Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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VFS Global to launch MOOC with AI-powered learning paths
 The new venture claims to break new ground in the MOOC sector, by using artificial intelligence to personalise students’ learning path.

VFS provide “identity management” for governments and immigration services around the world. Its move into the MOOC market comes amid frustrations connected to identifying students in online-only environments.

Alongside VFS’s provision of security techniques and technologies, they offer physical bases around the world. These are currently utilised for visa processing, but will be used for final examinations and possible classroom teaching in the new venture.

“I was particularly interested in their claim that they can identify strengths and weaknesses of individual learners”

Oxademy hope to address the lack of personal contact and personalisation that can be a weakness for massive open online courses.

Its AI technology aims to adapt content to the students’ needs, by automatically understanding the areas individuals are struggling with. For example, when a student is taking longer than average to read a passage of text, the AI will amend the future course content immediately.

Founder and CEO of Oxademy Syed Shahzad said by adopting technological leaps VFS-Oxademy will increase the effectiveness of MOOC learning.

“We are bringing learning to people instead of people to learning and it’s done by embracing the latest technologies available in digital human interaction and by using a huge amount of data,” he said.

Speaking to The PIE News, founder of MoocLab, an online learning reviews website, Carolyn McIntyre said the innovations VFS-Oxademy claim to bring to the MOOC sector could prove to be a key development.

“I was particularly interested in their claim that they can identify strengths and weaknesses of individual learners, and base content on those specific strengths and weaknesses,” she said. “If that goes as deep as the content within an individual course then that becomes very interesting.”

VFS-Oxademy will also provide an app, which they say will prompt students outside of learning hours.

The new VFS-Oxademy will offer postgraduate courses, such as MBAs or master’s of Science in Organisational Leadership, as well as executive education programs, such as the Global Leadership Program.

These will be available in both fully online formats, and blended courses, which will involve some classroom sessions alongside online teaching.

VFS-Oxademy said its AI and cloud technology will also be used outside of direct learning, to allow students to undertake work placements without travelling long distances.

OX360 will facilitate ‘virtual work placements’, which the company said “widens the pool from which companies can recruit work placements”.

VFS-Oxademy hope to partner with HEIs across the globe to offer affiliated courses online.

Oxademy currently has links with Kazan Federal University in Russia, where it provides modules for the MBA program; and with Northwood University in the US.

Output: Identity management provider VFS Global will launch a massive online open course which uses artificial intelligence to personalise students' learning paths. Developed in partnership with UK edtech start-up Oxademy, the course tailors its content to individual students by identifying areas they struggle with. The companies will also offer cloud-based technology that enables students to undertake work placements without travelling long distances.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Low Medicaid rates limit beneficiaries' access to assisted living facilities
 More than 700,000 elderly and disabled Americans receive health care in residential care communities, such as assisted living facilities. As the population ages, this number will grow. A new study by RTI International found that low Medicaid payment rates for services in assisted living and similar settings discourage residential care providers from serving Medicaid beneficiaries, which limits their access to community-based residential care.

The study found that some residential care settings limit the number of Medicaid residents they serve or decrease operating expenses in ways that may also reduce quality of care.

"Medicaid payment rates only cover services in residential care settings; they do not cover room and board," said Michael Lepore, Ph.D., senior health policy and health services researcher at RTI and lead author of the study. "One of the access barriers is the difficulty that Medicaid beneficiaries have paying for room and board in residential care settings because of their low incomes. This situation dissuades residential care providers from serving Medicaid beneficiaries."

Residential care settings are community-based homes or facilities that offer room, board and care services, the most popular being assisted living. Compared to nursing homes, these settings often are less institutional and are often the preferred setting. If Medicaid beneficiaries with long-term service and support needs cannot access residential care settings, then nursing homes may be their only option, ultimately costing taxpayers more money because Medicaid payment rates for nursing homes are higher.

The study, published in the Journal of Housing for the Elderly, found barriers that influence Medicaid beneficiaries' access to state-licensed residential care include Medicaid reimbursement rates for services, the supply of Medicaid-certified residential care settings and beds, and policies that affect room and board costs for Medicaid beneficiaries.

Researchers examined Medicaid policies in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, interviewed subject-matter experts, and conducted four state case studies informed by reviews of state policies and stakeholder interviews.

"States need to ensure their Medicaid rates for residential care services are sufficient to maintain an adequate supply of these settings and beds available to Medicaid beneficiaries, while also safeguarding quality of care and taxpayer resources," Lepore said. "Higher Medicaid rates may encourage more residential care settings to serve Medicaid beneficiaries, which may help reduce nursing home use by older adults and people with disabilities and potentially reduce Medicaid spending on long-term services and supports."

More information: Michael Lepore et al, Medicaid Beneficiaries' Access to Residential Care Settings, Journal of Housing For the Elderly (2017). DOI: 10.1080/02763893.2017.1335669

Provided by RTI International

Output: More than 700,000 elderly and disabled Americans receive health care in residential care communities, such as assisted living facilities. As the population ages, this number will grow. A new study by RTI International found that low Medicaid payment rates for services in assisted living and similar settings discourage residential care providers from serving Medicaid beneficiaries, which limits their access to community-based residential care.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Commonwealth Bank faces world’s first climate disclosure lawsuit
 The embattled Commonwealth Bank is being sued by shareholders for what they say is a failure to properly disclose the risks to the business posed by climate change.

The case will be the first anywhere in the world to test in court how companies are required to disclose climate change-related risks in their annual reports, and follows calls by shareholders, regulators and central banks around the world for greater clarity.

The papers were filed on Tuesday, after which the federal court will decide how the case should proceed.

The claim, brought by lawyers at Environmental Justice Australia on behalf of Commonwealth Bank shareholders Guy and Kim Abrahams, says the bank’s 2016 directors’ report did not adequately inform investors of climate change risks.

It also seeks an injunction to stop the bank making the same omissions in future annual reports.

The move comes six months after the Australian financial regulator warned climate change poses a material risk to the entire financial system, and called for companies to report on climate change-related risks as financial risks.

The sorts of risks the Commonwealth Bank might face as a result of climate change are diverse, said David Barnden, a lawyer at Environmental Justice Australia.

“CBA has exposure to the Australian economy in general. We could be talking about anything from extractive projects to the housing market, which might face risks from sea level rise,” Barnden said.

Reputational risks for the bank as the economy moves away from fossil fuels could also be significant, Barnden said, with the shareholders raising concerns about the bank’s position on funding Adani’s proposed Carmichael coalmine and associated infrastructure.

“There is an aspect of the claim that looks at the reputational and financial risks the Carmichael mine might pose to the bank,” Barnden said. “We say that CBA ought to have known of those risks and should tell investors what its plans are with respect to the mine and if it is considering financially supporting the mine.”

Another part of the claim focuses on the Commonwealth Bank not disclosing any climate-related risks as major or material risks. “When the bank talks about major or material risks to the bank, we say it should be talking about climate change,” said Banden.

In February, Geoff Summerhayes from the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, gave a speech saying that business needed to stop reporting on climate change as a purely ethical or environmental issue and begin seeing it as a financial problem. He said: “Like all risks, it is better they are explicitly considered and managed as appropriate, rather than simply ignored or neglected.”

And in June, the G20’s Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), led by Bank of England governor Mark Carney and former mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg, recommended banks disclose lending to companies with carbon-related risks.

The report recommended banks and other organisations include climate-related risks in their audited annual financial statements.

The proposals were supported by nearly 400 institutional investors controlling US$22tn in funds.

Emma Herd, chief executive of the Investor Group on Climate Change in Australia, said putting climate-related risk into the heart of financial reporting means it is treated very differently by the company.

“It means that you have a different level of internal governance processes, a higher degree of audit and scrutiny and you report the information in a much more robust and detailed way,” she said. “It’s stepping it up a notch in terms of how seriously companies treat the data.”

Herd said a lot of companies – not just banks – would be watching the case for potential implications any decision might have for their reporting requirements.

“For banks as well as all companies, this is an area that is moving very quickly,” Herd said. “And certainly from the investor perspective the bar keeps getting raised in terms of what is considered adequate disclosure in terms of climate-related financial risk.”

The case focuses on sections 297 and 299A of the Corporations Act. Section 297 says annual financial statements must present a “true and fair view” of the financial position and performance of the company. Section 299A says the financial report must contain enough information to allow people to make an informed assessment of the company’s financial position, business strategies and future prospects.

Guy Abrahams, one of the claimants and a chief executive of not-for-profit Climarte Inc, said in a statement: “We bought Commonwealth Bank shares more than 20 years ago as an investment in our children’s future.

“We are deeply concerned about the serious risks climate change poses to the environment and society. The bank should tell investors about the risks climate change will have on its business.”

The Commonwealth Bank has been contacted for comment.

Output: Australia’s Commonwealth Bank is being sued by shareholders over an alleged failure to disclose its exposure to climate change-related risks. The case, brought on behalf of shareholders Guy and Kim Abrahams by lawyers at Environmental Justice Australia, will be the first in the world to test the requirement for such disclosure in a court of law. It will argue that the bank’s 2016 directors’ report failed to provide adequate information about the exposure and will also seek an injunction to prevent similar omissions from future reports.


