The EU’s struggle with legal roadblocks and its crippling level of investment will be the elephant in the room during discussions on the bloc’s bid to introduce 5G that will take place at this year’s Mobile World Congress. European legislators and telecoms industry analysts described a new sense of urgency this year, as companies from other parts of the world get ready to debut their 5G services in Barcelona.

   
Insight: business deals (euractiv)

   

   
The global chemicals industry can achieve a substantial reduction in its emissions by 2030 through concerted abatement efforts. While some of the measures identified will be net-profit-positive (and will at least partially occur as part of the BAU case), other steps will require a considerable financial and technological effort, especially when one takes a business view (10% interest rate, depreciation over 10 years), rather than a societal view (4% interest rate, depreciation over lifetime).

   
The chemical industry’s contribution (icca-chem)

   

   
Since its introduction about five years ago, CRISPR–Cas9 gene editing has become a key tool in many biology laboratories around the world. The technique allows researchers to make changes to the genome at specific sites with much greater ease than previous methods, but it still has some frustrating limitations. Revamping Cas9 protein could work on more sites in the genome, and with fewer unwanted effects.

   
Revamping Cas9 protein (nature)

   

   
Artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and other forms of ‘smart automation’ are advancing at a rapid pace and have the potential to bring great benefits to the economy, by boosting productivity and creating new and better products and services. For advanced economies like the US, the EU and Japan, these technologies coul d hold the key to reversing the slump in productivity growth seen since the global financial crisis. But they could also produce a lot of disruption.

   
Key impacts in the three waves of automation (pwc)

   

   
This year’s Most Innovative Companies coverage is filled with inspiring examples of creativity, discipline, and positive change. It is our most robust edition ever, including top 10 lists in 36 categories, drawn from a research pool of thousands of companies all across the globe. (Many organizations nominated themselves through a new submission process this year.).

   
How to guide you through 2018 ? (fastcompany)

   

   
During oral arguments, the Department of Justice, by contrast, urged the court to compel Microsoft to hand over the data. The DOJ said that allowing Microsoft to refuse the order is tantamount to encouraging companies to keep particularly sensitive data overseas as a way to evade authorities. Two liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who have recently ruled on the side of privacy in the past, questioned whether the court should be stepping in.

   
Fears inside Silicon Valley (arstechnica)

   

   
The EU is losing 95% of the value of the plastics it produces. But the European Commission has a strategy to make plastic packaging more sustainable, both environmentally and economically. Now the Commission is ready to push ahead with the full plan, with a headline goal of making all plastics produced in the EU reusable or recyclable by 2030.

   
EU' Plastics strategy unveiled (euractiv)

   

  US farms vs UK/EU farms

   
Livestock raised for food in the US are dosed with five times as much antibiotic medicine as farm animals in the UK, new data has shown, raising questions about rules on meat imports under post-Brexit trade deals. The difference in rates of dosage rises to at least nine times as much in the case of beef cattle, and may be as high as 16 times the rate of dosage per cow in the UK.

   
Behind free trade deal (saveour)    UK-US antibiotic comparison  (saveour)

   

   
Aerospace engineers and futurists have been aware of the advantages of space manufacturing for some time. The ultra-clean vacuum out there could enable the manufacture of very pure pharmaceutical products, crystals, and alloys. Zero gravity and the absence of air turbulence lend themselves to the handling of large components and their assembly into giant structures.

   
Manufacturing in space (qualitydigest)

   

   
Companies will need to make fundamental changes and transform their operations to be the intelligence engine of the business and build the capabilities they need to succeed. What sort of changes? HfS researched 460 enterprise customers across the globe to find out what senior operations executives think and how businesses are preparing themselves to succeed in the future.

   
The future belongs to intelligent operations (accenture)

   

   
The companies’ technological push is encouraged by the government. Beijing has said it wants to be a leader in A.I. by 2030 and pledged to take on the United States in the field. While officials have emphasized the use of artificial intelligence in areas like defense and self-driving cars, they have also aggressively promoted its use in health care.

   
Alibaba & Tencent collaboration (nytimes)

   

   
The underlying drivers of human decision making have become exponentially more complex in recent years. Yet transactional data, traditional market research and demographic profiles alone are proving inadequate to explain not just what customers are doing, but why. And our research has led us to focus on five key dimensions of customer behavior — motivation, attention, connection, watch and wallet.

   
How & why people make decisions (kpmg)

   

   

“Three factors make the United States favourable to business now,” notes CEO advisor and author Ram Charan. “First, no country has better mechanisms for funding risks or for raising capital. Second, robotic technology is advancing rapidly, and thus labour cost arbitrage – less expensive labour in other countries – is no longer a restricting factor.

   
The Anxious Optimist in the Corner Office

   

   
In the past few months, IBM and Intel have announced that they have made quantum computers with 50 and 49 qubits, respectively, and Google is thought to have one waiting in the wings. “There is a lot of energy in the community, and the recent progress is immense,” said physicist Jens Eisert of the Free University of Berlin. There is now talk of impending “quantum supremacy”.

   
The tremendous speedup of calculation (wired)

   

   
Someone in the firm invents the wheel. “This is the way to solve it,” they say, and then the organization passes this on to the next generation in the organization. That’s one reason organizations exist, you know? So you don’t have to reinvent the wheel all the time. But we think this process works, and we just pass it on, not being aware of when circumstances change, especially when they change gradually.

   
How to instill good practice ? (strategy-business)
    

   
The credibility of a computer program used for bail and sentencing decisions has been called into question after it was found to be no more accurate at predicting the risk of reoffending than people with no criminal justice experience who were provided with only the defendant’s age, gender and criminal history.

   
Study queries program’s use in courts (advances.sciencemag)

   

   
Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center researchers developed a single blood test that screens for eight common cancer types and helps identify the location of the cancer. The test, called CancerSEEK, is a unique noninvasive, multianalyte test that simultaneously evaluates levels of eight cancer proteins and the presence of cancer gene mutations from circulating DNA in the blood.

   
Test Screens for Eight Cancer Types (hopkinsmedicine)

   

   
This year’s report covers more risks than ever, but focuses in particular on four key areas: environmental degradation, cybersecurity breaches, economic strains and geopolitical tensions. And in a new series called “Future Shocks” the report cautions against complacency and highlights the need to prepare for sudden and dramatic disruptions. Over this medium-term period, environmental and cyber risks predominate.

   
The growing strain on the global systems (docdroid pub)

   

   
This BAT reference document for the Production of Large Volume Organic Chemicals forms part of a series presenting the results of an exchange of information between EU Member States, the industries concerned, non-governmental organisations promoting environmental protection and the Commission, to draw up, review, and where necessary, update BAT reference documents as required by Article 13 of the Directive.

   

Best evailable tech. (eippcb.jrc.ec.europa)

   

  UK: foreign student & Higher education

   
The total benefit to the UK economy associated with a typical EU-domiciled student was approximately £87,000, with the comparable estimate for non-EU-domiciled students standing at approximately £102,000. The difference between the two estimates is primarily driven by the relatively higher tuition fees charged to non-EU-domiciled students.

   
Contribution to UK' economy (hpi.ac)

   

   
Last week, Baidu set up a booth at the CES trade show in Las Vegas for the first time. Nestled within a section for robotics, far away from the mega-spaces of tech behemoths like Samsung and Sony, Baidu’s presence wasn’t the splashiest. But by showing up, Baidu was hoping to leave an impression on current and potential partners that operate outside of China.

   
The openness is critical for success (fastcompany)

   

   
Windows OS users are targetted by viruses, malware, ransomware, and hackers more than any other operating systems. To safeguard the data, users must install a good antivirus software on their computer. There are a plethora of free antivirus software available for download. Unfortunately, not all programs are good. Windows OS also has a built-in antivirus utility called Windows Defender.

