years. According to Aviva, most children grow seven sizes in their first two years of life, with parents spending an average of £2,000 on clothes before a child reaches three.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
PE firm Clairvest invests in renewable energy for first time
 TORONTO, Sept. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Clairvest Group Inc. (TSX:CVG) (“Clairvest”) today announces that it, together with limited partnerships controlled by it, made a growth equity investment in Also Energy, Inc. (“Also Energy” or the “Company”). Clairvest, together with limited partnerships controlled by it have partnered with the existing management team who will retain a significant interest in the business.

Also Energy is a solar monitoring company based in Boulder, Colorado. Also Energy provides software and hardware that enable the monitoring and control of power production and plant operations for commercial, industrial and utility-scale power plants in the United States around the world. The Company was founded by Robert Schaefer, Chief Executive Officer and Holden Caine, Chief Technology Officer who will retain a significant stake in the Company. The opportunity was originated through Clairvest’s domain work in the renewable energy sector.

“Our domain efforts brought us to this exciting company and we have been consistently impressed with this business throughout our diligence. We are committed to support the Company through potential near-term turbulence and we are excited to partner with Robert and Holden to support the next phase of the Company’s growth," said Ken Rotman, Co-CEO of Clairvest.

“Clairvest is an ideal partner to help us continue to grow. We sought to find a supportive partner to provide capital and expertise to fuel our expansion and we have found just that in Clairvest," said Robert Schaefer.

Also Energy is Clairvest’s 49th platform investment and the fifth investment by CEP V. The Clairvest / CEP V co-investment pool is capitalized at $600 million and focuses on equity investments in growth companies.

About Clairvest

Clairvest Group Inc. is a private equity management firm that invests its own capital, and that of third parties through the Clairvest Equity Partners limited partnerships, in businesses that have the potential to generate superior returns. In addition to providing financing, Clairvest contributes strategic expertise and execution ability to support the growth and development of its investee partners. Clairvest realizes value through investment returns and the eventual disposition of its investments.

Output: Private equity firm Clairvest Group has made its first foray into the renewables sector with a growth equity investment in Boulder-based Also Energy. The company provides software and hardware to monitor and control global power production and plant operations for commercial, industrial and utility-scale power plants. As part of the deal, Also Energy CEO Robert Schaefer and CTO Holden Caine will retain a "significant stake" in the company.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Shell commits to renewable energy with investments
 Shell has long expressed its acceptance of the science of human-induced climate change and its determination to invest heavily in technologies to help enable a global transition to a world of drastically reduced greenhouse-gas emissions. As part of that commitment, Shell continues to fund a variety of research projects at MIT and elsewhere related to renewable energy, energy storage, and ways of capturing and storing carbon emissions from fossil fuel.

“For some years already we’ve been aware of the energy transition,” Brekelmans said. It’s accelerating, he said, and it’s clear that “it’s time to act, even more so than before.” Already, Shell has made “significant investments in wind, in solar, in biofuels — not all of them successful,” demonstrating the need to be careful about how one invests that research money. Because of the complexity of the world’s energy systems and demands, he said, “we have concluded that this will be a multidecade transition.”

In the discussion, titled, “If you had a billion dollars for energy-related R&D, where would you spend it?,” Brekelmans addressed that lofty question and many others about the company’s, and the world’s, energy future.

Harry Brekelmans, the projects and technology director for Royal Dutch Shell, one of the world’s leading oil and gas companies and a founding member of the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), on Wednesday met with groups of MIT students and faculty members about their work before taking part in a public discussion about energy issues with MITEI co-founder and director Robert Armstrong.

In introducing the discussion Maria Zuber, MIT’s vice president for research, pointed out that Shell’s CEO Ben Van Beurden recently said that with the right mix of policy and innovation, he sees global demand for oil peaking in the early 2030s or sooner — and that his next car will be electric.

Zuber said that MIT’s Plan for Action on Climate Change calls for finding solutions for decarbonizing the world’s energy systems, aiming for a zero-carbon energy system by the century’s end. To achieve that, she said, MIT’s view is that “the best chance of success is if a broad range of stakeholders, from industry to government to civil society, engage with each other proactively to address it.” One way of doing that, she said, is through conversations such as this one.

Brekelmans said that Shell’s approach to energy R&D is two-pronged, working in parallel on both near-term and long-term strategies. For the near term, the emphasis is on finding technologies that already exist in other industries that can be adapted and scaled up to have a rapid impact on energy use. The longer-term work deals with new findings in laboratories, that have great potential but that may require many years of work to determine if they can be scaled up to meet a significant portion of the world’s energy needs or to improve the performance of existing energy systems.

While the company’s investments in low-carbon energy technologies goes back many years, the mix of research projects they support has evolved over time, he said. One change is that much more of the long-term research is now focused on energy storage systems. These are seen as a key enabling technology to allow for increased usage of energy sources that are inherently variable, such as wind and solar power. “It was not part of our portfolio 10 years ago,” he said, but is now a significant piece of it.

Another research area of increasing emphasis is capturing and storing carbon emissions from power plants to reduce their climate impact, he said. But other approaches don’t necessarily have to be high-tech, he said. “When we talk about offsets, we increasingly talk about simple things like reforestation,” he told students during his morning meetings.