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Caltech develops effective process for CO2 to renewable fuels
 A team of chemists have discovered a new way to produce carbon-based liquid fuels from CO 2 .

The new additive, identified by a team of scientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), selectively converts CO 2  fuels containing multiple carbon atoms, a step towards producing renewable liquid fuels which are not derived from coal or oil.

"The results were quite shocking," says Jonas Peters, Bren Professor of Chemistry at Caltech and director of the Resnick Sustainability Institute, who jointly led the research in collaboration with Theodor Agapie, professor of chemistry at Caltech. "Usually, in these types of reactions with CO 2 , you see a lot of by-products like methane and hydrogen. In this case, the reaction was highly selective for the more desirable fuels that contain multiple carbons -- such as ethylene, ethanol, and propanol. We saw an 80 percent conversion to these multi-carbon fuel products, with only 20 percent or so going into hydrogen and methane."

Postdoctoral scholars Ruud Kortlever and Hsiang-Yun Chen and former postdoc Zhiji Han, carried out the research under the supervision of Peters and Agapie. The results have been published in ACS Central Science.

To find the perfect combination for making multicarbon fuels, the team experimented with a mix of different chemicals in the lab. They used an aqueous solution and a copper electrode, which served as both a catalyst and source of energy in place of the sun. The group added CO 2 to an aqueous solution and a copper electrode, as well as a class of organic molecules called N-substituted arylpyridiniums, which formed a very thin deposit on the electrode. This film, dramatically improved the fuel-making reaction, selectively producing the desirable chemicals ethanol, ethylene, and propanol.

"It's easy to make hydrogen under these conditions, so usually we see a lot of it," says Agapie. "But we want to disfavor the hydrogen production and favor high-energy density liquid fuels with carbon-carbon bonds, which is exactly what we get in our experiments."

The next step is for the team to determine how the additives enhanced the reaction. They also plan to test different additives, to see if they can further improve the selectivity for the desired fuels.

Ultimately, the team hope that the information they’re gaining could contribute towards the development of alternative fuels made from sunlight, CO 2 and water, instead of oil.

"Nature has stored solar energy in the form of oil over a long period of earth history via a process that takes millions of years," says Peters. "Chemists would like to figure out how to do this much faster."

Output: Scientists from the California Institute of Technology have developed a method to selectively produce carbon-based fuels from CO2, according to ACS Central Science. The teams added CO2 to an aqueous solution and a copper electrode, as well as organic molecules called N-substituted arylpyridiniums. This created a thin deposit on the electrode, a film which "dramatically improved" the reaction to create fuel, and selectively produced 80% ethanol, ethylene and propanol, and 20% hydrogen and methane. The results are a step towards renewable liquid fuels.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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YouTube lets users send direct message videos from within the app
 YouTube announced a new addition to its app to help make it easier to share videos. You’ll now be able to direct message any videos on the site to friends and family through private conversations.

Prior to the update, users would have to send videos to another person by copying and pasting the link into another messaging platform. Starting Monday, August 7, you can send and receive videos by sending them directly to someone. You can also carry on a conversation, send emojis, reply with another video, and invite others to join in on the group chat.

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All your existing conversations can be accessed in a new tab called “Shared” on the YouTube mobile app. To start using it, you’ll have to invite your friends from your contacts via SMS or by sending an invitation link through a social network, email, or messaging app.

The format looks a lot like Instagram’s direct message feature. If there’s a video you’d like to send, simply tap on the arrow below the video and a list of contacts will show up. You can either send it directly to one person or select multiple people — up to 30 — to create a group chat. You can also include a message before sending it in the text box available underneath the list of people you’re sending it to.

The new feature is similar to Google Messenger — later rebranded as Android Messages. The app allows you to communicate with anyone by using SMS and MMS, among others. You can send group texts along with pictures, audio messages, and videos without having to leave to exit the app.

The goal with YouTube’s new feature is apparent — keep users watching videos and engaging on the platform. Rather than having to switch back and forth between apps only to send videos, the sharing option lets you send an unlimited amount to all your friends by tapping a button. It might actually keep you on the app longer than planned.

The company has been testing the feature since last year, and rolled out the beta version to users in Canada this past January. YouTube’s blog post explains that after receiving feedback it performed further tweaks before releasing the final product. The YouTube update is gradually rolling out globally on Android and iOS.

Editors' Recommendations

Output: A YouTube update lets users send videos to family and friends directly from within the mobile app. People used to have to send a video by copying and pasting the link into another messaging platform. Now users can send and receive videos by direct message, meaning they can also have a conversation, reply with another video and invite others to join a group chat. Conversations can be accessed in the new Shared tab on the YouTube app.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Faraday Future signs lease for California factory to build EV
 Faraday Future is running on fumes. But it’s still running.

The Gardena-based luxury electric car start-up raised $14 million in emergency funding and will lease an old factory near Fresno that will enable it to turn out 10,000 cars a year.

The company has dramatically lowered its ambitions. Its goal now is to try to remain solvent enough to start manufacturing and selling the FF 91, a powerful, technology-packed luxurious electric sedan with a base price expected to top $100,000.

As recently as last year, the company had plans to turn out 150,000 cars a year from a massive new $5-billion assembly plant near Las Vegas.

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Those plans were dashed when the company’s primary investor, Chinese entrepreneur and LeEco Chief Executive Jia Yueting, ran into severe financial difficulty in his home country, including a government-decreed freeze on assets. Faraday financing dried up, and the Las Vegas factory never got off the ground.

Last week, a two-year-old investment firm called Innovatus Capital Partners handed Faraday $13.75 million on a one-year loan, but not before laying claims to Faraday’s Gardena headquarters as collateral. The cost of the loan was not made public.

Faraday’s new factory sits along a two-lane road in Hanford, a town of 55,000, and a railroad crossroads. Armstrong Rubber Co. first opened the building in 1962 to manufacture tires. In 1985, Italian tire-maker Pirelli bought the factory but shut it down in 2001, citing foreign competition and lower wage rates in Brazil and Venezuela.

The building has been mostly empty since, though late last year a medical marijuana supplier sought city permission to use it as a grow farm and processing plant, provoking a debate over morals versus economic development in the conservative community. The company bowed out in March after the city said it would wait until after the Nov. 18 election to decide.

Then Faraday stepped in. About 400 of Faraday’s 1,000 Gardena employees volunteered to drive to the Hanford site on Saturday to “see it, touch it, work on it, paint an FF sign on it,” said Stefan Krause, the company’s chief operating officer, who joined Faraday in March.

A Deutsche Bank and BMW veteran, Krause is on the hunt for capital to keep Faraday alive. The recently borrowed $14 million is peanuts against the tens to hundreds of millions of dollars Krause must raise.

An assembly plant and a schedule for production will help, he said: “For investors, it makes it more real.” The Hanford plant covers a million square feet with a section more than 300 yards long once used for tire making, the right shape and length for an auto assembly line.

When Krause came in last March, he saw how much time and money a brand new plant would require, and steered the company in a new direction. The need for speed is urgent, he said. “It’s strategically important to be the second (luxury electric car) after Tesla.”

A luxury electric car start-up based in Silicon Valley, Lucid Motors, is also seeking new capital as it races against Faraday and others, including Lynk & Co., a new luxury electric car maker in China that plans to sell in the U.S. through Volvo dealerships.

If Faraday’s plans are met, the first production cars will come off the line headed for customers by the end of next year.

russ.mitchell@latimes.com

Twitter: @russ1mitchell

Output: Electric vehicle (EV) maker Faraday Future has signed a lease on a former tyre factory in Hanford, California. The company has been pushing ahead with its plans to build a luxury EV, the FF 91, but has struggled with funding and recently pulled out of building a factory near Las Vegas. It is said to have received a $13.75m emergency loan from Innovatus Capital Partners, but will need many millions more to meet its promise of delivering a market-ready FF 91 by the end of 2018, which is expected to have a base price of more than $100,000.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Faraday Future signs lease for California factory to build EV
 Faraday Future announced on Monday that it has signed a lease on a turn-key manufacturing facility in Hanford, California, south of Fresno. The company has been hyping its plans to build a luxury electric vehicle called the FF 91 that would compete with high-end Teslas, but it has struggled with funding and production. Faraday recently pulled out of plans to build a massive factory north of Las Vegas as well as plans to negotiate a deal for another new factory location in Vallejo, California.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Faraday Future received an emergency loan from an investment firm to the tune of $13.75 million, using a claim to the company’s Gardena, California headquarters as collateral. The company will need to raise millions more to deliver market-ready FF 91s by the end of next year, as it has promised to do. Stefan Krause, Faraday Future’s Chief Operating Officer, told the Times that having an assembly line will attract additional investors, as it “makes it more real” for them.

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The warehouse being leased was originally a tire factory, first built by Armstrong Rubber Co. in 1962 and purchased by Italian tire maker Pirelli in 1985. Pirelli shut the factory down in 2001 for economic reasons, and tenants have been various since then, most recently including a potential pot-growing operation.

This weekend, the electric vehicle manufacturer invited its employees out to the site. More than 300 showed up, according to Faraday Future’s press release, to help “begin the process of site clean-up and embrace the company’s new manufacturing home.”

