title
stringlengths 4
205
| summary
stringlengths 102
4.94k
| url
stringlengths 41
634
| date
stringlengths 19
26
⌀ | article_content
stringlengths 10
100k
⌀ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Watch shows higher retention than other Facebook video content | Facebook video platform Watch has yet to gain the retention levels of YouTube. Analysis of 46 videos across 15 Watch pages by analytics firm Delmondo, including those of leading publishers and video creators, found viewers spent an average of 23 seconds watching a video. Crucially, this is just past the 20-second point where mid-roll ads are shown. Although 23 seconds was longer than the average watch time of a video in the Facebook News Feed and elsewhere on the site, the videos are lagging behind the 50% or more average retention rate on YouTube. Watch videos' running time varies from four minutes to 20 minutes.
| https://digiday.com/media/facebooks-watch-off-promising-start-faces-long-road-pursuit-youtube/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=digidaydis&utm_source=daily&utm_content=171004 | 2017-10-06 12:36:39.517000 | Early data suggests that Facebook’s Watch is getting viewers to spend more time watching videos. But Facebook still has a long way to go to achieve the levels of retention that top video creators and publishers can get on YouTube.
An analysis of 46 videos on 15 different Watch pages — including pages from top publishers and video creators Facebook is paying to make shows — found the videos averaged 23 seconds in time spent, according to social video analytics company Delmondo. This is greater than the 16.7 seconds Facebook said its users spend watching a video in the Facebook News Feed, on average, in June. It’s not uncommon for average watch times on Watch videos to be double or triple that of Facebook News Feed videos, according to other data tracked by Delmondo. A little more than a month old, Watch already offers hundreds of shows, each with its own page.
Top publishers such as Attn and Condé Nast also said they’re seeing greater retention on their Watch videos, with Attn stating that their Facebook Watch episodes are getting double the retention rate of their “regular programming” on Facebook.
“That’s because we have noticed our audience has developed an increasing appetite for longer-form content,” said Martha Pierce, head of audience for Attn, which has rolled out two shows on Watch — “Health Hacks” with Jessica Alba and “We Need to Talk” — so far.
Watch is Facebook’s biggest attempt yet to create a YouTube-like video experience on its platform. Facebook wants people to visit Facebook more often and spend a longer amount of time on the platform. So it’s incentivizing publishers, celebrities and top YouTube personalities by funding original episodic shows and algorithmically favoring longer videos within the News Feed.
“Many individual videos are being watched with an average watch time of one minute or one and a half minutes,” said Nick Cicero, CEO of Delmondo. “These are videos that are modeled after YouTube. Right from the get-go, [Watch is] trying to put people into a mentality for watching longer videos. There’s an intent by publishers and creators to make great stories that can last longer and capture attention spans for a longer period of time. So, there’s a natural growth in watch time.”
The early data shows Watch is trending in the right direction, but it’s clear that Facebook has a long way to go to establish the type of video experience it wants. Most Watch videos run anywhere from four minutes to 10- and 20-minute, TV-style episodes. Even measured against the lower end of that spectrum, 23 seconds is not a significant retention rate — and it’s nowhere near the consumption levels achieved by TV and top YouTube channels. (Notably, though, it does surpass the 20-second barrier before mid-roll ads, which have yet to be a source of significant revenue for publishers).
There’s no typical average retention rate on YouTube, said Matt Gielen, founder of audience development firm Little Monster Media. Generally, though, a 50 percent retention rate is considered just OK; the goal should be 60 percent or higher, he said.
Recently, publishers that have placed an emphasis on longer videos are seeing longer watch times and completion rates on their YouTube content. For instance, earlier this year, Vox.com said half of its YouTube videos were being watched for an average of four minutes. Bleacher Report and CNN’s Great Big Story have claimed completion rates of 65 percent or higher on YouTube.
The hope, for Facebook and for Watch publishers, is to grow to those consumption levels.
“If you get people into the Watch ecosystem and get them to watch episode after episode, there’s a whole new opportunity from a business perspective that you can’t replicate in the News Feed,” said Croi McNamara, svp of digital video programming for Condé Nast, whose dating show, “Virtually Dating,” is one of the top shows on Watch with 17 million video views, according to the company.
There’s evidence that when Facebook users treat Watch like YouTube — specifically, manually choosing to watch videos rather than being force-fed an autoplay video — they will spend time with the content. Retention rates on click-to-play videos are typically between 50 and 75 percent, according to Delmondo.
“[A higher retention rate] demonstrates that audiences are beginning to see our videos as something much bigger than a News Feed experience,” said Attn co-founder Matthew Segal. “That bodes well for our ability to tell longer stories.” |
Total to enter French residential gas and power market | Energy giant Total is to expand its portfolio to include the residential power and gas distribution. Its new service, Total Spring, will offer renewable energy and natural gas at a rate 10% cheaper than regulated tariffs. | https://www.energyvoice.com/oilandgas/152371/total-springs-gallic-gas-power-markets/ | 2017-10-06 12:34:05.530000 | An error occurred. Please try again.
French energy giant Total is expanding into the residential gas and power distribution market.
The new offering, Total Spring, will provide natural gas and green power that is 10% cheaper than regulated tariffs.
Patrick Pouyanné, chairman and chief executive officer, said: “Although the residential market was deregulated 10 years ago, French consumers haven’t really seen the effect on their bills.
“Today, Total is rolling out a unique offering in the French residential market: an affordable, reliable and simple solution.
“In 2011, we successfully introduced the Total Access service station concept. We’re aiming to repeat that success today with Total Spring, the most competitive natural gas and green power offering in the market. We hope that nearly three million French customers will place their trust in us and subscribe.”
The Total Spring rollout will be supported by a major multimedia advertising campaign beginning on October 8. |
Enel to supply geothermal heat for Italian greenhouse operator | Italian renewables company Enel Green Power has signed a contract to provide geothermal heat to a large greenhouse complex in Tuscany. The Casa del Corto complex is operated by Floramiata, one of the largest greenhouse operators in Europe, and the deal will help overcome the logistical problems of providing energy to the site. Enel is the leading geothermal energy supplier in Italy and has invested in research to improve the technology and make it more efficient. | http://www.thinkgeoenergy.com/enel-to-supply-geothermal-heat-to-large-scale-greenhouse-operations-in-tuscany/ | 2017-10-06 12:27:10.613000 | Enel to supply geothermal heat to large-scale greenhouse operations in Tuscany
Floramiata greenhouses, Italy (source: website screenshot)
Alexander Richter 3 Oct 2017
New favourable geothermal heating contract signed by Enel Green Power with greenhouse operator Floramiata in Tuscany helps to revive its business and expands ongoing heating business efforts by Enel.
Reported last week, Enel Green Power has signed a new contract for the sale of geothermal heat to the “Casa del Corto” greenhouse complex by company Floramiata in Piancastagnaio. This is a multi-year long-term contract at particularly advantageous prices that will allow new managers to relaunch the activity that has been experiencing difficulties during these years and to start off with a stable planning to foster further development.
This agreement is an important contribution to the Tuscany Region, with this cooperation involving institutions, trade unions, Enel Green Power and an entrepreneur, that led to the acquisition of a new property and reaching the Heat Use Agreement.
Floramiata, with its 28 hectares of heated greenhouses , is one of the largest operators in the sector at European level and recovering its operations enables the maintenance of consistent levels of employment: thermal energy supplied every year from EGP at affordable prices, they can be a major competitive lever that will offset some of the logistical problems in the area, particularly linked to road traffic. Enel Green Power thus confirms its policy of focusing on the geothermal areas in which it operates, with the aim of encouraging the growth and development of supply chains related to the use of the geothermal resource.
Enel Green Power, as well as being the leading geothermal source producer in Italy, is the largest national distributor of heat from renewable sources and in recent years has invested in research and innovation both in the field of technology, to improve and to make heating and heat distribution systems more efficient. This has helped agricultural products being developed using synergies with the geothermal resource, such as recently and ongoing experiments on the production of spirulina algae in greenhouses at Chiusdino that will be officially inaugurated in October.
Source: Il Giunco |
New tariff could hinder Pakistan utility sale | A change by Pakistan's energy regulator to the multi-year energy tariff has thrown a proposed multi-billion dollar electric company takeover into doubt. Shanghai Electric Power (SE) signed a deal last year to buy a 66.4% stake in Pakistan's K Electric from the UAE's Abraaj Group for $1.77bn. This was based on a tariff rate of PKR15.57 per unit, which has now been cut by the regulator, Nepra, to PKR12.07 per unit. SE's chairman has written to Nepra warning that the cut endangers the deal and the $9bn of investment in infrastructure that would accompany it. | https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/234978-Determined-tariff-may-harm-177-bnK-Electric-sale-deal | 2017-10-06 12:23:01.117000 | ISLAMABAD: The top man of an eminent Chinese company came forward to save the biggest ever private sector deal of $1.77 billion against sale of Abraaj group’s 66.4% stake in K Electric to the Shanghai Electric Power Company inked in August last year and told the Nepra that the current multiyear determined tariff at Rs12.07 per unit will cause termination of the transaction.
The current determined tariff was reduced by Rs3.50 power unit by Nepra on March 20, 2017 from the existing Multi Year Tariff of Rs15.57 per unit.
The petitioner (KE) had sought the tariff at Rs16.23 per unit. K. Electric has filed the review petition seeking viable tariff to make the $1.77 billion transaction materialised. However, Nepra is unmoved to extend any relief in tariff.
The previous tariff based on efficiency helped the KE to scale down its transmission and distribution (T&D) losses from 35pc to about 22.1 percent over the years, but most of the efficiency gain was allowed to the KE to let it invest and become profitable from being a loss-making entity. In the new tariff, the efficiency gains would now go to the consumers and the system operator would get its return on all assets.
In the latest scenario, Wang Yandan, Chairman of Shanghai Electric Power (SEP), in a letter to Nepra chief written on September 26, 2017 has sought the efficiency based Multi-Year Tariff to materialise its business plan under which a mammoth amount of $9 billion will be invested in 10 years’ time in improving the electricity supply as well as strengthening the transmission and distribution system of the entity. And to cater to the immediate energy needs of the city, SEP plans to build the 900MW power plant.
The copy of the letter exclusively available with The News clearly mentions: “The current determined tariff which is still under review makes the company’s operations completely unviable and non-bankable (both in terms of base tariff and structure) and will unfortunately cause the termination of the acquisition of controlling stake in K. Electric and subsequently the business plan which was aimed at improving the power generation outlook and the lives of the Karachiites.”
The letter further argues: “Our investment decision and business plan is carved out on a base tariff and performance based structure level same as the previous Multi Year Tariff which was based on efficiency regime.” It also pinpointed that the Chinese government and regulatory regime has extended the approvals to SEP on the basis of previous Mutli Year Tariff mode. Now the regulator has changed the efficiency based tariff regime which is why the determined tariff is no more viable for the SEP.
The letter also says by quoting SEP chairman: “We are seriously committed to the development of K. Electric and Karachi’s power infrastructure and for us to proceed further with the acquisition of controlling stakes in K. Electric and implement of our business plan, it is imperative that K.E’s new Multi Year Tariff is at a level same to the previous Multi Year Tariff of the entity.”
It said, “We have built up our entire business plan on the basis of previous Multi Year Tariff.” The official sources also disclosed that minority shareholder has also written the letters to NEPRA asking for increase in tariff to make the business plan of SEP and its investment sustainable.
To a question the official in Power Division said that the Ministries of Defense and Interior have, however, extended the NOC (no Objection Certificate) for the sale of Abraaj Group’s 66.4% stake in K-Electric to Shanghai Electric Power. However, the new buyer of K-Electric will be bound to ensure power supplies to vital defense installations at all times.
However, settlement of the outstanding dues which the seller (Abraaj management) is still an issue and dues are to be settled by the seller before the deal is finalized. The Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC) and National Transmission and Dispatch Company (NTDC) have made claims worth around $1.24 billion on account of cost of electricity, gas and late payment surcharges (LPS). Abraaj Group does not want to pay the interest and is seeking settlement of payment of principal amount. Abraaj Group is of the view that since the matter of payment of mark-up is pending in the court this issue should not be linked with the deal. The Power Division and SSGC do not agree with this stance. |
Cleaning company rejects zero-hours and adopts living wage | Clean for Good, a commercial cleaning firm backed by City of London church, St Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe, and operating on ethical principles, was launched this week. The company will pay its ten workers the London living wage and will provide paid leave, training and guaranteed working hours. The company will not use zero-hours contracts, but will offer the option of flexible hours. The company, operating in a sector notorious for poor pay and conditions, will also use ethical products and attempt to minimise its carbon footprint. Clean for Good hopes to achieve a minimum turnover of £600,000 in the next two years. | https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/oct/06/new-cleaning-firm-to-give-staff-london-living-wage-and-guaranteed-hours | 2017-10-06 12:20:30.333000 | A church-backed commercial cleaning company which pays its staff the London living wage is aiming to win business from established firms by promoting ethical principles.
Clean for Good aims to provide a fairer deal for workers in an industry known for low wages, antisocial hours and poor working conditions.
The company, which formally launched this week, is committed to providing paid leave, guaranteed working hours and training as well as the London living wage.
“We have no zero-hours contracts although we offer flexible hours for employees who want to combine work with study or family responsibilities,” said its business manager, Catherine Pearson.
“We offer staff paid holiday and sick leave, an opt-in pension and health and safety training. We use ethical products, keep our carbon footprint to a minimum and offer our clients transparency.”
Pearson is aiming for a turnover of at least £600,000 in the next two years. “Then we would be a sustainable business, covering our overheads and making a profit,” she said. Profits might be used to pay bonuses to staff, she added.
As well as taking a share of the market, Clean for Good hopes to challenge established companies to change their practices. “Often contracts are sub-contracted, sometimes more than once, and it’s unclear to clients how much the cleaner actually gets for their work.”
Clean for Good’s 10 staff are paid £9.75 per hour. The nine women and one man are from diverse ethnic backgrounds.
Until recently, Florentina, 36, was working in a fast food outlet for 72 hours a week without a contract and being paid in cash. Now she works for Clean for Good for 30 to 40 hours a week, making the same money as she did before, paying tax and with a legal contract. She sends some of her earnings home to Romania, where her children, aged 14 and 12, live.
The company was established by a City of London church, St Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe, which wanted to find a way of helping low-paid workers within its wealthy parish. It has eight clients so far, including a charity, a PR agency and a number of churches.
St-Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe, the Church Mission Society and the Centre for Theology and Community own 75% of the company’s shares; the remainder are owned by individual investors.
Jonny Baker, of the Church Mission Society, said: “Clean for Good is a potent combination of pioneering mission, social enterprise and God’s love. It is a practical mission in action.”
|
Textile that disinfects itself developed for hospital use | Researchers at a University of Leeds spin-off have created a self-disinfecting textile that can reduce bacterial contamination by over 90%. The Surfaceskins material can be used on hospital doors to lower the risk of disease transmission from contaminated hands. Doors, in particular, are hygiene risks because of the number of times they come into contact with contaminants. When it is pushed, the material dispenses a small amount of alcohol gel from tiny valves that disinfects the surface. The device needs to be replaced after 1,000 pushes or once a week.
| https://phys.org/news/2017-10-textile-material-germ-free.html | 2017-10-06 12:19:24.977000 | Close up of a Surfaceskins device showing the tiny valves that 'pump' alcohol gel onto the surface. Credit: Surfaceskins
Scientists have developed a novel weapon in the battle against deadly hospital-acquired infections - a textile that disinfects itself.
And independent tests show it can reduce bacteria levels by more than 90 per cent.
By incorporating the specially-engineered textile in a device designed to be used on hospital doors instead of the traditional aluminium door plate, that part of the door that people push to open it - they aim to bolster hand hygiene.
The self-disinfecting device - known as Surfaceskins - has been developed by a spin out company from the University of Leeds and is the culmination of seven years research and development.
Hospital doors are recognised as a key weak link in hygiene because of the number of times people touch them.
It takes just one person with dirty hands to pass through a door to put everyone else who follows at risk of cross contamination.
Surfaceskins antibacterial door pads work by dispensing a small quantity of alcohol gel onto the pad when it is pushed, to disinfect the surface ready for the next person to use the door.
This low-cost device, which incorporates three separate nonwoven textiles is designed to be replaced after seven days or one thousand pushes, whichever comes sooner.
Surfaceskins antibacterial door pads are not meant to replace the strict handwashing rules in hospitals, but instead provide an extra line of defence by helping clean hands to stay clean. Experts expect that Surfaceskins will increase people's awareness of the importance of washing hands and hand hygiene.
A study into the effectiveness of the new technology has just been published in the Journal of Hospital Infection.
Image shows a Surfaceskins device attached to a door. Credit: Surfaceskins
At the start of the study, both the Surfaceskins and control aluminium door plates were inoculated with bacteria at levels found on the hands of hospital staff. The study concluded that the Surfaceskins door pads were more effective than standard door plates over seven days in reducing the levels of three bacteria that commonly cause hospital-acquired infections: S. aureus, E. coli and E. faecalis.
Mark Wilcox, Professor of Medical Microbiology at the University, who led the independent evaluation, said: "Our results suggest that Surfaceskins door pads can help to reduce the contamination of doors by microbes."
"They offer a new way to reduce the risk of the spread of bacteria and viruses in hospital environments and other settings where frequent contact with doors could undermine hand hygiene."
Scale of hospital-acquired infections
According to data published in 2014 by the National Institute for Care and Excellence or NICE, 300,000 patients a year in England get hospital-acquired infections.
The infections mean increased treatment costs, estimated by NHS England to be around £1 billion a year, and put patients at risk of significant harm.
Surfaceskins technology
Four patents protect the innovation behind Surfaceskins. The device is fitted into a plastic holster which is attached to the door.
Surfaceskins contain a reservoir of alcohol gel and a membrane with tiny valves that dispense the gel onto the surface where it is pressed when opening a door, self-disinfecting it within seconds.
Chris Fowler, Chief Executive of the spin out that has developed the device, said: "Surfaceskins address a definite need, in a simple, effective and low-cost way. Designed to provide protection in many high-risk situations, the global market for Surfaceskins is immense.
Image shows a Surfaceskins device fitted to a hospital door. Credit: Surfaceskins
"In addition to the successful NHS trials, many organisations outside healthcare have expressed serious interest in introducing these self-disinfecting products. Surfaceskins can play an important role wherever door users have an interest in maintaining clean hands."
The company has also developed a door handle using the Surfaceskins technology.
Surfaceskins are being targeted at other industrial sectors where there is a need for meticulous hand hygiene such as in catering and hospitality. They could also be used on cruise ships where the spread of bacteria can lead to outbreaks of sickness.
On the back of successful trials and agreed distribution deals, Surfaceskins Ltd is now looking for £600,000 investment to expand their sales network and production capability at their Leeds-based facility.
Nonwovens Innovation and Research Institute Ltd
Surfaceskins is a collaboration between the Nonwovens Innovation and Research Institute Ltd (NIRI), a spin out company from the University's School of Design, and two industrial designers, Adam Walker and Simon Scott-Harden.
NIRI helps companies bring new textile ideas to market or to enhance or improve existing products or manufacturing processes.
Since being established 12 years ago, NIRI, which has recently relocated into larger premises in Leeds City Centre, has successfully completed 400+ projects for over 200 clients.
Nonwovens is a group of textiles created by interlocking or bonding individual fibres or filaments together, and includes a wide range of products including wound dressings, nappies, filters, military clothing and imitation fur.
More information: E.L. Best et al, The potential of alcohol release doorplates to reduce surface contamination during hand contact, Journal of Hospital Infection (2017). DOI: 10.1016/j.jhin.2017.07.027 |
3T Biosciences said to raise $12m for cancer treatment research | Biotech start-up 3T Biosciences is said to have raised more than $12m in a seed funding round as it seeks to develop a cancer treatment that harnesses the human body's own immune system. A source said the company is led by cancer biology PhD researcher and investor Luke Lee and a group of academics from Stanford University. Investors in the seed round reportedly include entrepreneur Peter Thiel and early Facebook investor Sean Parker.
| https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/04/peter-thiel-sean-parker-invest-in-3t-bioscieneces-to-fight-cancer.html | 2017-10-06 11:59:31.867000 | A stealth start-up called 3T Biosciences has raised more than $12 million in a massive seed round led by early Facebook investor Sean Parker and including Peter Thiel, according to a person familiar with the company's financing.
Little is known about 3T Biosciences, but this person said the company is led by cancer biology PhD student and investor, Asset Management Ventures' principal Luke Lee, as well as a group of academics from Christopher Garcia's biology lab at Stanford.
3T Biosciences is in the T-cell therapy space, the person said, meaning that it is among a growing group of new start-ups working to bolster the body's own immune system to fight cancer. That's a different approach than traditional medicines like chemotherapy, which kill off both cancerous and healthy cells. |
US move to back coal, nuclear plants faces energy industry fight | A coalition of groups from across the US energy production spectrum have made an unprecedented move to block government efforts seen as propping up the coal and nuclear industries. Organisations from the natural gas, oil and renewables industries filed papers urging the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to deny the Department of Energy's (DoE) recent request to compensate power plants that have a "90-day supply of fuel on hand" -- essentially, coal and nuclear producers. The coalition questioned the basis for the move and former FERC commissioner Nora Mead Brownell said it would "drive away investment in new, more efficient technologies".
| https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/behind-the-backlash-to-energy-secretary-rick-perrys-demand-for-coal-nuclear#gs.bQdRqB8 | 2017-10-06 11:01:51.903000 | Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s demand for market-disrupting price supports for coal and nuclear power plants has broken multiple rules for how energy policy is made, from upending the facts to subverting regular order. And it’s being pushed through on a hyper-fast, 60-day review period that’s not only unjustified by the Department of Energy report it cites as justification, but “practically and legally impossible” to meet.
This is a collection of the critiques that have emerged since Friday’s shock DOE filing with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. In a rarely used notice of public rule making (NOPR), DOE asked FERC to create market rules to provide compensation for power plants that, among other features, have a 90-day supply of fuel on hand -- something that only coal and nuclear power plants can do.
The NOPR cited the grid reliability study ordered by Perry in April to argue that baseload power plants need compensation to shore up grid reliability. But as we covered when it was released in July, the report doesn’t actually support that conclusion, stealing some of the thunder from clean energy and environmental groups’ arguments that the report was a Trojan horse for pro-coal and nuclear power policies all along.
Friday’s NOPR seems to have vindicated those views, however, as well as drawing the fire of a much broader coalition of energy industry players. On Tuesday, FERC received a joint motion from a coalition representing literally every sector of the energy economy except coal and nuclear power, asking it to deny DOE’s request for an interim final rule to take effect within 60 days, and to extend the comment period out to at least 90 days.
The coalition includes the country’s biggest solar and wind trade groups and renewables boosters like the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE) and Advanced Energy Economy. But it also includes the Natural Gas Supply Association, the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America, and the American Petroleum Institute -- a highly unusual set of bedfellows.
“This is the first time we've filed a motion in conjunction with API,” Gil Jenkins, a spokesperson for ACORE, told The Washington Post. “So it’s unprecedented, just as this very action taken by DOE.”
Also joining the motion were the American Public Power Association and National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, representing municipal and co-op utilities, and the Electricity Consumers Resource Council, representing big commercial and industrial power users. Even the generator group Electric Power Supply Association -- the same one that sued FERC to overturn its Order 745 regulations allowing demand response equal play in capacity markets -- has signed on.
“This is one of the most significant proposed rules in decades related to the energy industry, and, if finalized, would unquestionably have significant ramifications for wholesale markets under the commission’s jurisdiction,” the group wrote.
This view was shared across the energy industry spectrum this week. Former FERC chairman Jon Wellinghoff, a Democrat, told Utility Dive that the DOE rule would "blow up the markets” that the agency has spent the past four decades creating. Former FERC commissioner Nora Mead Brownell, a Republican, told RTO Insider that the proposal is “the antithesis of good economics. It’s going to destroy the markets [and] drive away investment in new, more efficient technologies.”
Even energy company CEOs are crying foul. At a Gulf Coast Power Association conference Tuesday in Austin, Texas, Dynegy CEO Bob Flexon called the NOPR a "red herring for subsidies" for nuclear and coal, while NRG Energy CEO Mauricio Gutierrez said that propping up coal and nuclear power plants, while leaving other resources open to competitive forces, would be “a recipe for disaster."
But the Edison Electric Institute utility trade group, which did not join the rest of the energy trade groups in Tuesday’s FERC filing, took a more neutral stance. In a Tuesday statement, EEI vice president of energy supply Richard McMahon said the NOPR shows that the DOE recognizes that "a balanced energy mix that includes 24/7 energy sources is vital to sustaining a secure, reliable and resilient energy grid,” and that ”new market rules should recognize the role that all generation sources play in maintaining the reliability and resiliency of the energy grid.”
Coal- and nuclear-reliant FirstEnergy Corp. was one of the lonely voices in support of the ruling. “Correcting the faulty market conditions and keeping essential baseload generating plants operating will help ensure customers continue to receive safe, reliable and affordable supplies of electricity while maintaining the security of the electricity grid,” CEO Charles Jones said in a prepared statement.
Why 90 days of fuel supply doesn’t make the grid more resilient
These views are complicated by the fact that DOE’s proposed "Grid Resiliency Pricing Rule” is lacking in so many details. Ari Peskoe, senior fellow in electricity law at the Harvard Law School Environmental Law Program Policy Initiative, pointed this out in a Monday Interchange discussion with GTM Research head Shayle Kann.
In simple terms, the rule does two things, Peskoe said. First, it defines reliability and resiliency attributes, including the 90-day fuel supply requirement. That in and of itself is a conclusion unsupported by the facts at hand, however, he said -- a point echoed by multiple parties since Friday.
“A lot of the arguments in the DOE proposal -- well, they’re certainly cherry-picked, but they’re also often specious,” said Devin Hartman, electricity policy manager at R Street, a free-market think tank in Washington, D.C. For example, the NOPR cites FERC and grid operators’ market design concerns as reasons for including 90-day fuel supply as a requirement -- but what evidence does exist indicates that fuel-supply problems are only a minor cause of power outages in the U.S., he said.
To back that up, he pointed to an analysis published Tuesday by the Rhodium Group, which crunched DOE data on the causes of the 3.4 billion customer-hours of major electricity disruptions from 2012 to 2016. Of that time, only 2,815 hours, or 0.0007 percent of the total, was due to fuel supply problems, it found -- and of those, 2,333 hours were due to fuel supply disruptions at a coal-fired power plant in northern Minnesota.
The real culprits for outages are instead severe weather, with Hurricane Sandy accounting for nearly-one third of the total hours of power lost over that period, and severe weather accounting for nearly all the rest. Puerto Rico’s nearly complete power outage in the wake of Hurricane Maria has already accounted for nearly twice the total number of outage hours in 2016.
DOE’s choice of 90 days of fuel stockpiles as the sole metric of reliability also fails to take into account the much deeper analysis presented in the DOE’s report, he noted. This built on existing work at FERC and the country’s big grid operators, calling for improvements in energy price formation and valuation of essential reliability services such as voltage support and frequency response.
Natural Resources Defense Council senior attorney John Moore told the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy on Tuesday that the DOE proposal is “sowing confusion and suggesting the power grid will be imperiled if we don’t pay large subsidies to keep specific types of generators afloat. We can achieve a higher level of reliability at a lower cost and with less pollution by defining reliability and resiliency needs first.”
Kann asked Peskoe whether DOE or FERC are under legal obligation to consider these alternative metrics for reliability and resiliency. Peskoe replied that "FERC rules have to be non-discriminatory -- that's a really fundamental premise they operate under." But that only strictly applies to rules that are "unduly discriminatory -- they can discriminate if there's some valid purpose.”
From “flimsy and vague” proposal to final rule in 60 days?
Second, DOE’s NOPR seeks to define a special rate that these resources should provide, Peskoe said, which “kind of suggests that these resources are going to be taken out of the competitive market construct and are now going to be compensated based on cost-of-service rate-making principles.” That’s the general view being taken by industry observers, since the rule would only apply to power plants in competitive wholesale markets, not those already subject to state or federal cost-of-service regulations.
That's not entirely clear, however, because the NOPR also cites the need for markets to support the benefits and services of reliability and resiliency, and “being compensated for benefits and services is different than cost of service,” he said. That could open the options for other methods, such as some kind of “value of coal tariff” to mimic the value-of-solar tariff proposals being fleshed out by a handful of states and utilities, or defining a new set of reliability and resilience attributes and creating a new market for them.
Unfortunately, the DOE’s NOPR is quite vague on what it’s asking FERC to undertake, he said. The questions left unanswered by the NOPR, according to a series of tweets he published after its release, include: “Is this cost-of-service ratemaking or is DOE suggesting that rate should be based on a plant’s ‘benefits and services? Does an eligible generator always receive this rate, or do they normally get paid LMP but receive this rate under certain circumstances? How does dispatch work if an eligible plant is not bidding into the market? Or is an eligible plant ‘bidding’ this special rate?”
These kinds of details, so common to traditional FERC rulemakings, are completely absent from DOE’s NOPR, he said. That would make it “practically and legally impossible” for FERC to actually comply with DOE’s request to have a final rule completed within the 15 days left between the end of the public comment period and the 60-day deadline it set out, he said.
NRDC clean energy attorney Miles Farmer agreed in a Friday blog post, noting that “DOE’s proposal is so vague that FERC could not possibly adopt it as is, making it hard to see how FERC could possibly advance it in a manner that complies [with] the procedural requirements for a formal rulemaking proposal.”
That’s the same reason that the 11 energy trade groups asked FERC to extend the comment period for the new rule. Despite the NOPR’s claims, the groups said, “both DOE and NERC recently released reports categorically concluding that there is no reliability emergency” that would require such a speed-up.
FERC this week filed notice that it was taking comments on the NOPR on the accelerated schedule, with Oct. 23 as the deadline for initial comments and Nov. 7 for reply comments. But it still hasn't ruled on the groups' proposal, leaving open the potential for extending its timeline.
Jason Johns, partner in Stoel Rives’ energy practice, suggested in a blog post that the short timeframe could be “perhaps intended to allow Interim Chairman Chatterjee and Commissioner Powelson to take action on this notice alone before FERC has a full set of commissioners.” Chatterjee has already expressed his support of recognizing baseload power “as an essential part of the fuel mix” that must be “properly compensated to recognize the value they provide to the system.”
But to remain legal, any action FERC takes will have to be rooted in several fundamental principles, Peskoe noted. First, it will have to find that existing grid operator tariffs are “unjust and unreasonable,” something that DOE’s NOPR does not take up. Second, it would have to show that the new rules being promulgated are “just and reasonable,” which is again difficult given that "FERC is going to have to address the total lack of detail in this document” on that matter.
-- |
Clean-energy tariff created for Facebook data centre | Virginia-based utility Dominion Energy has worked with Facebook to develop a renewable-energy tariff for the social media site's one-million sq ft, $750m data centre, to be built in Richmond. Dominion is set to file the tariff, called Schedule RF, with regulator the Virginia State Corporation Commission later this month. If approved, it could be adopted by firms including Amazon Web Services, Equinix and Digital Realty Trust, which also operate data centres in the state and have all pledged to use a 100% renewable energy supply.
| http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/energy/dominion-creates-clean-energy-tariff-facebook-data-center-virginia | 2017-10-06 11:00:12.057000 | At least some portion of electricity consumed by the future Facebook data center in Richmond, Virginia, will be offset by solar energy generated by plants the utility that serves the area is planning to build in the Commonwealth. Facebook will be buying the energy under a new renewable-energy tariff the social media company worked with the utility, Dominion Energy Virginia, to create.
While hyper-scale data center operators like Facebook, Alphabet, and Microsoft may be keen to power their massive computing facilities with renewable energy, it’s not a product that’s readily available from all energy providers in the US. Because matching energy supply with demand while ensuring their rates comply with regulations is a difficult balance utilities have to maintain, many of them have been resistant to adding a new product like renewable energy, which adds an extra layer of complexity in rate-setting to ensure extra costs a utility incurs doesn’t affect all its customers’ rates.
Related: How Renewable Energy is Changing the Data Center Market
This is why Google (now a subsidiary of Alphabet) spent years lobbying Duke Energy in North Carolina to adopt its renewable-energy tariff concept, where the utility sells renewable energy to customers that want it, while fully passing any additional costs to those specific customers. In 2015, Google became the first customer of Duke’s renewable-energy tariff.
Now, Facebook appears to have successfully lobbied Dominion to add a renewable-energy tariff to its product portfolio, which may have much wider implications for the data center industry than Google’s deal in North Carolina. About 130 miles north of Richmond, in Northern Virginia, is one of the largest and most active data center markets in the world. The largest data center operators there, including Amazon Web Services, Equinix, and Digital Realty Trust, have all pledged to power their infrastructure with 100 percent renewable energy, which means there are lots of potential future customers for Dominion’s new tariff besides Facebook.
First, however, state regulators have to approve the tariff, called Schedule RF. Dominion said it plans to file for approval with the Virginia State Corporation Commission this month. An approval, which is enjoying some strong political tailwind, is likely. Announcement of Facebook’s data center plans that came out of Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe’s office highlights the project’s solar-energy aspect; Representative Donald McEachin and Senator Mark Warner also made statements praising Facebook’s renewable-energy plans for the future facility.
“Facebook’s partnership with Virginia and this significant investment in Henrico County are great news for the region,” U.S Senator Mark Warner said. “This not only is a validation of the Commonwealth’s position as a leader in the tech economy. It also supports our investments in building a modern fiber and renewable energy infrastructure to maintain Virginia’s competitive edge for additional job creation and investment.” "I am so pleased to see Facebook invest in our community, bringing more than 100 tech job opportunities for the hardworking people of the Commonwealth," said Congressman Donald McEachin. "Not only will Facebook bring more tech jobs to the 4th Congressional District, but this project will include solar panels to power this facility with 100 percent renewable energy. Virginia is once again an innovative leader in creating jobs and using renewable energy to power our community's bright future.”
One of the proposed tariff’s requirements is that new renewable-energy generation plants built to support it are located in Virginia. However, like in most other such cases, the solar farms Dominion is planning to construct will not be supplying energy directly to the Facebook data center. They will offset the facility’s consumption of energy from the local electrical grid.
It’s unclear what portion of the data center’s total energy consumption will come from these solar farms. Companies typically use a combination of renewable energy credits and in some cases on-site generation to get to 100-percent renewable goals for hyper-scale data centers.
Facebook’s data center campus in Richmond is expected to take up nearly 1 million square feet. The company plans to invest $750 million in the project directly. |
Ikea's indoor mini farm promises fast home-grown produce | Ikea's innovation arm, Space10, has developed a prototype vertical farming kit for growing food at home, even with minimal space. Dubbed Lokal, the stackable system employs hydroponics and LEDs, and is claimed to be three times faster growing and use 90% less water than a traditional garden. The team is working on integrating internet of things sensors into the planters so users can track the progress of their produce from the Google Home app. While it is currently unknown whether Ikea will sell them in-store, such systems are touted as having the potential to help to address the issue of food security.
| https://futurism.com/this-innovative-farm-grows-food-three-times-faster-than-a-regular-garden/ | 2017-10-06 10:42:57.003000 | Eat Lokal
Ikea is no longer content to help people simply design their kitchens — the Scandinavian retailer is now considering ways to help customers grow the food cooked in them through Lokal, a prototype mini-farm capable of growing greens and herbs indoors.
Developed by Ikea's Space10 innovation lab, Lokal is based around a hydroponic farming system that uses LEDs to grow produce on stackable trays. The system's designers claim that Lokal greens grow roughly three times more quickly than those found in a traditional garden, using 90 percent less water in the process.
Image Credit: Space10
The design team is currently testing out a method of integrating sensors into the system's growing trays, which would allow at-home farmers to check the status of their crop from their smartphone via Google Home. The idea of using machine learning to analyze data collected by the community of Lokal gardeners is also being considered.
Growing Up
Ikea has yet to decide whether or not Lokal will be sold in stores, and according to Michael La Cour, Managing Director of IKEA Food Services, the project is still in its early stages and needs more development before it could be ready for retail.
However, whether or not Lokal makes it to an Ikea near you, vertical farming is clearly on the rise. This new methodology can be incredibly efficient and has already been employed in a retail environment in an effort to give customers access to the freshest possible produce. It also has the potential to help solve the growing food shortage crisis as the world's population continues skyward.
Many people like to be as self-sufficient as possible when it comes to their food, but not everyone has the space for a traditional garden or access to an allotment. Vertical farming gives just about anyone access to home-grown produce, so if a major company like Ikea can develop a straightforward kit to help would-be agriculturists get started, it has the potential to be a big success. |
Power retailers could derail Modi's 2018 electrification plan | Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ambitious INR163.2bn ($2.5bn) plan to electrify the whole of India by December 2018 could be scuppered by state electricity distribution companies. Many have lost money by selling power below cost prices to win political support, leaving them unable to invest in infrastructure or pay off debt. Modi's plan could result in annual power demand rising from the current 15% to as much as 35% within two years, according to a Deutsche Bank report. But convincing the states to charge higher tariffs could put Modi in a precarious political position as he seeks re-election in 2019.
| http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/policy/pm-narendra-modis-2-5-billion-free-power-plan-may-stumble-on-ailing-buyers/articleshow/60865417.cms | 2017-10-06 10:42:04.380000 | The success of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambitious plan to electrify all households in India by December 2018 faces a familiar hurdle: the money-losing state power retailers Modi earlier this week announced the government will spend 163.2 billion rupees ($2.5 billion) to provide electricity connections to every home in India by the end of next year, ahead of an earlier deadline of March 2019. The bulk of the cost for providing equipment such as power cables and electricity meters to every poor household will be borne by the federal government and partly by the states and the power retailer.“The key is not the scheme but the political will to allow for commercial operations of discoms,” CLSA analyst Bharat Parekh said in a report on Tuesday, referring to electricity distribution companies. “The key issue is that after electrifying the households, how much power will discoms supply and how will they recover the money.”Several power retailers are losing money on selling electricity below cost, and turning them around is in the hands of the state governments, which have traditionally used cheap power to shore up popular support and advance their political goals. Convincing states to allow profitable power tariffs will be Modi’s biggest challenge in fulfilling the pledge that helped him rise to power in New Delhi in 2014. Modi is up for re-election in 2019.“The onus now lies with the states,” according to Debasish Mishra, a partner at Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu LLP in Mumbai. “The federal government is paying for connections, but the purpose will be defeated if the states fail to supply reliable power to people. And for that to happen operational autonomy of the distribution companies and timely payment of subsidies is a must.”The announcement follows a 2015 proposal to reform power distribution, which sought to transfer three-quarters of utilities’ debt to their respective state governments. The utilities were set targets to bring down losses. As a result, total losses of utilities that signed up for the plan dropped 21.5 percent from a year earlier to 403 billion rupees in the year ended March 31.There’s pressure on state governments to bring losses down even further. Starting this financial year, states will begin sharing a part of the losses their retailers make, according to the plan to turn around power distributors. In the year ending March, provincial governments will take over 5 percent of their retailers’ losses in the previous year. The state’s share of losses will rise each year, reaching up to 50 percent in the year ending March 2021.Years of selling electricity below cost has eroded discoms’ ability to invest in infrastructure, buy enough power from generators and repay bank debts. Power generation plants operate at just about half their capacity, unable to sell all the power they can produce. The power-for-all plan could “act as a major stimulus for the ailing power sector in India, with demand revival,” Deutsche Bank analyst Abhishek Puri said in a Sept. 26 report.“Our analysis suggests that power demand could potentially grow by 20 percent to 35 percent from current levels in two years, if the government is able to meet its target, as against the tepid 15% cumulative growth in the past five years,” Puri said.Monday’s announcement supplements an earlier program to invest 760 billion rupees in rural electrification . Modi’s administration embarked on the plan in 2015, beginning with electrifying more than 18,000 un-electrified villages. About 3,000 villages still remain to be electrified, which means creating the infrastructure to take electricity to villages, making sure at least 10 percent of the households and public buildings there have power connections. Taking electricity to every home is the next phase of the plan.Retailers have coped with losses by limiting power supplies to consumers in rural areas, who are heavily subsidized, and selling more expensive electricity to industrial consumers to help fund a part of the losses. Even if all rural households get power, making adequate returns on their investment will be a challenge for retailers given the low-usage pattern.“This ambitious scheme needs to be followed up with equal emphasis on actual hours of supply, otherwise there’ll be a danger of people not getting the true benefits of electrification, which can reduce their willingness to pay,” said Ashwini Chitnis, a researcher at Prayas, a non-profit advocacy group that focuses on energy, health and education. “Poor cost recovery can result in poor maintenance and thus huge investments in network infrastructure can go waste.” |
Sadiq Khan asks BMW, Mercedes and VW to fund air pollution scheme | BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen have been accused of “double standards” by London Mayor, Sadiq Khan, after it emerged that the firms had paid £223m ($290m) to the German Sustainable Mobility Fund for Cities, but nothing to the UK. Khan has written to the car manufacturers asking them to contribute to a fund designed to tackle London’s air pollution crisis. Figures released on Wednesday revealed that every inhabitant of the capital is breathing air in breach of global guidelines for PM2.5 particle pollution. | https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/06/sadiq-khan-asks-car-manufacturers-to-give-funds-towards-tackling-londons-toxic-air | 2017-10-06 10:40:30.640000 | The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has written to three leading car manufacturers asking them to contribute to the fund set up to tackle the capital’s air pollution crisis.