Another change, he said, is “in the way we do R&D. Our collaboration with MIT is absolutely fundamental” to Shell’s efforts. “We know we can’t do it ourselves alone. Much of the progress is happening here and at other institutions.” With the company’s own technology campus in Kendall Square, bordering the MIT campus, “we are hiring people who have no prior experience in oil and gas but who have a knack for innovation,” he said. Shell’s investments, he said, include providing “seed investments in crazy ideas, to help bring them to the next stage.”

Despite the company’s ongoing commitment to working toward a transition away from greenhouse emissions, Brekelmans said that he and his colleagues “all conclude every year that we’re not moving fast enough,” and continue to redouble their efforts.

Emphasizing that their reach and their interests are global, he added that Shell has also recently opened a campus in Bangalore, India, that employs almost 1,000 technologists, as an incubator for new technologies and approaches. The world’s energy systems and needs are very different and highly localized, he said: “Almost every country is different,” in terms of its needs and the most effective ways of meeting them.

In the developing world, he said, the company provides aid through the Shell Foundation, helping to bring electricity and other energy supplies to some of the world’s 3 billion people who lack access to reliable power. Among other things, these grants are aimed at helping some developing nations steer toward the use of natural gas rather than coal, as a lower-carbon fuel.

Shell “wants to be a voice and a leader” in the world’s energy transition, he said. But along the way, he said, the company must “not abandon the economic process that made us a leader,” namely the production and distribution of oil and gas.

The company clearly recognizes the need for some kind of pricing on carbon fuels that reflects their real impact on the world, Brekelmans said. Already, the company “internally works with a price on carbon,” assuming that this will eventually be part of the economic reality.

As for what form that pricing should take, whether it’s a carbon tax, a fee-and-dividend, or a cap-and-trade system, he said, “we are relatively agnostic, as long as we have a price that we can then develop and evolve.” Having some such system in place, he says, is “preferable to the almost religious debate over what is the best system.”

Output: A senior executive at Royal Dutch Shell has outlined how the company sees the transition from fossil fuels to renewables as inevitable, and was investing significantly in renewables research. Harry Brekelmans, Shell's projects and technology director, told an audience at MIT that the company has concluded the transition will take several decades, and conceded that not all of the investments it has made in research have been successful. Shell's CEO also recently said that with the right mix of policy and innovation, demand for oil could peak in the early 2030s or sooner.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
DOE invests $10m in fuel cell tech
 Dive Brief:

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy has selected 16 projects to receive $10.2 million in funding to advance solid oxide fuel cell ( SOFC ) technology.

) technology. LG Fuel Cell Systems — the largest grant recipient by far — will receive almost $6 million to deploy a 250-kW integrated fuel cell system on a site provided by Stark State College in North Canton, Ohio.

It is the second funding news out of the Office of Fossil Energy in as many weeks. In late August, the office promised $50 million for two large-scale pilots for "transformational coal technologies."

Dive Insight:

DOE's funding to advance solid oxide fuel cells falls under two categories: core technology development, where it will back 15 projects, and prototype testing, with one project.

"The applied research projects will address the technical issues facing the cost and reliability of SOFC technology and conduct field testing of an integrated prototype system project intended to validate the solutions to those issues," DOE said.

According to the agency, SOFCs are "ideal for carbon capture in that the fuel and oxidant (air) streams can be kept separate by design, thereby facilitating high levels of carbon capture without substantial additional cost."

LG Fuel Cell Systems will deploy the 250-kW integrated fuel cell system to operate on natural gas and connect directly to the electric grid. According to DOE, the prototype will incorporate current technologies and operate under "a range of environmental conditions for at least 5,000 hours to assess progress of system durability, performance, and operating cost."

DOE will provide $5.7 million in funding, while the company provides $1.4 million.

Of the 15 technology development projects, all will receive about $300,000 from DOE. Among those projects, Montana State University will seek to develop strategies that use secondary phase materials added to traditional nickel-based cermet electrodes to enhance SOFC anode durability and performance. Redox Power Systems in College Park, Md., will develop critical high-throughput, in-line metrology techniques for evaluating protective coatings for SOFCs.

And at the University of South Carolina, researchers will work to develop and evaluate "novel, lost-cost, durable cathode materials" to support SOFC commercialization."

Output: LG Fuel Cell Systems has been awarded the lion's share of $10.2m in funding from the US Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy, to develop and advance solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) technology. LG has been granted almost $6m to test a 250 kW prototype integrated fuel cell system in Ohio, while 15 other groups, including Redox Power Systems and researchers at University of South Carolina, will receive around $300,000. SOFCs "facilitate high levels of carbon capture without substantial additional cost", according to the Office of Fossil Energy.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
New NQF report considers how to evaluate telehealth initiatives
 Increased investment in telehealth for providers, employers, and payers has become a reality, a forward momentum that is unlikely to be turned around. But even as adoption ticks up and state and national legislatures open the doors for more telehealth use and reimbursement, recent studies have shown mixed results about the efficacy of the technology.

About a year ago, in an effort to standardize the conversation around telemedicine efficacy, the Department of Health and Human Services commissioned the National Quality Forum to create a framework for telehealth measures. Now, after receiving and incorporating public comments, that framework has been published.

"The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) initiated this project, explicitly for the National Quality Forum (NQF) to convene a multistakeholder committee to recommend various methods to measure the use of telehealth as a means of providing care," NQF writes in the report. "The Committee was charged with developing a measurement framework that identifies measures and measure concepts and serves as a conceptual foundation for new measures, where needed, to assess the quality of care provided using telehealth modalities."