The company cited the turn-key nature of the Hanford factory, which does seem like a better fit for Faraday Future than previous plans to build all-new facilities. “After Saturday’s event, Faraday Future will continue the process of site preparations, including planning, refurbishment, and permitting,” a company press-release noted. “Following the move-out of current tenants in late November, the company expects significant movement to ramp-up on site in early 2018.”

The manufacturing facility is a million square feet “and will employ up to 1,300 workers, over three shifts, over time,” the company added.

Faraday Future’s VP of Global Manufacturing, Dag Reckhorn, also commented, “Our new production facility is the latest demonstration of our commitment to getting FF 91 on the road by the end of 2018. Despite significant headwinds on the path ahead of us, we are laser-focused on that one key milestone.”

Output: Electric vehicle (EV) maker Faraday Future has signed a lease on a former tyre factory in Hanford, California. The company has been pushing ahead with its plans to build a luxury EV, the FF 91, but has struggled with funding and recently pulled out of building a factory near Las Vegas. It is said to have received a $13.75m emergency loan from Innovatus Capital Partners, but will need many millions more to meet its promise of delivering a market-ready FF 91 by the end of 2018, which is expected to have a base price of more than $100,000.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Ranker doubles average viewability figures over 15 months
 Since advertisers are demanding that ads be seen, listicle publisher Ranker made several tweaks to its webpages to boost its number of viewable ads.

The publisher made its ads more viewable by removing slideshows, running ads that only load once they are in view and getting stricter about the ad creatives and exchanges it will allow on page, which led to a 60 percent decrease in page-load time. Over the past 15 months, Ranker doubled its average viewability rates from about 35 percent to more than 70 percent, said Clark Benson, CEO and founder of Ranker. All figures are from Ranker, citing Google.

The improved viewability has also contributed to a 64 percent increase in Ranker’s desktop CPMs and an 87 percent increase in its mobile CPMs over the past 12 months. While several factors — having faster-loading pages, using different exchanges and market conditions outside Ranker’s control — affected the increased ad rates, the improvement in viewability was the largest single factor, Benson said.

In May 2016, Ranker averaged 43 percent viewability on desktop and 31 percent viewability on mobile. Mobile viewability was worse than desktop because Ranker’s slideshows had worse viewability on mobile. Mobile screens aren’t big enough to fully display the slideshow’s image and an ad when a user landed on the page. Unless the user scrolled, mobile slideshows were a drag on viewability.

Among the various steps Ranker took to increase viewability, eliminating slideshows had the biggest impact. Getting rid of the format increased mobile viewability by 11 percentage points and brought it more in line with Ranker’s desktop viewability, Benson said.

According an Integral Ad Science survey, about 70 percent of advertisers transact on viewability. So increasing mobile viewability was imperative for Ranker since about 90 percent of its 25 million unique visitors came from mobile last month, according to comScore. Ranker gets 92 percent of its ad revenue from programmatic.

To further boost viewability, Ranker adopted lazy-loading ads, which only show an ad once it is viewable. This step increased viewability by 7 percentage points, Benson said.

Lazy-loading ads helped improve Ranker’s page-load speeds. Ranker also cut off slow exchanges and restricted the amount of code it would accept on ad creative. These factors together contributed to a 60 percent improvement in how long it takes Ranker to render content on mobile devices, from 1.2 seconds to 0.5 seconds.

While pushing for viewability has driven ad revenue for Ranker, Benson acknowledged the risk of unintended consequences. Viewability mandates have led to more ad clutter and reductions in how long ads are in view.

Ranker’s viewability quest hasn’t led to more ad clutter since it only allows one sticky ad per user session, and the ad units it cut to boost page speed were among its most intrusive. But time spent per session has declined about 10 percent, from 3.9 minutes to 3.5 minutes, since the slideshows it eliminated used to keep users on page longer.

Cutting out slideshows and slow-loading ad units also contributed to a drop in the number ad impressions per session by 36 percent for desktop and 41 percent for mobile. But the increases in CPMs offset this, Benson said.

“We feel the end result is better for user experience, but it wasn’t a clean, easy process,” Benson said.

Output: Listicle publisher Ranker has doubled its average viewability figures over 15 months by tweaking its webpages to boost the number of viewable ads. The Los Angeles-based firm improved ad visibility by running ads that load only when in view, removing slideshows and getting stricter about the ad creatives and exchanges it allows on page. The moves led to a 60% decrease in page-load time, meaning average viewability rates rose from about 35% to over 70%, Ranker CEO Clark Benson said. The changes contributed to an 87% increase in mobile CPM.


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UK government set to impose fines for cybersecurity failures
 British organisations could face fines of up to £17m, or 4% of global turnover, if they fail to take measures to prevent cyber-attacks that could result in major disruption to services such as transport, health or electricity networks.

But the proposals, which are being considered as part of a government consultation launched on Tuesday, say that financial penalties will be used as a “last resort” and not applied if organisations facing an attack can prove they assessed the risks adequately.

The move comes after the NHS became the highest-profile victim of a global ransomware attack, which resulted in operations being cancelled, ambulances being diverted and patient records being made unavailable.

The coordinated attack that infected a large number of computers across the health service was linked to WannaCry malicious software.

The issue came to the fore again after a major IT failure at British Airways left 75,000 passengers stranded and cost the airline £80m – although the company blamed a power supply issue rather than a cyber-attack.

The consultation will also focus on system failures, with requirements for companies to show what action they are taking to reduce the risks.

The digital and culture minister, Matt Hancock, said: “We want the UK to be the safest place in the world to live and be online, with our essential services and infrastructure prepared for the increasing risk of cyber-attack and more resilient against other threats such as power failures and environmental hazards.”

The consultation is on the Network and Information Systems directive to be implemented from May 2018, which is part of a £1.9bn national cyber-security strategy.

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport said it also wanted to see action to detect attacks, develop security monitoring and raise staff awareness, as well as ensuring incidents were reported immediately and that systems were in place for recovery. Workshops will be held where organisations can give feedback.

Ciaran Martin, the chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre, said organisations needed to do more to increase cyber security.

“The NCSC is committed to making the UK the safest place in the world to live and do business online, but we can’t do this alone,” he said. “Everyone has a part to play and that’s why since our launch we have been offering organisations expert advice on our website and the government’s Cyber Essentials Scheme.”

The penalties proposed for flaws in network and information systems are similar to those proposed for data protection.

Output: UK companies which do not take adequate measures to prevent cyber attacks, leaving infrastructure services such as transport or health exposed, could face financial penalties in a draft proposal from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport. Although dubbed a last resort, fines of up to £17m ($22m) or 4% of global turnover could be imposed. The proposal is part of a recently launched government consultation on the Network and Information Systems directive, set to take effect from May 2018.


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News site Quartz achieves 90% renewal rate for branded content
 Publishers’ branded-content campaigns have painfully low renewal rates. One way Quartz has managed to buck that trend is by giving technology insights and research to agencies and brands.

To formalize this approach, Quartz launched the Quartz Innovation Lab in January, where creative staffers spend a certain portion of their time working on projects like this about every six weeks.

The results have helped the creative services team, Quartz Creative, build deeper relationships with existing clients including HPE, sometimes leading to projects that didn’t involve any of Quartz’s media or its owned and operated properties. The Lab is part of an approach to help brands and agencies that’s led to a renewal rate of 90 percent for branded content, nearly three times higher than the industry average, per MediaRadar data. Since Quartz launched five years ago, it has executed over 540 campaigns for more than 150 brands, according to a company spokesperson. The company defines its renewal rate not over a set period of time but whether a client returns to do more work.

“Content isn’t the thing that advertisers need every single time,” said Joy Robins, Quartz’s svp of global revenue and strategy. “When an agency is looking for something ownable, really specific to a larger theme or brand challenge, we start that.”

It also helps being open to clients’ suggestions. For example, Quartz overhauled the Quartz Index, a product that sprang out of a request for proposal from the financial services firm Blackrock, when Blackrock wanted to renew that product.

But broadly, Quartz is getting its high renewal rate by helping agencies and brands stay on top of technological advances. That can mean doing more than branded content, such as building a chatbot, called Hugo, for HPE, which Quartz built with DigitasLBi.

Competition for branded-content budgets has never been more competitive. The number of publishers offering branded content swelled from 15 in 2013 to more than 600 last year, according to MediaRadar. That buyer’s market has helped keep renewal rates for branded-content programs down around 33 percent last year, according to MediaRadar.

Quartz focuses its research projects, which it calls sprints, on topics it expects clients will be interested in, or that already interests an agency it’s worked with before. Helping those agencies, which brands typically hire to help them think about emerging platforms, businesses or technologies, helps Quartz get to the table first, said Zazie Lucke, Quartz’s vp of marketing.

Over time, the expectation is that these research projects will lead Quartz to strike more retainer-like relationships with brands or agencies, as sophisticated publishers’ content studios are seeking to make revenue flow more consistent.

Robins said Quartz isn’t trying to become a full-service agency, though, because it sees its research and tools as a benefit to agencies.