   
Security software from renowned company (techwayz)

   

   
What to tax? Where to tax it? How to tax it? These are three big questions facing tax authorities and the governments which supervise them in the 21st Century. The opening up of the world economy through the expansion of trade and investment since the 1990s has enabled major new players to emerge on the world stage.

   
Paying taxes 2018 (pwc)

   

   
The decline in bees and other pollinators is worrying because they fertilise about 75% of all food crops, with half of pollination being done by wild species. Pesticides, habitat destruction, disease and climate change have all been implicated, but little research has been done on which factors cause the most damage.

   
The missing target (blogs.cornell)

   

   
Wealth managers are next up to feel the Millennial headwind. Born 1982 through 1995, this group is entering the investment scene in earnest. The good news is: This scenario brings opportunity for investment firms who can master the hybrid advice mix. Despite their love of all things digital, this tech-savvy group will still require the human touch and nuanced advice a human advisor can give— particularly in more complex investing situations.

   
Millennials related to the digit. mix (accenture)

   

   
Detecting reciprocity in the international system has at least two additional challenges. First, reciprocity requires cooperation between states to be coupled, such that cooperation by state A toward state B influences cooperation by state B toward state A and vice versa. A second challenge is that many models for detecting reciprocity can reach the wrong conclusion.

   
Detecting reciprocity: empirical & evolutionary (advances.sciencemag)

   

   
Over the past 10 years, further maturation of the “science” of gene therapy, safety modifications, and improvements in gene transfer efficiency and delivery have finally resulted in substantial clinical progress. Several gene and gene-modified cell- based therapies are already approved drugs, and over a dozen others have earned “ breakthrough therapy ” designation by regulators in the United States and around the world.

   
The present-day of clinical treatment (sciencemag)

   

   
The renewables revolution offers technology-driven energy generation and distribution, consistently and at an increasingly reasonable price. Innovative technology, designed to increase and maintain security of supply and meet growing consumer demand, is being introduced with impressive speed. The energy sector itself is undergoing consolidation in some countries while in others, new, smaller and more agile providers are stepping onto the stage at a steady pace.

   
Great expectations (kpmg)

   

   
In biomes where water availability is generally good,seasonal, daily and sporadic conditions can mean that life has to be able to survive its absence. Surprisingly, some organisms are able to survive complete loss of all their body water, to undergo anhydrobiosis. The biochemistry of anhydrobiosis challenges ideas of what ‘being alive’ really means and promises exciting biotechnological applications.

   
A third state of possibility (biochemist)

   

   
This in-depth analysis examines the issue of the possible revocation of a withdrawal notification under article 50 TEU. In light of the ongoing negotiations on the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, the possibility for the UK to revoke its withdrawal notification has become a significant political and legal/institutional issue. The analysis examines the case of revocation of a withdrawal notification under international law and under the EU law.

   
Legal/institutional issue (europa)

   

   
Researchers at F-Secure have revealed another weakness in Intel's management firmware that could allow an attacker with brief physical access to PCs to gain persistent remote access to the system, thanks to weak security in Intel's Active Management Technology (AMT) firmware—remote "out of band" device management technology installed on 100 million systems over the last decade, according to Intel.

   
Another security flaw (arstechnica)

   

   
Despite many challenges with biopharma R&D, there are numerous examples of innovation that demonstrate pharma’s resilience and optimism about the future – from the approval of numerous immunotherapies to the first ever approvals of chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR-T) therapies this year. Furthermore, there are a range of advanced technologies that have the potential to transform R&D across the entire value chain.

   
Key findings for top 12 biopharma (deloitte)

   

   
Flow chemistry is no longer a novel technology largely relegated to drug discovery labo ratories. Most pharmaceutical companies and some contract manufacturers have embraced continuous manufacturing to some degree for both drug substance and drug product manufacturing. Several factors are considered when determining whether batch or flow production methods are warranted.

   
How to perform hazardous reactions ? (pharmtech)

   

   
Algorithms don’t notice (nor do they care about) branding efforts, celebrity endorsements, or publicity campaigns — and there’s a very real possibility they’ll soon sit squarely between an organization and its customers. This poses a potential problem for consumer packaged goods and retailers. If there is no longer a physical place where a brand might exist and come to life for consumers, how will brands connect with shoppers?

   
Fjord trends (fjordnet)

   

   
The guidance refers to the EFSA PPR opinion in many instances. In addition, the first version of this guidance, issued in 2012 by the EFSA PPR Panel, has been revised in 2017 on the basis of new available data on human in vitro dermal absorption for PPPs and wherever clari fi cations were needed. Basic details of experimental design, available in the respective test guidelines and accompanying guidance for the conduct of studies, have not been addressed.

   
Human in vitro dermal absorption (wiley/j.efsa)

   

   
To keep the evolutionary pace of the technology, NAND Flash must scale aggressively in terms of bit cost. When approaching ultra-scaled technologies, planar NAND is hitting a wall: both academia researchers and industry worked to cope with this issue for several decades. Then, the 3D integration approach turned out to be the definitive alternative by eventually reaching mass production. This review paper exposes several 3D NAND Flash memory technologies.

   
The 3D NAND Flash Memories (mdpi)

   

   
The technology, media and entertainment, and telecommunications ecosystem remains as fascinating as ever in 2018. Will augmented reality become mainstream? How will machine learning affect the enterprise? What's the future of the smartphone? Deloitte Global invites you to read the latest Predictions report, designed to provide insight into transformation and growth opportunities over the next one to five years.

   
Global Predictions (deloitte)

   

   
Recent studies have highlighted a myriad of ways in which the activity and composition of the gut microbiota can affect the host organism. A primary way in which the gut microbiota affect host physiology is by the production of metabolites, such as short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs), which are subsequently absorbed into the bloodstream of the host.

   
How symbiotic microbes affect health ? (quantamagazine)

   

   
This paper is investigati ng whether the climate policy targets for 2050 and 2030 respectively are achievable and what conditions must be met. The evaluation is based on the Paris Agreement, the climate protection targets of the EU and insights from the UBA- study Klimaschutzbeitrag des Verkehrs bis 2050 [UBA, 2016a].

   
Climate protection in transport (umweltbundesamt)

   

   
Its features an approximate 30 percent productivity gain over the company’s 1st–generation 10nm-class 8Gb DDR4. In addition, the new 8Gb DDR4’s performance levels and energy efficiency have been improved about 10 and 15 percent respectively, thanks to the use of an advanced, proprietary circuit design technology. The new 8Gb DDR4 can operate at 3,600 megabits per second (Mbps) per pin.

   
A newly devised data sensing system (samsung)

   

   
For many of us, Bayesian statistics is voodoo magic at best, or completely subjective nonsense at worst. Among the trademarks of the Bayesian approach, Markov chain Monte Carlo methods are especially mysterious. They’re math-heavy and computationally expensive procedures for sure, but the basic reasoning behind them, like so much else in data science, can be made intuitive.

   
Introduction to Monte Carlo methods (towardsdatascience)

   

   
In the Middle East, burdened by systems of governance that are far less future-friendly, and under threats from extremists that would drag them even further into the past, they dream of the desert: wide open empty spaces where the future can be constructed anew. At least, that’s the vision Saudi Arabia has invoked with its recently announced plans for $500 billion techutopia mega-city Neom.

   
How to reinvent the rules ? (techcrunch)

   

   
On Dec. 4, 2017, a final round of comments from industry stakeholders who raised questions over FDA’s draft guidance, “Statistical Approaches to Evaluate Analytical Similarity,” about how to conduct analytical evaluation of similarity in biosimilars, was published on the website www.regulations.gov. Several biopharma majors were among the commenters and Other industry stakeholders include the Association for Accessible Medicines (AAM).