Khan has accused BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen of “double standards” after it emerged they had paid £223m to the German government’s Sustainable Mobility Fund for Cities earlier this year, but have given nothing to the UK.
“Londoners will be baffled by the double standards of these car manufacturers. On the one hand, they admit they’ve got to cut emissions from their vehicles, but they confine their funding to Germany alone.”
VW has also paid $15bn compensation in the US after the dieselgate scandal – when it was found to have fitted millions of cars with “defeat devices” that made their cars appear less polluting in emissions tests than they were on the road.
Khan said: “In July, the UK managing director of VW sat in my office and said they couldn’t contribute anything to fund cleaning up London’s air, but their German colleagues are providing money. Londoners will find that unacceptable.”
The scale of London’s air pollution crisis was laid bare on Wednesday, with new figures showing that every person in the capital is breathing air that exceeds global guidelines for dangerous toxic particles.
The research revealed that every area in the capital exceeds World Health Organisation (WHO) limits for PM2.5s – ultra-fine particles of less than 2.5 microns which have serious health implications, especially for children.
London is widely recognised as the worst area for air pollution in the UK, although there is growing evidence that dangerously polluted air is damaging people’s health in towns and cities across the country.
Khan has also written to the secretary of state for transport, Chris Grayling, to ask the government to do more.
“The government must act urgently to secure a meaningful amount of funding from these manufacturers, which could help people to scrap the most polluting diesel vehicles and take these off our streets,” said Khan.
The mayor has set out a range of plans to tackle pollution from diesel cars in the capital. The first stage, the new T-Charge, which will charge older, more polluting vehicles entering central London, starts later this month.
Clean air campaigners have welcomed the moves but called on him to go further and take more immediate action to tackle the crisis.
They are also calling on him to halt major road developments – such as the Silvertown Tunnel project – which they say will increase pollution in the capital.
Areeba Hamid, clean air campaigner at Greenpeace said: “Asking car manufacturers to take responsibility for their part in London’s air pollution crisis is an essential first step towards holding them accountable.
“A clean air fund that major car manufactures contribute towards could help, provided manufacturers agree to ditch diesel completely. In the meantime, new Euro 6 cars should be subject to ULEZ regulations if we are to clean up London’s air and keep it that way.” |
Sadiq Khan asks BMW, Mercedes and VW to fund air pollution scheme | BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen have been accused of “double standards” by London Mayor, Sadiq Khan, after it emerged that the firms had paid £223m ($290m) to the German Sustainable Mobility Fund for Cities, but nothing to the UK. Khan has written to the car manufacturers asking them to contribute to a fund designed to tackle London’s air pollution crisis. Figures released on Wednesday revealed that every inhabitant of the capital is breathing air in breach of global guidelines for PM2.5 particle pollution. | https://www.volkswagenag.com/en/news/2017/08/volkswagen-group-launches-package-of-measures.html | 2017-10-06 10:40:30.640000 | Together with the German Federal, state and municipal governments and German automakers, the Volkswagen Group will make a decisive contribution to a swift and sustained reduction in NOx emissions. A key element of this package is the trade-in incentive for Euro 1 - Euro 4 diesel models which will apply across all brands in the Group. In addition, the software update for Euro 5 and some Euro 6 diesel vehicles will be available throughout Europe and not just in Germany.
“With the incentive to trade in their vehicles we are giving our customers strong motivation to switch to a modern, more environmentally compatible vehicle powered by an internal combustion engine or an alternative drivetrain technology“, Matthias Müller said. “This incentive can be implemented quickly and will have a swift, quantifiable and sustained effect on significantly reducing NOx emissions and significantly improving air quality.”
The incentive is currently being prepared by the Group’s Volkswagen Passenger Cars, Audi, SEAT, ŠKODA, Porsche and Volkswagen Commercial vehicles brands and will be on offer soon.
Pan-European software update for Group vehicles
In Germany, the Volkswagen Group will install a software update on approx. four million Euro 5 and some Euro 6 diesel vehicles in total as agreed in order to reduce NOx emission levels. This figure also includes the approx. 2.5 million vehicles already being recalled, of which more than 70 percent have already been refitted.
In addition, the Volkswagen Group will be offering the software update to its diesel customers throughout Europe. As a result, NOx emissions from Euro 5 and some Euro 6 diesel vehicles currently on the market can be reduced by an average 25 to 30 percent.
Furthermore, the Volkswagen Group will contribute to the €500 million “sustainable mobility fund for cities”. The auto industry and the Federal government will each contribute €250 million. The Volkswagen Group’s contribution to the fund will be proportionate to its market share in Germany and will therefore represent a substantial amount. |
Battery-storage licence rethink mulled to end generation breaches | Battery storage could be considered a "distinct subset of electricity generation" if proposals from UK energy regulator Ofgem are accepted. The move aims to bring clarity to the battery storage industry and stop distribution network operators, which are prevented from owning generation capacity, from operating in the sector. Changes to electricity generation licence descriptions could also reduce levies passed onto consumers. The consultation period is set to end on 27 November, with Ofgem's anticipated changes in place for summer 2018. The UK government is also planning similar amendments to the 1989 Electricity Act.
| https://www.out-law.com/en/articles/2017/october/ofgem-to-licence-battery-storage-as-a-subset-of-generation/ | 2017-10-06 10:33:05.803000 | The energy regulator has proposed modifying the existing generation licence to accommodate storage as a distinct subset of electricity generation. The government intends to make the same change to the underlying primary legislation, the 1989 Electricity Act, when parliamentary time allows.
This is part of our series analysing the challenges and opportunities ahead for companies embracing smart energy technologies. For more, sign up to receive an exclusive Pinsent Masons research paper on smart energy technology, supply, storage and investment.
One of the effects of the change would be to stop distribution network operators (DNOs) from operating storage, as they are not permitted to own generation for competition reasons. However, Ofgem intends to permit DNOs to operate storage in specific circumstances where this would not be anti-competitive, such as for time-limited emergency restoration and maintenance.
The consultation closes on 27 November 2017, and Ofgem anticipates that the changes would take effect by summer 2018.
Separately, the UK government has announced the seven universities that will be founding partners of the £65 million Faraday Battery Institute, to be funded with part of the £246m that the government has set aside for battery technology investment over the next four years through its Industrial Strategy. The partner universities will work together with industry partners and other academic institutions to research and develop market-ready battery technologies.
The founding partners are Imperial College London, Newcastle University, University College London, University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, University of Southampton and University of Warwick.
Currently, electricity storage is not defined in primary legislation, making its regulatory status within the electricity system and planning regimes unclear. When parliamentary time allows, the government intends to amend the 1989 Electricity Act and other legislation to explicitly define electricity storage as a distinct subset of generation. Health and safety standards will also be updated.
In the meantime, Ofgem's proposed changes would allow for this to be done through the electricity generation licensing system, as indicated in the Smart Systems and Flexibility Plan it published in the summer. It intends to base its definition of storage on that proposed in the government's call for evidence on storage: "the conversion of electrical energy into a form of energy which can be stored, the storing of that energy, and the subsequent reconversion of that energy back into electrical energy in a controllable manner". The condition will require the licensee to ensure that 'self-consumption' is not the primary function of the storage facility.
The way the changes work would also address the issues faced by storage facilities regarding final consumption levies (FCLs), which under the current structure could effectively be charged twice at the time that storage providers both import from and export to the grid. 'Double counting' adds to the operational cost of storage projects and may be passed on to the end consumer, potentially making storage less competitive than other forms of generation.
Smart energy expert Nick Shenken of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com, explained that the potential for FCL double-charging arises because storage assets technically 'consume' electricity in order to store it and then the same electricity is similarly consumed by the end user when it is released from storage. FCLs are, in effect, a contribution towards the cost of market support mechanisms, such as the Renewables Obligation, feed-in tariffs, contracts for difference and the capacity market.
"Technically, in this scenario, there are at least two 'consumers' – the storage asset and the final consumer," Shenken said. "It was felt that the financial impact of this would likely fall on those final consumers, thus making storage uncompetitive in the market."
"The current proposals therefore set out a plan under which storage would become a subset of generation and potentially be able to receive a generation licence which only requires compliance with those of the general licence conditions which are relevant to storage, and not those conditions which are only relevant to conventional generation. In addition, storage assets with this kind of licence would be under an obligation to ensure that their primary function was in fact storage for injecting electricity back to the grid, and not for consumption at a later date on site," he said.
"Compliance with this condition ensures the storage asset is not in fact the end consumer, thus avoiding the FCLs. If the primary function is simply to store energy which is then used by the generator later, then the thinking is that they are in fact the end user and should pay FCLs. It will be interesting to watch whether the definition of 'primary function' becomes more detailed, or whether it will simply be left wider to encapsulate as much as possible," he said. |
Google Sidewalk Labs is favourite for Toronto waterfront project | Toronto's waterfront district is set to be transformed into a smart city neighbourhood after Alphabet-owned Google Sidewalk Labs topped the shortlist of potential development partners. The Quayside project will turn 12 acres of land into a mixed-use community and is intended to be a "climate-positive urban development", with an emphasis on sustainable architecture and urban design. Sidewalk Labs's goal is to reimagine "cities from the internet up" to create neighbourhoods that use new technology to solve common urban problems such as congestion and a shortage of affordable houses. An official announcement and more detailed plans of the scheme are expected later in the year. | https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/googles-sidewalk-labs-preferred-partner-toronto-waterfront-development/article36491720/?ref=http://www.theglobeandmail.com& | 2017-10-06 10:12:42.600000 | The Toronto skyline as seen from an inbound Porter airlines flight on Feb, 4, 2017.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail Share
Google's Sidewalk Labs has been selected as the top candidate to turn part of Toronto's waterfront into a smart neighbourhood designed to integrate new technology and advance sustainable architecture and urban design, The Globe and Mail has learned.
The project, known as Quayside, aims to turn 4.9 hectares (12 acres) of waterfront land near Parliament Street and Queens Quay East into a mixed-use community that Waterfront Toronto says will use advanced technology, innovative building techniques and funding to encourage "climate-positive urban development."
Waterfront staff selected Sidewalk Labs LLC, a unit of Google's parent company Alphabet Inc. that imagines, designs, tests and builds urban innovations, pending approval from the agency's board in the coming weeks, according to a source close to the negotiations.
The project would allow the tech company to work toward its stated goal of "reimagining cities from the Internet up," by integrating technology and urban design to create a 21st century neighbourhood that uses innovation to address common city problems, such as traffic congestion and a shortage of affordable housing.
According to a request for proposals issued by Waterfront Toronto, 20 per cent of the residential units built must be designated as affordable, and the development is meant to accommodate a range of income and age groups.
A spokesman for Google Canada declined to comment, as did Toronto Mayor John Tory. Waterfront Toronto spokeswoman Carol Webb declined to comment on Sidewalk's potential involvement.
"Our process includes a blackout period that must be observed … until our board of directors has approved the recommended proponent and the formal announcement is made," she said. "We expect to make that announcement later this fall."
Waterfront Toronto, the agency set up in 2001 by federal, provincial and city governments to transform 800 hectares in and around Toronto's port lands, issued an unusual request for proposals in March: It asked for an "innovation and funding partner" for the project. The particular form of development on the site was not fully determined. The project is intended to generate a financial return but also "use the waterfront as a test bed for how we construct the future city," Waterfront Toronto CEO Will Fleissig said in an interview in March.
The development, Mr. Fleissig suggested, could help make Toronto a global leader in addressing climate resiliency and the "smart city."
The Quayside land, currently home to low-rise industrial or office buildings surrounded by parking lots, is made up of tracts owned either by the city or Waterfront Toronto itself, plus one that is privately owned. Its development would carry forward to projects on nearby land, some of which is made possible because of the June announcement of a $1.185-billion flood protection plan.
"Our objective with Quayside is to advance new models for addressing pressing urban challenges, such as the increasing disparity in housing affordability, congestion on our roads and the imperative to address climate change," said Waterfront Toronto's Ms. Webb. "Beginning with Quayside, we aim to design a new kind of mixed-use, complete community that will combine forward-thinking urban design and new technologies to create people-first neighbourhoods that help address these challenges."
Sidewalk Labs develops what are often referred to as "smart cities" systems. It aims to use data collection and new technologies to solve urban problems. For example, it says it is working on an adaptive traffic light system that could "detect pedestrians, cyclists, cars, and transit vehicles to facilitate safe, seamless movement through congested urban intersections."
But the first project it mentions on its website is called "Building a District." Toronto is not mentioned by name but the site says Sidewalk is "pursuing a large-scale district that can serve as a living laboratory for urban technology – a testbed for co-ordinated solutions, a foundation for people to build on, and a vision for other cities to follow."
Bloomberg News reported earlier this year that Sidewalk CEO Dan Doctoroff – a former Bloomberg LP CEO who was the deputy mayor of New York under Michael Bloomberg – laid out the concept in a speech at a New York conference.
"I'm sure many of you are thinking this is a crazy idea," Mr. Doctoroff was quoted as saying in remarks first reported by a website called StateScoop. "We don't think it's crazy at all. People thought it was crazy when Google decided to connect all the world's information. People thought it was crazy to think about the concept of a self-driving car."
Sidewalk, which is about two years old, says its aim is to spin off any urban technologies or systems it creates into separate companies. Its most visible project to make that jump is called LinkNYC, a network of Wi-Fi kiosks to replace New York's payphones run by a Sidewalk-supported company called Intersection. |
Energy Impact Partners guides technology investment by utilities | Collaborative investment firm Energy Impact Partners (EIP) is helping traditional utilities seek out and invest in technologies that could reshape the industry for the first time in a century. Comprising 16 global energy companies with a total market value of $263bn, including National Grid, Xcel Energy and Southern Company, the fund has already made several cautious investments in the clean energy sector. EIP CEO Hans Kobler said the fund would focus on artificial intelligence, electric vehicles and distributed energy resource management systems.
| https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/utility-backed-investment-fund-buying-into-cleantech#gs.WJdeaXA | 2017-10-06 10:01:13.947000 | How do you bet on the next big thing when your job is to keep the lights on no matter what?
Utility business models are changing after a century of general continuity, and some companies are looking beyond the already well-proven technologies. Enter the investment firm Energy Impact Partners, a group of 16 global energy companies, including major utilities such as Southern Company, National Grid and Xcel Energy, that represent a cumulative $263 billion in market value.
For the past two years, the group has sought out companies and entrepreneurs looking for an infusion of capital and large-scale energy expertise. In exchange, EIP’s companies get a direct line to cutting-edge technology that could pose threats -- or opportunities -- to their business.
“Quite frankly, for up to 100 years, it has not changed all that much. The basic fundamentals of the utility power generation have remained fairly stable,” said Hans Kobler, EIP’s CEO. “That is about to change dramatically.”
Kobler calls EIP “a hybrid between a corporate and a financial investment arm.” The fund grew out of a similar concept of strategic technology investment pioneered by some members of the team while at General Electric -- and, like many venture funds, EIP is looking for a special sauce.
But its goals differ from the flashy, next-big-thing tendencies of Silicon Valley investors. Because the partnership is pioneered for and by utilities, a notoriously traditional and risk-averse group, EIP is more cautious in its investments.
“We’d like to find companies ready for prime time,” said Kobler. “We are conservative investors.”
They’ve selected businesses such as energy storage company Advanced Microgrid Solutions and smart energy monitor company Sense. And in July, they offered a “significant investment” to charging company Greenlots, EIP’s first step into the electric-vehicle sector.
So far, the rigorous bottom-up and top-down process EIP uses has yielded investments in just 12 companies.
First, researchers devise a long list of companies making a name in the sectors that utility partners want to pursue. Next, the partners weigh in on any individual experience they’ve had with the companies. Then comes a round-robin-style pitch session, where companies meet with a group of representatives from the utilities.
They’re then ranked and stacked against each other. Those that rise to the top get the money.
The process may sound similar to what many venture funds go through, but Kobler insists there are added barriers -- physics, for one.
Rather than considering a product’s viral potential alongside its high risk of failure, utilities also have to weigh the distribution of electricity because they have to keep the lights on -- not a simple task -- and, as Kobler says, “You cannot FedEx electrons.” Then there’s the constantly shifting regulatory landscape (take Rick Perry’s recent request for rules to buoy nuclear and coal, for example) to contend with.
Still, much like their counterparts at Google and Facebook, EIP’s investors do have a penchant for tech trends. When asked what sectors of the clean energy industry will be of particular focus for the fund in the next year, Kobler rattles off a list of sensible choices including electric vehicles, distributed energy resource management systems (DERMS), storage, and then one area that has the Valley atwitter as well: artificial intelligence.
EIP’s interest in hot areas like AI may seem a bit trendy for an investment fund that prides itself on its cautious choices, but wading into less-traversed territory also makes sense in an industry that’s notoriously difficult to invest in. Right now, the winners in renewables are still being decided and the contest could go any way. Utilities know the ball is still in the air.
And though Kobler says EIP will maintain its conservative strategy, he also says it’s not all about the financials.
Of course, utilities buying into a venture fund want to see a return on their investment. But utilities also want to get closer to the customer experience, and learn strategies for hardening their systems and changing infrastructure as the energy industry moves to its next chapter. By investing now, they hope they’ll continue to lead the tide instead of getting left behind.
“They all know their culture has to change,” said Kobler, adding that the fund’s innovation working group, which focuses on groundbreaking technology, has the broadest attendance of any.
“They know something is coming; they know they have to change,” said Kobler. “They are very, very eager and active to learn.” |
Gene therapy using HIV seen halting degenerative brain disease | A deactivated form of HIV has been used by scientists in a successful gene therapy trial of 17 boys with fatal degenerative brain disease adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD), according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The disabled form of the virus was used as a means of inserting genes into cells. Trial sponsor Bluebird Bio of Massachusetts revealed that after two years, 15 of the boys exhibited no obvious symptoms of ALD. The company hopes to market a gene therapy for ALD, but did not say how much it would cost.
| https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/05/health/gene-therapy-brain-disease.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fhealth&action=click&contentCollection=health®ion=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront | 2017-10-06 09:59:40.963000 | For the first time, doctors have used gene therapy to stave off a fatal degenerative brain disease, an achievement that some experts had thought impossible.
The key to making the therapy work? One of medicine’s greatest villains: HIV.
The patients were children who had inherited a mutated gene causing a rare disorder, adrenoleukodystrophy, or ALD. Nerve cells in the brain die, and in a few short years, children lose the ability to walk or talk.
They become unable to eat without a feeding tube, to see, hear or think. They usually die within five years of diagnosis.
The disease strikes about one in 20,000 boys; symptoms first occur at an average age of 7. The only treatment is a bone-marrow transplant — if a compatible donor can be found — or a transplant with cord blood, if it was saved at birth. |
Greenko to diversify with $750m investment in Indian power T&Ds | Indian clean energy firm Greenko Group is in talks to acquire at least two transmission and distribution assets as part of a $750m equity investment, according to President Mahesh Kolli. The purchases would be part of Greenko's plans to become an integrated energy firm, Kolli said, adding that he is also examining the electric-vehicle charging space. The moves come amid increased uncertainty in the Indian renewable energy market as some states have attempted to backtrack on offtake agreements.
| http://www.livemint.com/Companies/i9luS2zJu6Mya5u2goBRvO/Greenko-plans-750-million-equity-investment-for-diversifica.html | 2017-10-06 09:45:30.100000 | New Delhi: Given the uncertainties surrounding India’s renewable energy industry, Hyderabad-based Greenko Group is planning a $750 million equity investment for buying power transmission and distribution (T&D) assets to diversify.
Greenko, backed by Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC Holdings Pte and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, wants to become an integrated energy firm, founder, president and joint managing director Mahesh Kolli said in a telephone interview.
The firm is in talks to acquire several electricity transmission, distribution and hydropower projects, added Kolli. Greenko, which acquired SunEdison’s Indian assets last year, is also evaluating the electric vehicles charging business.
On 2 October, The Economic Times reported that Greenko is seeking to acquire Reliance Infrastructure’s Mumbai electricity business for an enterprise value of $2.15 billion. Kolli confirmed his firm’s interest in the assets.
A Reliance Infra spokesperson, in an email response, said, “We do not comment on speculations." Greenko currently has over 2.7 gigawatts (GW) of operating capacity with plans to achieve 3GW capacity by December. The firm plans to reach 5GW capacity by 2019. “In generation (projects) itself, we have put in a $1 billion worth of long term equity. That is giving us an Ebitda (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization) of close to $550 million. The long-term plan is to build an Ebitda of $1 billion," said Kolli.
To reach the $1 billion Ebitda target, an additional $150 million is planned from generation assets, with around $300 million expected from the T&D space that the firm is actively evaluating.
“For that (T&D) we will invest another up to $750 million of equity into that diversification track. For generation (assets), 3GW cash flow is sufficient," said Kolli.
The strategy is to ready Greenko to tap India’s rapidly evolving decarbonized, digitised and decentralised energy economy.
This comes at a time when the government seeks to reduce import of fossil fuels, boost underutilized power plants and meet its climate change commitments by providing universal access to electricity.
The firm is currently pursuing two transmission deals, added Kolli, while refusing to name them. Experts believe that given the disruptions in the Indian power sector, integration holds the key.
“Large players have to increasingly think of integrated utility play as they look for profitable and sustainable growth opportunities," said Manish Aggarwal, partner and head of corporate finance at consulting firm KPMG in India.
“Renewables surely is a huge play but will also witness headwinds. Focus of government is increasingly going to be towards transmission and distribution which offers immense opportunity going forward," added Aggarwal.
India’s low green energy tariffs have caused disruptions with some states looking to renege on their offtake commitments for projects awarded at comparatively higher tariffs.
Greenko has been acquiring assets in the Indian energy space. In 2016, it acquired SunEdison’s Indian assets at an enterprise value of $392 million.
The deal involved an equity investment of $42 million and required Greenko to assume project-level debt of $350 million. “If you look at our strategy, it has always been diversification.... Remember even when there was this complex scenario, I did acquire the TAQA hydro asset. I am still doing hydro. There are a couple of more hydros (projects), people are talking to us. Diversification is a key theme to whatever we do," said Kolli.
Greenko is also evaluating the electric-vehicle charging business even as there is rapidly emerging competition in the space. Utilities such as state-run NTPC is eyeing it, given the lucrative market potential of around 90 billion units of power.
“Mobility is also converging into power and that’s why we are looking at all these things," said Kolli, adding that the firm was not looking at the electric-vehicle charging space as a standalone business but would leverage its discom entry for the same.
India has drawn up an ambitious plan for a mass shift to electric vehicles by 2030 with state-owned Energy Efficiency Services Ltd going ahead with the first stage of procuring 10,000 electric cars.
“Therefore, I see more large players (including pure play renewables, transmission companies) increasingly thinking of more of a ‘integrated utility’ play, which will drive consolidation and also provide exit to many stand-alone platforms," said KPMG’s Aggarwal. |
FDA Issues Complex Generics Guide, Gottlieb Frames As Drug-Pricing Move | FDA released draft guidance Monday (Oct. 2) aimed at facilitating development of one class of high-cost, widely sold complex drugs that currently lack generic competition. The agency also released guidance decoding complex generic-related Generic Drug User Fee Amendments (GDUFA) II commitments.
| https://insidehealthpolicy.com/fda-week/fda-issues-complex-generics-guide-gottlieb-frames-drug-pricing-move | 2017-10-06 09:17:01.407000 | FDA released draft guidance Monday (Oct. 2) aimed at facilitating development of one class of high-cost, widely sold complex drugs that currently lack generic competition. The agency also released guidance decoding complex generic-related Generic Drug User Fee Amendments (GDUFA) II commitments. The agency framed the release of these new guides as a part of the agency's generic competition plan. "We're undertaking a number of efforts to ensure that the pathways for approval for generic versions of complex drug products are... |
Anthem’s exit leaves thousands on Central Coast with one health plan option | For about 60,000 Covered California customers, choosing a health plan next year will be easier, and possibly more painful, than ever: There will be only one insurer left in their communities after Anthem Blue Cross of California pulls out of much of the state’s individual market.
| http://kcbx.org/post/anthem-s-exit-leaves-thousands-central-coast-one-health-plan-option#stream/0 | 2017-10-06 09:15:37.247000 | For about 60,000 Covered California customers, choosing a health plan next year will be easier, and possibly more painful, than ever: There will be only one insurer left in their communities after Anthem Blue Cross of California pulls out of much of the state’s individual market.
That means they could lose doctors they trust, or pay higher premiums.
Anthem’s departure is also a blow for the Covered California exchange, which has often boasted that healthy competition among its plans helped lower costs and improve its members’ access to care.
Competition won’t be so healthy next year for Covered California enrollees in six counties: Monterey, San Benito, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Inyo and Mono. For them, it will be Blue Shield of California — or bust.
Portions of seven other counties will also be served only by Blue Shield.
Californians in those areas who buy their plans outside the Covered California exchange may also be limited to one insurer. It’s not clear how many people that includes.
“If one of [Covered California’s] goals … was to provide a competitive marketplace where people will have options and real choices, then there is a failure to meet that goal” in those areas, said Kevin Knauss, an insurance agent based in Granite Bay, outside Sacramento.
The lack of competition means “there are definitely going to be people who will have to pay more for their health insurance,” Knauss said.
Consumers who live in the one-plan areas and don’t receive federal tax credits to lower the cost of their premiums will be the most affected, he added. They will have to shoulder the full amount of the increase if the Blue Shield premiums are higher than what they are paying now.
Covered California enrollees whose incomes qualify them for the tax credits won’t bear the entire rate increases because as premiums rise, so do the credits. The increase in premium assistance would absorb a significant portion of the rate hikes.
Anthem cited uncertainty at the federal level and an unstable marketplace in its decision to withdraw from 16 of 19 pricing regions in the individual market. The 28 counties where it will continue to offer plans are mostly in the rural parts of Northern and central California.
Blue Shield is the only insurer that will offer plans statewide on the exchange in 2018.
Overall, 153,000 Anthem policyholders in Covered California will have to find new plans. About 144,000 people who purchase their policies outside the exchange will also be forced to switch insurers, Anthem reported.
But the state insurance market remains broadly competitive despite Anthem’s impending departure, and most people will have choices, said Tam Ma, a legal and policy director for the advocacy group Health Access California.
According to Covered California, 96 percent of its enrollees will have at least two plans to choose from next year, and 82 percent will have three or more. Still, choice will be more restricted than this year, when all enrollees had at least two carriers to choose from and 93 percent could pick from three or more.
For the four percent who won’t have a choice in 2018, “it is a huge inconvenience for them to have to sign up for another plan … particularly people who are in the middle of treatment or have ongoing health care needs,” Ma said.
Covered California said in an email that it will strive to bring choice and competition to those people in the coming years. It also said a new provider directory will help enrollees search for doctors by plan. The directory is expected to be available on the agency’s website before consumers start renewing their plans in October, said Covered California spokeswoman Lizelda Lopez.
About 80 percent of doctors on Anthem’s network are also on Blue Shield’s network, said Covered California spokesman James Scullary, who added that Blue Shield has a larger list of providers. For every doctor on Anthem’s network, there are about 3½ doctors on Blue Shield’s, he said.
In August, Covered California’s board voted to boost the agency’s marketing budget by $5.3 million, partly to target people affected by Anthem’s pullout.
“While there is ongoing uncertainty and a lack of clarity at the federal level, consumers who need affordable health insurance will continue to have good choices in Covered California next year,” Peter Lee, the agency’s executive director, said in August when he announced proposed rate hikes for 2018.
But Sandy Halverson of Goleta is among that four percent who won’t have any choice, because she lives in Santa Barbara County, where Blue Shield will be the only insurer next year.
In Santa Barbara, as in most places where it is the only carrier, Blue Shield will offer only a Preferred Provider Organization (PPO). But it will offer a Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) option in some locations, including San Luis Obispo County.
Halverson, who works at a car dealership, currently has an Anthem plan through the exchange. She likes the fact that her primary care doctor of 15 years is familiar with her medical history.
She gets her care from Sansum Clinic, a large nonprofit group with 22 locations, serving about 130,000 patients on the state’s Central Coast. Sansum does not contract with Blue Shield, which means that next year Halverson and about 7,000 other patients now covered by Anthem in the individual market will have to find new doctors or pay out-of-network costs if they want to keep their current ones.
Halverson does not relish having to choose a new doctor. She imagines she’ll just pick one randomly from a list — and then hope it’s a good match, she said.
Kelley Lovejoy, an insurance agent in Santa Barbara, said many of her clients chose Anthem because of its relationship with Sansum, and they have been confused and frustrated since learning their insurer is pulling out.
“That is my primary concern, my clients not being able to see the physicians and specialists that are important to them,” Lovejoy said.
There might be hope, however. Sansum wants to establish a relationship with Blue Shield, said the group’s spokeswoman, Jill Fonte.
Blue Shield already has a network of providers in Santa Barbara, but it is open to discussions with Sansum and other health care providers throughout the state, said Lauren Bartlett, a spokeswoman for the insurer.
Editor's note: This article was originally published by California Healthline on August 18, 2017. |
California Today: A Drug Crisis Proposal | San Francisco’s drug problem is in your face. Walk around long enough and you may well kick a used syringe or see someone shooting up in plain view. The visibility of the scourge is one reason city leaders are starting to move seriously toward creating so-called supervised injection sites. It would be among the first American cities to do so.
| https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/05/us/california-today-a-drug-crisis-proposal.html | 2017-10-06 09:14:27.960000 | Good morning.
(Want to get California Today by email? Here’s the sign-up.)
San Francisco’s drug problem is in your face. Walk around long enough and you may well kick a used syringe or see someone shooting up in plain view.
The visibility of the scourge is one reason city leaders are starting to move seriously toward creating so-called supervised injection sites. It would be among the first American cities to do so.
Supervisor London Breed has been a champion of the idea. In an interview, she recounted some of the efforts so far to address the drug problem: outreach, a needle exchange program and cleanup crews that collect thousands of syringes a month. |
Disrupting care coordination: Turning patient-generated health data into a call to action | Leaders within the health IT space are continuously innovating to bring care outside of a hospital's walls and into patients' homes. Many questions remain unanswered, however, including how to relieve physician administrative burden related to EHRs and how to implement the necessary IT infrastructure for data sharing.
| https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/healthcare-information-technology/disrupting-care-coordination-turning-patient-generated-health-data-into-a-call-to-action.html | 2017-10-06 09:13:32.367000 | Leaders within the health IT space are continuously innovating to bring care outside of a hospital's walls and into patients' homes. Many questions remain unanswered, however, including how to relieve physician administrative burden related to EHRs and how to implement the necessary IT infrastructure for data sharing. Despite the many challenges at play, stakeholders across the care continuum are striving to answer these questions to elevate patient care.
In a webinar sponsored by Nokia Technologies and hosted by Becker's Hospital Review, John Halamka, MD, CIO of Boston-based Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a 651-bed teaching hospital, and Alexis Normand, director of healthcare business for Nokia Technologies, weighed in on the many factors driving progress in the health IT space and how effectively leveraging patient-generated health data will transform care delivery.
Challenges and trends in the high-tech era of healthcare
"No other industry has moved so fast as healthcare in the high-tech era," Dr. Halamka said. In 2016, The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology found 96 percent of hospitals had a federally tested and certified EHR meeting CMS' Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Program. This figure is up from 71.9 percent in 2011.
"Healthcare moved a little faster than culture would allow," Dr. Halamka said. Integrating IT systems into daily workflows can take both time and energy. Other challenges with using data effectively include creating user-friendly patient portals, improving EHR interoperability and a steady decrease in innovation by EHR vendors due to government mandates.
Despite the many challenges impeding seamless data sharing, various trends are taking hold to eliminate challenges clinicians face in optimizing EHRs and other technological platforms. For example, Dr. Halamka predicted third parties will come into the mix and improve existing EHRs by adding unique functionalities. Dr. Halamka added this collaboration between EHR vendors and third parties will be the "real centerpiece of innovation."
IoT in 2017 and beyond
Many CIOs and other health systems executives are interested in IoT devices due to their potential for overcoming connectivity issues and sharing crucial information. Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center recently implemented an application, BIDMC @ home, targeted for its congestive heart failure patients. The hospital employed middleware applications by connecting EHRs to smartphones to facilitate communication between patients and their care team. When patients open BIDMC @ home on their mobile devices, the app will show patients their care plan for that day, including medication dosages and recommended foods. The app's success in improving outcomes is contingent on a patient's willingness to engage in their care, as they are charged with inputting both objective and subjective data into BIDMC @ home. The application then shares that information with the EHR and BIDMC @ home will analyze the variances in data to see if an intervention is necessary. If the app deems an intervention is needed, it will provide patients a number to call to seek additional care, which may include sending a visiting nurse to the patient's home. BIDMC @ home also contains embedded links displaying the raw data that triggered that alert.
"Patient-generated healthcare data shows [a care team] what variance occurred. Unless you implement programs that incorporate some kind of subjective and objective patient data into care management, it will be hard to survive the transition to value-based purchasing," Dr. Halamka said.
Patient care teams within Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center prioritize patient education. Providers will show patients graphs generated from BIDMC @ home, which will give them a better picture of how they are doing in adhering to their care plan.
"It is not just about showing the data," said Dr. Halamka. "It is about interpreting that data to provide wisdom [leading to] a call to action."
How data is changing care delivery
To drive optimal patient outcomes and change care delivery, the industry needs to prioritize "social" precision medicine, including allowing patients to readily communicate with their care team over a secure platform. Precision medicine encompasses a social element, which entails identifying how patients and providers prefer to interact with technology; baby boomers may prefer a phone call while a 24-old patient opts for a text message.
Dr. Halamka shared his wife's personal experience with hyperthyroidism to illustrate this point. After continually experiencing an elevated heart rate of 110 beats per minute throughout the day and losing a notable amount of weight, Dr. Halamka's wife contacted her physician over a secure texting platform to say she may have a thyroid issue. The physician ordered tests at a lab in close proximity to her and she received lab results minutes after they were completed, indicating escalated triiodothyronine and thyroxine levels. Her physician used an app to locate a reputable endocrinologist nearby, who prescribed her medication that alleviated the symptoms within two weeks. A process that previously could extend months or beyond happened in a few days through collaboration and the use of a secure communication platform.
"[The industry should] knit together all the devices in a home with primary care providers, labs, pharmacists, specialists and others at almost no-cost in a system that pays [clinicians] for high-quality outcomes," Dr. Halamka said.
The power of predictive medicine — Creating care plans of the future
Innovators within the healthcare sector are devising ways to use data to change healthcare delivery to a model focused on prevention. Preventive medicine is not only key to improving Americans' health, but it also fulfills another vital purpose: slashing healthcare costs. Simply put, healthcare costs are spiraling out of control, with healthcare accounting for 17.8 percent of Gross Domestic Product in 2015 for a total of $3.2 trillion dollars. Healthcare costs accumulate in the traditional healthcare system because it is designed to treat people after they're already ill.
"In a sense, medicine is always too late," Mr. Normand said. "You always to go to a doctor when you [are] already sick. There are a lot of cases where if you have data beforehand, you can prevent undesirable health events through intervention."
Nokia Technologies is working on solutions allowing patient data to disrupt the way care is coordinated, with the overall goal of driving early interventions. The company is targeting consumers with technology they already use, including watches and other wearables. New solutions hitting the market allow everyone to be an active participant in their health. With patients becoming more involved in their care and technology rapidly evolving to meet consumer demand, Mr. Normand predicted care delivery will look vastly different in the coming years.
"Digital health will take place less in a hospital setting," he said. "It will happen everywhere. It will be less visible, but it will be more pervasive."
To view the webinar recording, click here.
To view the webinar slides, click here. |
Healthcare executives: Improving the patient experience is key to a healthy bottom line | Hospital and health system reimbursement is more closely tied to patient satisfaction than ever before, and the link between patient satisfaction and revenue is expected to strengthen in years to come.
| https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/healthcare-executives-improving-the-patient-experience-is-key-to-a-healthy-bottom-line.html | 2017-10-06 09:12:54.317000 | Hospital and health system reimbursement is more closely tied to patient satisfaction than ever before, and the link between patient satisfaction and revenue is expected to strengthen in years to come.
There has been a major push in recent years for more price transparency in the healthcare industry as patients shoulder more medical costs. "There are a lot of people who have concerns about how they're going to pay for the care they receive," said Aaron Kull, managing director and North America revenue cycle offering lead at Accenture, during an executive roundtable Sept. 21 at the Becker's Hospital Review 3rd Annual Health IT + Revenue Cycle Conference in Chicago.
In addition to patients with high out-of-pocket costs, Mr. Kull said patients 55 and younger are also a force behind the price transparency movement. He said millennials, Gen-Xers and Gen-Zers are more than three times as likely to price shop for care as older generations.
How hospitals are addressing the push for more transparency
Provider organizations have responded to the demand for more transparency. However, there is still significant work to be done.
Although most patients want to be told how much their medical care will cost, the majority of providers are not offering pre-treatment cost estimates. Mr. Kull said about 50 percent of patients know their estimated out-of-pocket costs prior to seeing a medical professional, but only about one in four got that information from their provider. When healthcare organizations fail to provide patients with price information, they sometimes resort to using third-party price estimators or other online tools which may provide inaccurate information. When this happens, patients may end up using low-quality information to influence important health decisions, potentially causing adverse financial consequences for patients and their families.
While there is still a lot of room for improvement when it comes to price transparency, some hospitals and health systems have made it a top priority. The vice president of finance at a rural hospital in the south said his organization tries to give patients clarity about what they will owe as soon as possible. He said his hospital sometimes provides patients with out-of-pocket cost estimates three to four weeks prior to a procedure. This allows patients to prepare for any financial burden.
The vice president of managed care at a seven-hospital system in the northeast said it is important to improve transparency in all areas that could affect the amount a patient pays. For example, he said patients do not want to find out after the fact that there was an out-of-network provider involved in their care.
Engaging patients as early as possible not only helps boost patient satisfaction but also helps ensure provider organizations receive payment. Although patients are enrolling in health plans that require them to pay more out-of-pocket for their care, it is ultimately up to providers to collect that payment.
To ensure timely collection of payment, it is vital for healthcare organizations to provide price information to patients before the point of care, according to Dave Gaydosh, managing director and North America revenue cycle offering lead at Accenture. He said about 36 percent of patients are willing to pay for care up front, which "significantly reduces the [revenue cycle] burden on the back end." He also noted that more than half of patients do not pay their medical bills by the due date, which further underscores the importance of offering patient payment options prior to care and at the point of service.
Patient satisfaction must be a top priority
Providing a great consumer experience is a challenge in every industry, especially in healthcare. From receiving cost of care information to putting a post-discharge plan into place, patients want their healthcare experience to mirror interactions they have in other industries. However, meeting patient demands can be difficult for hospitals and health systems, which are facing cost pressure and are simultaneously trying to change their strategy and innovate to remain competitive.
Patients want their experience to be "seamless, simple, transparent, coordinated, personalized and secure," said Mr. Kull. Although healthcare organizations are facing a number of challenges, they cannot afford to falter when it comes to patient satisfaction. Hospitals that fail to alter their revenue cycle to respond to patients' expectations will likely see bad debt rise, as they will fail to collect from patients who are either frustrated by the process or confused by their bill. Provider organizations that fail to respond could also see some of their patients seek care elsewhere.