Jeff Malmad, a managing director at Mindshare North America who worked with Quartz on a panel presentation at CES that came from an Innovation Lab, said that while he keeps numerous publishers close at hand when thinking about branded-content programs for his clients, few third parties deliver actionable information like Innovation Lab’s insights. Asked how many publishers or brands deliver insights that actually go directly into work for clients, Malmad said, “They’re few and far between.”

Output: New York-based business news publisher Quartz has achieved a 90% renewal rate for branded content – defined as a client returning to do more work. Publishers' campaigns tend to have very low renewal rates but Quartz addressed that by offering technology insights and research to brands, supported by its Quartz Innovation Lab. The lab has enabled the creative services team to build deeper relationships with existing clients, leading to the development of further projects. The approach led to the increased renewal rate, which is nearly three times higher than the industry average, according to MediaRadar data.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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New York Times focuses on push notifications to drive traffic
 In June, The New York Times dropped seven emojis — two taxis, two hot dogs, a pencil, a heart and the Statue of Liberty — in a mobile push notification to promote its magazine’s all-comics issue on city life. Eric Bishop, who oversees push at the Times, said he started out thinking three emojis would be good (and already more than the Times had ever put in a push), but Jake Silverstein, the magazine’s editor, argued for more, saying: “I think we can make this even more fun and delightful.”

The push is a constrained medium, with limits on characters and visuals. But because push is becoming so important as a way to drive traffic to articles, the Times and other publishers are finding new ways to (ahem) push its expressive limits.

When the Times set up a dedicated push notifications team two years ago, its pushes were basically headlines without much context. Since then, it’s tried to make them more conversational and contextual, keeping in mind the personal nature of the lock screen and knowing people may just want to read the push and not click through.

“We’ve been trying to let our hair down a little — to be more internet-y,” Bishop said.

The Times isn’t alone in trying to make its pushes more conversational. CNN, too, has experimented with this approach, treating the push as appointment reading and pushing out stories that aren’t necessarily breaking but tap into interests people feel strongly about, like parenting.

The Times has a three- to eight-person team on its news desk that handles pushes, among other things. The team sends out around three a day on a typical day, or on really busy days, as many as eight or 10. But it spread the word about why pushes matter, and it’s worked. Individual reporters now lobby for their stories to be pushed; notifications’ wording are labored over in Slack; and even masthead editors get involved.

“It’s a big change for the newsroom to be thinking so much about push,” Bishop said. “I’m getting emails from reporters. That never happened before. And certain editors are pushing notifications all the time.”

Increasingly, the notifications are being written collaboratively or by the reporters themselves, especially when the story in question is a sensitive one. Political reporter Nicholas Confessore has emerged as an in-house expert. His “Special Report: The wealthiest American families have built a private tax system for the rich. Here’s how it works.” push was a top performer for the Times.

Like so many aspects of distributing news, publishers still are at the mercy of platforms when it comes to pushes. On Apple News, for example, where publishers can turn on notifications, some stories don’t render well, so the Times may not push those. Apple and Android have different push systems and features (Android devices display fewer words than Apple devices, for example), so publishers have to write pushes with both platforms in mind.

Still, at a time when publishers’ traffic is increasingly coming through social side doors, the pushes still are an important way to get people to publishers’ own mobile apps, where they control the experience and monetization. A good push will drive three or four times as many swipe-throughs to the Times’ app.

“Any time we push anything, you see a big spike in readership on a story,” Bishop said. “And it’s not uncommon for half of the traffic in the app to come from the push.”

Output: The New York Times is focusing on push notifications to increase mobile web traffic. The Times and other publishers are increasingly finding more expressive ways to use push notifications, including the use of emojis to make them more conversational in appearance. The Times sends up to 10 notifications on a busy day and also pushes stories that tap into issues readers feel strongly about, such as parenting, rather than just breaking news. Pushes are an important way for publishers to get readers to their own apps, where they can control monetisation and user experience.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Heineken prioritises Google and Facebook over TV advertising
 Heineken is shifting dollars from TV to Google and Facebook as the digital platforms become the new preferred way to reach mass audiences.

The brewer is rethinking the role of platforms long touted for their ability to deliver highly personalized messages. Digital (especially Google and Facebook) is a mass medium for Heineken, and as such, it’s increasingly using them to reach the most people in a broad target demographic.

Similar to how Procter & Gamble said it’s fine-tuning how it’s using Facebook to target potential customers, Heineken doesn’t think reach versus targeting is an either-or question; it’s just seeking the right balance. In some markets, that’s meant spending more on digital than it does on TV, according to Nourdin Rejeb, Heineken’s global manager for digital.

Rejeb said Heineken is increasingly inclined to spend most of its media budget with Facebook and Google, albeit with wider parameters for ad targeting. He said the brewer has viewed both platforms as mass reach channels for some time but that it’s getting more focused than ever on reach.

“We’re seeing in some cases digital spend is overtaking TV spend like a lot of brands because we’re realising that’s where consumers are spending most of their time,” Rejeb said. “That’s not to say TV isn’t important to us because it is; it’s just that the increase is definitely going to the digital.”

Most big brands like Heineken have gone from viewing advertising on Facebook and YouTube as a way to spur conversation around viral content to using it to catch hundreds of millions of people’s attention. While the scale is now there on these platforms (Facebook has around 2 billion monthly users), the brewer has struggled to get its ads viewed on the social network.

In the U.S., for example, many of Heineken’s videos on Facebook are viewed for less than three seconds. To counter this, Heineken has pushed all its messaging to the start of videos to get people to stop scrolling. The brewer is trying to limit its Facebook ads to six seconds, the length that Facebook has said is ideal, citing a recent test with Tropicana.

Today’s ad climate has many brands questioning whether they have overspent on digital. P&G made headlines when it axed $140 million worth of digital ads in the last quarter, questioning the ads’ effectiveness. Still, the brewer is upping its spend with Facebook and Google, saying they provide creative support.

“They obviously want our money as well, but the work we’re doing with both is working,” Rejeb said. “For us, those two partners are very critical.”

Heineken also is spending more time learning how its ads can capture people’s attention. To that end, it’s investing in ad and marketing tech. It’s building an ad server that will let it reserve large amounts of inventory directly from publishers or ad networks. It also plans to build a data-management platform where it can access and manage data, such as cookie IDs and mobile identifiers, to create targeting segments for its ad campaigns.

Output: Heineken has begun to prioritise Google and Facebook over TV advertising. The brewing giant is increasingly going digital, albeit with wider parameters, as it seeks to strike the right balance between reach versus targeting. Digital ad spend was overtaking TV in some cases, as consumers move online and away from fixed programming, said Nourdin Rejeb, global manager for digital at Heineken. The brewer is also investing in ad and marketing tech to learn how its ads can capture users' attention.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Regus WeWork enjoys 'incredible demand' in China
 The world’s largest co-working space provider is on the verge of pushing much further into China in coming months, WeWork Asia’s managing director said in Beijing ahead of the Wangjing branch opening. This came the same day as the company announced its acquisition of Singapore’s Spacemob as part of a $500 million expansion plan in Southeast Asia. Both announcements come only two weeks after the company received $500 million from SoftBank and Hony Capital for its China war chest.

WeWork’s seventh mainland China location, in Wangjing, is almost ready to open and has seen the fastest take up of rental out of any of the company’s buildings anywhere in the world. Almost 1,500 workers will move in in one day. After the company’s arrival in China a year ago, this will be the third location in Beijing, while Shanghai, the regional HQ, currently has four with two more locations under way. There are two locations in Hong Kong at present.

“We’ll definitely go a lot deeper in Beijing and Shanghai and Hong Kong. The product is much more valuable the deeper you get into a city. You have more of a community,” WeWork Asia Managing Director Christian Lee told TechNode. “There is the next set of cities in China that are incredibly important, whether it’s for Chinese startups, large Chinese companies, or companies coming into China. So for sure Shenzhen and there’s probably a list of three or four other cities that we’re actively exploring. So I think you’ll see us in another five cities in the next 12 months.”

However, the goal is not just to saturate Chinese cities with stylishly furnished break out areas and easy-to-use coffee machines. According to Lee, success is about “how many companies, not how many buildings.”

Right up to today, WeWork has been on an investment spree with deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars across Asia. Today they announced a $500 million plan to expand into Southeast Asia and South Korea, which includes the acquisition of Singapore’s Spacemob. On July 26, WeWork announced a deal with Japan’s SoftBank and China’s Hony to create a $500 million war chest for China expansion, after previous injections of $300 million and $430 million from SoftBank. WeWork is creating a joint venture with the investment fund in Japan, while it has formed separate entities for China and for Southeast Asia.

The Colliers International APAC Flexible Workspace Report 2017 states that: “Appetite from operators for new centers is stronger than ever and we should see 30% growth in take up year on year. With changes in the way people work, there appears to be strong end user demand to underpin this growth.”

And it’s China that is proving the most welcoming. “[Our buildings in China] are getting to 90-100% occupancy almost faster really than anywhere else in the world,” said Lee. “There is an incredible amount of demand for this kind of space.”

Local competition? Not a problem, according to Lee. “We don’t really think about the local co-working market to any great length. We really look at what we’re building as a global platform and there’s no one today that has the global learning we have, in terms of design and global community—that’s what we give to our members.”