   
The risk of restricting approvals (pharmtech)

   

   
From a government perspective, flexible retirement is a two-edged sword. On the one hand, it can increase people’s well-being by allowing them to combine work and a partial pension if they wish and it may entice some people to work longer. This, in turn, can help increase workers’ future pensions. Working longer will also contribute to greater economic growth and higher tax revenues.

   
Pension policy vs wider labour market policies (oecd)

   

   
The company intends to sell the chips to third-party manufacturers and to cloud vendors including Google. Meanwhile, it’s releasing a new computer powered by the Power9 chip, the AC922 and it intends to offer the chips in a service on the IBM cloud. “We generally take our technology to market as a complete solution,” Brad McCredie, IBM fellow and vice president of cognitive systems explained.

   
The Swiss Army knife (techcrunch)

   

   
To look into possible mechanisms behind the gender differences, a team of researchers from the US focused on a type of white blood cell, known as ILC2 cells, that originate in the bone marrow and become “seeded” in particular tissues of the body, including the lungs, early in life. When an allergen enters the lungs, the cells lining the airways secrete proteins that in turn trigger ILC2 to expand and produce yet more proteins, which kick off a cascading inflammatory response.

   
Sex hormones could be behind the trend (cell)

   

   
If we are to have a serious discussion of the possibilities of a new industrial strategy we need a clear grasp of the history of industrial change. Deindustrialisation measured as a falling share of industrial in total employment is now almost universal (including highly successful industrial countries such as Germany and also China), and understanding why this has happened should help make us realistic about what any future industrial strategy can deliver.

   
What works best four UK ? (gov.uk)

   

   
CRISPR/Cas9 system has recently been repurposed to enable target gene activation, allowing regulation of endogenous gene expression without creating DSBs. However, in vivo implementation of this gain-of-function system has proven difficult. Here, we report a robust system for in vivo activation of endogenous target genes through trans-epigenetic remodeling.

   
A CRISPR/Cas9 system involvement (cell)

   

   
Windows has been knocking around in some form or another for a grand total of 32 years now, and in that time it’s amassed a lot of features—not just the newest bells and whistles but long-standing features you might have forgotten about or never even discovered in the first place. Here are 10 really useful tricks that Windows 10 is capable of that you might not know about, but should definitely know about.Here the 10 really useful tricks.

   
10 Features you probably never use (gizmodo)

   

   
In the past decade, studies in this area have been revolutionized by the plunge in gene sequencing costs. The human genome project began in 1990 and cost about $2.7 billion — roughly $100 million per sequenced genome. Today, a genome can be sequenced for approximately $1,000 to $2,000, and we’re nearing a longstanding goal of the $100 genome.

   
What bacteria can tell us? (quantamagazine)

   

   
The Index was developed in part to address the need for a consistent and comprehensive measure for gender equality that can track a country’s progress over time. The Index does not seek to set priorities for countries but, rather, to provide a comprehensive set of data and a clear method for tracking gaps on critical indicators so that countries may set priorities within their own economic, political and cultural contexts.

   
The state of the world (weforum)

   

   
Estimates of US attributable burden and economic costs from 2003 through 2014. In utero exposure to perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) has been associated with decreases in birth weight. We aimed to estimate the proportion of PFOA-attributable low birth weight (LBW) births and associated costs in the US from 2003 to 2014, a period during which there were industry-initiated and regulatory activities aimed at reducing exposure.

   
Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) & low birth weight (medicalxpress)

   

   
Technology could be used to wipe out malaria carrying mosquitos or other pests but UN experts say fears over possible military uses and unintended consequences strengthen case for a ban.A US military agency is investing $100m in genetic extinction technologies that could wipe out malarial mosquitoes, invasive rodents or other species, emails released under freedom of information rules show.

   
$100m in genetic extinction technologies (theguardian)

   

   
Many of us, though, tend to think of our brains not as muscles, but as a computer: a machine capable of constant work. Not only is that untrue, but pushing ourselves to work for hours without a break can be harmful, some experts say. “The idea that you can indefinitely stretch out your deep focus and productivity time to these arbitrary limits is really wrong.

   
"karoshi" or death by overwork (bbc)

   

   
Genetically modified skin transplants from its own stem cells saved the child’s life.A medical team at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum’s burn unit and the Center for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Modena (Italy) were the first ever to successfully treat a child suffering from extensive skin damage using transplants derived from genetically modified stem cells.

   
Genetically modified skin (rub)

   

   
CFOs also remain optimistic about revenue prospects for their companies, with more than two-thirds of CFOs expecting their companies’ revenues to grow. Expectations for revenue growth are generally greater than for improving profit margins; the net balance of CFOs who expect revenues to increase is more than twice as high as for those expecting margins to increase.

   
Revenues and margins expectations (deloitte)

   

   
Bacteria are well known for being able to form biofilms on inert surfaces such as plastic and glass, and hence on medical devices including catheters, ventilator tubes, and enteral feeding tubes3. Biofilms form when bacteria attach to a surface and then continue to grow forming a layer composed of extracellular materials, such as polysaccharides. Such biofilms are recalcitrant to antibiotics, and are hard to physically remove4.

   
A clinical proof of concept (nature)

   

   
In fact, 63% of regional business leaders surveyed by PwC expect their global footprint to expand over the next three years. A net 50% plan to increase investments globally, up from 43% at the same time last year. Executives are forging ahead despite tremendous uncertainty over trade policy directions. They will balance an array of incentives — both economic and market-driven — to do more internationally against threats of rising barriers to foreign trade and investment.

   
Perspectives from CEOs (pwc)

   

   
Business schools are in an enrollment slump. Applications for full-time, two-year Master of Business Administration programs in the U.S. have declined since 2015. Last year 64 percent of U.S. full-time MBA programs received fewer applications, according to the Graduate Management Admission Council’s 2017 Application Trends Survey Report.

   
How to adjust to fit market pressures ? (bloomberg)

   

   
Much of the money going into African technology comes not from philanthropists but from hard-nosed investors looking for attractive returns. In 2016 African tech firms raised a record $367m. Although paltry by the standards of Silicon Valley, this is helping to stimulate the setting up of firms such as Flutterwave, a Nigerian payments company, and Zipline, which uses drones to deliver blood to clinics in Rwanda.

   
The leapfrog model (economist)

   

   
Intel’s Coffee Lake launched six weeks ago, but finding the chips online has sometimes been challenging. In order to ensure a continuous supply of the Intel Core i5-8400 Processor, Intel Core i5-8600K Processor, Intel Core i7-8700 Processor, and Intel Core i7-8700K Processor listed in the ‘Products Affected’ Table below, Intel will be adding an additional manufacturing site for Assembly/Test.

   
Ensuring a continuous supply (extremetech)

   

   
This assessment concludes, based on extensive evidence, that it is extremely likely that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse gases, are the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century. For the warming over the last century, there is no convincing alternative explanation supported by the extent of the observational evidence.

   
Authoritative assessment (globalchange)

   

   
Security experts have filed a proposal with the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) that defines a secure framework for delivering firmware updates to Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Filed on Monday by three ARM employees, their submission has entered the first phase of a three-stage process for becoming an official Internet standard.

   
The proposed IETF draft (bleepingcomputer)

   

   
Across the entire US-based workforce, increasingly sophisticated value chains have caused the nature of work to shift away from relatively routine work environments to ones filled with growing diversity and complexity. In particular, there has been growth in highly cognitive non-routine work (including professional or managerial work). From 1970 to 2009, highly cognitive non-routine work grew by 60%, while repetitive work declined by 12%.

   
Z Generation' workforce (deloitte)

   

   
Across the globe, businesses are racing to implement new technologies, using data to innovate and grow in an increasingly interconnected world. But as companies become more reliant on cyber capabilities, they must also recognize and manage the associated risks. To compete in the emerging digital world, companies must protect themselves from cyber risks, and become more resilient to cyber shocks – large scale events with cascading disruptive consequences.