During the roundtable, executives emphasized that improving patient satisfaction goes beyond making hospital billing more patient friendly. From improving care coordination to providing patients with cost information prior to a planned procedure, the executives discussed various initiatives their organizations have undertaken to improve the patient experience.
"When you start to look at all of the individual pieces consumers want … it is not simple," said Mr. Gaydosh from Accenture. However, the changing healthcare landscape makes it necessary for provider organizations to focus on improving the patient experience. "We're not going to be in fee-for-service … for the next 30 years. [Healthcare] is going to evolve. So we have to address these things," he said.
More articles on healthcare finance:
Tennessee hospital closes after falling 94% short of GoFundMe goal
California hospital files for bankruptcy after missing payroll
With 18 days cash on hand, NYC Health + Hospitals calls on state to release $380M in DSH funding |
Low-cost, high-volume services make up big portion of spending on unneeded health care | Low-cost, high-volume health services account for a high percentage of unnecessary health spending, adding strain to the health care system, new UCLA-led research suggests.
| https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-10-low-cost-high-volume-big-portion-unneeded.html | 2017-10-06 09:11:32.887000 | Credit: Pixabay
Low-cost, high-volume health services account for a high percentage of unnecessary health spending, adding strain to the health care system, new UCLA-led research suggests.
Analyzing data on 5.5 million patients in Virginia, the researchers found that services providing no net health benefits to patients cost that state's health care system more than $586 million in 2014. Of that amount, 65 percent went to low-cost, high-volume services such as unnecessary lab tests.
The findings are published in the October issue of the peer-reviewed journal Health Affairs.
The researchers relied on a large Virginia claims database because it is one of the few datasets that reflect payments from nearly all types of sources, said lead author Dr. John Mafi, assistant professor of medicine in the division of general internal medicine and health services research at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. These sources include fee-for-service Medicare, Medicare Advantage, Medicaid, private insurance and out-of-pocket costs.
These findings, he said, can serve as a microcosm for the nation's health system as a whole.
"Rising health care costs are putting an increasing strain on U.S. families, and from a taxpayer perspective we spend $3.2 trillion each year on health care," said Mafi, who is also a natural scientist in health policy at RAND Corporation. "That's nearly 18 percent of the nation's gross domestic product and of that $3 trillion, up to 30 percent is considered wasteful."
He said that instead of cutting coverage for all services, which could harm people who truly need them, policymakers should focus on reducing the health services of little health value to more safely reduce costs.
"Among the measures we studied, it was the low-cost, high-volume services that contributed the most to unnecessary health spending," Mafi said. "This is very important because it suggests that minor actions by all clinicians can play a major role in reducing unnecessary health care spending."
The researchers analyzed 44 services that are "low value" in specific clinical situations according to evidenced-based guidelines. These services do not represent all low-value care, and likely represent only a small proportion of care having little or no health benefits. They included lab tests for low-risk patients undergoing low-risk surgeries; stress cardiac or other cardiac imaging in low-risk patients without symptoms; routine head CT scans for simple dizziness; and imaging within the first six weeks of onset for low back pain that typically resolves itself.
They found that the 5.5 million people in the database received 5.4 million of the 44 services. Of that number, 1.7 million were low value, meaning they were medically unnecessary, and 3.4 million were high-value services that carried health benefits. Looking at the low-value services, they found that 1.6 million (93 percent) were very low cost and low cost, compared with 119,000 (7 percent) that were high and very high cost.
The cost for low- and very-low-cost, low-value services totaled $381 million, compared with $205 million for high- and very-high-cost, low-value services. This $586 million represented 2.1 percent of Virginia's total $28 billion in health care costs for the year.
Overall, about 20 percent of the 5.5 million people received at least one low-value service during the year analyzed.
"Given current levels of health care spending, the only way we can create headroom for innovation is to identify and eliminate low-value care," said Dr. A. Mark Fendrick, director of the University of Michigan Center for Value-Based Insurance Design, and the study's senior author. "An initial approach that targets the reduction of high-volume and less costly items might be a more strategic way to spark the movement to tackle the problem of low-value care."
More information: John N. Mafi et al. Low-Cost, High-Volume Health Services Contribute The Most To Unnecessary Health Spending, Health Affairs (2017). DOI: 10.1377/hlthaff.2017.0385 Journal information: Health Affairs |
Impact looks to launch second Australian solar investment fund | Australia's Impact Investment Group (IIG) said it plans to create a second solar investment fund after debuting an 11 MW solar farm developed with proceeds from its first fund, launched last year. The company said the second pool would open next year with the aim of raising between AUD100m ($78m) and AUD200m. Its first asset will probably be the 15 MW Swan Hill solar farm in the southern state of Victoria, according to Lane Crockett, IIG’s head of renewable energy infrastructure.
| http://reneweconomy.com.au/impact-plans-second-solar-investment-fund-as-williamsdale-opens-40825/ | 2017-10-06 09:09:42.513000 | Australia’s Impact Investment Group is planning to launch a second solar investment fund, following the runaway success of its first solar fund last year.
On Thursday, Impact celebrated the formal opening of the 11MW Williamsdale solar farm in the ACT, one of three solar farms contracted by the ACT government at the start of its goal to source the equivalent of 100 per cent of its electricity from renewable energy by 2020.
Williamsdale, which actually came on line earlier this year, was the first asset in the original solar fund, which attracted $100 million in less than two days from high net worth individuals, self-managed super funds and one institution, Future Super.
That fund aimed to deliver a return to investestors of 10 per cent per annum, and such was its success that Impact is now looking at a second fund, with the first asset likely to be the 15MW Swan Hill solar farm in Victoria, that is building on a “merchant basis”. A pipeline of other assets is also being put together.
“The smartest investors and developers in the country aren’t trying to eke another few years out of old unreliable, polluting coal-fired infrastructure,” said Lane Crockett, IIG’s head of renewable energy infrastructure.
“They are building the clean generators that will deliver reliable electricity, crucial environmental benefits, health benefits and attractive financial returns. Meanwhile, our investors have confidence knowing that the ACT government has committed to buying the farm’s electricity for 20 years.”
Crockett told RenewEconomy that the second fund would likely be launched next year, aiming for between $100 million and $200 million, once the pipeline of proposed solar projects in Victoria, Queensland and NSW is in place.
He said that there are two sweet spots in the Australia large scale solar market right now – one between 10MW and 30MW in size, and the bigger installations of 100MW plus.
“The benefit of the smaller solar farms is their speed to market …. and the ability to locate them in places where you can’t put bigger ones,” Crockett said.
“Solar costs have come down significantly over the last 3-4 years, it’s advantaged by its time of day generation portfolio, and its speed to market. It’s predictable, reliable technology, and it is well received by communities in regional areas.”
ACT climate and energy minister Shane Rattenbury said Williamsdale is the fourth large-scale solar farm built in the ACT. It joins the Royalla Solar Farm, Mt Majura Solar Farm and Mugga Lane Solar Park in completing the “solar highway”.
“The future is here, and it is clean, green and renewable. The clean power generated by Williamsdale Solar Farm takes us another significant step towards achieving our target of 100% renewable electricity by 2020 in the ACT,” he said in a statement.
“The ACT is establishing itself as a world leader when it comes to investment in renewable energy and action on climate change. Already, renewable energy has driven around $500 million of investment into the local economy.”
“By 2020, the ACT will produce 100% of our electricity from renewable sources like wind and solar and, by 2050 at the latest, our city will produce zero net greenhouse gas emissions.” |
Price Matters, in Patients’ Minds | When people believe a medicine is expensive, they may show a greater response to it. Researchers told 49 volunteers that they were testing two anti-itch creams — one that was costly, and one cheap — that contained the same ingredient known to reduce itch, but that the ingredient sometimes increased sensitivity to heat.
| https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/05/well/live/price-matters-in-patients-minds.html | 2017-10-06 09:09:08.597000 | When people believe a medicine is expensive, they may show a greater response to it.
Researchers told 49 volunteers that they were testing two anti-itch creams — one that was costly, and one cheap — that contained the same ingredient known to reduce itch, but that the ingredient sometimes increased sensitivity to heat.
Then they showed them the two medicines, one in an expensive-looking brand-name box with fancy lettering, the other in a plain generic-looking container. They did not tell them that neither cream contained any medicine, and that both contained only the same inert ingredient.
They randomly assigned them to try either the expensive or cheap cream. All participants knew which cream they were using. The study is in Science.
When exposed to heat, the volunteers using the expensive cream felt consistently more pain than those using the cheap one, and the effect increased over time. Using fMRI brain scans, researchers were able to show exactly which parts of the brain were involved in modifying how price information affects pain. |
Despite Boost In Social Security, Rising Medicare Part B Costs Leave Seniors In Bind | Millions of seniors will soon be notified that Medicare premiums for physicians’ services are rising and likely to consume most of the cost-of-living adjustment they’ll receive next year from Social Security.
| https://californiahealthline.org/news/despite-boost-in-social-security-rising-medicare-part-b-costs-leave-seniors-in-bind/ | 2017-10-06 09:07:01.387000 | About Insight Insight provides an in-depth look at health care issues in and affecting California. Have a story suggestion? Let us know.
Millions of seniors will soon be notified that Medicare premiums for physicians’ services are rising and likely to consume most of the cost-of-living adjustment they’ll receive next year from Social Security.
Higher 2018 premiums for Medicare Part B will hit older adults who’ve been shielded from significant cost increases for several years, including large numbers of low-income individuals who struggle to make ends meet.
“In effect, this means that increases in Social Security benefits will be minimal, for a third year, for many people, putting them in a bind,” said Mary Johnson, Social Security and Medicare policy consultant at the Senior Citizens League. In a new study, her organization estimates that seniors have lost one-third of their buying power since 2000 as Social Security cost-of-living adjustments have flattened and health care and housing costs have soared.
Another, much smaller group of high-income older adults will also face higher Medicare Part B premiums next year because of changes enacted in 2015 federal legislation.
Here’s a look at what’s going on and who’s affected:
The Basics
Medicare Part B is insurance that covers physicians’ services, outpatient care in hospitals and other settings, durable medical equipment such as wheelchairs or oxygen machines, laboratory tests, and some home health care services, among other items. Coverage is optional, but 91 percent of Medicare enrollees — including millions of people with serious disabilities — sign up for the program. (Those who don’t sign up are responsible for charges for these services on their own.)
Email Sign-Up Subscribe to California Healthline's free Daily Edition. Your Email Address Sign Up
Premiums, which change annually, represent about 25 percent of Medicare Part B’s expected per-beneficiary program spending. The government pays the remainder.
NAVIGATING AGING Navigating Aging focuses on medical issues and advice associated with aging and end-of-life care, helping America’s 45 million seniors and their families navigate the health care system.To contact Judith with a question or comment, click here. For more KHN coverage of aging, click here.
In fiscal 2017, federal spending for Medicare Part B came to $193 billion. From 2017 to 2024, Part B premiums are projected to rise an average 5.4 percent each year, faster than other parts of Medicare.
‘Hold Harmless’ Provisions. To protect seniors living on fixed incomes, a “hold harmless” provision in federal law prohibits Medicare from raising Part B premiums if doing so would end up reducing an individual’s Social Security benefits.
This provision applies to about 70 percent of people enrolled in Part B. Included are seniors who’ve been enrolled in Medicare for most of the past year and whose Part B premiums are automatically deducted from their Social Security checks.
Excluded are seniors who are newly enrolled in Medicare or those dually enrolled in Medicaid or enrolled in Medicare Savings Programs. (Under this circumstance, Medicaid, a joint federal-state program, pays Part B premiums.) Also excluded are older adults with high incomes who pay more for Part B because of Income-Related Monthly Adjustments (see more on this below).
Recent Experience
Since there was no cost-of-living adjustment for Social Security in 2016, Part B monthly premiums didn’t go up that year for seniors covered by hold harmless provisions. Instead, premiums for this group remained flat at $104.90 — where they’ve been for the previous three years.
Last year, Social Security gave recipients a tiny 0.3 percent cost-of-living increase. As a result, average 2017 Part B month premiums rose slightly, to $109, for seniors in the hold harmless group. The 2017 monthly premium average, paid by those who weren’t in this group and who therefore pay full freight, was $134.
Current Situation
Social Security is due to announce cost-of-living adjustments for 2018 in mid-October. Based on the best information available, it appears to be considering an adjustment of about 2.2 percent, according to Juliette Cubanski, associate director of the program on Medicare policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation. (Kaiser Health News is another, independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation.)
Apply a 2.2 percent adjustment to the average $1,360 monthly check received by Social Security recipients and they’d get an extra $29.92 in monthly payments.
For their part, the board of trustees of Medicare have indicated that Part B monthly premiums are likely to remain stable at about $134 a month next year. (Actual premium amounts should be disclosed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services within the next four to six weeks.)
Medicare has the right to impose that charge, so long as the amount that seniors receive from Social Security isn’t reduced in the process. So, the program is expected to ask older adults who paid $109 this year to pay $134 for Part B coverage next year — an increase of $25 a month.
Subtract that extra $25 charge for Part B premiums from seniors’ average $29.92 monthly Social Security increase and all that be left would be an extra $4.92 each month for expenses such as food, housing, medication and transportation.
“Many seniors are going to be disappointed,” said Lisa Swirsky, a policy adviser at the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.
Higher Income Brackets
Under the principle that those who have more can afford to pay more, Part B premium surcharges for higher-income Medicare beneficiaries have been in place since 2007. These Income-Related Monthly Adjustment Amounts (IMRAA) surcharges vary, depending on the income bracket that individuals and married couples are in. Nearly 3 million Medicare members paid the surcharges in 2015.
For the past decade this is how surcharges have worked:
Bracket One: Individuals with incomes of $85,001 to $107,000 were charged 35 percent of Part B per-beneficiary costs, resulting in 2017 premiums of $187.50.
Bracket Two: Incomes of $107,001 to $160,000 were charged 50 percent, resulting in 2017 premiums of $267.90.
Bracket Three: Incomes of $160,001 to $214,000 were charged 65 percent, resulting in 2017 premiums of $348.30
Bracket Four: Incomes of more than $214,000 were charged 80 percent, resulting in 2017 premiums of $428.60.
(Information for married couples who file jointly can be found here.)
Now, under legislation passed in 2015, brackets two, three and four are adopting lower income thresholds, a move that could raise premiums for hundreds of thousands of seniors. Bracket two will now consist of individuals with incomes of $107,001 to $133,500; bracket three will consist of individuals making $133,501 to 160,000; and bracket four will include individuals making more than $160,000. (Thresholds for couples have been altered as well.)
As John Grobe, president of Federal Career Experts, a consulting firm, noted in a blog post, this change “will add another layer of complexity” to higher-income individuals’ decisions regarding “electing Part B.”
If you’ve retired recently, moved to part-time status, divorced or otherwise undergone life changes that affect your income, you can ask Social Security for a new IRMAA determination, said Casey Schwarz, senior counsel at the Medicare Rights Center. Tips on what to do can be found at that organization’s site for consumers, Medicare Interactive.
We’re eager to hear from readers about questions you’d like answered, problems you’ve been having with your care and advice you need in dealing with the health care system. Visit kffhealthnews.org/columnists to submit your requests or tips.
This story was produced by Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation. |
On-demand insurer Slice raises $11.6m in round led by XL Catlin | Slice Labs, an on-demand insurance provider, has raised $11.6m in a funding round led by XL Catlin. The insurtech firm, which operates in 26 US states, intends to use the capital to expand across the country. Slice provides on-demand insurance for property sharers, like hosts on Airbnb-style platforms. It is also working on a car-sharing product. The firm plans to scale up its operation further by offering its platform to a variety of international insurers. | https://www.insurancetimes.co.uk/insurtech-startup-slice-in-fundraising-backed-by-xl-catlin/1425200.article | 2017-10-06 09:06:09.777000 | US on-demand insurtech start-up Slice Labs has obtained $11.6m (£8.8m) in a Series A investment led by XL Catlin’s venture arm XL Innovate.
Slice offers an on-demand insurance platform and currently provides coverage to homesharers such as AirBnb hosts. It is testing a new on-demand rideshare product.
Speaking at Insurtech London Conference in September, a confident Slice chief executive Tim Attia revealed that the company’s biggest issue had moved from how best to innovate to how to boost distribution and grow its reach, saying “We think we were able to pull off the innovation side.” Attia continued, ”Now we’re worried about scale.”
The insurtech company currently operates in 26 states across the US, with ambitions to conquer 50. It has now revealed that it intends to scale up by offering its platform to other insurers across the globe.
At the Insurtech London Conference Attia also spoke about cutting costs from the value chain through digitisation, claiming that Slice’s aim was to save 30 to 40 cents ( 20 to 30 pence) per transaction. Sustainability, Attia said, would come from creating a “digital insurer”.
Slice earlier raised $3.9m (£3m) in the first half of 2016 from backers XL Catlin, Munich Re and Horizons Ventures. It was part of the Silicon Valley Plug and Play accelerator.
Since debuting in October 2016, Slice evidently impressed investors XL Innovate with its double-digit monthly revenue growth.
XL Innovate managing partner Tom Hutton commented ““We are proud to stand behind Slice and lead their latest fundraising round. Slice is truly one of the most exciting companies in insurance technology that we’ve seen to date.”
“We believe the on-demand platform and technology offered by Slice has immense potential to completely disrupt how insurance is bought and sold, not just within the sharing economy, but globally and across the board.”
Speaking about the recent secured funding, Attia said: “We couldn’t be more eager to accelerate our go-to-market strategy with the support of such a strong group of investors bringing their strategic and financial expertise to the table.”
He continued “This is critical as we move to the next phase in the development of the company, which will be to scale and show traction both in the direct market and through strategic partnerships.” |
ECOWAS Commission to invest $35bn in Nigerian power sector | The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Commission is set to invest $35bn in creating solar and other renewable energy sources as well as infrastructure projects in Nigeria over the next eight years. The announcement from ECOWAS President Marcel de Souza at the annual Powering Africa: Nigeria 2017 conference came as he and other participants called on delegates to find and invest in solutions to the country's energy needs, saying such projects would stimulate the Nigerian economy. | https://guardian.ng/news/ecowas-commission-plans-35b-investments-in-nigerias-power-sector/ | 2017-10-06 09:05:40.757000 | President of the ECOWAS Commission, Marcel de Souza, has urged international communities, investors and experts in energy sector to give priority to investing in Nigeria’s power sector, as this would certainly contribute to improving access to electricity in the entire sub-region.
This is even as he disclosed that the Commission plans an investment of $35 billion in electricity, including grid, solar and other renewable energy sources and infrastructure projects from now till 2025.
The President made this appeal at the opening session of the ongoing sixth annual Powering Africa: Nigeria 2017 conference with the theme “Power Sector Recovery Programme: Recapitalising Nigeria’s Energy Sector.”
He said that despite the challenges being encountered in the power sector, Nigeria is expected to meet 50 per cent energy needs in Niger and Benin Republics, adding that Nigeria is the major provider of natural gas to other countries of the region through the West African gas pipeline.
De Souza who was represented by the Commissioner for Energy and Mines, ECOWAS Commission, Dr. Morlaye Bangoura, urged participants to focus on the Nigeria power sector, understand the challenges and proffer solution in line with the expectations of Nigeria and ECOWAS in the area of energy.He maintained that resolving the energy challenges of Nigeria will stimulate economic recovery effort.
Stressing that investing in Nigeria power sector not only provides access to the vast huge ECOWAS electricity market but also amount to investing in the lives of over 350 million people of the region.
In his keynote address, the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, noted that the objective of the summit was consistent with the efforts of the Federal Government towards achieving incremental power because the nation does not have enough.
He expressed hope that the administration is working towards achieving steady power where many people have access to power and eventually have uninterrupted power. The minister applauded the conference saying that it has already contributed to incremental power because no amount of power is too small so far it adds to the existing unit.
He thanked the Managing Director of EnergyNet Limited, Simon Gosling for the N36 million Cheque donation to Pan Africa Solar Limited currently involved in implementation solar projects in rural communities in Katsina State. He noted that it has provided incremental power for the country.
He called for adequate data of the total number of mini grids and solar homes systems in the country so that the country would be able to know the actual mega watts of power being generated at the moment.
In a presentation on “Nigeria Energy Database (NED) Initiative”, the Managing Director of the Rural Electrification Agency, Damilola Ogunbiyi, explained that the off grid electrification strategy meant to provide access to electricity being executed include stand alone system, mini grids, energizing education, energizing economies and Nigeria energy database.The conference was hosted by the ECOWAS Commission and organized by the EnergyNet Limited. |
Turo partners with locals to overcome car-rental insurance hurdle | Car-sharing start-up Turo has partnered with local independent car rental companies in British Columbia, Canada, to help provide insurance for its service as it expands in the region. The independent car companies will provide their own renter's insurance policies rather than Turo providing a central policy for all its clients. Turo says it's necessary to partner with such firms due to British Columbia insurance regulations. | https://www.insurance-canada.ca/2017/10/05/turo-car-sharing-marketplace/ | 2017-10-06 08:50:29.440000 | Turo Canada expands, partners with car rental entrepreneurs to fuel travellers’ adventures
Vancouver, BC (Oct. 3, 2017) – Turo announced today that its car sharing marketplace is now officially available in British Columbia, expanding to a new Canadian province for the first time since its launch in Alberta, Ontario and Quebec in April 2016. A pioneer of the sharing economy and travel industry, Turo connects local car owners with a bustling community of local and international travelers looking for the perfect vehicle for their next adventure. Turo has over four million members across the world, including 220,000 in Canada alone. The launch of Turo in British Columbia marks an important step in realizing Turo’s mission to put Canada’s 23 million cars to better use and to capture a growing share of the Canadian travel market.
“British Columbia is one of the top travel destinations in Canada and around the world. With its great outdoor culture, high penetration of car sharing and high levels of cross-border travel, it is a natural market for Turo,” said Cedric Mathieu, Director of Turo Canada. “This province has been active in our community since we launched the company, and over 7% of Turo community members are residents of B.C. who use the platform in other provinces and for travel to the US. We are proud to announce that they can now use it in their home province.”
To address the unique insurance regulations of BC, Turo has structured this first stage of its expansion to British Columbia by partnering with local, independent car rental entrepreneurs who will make their unique fleets of cars available to the Turo community and will be providing their own commercial rental insurance to travellers.
“We’re very excited to bring Turo to the people of British Columbia and provide them with a local, convenient, more personal alternative to big car rental companies through our local network of amazing car rental entrepreneurs,” said Cedric Mathieu. “Independent car rental companies are natural partners for Turo; most are family-run small businesses who offer great service, and great cars, at great prices. Using the Turo platform, they can easily reach our fast growing community of trusted travelers and be able to more effectively compete with the larger car rental chains. We’re thrilled to empower car entrepreneurs across beautiful British Columbia.”
A number of preferred partners such as hotels, independent car rental companies and individual car entrepreneurs have already listed their vehicles on the Turo platform. Some unique cars already available include makes and models like Tesla Model S, Mercedes-Benz CLA and Porsche Panamera, with many more to come in the coming weeks. All partners are required to carry adequate commercial rental insurance as well as provide best in class service in order to participate.
“We’re proud to chart a new path in the travel industry through our expansion to British Columbia. Thanks to Turo, international travelers can get a Tesla delivered to the Vancouver airport; tourists in Victoria can discover and rent cars directly from The DoubleTree by Hilton Victoria; these are two of many examples of how our platform makes car rental more accessible than ever, unlocking unique travel experiences and new economic opportunities for entrepreneurs and travel operators in B.C.,” said Mathieu.
Starting today, Turo is actively marketing towards travellers and suppliers across the province to raise awareness of the Turo brand in preparation of the future launch of its full peer-to-peer service.
“We remain committed to launching our peer-to-peer marketplace in the near future, and will be working with insurance regulators and legislators to bring Turo to all individual car owners in B.C. soon,” said Mathieu.
The news follows a funding announcement earlier this month, where Turo raised $92 million from top tier investors including Mercedes-Benz manufacturer, Daimler, bringing the company’s total funding to $193 million. Turo plans to invest the capital to enhance the customer experience on both sides of the marketplace, boost customer acquisition, and grow the Turo brand globally.
About Turo
Turo is a car sharing marketplace where local car owners provide travelers with the perfect vehicle for their next adventure. Travelers from around the world choose from a unique selection of cars and car owners earn extra money while helping fuel their adventures. A pioneer of the sharing economy and travel industry, Turo is a safe, supportive community where the car you rent is part of a story, not a fleet. Whether it’s an F-150 truck to help out on moving day, a Tesla for a luxurious weekend away, or a classic Mercedes-Benz for a picture-perfect road trip, travelers rent the car and own the adventure. Discover Turo at turo.com.
Source: Turo
Tags: British Columbia (BC) |
Group Nine Media creates content studio for social networks | Discovery-backed holding company Group Nine Media is launching Group Nine Social Studios, a dedicated unit producing content for social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as companion pieces to existing Discovery programming. Group Nine Social Studios enters a market that includes BuzzFeed, Mashable, Refinery29 and Bleacher Report, which have all created in-house studio divisions. "There’s a need right now to build things that have an IP value, even if you don’t know all the ways that you’ll be able to exploit that IP in the future," said Suzanne Kolb, chief brand officer for Group Nine Media.
| https://digiday.com/media/group-nine-media-creates-new-team-make-shows-facebook-snapchat/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=digidaydis&utm_source=uk&utm_content=171006 | 2017-10-06 08:39:45.377000 | Group Nine Media, a Discovery-backed holding company that oversees digital publishers NowThis, Thrillist, The Dodo and Seeker, is creating a new content team focused exclusively on making shows for social platforms.
The new unit, called Group Nine Social Studios, will operate as a sub-section of Group Nine’s a 20-person production and development division that supports the content teams across its media brands. Based in Los Angeles, Social Studios will be led by head of development Hayley Lozitsky and senior director of development Jeffrey Wisenbaugh. Suzanne Kolb, chief brand officer for Group Nine Media, said the company is still hiring for Social Studios, which will consist of video producers, editors and content-development specialists, but she would not provide a hard number on how big the team will eventually be. The goal of the team is to create original content for external partners and platforms.
“Platforms like [Facebook’s] Watch and Snapchat are now set up in a way that gives us this opportunity to create shows and franchises,” said Kolb. “It’s the right time to try it. But we need a dedicated team to support this type of content if we want to make it successful; otherwise, we would be adding on to too many other day jobs.”
While the obvious places for Group Nine to sell shows to are Facebook and Snapchat, Social Studios will also look at other distribution partners, including Google Stamp, YouTube and Twitter, Kolb added.
Group Nine Media is already committed to making social shows. It’s producing 24 original shows for Facebook’s Watch, including NowThis’ “Apocalypse NowThis,” Thrillist’s “Thrillist Investigates,” The Dodo’s “Comeback Kids: Animal Edition” and Seeker’s “Wild Sex.” During a New York Advertising Week event last week, Group Nine CEO Ben Lerer said the 24 Watch shows had combined to reach more than 100 million views and 100 million minutes in watch time.
A big part of the Social Studios team’s mandate is to also work with investor Discovery, which last year put $100 million into Group Nine Media when forming the holding company. Specifically, Social Studios will work with an original series team inside Discovery Digital to produce shows for social platforms and Discovery’s TV Everywhere apps. These shows would be “companion” pieces to existing popular TV series and other programming on Discovery.
The idea for creating Social Studios came from an August partnership between Group Nine Studios and Discovery on a Snapchat show for “Shark Week.” The three-episode series tackled topics such as shark biology, how sharks had survived multiple extinction-level events and weird-looking sharks. The three episodes, each running for roughly four minutes, combined to reach 12 million unique viewers, 18 million views and a 40 percent completion rate, according to Fred Graver, svp of digital content and social for Discovery.
“You have to make a bet on the fact that your brands must live on different platforms and devices and in different formats than the one Discovery already dominates on,” said Graver.
With Social Studios’ mandate to both create original shows and companion pieces to existing Discovery programming, the relationship between the Social Studios team and Discovery’s digital originals team will remain fluid, Graver said. Depending on the type of project, either Social Studios or Discovery Digital will take the creative lead.
The creation of Social Studios comes as other big distributed-media publishers are setting up divisions to create entertainment content. BuzzFeed, Bleacher Report, Mashable and Refinery29 have all built studio divisions with production and development people to create shows for social and streaming platforms — especially as these platforms are willing to fund the creation of such content.
There’s also value in creating “intellectual property” that has a longer shelf life and the potential for multiple revenue streams compared to quick-hit social clips.
“In the end, people don’t need more perishable stuff,” said Kolb. “There’s a need right now to build things that have an IP value, even if you don’t know all the ways that you’ll be able to exploit that IP in the future.” |
Utilities must join smart energy revolution or be left behind | Utilities are facing a two-pronged attack on their business models, both from companies such as Google and Apple, and also from emerging technology energy firms, according to Thilo Schneider of Pinsent Masons. He said while utilities have been slow to respond to changes within their industry, making clever acquisitions could help them compete, as their large customer base and established supply chain and delivery infrastructure could make them more attractive as investors than their venture capital and private equity rivals. Such joint ventures or partnerships would benefit utilities by giving them access to the technological innovations developed by start-ups.
| https://www.out-law.com/en/articles/2017/september/utility-companies-facing-a-pivotal-moment-with-smart-energy-revolution-says-expert/ | 2017-10-06 08:03:44.373000 | Utilities find themselves under increasing pressure from technology pioneers such as Google, Amazon, Apple and Tesla, who are introducing their technology into the home and increasingly offering smart energy solutions. Other emerging technology companies are also coming up with innovative and disruptive technologies in the smart energy sector in competition to what utilities are offering.
This is part of our series analysing the challenges and opportunities ahead for companies embracing smart energy technologies. For more, sign up to receive an exclusive Pinsent Masons research paper on smart energy technology, supply, storage and investment.
This may not quite be the utilities' 'iPhone moment', but presents a serious and fundamental challenge to their business as the success of the pioneering Apple smartphone was to the mobile telecoms business 10 years ago.
Utilities are responding by trying to diversify away from their traditional sources of revenue of generating and distributing power towards delivering smart energy solutions and energy services. However, utilities have traditionally been at a disadvantage compared to technology companies when it comes to innovating.
Utilities tend to be large multinationals that can have very complex and sometimes slow decision-making processes. This stands in contrast to technology companies that have in the past moved quickly to develop solutions where a gap in the market arises.
You just have to look at the way that Google came into the smart home market with Nest. It did this very quickly, very efficiently, before any of the utilities did, taking advantage of the fact that it understood how it could make the most of data and give consumers greater control of their energy usage.
However, there are clear opportunities for utilities to develop new technologies in partnership with smaller, more flexible technology companies through joint ventures, minority stake investments and even full acquisitions.
However, some of utility companies are not set up to make investments or acquisitions in the technology space in the way that the large tech companies are. In addition, they face competition from venture capital and private equity houses who are bidding for the same emerging tech businesses. The challenge for utilities is therefore to come up with efficient ways of identifying technologies and executing on the acquisition of, or investment in, technology companies so they can be competitive in the market.
As a result, we see utility companies setting up their own venture capital divisions to efficiently assess the viability of tech start-ups as a potential investment or acquisition target.
Often, venture capital divisions will make initial small stake investments into small technology start-ups and use that investment to assess the technology that the start-up has developed and see how it can fit in into its overall corporate technology strategy. From there, it can decide whether to increase its shareholding to a majority stake or make an outright acquisition, or indeed exit the investment at a later stage and realise the value that it has generated through it.
The challenge for corporates is to devise a clear strategy of how they want to use their venture capital divisions. They need to work out whether they want to use it as a stage to make investments with a view to making profits, or to use it as a platform to test technology and to later build up the stake and make a full-on acquisition.
Beyond making investments or acquisitions, partnering with technology companies can benefit utilities by helping them to better understand how to use data in a way that consumers can engage with or in a way that can help them develop new products.
There are advantages too for the tech community. They have new ideas but as small companies they lack a way to reach a significant number of people quickly. This is exactly what utilities have – large existing client bases, supply chains and delivery infrastructure that can help a good idea get fast, wide-ranging implementation. This can make a utility a more attractive investor proposition than a VC or private equity house.
Through the joint venture or partnership with the utility company, the tech start-up can test its equipment or ideas in a live environment and take advantage of the utility company's existing connections and infrastructure.
The way that small, flexible businesses like start-ups work is very different to that of long-established, more traditional utilities. There will be culture clashes, but that is just a risk that utilities will have to take to get the benefit of start-ups' ideas and innovation.
The fact that technology moves so quickly is also a risk. Not all technologies get through Gartner's 'trough of disillusionment', so utilities are taking a risk when investing in an emerging company and an innovative product.
However, that is a normal business risk which is not unique to the smart energy sector. When companies are looking at investing in new technologies they are always taking the risk that the technology will not be adopted in the market, that it will not be successful, that they will not beat the competition, and that the technology will not be useable by people going forward.
Finally, the pioneers of the technology companies are looking at the home in a holistic way. They are not looking at smart energy in isolation – they are looking at security and technology in the kitchen amongst other examples, and their technology will be aimed at bringing all these elements together.
The question is how utilities respond to this challenge. It will be interesting to see whether the energy companies respond stick to smart energy solutions or branch out to other technologies relevant to the home.
Thilo Schneider is an expert in corporate transactions in the technology sector at Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com. |
Off Grid Electric empowers poor, remote Africa with solar energy | US solar power firm Off Grid Electric is providing renewable energy to some of Africa's poorest and most remote locations. Its small-scale power units, which cost less than $7 per month to rent, have brought electricity to more than 100,000 homes and businesses across the Ivory Coast, Tanzania and Rwanda. Co-founder Joshua Pierce said the company, which has raised $100m in funding, plans to expand deeper into West Africa. Off Grid Electric is also developing TVs that run on solar battery packs and a method for customers to pay wirelessly.
| https://www.newsreview.com/chico/empowerment-through-power/content?oid=25072236 | 2017-10-06 07:52:17.800000 | Dale Word stands in front of the Chico headquarters of Solutions Cubed, where he works with their design team troubleshooting engineering projects for Off Grid Electric.
Clean-energy outcomes: Off Grid Electric’s data in Tanzania and EDF’s data in South Africa show that households using the solar services have reduced emissions from kerosene and black carbon by 1.45 kg per year.
When former Chico State faculty member Dale Word took a job with Off Grid Electric, a solar-power provider, about a year ago, he wanted to get his hands dirty. But he never imagined he’d be jumping into a 4x4 truck and driving down dirt paths in Sub-Saharan Africa to help deliver the ways and means of electricity to those living—yes—off the grid.
“When I left Chico State after 15 years, all I wanted to do was get my hands on real engineering,” said Word, previously an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering. “I had no idea I would come across this opportunity.”
Word, 55, lives in Chico and is now a computer engineer with Off Grid Electric, a venture-capital-backed firm providing small-scale solar-power units for lease to some of the poorest places in Africa. The company has expanded vastly on the continent and grown its workforce immensely since Chico State grad Joshua Pierce co-founded it in 2013.
Pierce planted the company’s roots here early on. He since has moved its U.S. headquarters to the Bay Area, along with relocating his family there. However, the Chico footprint remains firm—and Word is a large part of that.
“It’s been where a lot of the hands-on technical work has happened,” Word said.
From a small office in downtown Chico, Word works with a team of designers at Solutions Cubed, a subcontractor of Off Grid Electric that also does independent projects. The office is filled with circuit boxes connected to various electronic devices, such as fans, to help test the units. Solar panels also are strewn about the space on East First Street.
Word spends three days a week in the small design studio and two days at the headquarters in San Francisco. He codes the circuits inside small boxes that are meant to be the brains and battery pack of the system, connecting solar power to a small light. The systems are alternatives to archaic power supplies including kerosene lanterns, which can emit unhealthy fumes, or heavily polluting diesel generators. They are meant to provide light in places without electricity.
Off Grid Electric leases the small systems to each customer individually for less than $7 a month for the base option. The regional economy primarily functions on mobile currency. Users have a similar account to PayPal and deposit money; they then receive a code to type into the small box that connects solar power to the lights.
The company reached about 500 customers in its first year. That number jumped to about 21,000 the next. It now provides power to more than 100,000 homes and businesses across Tanzania, Rwanda and the Ivory Coast.
“Off Grid Electric has expanded from East Africa into West Africa, and we have plans to continue growing,” Pierce said. “Africa and distributed energy are ripe with potential, and we’re proud to be creating value in every new community we enter.”
Pierce’s company has secured $100 million in total funding and has more than 800 employees in the U.S., Tanzania, Rwanda, the Ivory Coast, the Netherlands, Russia and Nigeria.
Across its swath of Africa, Off Grid Electric is distributing thousands of new systems every month. Word sees his work as not just providing light in places where that commodity is hard to come by—it’s providing a metaphorical light for those looking to better their economic situation.
“This is our chance to get this continent right,” Word said.
Lights in the solar systems make it possible for children to do homework. They allow adults to read.
“Our goal is to empower folks,” he said. “It’s really exciting to see how proud people are to have these boxes.”
He has experienced this first-hand. On a trip to see the African operations, he went out on service calls with local technicians. His intent “was to go to some of the more remote customers,” he said.
Word recalls riding in a four-wheel-drive pickup down a gravel road in Tanzania when someone in his convoy tapped on the window from the back of the truck, telling the driver to turn left.
“There was nothing [to the] left, other than a path and some trees,” he said. “We had to figure out how to get it down the path.”
After navigating the truck, the group arrived at a clearing with a collection of round huts made out of sticks and mud, most with solar panels installed on the roof.
“It was great to see that connection between traditional lifestyle and using our products,” he said.
The future looks bright for the solar-power provider. The company recently started leasing small television sets that run similarly off the solar-power battery packs.
Word also is developing circuits that communicate wirelessly with Off Grid Electric, eliminating the process of entering a code after a payment to make the units work. With the new systems, Off Grid Electric could activate the units remotely and access them to perform diagnostic checks.
Additionally, the company formed a partnership with the EDF Group, a low-carbon-energy company, and launched a pilot expansion last year into the Ivory Coast.
Off Grid Electric is looking at developing new products as well.
“We’ve done a lot of really wonderful work on some things I can’t talk about yet,” Word said with a smile. |
Chinese business at standstill due to public holiday and congress | China is now in lock-down mode as it prepares for its annual one-week public holiday, however, this vacation is predicted to last even longer, as it then gets ready for the all-important, once-in-five-years Communist Party Congress on 18 October. "Commentators and markets rightly assume that the authorities are consumed by this transition and that all other policy matters are on the back-burner or in lock-down until after the Congress," says Freya Beamish of Pantheon Macroeconomics. As we have been highlighting, the Beijing government has been tightening security on all fronts in the run-up to the meeting that will involve a leadership reshuffle. | https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/06/chinas-golden-week-ends-but-the-communist-party-congress-will-keep-the-holiday-mood-up.html | 2017-10-06 07:50:44.447000 | Chinese business has come to a standstill as half the population travels over a one-week public holiday. But that quietude is expected to last several more weeks.
Although the Chinese will head back to work and school on Monday, their country is expected to remain in a holding pattern ahead of a pivotal Communist Party Congress set to start later this month.
"Commentators and markets rightly assume that the authorities are consumed by this transition and that all other policy matters are on the back-burner or in lock-down until after the Congress," Freya Beamish, Pantheon Macroeconomics' chief Asia economist, wrote in a recent note.
The once-in-five-years meeting will usher in leadership changes that are likely to see incumbent President Xi Jinping extend his term and consolidate power. The coming years of Xi rule will be critical for the world's second-largest economy as it grapples with the fallout from three decades of unbridled growth.
As Xi — the most powerful Chinese leader in decades — embarks on a new era, the meeting will review "faulty" outcomes from the economic reforms and review if China needs a new direction, said independent economist, Andy Xie.
China undertook a series of market reforms in the last three decades that propelled the Communist country to the spot of the world's second largest economy.
Market watchers, however, are concerned about the nation's debt-fueled growth, industrial overcapacity and capital outflows that may potentially spur a global economic crisis.
The Communist Party has been working to curtail its companies' international deal making over the last year, but major initiatives have slowed ahead of the Congress. That push is likely to pick up again in the fourth quarter, said Chunshek Chan, Dealogic's global M&A research head.
No matter the macroeconomic concerns, the only thing on Beijing's mind at this time is consolidating power in the country, Xie said: "It's much more important now to strengthen the control of the Communist Party than anything else."