The company now has around 170 employees in China, where it uses the same approach to getting a local perspective as everywhere else in the world. “When we started we sent three people from WeWork over and their main mission was to hire a local team: local community team, local designers, local real estate team to really help us navigate China from a local perspective,” said Lee.

“We’ve had to tailor. China is much more mobile-centric than other countries are so our app and how we integrate with WeChat, Alipay is different. Meetings tend to be much larger than meetings in the United States. With every building we open, we’re getting better,” said Lee.

The work spaces are proving useful to foreign companies trying moving into China. Around 70-80 percent are local Chinese members, with 20-30% international members tending to be enterprise members. In terms of being able to continue to support clients within a global platform as China tightens its requirements for data handling and access to foreign networks, Lee remains bullish. “We have a very large team of lawyers to make sure everything is working okay,” he said, adding that the local team includes provision for government relations.

While co-working space operators in China struggle to turn a profit, WeWork would only go so far as to say: “We don’t break out financials. When you look at the investors that we have—Softbank, Hony—they clearly believe that there is significant potential for this business and we think that there is significant potential in China.”

The company’s efforts seem to be paying off. An international user of one of WeWork’s other Beijing locations, Guanghua Lu, was very positive about the firm’s setup in China.

“Rent is going up in Beijing quite a lot so we’re actually saving RMB 60,000 by moving into WeWork as it’s all bundled—there are no unknown costs of printing, electricity, internet. It’s all the best of everything, the best printers, the fastest internet,” Sarah Keenlyside, founder of the Bespoke Travel Company told TechNode. “Coffee is included, and Jing A beer—it allows me to offer my staff benefits without that being an out-of-pocket cost. It even makes accounting easy as it’s literally just one cost.

“[Operating in Beijing has] been quite difficult. There are always problems with the internet in China, there’s often little technical hitches. When you’re a small company it wastes a lot of your staff time. WeWork does all that for you.”

On whether there’s any noticeable localization, Keenlyside could only think of the local touch added to the free TGIM (Thank God It’s Monday) breakfast: baozi, jiaozi, noodles and zhou are on offer. It’s the international element that is more important. “Being able to use any WeWork all over the world, that is just an incredible benefit for a small company. We’ve just expanded to Tokyo and they should be there before Christmas. The fact I can use that space in Tokyo is a massive benefit and so much cheaper than trying to rent somewhere,” said Keenlyside.

“For a company like us that wants to be an international company like them, the fact that we can grow along with them is really exciting.”

Output: WeWork is enjoying strong demand in China, according to WeWork's Asia managing director, Christian Lee, and has just opened its seventh branch in the Chinese mainland, in Wangjing. According to the Colliers International APAC Flexible Workspace Report 2017: “Appetite from operators for new centres is stronger than ever and we should see 30% growth in take-up year on year." Lee noted that WeWork is enjoying "90-100% occupancy in China almost faster than anywhere else in the world".


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Mazda cracks petrol compression engine to improve efficiency 30%
 Fresh on the heels of last week's tie-up with Toyota, Mazda announced on Tuesday that it has finally made a breakthrough in gasoline engine technology. Mazda is calling it Skyactive-X; we know it better as homogeneous charge compression ignition, or HCCI. It should mean a 20- to 30-percent boost in efficiency compared to Mazda's current gasoline direct-injection engines, and we may well see it in the next revision to the Mazda 3.

HCCI engines have been one of those "if only" technologies for some time now. Kyle Niemeyer first covered the idea back in 2012 for Ars as part of a deep dive into new engine tech that could help meet looming efficiency requirements for automakers.

In essence, HCCI is an attempt to run a gasoline engine like a diesel instead. Rather than squirt fuel into a cylinder—done directly, at high pressure, in the case of Mazda's current gasoline engines—then ignite it with a spark, the fuel and air are well-mixed and then compressed to achieve the bang in suck, squeeze, bang, blow.

Because the fuel and air are so well-mixed, combustion should happen simultaneously at multiple points within the cylinder's volume, burning more evenly, at a lower temperature, with fewer particulates or nitrogen oxides in the exhaust than a normal spark-ignited gasoline engine or a diesel engine. Making it work is apparently much harder than describing it; at various times, General Motors, Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, Ford, Honda, and Bosch have all tried their hand at the technology to little avail.

But Mazda is nothing if not stubborn when it comes to eclectic engine technologies; after all, it bravely persevered with the rotary engine for decades. In January, there were signs that it had made real progress with HCCI, and today we have the confirmation as part of a broader announcement from Mazda about its new long-term sustainability plan. Another element of the plan—given the catchy title "Sustainable Zoom-Zoom 2030"—is to start introducing EVs and hybrids "in regions that use a high ratio of clean energy for power generation or restrict certain vehicles to reduce air pollution."

Advertisement

This engine still has spark plugs!

The new HCCI engines will still use the good-old spark plug; for some operating conditions, it's better to run it as a conventional spark-ignition engine. Mazda says it has perfected the control issues that let the engine know when to transition between spark ignition and when things can be leaned-out enough to use HCCI, and it's calling it "spark controlled compression ignition."

The engines will also be supercharged, so they will be torquier than the current Mazda gasoline-powered engine range, and they'll be cleaner and more efficient. (Mazda's press release says that, volume for volume, they should be comparable to its current turbodiesel range in that regard.)

Reuters reports that Mazda also plans to keep HCCI to itself, although we wonder if that applies to its new best friend Toyota.

We know there is a vocal population who would like to see OEMs like Mazda give up development of new internal combustion engine technology altogether, focusing instead on fully switching over to battery electric vehicles. These days, national governments are throwing out dates like 2030 and 2040 for banning new fossil-fueled vehicles from sale.

But 2040 is a ways off, and if William Gibson has taught us anything, it's that the future is not evenly distributed. Certainly in the mid-term, there will be a use for hydrocarbon-fueled vehicles, particularly outside of dense urban corridors where average journeys are shorter and recharging infrastructure is thicker on the ground. So anything that makes those vehicles cleaner and more efficient ought to be viewed as a good thing.

Output: Mazda Motor has developed a compression ignition petrol engine, something that has confounded researchers from General Motors, Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, Ford, Honda, and Bosch at various times. The technology allows petrol engines to act more like diesel engines with a resultant bump in fuel efficiency of 20% to 30%. (For a more technical description of how the engine works, please see the Ars Technica article below). Mazda said it wants to begin selling vehicles with the SkyActiv engine from 2019.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Scientists discover toxic new byproduct of coal burning
 Our hypothesis is that the great majority of Magnéli phases in the environment are derived from TiO 2 minerals present in coal. This is strongly suggested by both the circumstantial evidence presented above concerning the spatial and temporal relationships between Magnéli phases and coal-fired power plants (over 1000 °C, locally reduced environments resulting from areas of incomplete combustion in the firebox), as well as the synthesis of Magnéli phases under the conditions of our heating experiments (over 900 °C, TiO 2 with pulverized coal under a N 2 atmosphere). It is also important to consider the possibility of generating Magnéli phases during coke production. Coke, typically made under highly reducing conditions from low-sulfur, low-ash bituminous coal at temperatures similar to those used in this study (over 900 °C), should result in Magnéli phases production. As mentioned in the Introduction, coke made from coal is used to produce 70% of the world’s steel.

TiO 2 naturally occurs in coal as anatase, rutile, and brookite, the three mineral TiO 2 polymorphs, whereas Magnéli phases have never been reported in any rank of coal, or coal origin. In summary, Swaine30 summarized Ti associations in coals, noting that Eskanazi31 called for an organic association of Ti. While an organic association may be the case in peats and low-rank coals, Finkelman11 found anatase and rutile in bituminous coals. Ketris and Yudovich12 acknowledge this mixed affiliation, placing Ti among the weakly or moderate coalphile elements. The levels of TiO 2 in coal vary, but generally are found within a range from roughly a few tenths of a percent, to a few percent, by weight. For example, Hower and Bland13 and Hower et al.14. found the TiO 2 content in the Pond Creek coal in eastern Kentucky to vary between 0.13–6.52%, with the highest amounts found in association with relatively high concentrations of Zr (as zircon, ZrSiO 4 ) in clastic-origin lithotypes. Similar trends were noted in eastern Kentucky’s River Gem15 and Elswick16 coals.

It should be noted that we have considered the possibility that Magnéli phases result from TiO 2 polymorphs, especially anatase, due to its common use in the catalytic beds of modern coal-fired power plants in the combustion gas exhaust stream. These beds are designed to minimize/eliminate NO x in the exhaust stream, commonly using anatase/rutile to provide favorable chemical conversion of these toxic emission gases present depending on the type of coal that is burned. Any release of the titanium oxides in the gas stream during years of service would be trapped by the plant’s electrostatic precipitators along with the fly ash exhaust component that it is designed to collect. However, such a scenario does not account for two factors. First, anatase/rutile used in these catalytic beds (e.g., P25) lack Magnéli phases. Second, the temperature of gases in this part of the power plant are many hundreds of degrees too low to generate Magnéli phases. Temperatures of at least 900 °C were needed in this study to convert anatase/rutile to Magnéli phases, with that temperature easily exceeded in the combustion chamber of a power plant. Therefore, TiO 2 used in catalytic beds should not be a source for titania suboxides from coal-burning power plants.