   
Strengthening digital society (pwc)

   

   
Lake Victoria is essential to the lives of over 30 million people. Water pollution, resource exploitation and a lack of regional cooperation are threatening its ecological balance. The situation is exacerbated by the high population growth rate. There are justifiable doubts as to whether the future of the essential water resource provided by Africa’s largest lake is secure.

   
Victoria' Lake (kas)

   

   
Silicon Valley is going all out to own America’s school computer-and-software market, projected to reach $21 billion in sales by 2020. An industry has grown up around courting public-school decision makers, and tech companies are using a sophisticated playbook to reach them, The New York Times has found in a review of thousands of pages of Baltimore County school documents.

   
Preparing students for the new economy (nytimes)

   

   
A vaccine combining centralized ancestral genes from four major influenza strains appears to provide broad protection against the dangerous ailment, according to new research by a team from the Nebraska Center for Virology. Mice protected by the unconventional vaccine survived exposure to lethal doses of seven of nine widely divergent influenza viruses.

   
Promising avenue toward a universal flu shot (nature)

   

  Mastering the Game in a short time

   
Recently, AlphaGo became the first program to defeat a world champion in the game of Go. The tree search in AlphaGo evaluated positions and selected moves using deep neural networks. These neural networks were trained by supervised learning from human expert moves, and by reinforcement learning from selfplay.

   
Continuous improvement without human knowledge (deepmind)

   

  Sustainable Chemistry

   
For evaluating of the sustainability of different production pathways and feedstock, it is mandatory to carefully assess all sustainability indicators. Generally the biomass routes are advantageous in terms of GHG emissions but effects are often lower than usually expected, if a cradle to gate analysis is made and all effects including crop cultivation, fertilizers, harvesting, transport, land use etc. are taken into account.

   
Priority topics (umweltbundesamt)

   

  Digital economy outlook 2017

   
The biennial OECD Digital Economy Outlook examines and documents evolutions and emerging opportunities and challenges in the digital economy. It highlights how OECD countries and partner economies are taking advantage of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and the Internet to meet their public policy objectives.

   
OECD' analysis

   

  What can epigenetics do for you?

   
Much of what we now regard as epigenetics consists of processes by which genetic information encoded in DNA is converted into cellular and organismal phenotypes; and from the organism’s point of view, it’s phenotype that matters. These epigenetic processes are influenced by a variety of environmental factors, including some such as diet, lifestyle and medication that are in our own hands; and it’s still much easier to change your diet than your DNA.

   
The intimate link "DNA & Epigenetic" (biochemis)

   

  EU' best available techniques

   
As equired in Article 13(3) of the Directive, the Commission has established a forum to promote the exchange of information, which is composed of representatives from Member States, the industries concerned and non-governmental organisations promoting environmental protection. The work of the TWG (technical working group) was led by the European IPPC Bureau (of the Commission's Joint Research Centre).

   
Surface treatment using Organic Solvents (jrc.ec.europa)

   

   
Like a brain, a deep neural network has layers of neurons artificial ones that are figments of computer memory. When a neuron fires, it sends signals to connected neurons in the layer above. During deep learning, connections in the network are strengthened or weakened as needed to make the system better at sending signals from input data — the pixels of a photo of a dog, for instance — up through the layers to neurons associated with the right high-level concepts, such as “dog".

   
The black box of deep learning (quantamagazine)

   

  Western Digital’s new approach

   
Western Digital announced a potential game changer that promises to expand the limits of traditional HDDs to up to 40TBs using a microwave-based write head, and the company says it will be available to the public in 2019. For the average consumer, the most important thing to understand is that the industry wanted to cram more information into the same disk space, it hit a wall, and microwaves appear to have opened up new possibilities.

   
MAMR drive in sight (gizmodo)

   

  UK' AI industry dev.

   
In April 2017, the Royal Society published a report on Machine Learning, the culmination of a major project to investigate the potential of Machine Learning over the next 5 - 10 years, and the barriers to realising that potential. 8 This Review builds on that work and complements it by focusing on conc rete actions that UK industry, academia and Government should take now.

   
How to grow Artificial Intelligence ? (gov)

   

   
For firms and internationally active managers, this places a premium on knowing just how different markets abroad are. In addition, it is helpful to know what drives these differences so suitable adjustment strategies can be devised and implemented. In our paper, “Mapping the business systems of 61 major economies,” my five co-authors* and I provide the currently most comprehensive overview and categorization of differences in the ways of doing business.

   
The nine major ways (qualitydigest)

   

   
The United Kingdom is withdrawing from the European Union. From 30 March 2019 onwards, the UK will be a “third country” outside the EU. This date can only be changed by mutual agreement between Brussels and London. The withdrawal process is unique and unprecedented. Learn how the UK’s withdrawal from the EU may affect your business related to EUCHA regulation.

   
Information as it is known (echa.europa)

   

   
Today, we find a function that has made considerable progress since our initial examination back in 2009. Smart technologies— cloud enablement, machine learning, biometrics, big data and analytics—are gradually being embedded. More respondents are reporting the integration of risk analytics within planning and decision making.

   
The hidden value of risk (accenture)

   

   
Americans with lower levels of income and education are acutely aware of a range of digital privacy related harms that could upend their financial, professional , or social well - being . And t hes e concerns are often accompanied by low levels of trust in the institutions and compani es that these Americans rel y on to be resp onsible stewards of their data.

   
Analysis by Socioeconomic status, race , & ethnicity (datasociety)

   

   
This paper, written mainly for transport planners in European cities, intends to provide a glimpse beyond Europe’s borders to understand recent transport-related innovations in developing and emerging countries. Not only in mega cities worldwide, decision makers, entrepreneurs and planners are currently testing new approaches to urban mobility driven by enormous pressures on rapid economic development.

   
Rethinking urban transport through global learning (umweltbundesamt)

   

   
The GDPR will supersede the 1995 EU Data Protection Directive (DPD) and all EU member states’ national laws based on it – including the UK Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA) – in May 2018. All organisations of any size and anywhere in the world that process the personal data of EU residents must comply with the Regulation. Failure to do so could result in fines of up to €20 million or 4% of annual global turnove whichever is greater.

   
Starting 25 may 2018 (itgovernance)

   

   
Eight disruptive forces that have the potential to shift the competitive landscape of the financial ecosystem impacting the financial services industry, including insights from seven industry segments: payments, digital banking, lending, insurance, market infrastructure, investment management, and equity crowdfunding. Learn what these findings mean for your business.

   
The financial ecosystem & competitive landscape (deloitte)

   

   
Only 20% of all Windows 10 users ran Edge as their main browser as of August 2017, down from 24% a year earlier. Still, that’s a lot of people running the browser, and many of them might run it only because Microsoft has made it the Windows 10 default. You might be one of them. There’s no doubt Edge has been an improvement over Internet Explorer. But it may not be improvement enough.

   
To others browsers (computerworld)

   

  Overview of taxes' impact

   
Constantly changing tax policies are an unwelcome distraction, delaying investment and eating into profits. Double taxation is another source of contention that causes significant concern, both in terms of money as well as time that it takes to resolve any tax authority concerns. It is a major barrier to cross-border trade and investment.

   
How to marry profitability with sustainability ? (ey-vx)

   

   
The question of how much degradation is sufficient has been the topic of much discussion among pharmaceutical scientists. Degradation of drug substances between 5% and 20% has been accepted as reasonable for validation of chromatographic assays; however, some pharmaceutical scientists believe that 10% degradation is optimal for use in analytical validation for small pharmaceutical molecules, for which acceptable stability limits of 90% of label claim is common.