"The key is to have the Communist Party as a coherent organization to control everything in the society — that seems to be the case. The people at the top worry about the stability. Stability is always number one in China," added Xie. |
China Eastern, Delta each take 10% stake in Air France-KLM | A number of airlines have completed a series of transactions aimed at strengthening strategic partnerships. China Eastern and Delta are each taking a 10% stake in Air France-KLM, which will in turn buy 31% of the UK's Virgin Atlantic. “This operation is an integral part of the Trust Together project, allowing Air France-KLM to regain the offensive, to reinforce its commercial integration with its principal partners and to continue improving its financial structure,” says Air France-KLM. | http://atwonline.com/airlines/china-eastern-and-delta-complete-air-france-klm-buy | 2017-10-06 07:41:57.420000 | Subscription Required
This content requires a subscription to one of the Aviation Week Intelligence Network (AWIN) bundles.
Schedule a demo today to find out how you can access this content and similar content related to your area of the global aviation industry.
Already an AWIN subscriber? Login
Did you know? Aviation Week has won top honors multiple times in the Jesse H. Neal National Business Journalism Awards, the business-to-business media equivalent of the Pulitzer Prizes. |
Google adds to voice-assisted Home smart-speaker range | Google has unveiled the next iterations of its smart speakers along with a suite of new gadgets. Google Home Mini will sell in the US for $49 from 19 October while the larger Google Home Max will be released in December for $399. The devices will feature upgraded voice-recognition software, which can differentiate between voices and has a more natural dialogue flow. The company also announced the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL phones, the Pixelbook laptop, the Clips artificial intelligence camera and Pixel buds, headphones that can translate languages in real-time.
| https://www.techhive.com/article/3230472/connected-home/google-home-mini.html | 2017-10-06 07:21:42.977000 | Confirming one of the industry’s worst-kept secrets, Google announced today that it finally has a cost-reduced version of its Google Home smart speaker. The $49 Google Home Mini, available for preorder now, will go head to head with the Echo Dot that Amazon introduced way back in March 2016.
Like the original Google Home, the Mini will feature fabric over its speaker grill. But Google assures us this is no ordinary fabric. Google’s lead designer for home hardware, Isabelle Olsson, said the company invented its own yarn for the Mini—going through 157 iterations to find just the right colors: chalk, charcoal, and coral.
“The first thing you notice,” Olsson said, “is the striking simplicity. The yarn is designed to allow sound and light to pass through it. Touch the fabric to pause the music or talk to the assistant.” Olsson said the speaker projects sound 360 degrees, or you can connect it to a Chromecast speaker.
Google The ability to stream video from a Nest Cam to a Chromecast shows the enviable synergy between Google and Nest Labs.
Industrial design aside, the biggest threat that Google presents to Amazon—at least on the smart home front—is Google Home’s voice-recognition capabilities. Google was first to recognize and respond to different people’s voices, and it’s still superior when it comes to linking one voice command to the next. Google VP Rishi Chandra introduced another new feature called Family Link accounts, which fine-tune the Google Assistant to respond to the voices of children under age 13.
With Family Link, Google Assistant can read children’s stories, play games like freeze tag, and respond to the types of questions that kids ask. Google has also partnered with Disney to bring characters from Disney properties ranging from Mickey Mouse to Star Wars to Google Home. Chandra said Warner Bros. and other studios would follow. |
Wind projects help global clean energy investment to $66.9bn in Q3 | Major wind projects helped boost global investment in clean energy to $66.9bn in Q3 2017, a 40% increase in annual terms, according to data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF). In investment categories, asset financing of utility-scale renewable energy projects saw the largest rise, up 72% YoY to $54.3bn. In contrast, venture capital and private equity funding fell 79% on the year to $662m and public market investment dropped 63% to $1.4bn. Based on total Q3 figures, BNEF suggested this year's clean energy investment could exceed the 2016 figure of $287.5bn. | https://renewablesnow.com/news/q3-clean-energy-investment-jumps-to-usd-669bn-bnef-586021/ | 2017-10-06 07:01:27.463000 | Global new investment in clean energy by region, by quarter, USD billion. Source: Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
Global clean energy investment in the third quarter (Q3) of 2017 increased to USD 66.9 billion (EUR 57.22bn), prompting suggestions that the 2017 total may exceed 2016 levels, show figures from Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) released Thursday.
Investment in July-September rose by 40% in annual terms and 3.1% quarter-on-quarter, driven by seven large wind power projects worth between USD 600 million and USD 4.5 billion. According to BNEF, the Q3 total suggests that clean energy investment for 2017 may be close to or slightly higher than the result of USD 287.5 billion in 2016.
INVESTMENT CATEGORY
The largest category of clean energy investment in Q3 2017 was asset finance of utility-scale renewable energy projects. At USD 54.3 billion, it jumped by 72% in annual terms. All of the biggest projects were in the wind sector, with offshore wind taking the lead.
The most notable transaction in the third quarter was American Electric Power Co Inc’s (NYSE:AEP) USD-4.5-billion investment in Invenergy Renewables LLC’s 2,000-MW Wind Catcher wind farm in Oklahoma. Construction of the 800-turbine complex is already underway and is slated for completion by 2020.
The other top asset finance deal came from Denmark-based Dong Energy's (CPH:DENERG) final investment decision on the 1,386-MW Hornsea Project Two offshore wind farm in the UK, estimated at USD 3.7 billion by its completion in 2022-2023. The third largest clean energy investment in the period was the financing of Canada’s Northland Power Inc (TSE:NPI) of the 252-MW Deutsche Bucht (DeBu) offshore wind project in the German North Sea, worth USD 1.6 billion.
The largest financing deal in the solar sector amounted to USD 460 million and was for First Solar Inc’s (NASDAQ:FSLR) 381-MW California Flats solar project.
Investment in small-scale solar projects of less than 1 MW stood at USD 10.8 billion, up 9% year-on-year.
Venture capital (VC) and private equity (PE) funding of clean energy companies slumped by 79% on the year to USD 662 million, marking the weakest quarterly figures since 2005. The biggest deal in this category was a USD-109-million private equity expansion capital round for Indian solar project developer Clean Max Enviro Energy Solutions.
Public markets investment plunged by 63% on an annual basis to USD 1.4 billion. “The weak third quarter figure for public markets investment came ironically despite a strong performance from clean energy stocks [..],” said Abraham Louw, analyst, clean energy economics at BNEF.
GEOGRAPHY
According to BNEF’s statistics, Q3 2017 clean energy investment surpassed the 100% annual growth mark in several countries, including Chile, Argentina, Australia and France. Investment in the US and China also increased, while figures for Germany, Japan and India marked a decrease as compared to Q3 2016.
The table below shows clean energy investments (in USD) in major markets, as given by BNEF.
Market Q3 2017 investment (in USD) Y/Y change Q/Q change China 23.8 billion +35% -8% US 14.8 billion +45% +8% Europe 11.6 billion +43% +45% Germany 2.4 billion -5% -26% Japan 2.2 billion -32% -17% India 1.1 billion -49% -60% Brazil 1.7 billion +32% -4% Mexico 2.8 billion - +84% Australia 1.8 billion +388% -10% Turkey 796 million - +312% France 631 million +109% -21% S Korea 593 million +143% +85% Argentina 1.2 billion - +151% UK 4.6 billion +57% - Chile 1 billion +134% +306%
(USD 1.0 = EUR 0.855)
Choose your newsletter by Renewables Now. Join for free! |
Auto supply chains struggle to keep up with US post-storm buying | US auto sales have surged by 12% YoY, according to Evolution Time Critical, primarily due to the recent tropical storms, which have led to cars needing to be replaced. However, the damage caused by the storms has also hampered vehicle supply chains, which are failing to keep up. With excess demand cited as the current problem, it is suggested that suitable contingency plans are needed for car manufacturers to protect supply chains if other disruptions occur. | http://www.supplychaindive.com/news/US-auto-sales-rise-hurricane-supply-chain/506493/ | 2017-10-06 05:58:52.467000 | Dive Brief:
Major storms have boosted the need for vehicle replacements, allowing U.S. vehicle manufacturers to enjoy a sales increase of up to 12% over 2016 sales, according to an Evolution Time Critical press release. Annual sales rates for light commercial vehicles also jumped to more than 18.5 million.
However, the automotive supply chain is also dealing with fallout and damages from storms Harvey and Irma, and is struggling to keep up.
Accordingly, further pressures will challenge automakers. An additional sales increase could hinder suppliers’ agility and speed, two factors that are now considered indispensable for maintaining healthy production standards.
Dive Insight:
Anticipating risk within the supply chain is a necessary part of planning since disruption can strike at any time in any form.
The types of risks affecting the supply chain run the gamut from labor strikes resulting from an overstressed production team to technological risks posed by cybercrime. Strategies to combat risk include everything from a shorter, quicker supply chain to achieving full visibility. And while the auto supply chain is generally highly resilient and redundant due to its just-in-time nature, excess demand appears to be the problem now.
"The issue is that, following natural disasters such as the recent hurricanes, the extent of possible disruption to vehicle manufacturers’ supply chains takes time to become certain," said Evolution Time Critical Managing Director Brad Brennan.
"Modern automotive supply chains are vast, highly complex operations and it is impossible to quickly and precisely glance at affected ports, airports and road networks to establish the extent of possible disruption — careful analysis can provide a crucial headstart, but even that is not infallible," he said. "It is only when the impact on Tier 3 or 4 suppliers — or beyond — emerges that the potential effect to vehicle manufacturers becomes apparent."
Thanks to heavy back stock, the industry has thus far been able to keep pace with need, but should any other disruption occur, automakers must be ready.
"The implementation of suitable contingency plans can protect otherwise fragile supply chains and help sustain automotive production at times of uncertainty," said Brennan. Of course, with every new disruption there is a silver lining. "This experience makes the automotive industry one of the more robust when it comes to protecting its supply chain and recovering swiftly from natural disasters.” |
Google launches 'babel fish' earbuds, translating even Chinese | Google has launched a set of ear buds capable of real-time translation of spoken conversations in 40 languages. The technology has been compared by some to the fictional 'babel fish' in Douglas Adams' sci-fi comedy 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy', which provides similarly instant translation. Google unveiled the device with a demonstration involving a conversation between two people, one speaking English and the other Swedish. The Pixel Buds will be available in the US from the start of November, priced at $159.
| http://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/2114054/new-google-earbuds-offer-real-time-translation?aid=197778625&sc_src=email_2034889&sc_llid=26452&sc_lid=146125635&sc_uid=z5biefUzPB&utm_source=emarsys&utm_medium=email#cxrecs_s | 2017-10-06 05:08:34.710000 | ‘If it works like that in the real world, that is a wow-we-are-living-in-the-future moment’ |
Nanomaterial enables more effective electrofuel production | Scientists in Florida have developed a way to produce hydrogen from seawater using solar energy. The technique uses a new hybrid nanomaterial, created by inserting tiny flakes of molybdenum disulphide into a sheet of titanium dioxide, and is nearly twice as effective as other photocatalysts. While other processes require purified water, this system works effectively in seawater. The breakthrough makes the production of hydrogen from seawater much more efficient and affordable, and could lead to the widespread adoption of the renewable gas as an alternative to fossil fuels, for example, in hydrogen fuel cell cars. | https://futurism.com/a-new-material-is-able-to-create-hydrogen-fuel-from-seawater/ | 2017-10-05 23:44:51.420000 | Sea-Fuel
There exists a wide range of renewable energy sources support our increasingly energy-intensive lives as fossil fuels are ultimately phased out. One of these new potential sources of energy is as promising as it is strange. University of Central Florida (UCF) researcher and assistant professor Yang Yang has developed a breakthrough hybrid nanomaterial that uses the power of an existing green energy source, solar energy, to turn seawater into hydrogen fuel.
A faculty member of both the NanoScience Technology Center and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at UCF, Yang's breakthrough has been 10 years in the making. Current materials being used to create hydrogen fuel are fairly costly and not all that efficient — a sharp contrast to Yang's new method.
The success is exciting: solar hydrogen splitting is something that many researchers, including Yang, have been working tirelessly towards for years. "We've opened a new window to splitting real water, not just purified water in a lab," Yang said. "This really works well in seawater."
To create hydrogen fuel, however, you need a photocatalyst — a material that triggers a chemical reaction when exposed to light. But considering the corrosive and difficult nature of seawater, Yang needed a photocatalyst that was uniquely durable, which is where the hybrid nanomaterial came in.
The nanomaterial began with an ultrathin sheet of titanium dioxide (the most common photocatalyst), into which nanocavities were carved. Nanoflakes of molybdenum disulfide, a 2D material as thick as a single atom, then coated these cavities. This material is nearly twice as effective as most other photocatalysts because instead of converting a limited range of light into energy, it can turn ultraviolet-visible to near-infrared light wavelengths into energy — a much wider range.
Artist's interpretation of the hybrid nanomaterial photocatalyst. Image Credit: University of Central Florida
Creative Energy
Hydrogen fuel, like everything, has its pros and cons. On the positive side, it's only emissions are water vapor, a drastic difference from what is produced by fossil fuels. In terms of vehicles, hydrogen fuel cells have about double the fuel economy of traditional gasoline. Additionally — and most obviously — hydrogen fuel is renewable and can be created in abundance.
However, until now the process to create hydrogen fuel has been considerably expensive, and there is a lack of existing infrastructure to support its use. The main issue with hydrogen fuel is that current methods for creating it are not only inefficient and costly, they often use nonrenewable natural gas. But this process has the potential to eliminate many of the issues presented by the use of hydrogen fuel.
If this nanomaterial is used on a larger-scale, the process could help generate a substantial amount of green energy, replacing fossil fuels and pushing us forward in the fight against climate change. In the immediate, it could also help bolster Florida's economy: with abundant sea water and the state's current efforts to recover from the devastation of Hurricane Irma, such a boost would no doubt be welcomed. |
Oracle rolls out cloud-based blockchain-as-a-service offering | California-based software firm Oracle has launched a cloud-based blockchain service. Oracle, which recently joined the Hyperledger project, will enable subscribers to build their own blockchain projects on the platform while leaving the company to manage the network infrastructure. Microsoft launched its own blockchain-as-a-service in 2015.
| http://www.zdnet.com/article/oracle-rolls-out-blockchain-cloud-service/ | 2017-10-05 13:26:29.377000 | On the first day of the OpenWorld conference, Oracle is rolling out Blockchain Cloud Service, helping the tech giant catch up with competitors like Microsoft and IBM.
A blockchain, the technology behind the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, is a shared, distributed ledger that can store complete transaction histories. It has a variety of use cases for enterprises that want to rely on tamper-proof transactions to create new revenue streams or improve business operations.
Once a customer subscribes to Oracle's Blockchain Cloud Service, which is part of the Oracle Cloud Platform, they can use the platform to build a blockchain network and then let Oracle manage the network infrastructure. Customers can then build their own smart contracts and applications on top of the network.
Oracle is promising "most comprehensive and enterprise grade blockchain service platform," Frank Xiong, Group VP of Blockchain Cloud Service, said to ZDNet, meaning it should be highly scalable, highly secure, and easy to integrate with existing applications.
Microsoft has been offering blockchain-as-a-service since 2015 and more recently introduced Enterprise Smart Contracts to make it easier for customers to use. Oracle maintains its blockchain cloud service will stand out in part by offering customers a way to seamlessly adopt it. Blockchain adoption will not happen overnight, Xiong said.
"We believe there will be a transition period of time... blockchain will be integrated with existing applications, whether in cloud or on premise," he said. "You don't need to switch everything overnight, but can move to this new disruptive technology gradually."
Oracle is also stressing the ability for enterprises to use the Blockchain Cloud Service to move operations beyond their own internal ecosystem by sharing data and monitoring transactions within and outside of the Oracle Cloud. Using REST APIs and Oracle's API management service, customers can invoke blockchain services directly or with pre-built integrations from Oracle Cloud. Oracle also recently joined Hyperledger, enabling customers to add value on top of the open source effort. |
Blockchain projects unite to provide transparency on ICOs | A group of 16 blockchain projects have partnered to launch Project Transparency, an initiative aimed at improving transparency and accountability of funds raised as regulations tighten around initial coin offerings. Santiment, Lykke, District0x, IconiqLab, Maecenas and Etherisc are among the projects behind the voluntary scheme. Projects wishing to join must disclose the wallets they control and the funds they hold as well as explain any expenditure that exceeds 0.5% of the funds raised.
| https://www.financemagnates.com/cryptocurrency/news/sixteen-blockchain-startups-launch-ico-transparency-initiative/?lipi=urn%3Ali%3Apage%3Ad_flagship3_feed%3BMj9rBzT4Q%2FiFnaM3wHJb0g%3D%3D | 2017-10-05 13:14:31.850000 | Sixteen Blockchain Blockchain Blockchain comprises a digital network of blocks with a comprehensive ledger of transactions made in a cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin or other altcoins.One of the signature features of blockchain is that it is maintained across more than one computer. The ledger can be public or private (permissioned.) In this sense, blockchain is immune to the manipulation of data making it not only open but verifiable. Because a blockchain is stored across a network of computers, it is very difficult to tampe Blockchain comprises a digital network of blocks with a comprehensive ledger of transactions made in a cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin or other altcoins.One of the signature features of blockchain is that it is maintained across more than one computer. The ledger can be public or private (permissioned.) In this sense, blockchain is immune to the manipulation of data making it not only open but verifiable. Because a blockchain is stored across a network of computers, it is very difficult to tampe Read this Term projects today announced the launch of Project Transparency at the Vienna ICO-Summit. The voluntary initiative aims to encourage disclosure of wallets controlled by a project and provide a voluntary explanation of any expenditure greater than 0.5% of the funds collected.
Learn how to buy Bitcoin and Ethereum safely with our simple guide!
The industry players behind the initiative are worth over $650 million by market cap. They are Santiment, Aragon, Cofound.it, District0x, Encrypgen, Etherisc, Hcash, Iconomi, Indorse, Lykke, Dappbase, GATCOIN, IconiqLab, Virgil Capital, Musiconomi and Maecenas.
They explain that the long term ambition is to provide potential investors and the community with greater transparency and accountability regarding funds raised, as the ICO space sees greater regulatory scrutiny in many markets and even legal restrictions in China and South Korea.
Maksim Balashevich, CEO and founder of Santiment, said: "With the rapid rise of digital currencies and proliferation of ICOs, investors increasingly want security regarding their funds and transparency on how they are administered. Santiment was developed to provide insight and transparency to investors looking to enter illiquid and highly volatile markets, Project Transparency affirms our commitment to improving governance in the Blockchain sector."
Balashevich recently took part in the Finance Magnates Blockchain Podcast:
Santiment has confirmed that it will provide funding for Project Transparency’s web page and for manpower to process applications and keep the initiative staffed. Any Blockchain project can join the initiative, the only criteria is to disclose the wallets controlled, funds held and explain any expenditures over 0.5% of the funds raised.
Taiyang Zhang, CEO of pre-ICO project Dappbase, and GATCOIN’s Simon Cheong, explained that their support for Project Transparency stems from their imminent funding goals and investor interest: "Transparency drives better, sustainable business. And that's what we want." |
Animal feed crops for meat industry threatening biodiversity: WWF | Crops, such as soy, grown for animal feed as a result of increased global demand for meat are causing wide-scale loss of land and species, according to a report by the WWF. Some of the world’s most vulnerable regions, including the Amazon, Congo Basin and Himalayas, are particularly affected. The study also found that intensive and industrial animal farming makes food less nutritious, with a single chicken in the 1970s containing the same amount of essential fatty acid omega-3 as six intensively reared chickens today. Approximately 60% of global biodiversity loss now results from human food consumption. | https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/05/vast-animal-feed-crops-meat-needs-destroying-planet | 2017-10-05 13:07:07.563000 | The ongoing global appetite for meat is having a devastating impact on the environment driven by the production of crop-based feed for animals, a new report has warned.
The vast scale of growing crops such as soy to rear chickens, pigs and other animals puts an enormous strain on natural resources leading to the wide-scale loss of land and species, according to the study from the conservation charity WWF.
Intensive and industrial animal farming also results in less nutritious food, it reveals, highlighting that six intensively reared chickens today have the same amount of omega-3 as found in just one chicken in the 1970s.
The study entitled Appetite for Destruction launches on Thursday at the 2017 Extinction and Livestock Conference in London, in conjunction with Compassion in World Farming (CIFW), and warns of the vast amount of land needed to grow the crops used for animal feed and cites some of the world’s most vulnerable areas such as the Amazon, Congo Basin and the Himalayas.
The report and conference come against a backdrop of alarming revelations of industrial farming. Last week a Guardian/ITV investigation showed chicken factory staff in the UK changing crucial food safety information.
Protein-rich soy is now produced in such huge quantities that the average European consumes approximately 61kg each year, largely indirectly by eating animal products such as chicken, pork, salmon, cheese, milk and eggs.
In 2010, the British livestock industry needed an area the size of Yorkshire to produce the soy used in feed. But if global demand for meat grows as expected, the report says, soy production would need to increase by nearly 80% by 2050.
“The world is consuming more animal protein than it needs and this is having a devastating effect on wildlife,” said Duncan Williamson, WWF food policy manager. “A staggering 60% of global biodiversity loss is down to the food we eat. We know a lot of people are aware that a meat-based diet has an impact on water and land, as well as causing greenhouse gas emissions, but few know the biggest issue of all comes from the crop-based feed the animals eat.”
With 23bn chickens, turkeys, geese, ducks and guinea fowl on the planet – more than three per person – the biggest user of crop-based feed globally is poultry. The second largest, with 30% of the world’s feed in 2009, is the pig industry.
In the UK, pork is the second favourite meat after chicken, with each person eating on average 25kg a year in 2015 – nearly the whole recommended yearly intake for all meats. UK nutritional guidelines recommend 45-55g of protein per day, but the average UK consumption is 64-88g, of which 37% is meat and meat products. |
MassiveU raises $1.6m for asynchronous mobile learning | Florida-based mobile learning solutions provider MassiveU has secured $1.6m in funding from an unknown investor, according to a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. MassiveU creates mobile apps which encourage students to develop critical thinking and creative problem-solving skills.
| http://newscenter.io/2017/10/edtech-startup-massiveu-secures-1-6-million/ | 2017-10-05 10:38:11.220000 | According to a recent SEC filing, MassiveU has raised $1.6 million in financing from an undisclosed investor.
MassiveU is a mobile learning solution for educators, learners and marketers. The company uses mobile apps to deliver asynchronous learning content from recognized subject matter experts to virtually any mobile phone, tablet or online screen. The platform’s purpose is to help students build critical thinking and creative problem-solving skills for college and career readiness. It also supports competency-based learning that aligns to state standards.
|
Bengali language support widens Google ad reach by 200 million | Google has added Bengali to the list of supported languages for its AdWords and AdSense programmes, giving advertisers the ability to target 200 million more people in their native tongue. The company is making efforts to tap into growing markets in India and neighbouring countries, with another 300 million people speaking Indian languages expected to come online in the next four years. The addition of Bengali increases the number of the region's languages supported by the platform to eight and suggests there is potential to expand to more.
| https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/10/05/google_adwords_now_in_bengali/ | 2017-10-05 09:36:13.887000 | Google has learned to speak Bengali and found an extra 200 million people to advertise to along the way.
Bengali is the world's sixth-most-prevalent language, is the official tongue of Bangladesh and is widely spoken in some India states. Yet the language's 200 million speakers have been cruelly denied the bounty that is Google's AdWords and Ad Sense search monetisation programs, the foundation of the company's revenue base.
Google therefore suggests that adding Bengali to its list of supported languages will mean great things for local publishers and advertisers, as its now possible to target 200 million extra people in their native tongues.
The company's announcement suggests it has plans to address more regional languages, too.
Ex-IBMer sues Google for $10bn – after his web ad for 'divine honey cancer cure' was pulled READ MORE
Shalini Girish, Google India's marketing solutions director said “we expect another 300 million Indian language users to come online in the next four years.” Advertising in Bengali is therefore “keeping up with with the needs of an evolving Internet audience” rather than tapping a hitherto-unaddressed market.
“Over the coming months, we will share more about our efforts to further build on this,” Girish adds.
Google recently added eight new Indian languages to voice search, with Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Malayalam and Urdu joining Hindi.
The Register expects AdWords will therefore soon reach Telugu and Marathi as they are the 15th and 16th most-spoken languages in the world according o the language prevalence list Google's offered to quantify the size of the Bengali-speaking world. The list says Telugu has 74.2m speakers and Marathi 71.8m, for 146m more lovely sets of read-for-ads eyeballs. If Google also adds Urdu and Lahnda, two languages widely-used in Pakistan, AdWords will reach another 198m people.
Doing so may not, however, turn into rivers of Gold as Google learned when Indians balked at paying even US$0.75 for apps, necessitating a reduction in the floor price to 10 rupees or just US$0.10. Bengali advertisers may need similarly low price options, but Google's auction system should take care of that. ® |
Yoco enhances POS platform for small businesses in South Africa | South African payments tech start-up Yoco has launched an enhanced point of sale (POS) system for small businesses in the country. The cloud-based solution is being marketed as a package with the company's existing card readers, and enables retailers to organise stock as well as record and monitor sales in real time. Yoco is upgrading 14,000 business users to the system for free and providing the app to any new users who buy their card readers. It's also available through the Apple App Store and Google Play.
| http://www.bizcommunity.com/Article/196/185/168301.html | 2017-10-05 09:32:49.897000 | Payments service provider Yoco has launched an enhanced Point of Sale (POS) solution, which according to the company is South Africa's first 100% locally made, free point of sale app. It has been purpose-designed to give small and emerging businesses the tools they need to better run their businesses and grow.
Packaged as a bundled offering with the company’s card readers, the integrated POS solution will allow businesses to organise stock, ring up sales, do cash ups, recons and monitor their sales performance in real-time. The payments startup is upgrading its 14,000 current merchants to the Yoco Point of Sale at no cost, and is also making it available for free to any business that purchases a Yoco card reader, as of today.
In development for a year, Yoco says the new cloud-based solution was developed hand in hand with its existing merchants to ensure it meets their needs.
“We’ve been developing our new point of sale for over 18 months,” says Yoco CTO Lungisa Matshoba. “During the beta phase, we saw 55 merchants process over 200,000 transactions on the Yoco Point of Sale. The experience highlighted to us the impact Yoco Point of Sale can have on the growth potential of thousands of other small businesses, from hairdressers to restaurants to clothing stores, across the country. The more these businesses grow, the more South Africa grows with it.”
Says Yoco CEO Katlego Maphai: “We have made accepting payments easy for SMEs - our next natural step was to focus on making running a business easier. Our ultimate goal is to allow entrepreneurs to focus their attention on growth and customer engagement, and not the day-to-day tasks which can be streamlined through technology and data.”
The Yoco Store
Yoco Point of Sale was unveiled at the company’s recently launched retail store, the Yoco Store, in Parkhurst, Johannesburg.
The Yoco Store is where current and potential Yoco customers can explore and get expert advice on Yoco’s products and solutions, as well as those of its partner ecosystem, which includes cloud accounting service Xero and cloud point of sale solutions TabletPOS (powered by iKentoo) and Vend. The store is one of the first in the world for a point of sale payments company, is completely cashless and is powered by the company’s point of sale offering.
Yoco Point of Sale has started rolling out across the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store. It will be available to all new and existing Yoco customers. |
Amazon’s server-to-server wrapper wins favour in ad industry | Amazon's Transparent Ad Marketplace is the most popular server-to-server wrapper in the ad industry, according to ServerBid. Advertisers like the product’s ease of use and the access it provides to proprietary behavioural data, plus it counters Google’s dominance. Amazon’s extensive database resolves the server-to-server problem of matching supply- and demand-side IDs encountered by tech vendors using third-party data. The firm is growing its presence in advertising, with a range of initiatives and 2,000 staff hires. However, Google could still win in the nascent area when its “exchange bidding” offering comes out of pilot.
| https://digiday.com/media/uh-oh-google-amazon-dominating-server-server-bidding/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=digidaydis&utm_source=daily&utm_content=171005 | 2017-10-05 09:27:37.787000 | Header bidding grew out of publishers’ desire to break the stranglehold Google has on programmatic advertising. Now, Google rival Amazon has established a leading position with the presumed successor to header bidding, server-side bidding.
Amazon’s Transparent Ad Marketplace is the most popular server-to-server wrapper in the ad industry, according to a study that ServerBid released on Oct. 4. Publishers are adopting this product because it brings in unique demand, is easy to integrate, matches users across different platforms and provides competition to Google, which already wields a lot of control over publishers and their tech stacks. While much of ad tech plumbing is interchangeable, Amazon has something new to bring to the party: proprietary commerce and behavioral data.
Since Amazon’s ad marketplace has unique demand, its wrapper is an attractive option for publishers trying to boost their programmatic CPMs, said Erik Requidan, vp of sales and programmatic strategy at Intermarkets.
Another benefit of Amazon’s wrapper is that it’s easy for publishers to set up and make adjustments to, said Emry Downinghall, vp of advertising at Chegg. For example, the wrapper lets publishers easily add or drop supply-side platforms. It also makes it easy for publishers to shift bidders between on-page and server-side.
A downside of server-to-server connections is that it is tougher for the SSPs and demand-side platforms to match their user IDs. With on-page header bidding, each SSP has access to the user’s browser, which means they gather and use their own matching data to sync with the DSP’s matching data.
But with server-to-server wrappers — where one vendor aggregates the bids from all the other vendors in a cloud-based product — only the vendor collecting the bids has access to the user’s browser, which means the other vendors have to sync their data to the aggregator’s data. This additional step can reduce match rates, and it is one reason why publishers are hesitant to adopt server-side bidding.
Unlike other tech vendors that have to make inferences from third-party data in order to build a large user database, Amazon continually obtains data directly from millions of people who use its various products. Because Amazon gathers lots of information on a large pool of users, it can avoid one of the pitfalls of server-side bidding by successfully matching user data across the various vendors in its wrapper, said Chip Schenck, vp of data and programmatic at Meredith Corporation.
The popularity of Amazon’s wrapper is just the latest example of the company sinking its hooks into the ad industry. Amazon is also growing its sales team, opening up self-service programmatic ad products, courting video publishers, getting frequently mentioned during quarterly earnings calls and hiring 2,000 people to work in its new office in New York City. Amazon declined an interview request for this story.
Given that the rise of header bidding was prompted by publishers’ frustrations about how Google’s ad server favored its own exchange, it isn’t surprising that some publishers want to hedge against the search giant’s dominance.
One of the reasons why publishers are adopting Amazon’s server-side wrapper is because they see it as a counterweight to Google, said Purch CTO John Potter.
“It’s a pretty straightforward concern of everyone from publishers to SSPs,” he said. “Nobody wants Google to have more power in advertising.”
But if there is anyone that can overtake Amazon in server-side bidding, it’s Google. Google’s server-side product, which it calls exchange bidding, is still in pilot, but the number of publishers using it has grown from 100 to 185 since May, according to a Google spokesperson. Google’s exchange bidding will become available in early 2018 to all publishers that use Google’s ad server DoubleClick for Publishers, the spokesperson said.
It’s worth recognizing that server-to-server bidding is still in its infancy. Amazon was an early adopter of this technology, but its wrapper isn’t even a year old.
Schenck said Amazon’s high adoption rate early on “gives them a little bit of a head start, but it doesn’t determine who wins the server-to-server war.” |
Time to Change the Way We Price Drugs | The U.S. should develop a different system of pricing drugs, Peter Bach, MD, said at a forum here on high prescription drug prices hosted by The Atlantic.
| https://www.medpagetoday.com/publichealthpolicy/generalprofessionalissues/68331 | 2017-10-05 09:18:24.203000 | WASHINGTON -- The U.S. should develop a different system of pricing drugs, Peter Bach, MD, said at a forum here on high prescription drug prices hosted by The Atlantic.
"Every other country uses a formal technology assessment to figure out how much to pay for drugs -- we don't," Bach, director of the Center for Health Policy and Outcomes at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, said at the forum on Tuesday, which was sponsored by Express Scripts, a pharmacy benefit management (PBM) firm. "And this is the only sector where the monopolist sets the price."
Value-based pricing would be a good start, said Michael Pishvaian, MD, director of the phase I clinical trial program at the Georgetown Lombardi Cancer Center here. "We think a lot of approvals should be linked to cost [and] value -- [that includes] extension of life plus what it means to the patient in their stage of cancer, plus the side effects that come with that -- that whole concept should be evaluated."
By that score, the newer hepatitis C drugs such as sofosbuvir (Solvaldi) "have great value because this is a disease that was leading to liver cancer for many patients and now, all of a sudden, patients are being cured of this virus," he said.
The $475,000 Treatment
One drug much discussed at the event was tisagenlecleucel (Kymriah), a CAR-T therapy approved recently approved to treat pediatric leukemia in patients who fail to respond to other treatments. The drug, which is given in a single dose, will be priced at $475,000.
The price of Kymriah "has broken the trend line," said Bach. "Price inflation on cancer drugs over last 50 years is up 100-fold, adjusting for inflation and a standardized [period of] therapy ... We're in the $100,000-$150,000 range for typical duration treatment course for a cancer drug, so this has completely broken the mold."
These drugs may be breaking the cost barrier, "but you're talking about potential cure, and in an advanced incurable cancer you're talking about drugs that would let a patient lead an otherwise normal life," said Pishvaian. "How do you price that? It's really hard to put a limit on that life."
One reason drugs are so expensive is that consumers are also paying for all of the drugs that never made it to market, said Lori Reilly, executive vice president of policy and research at the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA). "Ninety percent of what we do fails," she said. "How can we make investment of $3 billion [on a drug] that fails if we can't recoup cost not just of those who make it to market, but the ones that never make it to market?"
The U.S. also is making up for the low prices charged in other countries that have the ability to negotiate, said Matt Eyles, executive vice president of policy and regulatory affairs at America's Health Insurance Plans. "We are funding the rest of the world; there's no doubt about it," he said. "That trend is not changing, especially as other countries clamp down on pricing in a way we are not ... We need basic transparency to understand how these prices are being arrived at, what the inputs are, and what makes sense."
Supply Chain Markup
Another issue is the markups that are charged all along the supply chain, said Reilly. "A recent study ... found that for every dollar of the list price of a prescription drug that is sold, the brand-name manufacturer gets about 62 cents of it. The rest goes to other people in the supply chain."
For instance, "a big chunk of it goes to discounts and rebates to health insurance companies, mandated government rebates, and costs to pharmacy benefit managers, pharmacies, and wholesalers," she continued. "We'd like to see transparency ... across the entire supply chain, including the hospital setting where drugs are commonly marked up as much as 600% over the price charged. So transparency is great, presuming it applies to everyone."
Value-based pricing -- paying based on the outcome of a treatment -- is often touted as a solution to the pricing problem, but there is a lot of skepticism about whether that will lead to lower prices, said Eyles. "The jury is definitely out about how those [programs] will impact pricing," he said. "The insidious problem we have is that there is year-over-year inflation of 9%, 10%, 20% ... when the rest of the healthcare system is much much lower. That's not great corporate behavior, and when that's rampant across the branded industry [we wonder] what's going on here."
It's true that initially there maybe apparent costs to value-based pricing, said Rep. Patrick Meehan (R-Pa.). But the overall goal is to look down the road and see what the costs are to non-adherence and the unavailability of breakthrough drugs which can change outcomes."
"If we can find ways to deliver drugs that work on individuals ... that's going to hold down overall costs to the system in addition to patient suffering," he continued. But there are impediments to implementing such pricing programs, "like the [anti-]kickback laws that I'm working to get around."
Increasing Competition
Increasing competition is another solution to look at said Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.). She cited the large price increases instituted by the manufacturer of the EpiPen epinephrine auto-injector as an example of what can happen when there is no competition for a drug. "If we believe in capitalism, we have to have competition; otherwise this is never going to work."
Klobuchar is co-sponsoring a bill with Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) that would put an end to one type of anti-competitive move: so-called "pay for delay" deals in which a brand-name manufacturer of a particular drug pays a generic drug firm to delay entering the market for that drug with its generic version.
"I think it will [get traction]," she said of her bill. "If we have a vote, I can't see people, like lemmings, voting with the pharmacuetical companies -- when you have to explain to constituents that you're going to allow a practice that allows pharmaceutical companies to keep drugs off the market."
Allowing importation of cheaper drugs from foreign countries is another option, said Klobuchar. This could be done in one of three ways: "you could straight out allow it, or allow it [from] certain countries -- like the bill I have with Sen. [John] McCain (R-Ariz.) to allow importation from Canada -- or you could do it like the bill Sen. [Mike] Lee (R-Utah) and I have with a trigger -- that is, for a drug with no competition or limited competition, you could allow a safe drug to be imported from another country."
Negotiating drug prices is another possibility, said Meehan, although he added that he didn't think the government should do it. "This is probably best left to those that are in a position to negotiate effectively," like PBMs, he said. "They can work on volume, and they can work on other kinds of incentives."
And there's one other idea: slowing the volume of direct-to-consumer advertising, said Michael Sapienza, CEO of the Colon Cancer Alliance. "Let's say any drug that comes to market, [the drug company] is spending about $250 million on direct-to-consumer ads... [but] you're not targeting that specialty population," he said. By working with patient advocacy groups and other patient forums, "you could take $2-3 million and target a specific patient population -- I would think you'd get much better bang for your buck."
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. |
Congress missed deadlines, billions at stake for California low-income health programs | Congress missed its Sept. 30 deadline to renew funding for two health programs for low-income people, despite bipartisan support, and now California is waiting to learn the fate of billions of dollars it needs to keep those programs going.
| https://www.scpr.org/news/2017/10/04/76314/congress-missed-deadlines-billions-at-stake-for-ca/ | 2017-10-05 09:16:55.017000 | Congress missed its Sept. 30 deadline to renew funding for two health programs for low-income people, despite bipartisan support, and now California is waiting to learn the fate of billions of dollars it needs to keep those programs going.
Lawmakers did not renew funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, known as CHIP, and the Community Health Investment, Modernization and Excellence Act, called the CHIME Act, which would reauthorize assistance for community health centers.
In the case of CHIP, California stands to get $2.7 billion annually; under the CHIME Act, community health centers receive more than $600 million a year in direct grants.
The state and local health clinics won't need to cut back on services just yet. State officials said there's enough CHIP funding on hand to last until the end of the year. The U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration, which provides federal grants to community health centers, said it expects current funding will also last through December.
Supporters hope Congress will vote on bills to renew both programs in the next couple of weeks.
"States can’t fund children’s health coverage on promises. They need the funding to come through and they need it now," said Kelly Hardy, senior managing director of health policy for the advocacy group Children Now.
In California, the Department of Health Care Services uses CHIP funding to expand Medi-Cal coverage to two million kids in the state whose parents make about two-and-one-half times the federal poverty level, which is too high to qualify for Medi-Cal. The program also covers pregnant women.
"To the extent Congress fails to extend CHIP funding, the Administration would work with the state Legislature and [the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] on contingency options, based upon federal guidance and direction," Health Care Services said in a written statement.
A loss of CHIP funding would mean a cut to provider reimbursement rates, predicted Lara Khouri, senior vice president and chief strategy officer at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.
"If that was substantial enough, we’d be in a situation where we’d have to look at our programs," she said.
Community health centers say they would also have to make cuts to their staffing and programs. The nonprofit clinics serve mostly Medi-Cal and homeless patients and the uninsured, including those in the U.S. illegally.
Andie Patterson, the director of government affairs for CaliforniaHealth+ Advocates, said it would be hard for clinics to recover from a loss of any funding, since they run on tight budget margins. Community clinics employ more than 30,000 people in the state, she said.
"It makes no sense to create all these delays and uncertainty in the health care industry, but also in local economies and in local health care settings," she said.
Some health advocates blame the last-ditch effort to repeal Obamacare for steering lawmakers' attention away from the CHIP and CHIME deadlines.
"We had a line of sight to bipartisan support for CHIP before the Graham-Cassidy bill got put on the table," said Khouri. "And unfortunately, we feel that folks were distracted from something that was a clear and shared imperative." |
San Diego hepatitis outbreak continues to grow: 481 cases | Add 20 more cases and 22 more hospitalizations to San Diego County’s ever-growing hepatitis A outbreak. Tuesday afternoon the county Health and Human Services Agency raised the number of the outbreak’s confirmed cases to 481 from 461 and hospitalizations to 337 from 315.
| http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-hepatitis-san-diego-20171004-story.html | 2017-10-05 09:15:47.697000 | Add 20 more cases and 22 more hospitalizations to San Diego County’s ever-growing hepatitis A outbreak.