NQF looked at 68 existing telehealth studies to break down the different measurement possibilities. The resulting document covers live video telehealth, store and forward, remote monitoring, and health apps. It breaks measures down into four broad domains: access to care; cost and financial impacts; patient, provider, and community experience; and effectiveness, including clinical, operational, and technical effectiveness.

An assessment of telehealth should look at how the technology impacts the need for travel, how it affects the timeliness of care, and what actionable information it creates for caregivers. Other factors to consider include the impact on patient empowerment, care coordination, and the ability of remote monitoring to enhance personalized medicine efforts.

The 81-page report includes more details on the proposed measures, a series of case studies exemplifying the measures, and a discussion of how these measures interact with MACRA and with other NQF projects.

Output: A report from the National Quality Forum has been published. The report, commissioned by the Department of Health and Human Services, was designed to create a framework for telehealth adoption. The NQF examined 68 telehealth studies to establish an efficacy measurement framework, studying access to care; patient, provider and community experiences; the cost and financial impact of telehealth; and on the efficacy of telehealth services, including technical, operational and clinical factors. The telehealth services include live video, store and forward sessions, remote monitoring and the use of healthcare apps. The assessment of telehealth’s efficacy must consider how the technology could improve the need for travel, the speed of care and the provision of useful caregiver data. It also requires the assessment of patient empowerment, the coordination of care, and the improvement of personalized medical treatment.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
China's $24bn online education market set to grow 20% annually
 Analysts believe the best is yet to come for the US$24 billion market, with innovations such as live-streamed lessons enabling teachers to reach out to students in remote areas and smaller cities

Output: China’s online education sector is predicted to grow 20% annually to reach $41bn by 2019. The education market across the world is due to hit $190bn by the same year. The surge is due to the increase in household spending capital, the lack of educational resources and the relaxing of the one-child policy. Online education firms in China have already seen 144m users join by June alone.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Spending on adaptive learning tech triples to $41m since 2013
 Summit Public Schools is banking on personalized learning as the wave of the future. Summit Public Schools

Over the past few years, Bill Gates, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Netflix CEO Reed Hastings have all endorsed a teaching method known as "personalized learning."

It involves students guiding their own lessons with the help of technology, while teachers take on more of a coaching role if problems emerge. For its apparent benefits in getting kids up to speed in reading and math, advocates have claimed it could — and should — become the future of US education.

But personalized learning is so new, many teachers still need to learn how it works.

Starting this academic year, one of the largest school networks using personalized learning, Summit Public Schools, is hosting a residency program to address that skills gap. Across eight locations in California, 24 teachers will spend one year learning the skills to personalize students' education in the future.

"We are modeling teaching through the student learning experience," Adam Carter, Summit's Chief Academic Officer, told Business Insider. This year, approximately 330 schools serving thousands of students in 40 states will use the Summit Learning Program in some capacity, whether online or in-person.

Summit residents will learn how to teach personalized learning in the same way kids learn from it. Summit Public Schools

Four days a week, each resident teacher will be paired with a teacher in a Summit school. They'll spend the remaining school day working on their own. All the while, they'll learn about the strategies that makes personalized learning so appealing, according to leaders like Gates and Zuckerberg: Socratic discussions, small group workshops, and self-guided coursework.

The teachers will also convene in similar groups to learn about the style of teaching they'll be relying on. In that way, Summit hopes to generate a group of teachers that understand personalized learning inside and out because they, themselves, have learned through the method.

"Not only does this experience build expertise," Carter said, "but is also builds empathy for students."

By putting teachers in the same position as students, Summit expects them to develop greater empathy. Summit Public Schools

Summit doesn't expect personalized learning to become the default mode of instruction in all schools, Carter said. Rather, the network wants to continually adapt to what research says is most effective for helping kids learn, even if that means abandoning personalized learning. Those kinds of insights are determined by things like the needs of a given school and its surrounding community.

The current research seems to support Summit's model for now. A study published last year found that kids in 62 schools using personalized education scored higher on reading and math standardized compared to kids learning without personalized instruction. Many who were below-average scorers ended up above-average.

In other countries with successful education programs, the personalized model seems to be a deciding factor in success. Students in Finland and Peru, for example, receive personalized learning through cleverly designed classrooms and mobile devices that allow students to work at their own speed.

Residents in Summit's new program will ultimately earn a California Preliminary Teacher Credential from Summit Public Schools. Summit may also offer teachers a full-time job if they excel in their position.

"The real barriers to personalized learning have always been structural," Carter said. "What we’re trying to do is provide new structures that are more about students and less about how things have always been done. The desire is there. The know how is there and the systems are there. This is possible."

Output: Adaptive learning technology spending by US school districts has tripled to reach $41m since 2013, according to education tech provider Noodle Markets. Of those funds, 9% was spent on the professional development of teachers. Adaptive learning tech provides students with tailored content, increasing personalisation and helping with self-guided learning. The new system does require increased input from educators in terms of time and assignment preparation; however, Summit Public Schools, which serves New Jersey, is hosting a residency programme to train teachers in the skills that they need.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Spending on adaptive learning tech triples to $41m since 2013
 Dive Brief:

A report from Noodle Markets shows school district spending on adaptive learning technology has tripled to $41 million since 2013, with 9% of those funds spent on teacher professional development, according to EdTech: Focus on K-12.

Adaptive learning tech uses algorithms and data to present students with content matched to their current progress, with the idea being that it simplifies personalized and self-paced learning for teachers.