It should also be noted that burning municipal solid waste is becoming more and more common worldwide, and the production and/or fate of nanoparticles (including TiO 2 in commercial products) during this incineration is of growing interest (e.g., refs 32, 33). Many incineration protocols use temperatures below what we have found to be conducive to Magnéli phase production under highly reducing conditions (<900 °C). In addition, our preliminary experiments to date using P25 starting material in the presence of sewage sludge under N 2 at 900 and 1000 °C produced rutile exclusively (as measured by powder XRD). However, some incineration is driven by burning coal at temperatures well in excess of 1000 °C, and here we would expect the production of Magnéli phases both from the TiO 2 in the coal itself and any in the waste. Given a 2014 estimate that 8600 metric tons of nanomaterials are incinerated annually on a global basis34, and that TiO 2 nanomaterials would be some fraction of this, and that high temperature incineration using a carbon-based fuel would be some fraction of this, the production of Magnéli phases due to incineration is several orders of magnitude less than our estimated Gt levels of Magnéli phase generation due to industrial coal-burning (see Discussion below). Therefore, waste incineration is not expected to be a significant contributor to Magnéli phase production relative to coal-burning power plants.

Schindler and Hochella35 very recently identified Magnéli phases in soils proximal to Cu-Ni-sulfides smelters and refineries in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. Although the identified nano-size Magnéli phases only occurred as minute traces of material in mineral surface coatings, its discovery in this setting suggests that these phases can also form during the reductive smelting and refining of metal-bearing ores in the presence of coke, coal, or carbon monoxide. In this scenario, this also opens the possibility of Magnéli phases originating from TiO 2 polymorphs present in the ore being smelted and refined. Hence, the anthropogenic formation of Magnéli phases may not be limited to coal-burning power plants and likely also coking facilities. Nevertheless, further study is needed, and this paper has concentrated on coal-burning power plants due to their tremendous and still growing abundance in the industrial world.

With the seeming ubiquity of incidental Magnéli phases from coal combustion, in fact it is quite the opposite for naturally occurring Magnéli phases. Such naturally occurring instances are very rarely recognized. Magnéli phases have infrequently been observed in lunar rocks, as oxygen deficient, blue “rutile”36, 37. Further, Magnéli phases have been suspected or identified, for example, as rare Ti oxide phases in interplanetary dust particles38, in carbonaceous chondrite meteorite matrices39, and in micrometeorites in Antarctic ice particles40. Aside from these extraterrestrial origins, the only Earth-bound natural occurrence that we could locate in the literature comes from Pedersen and Rønsbo41 who discovered “mudstone xenoliths” exposed in one location on the central coast of western Greenland where andesitic magma likely flowed into shallow water underlain by a carbonaceous mudstone, resulting in high temperature (about 1200 °C), low confining pressure (close to five bars), extremely reducing (producing native iron), pyrometamorphosed sediment xenoliths where anatase/rutile grains were transformed to Magnéli phases.

Given our assessment that the overwhelming majority of nanoscale Magnéli phases found in the environment are from industrial coal-burning, it is possible that these Magnéli phases could be used as a tracer for the global distribution of coal-burning solid-state emissions. Scientists have been working on using various source apportionment techniques for tracking coal-burning emissions using isotope geochemistry, chemical fingerprinting, and modeling to differentiate coal ash contamination from other contaminant sources in the environment (e.g., see refs 42,43,44). This is a very difficult task due to the extraordinary complexity of environmental chemistries and physical matrices. A unique fingerprint to trace the distribution of coal ash components around the globe is still lacking. More specific tracers are also needed for medical diagnoses, especially in the study of lung disease due to the severity of this problem as discussed in the Introduction of this article.

Therefore, Magnéli phases are presented here as a new tracer candidate for coal-burning power plant and likely coke production/smelting plant emissions, both fluvial and aeolian. Such a tracer could be used alone, or in combination with other source apportionment techniques mentioned above. Perhaps the strength of a Magnéli phase tracing method is in its surprising simplicity and ease of use. This stems from the confluence of a number of fortunate occurrences and processes that work together to provide such a method. TiO 2 mineral phases are essentially a ubiquitous accessory phase in all coals worldwide, generally varying from a tenth of a percent to several percent, by weight. Combustion of the coal, with included TiO 2 minerals which are never intentionally targeted for separation from the coal due to their relatively benign nature, and at temperatures over 1000 °C under locally reducing conditions, very quickly produces Magnéli phases. Although worthy of a separate study, the grain sizes of the Magnéli phases generated should be quite variable, although in this study, using TEM as the critical identification and tracking tool, we have selected for submicron grains. These Magnéli phases are then entrained with the many other gaseous and condensed matter components of the plant emission stream. Some fraction of these phases will leave the plant with the gaseous stream (from virtually none to a significant proportion, depending on the plant design and efficacy of its emission-control systems). The remainder will end up in the collected ash components, to be later stored in impoundments or landfills, or recycled into various ash-containing products (concrete/cement, wallboard, road fill, etc.). In all of these possibilities, the incidentally produced Magnéli phases are entering some aspect of the environment, and are immediately or eventually (through secondary processes, e.g., wallboard disposal in a landfill, or incinerated) subject to transport via natural aeolian or fluvial process, and often a combination of the two.

The organismal and ecological environments that these Magnéli phases enter lack the occurrence of Magnéli phases, given their extraordinary rarity in natural systems. On the other hand, we estimate the production of Magnéli phases due to industrial coal-burning to be enormous over the last two centuries since the Industrial Revolution. Considering ballpark, but well-founded estimations of coal productions in modern times1, accounting for the great majority of coal that has ever been used, one can say that on the order of a few hundred gigatons (Gt) of coal has been burned by humans. We can also estimate from existing observations and data that coal contains on the order of an average of 2% TiO 2 , and that, on average, a coal will produce roughly 15% residual ash (both of these estimates are ours, from our personal estimations from the vast coal mineral and ash literature, and our own experience). While the conversion efficiency of TiO 2 minerals to Magnéli phases in the burning process is not known, we can say that, at least in the size range of up to several hundred nanometers (as observed in this study among 22 ashes collected from around the United States and China), most of the titania has been converted to Magnéli phases.

Considering all of this, we are still left with on the order of a Gt of Magnéli phase production via industrial coal-burning over the last few centuries to be spread via the atmosphere and hydrosphere around the planet. The bottom line is that if one observes these highly unusual, easily recognizable phases in selective searching with a TEM, whether in or on soils, river/estuary water or sediments, city streets, stormwater ponds, human lung tissue, or wherever else, that portion of the environment has been very likely impacted by these phases and other solid state components in a similar size range from the sources that have been described herein. The reach of these small physical components (e.g., naturally occurring nano-sized inorganic solids) is global, as is well-known and documented10.

Until now, and as described in detail above, titania suboxides were not known to be widely distributed in the environment, and to our knowledge have not been used in commercial products with wide distribution20. This explains why toxicity testing had not been initiated and underscores why an understanding of the particles’ toxicity potential is now needed. In comparison, the nanoparticles of the polymorphs of TiO 2 are widely used in commercial products, from paints to makeup to sunscreens, among other uses, and as expected, the toxicity of these nanoparticles have been widely studied. TiO 2 nanoparticle toxicity has been extensively examined in the context of freshwater and marine environments and in organisms belonging to several trophic levels45,46,47,48. It is generally thought that oxidative stress is the primary mechanism of acute toxicity to developing organisms due to the ability of forms of TiO 2 to produce reactive oxygen species (ROS) when irradiated49,50,51,52. ROS leads to cell death via protein, lipid, and DNA damage45, 46, 48. There is also evidence that sub-chronic exposure to adult zebrafish causes neurological effects associated with spatial recognition memory and behavior52. Several studies implicate TiO 2 nanoparticle coating, shape, size, and aggregation properties as confounding variables to these nanoparticle’s bioavailability and toxicity45, 46, 50, 53. This is especially relevant in studies using zebrafish models because of the protective chorion (an acellular enclosure) encompassing the developing fish between 0–48 hpf. Though its permeability has not been thoroughly characterized, the zebrafish chorion is a known barrier to the uptake of many contaminants, including metallic nanomaterials29, 54,55,56,57. Studies aiming to characterize the toxicity of metal nanoparticles commonly remove the chorion prior to exposure to ensure particle bioavailability during early stages of development when organisms are most sensitive to environmental stressors29, 54, 56, 57. In fact, in additional experiments with chorionated zebrafish embryos in this study (data not shown), we failed to observe significantly reduced survival after exposure to P25 and P25-900 °C nanoparticles at concentrations up to 1000 ppm; these results corroborate the references cited above, demonstrating the protective effect of the zebrafish chorion barrier to titanium oxide nanomaterial bioavailability. The chorion is also commonly removed in screening assays investigating the toxicity potential of pharmacological agents or other chemicals; for these purposes, the dechorionated embryonic zebrafish is a high-throughput and robust vertebrate model54, 56, 57.