Tuesday afternoon the county Health and Human Services Agency raised the number of the outbreak’s confirmed cases to 481 from 461 and hospitalizations to 337 from 315. The death count associated with the outbreak, which started in November 2016, remained at 17 for a second straight week.
For the last two weeks, the health department has reported having more than 40 cases under investigation awaiting confirmation from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that they suspect are caused by the same unique strains associated with other outbreak cases.
Advertisement
No information on the number of cases under investigation was available Tuesday. All of those who have died during the outbreak have had underlying medical conditions such as liver disease. Most were also homeless and/or drug users.
Vaccination events continue throughout the city as public health officials focus on those at the highest risk of infection such as health and safety workers and those who work with homeless outreach organizations and food service workers.
Hepatitis A infection is seldom fatal unless other complications, such as liver disease or an autoimmune disorder, are already present.
The hepatitis A virus is shed in human feces and transmitted when a person accidentally comes in contact with fecal matter. Proper hygiene — hand-washing with soap and warm water for at least 20 seconds after using the bathroom — is sufficient to kill the virus, though alcohol-based hand sanitizer may not be effective. Hepatitis A symptoms include jaundice (yellowing of the skin and the whites of the eyes), abdominal pain, fatigue, diarrhea, vomiting and nausea.
Sisson writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.
ALSO
San Diego legalizes supply chain for marijuana operations
Sylmar armory to be converted to year-round housing for homeless women
Allegations that students’ flutes were tainted with semen spark disgust, demands for answers |
Meals on Wheels tests high-tech health checks for seniors | Just after he finished delivering a meal to 70-year-old Anne Stillman of Vista, a question popped up on Christopher Topper’s smartphone screen.
| http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/health/sd-me-meals-health-20170830-story.html | 2017-10-05 09:14:10.437000 | Meals on Wheels is now not only delivering meals to geriatric clients, but checking after their healthcare.
Just after he finished delivering a meal to 70-year-old Anne Stillman of Vista, a question popped up on Christopher Topper’s smartphone screen.
Before getting into his truck to head to his next delivery, the Meals on Wheels courier took just a second to respond to the query.
“The app asks me if there is a change in condition, meaning, is there anything that needs to be reported about her wellness? Anne looks great, I’m going to hit ‘no’ and, boom, on to the next client,” Topper said just before sliding back behind the wheel.
Advertisement
That quick tap puts Meals on Wheels on the edge of a revolution in health care that seeks to take action on potential problems in homes before seniors end up in the back of an ambulance.
This kind of work, experts say, is becoming more vital as baby boomers enter retirement age and advances in health care mean that their parents have a better chance than ever of celebrating their 100th birthdays.
Those age 65 and older were already consuming significantly more of the nation’s emergency department visits in 2014 than they were in 2006, according to an estimate from the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. During that year span, seniors jumped from 16.8 percent of all visits to 18 percent nationwide, an increase of more than 4 million visits in eight years. And demographers expect that trend to accelerate.
San Diego has recently become something of a hotbed for efforts to stem the tide through prevention, either on the front end by stopping accidents before they happen or on the back end by reducing the chances that hospitalized older patients will be readmitted once they are sent home.
Meals on Wheels, for example, has asked its volunteers and paid couriers to keep an eye on the senior clients they see many times per week. But that oversight has been largely ad-hoc.
Here is the classic opportunity for data-driven change, said Dr. Zia Agha, chief medical officer at San Diego’s West Health, a research and philanthropy non profit.
Dinner with a side of health
West helped add a module to the “SERVtracker” software that many Meals on Wheels operations use to guide their drivers from one home to the next and confirm that each delivery has been made. That “has the client’s condition changed” question is asked each time a driver confirms delivery, and, if they say yes, then the system automatically moves through a list of ever more precise follow-ups, helping to triage the specific problem that needs attention.
Once that problem is identified, drivers can hit send and the information moves electronically back to headquarters where a care coordinator can take a look often before the driver has left the driveway.
Though Topper did not find anything amiss at Stillman’s mobile home, he said he has had a few cases over the last two and a half months where the software made a difference. In one case, a female client had extreme dental pain and no way to get to a dentist. In another case, he noticed that a woman’s home, which was always meticulously kept, was a mess, indicating she may have been experiencing a mental or physical problem.
“As soon as you hit the button, lots of people know that there is an issue, and they can get right on it,” Topper said.
Some might wonder what the clients make of the idea that the people who are delivering their meals are also scoping them out for health problems and reporting any that they might observe.
Standing in the doorway of her mobile home, Stillman said she doesn’t consider this kind of observation intrusive. A while back, she said, she would have died due to undiagnosed diabetes if her nephew hadn’t happened to come check on her and saw that she was too weak to walk outside. The paramedic, she said, told her she wouldn’t have lasted another day.
“I don’t think it’s invasive if you’re truly concerned about somebody, you know,” she said.
Debbie Case, president of Meals on Wheels of San Diego County, said having the incoming information pre-sorted into categories helps elicit a rapid connection to the right resources, whether it’s social services, health providers or transportation networks.
The system started this spring on single North County delivery route and was used with only a handful of the program’s full-time paid couriers but expanded this summer to include about 40 volunteers serving six routes around the county.
Case said that, in eight weeks of trial operation, volunteers reported 60 changes in condition on 22 of their clients, using the software to immediately send a report which can bring about a response in less than a day in non-emergency situations that otherwise might take several days to sort out.
Now, she noted, the challenge is to expand electronic delivery tracking to the thousands of volunteers who deliver meals across San Diego, and across the country. Most are seniors themselves, and many aren’t that interested in using smartphone apps.
“We can’t just pull the bandage off or we lose 3,000 volunteers. You have to do it strategically over the next couple of years,” Case said.
Emergencies not the whole story
Still, these kind of problem-interceptor programs are not a panacea, says Dr. Daniel Waxman, a UCLA Los Angeles emergency department doctor and health policy researcher.
Preventive programs, he said, can certainly help reduce visits and costs.
But most senior emergency visits, he said, are appropriate. In many cases, an older patient may come in with a condition — vague chest pain, say — that could be a heart attack or simply the kind of pain that comes with aging blood vessels. People with these kinds of symptoms, Waxman said, need to come in for an immediate workup, even if most will not turn out to be heart attacks.
It’s what happens after a workup like that where costs can soar, he said. Even if a full workup in the emergency department, complete with electrocardiogram, shows there is no heart attack happening, doctors know that vague chest pain is often reported hours or even days before a heart attack.
These patients need follow up the next day and if doctors are not confident they’ll get what they need outside the hospital, they admit.
In 2008, a government report estimated that one in 10 hospital admissions was preventable and that 60 percent of those estimated 4 million hospitalizations were for Americans age 65 and older.
Just over a third of health care expenses for those age 65 and older were on in-patient admissions compared to only 2.3 percent in the emergency room, according to a 2013 report by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
Following up
This reality has not been lost on San Diego health care providers.
San Diego County’s Aging and Independence Services Department received funding in 2010 to run a local care transitions team that focused on follow-up care after hospitalization for patients with chronic diseases.
That work, according to a 2015 report, resulted in a 24.7 percent drop in hospital readmissions overall and a 72 percent drop for high-risk Medicare patients.
Though the federally-funded program lost its grant in 2016, many local hospitals have continued the practices they honed while they were in the program. Sharp Grossmont Hospital, for example, tries to connect seniors with whatever services they need after they leave right down to issuing them food bags at discharge.
Kaiser Permanente San Diego often creates follow-up appointments before its members leave the emergency department and sets up what it calls “bridge clinics” for patients who have complex needs to visit after they have an emergency.
UC San Diego and West Health are taking things one step further with a pilot program called Acute Care at Home. It identifies stable patients who need attention that might otherwise have meant hospitalization — say a requirement for intravenous antibiotics to take care of an infection.
Dr. Vaishal Tolia, who runs the program, said that about 70 patients have been enrolled in Acute Care at Home since it started last summer. Nurses are assigned to visit the patients in their homes as often as necessary and Tolia said that, so far, there have been no readmissions to the hospital for the same health problem that they were enrolled for.
“We’ve found that we’re able to mimic the care that they would be receiving in the hospital, and some end up getting visited by a nurse three times per day,” Tolia said.
Health Playlist × On Now Video: Leaders urge public to help extinguish hepatitis outbreak On Now San Diego starts cleansing sidewalks, streets to combat hepatitis A On Now Video: Scripps to shutter its hospice service On Now Video: Scripps La Jolla hospitals nab top local spot in annual hospital rankings On Now Video: Does a parent's Alzheimer's doom their children? On Now EpiPen recall expands On Now Kids can add years to your life
[email protected]
(619) 293-1850
Twitter: @paulsisson |
U.S. Health Care Reform Can’t Wait for Quality Measures to Be Perfect | There’s a debate in the United States about whether the current measures of health care quality are adequate to support the movement away from fee-for-service toward value-based payment. Some providers advocate slowing or even halting payment reform efforts because they don’t believe that quality can be adequately measured to determine fair payment.
| https://hbr.org/2017/10/u-s-health-care-reform-cant-wait-for-quality-measures-to-be-perfect | 2017-10-05 09:13:08.967000 | U.S. policymakers have been debating health care payment reform. While the Trump administration has yet to weigh in, delaying the move to value-based payment is not an option for three reasons. First, even imperfect measurement and transparency accelerate quality improvement. Second, the act of using measures will improve measurement. And third, returning to fee-for-service is not an option.
There’s a debate in the United States about whether the current measures of health care quality are adequate to support the movement away from fee-for-service toward value-based payment. Some providers advocate slowing or even halting payment reform efforts because they don’t believe that quality can be adequately measured to determine fair payment. Employers and other purchasers, however, strongly support the currently available quality measures used in payment reform efforts to reward higher-performing providers. So far, the Trump administration has not weighed in.
The four of us, leaders of organizations that represent large employers and other purchasers of health care, reject any delay in payment reform efforts for the following three reasons:
Even imperfect measurement and transparency accelerate quality improvement. One set of measures often questioned is the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s (AHRQ) Patient Safety Indicators (PSIs) used by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and others in value-based payment programs. These indicators measure surgical complications and errors in hospitals, which is critical given that one in four hospital admissions is estimated to result in an adverse event.
Insight Center Transforming Health Care Sponsored by Medtronic How leading providers are delivering value for patients.
PSIs remain among the most evidence-based, well-tested, and validated quality measures available. CMS uses many in its value-based purchasing programs. Use and reporting of PSIs through AHRQ’s Medicare Patient Safety Monitoring System has measurably improved quality. For instance, CMS reported a reduction in inpatient venous thromboembolisms (VTEs) from 28,000 in 2010 to 16,000 in 2014, meaning that 12,000 fewer patients had potentially fatal blood clots in 2014.
In addition to using quality measures in payment programs and for quality improvement, making measures public is key to accelerating change. “If transparency were a medication, it would be a blockbuster,” concluded a multi-stakeholder roundtable convened by the National Patient Safety Foundation’s Lucian Leape Institute in 2015. The foundation’s report cited the Leapfrog Group’s first-ever reporting of early elective delivery rates by hospitals in 2010, which galvanized a cascade of efforts to curtail the problem and thus reduce maternal harms and neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) admissions. This was effective: The national mean of early elective deliveries declined from a rate of 17% to 2.8% in only five years.
Using measures improves measurement. Providers and health care executives sometimes point to flaws in their medical-record and billing systems as a main reason certain measures shouldn’t be used. As they see it, their performance on the measures isn’t the issue; it’s their medical records or billing coding that’s the problem. They believe these internal systems should be fixed before measures that use this information are applied in payment formulas or public reporting.
But use of these measures is often necessary to break logjams in correcting the health care industry’s long-neglected weaknesses in data-quality control. Indeed, many of the nuanced imperfections providers criticize were only uncovered by public reporting, which revealed unexpectedly poor performance for some providers, prompting them to research the medical records to find out the reasons.
Even rough measures make a big difference when they are publicly reported. For instance, New York State’s release of surgical mortality data for coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) procedures jump-started the movement to define and more carefully collect much stronger measures of CABG outcomes, and today we have many advances in cardiac care and its measurement.
In the New York example, the success in generating ever better measures — and more importantly, achieving ever better outcomes for patients — came about because providers made the changes that saved lives, and they deserve all the credit for that. A thorough, respectful process for building scientific and stakeholder consensus around measures has been orchestrated by leaders like the National Quality Forum (NQF) and the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA). Purchasers are committed to partnering in the development and refinement of excellent measures while we advance transparency and payment reform alongside that work.
Returning to fee-for-service is not an option. Given the widely acknowledged waste, heavy costs, and quality-of-care issues produced by the fee-for-service system, the fact that there are rough spots on the road to value-based payment is hardly a justification for slowing down reform. If converting to a more sensible payment system were easy, it would have been done a long time ago.
The change to performance-based payment and market share requires tenacity and patience. Current quality measures may have rough edges, but stakeholders have worked hard to steadily improve their validity and reliability. Employers and other purchasers, such as those involved in our organizations, must work with forward-thinking colleagues in the health care system to continually improve the measures that publicly signal value. It will be a learning process for providers and purchasers as long as we’re guided by a spirit of transparency.
Whatever the risks of imperfect measurement, America’s first priority must be to eliminate avoidable suffering, mortality, and waste in its uniquely costly health care system. We hope that the Trump administration and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle will continue to recognize what our members see clearly: delaying payment reform is not an option. |
Why healthcare needs to become even more consumer-focused | Thanks in large part to digital technology, consumers expect a lot from healthcare these days. Much like what they experience in the retail and consumer goods worlds, they want an easy, seamless, individualized experience -- and what makes healthcare unique are the pressures from governments and employers to lower costs amidst these rising consumer expectations.
| http://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/why-healthcare-needs-become-even-more-consumer-focused | 2017-10-05 09:12:21.327000 | Thanks in large part to digital technology, consumers expect a lot from healthcare these days. Much like what they experience in the retail and consumer goods worlds, they want an easy, seamless, individualized experience -- and what makes healthcare unique are the pressures from governments and employers to lower costs amidst these rising consumer expectations. Becoming more consumer centric is no longer a luxury. It's a necessity.
A new report from Prophet sheds some light on some of the reasons for this shift, and provides some insight into how to make the transition. Hint: Technology is key.
[Also: Kaiser Permanente first in Medicare Advantage consumer satisfaction, study finds]
In fact, the authors suggest that every healthcare business should think and act like a technology company. Measures of patient dissatisfaction seem to bolster this claim: Prophet found that 81 percent of consumers are dissatisfied with their healthcare experiences, and the ones who are happiest are those who interact with the health system the least.
It's not hard to see why. The healthcare system has plenty of faults, including insurance plans full of indecipherable jargon, long wait times for appointments and procedures, bills that arrive in the mail months after a visit, and lack of coordination between physicians, insurers and pharmacies.
[Also: Health plans get low marks for patient engagement in new Healthmine survey]
Patients are feeling the burden, according to the report. Rising healthcare costs are expected to outpace population growth at least four times from 2017 to 2020. Meanwhile, there's been an 86 percent increase in worker contribution to to health insurance premiums from 2005 to 2015, and a 67 percent increase in employee deductibles from 2010 to 2015.
All of that means consumers are becoming more discerning shoppers. They have to be. The time they spend searching for a physician, their ability to schedule an appointment when convenient, their time spent in the waiting room, their appointment follow-up -- all of things become a lot more important when the price tag is so high.
The shift from volume-based reimbursement models to value-based models is where the rubber meets the road. The continued shift in that direction seems inevitable, and according to Prophet, consumer engagements that keep that keep patients healthier is how healthcare organizations will remain financially stable in the future.
In fact, payers predict that 59 percent of all payment models by 2021 will be a mix of capitation, pay-for-performance and episodic payment, all various forms of value-based care. This also means that private payers need to be equipped to deliver on risk-based contracts, the authors said.
So what should healthcare organizations do? A few things.
For one, healthcare organizations should optimize the entire healthcare journey as a strategic priority, rather than enhancing consumer experiences in one-off initiatives, the authors said. That requires a vision for the organization, hiring the right leaders to take change, and creating a plan to change the experience and win over consumers.
The healthcare experience also needs to become less fragmented. Fragmentation breeds frustration, inefficiencies and a whole lot of dissatisfaction; what's needed is a healthcare ecosystem.
Being person-centric rather than population-centric certainly wouldn't hurt, either. Many healthcare organizations currently create products and services for groups of similar consumers, such as those who have share the same condition of demographic. Those products and services, according to Prophet, should be tailored to consumers based on their individual needs.
It's about giving consumers a voice similar to what they experience in other industries, and also giving them the ability to manage their health in a way that keeps them well and out of the hospital. These shifts, the authors said, will ultimately lower costs and lead to stronger brand loyalty.
Twitter: @JELagasse
Email the writer: [email protected] |
GOP budget plan slashes $473 billion from Medicare, $1 trillion from Medicaid over next decade | Senate Budget Committee Ranking Member Bernie Sanders has released a five-page report showing the Republican plan to cut $473 billion from Medicare and $1 trillion from Medicaid over the next decade.
| http://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/gop-budget-plan-slashes-473-billion-medicare-1-trillion-medicaid-over-next-decade | 2017-10-05 09:10:40.547000 | Photo from Wikipedia.
Senate Budget Committee Ranking Member Bernie Sanders has released a five-page report showing the Republican plan to cut $473 billion from Medicare and $1 trillion from Medicaid over the next decade.
Billions would be slashed from Affordable Care Act tax credits, making it easier for Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
[Also: Community health centers anxiously await budget from Congress]
The Senate budget plan would take $37 billion out of the National Institutes of Health over the next decade, which would cut funding for Alzheimer's disease, cancer and other critical medical research, the report said.
The Senate Budget Committee is scheduled to begin a mark-up of the budget proposal Wednesday at 2:30 p.m., and again on Thursday. The plan would then be reconciled with the House budget.
[Also: Draft budget gives HHS additional $14.5B over president's request, cuts additional funding for ACA programs]
"The Republican budget is a massive transfer of wealth from working families, the elderly, children, the sick and the poor to the top 1 percent," the report said. "Not only would it cut Medicaid by $1 trillion, it would also cut Medicare by more than $470 billion in order to pay for hundreds of billions in tax breaks to the wealthiest people and most profitable corporations in America."
There are also cuts to housing, heating, nutrition assistance, Pell Grant funding, Head Start services and transportation, according to the report.
Proposals include cutting $37 billion to affordable housing and the Section 8 rental assistance program, $4 billion in the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, $6.5 billion to the Women, Infant and Children's nutrition program, more than $100 billion, or 33 percent of Pell Grant funding for students and $3 billion from Head Start services.
The Republican plan would increase the federal deficit by $1.5 trillion over the next decade, which would pave the way for cuts to Social Security, the report said. At the end of the year, if legislation has added to the deficit, the Office of Management and Budget is required to enact an across-the-board spending cut in a sequestration.
Sanders, an Independent from Vermont, is a proponent of Medicare for all in a single payer plan for healthcare.
Twitter: @SusanJMorse
Email the writer: [email protected] |
Community-Based Program Cut ED Visits by Nearly 30% | A community-based program that helped high ED users get things like household resources, access to transportation, and help applying for assistance programs reduced ED visits and hospital admissions, finds new research.
| http://www.healthleadersmedia.com/quality/community-based-program-cut-ed-visits-nearly-30 | 2017-10-05 09:06:19.067000 | The program also reduced hospital admissions and increased the use of primary care doctors.
A community-based program that helped high ED users get things like household resources, access to transportation, and help applying for assistance programs reduced ED visits and hospital admissions, finds new research.
It also increased the use of primary care doctors, according to the study published in the journal Health Affairs.
"Many programs have tried to tackle the problem of high utilizers of hospital emergency departments. These are usually people who are on Medicaid," the study's first author Roberta Capp, MD, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, said in a statement. "But this is the first program to show that care coordination actually works."
Capp and her team used and evaluated Bridges to Care (B2C), an ED-initiated, community-based program. It was one of four sites funded by a CMS Innovations grant. The program was led by Rutgers University Center for State Health Policy and developed in collaboration with four Colorado stakeholders including an urban academic hospital, a network of 13 local federally qualified health centers, a mental health clinic and a community advocacy organization.
The B2C program targeted Medicaid-eligible high ED users, defined as adults who had two or more ED visits or hospital admissions within the last 180 days.
These patients got a personally tailored, 60-day care plan that included housing help, refugee services, and access to transportation. They also got help applying for insurance and disability benefits, setting up medical appointments, and filling prescriptions, among other services.
During the six months after B2C enrollment, the participants had:
29.7% fewer ED visits
30% less hospitalizations
123% more primary care visits than the control subjects
"There is a perspective from multiple stakeholders that high users of the ED are difficult patients," Capp said. "But this study shows that patients use the ED because of there are serious barriers to care.”
Those barriers can include multiple chronic diseases, including mental illness, the authors said.
Although care coordination has been shown to reduce costs, other programs aimed at reducing ED usage have been only hospital based and have had mixed results, the researchers said.
The difference with the B2C intervention is that it combines active ED outreach with multidisciplinary, community-based services, including a care coordinator, a health coach, a behavioral health specialist, a community health worker, and frequent home visits.
"We believe that our success stems from bringing together different healthcare systems, breaking down silos between disciplines and focusing on continuity of care in the outpatient setting," Capp said.
"We learned that active outreach in the ED is key to ensuring successful high utilizer and enrollment and engagement," the study said. |
Older-adult patients more likely to disclose suicidal thoughts as they age | Suicide among older adults is a growing public health issue. Conditions associated with aging—chronic pain, diagnosed or perceived terminal illness, social isolation, and the death of friends and family—can push older Americans towards ending their own lives.
| https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-10-older-adult-patients-disclose-suicidal-thoughts.html | 2017-10-05 09:04:41.623000 | Credit: CC0 Public Domain
Suicide among older adults is a growing public health issue. Conditions associated with aging—chronic pain, diagnosed or perceived terminal illness, social isolation, and the death of friends and family—can push older Americans towards ending their own lives. A new study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine shows that 23% of individuals aged 50 and older who died by suicide had disclosed their suicide intent.
Using 10 years of data from the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS), researchers were able to identify key trends about older suicide decedents. They found the older the decedents were, the more likely they were to have disclosed their intent to die by suicide. Decedents who had depressed mood or health problems were more likely to have disclosed, as well as those who had recently received mental health care or undergone substance abuse treatment.
"Findings that depressed mood, health problems, and other stressors were associated with increased odds of disclosure indicate that suicide may have been prevented by providing the services needed to alleviate these problems," explained lead investigator Namkee Choi, PhD, Louis and Ann Wolens Centennial Chair in Gerontology, Steve Hicks School of Social Work at the University of Texas, Austin, TX. "Healthcare providers need better preparation to screen and aid those in need to prevent suicide."
The study also looked at other aspects of older-adult suicide. The data revealed that disclosure was most often to an intimate partner or other family member, with only a small number talking about suicide to a healthcare professional. In terms of methods of suicide, researchers found that the use of firearms and hanging/suffocation were associated with lower overall disclosure odds. Among firearm users, however, men were more likely to have disclosed than females.
"Because disclosing suicide intent provides an opportunity to prevent suicide and offer assistance in coping with stressors, the study findings have important clinical implications for increasing disclosure and preventing suicide among older adults," said Dr. Choi. Investigators pinpoint four important interventions that may help prevent suicide by the elderly:
Healthcare providers, especially primary care physicians who work closely with older adults, should routinely assess suicide risk and inquire about access to guns and other means of suicide. Evidence-based prevention training programs such as Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training should be considered.
Public health campaigns aimed at families and other social support systems for elderly patients should discuss suicide warning signs and give information on how to seek help after a disclosure.
Healthcare and social service systems need to ensure that older adults have access to services that address their mental and physical health needs, such as therapy for ongoing emotional turmoil and crisis counseling, palliative care for chronic pain, and affordable and accessible long-term care services for chronic illness and disabling conditions.
Older adults suffering from depression, mental illness, or substance abuse need tailored treatment services made to suit their specific needs. These services can be integrated into the primary car setting to ease access and reduce the stigma of getting mental health help.
As suicide rates for older Americans continue to climb, it is crucial to take a close look at this issue and find opportunities for intervention. "High late-life suicide rates in a rapidly aging society call for more effective ways to identify older adults at risk and provide prevention and intervention services," concluded Dr. Choi.
More information: Namkee G. Choi et al, Older Suicide Decedents: Intent Disclosure, Mental and Physical Health, and Suicide Means, American Journal of Preventive Medicine (2017). DOI: 10.1016/j.amepre.2017.07.021 Journal information: American Journal of Preventive Medicine |
Department of Veterans Affairs Aims to Trump State Telemedicine Rules | The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (“VA”) is taking a significant step towards expanding needed services to Veterans by proposing a rule to preempt state restrictions on telehealth.
| https://www.natlawreview.com/article/department-veterans-affairs-aims-to-trump-state-telemedicine-rules | 2017-10-05 09:04:10.410000 | Wednesday, October 4, 2017
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (“VA”) is taking a significant step towards expanding needed services to Veterans by proposing a rule to preempt state restrictions on telehealth.
Most states currently restrict providers (including VA employees) from treating patients that are located in that state if the provider is not licensed there. As a result, the VA has had difficulty getting a sufficient number of providers to furnish services via telemedicine for fear that they will face discipline from those states for the unlicensed practice of medicine.
The VA has a real need for expanding its telemedicine capabilities as many of its patients are located in rural and underserved areas. The VA’s top clinical priority is mental health, and having more robust telemedicine capabilities could help improve timeliness of treatment (a reputational sore spot for the VA). The VA could also use telemedicine to reach more people in need that may not otherwise seek help. The rule would allow the VA to more evenly distribute care by hiring providers in urban areas where there is larger pool and have them treat in rural areas (via telemedicine).
The American Medical Association (“AMA”) has expressed support for the proposed rule. Jack Resneck Jr., M.D., Chair-elect of the AMA Board of Trustees, issued the following statement showing the AMA’s support:
“The AMA supports expansion of clinically validated telehealth services within the VA, and this decision ensures that important patient protections are in place for the delivery of high quality and reliable care. The VA has a unique federally controlled healthcare system with essential safeguards to help ensure that both in-person and virtual beneficiary care meet and exceed the standard of care. The AMA strongly supports that the proposed rule explicitly provides that this program’s multi-state licensure exception applies only to VA-employed providers and would not be expanded to contracted physicians or providers who are not directly controlled and supervised by the VA and would not necessarily have the same training, staff support, shared access to a beneficiary’s EHR and infrastructure capabilities. We applaud the VA’s expansion of telehealth services in a manner that promotes quality and access.”
Not everyone is happy about the proposed rule, however. Some organizations oppose the rule as undermining each state’s ability to govern the practice of medicine within its borders. The concern is that states would have no ability to regulate their citizens’ care under this new framework.
While this rule is limited only to VA patients and providers, the hope is that other federal agencies or even states will follow the VA’s lead. Given the importance of increasing access to care and the advances in the delivery of care via telemedicine, it might be time for states to reexamine their restrictive approach to professional licensure. |
GM more than doubles size of test fleet for self-driving cars | General Motors has doubled the number of self-driving cars it is testing in California through its specialist subsidiary company Cruise Automation. The test fleet now comprises 100 vehicles, up from between 30 and 40 previously, which are operating on the streets of San Francisco to gather data to improve the company's software for navigating busy streets. The company has reported an increase in collisions involving its vehicles, with six minor crashes in September, but blamed all of these on the other party.
| https://www.thenational.ae/business/gm-more-than-doubles-robot-car-fleet-1.664268 | 2017-10-05 08:41:41.350000 | General Motors' self-driving unit, Cruise Automation, has more than doubled the size of its test fleet of robot cars in California during the past three months, a GM spokesman said.
As the company increases the size of its test fleet, it has also reported more run-ins between its self-driving cars and human-operated vehicles and bicycles, telling California regulators its vehicles were involved in six minor crashes in the state in September.
"All our incidents this year were caused by the other vehicle," said Rebecca Mark, a spokeswoman for GM Cruise.
In the past three months, the Cruise unit has increased the number of vehicles registered for testing on California streets to 100 from the previous 30 to 40, the GM spokesman Ray Wert said.
Cruise is testing vehicles in San Francisco as part of its effort to develop software capable of navigating congested and often chaotic urban environments.
Investors are watching GM's progress closely, and the car maker's shares have risen 17 per cent during the past month as some analysts have said the company could deploy robot taxis within the next year or two.
A US senate panel approved legislation on Wednesday that would allow car makers to greatly expand testing of self-driving cars. Some safety groups have objected to the proposal, saying it gives too much latitude to motor manufacturers.
As Cruise, and rivals, put more self-driving vehicles on the road to gather data to train their artificial intelligence systems, they are more frequently encountering human drivers who are not programmed to obey all traffic laws.
____________
Read more:
How a hacked robot could cause you harm
More car makers need to make vehicles upgradeable on the fly
Driverless buses road-tested amid bustle of Parisian financiers
____________
In filings to California regulators, Cruise said the six accidents in the state last month involved other cars and a bicyclist hitting its test cars.
The accidents did not result in injuries or serious damage, according to the GM reports. In total, GM Cruise vehicles have been involved in 13 collisions reported to California regulators in 2017, while Alphabet's Waymo vehicles have been involved in three crashes.
California state law requires that all crashes involving self-driving vehicles be reported, regardless of severity.
Most of the crashes involved drivers of other vehicles striking the GM cars that were slowing for stop signs, pedestrians or other issues. In one crash, a driver of a Ford Ranger was on his cellphone when he rear-ended a Chevrolet Bolt stopped at a red light.
In another instance, the driver of a Chevrolet Bolt noticed an intoxicated cyclist in San Francisco going the wrong direction toward the Bolt. The human driver stopped the Bolt and the cyclist hit the bumper and fell over. The bicyclist pulled on a sensor attached to the vehicle causing minor damage.
"While we look forward to the day when autonomous vehicles are commonplace, the streets we drive on today are not so simple, and we will continue to learn how humans drive and improve how we share the road together,” GM said. |
US Treasury plans to track assets with blockchain | The US Department of the Treasury is planning a pilot programme that uses blockchain technology to track office equipment, including smartphones and computers. The project is being pursued by the department's Bureau of Fiscal Services, which is examining the potential for distributed ledger technology (DLT) to be used to improve efficiency and accountability in the management of government assets and finances.
| https://cointelegraph.com/news/us-treasury-pilots-blockchain-based-asset-tracking-system | 2017-10-05 08:26:03.617000 | The US Department of the Treasury’s Bureau of Fiscal Services has announced that it is piloting the use of distributed ledger technology (DLT) to monitor the movement of physical assets like smartphones and computers. A yet-to-be-named contractor will be hired as a partner in developing the prototype system.
As part of the project, the Treasury will determine whether its physical assets can be tracked and reconciled in real-time as they are transferred from person to person. It will use Blockchain technology to make digital records of the transfers. The bureau will also study other possible use cases of the technology, particularly in the improvement of processes for the management of government finances.
According to Assistant Commissioner John Hill, they intend to identify the opportunities where technological innovations are used to improve efficiency, accountability, and customer service in government agencies.
"There are many exciting innovations coming out of the commercial sector that can be applied to federal financial management. I hope that these two pilot projects identify the opportunities where the innovations will have the most impact on efficiency, accountability and customer service."
Brief profile of the bureau
The Bureau of Fiscal Services was created through the merger of two separate agencies in 2012. Its main responsibility is to borrow money to finance the government and handle interagency payments and accounting.
Other US agencies testing Blockchain
Aside from the Bureau of Fiscal Services, there are already several US government agencies piloting Blockchain projects to improve or streamline their operations. One of these agencies is the General Services Administration (GSA), which trialed the use of the technology in reviewing information technology (IT)-related contract bids from vendors. Another agency is the State Department, which has launched a project to examine the potential of the technology in diplomatic applications. |
Insurance involvement sees dash cam usage rise | Cameras installed on dashboards of vehicles have seen increasing usage since insurance companies have promoted their adoption. In particular, the willingness of insurance providers to use dash-cam footage when assessing a claim is behind the rise in the use of the cameras. This has allowed claims to be paid out with greater ease, something greatly benefiting operators of large fleets of vehicles. | https://www.fleeteurope.com/en/analysis/dash-cams-spy-cab-driver-aid | 2017-10-05 08:25:36.300000 | Sales of dash cams (dashboard cameras) throughout Europe have rocketed in the last few years. The latest figures available show that dash cam sales shot up 918% in the UK alone in 2015.
Initially, consumers were the primary buyers of dash cams, and arguably it was for entertainment (sharing footage on YouTube and social media) but then insurance companies got involved and now LCV (Light Commercial Vehicle) fleets are seeing the benefits too.
The phenomenon is due in part to insurance companies agreeing to accept dashboard-mounted video footage as evidence in the event of a claim. “Cash-for-crash” fraud forced insurers to take drastic action. Not only have they allowed dash cam footage, they have incentivised drivers to self-install the evidence capturing equipment by reducing premiums for those who do.
However, enthusiasm for the devices in some European countries has cooled, primarily due to perceived privacy breaches. Luxemburg and Austria, for example, have restricted the use of dash cams to only certain sectors and have collected heavy fines from drivers installing them illegally.
UK-based logistics management and transport company Wincanton operates a fleet of 250 LCVs and has a mix of dash cam solutions, single channel, forward-facing, plus 360-degree multi-channel camera systems.
Carl Hanson, Wincanton’s fleet director, takes up the story: “It depends on what you’re looking for. If all you want is something to address insurance claims, then a single, forward-facing camera in each vehicle may be sufficient. But if you want to come at it from a preventative perspective, you’re going to need something that aids drivers.”
In this case, the dash cams have had a positive impact: “We’ve been able to reduce our accident rate by 30%.” Hanson declares.
Much of Wincanton’s LCV fleet operates within the construction industry, in built up areas where hidden obstacles and potential risks are commonplace. So, having a full, 360-degree view around the vehicle helps increase visibility of vulnerable road users and eliminates blind spots. The system enables drivers to be aware of pedestrians, cyclists, straying animals, plus it acts as a driver aid, helping with difficult manoeuvring when no one is around to assist.
In addition to resolving insurance claims quickly, the next stage for fleets is camera integrated telematics.
Says Hanson: “Cameras record events but telematics is about avoidance and prevention. It has to support driver engagement positively.”
He is keen to point out the importance of linking the rollout of dash cams into an overall safety and behavioural change program.
“Get drivers involved and demonstrate the safety benefits for them and not merely the ‘Spy-in-the-cab’ scenario.” He says.
Hanson also highlights another important issue to consider - complacency.
“The thing to watch out for is that drivers get used to the cameras and in some cases quickly forget about them and regress into old habits. Any improvements in their driving could be short-term. Telematics gives you the ability to monitor driver behaviour over the long-term.”
It also provides the data needed to make informed decisions about where, when and what action needs to be taken.
But like all technology, telematics is only a tool. It provides the data but if that data is not acted on, long-lasting driving habits cannot be changed.
When thinking about what system to invest in, Wincanton’s Hanson advises the following:
Think about the benefits you want to achieve – is it safety or financial gain?
Consider the risks your fleet faces daily and how likely these things are to happen.
How many miles does your fleet drive and are those journeys mostly motorways or urban?
Also, how will you view the footage? Does it have to be instant (streamed) or will recorded suffice?
The positioning of cameras needs to also be thought through carefully. They tend to move, or be knocked by drivers or other in-cab personnel, which could deactivate the recording function.
Under its brand name RoadHawk, TrakM8 offers a multi-camera system that can deliver high-quality streamed video and audio using the cellular network. It also supports GPS and G-Force data.
UK-based vehicle recovery company The AA runs a fleet of 3000 LCVs, mostly Transit and more recently Custom and Courier-types. The company relies on a telematics system supplied by TrakM8 but no dash cams currently, although they are beginning trialled. Why so late to the table?
Stuart Thomas, Head of Fleet and SME Services, The AA, explains: “We were early adopters of telematics technology. Our fleet is complex and we carry a lot of equipment. It is comprised of very specific, specially kitted out vans that have beacons and we need to know when they are on and off. We have recovery trailers in the van and we need to be alerted as to when they are deployed and when a driver is towing, how long he has stopped for, where he is.”
“Our need for telematics data has always been far stronger than the insurance issue for us. However, now that integrated dash cam and telematics systems are available, we are beginning to trial them so this may change.”
Andrew Tillman, fleet strategy director at TrakM8, has been selling dash cams since they first launched and strongly believes that for LCV fleets telematics/dash cam integration is a “no brainer”: “Instead of having to collect an SD card, with this system you can access footage from a specific date and time so if an accident happened at around 2pm on Thursday, you can request that exact footage, say 10 minutes either side of that. It negates having to watch hours of video to reproduce and analyse collision data.”
London-based provider of textile maintenance services Berendsen, which operates a 680-strong mixed fleet, claims to have cut carbon emissions by 2,000 tonnes a year by introducing a fleet and driver efficiency programme underpinned by OptiDrive 360 and TomTom Telematics’ integrated telematics and fleet camera solution. The system scores and provides feedback to drivers on a range of performance indicators (fuel consumption, speeding, harsh braking and steering).
Dash cams have their place in LCV fleets but they must be viewed by fleet managers and drivers as an aid, not a spy or source of entertainment. |
Oxford PV to receive EIB funding for German perovskite pilot site | British perovskite technology company Oxford PV is expected to be provided $17.6m by European Investment Bank for a trial project in Germany. The operation will convert a PV thin-film module factory into a production plant for tandem silicon-perovskite PV cells. | https://renewablesnow.com/news/oxford-pv-to-get-eib-funds-for-german-perovskite-pilot-site-585462/ | 2017-10-05 08:10:46.767000 | UK perovskite technology developer Oxford Photovoltaics Ltd (Oxford PV) is poised to get financing from the European Investment Bank (EIB) for its pilot site in Germany.
The bank is considering providing EUR 15 million (USD 17.6m) for the project, which will turn an existing PV thin-film module factory in Germany into a "first-of-a-kind" plant for the production of tandem silicon-perovskite PV cells.
Oxford PV, a spin-out of Oxford University, announced the acquisition of the pilot line in Brandenburg, Germany in late 2016. EIB says on its website the site will allow the company to demonstrate its perovskite technology at full wafer scale in pilot volumes and deploy perovskite on silicon tandem cells. The total cost of the project is EUR 30 million.
Oxford PV has been backed by investors including Statoil ASA and Legal & General Capital in its drive to commercialise its perovskite-based solar technology that is set to boost the performance of ordinary solar cells. At the end of 2016 the company announced a joint development agreement with an unnamed global manufacturer of solar cells and modules.
(EUR 1 = USD 1.174)
Choose your newsletter by Renewables Now. Join for free! |
Remixpoint offers bitcoin payment option for energy bills | Japanese firm Remixpoint has launched an integrated service allowing customers across the country to pay their electricity bills with bitcoin. The service offers savings of up to 3% on fees for those who use it. The transactions will be processed by Remixpoint subsidiary Bitpoint, which the Japanese Financial Services Agency recently granted the status of "virtual currency exchange". Bitpoint has also partnered with Peach Aviation and Evolable Asia to bring bitcoin payments to Japan's airline and hotel sectors.
| http://www.bitcoininsider.org/article/7408/large-japanese-energy-supplier-adds-bitcoin-payments-discount | 2017-10-05 08:08:08.797000 | Remixpoint, a Japanese company engaged in a number of energy-related businesses, has recently launched a new electricity service with bitcoin payments integrated to serve customers all over Japan. The company is now offering customers who pay with bitcoin a discount on their electricity bills. Bitcoin payments are processed by the company’s cryptocurrency exchange subsidiary, Bitpoint.
Also read: Russia Proposes Adding Cryptocurrency to the Population’s Financial Literacy Strategy
Integrating Power Business with Bitcoin Payments
Established in March 2004, Remixpoint is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and has a market capitalization of approximately 57 billion yen at press time. The company engages in a number of energy-related businesses such as developing and selling energy management systems; energy conservation consulting; selling energy-saving equipment; and electricity retailing.
In February 2016, Remixpoint developed a retail electricity business centered on high-voltage clients in the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) service area. This service was expanded across Japan in August this year. The company subsequently expanded its retail electricity business to service low-voltage consumers beginning on October 1. Low-voltage customers include households, corporations, and retailers.