Some schools have developed simplified workarounds to more specific adaptive tech, using Google Forms and Google Sheets to deliver content to students based on how they respond to questions, and success with adaptive tools has also required some schools and districts to strengthen and expand their infrastructure.

Dive Insight:

The last several years have seen a push to provide students with educational experiences personalized to fit their needs and current progress. And while doing so has long proven effective in some private school models, like the Montessori system, it's been much harder to scale to the often-larger class sizes found in many public schools.

That's where adaptive learning tech has stepped in, serving as a means of gathering data on students' progress and presenting them with harder content when they're ready to progress or reviewing content at their current level if they're not at that point yet. Used in combination with a flipped learning model, for example — where the student engages with pedagogical content that would traditionally be delivered in class and engages in discussion or completes assignments or projects during class time — it has the potential to deliver on that promise.

Notably, however, this can require some additional time commitment on the part of educators, as the model can require additional preparation and deeper assignments on top of the extra one-on-one time with students. As a result, administrators will want to keep in mind the potential for teacher burnout and how to address it when considering such a model.

Output: Adaptive learning technology spending by US school districts has tripled to reach $41m since 2013, according to education tech provider Noodle Markets. Of those funds, 9% was spent on the professional development of teachers. Adaptive learning tech provides students with tailored content, increasing personalisation and helping with self-guided learning. The new system does require increased input from educators in terms of time and assignment preparation; however, Summit Public Schools, which serves New Jersey, is hosting a residency programme to train teachers in the skills that they need.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Dentists to poor people: Drop dead
 The women and men who fix your teeth now make more money per capita than doctors . To preserve their high incomes, dentists have historically refused to participate in Medicare because of low reimbursements, and ditto for Medicaid. Now dentists are resolutely — some would say fanatically — opposing efforts to let dental hygienists and dental therapists deliver prophylactic care to children, the elderly, and to poor and underserved regions in America.

Dentists, who seem like perfectly nice people when you meet them at after-school events or at the grocery store, are carving out a bizarre public persona that is a mixture of Simon Legree, Snidely Whiplash, and Dr. Evil.

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The shocking outcome of dentists’ apparent indifference to the less fortunate came in 2007, when 12-year old Deamonte Driver died of an oral infection in Maryland’s affluent Prince George’s County. How unpleasant for the nation’s lawmakers to read the next day’s Washington Post headline: “For Want of a Dentist: Prince George’s Boy Dies After Bacteria from Tooth Spread to Brain.”

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Staff writer Mary Otto wrote that story, and later left the paper to research her just-published book “Teeth: The Story of Beauty, Inequality, and the Struggle for Oral Health in America.” It’s an ungainly title, and it’s a subject that probably feels as foreign to you as it does to me. I bet that most Globe readers brush regularly and make sure their children show up for dental appointments, terrifying though they may be.

Otto’s book is about the other one-third of the country: the uninsured elderly (Medicare doesn’t cover dental check-ups), the tens of millions of children underserved by Medicaid (two-thirds of dentists don’t accept Medicaid patients), and the residents of the 400-plus rural counties that have no dentist at all.

Some dentists and public health types have a solution for these problems: They want to license lower-paid hygienists and dental therapists, so-called “mid-level” practitioners, to deliver baseline care to the needy. Dental associations have been fighting against them tooth and claw, forever.

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Earlier this summer, The Washington Post compared the American Dental Association to the National Rifle Association in its relentless, single-issue attack on state legislators who support mid-level care. The ADA worked hard (and unsuccessfully) to scuttle a plan to let dental therapists treat Alaska Native tribes. “They went after these Alaskan therapists like they were ISIS,” dentist Jack Dillenberg told the Post. “It was embarrassing.”

A similar scenario is playing out in Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Dental Society is opposing Senator Harriette Chandler’s Senate bill 1169, which seeks to allow dental therapists to treat patients under the “general supervision” of a dentist, after 500 hours of training. The MDS is promoting a more restrictive bill that imposes limits on where therapists can practice, and on how they can be reimbursed.

“The battle going on in Massachusetts mirrors the battle going on in other states across the country,” says Otto, who will be speaking at the Harvard Dental School on Sept. 12, the same day that Chandler’s bill is scheduled for a joint hearing on Beacon Hill.

Last month the Boston City Council urged the Legislature to pass the Chandler bill. “More than 530,000 people in Massachusetts live in areas with a shortage of dentists,” Jamaica Plain councilor Matt O’Malley said in an accompanying statement. “Boston residents deserve better, and these mid-level providers can help bring cost-effective dental care to children, seniors, and people with disabilities currently going without it.”

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Alex Beam’s column appears regularly in the Globe. Follow him on Twitter @imalexbeamyrnot.

Output: The perception of dental industry providers is negative and likely to continue being so with the antagonism to providing better access to oral care. Dentists make more money per capita than doctors but have steadfastly refused to become Medicare providers due to low reimbursement rates. The main issue at present is the opposition to dental hygienists and dental therapists being licensed by states to deliver prophylactic care to children, the elderly, and to the poor, as well as to underserviced areas across the US. These “mid-level” practitioners could alleviate the coverage crisis and provide remote areas with cost-effective access to care, but dental associations across the US have posed significant opposition to the move.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Facebook VR kits sent to all Arkansas public high schools
 Virtual Reality

All Arkansas Public High Schools to Receive Facebook VR Kits

Facebook has decided to expand an existing partnership with the Arkansas Department of Education and now plans to bring virtual reality (VR) education to every public high school in the state.