   
FDrug substance & drug products (pharmtech)

   

   
The extent to which digital consumption of pirated materials displaces legitimate purchases is of fundamental importance for EU copyright policy design. The European Commission has commissioned Ecorys to carry out a study on the relation between online copyright infringement (digital piracy) and sales of copyrighted content.

   
EU' copyright debate (netzpolitik)

   

   
Mineral water consumption in America cratered in the early 20th century in part because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration made it harder to tout medicinal benefits without expensive testing. Today, Americans often drink bottled water for what they hope is not in it. Fears about what comes out of the tap aren’t completely unfounded; 77 million Americans are served by water systems that violate testing requirements.

   
Nestlé' water tested hourly (bloomberg)

   

   
Oracle has just announced the general availability of Java SE 9, Java EE 8 and the Java EE 8 Software Development Kit (SDK). From now on, it’s all about faster releases and more open source engagement. Oracle recently announced that they are planning to move to a 6-month release cadence using a time driven release model and a long-term support release every three years.”

   
More open source engagement (jaxenter)

   

   
ARS’ products were designed in Norway and not originally expected to sell in great numbers. When the company landed a contract for 15,000 pieces, they found that their processes weren’t suitable for that kind of quantity. As they tried to scale up to handle that kind of volume, they naturally did things like building huge batches and sub-assemblies, carrying a lot of work-in-process inventory and sharing tools...

   
How Lean helps small company ? (qualitydigest)

   

   
One thing hasn’t changed this year: Recruiting top talent is still difficult for most firms, and demand greatly outstrips supply. That’s influencing many of the areas we looked at, including compensation and retention. Whether you’re looking to expand your team or job searching yourself, read on to see which IT hiring practices are trending and which ones are falling out of favor.

   
8 going cold (cio)

   

   
Bees, the most important group of pollinators, visit flowers for nectar, but also collect large amounts of pollen mainly to feed their offspring. Contrastingly, pollen is essential for the plants’ reproduction, serving as a vehicle for gametes. Pollen is expensive, and, unlike nectar, pollen supply is strictly limited. As soon as pollen is collected and groomed into the bees’ transport organs, it is mostly lost for the flowers’ pollination.

   
To be on the safe site (plos)

   

   
When we think of a technologically advanced society, we think of Silicon Valley, home to Facebook, Google, and so many amazing Internet companies. Ironically, China has blocked usage of these companies, developing their own, copied versions of Google or Facebook. However, these imitated versions are beginning to outdo their predecessors. To get a better understanding of what I am talking about, check out the New York Times video.

   
Don’t judge a book by its cover (thenextweb)

   

   
A new study published in Nature Geoscience by a group of well-known climate scientists, led to a different news outlets baked very different breads with it. That happens pretty frequently these days, but, in this case, the new study was especially complex and more easily misunderstood—even by those without a Breitbartian aggressive ideological bias against climate science.

   
Is there any right answer ? (arstechnica)

   

  Strategic foresight in EU R&I policy

   
Our world has been shifting from a 'flat' to a much more complex landscape, with unexpected developments arising that escape our established ways of thinking and decision-making. The phenomena include globally as well as locally inter-connected challenges such as climate change and migration, but also transformative changes of our social and technological lives, such as those triggered by digitisation.

   
Proactive, informed & collective action (publications.europa)

   

   
The impact of CO2 emissions is one of the most difficult challenges to be addressed. Virtually all human activities require energy and products that currently rely heavily on cheap and abundant fossil resources. The chemical industry is no exception. It requires energy for running its processes, and feedstock most often carbon feedstock, eventually embedded in most chemical products and materials resulting in CO2 emissions.

   
Achieving a carbon neutral chemical sector by 2050 (cefic)

   

   
Now, at a time of heightened regulatory uncertainty, there’s increased potential for changes in direction and disruption of ongoing trends. In this dynamic environment, it’s important for companies to concentrate on the regulatory areas that they believe represent the highest risk to their organization, doing their best to create a resilient business while focusing on things that are within their control.

   
Survey report 2017 (deloitte)

   

   
As graphene's popularity grows as an advanced "wonder" material, the speed and quality at which it can be manufactured will be paramount. With that in mind, the research group of SungWoo Nam, assistant professor of mechanical science and engineering at Illinois, has developed a cleaner and more environmentally friendly method to isolate graphene using carbon dioxide (CO2) in the form of carbonic acid as the electrolyte solution.

   
More environmentally friendly (innovations-report)

   

   
Many companies are attempting a radical — and often rapid — shift from hierarchical structures to more agile environments, in order to operate at the speed required by today’s competitive marketplace. Companies like ANZ, the Australian-based banking giant, have made explicit commitments to adopt agile principles, while others like Zappos, are on the bleeding edge of organizational transformation.

   
Moving toward a continuous planning process (hbr)

   

   
In 2014, spending per capita in low-income countries varied from US$33 to $347, and per capita spending in high-income countries varied from $853 to $9237. The health financing transition is not guaranteed to continue as new countries progress through various stages of development. Prospective health spending estimates show what past trends and relationships suggest regarding future spending and sources of those funds.

   
Level of development & financing environment (lancet)

   

   
While the long-standing clinical efficacy of antibiotics or surgery for Crohn’s disease highlights the potential contribution of the so-called ‘IBD microbiome’ to inflammation, recent seminal studies revealed the impact of IBD-derived gut microbiota on host mucosal and systemic inflammation. This mechanistic understanding of how our ‘microbial organ’ functionally impacts both mucosal and systemic inflammatory pathways will help drive novel diagnostic and therapeutic approaches for IBD.

   
From the inside out (biochemist)

   

   
Understanding the nuclear dynamics of a world in which more than one nation is developing and deploying ballistic missile defense systems for strategic purpos - es. Strategic purposes could mean for defense of a national territory, defending command and control centers, protecting nuclear-armed ballistic missiles to help ensure retaliatory forces, or providing political cover for development of anti-satellite weapons that could target strategic military communications as well as command and control satellites.

   
Nuclear-armed states defences (fas)

   

   
The European Commission has announced six criteria the candidates need to fulfil in order to become the drug agency’s new home. Member states have until the end of July to submit their bids to host EMA and the European Banking Agency but the political discussion has already heated up. The Commission has tried to downplay the political angle of the talks.

   
Special report (euractiv)

   

   
Platforms are no longer restricted to retail or high-tech, but are visible across multiple industries — and the trend is accelerating. in 2007, the five major mobile-phone manufacturers — Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and LG — collectively controlled 90% of the industry’s global profits. That year, Apple’s iPhone was launched and started taking market share.

   

Creating a $5 trillion market (sloanreview.mit)

   

   
New technologies such as 3D laminated glass, haptic sensors (which pick up touch pressure and motion), and augmented reality heads-up displays — which offer drivers alerts, safety aids, and warnings on readouts embedded in the windshield — have entered the vocabulary of traditional suppliers. Large navigation and entertainment display screens in the dashboard offer Web-based information and media as well as the promise of data arrays picked up from networked roads and other cars.

   
How much innovation is too much ? (strategy-business)

   

   
We are living through a fundamental transformation in the way we work. Automation and 'thinking machines' are replacing human tasks, changing the skills that organisations are looking for in their people. But what will the future look like? This isn’t a time to sit back and wait for events to unfold. To be prepared for the future, you have to understand it.

   
The competing forces shaping 2030 (pwc)

   

   
The F-35 was billed as a fighter jet that could do almost everything the U.S. military desired, serving the Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy—and even Britain’s Royal Air Force and Royal Navy—all in one aircraft design. It’s supposed to replace and improve upon several current—and aging—aircraft types with widely different missions.

   
How did we get here? (qualitydigest)

   

   
Even if an organisation works through one ‘umbrella’ company (a system integrator), it’s sometimes useful to understand how the cost roll-up works so that it can consider buying some or all the pieces separately – in the same way that an airline can decide the paint scheme and which engines are to be fitted on the aircraft they choose.