Along with the new service, Remixpoint also announced the integration of bitcoin payments into its new offering. Bitcoin is not only accepted for electricity payments, but the company offers discounts for customers paying with the digital currency. The company wrote:
Payment of utility bills in virtual currency has already been introduced.
Bitcoin payments are made through the company’s subsidiary, Bitpoint, a cryptocurrency exchange and payment service provider.
Last week, Bitpoint became one of the first eleven bitcoin exchanges in Japan to be granted registration as a “virtual currency exchange” by the Japanese Financial Services Agency (FSA). In May, the exchange partnered with Peach Aviation to bring bitcoin payments to the airline and its affiliated stores. In addition, Bitpoint partnered with Evolable Asia to bring bitcoin payments to over 1,400 hotels and inns across Japan.
At the “Energy Innovation Japan 2017” event last week, the company promoted its new service, stating:
We introduce a new scheme that makes maximum use of the integration of the power retailing business and virtual currency exchange management…By using our electricity service, we propose a total cost reduction from existing services by introducing bitcoin and energy-saving equipment.
Service Areas
In Japan, the electricity market is divided up into 10 regulated companies. They are Chugoku Electric Power Company; Chubu Electric Power Company; Hokuriku Electric Power Company; Hokkaido Electric Power Company; Kyushu Electric Power Company; Kansai Electric Power Company; Okinawa Electric Power Company; Tohoku Electric Power Company; Shikoku Electric Power Company; and TEPCO.
Remixpoint purchases electricity from all of the aforementioned power companies except one, Okinawa Electric Power Company. Through the nine power companies, Remixpoint is able to provide electricity to customers all over Japan.
Promoting Cryptocurrency Payments
In its announcement, Remixpoint stated that its target customers are corporations and retailers, citing tough competition for ordinary households. “Low-voltage customers in the retail electric power market have small electricity bills compared to high-voltage customers,” the company detailed, noting that the savings are minimal when additional costs such as “invoicing and transfer fees” are included.
The company, therefore, opened an account at Bitpoint to enable customers to pay with bitcoin and save on fees. According to reports, customers can save up to 3 percent in fees using this option. The company added:
We will promote the spread of virtual currency settlement in Japan by developing payment services that take advantage of the strength of reducing remittance and settlement costs, which is the original value of virtual currencies.
What do you think of Remixpoint’s strategy to integrate bitcon payments with its power business? Let us know in the comments section below.
Images courtesy of Shutterstock, FECP, Tepco, and Remix Point.
Need to calculate your bitcoin holdings? Check our tools section.
The post Large Japanese Energy Supplier Adds Bitcoin Payments With a Discount appeared first on Bitcoin News. |
Australia urged to legalise drink-driving in autonomous cars | Australia's National Transport Commission (NTC) has said there should be no drink-driving limitations imposed on people using fully automated vehicles, but current rules should still apply for partially automated cars. The proposal is part of the independent statutory body's attempts to overhaul the country's regulations ahead of the wider deployment of self-driving vehicles, which some predict could be as soon as 2020. The NTC will present its recommendations next year.
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/05/push-for-drink-driving-law-exemption-for-those-in-automated-cars | 2017-10-05 08:05:21.793000 | Uber drivers could one day be spared from engaging in small talk with drunks if a National Transport Commission suggestion to allow people under the influence of alcohol to use fully automated vehicles is adopted by state road authorities.
The NTC, an independent statutory body tasked with reforming Australia’s driving laws to prepare for the arrival of driverless cars, has recommended an “exemption” from drink and drug-driving laws for people who ride in fully automated vehicles.
In a new discussion paper it argues there is a “clear-cut” justification for an exemption from drink-driving laws because there is “no possibility that a human could drive a dedicated automated vehicle”.
“The situation is analogous to a person instructing a taxi driver where to go,” the NTC report states.
State traffic laws prohibit driving under the influence of varying levels of alcohol but the NTC says they could be a “barrier” to the benefits of driverless vehicles, which it argues could improve road safety by reducing the incidence of drink-driving.
Advocates of the new technology argue its largest benefit would be reducing Australia’s road toll. There are about 1,300 deaths in Australia every year and the vast majority are caused by human error.
However, it recommend the rules remain in place for semi-autonomous vehicles or those that allow manual driving.
While individual states and territories set road rules, the NTC provides a model for nationally consistent laws.
It has been tasked with grappling with the enormous regulatory overhaul required to respond to the introduction of driverless-vehicle technology, which some estimate could be on roads in Australia by 2020.
That includes the question of who is liable in the event of driverless vehicle malfunction that results in an accident and to what extent a person in an autonomous vehicle is deemed to be in control.
Current laws assume that a person is in control of a vehicle but the NTC believes that should be changed so that a person “would not expect to be held responsible for contraventions of the laws” while an automated vehicle was engaged.
“To hold the human responsible may restrict the introduction of automated vehicles into Australia and unnecessarily deny or delay the many potential benefits of the technology,” the NTC found.
Instead, the law should be changed so that the automated driving system itself was legally responsible.
The NTC is due to make recommendations for reforms at the 2018 transport and infrastructure council meeting of Commonwealth, state and territory transport ministers.
Various states and territories have legislated to allow trials of driverless-vehicle technology in recent years.
South Australia passed legislation last year, while New South Wales passed legislation to allow its own trials in August. |
IBM insists Watson should not be regulated as a medical device | IBM has been trying to persuade the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that its Watson supercomputer does not need the same regulatory oversight that medical devices are subject to. The FDA is set to release guidelines on which software products will be exempt from the forthcoming 21st Century Cures Act. The impending legislation prompted IBM to launch a $26m lobbying campaign seeking a "common-sense regulatory distinction between low-risk software and inherently higher risk technologies". Critics have said IBM's artificial intelligence algorithms are still not widely understood, blur decision-making between man and machine, and should be subject to regulation.
| https://www.statnews.com/2017/10/04/ibm-watson-regulation-fda-congress/?utm_source=STAT+Newsletters&utm_campaign=73f3bbaaf0-MR&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8cab1d7961-73f3bbaaf0-149854338 | 2017-10-05 08:00:48.297000 | IBM to Congress: Watson will transform health care, so keep your hands off our supercomputer
To the public, IBM trumpets its Watson supercomputer as the next big thing in medicine, a new kind of machine that melds human expertise with digital speed to give patients personalized treatment advice.
Meanwhile, in the halls of Congress, company executives have been delivering a blunter message: We will revolutionize patient care, so please get out of the way.
advertisement
Like any new technology, Watson poses unknown risks; for example, what if its advice is wrong and harms a patient? But IBM argues that its machine doesn’t need to be regulated because it’s different from other medical devices. It’s not like a pacemaker or a CT scanner, so the company shouldn’t have to prove to the government that it’s safe and effective. |
Brisbane airport to become biojet refuelling port | Brisbane aims to become a hub for sustainable aviation fuel following a deal between Virgin Australia and US-based biofuel producer Gevo. Brisbane joins airports in Oslo and Los Angeles capable of providing biojet fuel to airlines. Queensland is trying to establish itself as a hub for bioproducts with a goal of generating $1bn from the sector by 2026. | http://reneweconomy.com.au/brisbane-airport-world-leader-biojet-fuel-26272/ | 2017-10-05 07:43:23.247000 | PRESS RELEASE
Brisbane is set to become one of a handful of hubs around the world for sustainable aviation fuel, under an agreement supported by the Palaszczuk Government between Virgin Australia and US-based biofuel producer Gevo.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said the biojet trial was yet another show of confidence in Queensland’s growing biofuel industry.
“Biojet is a proven fuel source, one that is already bringing Virgin Australia flights into Brisbane from Los Angeles,” the Premier said.
“By establishing Brisbane Airport as a biojet refuelling port, we can help open another key market for our cane farmers and biofuture pioneers alike.”
The Palaszczuk Government has already signed a biofuel agreement with the US Navy as part of its Great Green Fleet initiative, which is a commitment by the US to source 50% of its fuel needs from renewable sources by 2020.
“The biorefinery projects currently under development across Queensland have the potential to create 1100 jobs when they are operational,” the Premier said.
“To get up and running, industrial-scale biorefinieries need a critical mass of customers to supply.
“That’s why it’s vital to get big industries like aviation and defence on board as potential customers.”
State Development Minister Dr Anthony Lynham said biojet can be produced from a range of organic materials, including sugarcane bagasse, molasses, wood waste and agave.
“Some of the existing refinery projects being developed in Queensland will have the capability to produce biofuel for commercial aviation,” Dr Lynham said.
“This partnership between the Virgin Australia Group and Gevo, Inc. has the potential to draw even more proponents into the industry, as demand for biofuels grows.
“That means more demand for sugar cane, and more jobs in agriculture and biofutures across our regions.”
Work on using biojet as a complementary fuel source to conventional jet aviation fuel has been underway for more than a decade, and the fuel is now being supplied at airports at Oslo and Los Angeles, including on Virgin Australia’s services from Los Angeles to Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.
Dr Lynham said that the project showed the Queensland Government’s Biofutures Roadmap was paying dividends.
“Queensland has a vision for a $1 billion biofutures sector by 2026,” Dr Lynham said.
“Since the launch of our Biofutures Roadmap in June 2016 we have directly supported 15 new biofutures projects, including today’s announcement.
“Queensland’s bio-industrial revolution is here, and the dividends it’s going to pay our state in jobs and economic growth will mean a greener and more prosperous future for all Queenslanders.”
Virgin Australia Group CEO John Borghetti said this initiative built on Virgin Australia’s commitment to be a leader in the commercialisation of the sustainable aviation fuel industry in Australia.
“The agreement announced today is critical to testing the fuel supply chain infrastructure in Australia to ensure that Virgin Australia and Brisbane Airport are ready for the commercial supply of these exciting fuels,” Mr Borghetti said.
Brisbane Airport Corporation (BAC) Acting CEO Stephen Goodwin said the initiative was clearly aligned with BAC’s strategy to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions produced as a result of airport operations.
“Energy efficiency and increased use of renewable energies are the foundations of BAC’s emissions reduction program, so we are enthusiastic supporters of this initiative as it will help reduce Brisbane Airport’s carbon footprint even further by assisting the airlines to reduce their emissions,” Mr Goodwin said.
“We applaud the Queensland State Government, Virgin Australia and Gevo Inc for their foresight and commitment to sustainability and we’re pleased to be affiliated with this exciting partnership and the home base for this world-first initiative.”
CEO of Gevo, Inc., Dr Patrick Gruber, said that although his company would initially supply jet fuel from its hydrocarbon plant based in Texas, and derived from isobutanol produced at its commercial isobutanol plant located in Minnesota, there would be significant opportunities for production in Queensland.
“When I visited Queensland last year for the Biofutures Industry Forum, I discovered the depth and diversity of your agriculture sector,” Dr Gruber said.
“We believe Queensland offers huge potential for low-cost sugar feedstocks to produce biofuels. It really opened our eyes to Queensland’s potential for sustainable aviation fuels based on Gevo’s alcohol-to-jet technology.”
The partnership has received positive recognition from the aviation sector’s global peak body, the International Air Transport Association (IATA).
“We applaud the policy vision of the Queensland Government to support aviation’s desire to advance the deployment of sustainable jet fuel,” said the CEO of IATA, Alexandre de Juniac, from the IATA offices in Switzerland.
“Effective collaboration between airlines, producers, airports and policy makers is crucial to accelerate the deployment of sustainable jet fuel and this project is a great example that can benefit the entire industry.”
Media Contact:
Premier’s Office: Geoff Breusch 0417 272 875
Minister Lynham’s Office: Jan Martin 0439 341 314 |
Xiaomi plans base in Indonesia to expand its 'golden triangle' | Xiaomi is setting up a permanent unit in Indonesia as the company views the country as the "most important" market after China and India and wants to be known for more than just a smartphone maker but also for its hardware, internet and retail abilities, or "golden triangle", as the company's CEO Lei Jun describes it. Xiaomi is now the fifth largest smartphone manufacturer globally, with presence in over 60 countries, according to International Data Corporation, thanks in particular to its growing demand in India. | https://insideretail.asia/2017/10/05/xiaomi-plans-indonesia-based-business/ | 2017-10-05 07:37:05.437000 | Xiaomi has announced plans to set up a permanent business entity in Indonesia.
Indonesia is pushing for foreign firms that have internet-based services there to set up local companies for the purpose of tax compliance.
Speaking at the Xiaomi Way of Innovation event in Jakarta, CEO/founder Lei Jun said Indonesia was the company’s “most important” market after China and India.
International Data Corporation (IDC) data for the first quarter of this year ranked Xiaomi, which entered the smartphone market in 2010, the fifth-largest smartphone manufacturer in the world. It has a presence in more than 60 countries and last month shipped a record 10 million smartphones, thanks to growing demand in India.
Lei said Xiaomi was mostly known in Indonesia as a smartphone manufacturer, but he wanted to change that by taking more of the firm’s products mainstream. Xiaomi was also an internet and e-commerce company, he said.
He referred to the company’s business model as a “golden triangle” as it was propped up by three key elements: hardware, internet and retail.
Xiaomi’s products include robot vacuum cleaners, rice cookers, washing machines, scooters, toys and desk lamps.
“Hopefully in the future Xiaomi’s ecosystem of products can deliver a great impact on Indonesian users and producers.” |
American Family to integrate drone software with claims system | American Family Insurance is working on a development project to allow the integration of drone software directly into its claims operations. At present, the firm has trained a small number of its claims team to fly drones over sites which clients have reported are damaged. The firm is, however, still in a "proof of technology" phase regarding widespread drone use, according to its unmanned ariel vehicles chief pilot Taylor Horsager. He added larger sites are also harder to assess using drones due to laws requiring the vehicles be in line of site at all times. | http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/west/2017/10/04/466511.htm | 2017-10-05 07:35:59.470000 | One major insurance carrier already has a program underway to train claims adjusters to visit accident sites and fly drones to gather data.
American Family Insurance started working on developing a drone program around 2013, and the company now has a “batch” of adjusters training to fly unmanned aerial vehicles at the sites where clients have reported property damage or other losses, according to Taylor Horsager, UAV chief pilot and instructor for American Family.
Horsager was speaking on drones in the insurance industry on Wednesday at the Drone World Expo in San Jose, Calif., which runs through Thursday.
“We see drones as an opportunity to service people faster and more effectively,” Horsager said.
American Family is currently working on a research and development project to develop hardware and software for drones, which will eventually be directly integrated it into the carrier’s claims system, he said.
He said the plan right now is to keep the process straightforward, as in teaching an adjuster to go to a site and operate a drone via a cellphone.
“We’re looking at the technology on the market and trying to do things as simply as possible,” he added.
The company is currently conducting “proof of concept” testing, and creating a check list for adjusters who are going out to a site that includes basic check boxes on a list like: Is it safe to fly? Do I have permission from the property owner?
It’s a start, but it appears the company is already beefing up to be a big user of drones.
Asked how many American Family adjusters have been trained on drones, he only offered “a small batch” in response.
“We are in proof of technology mode,” he said, adding that there are issues to be overcome and “the technology is not there yet.”
One challenge is the visual line of site rule implemented by the Federal Aviation Administration, which requires an operator to be able to see the drone with the naked eye at all times. That makes it hard to gather data for large sites.
However, the said the sky may literally be the limit for what drones can do in the insurance industry, according to him.
“We definitely have a potential of scaling, and definitely have a potential of having third-party needs,” he said.
The moderator on the panel was Kathleen Swain, senior director of UAS programs for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association.
She believes that if more drones were already deployed by the industry, money could have been saved by getting adjusters out to disaster sites to gather information to pay claims earlier.
“After hurricanes Harvey and Maria, we really see how important it is to get that technology up and running,” she said.
Beverly Adams, head of catastrophe planning and response with Guy Carpenter, views drones and their advanced data collection capabilities as an opportunity to get the insurance industry “a seat at the table” before disasters happen instead of responding to them.
She noted that many national disaster plans don’t even mention insurance, but that the industry should be invited to partake in such planning.
“We’ve almost got to earn our stripes,” Adams said.
In fact, she said she envisions the need for drones to grow to the point where many insurers will need to seek out third-party providers to fill demand.
“We know right now that we’re not going to be charging vast amounts of money to do this,” she added, addressing her comments to those potential providers in the audience who may entertain working with her company. “These are risk surveys.”
Jessica Magill, who works with Swain as an account executive at AOPA, said she’s seen a “drastic change in the market” in just the last 18 months, when she fielded a call from a drone pilot who wanted to make a change on his policy.
That got her to learn about drone insurance and she’s been embedded in it ever since. At that time she got the call, AOPA could only offer customers two choices for policies: a $1 million liability policy, or a $500,000 liability policy.
And they had only one carrier to work with back then.
Now they’re working with five carriers, “and we’ve got more coming on board,” she added.
The firm can also now offer liability for damage caused by a drone, but also coverage for the drone itself, and underwriters are starting to open up to covering a broader range of drone operations, she said.
“It’s really changed and it’s really kind of cool to see how our carriers have changed and how they are viewing the risk,” she said.
Swain put in that as more carriers have entered the drone insurance world, they’re coming in with a lot more to offer insureds.
“A lot of times we’re seeing open peril, no exclusion policies come to market,” Swain said. “Carriers are stepping up to the plate and offering policies with no exclusions.”
Drone VCs
A surefire way to figure out how bright the future is for the drone business is to follow the money.
That’s just what one group of experts discussed on a panel titled “Follow the Money: Exploring the Drone Investment Climate.”
“The last few years there’s been a noticeable venture uptick in investing in drones,” said panel moderator Jonathan Evans, co-president of Skyward, a venture-backed software company based Portland, Ore., which was recently acquired by Verizon.
The other panelists were: Yoshi Iwakami, a partner in World Innovation Lab; Ashley Carroll, a partner in Social Capital; Bilal Zuberi, a partner in Lux Capital; Jake Kaldenbaugh, a technology M&A banker at Growthpoint Technology Partners; and Tammi Smorynski, a director with Intel Capital.
Zuberi agreed with the assessment that investments in drones have picked up in recent, but he believes tha tover the past year or more that more venture capitalists are wanting to see more revenue being produced by what is so far a small number of successful drone companies before putting more money into the industry.
“I think all the major VCs at this point have an investment in drones,” he said.
He said some of the smaller drone companies may be struggling to find capital, while “there’s a lot of money for later-stage companies.”
For now, much of the backing for the industry is waiting for more success stories, he said.
“I think there’s a lot of companies sitting in valuation between $40 and $100 million and they’re still trying to figure things out,” he said.
Still, he said there’s a bright horizon for drones.
“But if you take the long-term perspective, drones are going to be around for a long time and they’re going to be an important part of the economy,” he said.
Hurricanes Harvey and Irma
Drone response to hurricanes Harvey and Irma seemed to play an important enough role to demand a panel on it at the conference.
“When Harvey first happened in it became apparent pretty quickly that drones were going to be part of the story,” said Christopher Korody, principal with DroneBusiness.center, an information website focused on drones.
Korody was a moderator for the panel to discuss the response to these disasters. Others on the panel were Justin Adams, director of business development for Kovar and Associates, Tony Eggimann, captain of the Menlo Park Fire Protection District, Dyan Gibbens, CEO and founder of Trumbull Unmanned, Bradley Koeckeritz, chief of the UAS division for the of the U.S. Department of the Interior, and Art Pregler, UAS program director of AT&T.
Adams was an early responder to both Harvey and Irma.
“The biggest challenge I know we had was controlling airspace,” he said. “We tried to control airspace very quickly.”
He said he and his team during Harvey had to go to the FAA to get flight level authorizations and to restrict drone flights from other operators to prevent interference.
One of their big tasks following the disaster was separating fact from fiction. The drone team often flew over areas to confirm or deny that rumored flooding had occurred there.
“It was more rumor control,” he said.
When all was said and done, he and his team provided 2.8 terabytes of data to Fort Bend County, Texas, where they were surveying.
Koeckeritz, who noted that the Department of the Interior is a steward for “about one-fifth of the landmass in the United States,” and therefore a big user for drones, said the department deployed 12 pilots and their drones to Harvey.
Flight missions included data processing, flood inundation mapping and damage assessment.
One of the biggest benefits of the drone missions was cost avoidance, he said, adding that they saved “thousands of dollars” from having to use boats to go in and assess flooded areas.
Saving costs and time spent deploying boats to areas that may or may not have been flooded was also a major takeaway for Eggimann.
He and his team of drone operators were OK’d to head to Wharton, Texas to conduct search and rescue reconnaissance.
During their time responding to Harvey, they deployed a drone to map out a plan on how to deploy boats. They sent out the drone to gather information on where to go with the boats, and then began preparing to deploy.
“As the guys were getting the boats up and running, the drone came back and we were able to download images and devise a plan,” Koeckeritz said.
He said that using drones is something his department plans to do more often. The department started a UAS program roughly three years ago, and now has five trained pilots, with what he thinks is a need to train as many as a dozen more.
Pregler said AT&T deployed drones for both Harvey and Irma.
The drones provided valuable information to assess the damage to communications systems in both areas and report back.
However, in one case a drone proved a bit more useful than as a mere information conduit, when the drone team came across an area without power that was disconnected from fiber optic cable across the river.
“We pulled the fiber optic cable across the river to establish connectivity,” he said.
Related:
Topics Carriers Flood Tech Aviation Market |
Amazon opens new office, creates 2,000 jobs | Online retail giant Amazon is adding to its New York and Paris advertising teams with an office in Manhattan, where it plans to employ up to 2,000 staff. The company is making its presence felt in the advertising sector, with media agency executives claiming that Amazon's team contacts them frequently. Amazon is expanding its suite of advertising offerings and increasingly targeting non-endemic advertisers, such as restaurants or airlines, said Saurabh Sharma, director of programmatic at the company. | https://digiday.com/marketing/amazon-will-soon-2000-people-advertising-new-york-city/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=digidaydis&utm_source=daily&utm_content=171005 | 2017-10-05 07:34:10.967000 | Amazon continues to make serious inroads into the advertising business. Its latest move: a new office in Manhattan that it says will bring 2,000 jobs, mostly in advertising, to the city — and closer to Madison Avenue. Multiple media agency executives in New York said they’ve been hearing more from Amazon reps who are trying to sell them and their clients on Amazon advertising. Another executive said he’s hearing from Amazon more, and Amazon has hired programmatic specialists from his agency in New York.
Amazon’s sales team for advertising is growing fast: It’s different from other platforms in that its team works cross-functionally across advertising and retail. For larger brands, Amazon has dedicated teams. The company has had a team in New York for many years but also has big ad presences in other places including Tokyo and Paris — “anywhere there are ad agencies in place,” said Saurabh Sharma, director of programmatic at Amazon.
Amazon is increasingly trying to pitch to what the company dubs “non-endemic” advertisers — brands that don’t sell on Amazon. Asked what he considers a challenge, Sharma mentioned that push, adding that it’s not really a challenge, but an opportunity. Non-endemic advertisers would cover, for example, brands in categories like cable, wireless, airlines or restaurants. “There are opportunities to bring that value,” said Sharma.
Amazon’s ad buckets cover everything from search (the sponsored products that appear when people search for things on Amazon.com), to more traditional display in the form of banner advertising, to newer video advertising or device-based advertising on Kindle, or through its new streaming service for entertainment. There’s also what is known as “custom” advertising, which could include anything from a full homepage takeover of Amazon.com on Black Friday to using Amazon boxes themselves as ad inventory.
Sharma said more advertising offerings are coming. The company is doing more with other pieces of “inventory” such as Amazon Lockers, self-service kiosks that let customers pick up Amazon packages, as well as starting to offer TV-like advertising for its new streaming service on Prime Vide, which includes “Thursday Night Football.” (The kickoff Bears-Packers matchup had 1.6 million viewers initiating the stream in late September.)
“To really go after the Google and Facebook duopoly, [Amazon needs] to think outside of just product advertising,” said one agency buyer who works with Amazon. “Retail is just one piece of online business overall.”
Geico, a non-endemic advertiser, advertises within Amazon’s “Thursday Night Football,” for example, said Sharma. Another example is Hyundai, a non-endemic brand that did a custom test-drive campaign called “Prime Now. Drive Now.”
That push for non-endemic brands is most of what the “education” piece for agencies is around. “We’ve been hearing from them more,” said Nicholas Pappas, CEO at indie media shop SwellShark, who works with brands including Applegate, Virgin Atlantic, Spike and Dos Equis. “We’ve been discussing ways to bring more non-endemic partners onto Amazon advertising, and we’re excited.”
Sharma said Amazon’s big competitive advantage as a platform is that it is about the intersection of e-commerce and advertising. “It’s not only about being able to place ads in the right place and right time; it’s also the right relevance,” he said. At a high level, Amazon offers measurement metrics from impressions and clicks to deeper data on sales information, full shopping journeys and things like a customer’s worth over a lifetime. E-commerce and marketing at Amazon go hand in hand — the platform does plenty of consulting with brands and agencies on what it calls “retail readiness.”
“We can tell you how a campaign does, but in order to do something about it, you have to do something beyond advertising,” said Sharma. So agencies and brands have to be trained on things like creating the right product page, making sure inventory is in stock and policing reviews, according to agency execs.
But the key with non-endemic brands is that you can’t necessarily sell them on straight display or search advertising. So along with training programs for items sold on Amazon, agencies are also hearing more about how to do advertising for brands not sold on Amazon. “[Amazon] has to educate planners on how to use data,” said one exec. For example, a non-endemic brand can examine what else its customers buy to create a fuller picture of who their customer is. One agency, for instance, is working with a real estate company and looking for data on people shopping on Amazon.com for moving boxes.
“Advertising for us is another big area … in terms of tech,” said Sharma. “Like Amazon Web Services can provide tech solutions for other developers, for people building on our cloud, within ad tech we can bring the same value to agencies — as a tech leader.” |
Tokio Marine teams up with Pand.ai for life insurance chatbot | Tokio Marine Life Insurance Singapore has introduced a chatbot to aid customers. The bot is said to rely less on perfect grammar and sentence construction than other virtual assistants. The firm worked with artificial intelligence firm Pand.ai to develop the bot. The chatbot will be used in providing information to clients regarding their policies while also providing on-demand explanations of commonly-used insurance terms. | http://www.marketing-interactive.com/tokio-marine-life-insurance-debuts-chatbot-which-understands-singlish/ | 2017-10-05 06:53:01.287000 | Tokio Marine Life Insurance Singapore (TMLS) has launched an AI chatbot in Singapore, in a bid to simplify life insurance and make it more accessible to the public. The chatbot’s name is TOMI and stands for Tokio Marine Insurance. It was built in collaboration with local AI startup Pand.ai.According to the statement, the technology behind TOMI is called Deep Learning for Natural Language Processing (Deep NLP). The technology is able to interpret sentences regardless of length and grammatical accuracy, compared to the traditional NLP approach which only interprets short phrases and sentences.This capability allows TOMI to understand grammatically inaccurate sentences, and even Singlish."This sets TOMI apart from many other chatbots, which rely primarily on keyword recognition or require grammatical accuracy from users,” the statement added.The chatbot builds on the success of an earlier version released in January, which was launched for its financial advisers. The current version is targeted towards users to increase understanding and enable users to manage their insurance coverage more independently.This is through the provision of users with instant and accurate explanations of commonly-used terms in insurance, information on TMLS products and solutions. The chatbot also looks to serve as a potential touch point for those looking to join the industry as a financial adviser with TMLS.The move will also be supported by regional headquarters Tokio Marine Asia (TMA), which will be exploring the potential extension of TOMI and its functionalities to other regional markets in Asia.“Conversations play an important role in how a customer buys and consumes life insurance products. As customers’ behaviour shift towards digital, we see intelligent AI-powered chatbots as a natural evolution of websites and mobile apps, and will eventually become a dominant digital channel in how a customer interacts with an insurer,” James Tan, CEO of TMLS, said.Marketing has reached out to TMLS for additional comment. |
SEC plans fiduciary rule with DOL involvement | The US Securities and Exchange Commission is drafting a proposed fiduciary standard rule, according to its chairman Jay Clayton. The SEC is working with the Department of Labor (DOL) in establishing the new legislation. The DOL's own fiduciary rule, finalised in 2016, was criticised for being complex and having the potential to lead brokers away from all but the largest retirement accounts due to the fiduciary duty it placed on intermediaries. | http://www.investmentnews.com/article/20171004/FREE/171009978/sec-chief-jay-clayton-tells-lawmakers-agency-is-drafting-its-own | 2017-10-05 06:26:29.363000 | Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton told lawmakers on Wednesday that the agency is drafting a proposal for a fiduciary rule.
The agency is trying to catch up with the Department of Labor, which partially implemented its own fiduciary rule in June and is currently conducting a review of the regulation’s enforcement mechanisms as ordered by President Donald J. Trump that could lead to revisions. The SEC is currently receiving public comments about a fiduciary rule.
“The next step in anything like this would be a rule proposal. We’re working on such a proposal,” Mr. Clayton said in an appearance before the House Financial Services Committee. “We’re going to work with the Department of Labor. If this were easy, it would already have been fixed.”
As he did in testimony before the Senate Banking Committee last week, Mr. Clayton outlined the rubric that he would use for a fiduciary rule. It must preserve investors’ choice to use a broker or investment adviser, be clear, and apply consistently to all types of investment accounts. It must also be the product of cooperation between the SEC and DOL, whose rule requires brokers to act in the best interests of their clients in retirement accounts only.
Mr. Clayton said he is “confident” the agency can propose a rule that “addresses those core issues and that has a standard that protects investors that they understand.”
He declined to provide a timeline for when the measure might be released.
The SEC is currently operating with only three of its normal complement of five commissioners. Mr. Trump has nominated Republican Hester Peirce and Democrat Robert Jackson to fill the two openings. The Senate Banking Committee has not yet scheduled a confirmation hearing. It’s unlikely the SEC would advance a fiduciary rule before Ms. Peirce and Mr. Jackson come on board.
Mr. Clayton reassured Republican lawmakers that the SEC would address concerns they have raised about the DOL fiduciary rule. Republicans and financial industry opponents assert that the measure, finalized during the Obama administration, is too complex, increases litigation risk and will force brokers to abandon investors with modest retirement accounts because of the increased costs of providing fiduciary advice.
Supporters of the DOL rule maintain that it would mitigate broker conflicts of interest that lead to the sale of inappropriate high-fee investment products that erode savings.
One of the most strident GOP critics, Rep. Ann Wagner, R-Mo., touted the bill she introduced last week that would kill the DOL rule and replace it with a disclosure-based best-interests standard for brokers. The legislation directs the SEC to write the rule, putting the agency in the driver’s seat on the regulation of investment advice, instead of the DOL.
Mr. Clayton aligned himself with Ms. Wagner.
“A lot of the themes that you outlined are themes that I have, which is [investor] choice,” he said.
Near the end of the hearing, which lasted more than three-and-a-half hours, Rep. John Delaney, D-Md., asked Mr. Clayton whether he supported the DOL rule.
“I like the words,” Mr. Clayton said, referring to the DOL rule’s goal of reducing brokers’ conflicts of interest. “The question is, are we going to implement it in a way that adversely affects choice?” |
UK firms lag US counterparts in understanding benefit of robotics | A fifth of UK businesses say their management understands the importance of robotic process automation (RPA), compared with 34% in the US, according to a survey by Redwood Software. While 64% of UK firms think RPA should be part of their wider IT planning, three-quarters of their US counterparts did, the study found. "There’s still a lot to be done to educate those at management level as to the benefits of software robotics," said Redwood chief of staff Neil Kinson. The study also revealed that 83% of UK and US IT managers believe RPA is crucial to their digital transformation. | http://www.information-age.com/us-businesses-lead-robotic-revolution-uk-boardrooms-lack-understanding-123468900/ | 2017-10-05 06:22:30.873000 | Today, Redwood Software, has revealed that businesses in the US consider robotics more important than organisations in the UK, with 19% of UK businesses ranking the technology as a ‘top priority’, compared to over 30% in the US.
In fact, while 64% of UK survey respondents see robotic process automation (RPA) as important to their wider IT strategy, over three quarters of US businesses answered the same, again placing them in the number one spot.
>See also: The robots keep rising as AI-driven business transformation evolves
However, the research does also reveal similarities in robotic uptake over the last year, as both the UK (62%) and U.S. (78%) participants admitted RPA has become ‘more of a priority’ for them in this timeframe.
A lack of buy-in from leadership
The research also highlights a worrying lack of understanding from those in senior positions across the UK, with just 20% of businesses believing their company’s management understands the essentials. This demonstrates quite a difference to the US market, as 34% of businesses believe their management are pioneers of robotics.
Neil Kinson, chief of staff at Redwood Software, commented: “While it’s great to see an increase in the number of businesses across both the UK and U.S. that have prioritised RPA over the last 12 months, there’s still a lot to be done to educate those at management level as to the benefits of software robotics.”
>See also: The secret behind scaling RPA across the enterprise
“Without buy-in from those in senior positions the success of automation within a business will be limited. And not only buy-in from the c-suite but from across the business in general. The impact of understanding the benefits of automation will see a significant shift in the overall culture of the company and attitude towards the technology. Most importantly, every employee will understand how robotics can help them in their role and day to day tasks.”
When asked to consider whether they felt 80% or more of business processes could be automated using RPA in the next five years, just 12% of UK organisations agreed, while almost 50% more US businesses agreed.
Robotising the digital transformation
Despite the research unveiling many differences between the American and English robotics landscapes, one fundamental area that both agree on is the role of robotics in achieving digital transformation. Overall, 83% of the IT decision makers surveyed believe RPA is an ‘essential’ or ‘key part’ of their digital transformation.
>See also: 5 steps to successful RPA implementation
Unsurprisingly, the top reasons for favouring the role of robotics in the digital transformation process included cost saving (59%), increased agility (54%) and scalability (43%). In addition, 32% of US and UK businesses referenced RPA as bringing improved customer satisfaction to their transformation strategy.
Supporting the understanding that RPA plays an essential part in digital transformation, the research revealed that over two thirds (80%) of organisations involved in the survey have a robotics process automation strategy in place, with 82% using RPA to automate business processes. |
India to allow transactions between digital wallets | The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is set to allow interoperability between digital wallets provided by different firms within six months, provided they comply with regulations. Companies will be granted access to the state-owned Unified Payment Interface, which is currently only available to banks and a handful of digital wallets. The decision follows a recommendation made last December by the Ratan Watal Committee and lobbying from e-wallet firms, which claimed the move would improve the user experience. | https://qz.com/1094141/connecting-paytm-mobikwik-and-freecharge-will-get-easier-as-rbi-is-demolishing-the-walls-that-divide-indias-e-wallet-companies/ | 2017-10-05 05:35:25.750000 | There has been a boom in India’s e-wallets industry lately, but most such apps—and thereby, their users—have been siloed. Due to a lack of interoperability, users of one wallet app can transact only with those who use the same app. So they are left in a fix as they need to maintain separate wallets for separate services.
On Oct. 4, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said it will allow e-wallets of private firms to interoperate. So, users of one app will now be able to transact with users of a different app. This facility is currently functional under the state-owned Unified Payment Interface (UPI), available only to banks and those e-wallets built on the UPI platform.
Advertisement
E-wallets interoperability will be allowed within six months to those compliant with know your customer (KYC) norms, RBI announced under its developmental and regulatory policies.
Some platforms have been more open all along. For instance, Flipkart-owned PhonePe partners with YES Bank to access the UPI platform, BookMyShow’s wallet accepts payments from multiple wallets, and Google Tez uses the UPI platform to function as an extension of one’s bank account. But once RBI allows interoperability, several others like Paytm, MobiKwik, FreeCharge, Ola Money, and Amazon Pay, too, will be able to do it.
RBI’s decision comes amidst a massive market opportunity—India’s digital payments scene is slated to surpass Rs30,000 crore ($4.6 billion) by the end of 2022. However, hardly any player has achieved profitability yet. To add to the pressure, competition is getting fierce in an already overcrowded market: A slew of public and private players, from the government to myriad fin-tech companies to messaging apps are vying for customers’ wallets.
The central bank’s move may well be the catalyst for India’s digital payment companies who have long sought interoperability.
Advertisement
Paytm welcomed RBI’s move towards openness saying it “should act as a strong boost for digital payments ecosystem in India.” ”For the user, this means they do not have to download another wallet if they already have MobiKwik (or any other),” Bipin Preet Singh, founder and CEO of MobiKwik, told Quartz. “They can pay across the merchant network of any other pre-paid payment instrument. This helps us widen our reach and brings enormous value to our business.” Ola and Amazon did not respond to Quartz at the time of publishing.
E-wallet firms have always claimed that banks have an unfair advantage in the digital payments ecosystem as bank-to-bank fund transfers are as easy as sending a text message, thanks to UPI. For transferring funds via UPI, customers don’t even need to remember the Indian Financial System Code (needed for online bank transactions) or bank account details.
The Ratan Watal Committee, tasked by the government with suggesting measures to encourage e-payments, had recommended in December that e-wallet players be open to interoperability to improve user convenience and their own market share. |
Ecobank unveils mVisa-based Scan+Pay cashless payments in Africa | Ecobank has partnered with Visa to launch its Scan+Pay secure mobile payment solution throughout 33 African nations. Users can make instant payments for goods and services, as well as peer-to-peer and international transfers, to any other Visa cardholder via a mobile phone. Also, businesses using the system as a point of sale don't need to install additional, expensive hardware. Ecobank said its Scan+Pay with mVisa solution, which is built on QR code technology, is aimed at bringing digital financial services to Africa's banked and unbanked populations.
| http://www.communicationsafrica.com/commerce/ecobank-launches-mvisa-in-33-countries-across-africa | 2017-10-05 05:30:20.620000 | Ecobank launches mVisa in 33 countries across Africa
Ecobank Scan+Pay with mVisa delivers instant, secure cashless payment for goods and services by allowing customers to scan a QR code on a smartphone or enter a unique merchant identifying code into either a feature phone or smartphone
How to make payments with mVisa. (Image source: Visa)
The strategic tie-up signals interoperability on a cross-border level, and potentially huge gains, as it affords consumers with the ability to use their mobile phone to directly access the funds in their bank accounts to pay person-to-merchant (P2M) or person-to-person (P2P).
Ecobank Scan+Pay with mVisa delivers instant, secure cashless payment for goods and services by allowing customers to scan a QR code on a smartphone or enter a unique merchant identifying code into either a feature phone or smartphone. The payment goes straight from the consumer’s bank account into the merchant’s account and provides real-time notification to both parties. This serves to accelerate digital commerce and combat some of the challenges merchants have faced using traditional point of sale systems, including the cost of installation coupled with the requirement of electricity and internet connectivity.
Ecobank mVisa solutions also enable customers to send money instantly to any Visa cardholders worldwide. This is a major innovation that serves the needs of Africans in the diaspora by enabling them to simply link their Visa card to the Ecobank unified mobile app to send money home to another Visa cardholder quickly and securely.
“We are fulfilling our commitment to give every African the right to participate effectively in the global economy at an affordable price and in a convenient manner. Ecobank Scan+Pay with mVisa helps merchants – particularly small and micro merchants – to grow their sales without the risks of carrying cash whilst also giving consumers the ability to pay for goods and services in a cashless manner from their phones. Consumers can also conduct person-to-person payments and instantly transfer money to their friends and family via their phones at very low cost,” said Ecobank Chief Executive Officer Ade Ayeyemi.
The partnership demonstrates both Ecobank and Visa’s continued commitment to provide financial services to the banked and unbanked in Africa by leveraging digital platforms to offer convenient and affordable payment mechanisms.
Andrew Torre, President for Visa Sub-Saharan Africa said, “We are glad to partner with Ecobank to bring mVisa into the market, a mobile payment solution with real benefits to drive digital transformation backed by advantages of Visa’s global network - security, reliability and global acceptance, allowing consumers to make payments both domestically and internationally.” |
Retailer Jumia launches Nigeria's first e-commerce chatbot | Nigerian online retail firm Jumia has launched Jumia Bot, the country's first-ever e-commerce chatbot. Operating via Facebook's Messenger app, the bot is aimed at the 18 million users of the social media platform in Nigeria, and uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to offer an increasingly tailored shopping service over time. "JumiaBot has a very simple yet important objective: to help our customers get to personalised deals on Jumia Nigeria," said Juliet Anammah, CEO of the retailer.
| http://www.communicationsafrica.com/commerce/jumia-introduces-nigeria-s-first-e-commerce-robot-jumia-bot | 2017-10-05 05:25:42.547000 | Jumia introduces Nigeria’s first e-commerce robot, Jumia Bot
The Jumia Bot works by asking customers what they’re looking for and then using their answers to find the best offers
Jumia Bot, Nigeria's first e-commerce bot. (Image source: Jumia)
Jumia introduced JumiaBot on 2 October, Nigeria’s first e-commerce Bot. Using Jumia Bot, shoppers can order food, find fashion or electronic items and book hotels and flights by simply having an online conversation with the bot.