The original Arkansas Facebook and Techstart Partnership was announced earlier this year and entailed donating 500 VR kits to about 250 schools, educational co-ops and STEM education centers. The classroom VR kits include an Oculus Rift, touch controller, 30 VR viewers and other equipment necessary to participate in the Techstart program — which combines virtual reality instruction, curriculum support and professional development for educators to give students access to high quality computer science and VR education.

The Oculus Rift. Image: Oculus.

According to a state department news release, around 400 kits were distributed to date. Now, the company will send a kit to all public high schools in Arkansas (totalling around 360 schools).

“We are appreciative to Facebook for its continued efforts to generate excitement for STEM fields in Arkansas high schools,” said Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson. “Facebook’s generous donation will provide Arkansas’ students with an exciting learning platform that will allow them to have fun while sharpening their computer science skills and exploring STEM careers. Students who utilize this incredible platform will be well-positioned to succeed in our increasingly technology driven economy.”

The long-term vision of Facebook’s Techstart program is to address the employment gap currently facing the technology industry, or the estimated one million programming jobs that will be open by 2020.

To learn more, visit the program site.

Output: Facebook will build on its partnership with the Arkansas Department of Education by offering virtual reality (VR) educational facilities to every Arkansas public high school. Facebook has already donated 400 virtual reality kits to around 250 schools. The kits include Oculus Rift headsets, controllers, computers and other necessary equipment for the proprietary programme. "Facebook’s generous donation will provide Arkansas’ students with an exciting learning platform that will allow them to have fun while sharpening their computer science skills and exploring STEM careers", said Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Cruise industry fails to deliver on cleaner ships
 The world’s cruise ships have done virtually nothing to reduce their pollution over the past year, with some still emitting as much particulate matter as 1m cars a day, a report says.

The annual survey of 63 ships, conducted by the German environment group Nabu, refused to recommend a single one for adequately reducing its environmental impact in 2017.

It accused the industry of having “contempt” for the health of its customers, saying companies had reneged on promises to clean up their fleets.

“Last year the sector claimed 23 ships would be operating with soot filters,” said Nabu’s Dietmar Oeliger. “The truth is not a single filter is working at present.”

The report’s authors say a mid-size cruise ship’s diesel engine can use 150 tonnes of fuel each day, which would emit as much particulate as one million cars. In December, the Australian government passed a regulation forcing cruise ships in Sydney harbour to use low-sulphur fuel, after residents complained emissions were negatively affecting their health.

The New South Wales Environmental Protection Agency had earlier warned that docked cruise ships posed a health risk to those who lived near them.

“Many cruise ships emit high levels of fine particles and sulfur dioxide, both of which can be harmful to human health,” it said.

Nabu is calling on all cruise ships worldwide to ban their use of heavy fuel and to install particulate filters on all ships.

However, it said the German companies Hapag-Lloyd and TUI were the only ones to have taken any steps over the past year.

“Hapag-Lloyd and TUI share the top position due to the installation of nitrogen oxide catalysts, a small but important step towards cleaner ships,” the report said.

Industry leaders Costa, MSC and Royal Carribbean were all handed fail grades, along with the British-American company Cunard, which owns the Queen Mary 2.

The world’s largest cruise ship, Royal Carribbean’s Harmony of the Seas, which can carry 6,3000 passengers, came equal last.

“No company comes recommended in Nabu’s 2017 cruise ship rankings, which show just how little progress companies have made towards cutting pollution,” the group said in a statement.

“The cruise industry’s contempt for the health of its customers and port citizens is underlined by the fact that not one company responded to a simple Q&A supplied by Nabu.”

In March last year a London residents’ group said the pollution from cruise liners could prevent the city meeting its EU legal limits on noxious emissions.

The Brussels-based Transport and Environment group estimates pollution from international shipping caused “approximately 50,000 premature deaths per year in Europe”.

“Through chemical reactions in the air, SO2 and NOx is converted into fine particles, sulphate and nitrate aerosols,” it said. “Tiny airborne particles are linked to premature deaths. The particles get into the lungs and are small enough to pass through tissues and enter the blood.”

Output: German environmental group Nabu accused the cruise industry of reneging and "having contempt” for customer health and those living near ports, after ships failed to adequately reduce their environmental impact over the past year. In the group’s survey of 63 ships, none made the recommend list and Costa, MSC and Royal Carribbean and Cunard were all “failed”, as some mid-sized diesel ships continue to emit particulate matter equivalent to that of one million cars each day. Promised soot filters on 23 ships were still missing and only Germany’s Hapag-Lloyd and TUI took steps toward cleaner ships, installing nitrogen oxide catalysts.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Wind turbine capacity factors rose 12% since 1993
 This article first appeared on the BNEF mobile app and the Bloomberg Terminal.

Improving wind turbine performance delivers cheaper power

Average capacity factors now around 37%, up from 25% in 1993

Improving onshore wind capacity factors

Source: Bloomberg New Energy Finance

The cost of energy from onshore wind has been tumbling in recent years, in large part due to ever-improving wind turbine designs. Average capacity factors have increased from 25% in 1993 to 37% in 2017. Turbines are getting bigger too, with median capacity increasing from 2MW in 2010 to 2.4MW today. The chart shows this inexorable march, with each dot representing a wind project. Dot size indicates generating capacity and its position on the y-axis its capacity factor. Results were produced from over 2,000 runs of the BNEF Wind Capacity Factor Tool, recently re-published with 87 new turbine specifications.