   
Understanding the market (themanufacturer)

   

   

Experts from EFSA’s Panel on Biological Hazards recommend that Member States increase awareness of public health risks associated with raw and undercooked pork meat and advise consumers to cook pork meat thoroughly. They also recommend the development of suitable methods for detecting hepatitis E in food. ECDC report: 10-fold increase of hepatitis E cases in the EU/EEA between 2005 and 2015.

   
Report (efsa)

   

   
The privacy of average internet denizens has never been in greater peril. ISPs, advertisers, and government agencies from around the world are increasingly interested in tracking every single movement you make online. Whether you’re a whistle blower, a political dissident, or simply someone who hates the idea of third-parties scrutinizing your surfing habits, there are plenty of tools available to keep prying eyes off of your traffic.

   
20 best tips (extremetech)

   

   
Frictionless, automated, personalized travel on demand—that’s the dream of the future of mobility. And the extended auto ecosystem's various elements are coalescing to realize that dream sooner than expected, which means that incumbents and disruptors need to move at top speed to get on board. The speed at which this transformation will take place, and how corporate leaders believe their enterprises’ business models need to adapt.

   
How to succeed in it ? (deloitte)

   

   
This year’s Outlook emphasizes that disruption has become a fact of life for CEOs and their businesses as they respond to heightened uncertainty. But importantly, most see disruption as an opportunity to transform their business model, develop new products and services and reshape their business so it is even more successful than it has been in the past.

   
Global CEO Outlook (kpmg)

   

   
The analysis carried out for this report gauges the economic potential for AI between now and 2030, including for regional economies and eight commercial sectors worldwide. Through our AI Impact Index, we also look at how improvements to personalisation/customisation, quality and functionality could boost value, choice and demand across nearly 300 use cases of AI, along with how quickly transformation and disruption are likely to take hold.

   
Sizing the prize (pwc)

   

   
Satoshi Nakamoto had accounted for a lot, but Ukrainian botnets of involuntarily mining computers probably weren’t on his radar when he wrote his manifesto in 2008. Even though cryptocurrencies have lost some of their innocence, there is still a lot to love. Altcoins like Ether, Litecoin, Ripple, Zcash and Monero each have their own special character and strength.

   
Trading in cryptocurrencies (thenextweb)

   

  Why we need AI regulation ?

   
There is something that really scares Musk: Artificial Intelligence, and the idea of software and machines taking over their human creators. He’s been warning people about AI for years, and today called it the “biggest risk we face as a civilization” when he spoke at the National Governors Association Summer Meeting in Rhode Island.

   
How to be proactive in regulation ? (recode)

   

   
The BAT reference document (BREF) entitled 'Non-Ferrous Metals Industries' forms part of a series presenting the results of an exchange of information between EU Member States, the industries concerned, non-governmental organisations promoting environmental protection, and the Commission, to draw up, review and, where necessary, update BAT reference documents as required by the Directive 2010/75/EU on industrial emissions.

   
The result of a review (jrc.ec.europa)

   

   
The population extinction pulse we describe here shows, from a quantitative viewpoint, that Earth’s sixth mass extinction is more severe than perceived when looking exclusively at species extinctions. Therefore, humanity needs to address anthropogenic population extirpation and decimation immediately. That conclusion is based on analyses of the numbers and degrees of range contraction using a sample of 27,600 vertebrate species.

   
The biological annihilation (pnas)

   

  Thinking Machines

   
The quality and quantity of this data is increasing exponentially – it is expected to grow more than 50-fold this decade alone, reaching 25,000 petabytes (25bn gigabytes) worldwide by 2020. To put that into some perspective, 2 petabytes is the equivalent of all US academic research libraries put together. No wonder that AI is needed to work through this rising flood of data, and help us avoid a digital version of IBM’s dystopian future.

   
From Magic to Normal (eyeforpharma)

   

   
Looking to the future, if the pace of change is sustained, we can, if nothing else, expect to be surprised, whether by the speed with which automated devices take over our jobs and lives, or by the emotional intelligence of robots, or by the dangers of new generations of virus, trolls or cyberattacks. Making the best of this revolution has now become one of the greatest challenges for any society.

   
Growing the best, not the worst (kas)

   

   
One of the most common causes of death and disability. Although pharmacological advances and revascularization techniques have decreased mortality, many survivors will eventually succumb to heart failure secondary to the residual microvascular perfusion deficit that remains after revascularization. We present a novel system that rescues the myocardium from acute ischemia, using photosynthesis through intramyocardial delivery of the cyanobacterium Synechococcus elongatus.

   
Photon-powered myocardium (sciencemag)

   

   
The TEF is a government-backed assessment of undergraduate teaching quality across all higher education institutions in England, which also includes some institutions in Scotland and Wales (with others opting not to take part). The results in full are published below, along with each institution’s position in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2016-2017 and its research excellence framework grade point average.

   
TEF results 2017 (timeshighereducation)

   

   
Only 25 percent of Latin American CEOs say they expect major disruption in their sector in the next 3 years — indeed, that’s half the proportion of global CEOs who expect their business models will face disruption in the next 3 years. Online services will come to pose a greater threat to traditional businesses, but only when financial inclusion increases significantly — perhaps when cellphone providers encourage more people to exchange value and currency by phone, as they are in Africa.

   
Latin American CEOs (kpmg)

   

   
Today, the cloud is a ubiquity we take for granted. We expect every file, every service and digital asset we have to be available across all our devices everywhere we go, at any time of the day. Today, thanks to cloud computing, education and training has become more affordable, flexible and accessible to millions of people and thousands of businesses. Here’s a look at how cloud-based education has changed things for the better.

   
Changing things for the better (thenextweb)

   

   
Most of Starsky’s AI rivals are focusing exclusively on research, logging as many miles and as much performance data as possible. Seltz-Axmacher’s trucks are still in beta, too—but they’re already earning revenue, carrying containers full of goods along U.S. highways. While the remote-control system develops, two Starsky employees ride in each cab: a software engineer in the passenger seat, keeping an eye on the algorithms, and a truck driver behind the wheel.

   
At the autonomous driving startup (bloomberg)

   

   
We have developed our Golden Age index to quantify how far different economies are harnessing the power of their older workers. The index captures a broad range of indicators relating to the participation of older people in employment and training. Iceland, New Zealand and Sweden lead the OECD on this index, with large potential economic gains if employment rates for those over 55s could be raised to those of the top performers.

   
From silver hair (pwc)

   

   
Global demand for coal has fallen for the second consecutive year, according to a BP study, helped by the US and China burning less of the dirtiest fossil fuel.The UK was described as the “most extreme example” of the trend away from coal, which has resulted in its use returning to levels not seen since the start of the industrial revolution.

   
The Paris deal’s goal (bp)

   

   
Right across healthcare, advanced analytical and cognitive technologies are sucking in data, aggregating, analyzing, then spitting out insights hidden in previously disconnected data. As they work tirelessly, we humans stand by salivating at the prospect of fast, high-quality and well-curated data to speed discovery and time to market, moving us closer to personalized, outcomes-based healthcare.

   
When the Machines Take Over (eyeforpharma)

   

   
Across Europe efforts are made to collect, monitor and analyse information on levels of chemicals in plants, animals, food and drinks. This work helps national and European authorities to be aware of the situation on the ground and to measure the impact of existing controls. It can also help to understand if new safety assessments or control measures are needed and to set priorities for future research funding and data collection activities.

   
Why are there chemicals in our food? (efsa)

   

   
We conduct the inaugural investigation of the relationship between climatic anomalies, reports of insufficient sleep, and projected climate change. Using data from 765,000 U.S. survey respondents from 2002 to 2011, coupled with nighttime temperature data, we show that increases in nighttime temperatures amplify self-reported nights of insufficient sleep.