This innovation, powered and hosted by Facebook Messenger, will offer Nigeria’s 18 Million Facebook users the ability to get their own personal Jumia shopping assistant directly on Facebook Messenger. For example, to get access to the best hotel and airfare deals on Facebook Messenger, a user can simply provide his or her preferred date and destination to the bot in order to see the top recommendations.
Once a user’s criteria is selected, Jumia Bot will remember and use the research for his or her next order. The bot, developed by Jumia with support from Facebook, uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) and natural learning process to hone in and learn users’ preferences over time in order to make recommendations that are personalised, timeline and useful to the shopper. The shopper’s post-order experience is also integrated into Jumia Bot. As a result, shoppers can track their orders and contact the Customer Service team for follow-up questions.
"When we launched Bot for Businesses on Messenger, our goal was to help companies make meaningful connections with their customers in order to meet their business goals.” said Emeka Afigbo, Head, Platform Partnerships, Middle East and Africa at Facebook. “We are excited to be part of the story in providing technology solutions to one of Africa’s leading e-commerce websites.”
In a statement on the significance of this new service, Juliet Anammah, CEO Jumia Nigeria said, “Jumia Bot has a very simple yet important objective: to help our customers get to personalised deals on Jumia Nigeria. We are pleased to unveil this new dimension of e-shopping for the Nigerian customer, and excited about helping to pioneer the next wave of local content and tech tools within our ecosystem.” |
Starling bank follows rival Revolut into business banking | London-based disruptor Starling Bank is set to offer business banking to entrepreneurs, sole-traders and small business owners. CEO Anne Boden wants to target a "hugely underserved group of people who need more than a personal current account but aren’t quite a small business". Starling is looking to offer services including 24/7 customer service availability, access to the bank's marketplace and same day, free set-up. The company will test the product on a small group at the end of this year with a view to going live in 2018. | http://www.altfi.com/article/3581_fintech_bank_starling_to_launch_business_accounts | 2017-10-05 04:36:20.993000 | Starling Bank has followed rival banking challenger Revolut into business banking. The fintech disruptor will target entrepreneurs, sole-traders and small business owners.
Starling is now accepting registrations from interested businesses, and will open to a group of closed testers towards the end of the year. It plans to take the product live in early 2018.
Key features of the service will include same-day set up (free of charge), round the clock customer service availability and access to Starling’s marketplace, which is comprised of an integrated array of technology services. Via the marketplace, businesses will be able to link their bank account to their invoicing and accounting services. Businesses will also be able to categorise transactions. Payment services, including real-time Faster Payments and international payments, will also be included.
“At the heart of Starling Bank is an understanding of our customers and their passions,” said Anne Boden (pictured), founder and CEO of Starling. “For a large number of our customers, that passion is a side hustle or small business that they run alongside their nine-to-five. What’s therefore become apparent is that a hugely underserved group of people exist who need more than a personal current account but aren’t quite a small business.”
Starling’s closest competitor in what Boden terms the “side hustle” space will be Curve, which caters to business owners, directors, freelancers and contractors across Europe. The firm raised $10m in a series A fundraise in July, with global banks Santander InnoVentures and Investec participating in the round. Starling is backed by $70m in venture funding from a single Bahamas-based investor named Harald McPike.
Revolut launched its business-facing service in June, landing a number of FTSE 100 companies, including two international airlines. Revolut’s business banking service costs between £25 and £1,000 per month, depending on the package, and is compatible with 25 currencies.
Starling and Curve appear to be going after smaller business operations, leaving Revolut to battle it out with incumbents.
“We are focused on sole traders and small businesses because the banking industry hasn’t offered something tailored for them,” said Sarah Guha, product director at Starling Bank. |
Study tests whether robots can influence insects to help humans | Researchers at Switzerland's École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne are deploying tiny robots in insect colonies to see whether machines could be used to subtly alter group behaviour to the benefit of humans. The team placed reprogrammed Thymio bots in a colony of ants to see if ant and machine can work together when finding food. The experiment is part of the European Union-funded CyBioSys project, and scientists said future applications could include search-and-rescue scenarios. | https://phys.org/news/2017-10-robotic-bugs-insects-helpers.html | 2017-10-05 03:33:18.220000 | Robots help ants with daily chores so they can be accepted into the colony. Credit: Dr Bertrand Collignon
Tiny mobile robots are learning to work with insects in the hope the creatures' sensitive antennae and ability to squeeze into small spaces can be put to use serving humans.
With a soft electronic whirr, a rather unusual looking ant trundles along behind a column of its arthropod comrades as they march off to fetch some food.
While the little insects begin ferrying tiny globules of sugar back home, their mechanical companion bustles forward to effortlessly pick up the entire container and carry it back to the nest.
It is a dramatic demonstration of how robots can be introduced and accepted into insect societies.
But the research, which is being conducted as part of the EU-funded CyBioSys project, could be an important step towards using robots to subtly control, or work alongside, animals or humans.
'The idea is to be able to solve (a) problem with a better solution than they (the robots and insects) can produce individually,' said Dr Bertrand Collignon, who is leading the research at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, in Switzerland.
The robots, which 'live' with the ants, pick up signs that food has been discovered through a camera mounted inside the nest. The camera alerts the robots when it detects an increasing numbers of ants are departing – a sign that food has been found.
The robots – reprogrammed off-the-shelf Thymio bots managed by simple Raspberry Pi computers – then use sensors to follow the columns of exiting ants. Once the ants have led their robotic counterparts to their discovery, the robots take over, using their superior muscle power to lug it home.
Dr Collignon described this as a 'cyber-biological system', which improves both on the natural order, and on what robots could achieve on their own. By getting ants and robots to collaborate, each community plays to its strengths, he says.
'The ants are good at exploring the environment very efficiently, with many scouts patrolling the vicinity of the nest at the same time,' said Dr Collignon, who is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie action fellow. 'But individual ants are not able to transport large amounts of food and some can get lost between the food and the nest.'
Robots are like pack animals in comparison, carrying an order of magnitude more food than an ant can, and accomplishing in a few minutes what would have taken the ants hours.
Dr Collignon believes it is the first project to consider an insect swarm as a biosensor and then embed in a robot the ability to extract data from the colony.
But he also believes this research could be combined with other work teaching robots to communicate with animals. Instead of relying on top-down instructions—like a shepherd dog herding sheep—this would work by subtly influencing them from a position as one of the group.
As many social insects such as ants and bees can form aggressive colonies that normally do not respond well to outsiders, influencing them from within may offer a new approach.
In a previous EU-funded project, LEURRE, a team pioneered the creation of small mobile robots that could interact with cockroaches and influence their collective behaviour.
When kept in a pen together, cockroaches will gradually gather under the same dark shelter. They achieve this simply by following two rules: stay close to other cockroaches, and head for somewhere dark.
But when the researchers released small robots into the pen programmed with slightly different rules—stay close to other cockroaches but prefer a lighter refuge—in time the cockroaches, along with the robots, gathered in the lighter shelter instead.
Dr Collignon believes that the two types of robotic work – collaboration and communication – could find applications in search and rescue, exploring environments too dangerous or inaccessible for humans. Eventually, small animals could be used to get into restricted environments such as collapsed buildings.
By integrating artificial systems, such as robots, into more natural ones – such as a warehouse full of chickens – it could lead to new solutions to help control animal behaviour on farms. An example might be preventing deadly mass panic attacks amongst intensively reared animals by using robots that can detect the early signs of an impending stampede and diverting one by behaving in a different way.
'The first step is to be able to track what natural agents are doing and react appropriately to that,' he said. 'That's already a tricky thing. Once you have sensed what nature is doing, you can then interact. The robotic agent can do what it has been designed for and then act on the system.' |
YouTube changes algorithm after Las Vegas shooting fake news | YouTube has made changes to its search algorithm after people attempting to learn about the Las Vegas shooting on Sunday, that resulted in the deaths of 58 people, were directed to conspiracy theories and fake news. The changes will seek to promote more mainstream news, but YouTube has not indicated how it will determine which sources are authoritative. Facebook and Google have also been criticised for promoting conspiracy theories about the shooting. Earlier this year, brands removed ads from YouTube after it merged that they were running alongside extremist videos. | https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2017/10/05/youtube-alters-algorithm-after-searches-las-vegas-shooting-turn-up-conspiracy-theories/736548001/ | 2017-10-04 22:00:00 | SAN FRANCISCO — YouTube has changed its powerful search algorithm to promote videos from more mainstream news outlets in search results after people looking for details on the Las Vegas shooting were served up conspiracy theories and misinformation.
YouTube confirmed the changes Thursday. It didn't say how it decides which news sources are authoritative.
In the days after the mass shooting, videos abounded on YouTube, some questioning whether the shooting occurred and others claiming law enforcement officials had deceived the public about what really happened.
Searching for "Las Vegas shooting" on YouTube led many people to these videos, some of which claimed it was a "false flag," a term conspiracy theorists use to refer to mass shootings they believe were staged by the government to promote gun control.
Law enforcement officials say Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock acted alone, opening fire Sunday from the 32-second floor of the hotel. The attack killed 58 people and injured nearly 500. Paddock shot and killed himself as police tried to break into the room.
Jake Morphonios, who runs the End Times News Report, championed the theory of a second shooter on the fourth floor of the Mandalay Bay casino. He says he presented a "fact-based analysis of the evidence" and insists "there is nothing offensive in my videos." But Morphonios says he received a strike from YouTube for violating its community standards. YouTube takes down accounts that get three strikes in three months.
As a result, Morphonios told YouTube viewers he deleted all of the Las Vegas videos.
"I hated to do it, but if I get any more strikes, my entire channel is going to be deleted," he said in a video explaining the decision.
More:Portrait of a killer: Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock remains an enigma to police
More:Las Vegas shooting: Answering 4 common questions
More:We don't know Stephen Paddock's motive. Does it matter?
More:Vegas killer's girlfriend: He was 'a kind, quiet caring man'
Public outcry over YouTube videos promoting conspiracy theories is just the latest online flap for the major U.S. Internet companies. Within hours of the attack, Facebook and Google were called out for promoting conspiracy theories, with one anonymous message board misidentifying the shooter and claiming he was an anti-Trump Democrat.
Paddock's motives still aren't clear. He was a retired accountant with a taste for high-stakes poker. His brother, Eric Paddock, said he wasn't aware of any religious or political affiliations.
More:Google search spread wrong info from 4chan on Las Vegas shooting suspect
More:Google looks for Russian meddling in election after Twitter slammed
More:Facebook political ads are coming out of the shadows — why you should care
This isn't the first time fringe content has plunged YouTube into controversy. Major brands pulled spending on YouTube earlier this year after reports surfaced that their ads were running next to extremist videos.
YouTube is one of the Internet's most popular destinations for video. People now watch more than 1 billion hours of videos a day on it.
Helping drive that popularity is the "Up next" column which suggests additional videos to viewers.
The Wall Street Journal found incidents this week in which YouTube suggested videos promoting conspiracy theories next to videos from mainstream news sources. YouTube acknowledged issues with the "Up next" algorithm and said it was looking to promote more authoritative results there, too.
More:Las Vegas survivors have been through hell. And it's not over. |
Insurtech Pie Insurance launches in US following $4.3m fundraise | Pie Insurance, an insurtech focusing workers' compensation, has launched following the closing of its seed funding round. The firm raised $4.3m from the round, which was led by Sirius Group, Moxley holdings and Elefund. The firm will initially offer a service to small and medium-sized businesses allowing enterprises to monitor workers' compensation insurance rates. It plans to offer its own insurance policies by 2018. | https://www.crowdfundinsider.com/2017/10/122722-insurtech-startup-pie-insurance-gets-4-3-million-seed-funding/ | 2017-10-04 16:31:19.803000 | Pie Insurance, a direct distribution workers’ compensation Insurtech business, has launched today at InsureTech Connect. Pie Insurance said it had closed on a $4.3 million seed round led by Sirius Group, Moxley holdings and Elefund.
Sirius Group, is a global specialty insurer and reinsurer with $2.9 billion in capital and an A.M. Best “A” rating; Moxley Holdings os an early stage VC for data-enabled businesses; and Elefund, is an early stage VC with seed investments in FinTech businesses such as eShares and Robinhood.
Pie Insurance’s co-founder and CEO is John Swigart, who was part of the executive team that led Esurance from start-up to $1.3 billion in premiums and sale to Allstate for $1 billion in 2011.
The company’s initial service is an interactive Price Predictor tool that allows SMEs an improved insight into their workers’ compensation insurance rates. In 2018 Pie expects to begin offering its own A.M. Best “A” rated insurance policies.
The tool is said to be a “tangible demonstration of Pie’s commitment to innovative and transparent insurance solutions for U.S. small business owners.” The company states that 90% of small businesses in many industries are overpaying for workers’ compensation.
The Pie Price Predictor tool is said to be the first of its kind to be tailored for SMEs, assessing the range each business should be paying for insurance and the market average from a few user-submitted pieces of information. It leverages Pie’s pricing algorithms and is powered by Valen Analytics, an Insurity company.
“The SMB market is often overcharged and underserved when it comes to meeting their commercial insurance needs,” stated Swigart. “The traditional high-touch approach agents and underwriters use in commercial lines lead to high prices and a protracted customer experience. Yet, the profitability in this sector indicates that small accounts are subsidizing larger accounts at most insurance companies. By focusing exclusively on small businesses with a digitally enabled solution, Pie will solve this problem at scale.”
Joel Moxley, General Partner with Moxley Holdings, said he believes Pie can become a meaningful player in the $100 billion SME insurance market. |
China's Guirenniao to buy a part of Prince Global Sports trademark | China's Guirenniao is to buy a portion of the trademark rights of struggling US-based Prince Global Sports, which would give the Chinese sportswear maker the rights to Prince trademark assets such as its social media, websites and rights to develop and sell Prince products in China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and South Korea. Prince, famous for its tennis rackets, filed for bankruptcy protection in 2012. | http://www.caixinglobal.com/2017-10-04/101153252.html | 2017-10-04 15:50:45.090000 | Chinese sportswear maker Guirenniao Co. Ltd. plans to acquire part of the trademark rights of U.S.-based Prince Global Sports LLC for $20 million.
The deal will give Guirenniao the rights to Prince trademark assets, including its websites and social media, the rights to develop and sell Prince-branded products in Greater China, including in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, as wells as in South Korea.
Prince is a famous manufacturer of tennis rackets, footwear and apparel. However, the private company has undergone financial challenges and filed for bankruptcy protection in 2012.
The deal can help the Chinese buyer diversify its brands and markets, the company said in a filing to the Shanghai Stock Exchange on Saturday.
Guirenniao, which is popular in smaller cities in China, said it will make use of Prince’s assets and will target high-end consumers in first- and second-tier cities.
Trading on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, where Guirenniao lists, is closed during the week-long national holiday between Oct. 1 and Oct. 8.
Contact reporter Coco Feng ([email protected]) |
Severe turbulence to increase due to climate change | Climate change will raise the amount of severe turbulence experienced on aeroplanes by 2050 to 2080, according to a study by the University of Reading. For aircraft cruising around 39,000 ft, it suggests potential increases of 181% over the North Atlantic, 161% over Europe, 113% over North America, 92% over the North Pacific, and 64% over Asia. Severe turbulence, large and abrupt changes to altitude, causes hundreds of passenger injuries annually and is a well-known risk for flight attendants. Lead researcher, Professor Paul Williams, said the study "highlighted the need to develop better turbulence forecasts".
| https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/04/climate-change-will-increase-the-risk-of-severe-turbulence-on-planes-research-says.html | 2017-10-04 15:37:01.417000 | Climate change is set to increase the amount of severe turbulence on planes by 2050 to 2080, according to a study.
Researchers at the University of Reading in England analyzed supercomputer simulations of the future atmosphere, focusing on clear air turbulence. As it is invisible, clear air turbulence is seen as being especially problematic.
For nervous fliers, the numbers contained within the research do not make for comfortable reading.
The study projects that severe turbulence at a typical cruising altitude of 39,000 feet is set to rise by roughly 181 percent over the North Atlantic; 161 percent over Europe; 113 percent over North America; 92 percent over the North Pacific; and 64 percent over Asia.
Australia's Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) describes severe turbulence as being characterized by large and abrupt changes in altitude or attitude (relating to an aircraft's orientation), as well as "large variation in indicated airspeed." During severe turbulence, an aircraft "may be temporarily out of control," the CASA adds. |
MassMutual introduces data-powered mortality risk system | MassMutual is launching a platform using data to devise a mortality risk scoring system to be used by its life insurance arm. The platform, dubbed LifeRisk 360, will reportedly be able to use data and machine learning to assess the health and lifestyles of millions of potential clients. The firm says the platform will allow for greater individual assessment when providing life insurance policies. MassMutual worked with California-based Captricity in launching the platform. Captricity provided the underlying data for LifeRisk 360 and the two firms also announced the data service may be made available to external clients. | http://globenewswire.com/news-release/2017/10/04/1140779/0/en/MassMutual-Set-to-Launch-LifeRisk-360-Digital-Initiative.html?f=22&fvtc=7 | 2017-10-04 15:26:09.680000 | SPRINGFIELD, Mass., and OAKLAND, Calif.,, Oct. 04, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company (MassMutual) announced today the launch of LifeRisk 360 – an exciting new digital initiative that will utilize cutting-edge data science techniques to create the first individual mortality risk scoring system of its kind for the life insurance industry.
The LifeRisk 360 initiative is headed by Sears Merritt, MassMutual’s Chief Data Scientist, and draws on machine learning and artificial intelligence methodologies, as well as hundreds of millions of data points that characterize the health and behavior of millions of individuals spanning nearly two decades.
Among the anticipated benefits to life insurance carriers: significant improvements in the application process and a substantial improvement in the ability to deliver rapid assessment of individual life insurance risk relative to current industry best practices.
“We are excited to introduce LifeRisk 360 – an innovative and distinct life insurance risk assessment platform designed to bring new intelligent insights into a largely manual process,” Merritt said. “By leveraging linked data elements and machine learning methodologies, our objective is to further reduce underwriting decision time and improve mortality risk selection.”
Importantly, MassMutual and Captricity, an Oakland, Calif.-based intelligent automation provider for insurance, announced today that they are exploring a potential partnership in which Captricity would make the LifeRisk 360 scoring service broadly available to the U.S. life insurance market on a fee-for-service basis. MassMutual utilized Captricity’s distinct solution to create a proprietary dataset, which underpins the new LifeRisk 360 product.
“Our planned partnership with LifeRisk 360 rewards our insurance carriers and their customers by reimagining underwriting as a modern, digital process,” said Kuang Chen, CEO of Captricity. “This solution enables insurers to eliminate many of the manual steps and friction associated with underwriting. This solution will be an industry pivot point, giving carriers the ability to accelerate their own data-driven underwriting initiatives to deliver minimally invasive decisions faster.”
Pending completion of the final agreement, the new solution is expected to be available to life insurance companies beginning in the first quarter of 2018.
About MassMutual
MassMutual is a leading mutual life insurance company that is run for the benefit of its members and participating policyowners. MassMutual offers a wide range of financial products and services, including life insurance, disability income insurance, long term care insurance, annuities, retirement plans and other employee benefits. For more information, visit www.massmutual.com.
About Captricity
Captricity’s AI-powered intelligent automation solution extracts and enhances data at 99.9% accuracy from any customer channel — including handwritten documents — and delivers it seamlessly into downstream systems and workflows. Thirteen of the top 20 US life insurers use high-quality, normalized data from Captricity to deliver business insights that increase revenue, lower costs, and drive a deeper understanding of risk. Captricity is headquartered in Oakland, CA. For more information, visit www.captricity.com.
Attachments:
A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/6daba31c-f2b2-4509-a4cf-461ca11f62ab |
Google Assistant is twice as smart as Siri | Google's virtual assistant is twice as intelligent as Apple's Siri, according to Chinese researchers studying the artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities of a number of platforms. The findings showed Google's app had an IQ of 47.28, nearly double Siri's score of 23.94. Chinese search engine Baidu and Microsoft's Bing also scored higher than Apple's assistant, but none of the AI systems tested could match a typical six-year-old's IQ of 55.5. All the systems had shown significant increases in intellectual capability between 2014 and 2016, the researchers found.
| https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/02/google-ai-has-almost-twice-the-iq-of-siri-says-study.html | 2017-10-04 13:27:22.737000 | Google's artificial intelligence technology has a considerably higher I.Q. than Apple's Siri virtual assistant, according to a new academic paper attempting to compare the smarts of various artificial intelligence systems.
The paper — written by a trio of Chinese researchers, including Yong Shi, executive deputy director of the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Research Center on Fictitious Economy and Data Science — says that in 2016 Google's AI had an IQ of 47.28. It came out ahead of Chinese search engine Baidu (32.92) and Microsoft's Bing (31.98) and had almost double the IQ of Siri (23.94).
Notably, none of these systems had a higher IQ than a 6-year-old (55.5), much less an 18-year-old (97), the researchers found.
But the Google and Microsoft systems have been getting smarter. In 2014 Google's IQ score was 26.5, while Microsoft's was 13.5. At that time the researchers were not yet analyzing Baidu and Siri.
Apple, Google and Microsoft have all been , which can yield improvements in speech recognition, image recognition and other areas. These techniques can be applied to revenue-generating processes like serving ads.
But comparing companies' existing AI systems — and seeing how they stack up with human beings — has been difficult, and that's one reason the researchers have attempted to create a comparison method. The researchers have taken into consideration the systems' abilities around "knowledge mastery, learning, use and creation."
The new paper, published on Sunday, does touch on , the system for playing the Chinese board game of Go from Google parent company Alphabet's DeepMind group. While the researchers didn't give it an IQ score, they did conclude that its intelligence is below that of humans.
Google declined to comment. Apple was not immediately available to comment on the study. |
Preview of Halo game to debut on Microsoft VR headsets | Players of the popular video game Halo will be able to experience it in virtual reality (VR) from later this month. Microsoft is releasing a free download called Halo Recruit on 17 October, which will be available on its Windows Mixed Reality headset. While not a full version of the game, it will provide a virtual reality environment of characters from it and give a preview of what it would look like in VR. Microsoft is increasing its support for VR gaming, giving developers access to support and allowing them to test games on its headsets.
| https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/3/16408638/microsoft-halo-recruit-vr-experience | 2017-10-04 13:17:04.283000 | Microsoft is bringing Halo to its Windows Mixed Reality headsets later this month. Halo Recruit will be available as a free download on October 17th, and it’s designed to be a VR environment of characters in the popular game. 343 industries has created the experience, and it looks like it will be similar to the lightsaber VR experience available on the HTC Vive last year. It’s not a full game of Halo, nor will you be running around as Master Chief, but it’s a first attempt at how Halo could look in virtual reality. |
Leak suggests UK safety standards could be weakened after Brexit | UK safety standards could be threatened after Brexit by ministers looking for “quick wins,” according to a leaked email from an official in the country's Business Department. The email also suggested that CE markings, which indicate that products comply with European Union safety, health or environmental requirements, and which apply to items including electrical equipment, machinery, medical devices and toys, could be replaced by online Amazon reviews. | https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/the-latest-idea-from-a-brexit-official-replace-eu-safety-checks-with-amazon-reviews-a3650231.html | 2017-10-04 13:13:32.680000 | M inisters are looking for “quick wins” to move away from the European safety standards regime, according to a leaked email.
A Brexit official in the Business Department also suggested in the message that Amazon reviews could replace the “CE European standards mark” in the eyes of online shoppers. The revelations immediately sparked concerns that the system for ensuring the safety of electrical equipment, toys, machinery, medical devices and other products could be watered down after Britain quits the EU.
The CE marking shows that a manufacturer has checked that their products meet EU safety, health or environmental requirements, indicates compliance with EU legislation and allows the free movement of products within the European market. In the email, the Brexit official asks for any “evidence, anecdotal or otherwise, that businesses are saying they don’t want divergence”.
She then adds: “Similarly, any sectors who are suggesting they would like early divergence (we are also looking for quick wins!)”.
The message then discusses the shift in shopping trends to online.
“I actually wonder, given the UK consumer penchant for internet shopping, the extent to which an Amazon review will supersede any mark to demonstrate conformity with safety requirements,” the official says.
Labour expressed alarm at the remarks in the email, which were made in response to a document by the techUK trade body on the CE marking system.
Shadow Brexit minister Matthew Pennycook said: “This comment from a Government official should concern us all. The safe use of medical equipment and children’s toys cannot be guaranteed in the same way as one would review the latest blockbuster or episode of Game of Thrones.
“Ministers should ensure that after Britain leaves the European Union consumers remain certain that the products they buy are safe, and that our exporters can continue to easily sell their products abroad.”
A spokeswoman for the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said: “Until we leave the EU, the UK Government continues to implement European regulations.
“This correspondence does not indicate future policy direction, but was part of a normal engagement process with industry stakeholders.”
Ministers have been pushing for a deal with the EU in the “divorce talks”, including a multi-billion bill which the UK is expected to have to pay, so we can move on to negotiations over future trade deal.
However, it appears increasingly likely that the departure talksnegotiations will not have progressed sufficiently for EU leaders to agree at a summit later this month for trade talks to start.
Theresa May has also outlined British proposals for a transition period of around two years from when Britain formally quits the EU in March 2019.While t
The Government has warned Brussels that if it seeks to punish the UK for leaving the EU Britain could become a low-tax, low-regulation economy which could threaten their social market economic model. @nicholascecil |
Oracle introduces AI self-maintenance to its 18c database | California firm Oracle has announced that its 18c database now has the ability to "automatically upgrade, patch, and tune itself" without an interruption to service. The company said its software had learned what its "normal" behaviour was, thus enabling it to target anything out of the ordinary, with no human intervention required. Oracle said the move isn't likely to result in job losses, rather staff will be able to spend more time helping customers rather than patching software.
| https://www.technologyreview.com/the-download/609026/oracles-new-database-uses-ai-to-patch-itself/?utm_source=MIT+Technology+Review&utm_campaign=bba04c5941-The_Download&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_997ed6f472-bba04c5941-154455665 | 2017-10-04 12:19:59.237000 | If you can’t trust humans to update your software, teach it to do the job for itself. That’s the thinking at the enterprise software firm Oracle, anyway, which has just announced that its 18c database system now uses machine learning to “automatically upgrade, patch, and tune itself while running.”
VentureBeat reports that system administrators provide rules for the database, but then leave it to its own devices. The software learns what “normal” looks like, and then tries to stop anything that seems untoward, and does all that without the downtime that comes when humans peer under the hood. “If you eliminate all human labor, you eliminate human error,” Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, (pictured above) explained as he announced the new software yesterday.
That raises the specter of technological unemployment, of course. In Oracle's case, the theory appears to be that the AI will free up network administrators to help users, rather than having them spend their time patching software. But if, like at Equifax, they weren’t patching much software in the first place, there is always the chance that their presence is no longer required.
And Oracle isn’t alone in using AI to improve the security of software. Data science platform Kaggle is currently running a contest in which researchers build offensive and defensive AIs to improve software security. In other words: sysadmins of the world, look busy. |
All Londoners experience unsafe levels of particle pollution | All inhabitants of London are breathing air exceeding global guidelines for toxic PM2.5 particles, according to data from the London Atmospheric Emissions Inventory. Every area in the city exceeds World Health Organisation limits for the particle, the report states, with almost 95% of the capital’s population living in areas that do so by at least 50%. Exposure to the particulates increases the risk of cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. Half of PM2.5 in London's air comes from outside the city, according to the report. Within the capital, the main sources are construction, tyre and brake wear, and wood burning.
| https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/pm2-5-map-and-exposure-data | 2017-10-04 12:15:15.683000 | Created 6 years ago , updated 6 years ago
This report contains an introduction to PM 2.5 , summarises our current understanding of PM 2.5 concentrations and exposure, discusses the findings of research undertaken by the GLA and TfL into the extent of PM 2.5 pollution in London, and assesses the potential for meeting World Health Organisation guidelines by 2030. Our analysis found that at present all Londoners are exposed to concentrations higher than WHO air quality guidelines, but, if PM 2.5 reduction measures within the Mayor’s Transport Strategy and London Environment Strategy are accompanied by co-operation on a national and international level, the guideline limit is achievable by 2030. |
All Londoners experience unsafe levels of particle pollution | All inhabitants of London are breathing air exceeding global guidelines for toxic PM2.5 particles, according to data from the London Atmospheric Emissions Inventory. Every area in the city exceeds World Health Organisation limits for the particle, the report states, with almost 95% of the capital’s population living in areas that do so by at least 50%. Exposure to the particulates increases the risk of cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. Half of PM2.5 in London's air comes from outside the city, according to the report. Within the capital, the main sources are construction, tyre and brake wear, and wood burning.
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/04/revealed-every-londoner-breathing-dangerous-levels-of-toxic-air-particle | 2017-10-04 12:15:15.683000 | The scale of London’s air pollution crisis was laid bare on Wednesday, with new figures showing that every person in the capital is breathing air that exceeds global guidelines for one of the most dangerous toxic particles.
The research, based on the latest updated London Atmospheric Emissions Inventory, shows that every area in the capital exceeds World Health Organisation (WHO) limits for a damaging type of particle known as PM2.5.
It also found that 7.9 million Londoners – nearly 95% of the capital’s population – live in areas that exceed the limit by 50% or more. In central London the average annual levels are almost double the WHO limit of 10 µg/m3.
The findings, described as “sickening” by London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, have serious health implications – especially for children – with both short- and long-term exposure to these particulates increasing the likelihood of respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. Health experts say that young people exposed to these toxic pollutants are more likely to grow up with reduced lung function and develop asthma.
Khan said: “It’s sickening to know that not a single area of London meets World Health Organisation health standards, but even worse than that, nearly 95% of the capital is exceeding these guidelines by at least 50%.”
London is widely recognised as the worst area for air pollution in the UK, although there is growing evidence that dangerously polluted air is damaging people’s health in towns and cities across the country.
Khan added: “We should be ashamed that our young people – the next generation of Londoners – are being exposed to these tiny particles of toxic dust that are seriously damaging their lungs and shortening their life expectancy. I understand this is really difficult for Londoners, but that’s why I felt it was so important that I made this information public so people really understand the scale of the challenge we face in London.”
The mayor’s office said approximately half of PM2.5 in London is from sources outside the city. However, the main sources of PM2.5 emissions in London are from tyre and brake wear, construction and wood burning.
Last week Khan unveiled plans to limit the use of wood-burning stoves in the capital from 2025 and tighten up regulations to make sure all new stoves from 2022 are as clean as possible.
He has also set out a range of plans to tackle pollution from diesel cars in the capital. The first stage, the new T-Charge, which will charge older, more polluting vehicles entering central London, starts later this month.
The figures were revealed as it emerged that the government has failed to bring down the number of regions across the UK with illegal levels of air pollution despite being ordered to by the courts.
According to figures submitted by ministers to the European Commission, 37 out of 43 zones across the UK are still in breach of pollution limits – the same number as in 2015 – despite the government being under a supreme court order to bring pollution down as soon as possible.
Clean air campaigners criticised the government’s inaction and welcomed Khan’s plans, which include the introduction of an ultra low emission zone in 2019.
But they called on the mayor to take more urgent, immediate action in light of the scale of the crisis.
Paul Morozzo, a clean air campaigner at Greenpeace, said: “London air isn’t safe to breathe. Every person in London is affected by this crisis – old or young, healthy or ill. The air you breathe in London is putting your health at risk now and in the future, whether you realise it or not.
“Restricting diesel will make a big difference to both PM and nitrogen oxide air pollution in London, which is why the mayor has no choice but to get tough on cleaning up our roads.”
Dr Penny Woods, chief executive of the British Lung Foundation, said: “Quite frankly, this research beggars belief and is deeply concerning for every Londoner. Toxic air is poisoning our children, making existing lung conditions worse, such as asthma. The mayor cannot solve this public health crisis without government support. We urgently need changes to taxation for new diesel vehicles and a diesel scrappage scheme.”
Jonathan Bartley, co-leader of the Green party, said: “The mayor needs to decide whether he is going to commit to take the air pollution epidemic seriously or not. And that means making the right choices over the big polluting decisions. Creating pollution with one hand and then trying to waft it away with the other is no solution.
“The mayor can’t credibly claim to be tackling London’s dirty air when he is actively contributing to it by building the Silvertown tunnel, backing City airport expansion and failing to bring in a moratorium on waste incineration.”
The mayor released the latest findings on Wednesday morning as he signed London up to the Breathe Life coalition organised by the WHO, the body UN Environment and the Climate & Clean Air Coalition, at the Child Health Initiative conference at City Hall.
The initiative aims to connect similar world cities, combine expertise, share best practice and work together to improve air quality.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director-general, welcomed London’s support and Khan’s measures aimed at tackling air pollution.
“To ensure good health, every person must be able to breathe clean air no matter where they live. London’s plan to clean up their air means millions of people will be able to walk to work and walk their children to school without worrying about whether the air is going to make them sick. More cities around the world must also follow suit.” |
Interest in earthquake insurance rises in California post-Mexico | The recent earthquake in central Mexico has prompted many California residents to begin making inquiries regarding earthquake insurance. The California Earthquake Authority says it has seen "dramatic" increases in calls and website visits. While the number of policies covering earthquake damage has actually increased over the last 20 years, the overall percentage of Californians insured has dropped as the state's population has swelled. Since 1994, the percentage of homeowners insured has dropped from 33% to less than 11%. Almost 95% of California renters are also without coverage for damage to their possessions resulting from an earthquake. | http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-agenda-earthquake-insurance-20171002-story.html | 2017-10-04 11:48:27.480000 | Bill and Liz Barlak have carried earthquake insurance on their three-bedroom house in Burbank since the couple bought the property 30 years ago.
“It helps us sleep at night,” said Bill Barlak, 66, an engineer. “I wouldn’t buy a home without it.”
Which makes the Barlaks part of a minority in California.
The state’s population, housing stock, home prices and number of renters all have soared in the 23 years since the Los Angeles area’s last major earthquake, a magnitude 6.7 temblor centered in Northridge that left 57 dead and caused an estimated $44 billion in property damage.
Advertisement
Nonetheless, the percentage of homeowners and renters who have earthquake insurance has dropped sharply.
That might change after the recent deadly earthquakes in Mexico, which were a reminder that California is considered overdue for another major quake of its own.
The Mexico quakes, and before that the hurricanes in the southern United States, sparked a “dramatic increase” in website visits and calls to the California Earthquake Authority. The CEA was created after the Northridge quake to provide earthquake coverage on behalf of the insurance companies that comprise its membership, spokeswoman Sarah Sol said in an email.
While policy sales figures for September aren’t yet available, “callers were asking for detailed information about earthquake insurance coverage,” she said.
Only 10.8% of Californians with residential insurance had earthquake coverage at the end of last year, compared with nearly 33% when the Northridge quake struck in the early morning of Jan. 17, 1994, according to the California Department of Insurance.
The figure has stayed below 11% for the last five years.
Renters as a group are even less inclined to have an earthquake policy, with only 5.24% carrying such coverage last year compared with nearly 10% a decade ago, the department said.
“It’s stunning,” said CEA Chief Executive Glenn Pomeroy. “The fact that 90% [of homeowners] are uninsured is a terrible thing for California to be resilient and survive the next big quake,” said Pomeroy, whose privately funded, not-for-profit organization handles about 80% of earthquake policies in the state and now has the ability to pay up to $15 billion in claims.
Theories as to why more residents don’t get coverage range from faded memories of earlier quakes to confusion over coverage and pricing.
The number of Californians buying earthquake insurance has actually risen steadily over the years. The CEA had 952,000 policies in force as of August, compared with 754,672 at the end of 2006.
But the population and number of houses in California has soared even more, leaving those covered by quake insurance a low percentage of the total.
There are now about 9.1 million detached houses in California, a 25% increase from the 7.3 million in 1994 when the Northridge quake hit, according to data from the California Department of Finance.
Home prices also have skyrocketed. The median price of a single-family house in Los Angeles County hit a record $580,000 in August, according to the data firm CoreLogic, more than triple the median price of $189,400 in mid-1994.
The record-setting prices have forced many Californians, especially millennials who are in their early earnings years, to rent rather than buy. Yet 95% of the renters don’t have insurance to cover the cost of replacing their possessions if a major temblor struck.
The renters’ landlords are responsible for covering their buildings in the event of a quake, but generally it’s up to renters to get coverage for their belongings.
“People are going to have difficulty recovering, particularly lower-income people and people with fairly high mortgages,” said Robert Hunter, insurance director at the advocacy group Consumer Federation of America.
Newly arrived or younger Californians may have no awareness of the trauma that follows a big quake. It’s been more than two decades since the Northridge quake, which was the costliest U.S. earthquake on record after adjusting for inflation, according to the Insurance Information Institute, an industry trade group.
“Earthquakes don’t happen very often so people have a hard time focusing on it when there are so many other things in their lives,” Pomeroy said. “A lot of people weren’t living here [in 1994] or weren’t living at all then, so they don’t internalize it.”
Dwellers often mistakenly believe earthquake coverage is part of their normal homeowners or rental insurance policies, or have the misconception that if the quake is big enough, the federal government will give them help.
But grants from the Federal Emergency Management Agency under its individuals and households program are capped at $33,300.
There’s another reason cited for Californians’ resistance to buying earthquake insurance: lingering memories of high premiums immediately after the Northridge quake.
Insurers in California were required to offer earthquake coverage along with general homeowners insurance when the Northridge quake occurred. After Northridge, premiums for quake coverage soared, coverage was restricted and insurers balked at being forced to write new policies.
That led the state Legislature to create the CEA, whose participating insurers now include State Farm, Allstate, Mercury, Progressive, Farmers and Liberty Mutual.
Initially, the CEA’s policies were expensive and somewhat skimpy, including only $5,000 for replacing personal property (in addition to the replacement cost of the structure) and only one deductible of 15%.
Today, however, the CEA personal-property coverage is up to $200,000, and the “loss of use” coverage — for living expenses while a home is being repaired or rebuilt — is up to $100,000. Condo policies can cover damage assessments levied by homeowner associations.
Premiums vary depending on where the house is located, its age, style of construction and soil conditions, to name a few factors. But overall, the CEA says premiums on its policies have dropped by more than 50% since the authority was created. (The CEA website has a tool that shows coverage options and estimated cost.)
Also, the deductibles on CEA policies now range from 5% to 25%. And the CEA notes that another fear about earthquake insurance— that homeowners and renters must come up with the money to pay deductibles — is unfounded because the deductible is subtracted from the claim payment.
“There is no out-of-pocket requirement,” Pomeroy said. “If you have a home destroyed, we’ll pay the replacement cost, less the deductible, and they can choose how to rebuild.”
Hunter said every California resident “should go through a careful process and analyze what would happen if something like what happened in Mexico happened in your area.”
Mexico has experienced a series of earthquakes recently, capped by a magnitude 7.1 quake that struck near Mexico City on Sept. 19, leaving more than 325 dead and thousands of properties destroyed or damaged.
“You have to think the worst-case scenario,” Hunter said. “The longer it doesn’t happen [in California], the more people think it won’t happen.”
But Barlak — who pays an additional $648 a year for earthquake coverage on his homeowners policy, with a 15% deductible — says he doesn’t need to be persuaded to stay insured.
“I would question whether you can afford to not have it,” he said.
[email protected]
Twitter: @PeltzLATimes
ALSO
Fixing L.A. buildings vulnerable to collapse is vital before next big earthquake, Garcetti says
Here’s what earthquake magnitudes mean—and why an 8 can be so much scarier than a 6
Why some buildings crumbled and others survived the Mexico City quake: A sober lesson for California |
Amazon must repay $294m after ‘illegal’ Luxembourg tax deal | Amazon has been told to repay €250m ($294m) by the European Commission after the authority found the company to have received illegal and unfair state aid from Luxembourg. The commission stated that the deal had allowed Amazon to artificially reduce its tax bill from 2006 to 2014. The commission also announced that it would take action against the Irish government in the European Court of Justice in relation to its failure to collect €13bn in unpaid taxes from Apple. | https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/04/amazon-eu-tax-irish-government-apple | 2017-10-04 11:46:55.447000 | Amazon has been ordered to repay €250m (£222m) in illegal state aid to Luxembourg, as EU authorities continue their campaign against sweetheart deals that help the biggest corporations slash their tax bills.