Clients can access the full report and tool here.

BNEF Shorts are research excerpts available only on the BNEF mobile app and the Bloomberg Terminal, highlighting key findings from our reports. If you would like to learn more about our services, please contact us.

Output: The average capacity factors of onshore wind turbines grew from 25% in 1993 to 37% this year as a result of incremental design improvements, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Median capacity has also risen from 2 MW to 2.4 MW during the past seven years, as a result of the increasing size of the turbines, BNEF said.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
H2O-based lithium-ion batteries reduce explosion risk
 Water-in-salt electrolyte. Credit: Jhi Scott, ARL Photographer

Researchers at the University of Maryland and the U.S. Army Research Laboratory have developed for the first time a lithium-ion battery that uses a water-salt solution as its electrolyte and reaches the 4.0 volt mark desired for household electronics, such as laptop computers, without the fire and explosive risks associated with some commercially available non-aqueous lithium-ion batteries. Their work appears September 6 in Joule.

"In the past, if you wanted high energy, you would choose a non-aqueous lithium-ion battery, but you would have to compromise on safety. If you preferred safety, you could use an aqueous battery such as nickel/metal hydride, but you would have to settle for lower energy," says co-senior author Kang Xu, a lab fellow at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory specializing in electrochemistry and materials science. "Now, we are showing that you can simultaneously have access to both high energy and high safety."

The research follows a 2015 study in Science that produced a similar 3.0 volt battery with an aqueous electrolyte but was stymied from achieving higher voltages by the so-called "cathodic challenge," in which one end of the battery, made from either graphite or lithium metal, is degraded by the aqueous electrolyte. To solve this problem and make the leap from three volts to four, the first author, University of Maryland assistant research scientist Chongyin Yang, designed a new gel polymer electrolyte coating that can be applied to the graphite or lithium anode. The video shows how an interphase precursor water in salt GPE demonstrates extremely low reactivity with lithium metal. Credit: Yang et al.

This hydrophobic coating expels water molecules from the vicinity of the electrode surface and then, upon charging for the first time, decomposes and forms a stable interphase—a thin mixture of breakdown products that separates the solid anode from the liquid electrolyte. This interphase, inspired by a layer generated within non-aqueous batteries, protects the anode from debilitating side reactions, allowing the battery to use desirable anode materials, such as graphite or lithium metal, and achieve better energy density and cycling ability.

"The key innovation here is making the right gel that can block water contact with the anode so that the water doesn't decompose and can also form the right interphase to support high battery performance," says co-senior author Chunsheng Wang, Professor of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Maryland's A. James Clark School of Engineering.

Water-in-salt gel electrolyte. Credit: Jhi Scott, ARL Photographer

The addition of the gel coating also boosts the safety advantages of the new battery when compared to standard non-aqueous lithium-ion batteries and boosts the energy density when compared to any other proposed aqueous lithium-ion batteries. All aqueous lithium-ion batteries benefit from the inflammability of water-based electrolytes as opposed to the highly flammable organic solvents used in their non-aqueous counterparts. Unique to this one, however, is that even when the interphase layer is damaged (if the battery casing were punctured, for instance), it reacts slowly with the lithium or lithiated graphite anode, preventing the smoking, fire, or explosion that could otherwise occur if a damaged battery brought the metal into direct contact with the electrolyte. This video shows how when punctured repeatedly with a nail, a four-volt aqueous lithium-ion battery initially maintains its voltage, and no fire, smoke, or explosion occurs. This contrasts with the instantaneous short-circuit and explosive risk of an analogous non-aqueous battery. Credit: Yang et al.

Though the power and energy density of the new battery are suitable for commercial applications currently served by more hazardous non-aqueous batteries, certain improvements would make it even more competitive. In particular, the researchers would like to increase the number of full-performance cycles that the battery can complete and to reduce material expenses where possible. "Right now, we are talking about 50-100 cycles, but to compare with organic electrolyte batteries, we want to get to 500 or more," Wang says.

The researchers also note that the electrochemical manipulations behind the jump to four volts have importance within battery technology and beyond. "This is the first time that we are able to stabilize really reactive anodes like graphite and lithium in aqueous media," says Xu. "This opens a broad window into many different topics in electrochemistry, including sodium-ion batteries, lithium-sulfur batteries, multiple ion chemistries involving zinc and magnesium, or even electroplating and electrochemical synthesis; we just have not fully explored them yet."

Output: A research team from the University of Maryland and the US Army Research Laboratory have created a lithium-ion battery that utilises water-salt electrolyte solution that can hit 4 volts without risk of explosion. Non-aqueous lithium-ion batteries provide high energy but runs the risk of compromising safety. The researchers used a gel polymer electrolyte coating for the graphite or lithium anodes in its batteries, allowing for slower reactions should damage occur, preventing issues such as fire and explosive reactions.


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Ruling on UK code breach sees Asda paying back suppliers
 Asda has been forced to pay back hundreds of thousands of pounds to dozens of suppliers after breaching an industry code governing fair dealing.

The company, named as the worst supermarket in its treatment of suppliers earlier this year, was found to have demanded up front payments worth up to a quarter of the value of annual sales of particular products in order for suppliers to retain their place on the shelf.