   
Nighttime temperature (sciencemag)

   

   
Organic photoredox catalysis can enable bond-making that is difficult or impossible using other types of chemistry.A new photoreactor can increase the rate of light-mediated reactions up to 10 times compared with the same reactions run using standard setups. The benchtop device allows researchers to precisely use light as a reagent for the first time and promises to further the field of photoredox catalysis.

   
Light touch boosts reactions 10-fold (chemistryworld)

   

   
This annual report gives an overview of the activities undertaken in 2016 by EFSA, Member States and other parties with the aim to stimulate and optimise scientific cooperation. In addition, it highlights how EFSA supports the European Commission in its enlargement programmes and contributes to harmonisation efforts with international partners, EU institutions and agencie.

   
Scientific cooperation (efsa)

   

   
Cyberattacks are a constantly evolving menace that can’t be contained by humans alone. MIT research scientist has devoted much of his career to helping cybersecurity experts and artificial-intelligence systems work in tandem to stop hackers. Last year he launched Patternex, a security startup that uses artificial intelligence to detect potential threats, then turns those findings over to human analysts for verification.

   
Humans & AI as one team (mit)

   

   
Light-to-moderate drinking has been associated with a lower risk of dementia and a reduced incidence of myocardial infarction and stroke. Brain imaging studies, however, have thus far failed to provide a convincing neural correlate that could underpin any protective effect. Results of research into the effects of moderate alcohol on the brain are inconsistent.

   
Longitudinal cohort study (bmj)

   

   
Two views of a composite reconstruction of the earliest known Homo sapiens fossils from Jebel Irhoud (Morocco) based on micro computed tomographic scans of multiple original fossils. Dated to 300 thousand years ago these early Homo sapiens already have a modern-looking face that falls within the variation of humans living today.

   
New finds of fossils and stone tools (sciencemag)

   

   
Products that are replaced before reaching an optimum lifespan or service life require more resources and result in greater amounts of waste. For some years now this phenomenon has been discussed under the term of “obsolescence”. There are many reasons for premature new purchases. Especially in the area of consumer electronics and in information technology.

   
Improving product service life & information (umweltbundesamt)

   

  Just eat more fish?

   
Seafood is very healthy to eat – all things considered. Fish and shellfish are an important source of protein, vitamins and minerals, and they are low in saturated fat. But seafood’s claim to fame is its omega-3 fatty acids, docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), all of which are beneficial to health. The U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans strongly suggest that adults eat two servings of seafood, or a total of eight ounces, per week.

   
How can I make an informed decision ? (theconversation)

   

   
A report this month by the UK’s Office of National Statistics found that “EU migrants” make up 11% of Britain’s manufacturing workers. EU workers from outside the UK tended to work longer hours than the workforce average, the report said. Non-UK workers were more likely to be overqualified for the jobs they were doing, it added. The British government has yet to explain how its post-Brexit immigration rules will work.

   
Special report (euractiv)

   

   
As different missions require different designs, the lack of a formal plan and specific destinations for future missions has complicated spacesuit development,” sniffed the OIG. It recommended that appropriate NASA officials “implement a formal plan for design, production, and testing of the next-generation extravehicular activity (EVA) spacesuits in accordance with the exploration goals of the Agency in 2024.

   
Advanced spacesuit project (nasa)

   

   
Climate change is clearly an urgent challenge. But meeting that challenge is an opportunity to create new sources of growth by placing the climate imperative at the core of national growth and development strategies. Adopting such an inclusive, low-emission and climate- resilient growth agenda would be an opportunity to reorient G20 growth objectives as the 2014 Brisbane commitment to “2% upside growth” in the G20 nears its end in 2018.

   
Investing in growth (oecd)

   

   
With a Congress that has demonstrated its lack of interest in protecting you from your ISP, and ISPs that have repeatedly demonstrated a "whatever-we-can-get-away-with" attitude toward customers' data privacy and integrity, it may be time to look into how to get your data out from under your ISP's prying eyes and grubby fingers intact. To do that, you'll need a VPN.

   
The problem and the solution (arstechnica)

   

   
The Electron’s engine, named for the New Zealand-born nuclear physicist Ernest Rutherford, is the first of its type to be primarily 3D-printed. Each Rutherford engine, including its engine chamber, injector, pumps and main propellant valves, can be printed in 24 hours.If successful, the Electron test launch will be the first commercial rocket to reach Earth orbit from a launch complex in the Southern Hemisphere.

   
Cubesats & 3D printing (spaceflightnow)

   

   
Multiple lines of research indicate that fathers often treat boys and girls differently in ways that impact child outcomes. The complex picture that has emerged, however, is obscured by methodological challenges inherent to the study of parental caregiving, and no studies to date have examined the possibility that gender differences in observed real-world paternal behavior are related to differential paternal brain responses to male and female children.

   
Assessing parenting behaviors (apa)

   

   
This publication is a Science for Policy report by the Joint Research Centre, the European Commission’s in-house science service. It aims to provide evidence-based scientific support to the European policy-making process. The scientific output expressed does not imply a policy position of the European Commission. Neither the European Commission nor any person acting on behalf of the Commission is responsible for the use which might be made of this publication.

   
Best available techniques (jrc.ec)

   

   
Despite the striking physiological and behavioral impact of nutritional proteins, how animals direct feeding decisions to ensure protein homeostasis is not understood. A major obstacle in identifying the rules governing food choice is the nutritional complexity of natural foods, which hinders the discovery of the nutritional variables controlling feeding decision.

   
Commensal bacteria direct feeding decisions  (journals.plos)

   

   
Characterizing and monitoring tumor genomes with blood samples could achieve significant improvements in precision medicine. As tumors shed parts of themselves into the circulation, analyses of circulating tumor cells, circulating tumor DNA, and tumor-derived exosomes, often referred to as “liquid biopsies”, may enable tumor genome characterization by minimally invasive means.

   
An imminent routine practice (biomedcentral)

   

   
Here, we developed a new method of estimating rates of absolute mobility that can be implemented with existing data sets covering the 1940 to 1984 birth cohorts. Our approach combines two inputs: marginal income distributions for parents and children, and the copula of the parent and child income distribution, defined as the joint distribution of parent and child income ranks.

   
Income mobility since 1940 (science.sciencemag)

   

   
Hair differentiates from follicle stem cells through progenitor cells in the matrix. In contrast to stem cells in the bulge, the identities of the progenitors and the mechanisms by which they regulate hair shaft components are poorly understood. Hair is also pigmented by melanocytes in the follicle. However, the niche that regulates follicular melanocytes is not well characterized.

   
Identification of hair shaft progenitors (genesdev.cshlp)

   

   
While the forecast for offshore wind farms of the future is for ever-larger projects featuring ever-larger wind turbines, an unprecedented plan from electricity grid operators in the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark aims to rewrite the rulebook on offshore wind development. “Don’t be mistaken, this is really a very large, very ambitious project—there’s nothing like it anywhere in the world".

   
A giant wind farm (arstechnica)

   

   
National levels of personal health-care access and quality can be approximated by measuring mortality rates from causes that should not be fatal in the presence of effective medical care. Previous analyses of mortality amenable to health care only focused on high-income countries and faced several methodological challenges. In the present analysis, we use the highly standardised cause of death and risk factor.

   
A highly standardised analysis (thelancet)

   

   
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg celebrated his 33rd birthday on Sunday, and on Monday his executive team surprised him with a special birthday cake shaped like pieces of meat. That is kinda fun, and bizarre, but even more interesting is the fact that Zuckerberg shared to his Facebook page this photo that includes nearly all of Facebook’s highest-ranking executives in the same place at the same time.