The European commission also announced on Wednesday that it planned to take the the Irish government to the European court of justice (ECJ) over its failure to collect €13bn in unpaid taxes from Apple, in relation to an earlier ruling.
Margrethe Vestager, the EU commissioner in charge of competition, said Luxembourg’s “illegal tax advantages to Amazon” had allowed almost three-quarters of the company’s profits to go untaxed, allowing it to pay four times less tax than local rivals.
“This is about competition in Europe, no matter your flag, no matter your ownership,” Vestager said, dismissing suggestions she was targeting non-European companies. “Paying taxes is part of doing business in Europe.”
The commission said Amazon had benefited from an illegal tax deal granted by the Luxembourg authorities that allowed the company to artificially reduce its tax bill by €250m from 2006 to 2014. The company has been ordered to repay the full amount plus interest.
Amazon rejected the findings of the commission investigation. “We believe that Amazon did not receive any special treatment from Luxembourg and that we paid tax in full accordance with both Luxembourg and international tax law. We will study the commission’s ruling and consider our legal options, including an appeal.”
The country’s government said: “As Amazon has been taxed in accordance with the tax rules applicable at the relevant time, Luxembourg considers that the company has not been granted incompatible state aid.”
In a separate announcement, Vestager said she was appealing to Europe’s highest court to enforce an earlier ruling against Apple to ensure the iPhone maker repaid €13bn in back taxes.
Apple, which has appealed to Europe’s highest court to contest the decision, has neither repaid the money to the Irish government nor placed the money in an escrow account, a standard practice when court proceedings are under way.
Dublin said it disputed the commission’s ruling that it made the wrong decision in the Apple tax deal, but has promised to collect money owed as soon as possible. Citing its “intensive work” on recovering the funds, the Irish government described the decision as “extremely regrettable” in a statement.
“Irish officials and experts have been engaged in intensive work to ensure that the state complies with all its recovery obligations as soon as possible, and have been in constant contact with the European commission and Apple on all aspects of this process for over a year,” it said.
EU member states risk multimillion-euro fines when they fail to act on EU competition rulings. In 2015 the commission requested a €20m fine plus daily penalty payments against Italy over the country’s refusal to collect back taxes from Sardinian hotels that had benefited from special deals.
The commission acknowledged that Ireland had begun to work on the recovery of the back taxes, but deems the Irish deadline of “March 2018 at the earliest” not good enough.
The case against Amazon centred on two subsidiaries incorporated in Luxembourg and controlled by the US parent – Amazon EU group and Amazon Europe Holding Technologies. The latter was described by the commission as “an empty shell” that had no employees or offices, but was used to bring down the company’s tax bill.
Amazon EU group, which runs the internet company’s operations in the region, transferred 90% of its operating profits to the holding company, where they were not taxed. As a result, Amazon paid an effective tax rate in Luxembourg of 7.25%, compared with the national rate of 29%.
Amazon’s blueprint was Project Goldcrest, a tax scheme named after Luxembourg’s national bird, based on a 2003 deal with authorities in the Grand Duchy. Amazon changed its tax operations in June 2014, a year after Brussels began investigating tax rulings across the EU.
US authorities have also been investigating Project Goldcrest, but lost in court to the retail firm. In March a court ruled against the Internal Revenue Service, which had argued Amazon owed the US $1.5bn (£1.13bn) in unpaid taxes linked to its Luxembourg companies.
Luxembourg’s role in orchestrating tax avoidance deals for hundreds of global companies was revealed by the Guardian in 2014, raising questions about tax policy in one of the EU’s oldest member states.
The case continues to hang over Jean-Claude Juncker, the European commission president, who served as Luxembourg’s prime minister from 1995 to 2013, and acted as finance minister for much of that period.
The commission launched the Amazon investigation in October 2014, just weeks before Juncker took office, while the fallout over the Luxleaks revelations clouded his early weeks.
Many European politicians and business groups argue generous tax breaks give Amazon an unfair competitive advantage over smaller rivals, prompting the recent announcement of a plan to rewrite EU tax rules. But investigations into unfair state aid run broader, with the EU authorities expected to conclude an inquiry into the fast-food chain McDonald’s in the coming weeks.
The commission has also ruled unlawful tax deals between Starbucks and the Dutch authorities, as well as Fiat’s arrangements with Luxembourg. The Apple case has generated the biggest furore, with the chief executive, Tim Cook, dismissing the claims as “total political crap”.
The commission said the sweetheart deal with the Irish government allowed Apple to pay a maximum tax rate of 1%, which fell to just 0.005% in 2014. The usual rate of corporation tax in Ireland is 12.5%.
If the UK leaves the EU single market, it will not be bound by European rules on fair tax competition. However, any free-trade deal with the EU is likely to constrain the government’s ability to turn the UK into a low-tax haven. Vestager said she was not expecting British government’s to pursue this course: “I don’t see why [UK policy] would change.” |
Bermuda insurer of the year accolade awarded to XL Catlin | XL Catlin was named Bermuda insurer of the year by trade publication Reactions. The firm was applauded for committing resources to Bermuda as well as its willingness to support innovation. The variety of products the insurer offers via its Bermuda platform was also lauded.
| http://bernews.com/2017/10/xl-catlin-named-bermuda-insurer-year/ | 2017-10-04 11:31:53.350000 | Insurance industry trade publication Reactions magazine has named XL Catlin as the Bermuda Insurer of the Year.
Patrick Tannock, XL Catlin Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of XL Bermuda Ltd, Insurance, was joined by team members Cathy Duffy, Underwriting Manager; Mark Flanagan, Chief Property Underwriter; Carla Greaves, Chief Excess Casualty Underwriter; Matt Irvine, Chief Underwriting Officer for Bermuda Professional Lines, and Kim Wilkerson, Head of Bermuda Claims for Insurance, as well as North America colleagues at the awards ceremony in New York City on September 28 to celebrate the achievement.
Reactions magazine conducted the awards nomination process throughout the spring and into the summer. They asked executives at brokerage houses in North America which insurance and reinsurance companies have stood out in their market as top performers for the period June 1, 2016 to May 31, 2017 and why.
XL Catlin was selected as Bermuda Insurer of the Year because “it was mentioned by many of the North America brokers as a company with a very strong reputation in terms of consistent high-quality performance”.
The list of companies that are mentioned most by the brokers are then reviewed by a panel of highly-respected and independent industry judges who consider the nominations, along with their own thoughts, when deciding which companies and individuals to select.
According to Reactions, the prevailing comments from the judging panel were that “XL Catlin has committed significant resources in Bermuda [more so than others] and are willing to innovate in what is a traditional marketplace”.
They also noted that XL Catlin’s Bermuda Insurance platform offers “a broad range of products with well-rated capacity and has a consistent team of underwriters”. They added that it is “regarded as one of the key markets on the island for large corporate clients”.
Mr. Tannock, who accepted the award on behalf of the team, said: “We’re honored to receive this award which underscores our user-friendly, friction free and solution-oriented approach to addressing clients’ and brokers’ needs.
“It’s great to be acknowledged and helps to validate the hard work and contributions that our colleagues consistently make to the Bermuda market and beyond.”
Read More About
Category: All, Business, News |
Chatbots may solve issues of patient engagement | Chatbots could be the solution to low patient engagement with mhealth solutions, according to a study by google. The ability to constantly collect patient data allows for increased personalisation, while the ability to communicate using text or speech enables them to be used easily by patients with specific needs, according to the study. Chatbots can also integrate with multiple platforms, making them widely accessible. Artificial intelligence solutions could improve further improve mhealth technology in future.
| http://www.healthtechzone.com/topics/healthcare/articles/2017/10/04/434840-how-chatbots-solve-low-patient-engagement-problem.htm | 2017-10-04 11:20:25.933000 | According to recent studies held by Google and Pew Research Center, today one in twenty Google searches is for health related information, with 80% of Internet users seeking online health information.
Healthcare technology across web, mobile, apps and wearables gains more active users yearly (see image 1). According to Accenture, engagement of medical apps and wearables doubled in two years. At the same time, the number of people that avoid addressing their healthcare needs to various technological solutions decreased in two during the same period. In other words, technology and electronic health management tools continue gathering momentum, with apps and wearables in the lead in terms of growth speed.
Image 1. Credit: Accenture
However, the same Accenture research shows that the growing audience of medical apps addresses health-related needs to digital in fitness or nutrition/diet related situations, while medication managers and chronic disease trackers are adopted at a much lesser scale (see image 2).
Image 2. Credit: Accenture
The most plausible reason of such gap is low patient engagement that has already became a buzzed issue in healthcare. In fact, it has got special attention from healthcare technology companies dedicated to develop efficient solutions to this problem.
Two-Sided Cause of Low Patient Engagement
1. Existing solutions are intuitive, but not intuitive enough
Take medical apps such as reminders and trackers. Despite being perfectly UI/UX designed, they still lack personalization and the sense of time. Creators might have thought through average behavioral and schedule preferences of app users – wake-up time, working hours, work-out itinerary, and adjusted pings and notifications respectively.
However, as everyone’s schedule is different, lack of in-app personalization results in low user response, hence, low patient engagement in the long run. It doesn’t matter how timely 9-o’clock notification to check blood sugar level is. When a patient is stuck in traffic, he or she won’t respond to the app’s ping and most probably miss the procedure.
2. Low patient activation
Another problem of patient engagement stands at the very start of patient’s adoption. Patient activation in one’s healthcare – interest and active involvement – directly determines further engagement.
Technology solutions such as apps, wearables and EHR play major role in increasing patient activation, as more healthcare information becomes available and manageable. However, current generation of technology solutions still has room for improvement. Up to this date, the problems of solutions unable to hook the attention of patients for long or simply helpless for patients with special needs (mental illness, speech or vision disorders) remain.
Future state of mHealth that brings further infusing AI-based technologies, shift to digital omnivores for omnichannel experience, as well as management and security of massive healthcare data is to contribute to the increase of patient activation. In the long run, new features of mHealth solutions will change the rates of patient engagement.
New Technology to Solve Patient Engagement
Apart from the development of existing mHealth, telemedicine and healthcare wearables, hardware and software, new generation of solutions steps in to solve patient engagement problem.
Chatbots that already have broad application in e-commerce, travel and hospitality are predicted to take active part in increasing patient engagement. Along with chatbots for education, chatbots for healthcare are not expected to be complex to diagnose or provide automated medical analysis. At least, not yet. However, there’s a number of cases where this technology will shine, probably, better than traditional apps or non-digital solutions.
4 Features of Healthcare Chatbots that Help in Patient Engagement
1. Chatbots skip activation gateway
Chatbots are mobile native, like apps. Unlike apps, most chatbots are placed into popular messengers. The main benefit in this case, apart from no-need-to-download, is instant activation and feedback, 24/7/365.
Bot operates inside familiar interfaces of existing apps that billions of people use daily. It’s the most valuable benefit for less tech savvy patients of different generations that find it hard to adjust to fast changing design trends on mobile. So as for patients with special needs who may require simpler and more intuitive interfaces to interact with.
2. Chatbots react to emergency fast
If a chatbot is integrated into an active healthcare system and connected to special institutes such as ER, it can promptly alarm and call for help in case of emergency. If a bot has proper functionality, it can even detect the case of emergency, for example, when the patient doesn’t respond to bot’s messages. Another bonus is chatbot interface – text and voice. In case of danger, chatbot provides better reaction to the command “call 911,” compared to app or traditional phone that requires at least activation or dial.
3. Chatbots are more personal
Personalization is a true gem of chatbot technology. Constantly collecting patient data, a personal virtual healthcare assistant adjusts to patient’s specifics in time.
For example, bots powered by NLP technology can adjust to the speech and auditory specifics of the patients with special needs. Recent development in computer vision, in turn, is of help to the patients with visual disability. In other words, chatbots can be more sensitive to individual needs, which moves them closer to medical robots. Still chatbots cost far less than ASIMO or similar robots.
4. Chatbots are omnichannel
Another advantage of chatbot technology is its scalability. This technology is adjustable to mobile environment when it inhabits messenger apps such as Slack, Facebook Messenger, Skype, Kik or Telegram, integrates to web if embedded to websites and lives in voice assistants such as Skills for Amazon Alexa devices or Google Home. Moreover, bots are easily integrated with third-party systems through various APIs.
As far as chatbot application in healthcare is concerned, scalability brings better availability and more consistent experience. For example, one chatbot can perform vitally important functions such as calling an ER in case of emergency across various devices, whichever is closer or on. It gives more intuitive notifications, for instance, on iPhone when a patient is on the move, via web when one is at work and in Alexa when a patient is at home.
These are the key features of chatbots that help to increase patient engagement. Personalization and leveraging of patient data allows bots to be timely and to the point. Text and voice interface helps chatbot technology adjust to specific patient needs and simplify interaction. While scalability and connectivity turns bots into a convenient point of contact across various devices.
However, these are not the only ones that matter. Further adaption of chatbot technology, development of various branches of AI and integration capabilities may help bots drastically change both the rate of patient engagement and the way patients apply healthcare solutions.
Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. [ Free eNews Subscription
Edited by Mandi Nowitz |
US Marines in Middle East use 3D printer to make drones | US Marines in the Middle East are using 3D printing technology to manufacture supplies, including low-cost drones. They have set up the "Ripper Lab", which has 3D printers, design software and materials for the production of equipment, including tools, spare parts and quadcopter drones called Nibblers. The cost of production currently exceeds that of conventionally manufactured equipment, but the flexibility of being able to produce items on site has clear advantages, commanders have said. The Marines are also experimenting with a mobile 3D printing lab called the X-FAB system, which is still in development.
| http://www.3ders.org/articles/20171002-us-marines-ripper-lab-used-to-manufacture-3d-printed-nibbler-drones-in-middle-east.html | 2017-10-04 11:16:11.640000 | Oct 2, 2017 | By Tess
A U.S. Marine Corps task force has set up a 3D printing lab on the ground in the Middle East, using it to 3D print quadcopter drones, tools, medical supplies, and more. Dubbed the “Ripper Lab,” the facility is allowing the task force to print devices and replacement parts on-demand and at a lower cost than shipping them in.
Over the past year, the U.S. Marine Corps has made significant strides with the adoption of additive manufacturing technologies, developing 3D printed components for future smart trucks, experimenting with 3D printed munitions, and perhaps most significantly, manufacturing low-cost drones.
Just months ago, a Marine Corps battalion evaluated the X-FAB system—a self-contained, mobile additive manufacturing lab which consists of four 3D printers, one 3D scanner, and CAD software. The X-FAB lab, which is still in development, would enable devices such as surveillance drones to be produced on-demand and, importantly, on the ground.
As another Marine Corps task force based in the Middle East has shown, 3D printing is already in use and is proving to be a critical technology in the fight against ISIS.
The Marines of Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force Crisis Response-Central Command recently established an on-the-ground 3D printing facility equipped with 3D printers, materials, CAD software, etc. in the Middle East.
Named “Ripper Lab,” the 3D printing test operation was set up to see how well 3D printing could support the troops. A first of its kind, the 3D printer lab is operated by a team of 48 and has been used to manufacture tools such as wrenches, medical supplies, various replacement parts, and a number of quadcopter drones known as “Nibblers.”
These 3D printed drones, of which there are already about 25, are designed for increasing “situational awareness” on patrols. The adaptable UAVs are capable of flying for 20 to 25 minutes at a time, and can be used to monitor and protect the U.S. military’s positions from drones sent by the enemy.
Of course, there are still a few setbacks with the technology. For one, the Nibbler drones cost about $2,000 each to 3D print, quite a bit more than their off-the-shelf counterparts (which reportedly go for about $500 apiece). But the cost difference doesn’t seem to outweigh the advantages of in-situ manufacturing and the easy and cheap production of replacement parts.
(Images: U.S. Marine Corps)
“Across the entire Marine Corps… it takes time to get the training and then the resources, i.e., money to buy the materials and 3D printers and things like that," said Col. Bill Vivian, the commander of the 7th Marine Regiment which led the 3D printing operation. "But 3D printers are coming to each installation in the Marine Corps and that’s starting to unfold now, so I think those possibilities are getting close."
Vivian added that since 3D printing has been adopted in the Marine Corps, he has seen a lot of interest amongst the troops: “Since we engaged and we let Marines at the lowest level know we’re wrestling with this new technology, we found out a lot of them were doing it anyway—several Marines had their own 3D printers. And so just taking advantage of natural talents we have out there, we were able to pull them in and use them to our advantage. It helped retention: Marines were very excited and we were able to do some things faster than we otherwise would have been able to."
Currently, Vivian and his task force are working on improving the 3D printed Nibbler drone by integrating higher-quality cameras and increasing the vehicle's flying time and range.
Posted in 3D Printing Application
Maybe you also like:
|
DeepMind forms an AI ethics unit | Google's artificial intelligence (AI) company DeepMind is forming new unit the DeepMind Ethics & Society (DMES) to analyse all aspects of AI technology, its impact on people and society. "We’re going to be collaborating with all kinds of think tanks and academics. I think it’s exciting to be a company that is putting sensitive issues… on the table for public discussion," said DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman. He added DMES would be more transparent than DeepMind, which will launch a series of other initiatives next year to explore the ethical impacts of AI. | http://www.wired.co.uk/article/deepmind-ethics-and-society-artificial-intelligence | 2017-10-04 11:14:03.970000 | While little is known about the ruminations of DeepMind’s internal ethics and safety board, DMES is intended to be open and transparent. All its research will be published online in full and its six external fellows – who include economist professor Diane Coyle; philosopher and existential risk expert professor Nick Bostrom; international diplomat Christiana Figueres; and economist professor Jeffrey Sachs – have not signed any non-disclosure agreements.
“I can say what I like about anything, anywhere, there’s no constraining agreement,” professor Coyle tells me. She describes her role as a fellow to DMES as conducting academic reviews on research, taking part in workshops and giving feedback. She adds that concerns about DeepMind in-housing crucial AI research are broadly unfounded. “DeepMind is obviously owned by Google now. But you can be too cynical about it. I think they are sincere and genuinely want to achieve some understanding and do some very good research. And I think if a lot more companies did it we’d be in a better place.”
Such cynicism might be founded on DeepMind’s collaboration with the NHS Royal Free Trust to develop an app used to detect acute kidney injury. An investigation into the data-sharing agreement between the firm and the NHS by the Information Commissioner’s Office found that the Royal Free had failed to comply with the data protection act when it handed over details of 1.6 million patients to DeepMind. At the time, a DeepMind spokesperson said the firm “underestimated the complexity of the NHS and of the rules around patient data”. The ICO warned that such work should never be “a choice between privacy or innovation”.
When I raise the issue with Suleyman, he counters that DeepMind created a panel of independent reviewers to scrutinise its work with the NHS, adding the company took “serious measures” to be open and transparent. “There's so much more that we need to do when it comes to interacting with this kind of data in the NHS. And that is really, really challenging,” he says. “It is ambiguous, a lot of the texts are very tough to navigate when it comes to regulation and a lot of it is emerging and trying to catch up with the technology.” If it works as DeepMind hopes, one role for DMES could be to spot similar issues and tackle them in the open based on input from all parties.
“I think having a forum where you can bring a lot of disciplinary views to bear is one of the really attractive things about this” Professor Diane Coyle
The launch of DMES comes little-over a year after the launch of the Partnership on AI, a consortium of technology firms, activist organisations and academic institutions focussed on establishing best practises for developments in artificial intelligence. DeepMind was a founding member, alongside Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft and IBM. For Suleyman, it was necessary to establish DMES alongside the Partnership to tackle the size of the challenge the industry faces. “The objective of DMES is to start to do the work ourselves that I don't see happening elsewhere. The more people doing this research the better. We want there to be lots of orthogonal approaches on this work.” One of the challenges for the Partnership, Suleyman continues, is persuading “all the companies and researchers to get on board with the direction of travel”.
As well partnering with organisations such as the Royal Society and Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, DMES will also work closely with the Partnership on AI. Such work will often involve funding interdisciplinary research. While the existence of DeepMind funding will always be made public, the amount of funding may sometimes remain secret. “I think DeepMind should be applauded for taking the initiative to extend its engagement with questions of ethics and social impacts of AI,” says professor Bostrom. “Of course, if there were only one voice speaking on these issues it would be concerning – and maybe equally concerning whether that one voice was a cooperation, a government, or some nutty academic. Fortunately that is not the world we are living in.” He describes DMES as an effort by DeepMind to expose itself to “a larger set of critical economic and ethical perspectives”. DeepMind will also launch “other initiatives” looking into the ethical and societal impacts of AI in 2018, Suleyman says. |
Ikea uses augmented reality to let customers preview furniture | Furniture retailer Ikea has launched Ikea Place, anaugmented reality (AR) app which shows users what furniture would look in their home before they buy. The app is among the first to use Apple’s ARKit tech. Feedback so far had been "positive", said Michael Valdsgaard, leader of digital transformation at Inter Ikea. The company is already looking at improving the app with a better search function, more items available and the option of direct purchase, said Valdsgaard. Ikea is aiming for €5bn ($5.9bn) in online sales by 2020.
| https://digiday.com/marketing/ikea-using-augmented-reality/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=digidaydis&utm_source=uk&utm_content=171004 | 2017-10-04 11:11:29.930000 | For years, Ikea has relied on shoppers visiting its stores to sell furniture, but now, it’s hoping a smartphone will drive sales.
The retailer is using augmented reality to let customers preview how furniture looks on their smartphones before they buy. Customers use Ikea Place, one of the first apps to use Apple’s ARKit tech, to place the company’s furniture wherever they envision it in their homes.
In Ikea Place, customers can view 3-D renderings from different angles of over 2,000 products before reserving the ones they want in the app, which directs to the Ikea site to complete purchases. Currently, large furniture for living rooms such as sofas, armchairs and storage units are available to preview in the app, though more products are in the pipeline.
Seeing lifelike versions of Ikea’s products in rooms lets shoppers make a “reliable buying” decision, said Michael Valdsgaard, leader of digital transformation at Inter Ikea, the holding company for Ikea.
Ikea has struggled with e-commerce sales partially because of its slow adoption of digital. Allowing people to see what a product would look like in their house without embarking on a three-hour Ikea trip could help the company with online sales, said Daisy Pledge, founder of AR startup Surreal Studios.
Valdsgaard described potential uplift in sales from AR as a “dream scenario” for Ikea, which is targeting €5 billion ($5.9 billion) in online sales by 2020, up from the €1.4 billion ($1.6 billion) it generated in 2016. The business has around 340 stores in 28 countries, with e-commerce services in 14 countries.
“Most people postpone a purchase of a new sofa because they’re not comfortable making the decision if they aren’t sure the color is going to match [the rest of the room] or it fits the style,” he said. “Now, we can give them [those answers] in their hands, while letting them have fun with home furnishing for free and with no effort.”
The app launched in the U.S. on Sept. 19, coinciding with Apple’s iOS 11 update, and is rolling out to other markets over the coming weeks. Valdsgaard declined to reveal how many times Ikea Place has been downloaded but said the reaction has been “positive,” noting that people are sharing how they’re using it online.
Early feedback on social media for Ikea Place inspired its developers to introduce a search feature for people to find specific products, which they built and launched in five days, Valdsgaard said.
“The most important thing for us is that we’re not a tech company,” he said. “In order to sell furniture, we have to understand technology and try to move in the direction it’s moving.”
Better search, more furniture and the ability to buy directly from the app could all be added to future updates. For now, the retailer is focused on driving downloads on Apple devices because the Google AR developer kits are not ready for what it wants to do. Development is being handled by Ikea’s Copenhagen, Denmark-based innovation unit Space10 and AR agency Twnkls.
Ikea Place is also working with agency 72andSunny to build a long-term proposition for the app and AR, which could play as big of a role in Ikea’s ads as its catalog has previously, like in its “Experience the power of a bookbook” campaign in 2014, a satirical take on Apple’s product promotion style that pitched Ikea’s catalog as the latest gadget. To date, ads for Ikea Place encourage people to experiment with it and have revolved around a series of short films, GIFs, a blog post and social media posts. |
French publisher Liberation favours Facebook for revenue | French publisher Libération is succeeding where its rivals have failed by generating revenue from Facebook's Instant Articles (IA). According to Xavier Grangier, the publisher’s head of digital, IA is responsible for 55% of its mobile ad revenue, despite making up just 10% of Libération’s mobile page views. The tool has also enabled it to add 2,000 new subscribers a month to its newsletter since February. "Facebook knows its ads better than others; it owns the data, so it can do a better job at targeting on its platform", said Grangier.
| https://digiday.com/media/french-publisher-liberation-now-gets-half-mobile-ad-revenue-facebook-instant-articles/ | 2017-10-04 11:06:04.807000 | While some publishers have found it challenging to monetize Facebook Instant Articles, French news publisher Libération remains a fan. According to the publisher, it makes more money through ads sold by Facebook via IA than on its own mobile webpages.
Libération has formatted all its 150 daily articles for Facebook’s fast-loading mobile pages feature since January 2016. CPMs have fluctuated: For the month of June, on average, CPMs for ads within the article on IA were $3.56; this figure dropped during the summer lull of July and August to $2.85. In September, it climbed to $3.19, according to the publisher.
Revenue from IA is nearly three times what Libération makes on its own mobile pages, where 96 percent of its ads are sold programmatically, fetching CPMs of around 36 cents, according to the publisher. This increases to $6 for direct ads, but with few of them making up Libération’s mobile webpages, IA revenue emerges on top.
“Facebook knows its ads better than others; it owns the data, so it can do a better job at targeting on its platform,” said Xavier Grangier, the publisher’s head of digital.
Grangier said revenue from IA, which is in the five-figure range, accounts for 55 percent of its mobile revenue (desktop revenue is still the majority). This IA revenue is modest, but it’s punching above its weight because IA accounts for just 10 percent of Libération’s mobile pageviews, he said. A number of factors would account for higher CPMs in IA, including publisher readership, seasonality or fewer pageviews. Grangier said the fill rate for IA is often above 94 percent and 98 percent on Libération’s own mobile site. IA fetches average dwell times of 3.24 minutes, compared to 2.17 minutes on the publisher’s own mobile site, he added.
For other publishers who monetize their own mobile pages more effectively than Libération, through more direct sales, for instance, the reasons for being on IA, while the user experience is good, are less clear-cut — leading publishers to withdraw from it — as most of the data and analytics lie with Facebook. While some publishers suggest that decline in Facebook reach is linked to IA, it’s hard to attribute traffic drops, there is no clear evidence that Facebook prioritizes IA.
Elsewhere in the French market, Le Parisien has been outspoken on the insufficient monetization of IA. Le Monde and Le Figaro decided to eschew the feature.
Facebook has been making more of an effort to offer publishers more monetization routes and data around IA. In June, it introduced more ad units, the company said early tests showed incremental increases in revenue for publishers. Other publishers are seeing IA revenue increase, albeit from low bases. Facebook has said that since the beginning of 2017, revenue per thousand impressions from Facebook Audience Network in IA has increased by over 50 percent. It also introduced call-to-action units for people to sign up for a newsletter or install an app to sweeten the deal for publishers.
Since February, Libération has offered newsletter subscriptions through IA, signing up 2,000 new subscribers a month to its morning briefing, which has about 200,000 subscribers. On its own site, it signs up roughly 500 people a month, but Grangier notes there are fewer email sign-up options on site. IA email sign-up is performing well for Bauer Xcel Media, where IA users are 50 times more likely to sign up for email newsletters than those who visit its own properties. This is partly because users don’t have to enter their email addresses, as Facebook automatically pulls them in.
Libération has 11,000 digital subscribers and gets half of its revenue from its subscriptions, according to Grangier. “For us [IA is] a good thing,” he said. “The problem is we don’t drive subscriptions, but revenue and visibility are important at the moment. This could change in time to focus more on subscriptions.”
Facebook is on the cusp of letting publishers sign up subscribers through IA, a feature Grangier said Libération is interested in using. |
Chinese cinemas accused of not declaring US movie ticket sales | Chinese ticket sales on US films from 2016 are said to have been underrepresented by around 9%, worth roughly $40m in revenue, according to a person reported to have knowledge of a yet-to-be published study by the Motion Picture Association of America. The audit assessed a small percentage of Chinese cinemas and extrapolated the results to offer a countrywide estimate. State-backed distributor the China Film Group has not yet commented on the findings. The figures come as authorities are cracking down on the manipulation of box-office results, and ahead of talks between representatives from the US and Chinese government trade agencies. | http://www.latimes.com/business/hollywood/la-fi-ct-mpaa-audit-china-box-office20171003-story.html | 2017-10-04 10:41:12.643000 | Some Chinese theaters are shortchanging U.S. film studios whose movies are shown in the world’s most populous country, according to a person familiar with an audit conducted by the Motion Picture Assn. of America.
The MPAA, which is the lobbying arm for the six major movie studios, hired accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers last year to audit ticket sales from China amid concerns over the accuracy of reported box-office statistics coming out of the country.
The audit found that the Chinese ticket sales from 2016 were underrepresented by about 9%, amounting to roughly $40 million in lost revenue, according to the person with knowledge of the study, which has not yet been made public. The audit examined the business of a small portion of Chinese theaters and extrapolated the findings to account for the country’s entire marketplace.
Advertisement
The schemes employed by the theaters included underreporting the number of tickets sold to screenings and not disclosing showings of movies, according to the person familiar with the audit who was not authorized to comment publicly about the findings.
China Film Group, the state-backed distributor of most films in the country, has been shown the results of the audit, the individual said, but has yet to comment on the findings.
The MPAA declined to comment.
The audit comes ahead of planned negotiations between the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and its analogous Chinese entity. The talks will center in part on a potential expansion of the quota that allows for U.S. films to be shown in China. Under the existing revenue-sharing pact, which was finalized in 2012, 34 movies from foreign studios can be shown each year in China. U.S. studios receive 25% of the box-office revenue from those pictures.
China is the second-largest film market in the world, behind the U.S. and Canada, and boasts more than 40,000 movie screens. According to MPAA data, China’s box office grew about 4% last year to $6.6 billion.
That actually represented a slowdown from explosive growth in recent years; the drop-off has been attributed in part to a weak film slate and the drying up of discounts from online ticket sellers such as Alibaba Group.
Still, the country is important to the success of major studios’ movies, which are sometimes tailored to appeal to Chinese audiences. Over the years, distinct versions of films including “Looper” and “Iron Man 3” have been created for China.
In some cases, U.S. movies perform better in China than they do domestically. “Transformers: The Last Knight,” the latest film in the Paramount Pictures action franchise, grossed nearly $120 million in China in its opening weekend, nearly triple the Michael Bay movie’s tepid $45 million stateside bow in June, according to Box Office Mojo.
Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for data firm ComScore, said the Chinese market is “vitally important to the success of individual movies.”
Some films, he said, “often are able to become hits rather than misses when the China component is figured into the box-office equation.”
Ahead of the release of the findings of the audit, which were first reported by the Wall Street Journal, Chinese authorities had already signaled a willingness to examine and crack down on the potential distortion of box-office data provided by companies operating there.
In 2016, the Beijing-based distributor of the Mike Tyson-starring martial arts picture “Ip Man 3” was barred from releasing films for a month after an investigation found the company had inflated the film’s opening-weekend box-office tally by nearly $5 million, the Times reported last year. Pumping up the film’s theatrical take allowed its producers to boast about the outsized success of the project.
[email protected]
@DanielNMiller |
Russian-linked Facebook ads targeted swing states | Several of the ads paid for by Russia on Facebook during the 2016 US presidential campaign specifically targeted swing states Michigan and Wisconsin, where Donald Trump won by a few thousand votes, according to multiple sources cited by CNN. The ads have already been described as spreading "divisive social political messages", but this is the first information regarding demographic and geographic targeting to be revealed. Representatives from Twitter, Google and Facebook will testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee investigating alleged Russian meddling in the election on 1 November.
| https://www.engadget.com/2017/10/04/facebook-russia-ads-michigan-wisconsin/ | 2017-10-04 10:38:24.390000 | More details are emerging about the Russia-linked ads Facebook handed over to Congressional investigators just days ago. According to multiple sources who spoke to CNN, a number of the paid posts specifically targeted two states that were crucial to Trump's victory in November: Michigan and Wisconsin. Facebook has already revealed that the 3,000 ads (viewed by roughly 10 million people) focused on "divisive social political messages," including issues about race, LGBT topics, immigration, and gun rights. But, the latest info sheds light on the geographic and demographical targeting of the promotional messages -- two aspects Facebook has not discussed in detail.
Trump beat Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in Michigan by just 10,704 votes. Wisconsin too was a tight race, with Trump grabbing victory by 22,700 votes. Just days after the results were announced, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg swiped back at his critics by claiming it was "crazy" to think that fake news on his platform swayed the election. He's since said he regrets those remarks. But, bogus articles were just part of the machinery used by nefarious forces, along with promoted events, and ads. The latter saw Facebook's comprehensive (and controversial) ad targeting tool utilized to target groups in key areas of Michigan and Wisconsin, people with knowledge on the matter told CNN.
Facebook is cooperating with the Senate Intelligence Committee investigating Russia's alleged social media interference during the elections. However, it's not the only one in the dock. Twitter also recently handed over evidence of over 1,800 Russia Today accounts that posted targeted ads in the US. Total Spend on the advertisements, which were also created during the 2016 election, came to $274,100. Despite its willingness to hand over data, it seems the company has not shut down several accounts associated with the so-called propagandist news outlet. As Recode points out, the @RT_com, @RT_America, and @ActualidadRT are still fully active. What's more, they have not reportedly been banned from advertising on the platform.
Elsewhere, Russia Today has lost a powerful soapbox. Google -- which is also being rounded up as part of the Senate's extensive investigation -- just removed Russia Today from its premium YouTube ad program (known as Google Preferred). Facebook, Google, and Twitter will be questioned by Senate lawmakers on November 1st. |
Interest-only mortgage risks 'not clear' to Australian borrowers | A third of Australian homeowners may be unaware of the risks associated with interest-only mortgages, with a lack of financial literacy possibly to blame, according to a survey by UBS. Interest-only loans offer lenders an initial period when they pay off only the interest on the mortgage, but after that has elapsed, they must pay back the main loan as well, or refinance. Analyst Jonathan Mott said customers could face increases of between 30% and 60% at the end of interest-only periods, which could lead to "substantial stress". In 2015, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission questioned banks' credit standards in interest-only lending. | http://www.smh.com.au/business/banking-and-finance/one-in-three-dont-understand-their-interestonly-loans-says-ubs-20171004-gyu2r5.html | 2017-10-04 10:35:22.587000 | A third of customers with interest-only mortgages may not properly understand the type of loan they have taken out, which could put many in "substantial" stress when the time comes to pay their debt, UBS analysts warn.
Amid a regulatory crackdown on interest-only loans, a new report by analysts led by Jonathan Mott highlights the potential for repayment difficulties with this type of mortgage.
Typically, an interest-only loan will allow a customer to only pay interest for the first five years. After that, they must start also paying principal, which raises their monthly payments substantially - or attempt to refinance.
However, the UBS analysts believe there is a real risk many consumers do not realise their mortgage payments will rise in this manner. |
Kazakhstan to earn $1bn from gas export deal with China | Kazakhstan will export 5 billion cubic metres of natural gas to neighbouring China as part of a new trade agreement, earning the central Asian nation an expected $1bn. JSC KazTransGas and PetroChina signed an agreement on 30 September and gas exports are due to start on 15 October. The deal aims to boost bilateral ties and focuses on infrastructure, trade and transport links. | http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/kazakhstan-to-start-exporting-gas-to-china-on-october-15/article19795387.ece | 2017-10-04 10:24:24.690000 | October 04, 2017 11:09 am | Updated 11:11 am IST - ASTANA:
Kazakhstan has signed a trade agreement with China covering exports of 5 billion cubic meters of natural gas to the Asian giant for a year, a deal that is expected to generate $1 billion in earnings for the Central Asian country, JSC KazTransGas said on Tuesday.
“The contract was signed by JSC KazTransGas and PetroChina International Company Limited on September 30 in Beijing. Gas export deliveries are scheduled to begin on October 15,” the Kazakh company’s press service said in a statement, reports Efe.
“Expected export earnings will be around $1 billion,” JSC KazTransGas said.
The natural gas will come from fields in western Kazakhstan, as well as reserves at JSC KazMunayGas’s underground storage facilities.
Via the Khorgos border point
China will take delivery of the gas via the Khorgos border point, the most important trade frontier between the countries.
“The diversification of transit and export routes for gas transportation in Kazakhstan, as well as the increase in the volume of natural gas exports, are important strategic objectives for the country,” JSC KazMunayGas vice president of transportation and gas trading Kairat Sharipbayev said.
Exports of Kazakh gas to China are aimed at promoting beneficial bilateral relations focused on creating a common infrastructure and establishing trade and transport links in the Eurasian region, the statement said.
The agreement also calls for bolstering bilateral strategic energy relations, as indicated by the production of 25 per cent of Kazakh oil by Chinese companies. |
Amazon's Echo and Alexa launch in India, by invitation only | Amazon is releasing its Echo speakers and accompanying voice-activated assistant Alexa in the Asian market for the first time, with an invitation-only offer to Indian customers. Amazon said the Alexa device will have an all-new English voice and offer a "customised Indian experience", as a host of developers race to create skills covering Indian music service Saavn, the Times of India and ride-hailing firm Ola, among others. Shipping is due to begin at the end of October. India is Amazon's fourth market launch for Echo, and the country has become a hotbed for Western firms such as Apple and Intel.
| https://venturebeat.com/2017/10/04/amazon-launches-alexa-and-echo-by-invitation-in-india-japan-coming-later-this-year/ | 2017-10-04 10:20:25.283000 | Missed the GamesBeat Summit excitement? Don't worry! Tune in now to catch all of the live and virtual sessions here.
Amazon has announced that its smart Echo speakers and accompanying Alexa voice service are now available in India, but by invitation only.
Additionally, Amazon announced that the Echo will be landing in Japan “later this year,” according to a separate press release.
Those wishing to buy an Echo, Echo Plus, or Echo Dot in India can request an invitation to purchase a device through Amazon.in today, with local pricing coming in at ₹9,999 ($153), ₹14,999 ($230), and ₹4,499 ($69), respectively. The initial batch of devices is slated to start shipping from October 30.
Echo, echo, echo…
Following an invite-only period that kicked off more than three years ago, Amazon launched the Echo in the U.S. in July 2015 before extending it into Germany and the U.K. last year. India represents the fourth official market launch for Echo, and the first in Asia. The news comes just a week after Amazon unveiled a triumvirate of new Echo devices, including a second-generation Echo, the new Echo Plus, and the Echo Spot alarm clock.
Event Transform 2023 Join us in San Francisco on July 11-12, where top executives will share how they have integrated and optimized AI investments for success and avoided common pitfalls. Register Now
For now, Alexa — the digital voice-activated assistant that can understand and answer your questions — still only speaks English and German. English is, of course, an official language in India, but for the Indian launch Amazon said that Alexa will deliver a “customized Indian experience,” with an “all-new English voice” that understands and converses in local pronunciations and intonation. It will also support music titles, names, and places in additional non-English languages. And Indian developers are building skills for the local market, covering Saavn, Times of India, ESPNcricinfo, Ola, and FreshMenu, among others.
Rumors of an imminent Indian launch had abounded for some time. An Economic Times report from July noted that while English would be the predominant language at launch, Alexa would later be updated to include regional tongues, such as Tamil, Hindi, and Marathi. However, Amazon hasn’t given any indication that this is the case or when a language expansion may be expected.
Battle for the “next billion”
India has emerged as a key battleground for Western tech firms, with Apple committed to selling iPhones manufactured in Bengaluru, Google going all-in to target the “next billion” internet users across the country, Intel spending $178 million on a new “smart and green” R&D facility there, and Facebook showing growing interest. Last year, Amazon opened its first Indian AWS data center in Mumbai to help enhance data transfer speeds and to satisfy local data sovereignty concerns.
With the smart speaker market heating up, and both Google and Apple offering devices similar to the Echo, Amazon is keen to get a head start in what could prove a lucrative market for the fast-growing product line. The company revealed that the Echo Dot was its best-selling product on Prime Day in the U.S. this year, though that was probably largely due to its huge temporary discount. |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.