Some of those who refused to make these payments, which were greater than those agreed in suppliers’ contracts, were given notice that they would be ousted within as little as four to eight weeks, according to the industry watchdog.

Other changes including cost price reductions were also demanded from suppliers with as little as 24 hours notice under the group’s project renewal plan, designed in partnership with the Bain & Company consultancy to save costs and help cut prices for shoppers.

The demands, reported by the Guardian last year, were in breach of the grocery supply code of practice – government-backed regulations that can attract a fine of up to 1% of UK turnover.

In a “code clarification” document published this week, the Groceries Code Adjudicator (GCA), said it had not decided to launch a formal investigation into Asda’s behaviour or issue a fine.

However the regulator, which oversees a government-backed industry code of practice, said a review had found that the Walmart-owned chain had breached “the overarching principle of fair dealing” in the code with conversations “designed to carry an implication of detriment if any supplier declined to agree” to its demands.

The watchdog said there was no need to launch an investigation. Asda had “proactively engaged with suppliers to rectify any lump sum arrangements, which should not have been made” and put further safeguards in place to prevent any further breaches.

The GCA report added that the project renewal strategy had been designed by a consultancy commissioned by Asda to achieve cost savings, and it was clear that “the role of the third party consultants was closely bound up with the issues raised”, as they had been able to achieve bonuses based on the amount of money they were able to save Asda.

The supermarket said project renewal, launched in late 2015 under former chief executive Andy Clarke, had been Asda-led with support from Bain.

Asda’s current chief executive, Sean Clarke, said: “Our mission is to save customers money through low prices by always securing the lowest possible costs built on a foundation of strong, trusted partnerships with our suppliers and absolutely in line with the groceries supply code of practice (Gscop).

“The matter raised in the GCA’s case study occurred over a year ago and since then we have significantly strengthened our Gscop compliance programme. We have engaged openly and transparently with the GCA to support her enquiries in keeping with her collaborative approach.”

Bain said in a statement: “As per our company policy, we do not speak publicly about who may or may not be our client.”

Output: Walmart-owned Asda is to pay hundreds of thousands of pounds back to suppliers, after breaching the grocery supply code of practice that governs fair dealing. UK industry regulator, the Groceries Code Adjudicator, found Adsa charged disproportionate upfront fees, not necessarily those agreed in supplier contracts, and ousted some suppliers at short notice if they refused to oblige. It also made last-minute demands for cuts in cost prices on the back of its project renewal plan designed to cut costs, which it developed with consultancy firm Bain & Company. The grocer avoided both a fine and any formal investigation.


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Sizmek completes takeover of Rocket Fuel
 Sizmek’s proposed takeover of Rocket Fuel has been given the all-clear following the closure of the publicly-listed adtech outfit’s opportunity to seek alternative offers, with Mark Grether named chief executive officer.

The merger deal appears to have cleared recent legal objections from parties questioning the value it delivers to shareholders / SIzmek

In a statement announcing the closure of the deal Grether, claimed the renewed focus of the pair would see it combine data enablement, creative optimization and media execution.

“Sizmek’s unique ability to centralize data components in one place, across the entirety of the media plan, combined with Rocket Fuel’s AI-enabled decisioning provides our clients with robust data on the campaign, the consumer, the context, the creative, and the cost,” he added.

Prior to taking the reins at Sizmek, Grether served as its executive chairman after being appointed to the role in February, he was formerly one of the cofounders of WPP’s adtech hub Xaxis, holding the role of chief operating officer while there.

As Grether steps into the new role of president and chief executive officer of Sizmek, Rocket Fuel’s chief Randy Wootton will assume the role special advisor working with both sets of teams throughout the transition period.

The proposed takeover was initially announced in July, and approved by Rocket Fuel's board of director, with the consideration period (a stipulation in the deal) initially slated to close by the end of August, although this was later extended until September 5.

The terms of the deal initially prompted an investigation by law firm Levi & Korsinsky as to whether such a transaction (which saw Vector Capital-backed Sizmek offer $2.60 per share for Rocket Fuel and valued the company at $145m) delivered value for shareholders, although this objection appears to have been resolved.

Needham & Company, LLC served as financial advisor to Rocket Fuel during the process, with Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, Professional Corporation as its legal advisor during the process. Meanwhile, Kirkland & Ellis LLP acted as Sizmek’s legal advisor.

At the time of the initial announcement, the two companies stated: "The proposed combination with Sizmek brings Rocket Fuel's media optimization and industry leading AI-enabled decisioning to Sizmek's omni-channel creative optimization and data activation platform, marking the next logical step in marketing automation."

With over 20,000 advertisers across 3,600 agencies, in over 70 countries, the combined entity will hope to pose as a preferred alternative to the established market leaders – a prospect that has been welcomed among some media buyers.

Commenting on the closure of the deal, Erica Schmidt, Cadreon, managing director, North America, and executive vice president, said: “We are constantly prospecting new ways to reach and impact key audiences.

“The integration of Sizmek and Rocket Fuel will create enhanced product offerings and enable us to truly optimize campaign performance.”

Rocket Fuel was one of the early adtech outfits to trade publicly, listing on the Nasdaq in 2013, and at its heights was valued at $2bn. Although it soon ran into troubles after being embroiled in a high profile ‘bot fraud’ media scandal, which negatively affected its share price, a blow it found difficult to recover from, as indicated by its axing of 11% of its headcount at the start of the year.