Therefore, in this first study of titania suboxide toxicity, we were primarily interested in reporting the inherent toxicity of the P25-900 °C (Magnéli phase) particles in the absence of the embryonic zebrafish protective chorion barrier (i.e., toxicity relevance to aquatic animal gills or terrestrial animal lungs). We observed significant reductions in embryo survival following acute exposure to these particles in the absence of SSR, but not following co-exposure to P25-900 °C and SSR. These results are in stark contrast to those of P25, in which the detrimental effects are primarily attributed to the material’s photo-induced toxicity due to the generation of ROS as described above. In contrast, the reason for the toxicity of Magnéli phase titania suboxides is not known, this being the first time that a formal biotoxicity study has been conducted for these materials. Whatever role Magnéli phases play in and around biological systems is expected to be fundamentally different than TiO 2 phases. Unlike the wide band gap semiconducting, UV absorbing TiO 2 phases, Magnéli phases are narrow band gap semiconductors (see above), with electrical conducting properties similar to carbon/graphitic materials20. Additionally, these variably defective materials are expected to have interesting and important ionic conductivity and catalytic properties that still need to be thoroughly explored.

The immediate relevance of this work is aquatic organism exposure under conditions of limited solar radiation co-exposure, but there are also translational implications for human health. Of particular interest is the reactivity of Magnéli phases in human lung alveolar membranes considering their accessibility to this critical and vulnerable portion of our physiology, and the fact that their biological reactivity likely does not depend on solar radiation co-exposure.

Overall, Magnéli phases are a newly recognized incidental nanomaterial in the environment with very wide distribution, allowing it to be a new candidate for tracing the distribution of industrial coal-burning solid-state emissions worldwide. In addition, while we provide an initial assessment of Magnéli phase toxicity using an established exposure regimen and animal model, this situation also clearly invites further toxicity studies aimed at comprehensive characterization of Magnéli phase toxicity at sublethal concentrations and investigations of potential mechanisms of action. New toxicity pathways in micro- to macro-organisms, including humans, are likely to be found.

Output: A new coal byproduct that poses potential risks to human health has been discovered by scientists investigating the aftermath of a coal-ash spill in North Carolina. Researchers discovered a material composed of titanium and oxygen, which proved toxic when ingested by zebrafish. The scientists, who discovered the material as far away as China, expect analogous effects in animals, including humans. Identifying the locations where the titanium materials appear could also enable scientists to map the distribution of the effects of coal-burning and coke production.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Australian Greens call for re-regulation of power market
 As Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull prepares to browbeat big electricity retailers in Canberra, the Greens have unveiled their own plans, calling for a price cap on soaring power bills.

The government has touted Wednesday's meeting in Canberra as a chance to pressure major retailers to increase pricing plan transparency to give consumers a clearer path to the cheapest options and avoid some of the pain of huge tariff hikes.

The Greens' plan, though, would have the government go much further, giving states where retail electricity prices are currently deregulated – Victoria, NSW, South Australia, parts of Queensland – until the end of 2017 to re-regulate prices. States would be able to set up public retailers to boost competition.

Should the states fail to act, the Commonwealth could order the Australian Energy Regulator to set prices.

Output: The Australian Greens have put forward a policy that would cap soaring energy prices. The proposal would force states in which retail electricity prices are currently deregulated to re-regulate by the end of 2017. Under the legislation, should the states of Victoria, New South Wales, South Australia, and Queensland fail to re-regulate, the Australian Energy Regulator would be permitted to set energy prices itself.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
GM launches autonomous ride-hailing service in San Francisco
 It’s always been a bit weird that San Francisco, the cradle of autonomous research, has been missing from the list of cities that boast their own self-driving ride-hailing services. Autonomous cars are prowling the streets of cities like Pittsburgh, Phoenix, and Singapore — and soon enough Boston — offering rides to ordinary people through services like Uber, NuTonomy, and Waymo. And poor San Francisco has been left out of the mix — until now.

Cruise, the self-driving subsidiary of General Motors, announced today that it was launching a beta version of an app to hail one of its self-driving cars for daily trips. The service is available seven days a week, allowing Cruise to evaluate how people use autonomous vehicles as a primary transportation service. There’s a catch, though: the app is only available to Cruise’s employees for now.

Cruise Anywhere... if you’re a Cruise employee, that is

By limiting the service to Cruise’s employees, the company says it wants to start small before it considers expanding to more users. This makes sense, as most companies that operate self-driving cars are just now figuring out how to deploy them publicly. Uber is offering rides to a limited number of people in Pittsburgh and Arizona; Waymo (née Google) is conducting its public program in Arizona as well; and NuTonomy is offering trips in Singapore and will soon launch in Boston in partnership with Lyft.

Cruise’s service, called “Cruise Anywhere,” is currently being used by about 10 percent of the company’s 200 San Francisco-based employees, with more being enrolled each week. (There’s currently a waitlist.) GM employees who are based in Detroit are also eligible for rides, when and if they are in the city.

Image: Cruise

Image: Cruise

Cruise has been operating a fleet of all-electric Chevy Bolts equipped with self-driving cameras and sensors on public roads in San Francisco for months now. So it makes sense that it would eventually launch a publicly available ride-hailing service at some point. While we’re not there yet, GM did announce in June that it had completed production on 130 additional all-electric autonomous vehicles at its assembly plant in Michigan. It’s not difficult to see Cruise giving the green light to non-employee trips in the near future.

Output: Cruise, the autonomous vehicle subsidiary of General Motors, has announced that it is launching a beta version of a ride-hailing app specifically for its self-driving vehicles in San Francisco. However, the app is only currently available for Cruise employees. Called Cruise Anywhere, the service is available seven days a week, and it is used by roughly 10% of Cruise's San Francisco-based workforce of 200.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
European offshore wind must triple to reach Paris goals: Ecofys
 If Europe is to fall in line with the Paris Climate Agreement intention of limiting global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, the region must significantly increase its rate of growth for offshore wind development, tripling it at the very least.

These are the primary conclusions published by Michiel Müller from leading international energy and climate consultancy, Ecofys, who penned an article for Energy Post last week explaining that “Europe will need a fully decarbonized electricity supply by 2045” and that “Renewables are essential to making this happen,” specifically, Müller argued that “offshore wind from the North Seas region will be pivotal for realising a 100% decarbonised electricity supply in less than 30 years.”

Müller’s argument is based on research done between Ecofys and its parent company, Navigant, which looked at offshore wind generation in the North Sea for the ten countries surrounding the North Sea — France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Ireland, and the United Kingdom. Specifically, a white paper published in March by Ecofys and Navigant concluded that 15% of the North Sea region’s total electricity demand could be supplied by offshore wind energy by 2030. This integrated ‘North Sea Grid’ is believed to be the only way to achieve the growth necessary to help meet the Paris Climate Agreement targets.

The research from Ecofys and Navigant determined that the total available onshore generation from various renewable energy sources — wind, solar, bio, hydro, and a little bit of nuclear — would only be able to provide up to 55% of the required capacity to meet the Paris Agreement targets. This leaves 45% needed to be covered by offshore wind, which translates into approximately 230 GW (gigawatts) — 180 GW generated in the North Sea, and the remaining 50 GW in other seas such as the Baltic and Irish Seas, as well as the Atlantic Ocean.

There is currently only 13 GW worth of offshore installed in the region, requiring a massive turning of the screws to increase the rate of delivery. Ecofys and Navigant explains that the installation rate would have to triple from the current 3 GW a year to approximately 10 GW a year.

But, as has been pointed out repeatedly this year, this sort of growth cannot be achieved by one nation alone, and requires national collaboration, coordination, and interconnectivity between North Sea nations. Interestingly, a report published in July by the World Energy Council (WEC) Netherlands posited a similar solution, explaining that the North Sea must play a crucial role in the energy transition ahead for northwestern Europe — a transition which could result in between €100 billion and €200 billion in economic value for neighboring regions in the transition away from fossil fuels.

“The opportunities and diversity thereof in the North Sea are huge,” said Jeroen van Hoof, the chair of WEC Netherlands. “The Energy Transformation in the North Sea creates new industries. We can benefit from huge economic advantages by installing large wind farms. Also, a co-ordinated removal and smart re-use of former oil and gas assets can generate new economic activities. The potential is significant.”

The main point from all that has been published this year regarding the North Sea’s potential, however, is the desperate need for cooperation and interconnectivity between the North Sea’s bordering coutnries. As Müller concludes in his Energy Post article, before the demand for interconnection “can be addressed on the technical level, it will be the collaborative connection between the involved countries and public and private stakeholders that counts.”

“Developing a long-term spatial planning strategy and a robust 2045 roadmap for flexibility options will be two of the key steps to meeting the Paris goals. Joint strategic planning will secure operational security during and beyond the energy transition.”

The full article from Energy Post can be read here — and I recommend you do.