This was further negatively impacted with Wall Street investors' dulled enthusiasm for adtech stock, which also enhanced difficulties with such adtech outfits reducing their reliance on I/O-based revenue.

Sizmek, which was formerly listed on the Nasdaq, was itself purchased for $122m by Vector Capital a little over a year ago, in what was one of the early moves in a relatively recent trend of private equity players making moves in the ongoing mergers and acquisitions in adtech.

Output: Texas-based firm Sizmek has completed its acquisition of adtech company Rocket Fuel, according to newly-named CEO Mark Grether. The deal, first announced in July, was subject to investigation over whether it offered shareholders value for money. The integrated company now boasts 20,000 advertisers across 3,600 agencies in more than 70 countries, and will see Rocket Fuel chief Randy Wootton appointed as special advisor.


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Machine learning used to combat pipeline leaks
 The Keystone pipeline that would move crude oil from Canada through the U.S. to a refinery in Texas has been controversial, but it would only be a fraction of the more than two million miles of pipelines moving oil and gas around the country. Many existing and proposed pipelines spark the same concerns from people as Keystone: the potential for leaks, especially those that go undetected for long periods of time.

Existing detection systems mostly spot large problems, often visually by inspectors walking or flying over a pipeline. Internal systems commonly used in the oil and gas industry rely on computational pipeline modeling, which searches for anomalies in flow and pressure. That works well for large leaks, but falls short in finding smaller ones, of up to one percent of pipeline flow, says Maria Araujo, a manager in the Intelligent Systems Division of the Southwest Research Institute.

Even such a small percentage adds up quickly. She notes that one percent of the flow of the Keystone pipeline is in the neighborhood of 8,000 gallons per day. To improve the efficiency of detection systems, Araujo leads a team taking the technology to the next level using sensors, artificial intelligence, and deep learning. She came to the problem of leak detection while working with machine learning for autonomously driven vehicles.

Sensors, cameras and hardware can be fitted to drones for inspection flyovers. Image: Southwest Research Institute

“We’re not adapting technology,” she says. “We’re using existing technology as building blocks. The problem is very different. With cars, you’re looking for objects. Here, you look for liquids. Gasoline and diesel are transparent to the human eye. How do you differentiate between substances?”

Actually, the system looks for a variety of liquids. To begin tackling the challenge, the SWRI team tested four optical sensors: thermal, optical, hyperspectral and short wave infrared. They eliminated hyperspectral and short wave infrared, keeping off-the-shelf thermal and optical systems.

There’s nothing unusual about using sensors for detecting leaks, but Araujo wanted to improve accuracy. So the SWRI team set out to adapt machine learning techniques, ultimately producing a multiplatform dubbed SLED, Smart Leak Detection System, that uses new algorithms to process images and identify, confirm or reject potential problems. Using feature extraction and classifier training methods, they taught computers to identify unique features across a wide range of environmental conditions.

“These algorithms thrive on lots of data,” says Araujo. The team produced and collected thousands of images of data such as gasoline, diesel fuel, mineral oil, crude oil and water on various surfaces, including grass, gravel, dirt and hard surfaces such as concrete. The images were shot from numerous angles and under varying conditions from full sunlight to clouds and darkness. “It’s hard to operate under different environmental conditions,” she adds. “We found if you train [the system] under certain conditions, it gets tripped up in others, especially shading. Being able to work under shading and different temperatures was a big challenge in modifying algorithms.”

The ability of the system to provide a reliable fingerprint of small leaks as well as identify non-leak situations greatly increases its accuracy. That’s important because one of the biggest problems in the industry is a false alarm, says Araujo. Pipelines wind their way across long and often remote or underground rights of way. Sending work crews to remote areas and shutting a pipeline down costs a significant amount of money, and operators can dismiss alarms if there were previous false alerts, she says.

SWRI further upgraded the system using deep-learning techniques. The team developed a deep convolutional neural network to process the tremendous amount of data to identify the hazardous liquids. Such techniques have been impractical in most cases, but advances and improvements in multi-core processing hardware are making it more common, say researchers. The final product is a fully autonomous system that can be used without human oversight, says Araujo.

It can be fitted to pumping station platforms along pipeline routes, often a high-risk location because of the number of valves and equipment that can break. The SWRI team also has installed and successfully tested the system on drones that can fly over long reaches of a pipeline.

“We simulated pipeline leaks with a high degree of replication to the real world,” she says. The work was done at SWRI’s Forth Worth, TX, campus, using existing piping and systems. The initial goal was to identify the difference between water and hazardous liquids, but it exceeded expectations by differentiating between gasoline, crude oil, mineral oil and diesel, as well as water.

Araujo now is working to adapt the technology to detect pipeline methane leaks in a program with the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory. The team is using infrared cameras to detect the spectral response of the gas. The deep-learning algorithm also must be reworked, a task she says is much more than an adaptation.

“This is a very significant ‘tweak’,” she says. “Now you are trying to detect a plume, something that shifts with the wind. It is a different problem.”

The goal is to produce an automated small-scale gaseous leak-detection system along the entire natural gas supply chain, including extraction, storage, distribution and transportation.

Output: Researchers from the Intelligent Systems Division of the Southwest Research Institute have trained artificial intelligence systems to recognise liquids involved in pipeline leaks. Using thermal and optical sensors, the Smart Leak Detection System (SLED) applies algorithms to detect and predict issues. The system can be used without human intervention, and can be fitted to pumping station platforms and drones, avoiding high-risk human monitoring.