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Output: To meet the demands of the Paris Climate Change agreement, Europe needs to triple its offshore wind installation rate to 10 GW per year by 2030, according to Michiel Müller of environmental consultancy Ecofys. Writing in Energy Post, Müller said to achieve a 100% decarbonised electricity supply within 30 years, an integrated North Sea grid was the best way to generate the 45% increase in capacity required to power the 10 countries around the North Sea. He also called for a "new level of collaboration, coordination, and interconnectivity" between the nations to make the project a reality.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
European offshore wind must triple to reach Paris goals: Ecofys
 To support the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting temperature increase to 1.5°C, Europe will need a CO 2 -neutral electricity supply by 2045. A target we cannot meet unless we ramp up Europe’s offshore wind capacity, says Michiel Müller from consultancy Ecofys, a Navigant company. The company’s energy experts calculated that the current offshore wind installation rate would have to triple to get this goal within reach. They argue that an integrated North Sea Grid is the only way to achieve this growth at lowest possible cost while maximizing benefits to the environment.

To meet the goal agreed at the Paris climate change conference in December 2015, Europe will need a fully decarbonized electricity supply by 2045.

Renewables are essential to making this happen. The joint energy team of Ecofys and Navigant have investigated Europe’s renewable generation resources and find that offshore wind from the North Seas region will be pivotal for realising a 100% decarbonised electricity supply in less than 30 years.

In their analysis, the experts looked specifically at the ten countries around the North Sea – France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxemburg, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Ireland, and the United Kingdom – that cooperate in the EU-supported North Seas Countries Offshore Grid Initiative established in 2009.

Such growth in offshore wind cannot be realised through individual efforts—it is possible only through a new level of collaboration, coordination, and interconnectivity between the North Seas countries

To determine the required offshore capacity for the whole region, the team started with the 2045 electricity demand per country and assumed a complete phaseout of fossil-fueled electricity generation, as well as a started retirement of nuclear. We assumed that current operational nuclear plants will be decommissioned and not replaced after their lifetime. Thus, the only nuclear plants around by 2045 will be new ones that are in an advanced planning stage today.

The Ecofys and Navigant consultants then determined the total available onshore generation capacity by means of several scenario studies and identified how much of the Paris-compatible electricity generation capacity can be met on land. The countries’ joint onshore generation resources (wind, solar, bio, hydro, and remaining nuclear)could provide up to 55% of the required capacity. This leaves 45% to be covered by offshore sources and translates into an offshore wind target of approximately 230 GW for the North Seas countries. [ 180 GW of that capacity could be generated in the North Sea, and the remaining 50 GW in other seas like the Baltic and Irish Seas and the Atlantic.

With 13 GW installed currently, however, the region is far from the required total. To realise this growth, the offshore wind installation rate would have to triple from the current 3 GW/year to approximately 10 GW/year in 2030.

Long-term spatial planning

Such growth in offshore wind cannot be realised through individual efforts—it is possible only through a new level of collaboration, coordination, and interconnectivity between the North Seas countries. In addition to its role as a natural habitat, the North Sea is intensely used as a place for fisheries, tourism, military zones, oil & gas infrastructure, and shipping, and therefore of vital importance to the region’s economy.

While there is sufficient space to develop the required offshore wind capacity (current estimates indicate that some 10% of the North Sea surface will be required for offshore wind, based on a wind farm intensity of 5-6MW/km2), a careful balance must be maintained, ensuring maximum benefit to the environment and cost-efficient development of both wind farms and associated infrastructure.

The analysis shows that Great Britain and Ireland have a need for import capacity of roughly 30 GW, while continental North Western Europe has a deficit of 25 GW

Harnessing and preserving the environment of the North Sea region requires constructive collaboration among all sectors. The potential offshore grid could support the marine biodiversity through new protected areas for wildlife and extended migratory corridors.

This requires a shared long-term view by all North Sea countries. A joint spatial planning strategy is needed to reflect changes in use (e.g., decommissioning of oil & gas) and ensure a cost-efficient utilization of the resource, aligned with offshore and onshore grid development and environmental protection.

50 GW-80 GW interconnector capacity required for grid balancing

Long-term planning will also have to go into securing the stability of such new infrastructure. With higher shares of renewable energy, the stability of the grid heavily depends on an increase in flexibility options. A crucial enabler for a flexible power system is a well-developed network, or in the case of the North Sea offshore wind-dominated system, an infrastructure with increased levels of interconnectivity.

Based on a high level adequacy assessment, we determined the likely reliable capacity that would be available. Ecofys investigated peak demand situations for the three sub-systems around the North Sea: Great Britain and Ireland, continental Northwestern Europe, and the Nordics.

The team analysed how much wind power is available at minimum wind conditions with regard to climatic data and the geographical spread of wind parks. Comparing the results with the available onshore resources, dispatchable generation and flexibility from demand and storage, they deducted the margin each of the three ‘sub-systems’ has. A negative margin shows a need to interconnect to regions with more resources.

With the phaseout of fossil-fueled electricity generation the dispatchable generation capacity drops from a level of 64% in today’s generation mix to approximately 25%

The analysis shows that Great Britain and Ireland have a need for import capacity of roughly 30 GW, while continental North Western Europe has a deficit of 25 GW. An overall level of 50 GW-80 GW of interconnection capacity will be required for the North Seas area.

Growth of interconnection capability requires a careful evaluation of the cost-benefit analysis approach. A new methodology to value grid stability could incentivize interconnector capacity. Current planning practice often limits the level of offshore interconnections to save operational costs. Today’s main methodology, approved by regulators and the European Commission, compares the cost for a new interconnector with the carbon and fuel cost savings it will bring about.

After 2030, these savings will be less of an incentive when renewables plants – with zero marginal and no carbon costs – are dominating the market. Interconnectors, however, will still be crucial as they give flexibility in stressed system conditions and periods of scarcity, and thus provide security of supply. The current methodology does not express this benefit. The task therefore demands a new way of thinking: business cases will have to be redefined to include societal and environmental profits.

More flexibility options

The transition to a decarbonised electricity supply marks the end of dependence on conventional reserves. This will also mean a significantly reduced dispatchable capacity and calls for a steep increase in flexibility options.

With the phaseout of fossil-fueled electricity generation, the dispatchable generation capacity drops from a level of 64% in today’s generation mix to approximately 25%, primarily from hydro and bio, in the 2045 system.

A transition to new, cost-effective flexibility sources such as storage, demand response, power-to-gas/heat, and ancillary services from renewables is already underway. The use of these new flexibility sources will become essential in the 2045 scenario to ensure a constant, instantaneous supply/demand balance.

Developing a long-term spatial planning strategy and a robust 2045 roadmap for flexibility options will be two of the key steps to meeting the Paris goals

This means that a more realistic and robust potential estimate and roadmap are needed than currently available forecasts, to plan demand response, small-scale storage and large-scale storage by 2045. This should not be based purely on industry-push figures, but also on making the tradeoff of some of these projects with interconnection levels. With flexibility options becoming both more significant and affordable, e.g., the demand for interconnection could go down and in turn further increase the need for flexibility options.

However, before this demand can be addressed on the technical level, it will be the collaborative connection between the involved countries and public and private stakeholders that counts.

Developing a long-term spatial planning strategy and a robust 2045 roadmap for flexibility options will be two of the key steps to meeting the Paris goals. Joint strategic planning will secure operational security during and beyond the energy transition.

Editor’s Note

Michiel Müller is a Managing Director at Ecofys, a Navigant company, and an offshore wind energy expert. He has published two white papers on the topic and presented the above findings at the European Commission’s North Seas Energy Forum 2017. Find the full presentation here.

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Output: To meet the demands of the Paris Climate Change agreement, Europe needs to triple its offshore wind installation rate to 10 GW per year by 2030, according to Michiel Müller of environmental consultancy Ecofys. Writing in Energy Post, Müller said to achieve a 100% decarbonised electricity supply within 30 years, an integrated North Sea grid was the best way to generate the 45% increase in capacity required to power the 10 countries around the North Sea. He also called for a "new level of collaboration, coordination, and interconnectivity" between the nations to make the project a reality.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Regus Avanta India plans to expand to capitalise on office-share trend
 With plug-and-play offices becoming more robust in the real estate sector, Avanta India, a business centre provider, is looking to cash in on its popularity.

The company, which has five business centres in Delhi NCR, said it is planning add four more by next year.

“We will launch our Mumbai centre shortly. We are also looking at Pune, Bengaluru and Hyderabad,” Nakul Mathur, MD Avanta India said, adding that the company would invest ₹10 crore for its expansion.

Mathur said Avanta is also in talks with various developers to open business centres. “We have close to 1.25 lakh sq ft of space under operations currently and about 1,400 desks across the five centres which are operational. We lease out space for both long and short term,” he said.

Avanta provides a comprehensive set of services featuring multiple kinds of spaces and virtual as well as digital assistance. “We are looking to set up large office spaces (20,000 -30,000 sq ft) to suit the requirement of our clients,” Mathur said.

Business centres typically take space from developers and convert them into fully equipped serviced work spaces.

Mathur said a chunk of its client base was corporate and the balance from start-up segment.

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Output: Avanta India, is looking to capitalise on the popularity of plug-and-play offices by extending its number of business centres in Delhi NCR from five to nine by 2018. A centre is also set to open in Mumbai and the firm, which currently has 125,000 sq ft of space, plans to spend 10 crore rupees ($1.6m) on expansion, eyeing Pune, Bengaluru and Hyderabad, according to MD Nakul Mathur.