   
Who gets to celebrate with the boss? (recode)

   

   
Despite their fat content and composition, milk and dairy products are naturally rich in various minerals(ca++, K+..), protein and vitamins (vit A & B12). Nutrients including calcium, potassium and magnesium have been suggested to be associated with lower risk of stroke. Short-term human intervention studies, also indicated that subjects who have high-fat diets enriched with dairy minerals or calcium have significantly lower total cholesterol and LDL-cholesterol levels than those on a control diet.

   
A misconception & a “mistaken belief" (springer)

   

   
Scientists are migratory beasts. It's just the nature of the job: You spend your days at the border of human knowledge. Depending on the topic, only a dozen people may deeply understand your research—let alone help you push it further—and they are scattered across the world. For many, completing a Ph.D., doing postdoctoral research, and landing a permanent job all in one country is impossible. And so you wander.

   
Vast set of public CVs (sciencemag)

   

   
JCAP was founded in 2010 under an initial five-year U.S. Department of Energy contract with the broad aim of developing methods for producing hydrogen and carbon-based fuels using only sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide as inputs. That initial agreement was renewed in 2015 for another five years. JCAP research was able to demonstrate technologies that were at least 10-percent hydrogen efficient, which is a ratio of power from chemical energy to power from sunlight.

   
From Water Splitting to CO2 Reduction (ieee)

   

  Better energy, greater prosperity

   
Despite the scale of the challenge, the Energy Transitions Commission is confident that this transition is technically and economically possible, and that it would deliver important additional social benefits with, for instance, dramatically improved local air quality leading to longer and healthier lives and economic opportunities related to the development of new industries and business models.

   
Achievable pathways to low-carbon energy systems (energy-transitions)
   

   

   
Overall, 97. 2 % of the 84,341 samples analysed in 2015 were free of quantifiable residues or contained residues within the legally permitted levels. Based on the analytical results provided by the reporting countries, a detailed data analysis was performed regarding pesticide occurrence in the most important food products consumed and the dietary risk related to the exposure of European consumers to pesticide residues.

   
Report on pesticide residues (onlinelibrary.wiley)

   

   
Many of the immigration debates now raging around the world reflect the faulty assumption that admitting immigrants is an act of largesse – and a costly one, at that. But, far from being an economic burden, immigrants represent a major economic opportunity for destination countries. Those countries that take a thoughtful, long-term approach to immigration can capture large and tangible benefits.

   
Positive economic impact (project-syndicate)

   

   
If the allegations are true, the Bose case is just the latest privacy incident involving the so-called "Internet of things" in which more companies and devices that are connected to the web can't resist the temptation of harvesting the consumer data they throw off. Bose, whose wireless QuietComfort 35 headphones have received enthusiastic reviews, did not immediately reply to an email request for comment about the complaint.

   
Headphones spy on users (fortune)

   

   
An important source of variability presumably lies in the cognitive ability to make use of an implant, and in particular the capacity to compensate for the crude CI auditory input by mapping auditory and visual speech cues. Accordingly, the response of visual cortex to speech, shortly after implantation, is a significant positive predictor of CI success in post-lingual deaf adults.

   
Predicting individual benefit (nature)

   

   
While there's no predicting how social media users might react to an employee's thoughtless comment, controversial statement or off-color joke, companies can minimize the damage of this type of incident -- if they are prepared. Here's a look at practices that your business can put in place to prevent these incidents, plus tips to diffuse them, should you be caught in the crosshairs.

   
5 steps (computerworld)

   

   
One of the benefits of adopting a QbD approach is highlighted in ICH guidance: “Areas where the demonstration of greater understanding of pharmaceutical and manufacturing sciences can create a basis for flexible regulatory approaches. The degree of regulatory flexibility is predicated on the level of relevant scientific knowledge provided” .

   
AQbD concepts & implementation (pharmtech)

   

   
Given the amount of uncertainty that comes with measuring how well any malware protection works, the entire controversy could end up being a rounding error. But the confusion and controversy in the industry are not exactly comforting when you're trying to figure out how to best protect yourself from the next potential security breach or ransomware infection.

   
The antivirus market (arstechnica)

   

   
The Food Law Code of Practice gives statutory guidance to which local authorities must have regard when engaged in the enforcement of food law. Local authorities must follow and implement the relevant provisions of the Code. The Food Standards Agency published a revised Food Law Code of Practice (England) on 30 March 2017, which came into force on that date.

   
Regulation (food.gov)

   

  Commitments without Paris plan ?

   
With fossil-fuel-loving climate skeptic Donald Trump in the White House and Congress dominated by like-minded Republicans, environmentalists have given up hope of the federal government following through on President Obama’s climate mitigation and environmental promises. But just because Trump has rescinded the Clean Power Plan and is promising to bring back the coal industry doesn’t mean that Americans have to give up on leading the world out of the climate abyss.

   
U.S. greenhouse gas emissions (emagazine)
   

  Your web browsing history at stake

   
Internet providers now just need a signature from President Trump before they’re free to take, share, and even sell your web browsing history without your permission. The House of Representatives passed a resolution today overturning an Obama-era FCC rule that required internet providers to get customers’ permission before sharing their browsing history with other companies.

   
Privacy protections are dead (theverge)

   

  Inside the mind of the investor

   
Despite the considerable political uncertainty across the world, our latest global survey of investment professionals found relatively high levels of optimism about global economic growth prospects. Nearly half of the 554 investors and analysts who responded to our online survey expect global economic growth prospects to improve over the next 12 months a higher percentage than last year.

   
Doing business in uncertain time (pwc)

   

   
For almost 500 years, the Mercator projection has been the norm for maps of the world, ubiquitous in atlases, pinned on peeling school walls. Mercator’s distortions affect continents as well as nations. For example, South America is made to look about the same size as Europe, when in fact it is almost twice as large, and Greenland looks roughly the size of Africa when it is actually about 14 times smaller.

   
Rewriting the historical & socio-political message (theguardian)

   

   
Scientists have developed a new genetic test for Alzheimer’s risk that can be used to predict the age at which a person will develop the disease. A high score on the test, which is based on 31 genetic markers, can translate to being diagnosed many years earlier than those with a low-risk genetic profile. Those ranked in the top 10% in terms of risk were more than three times as likely to develop Alzheimer’s during the course of the study.

   
Polygenic hazard score test (plos)

   

   
Everything in the natural world can be described by quantum mechanics. Born a century ago, this theory is the rule book for what happens at atomic scales, providing explanations for everything from the layout of the periodic table to the zoo of particles spraying out of atom-smashers. It has guided the development of everyday technologies from lasers to MRI machines and put a solid foundation under astrophysicists’ musings about unknowables such as the interiors of black holes and the dawn of the universe.

   
Here, there and everywhere (economist)

   

   
The digital revolution we’re part of today isn’t a cold, dystopian future of robots controlling the world. Rather, it’s an age of human empowerment. It’s about us designing technology that conforms itself to people, putting us firmly in control of our own fate. No longer are we waiting and wondering how the latest advances will change things; we’re shaping the world to fit our needs, large and small.

   
The era of the intelligent enterprise (accenture)

   

  The recovery of damaged nerve syst.

   
Transplantation of OECs is emerging as a promising approach for treating injuries to both the PNS and the CNS. OEC transplantation has led to successful outcomes in both animals and humans with spinal cord injury. Animal studies of spinal cord injuries showed that OECs can survive and migrate long distances into the injury site, reduce scar tissue and cavity formation, restore breathing and climbing function and improve hindlimb mobility.

   
Olfactory enseathing cells implications (mdepi)

   

   
Biotechnology is the use of living systems or organisms in the creation of industrial products. A biologic medical product is manufactured in a living system such as a microorganism, plant or animal cells. According to a report published (September 2016) by the European Biopharmaceutical Enterprises (EBE), biologic medicines have truly transformative potential, offering cures to patients when previously at best clinical signs could be treated.

   
How to stimulate competition ? (euractiv)

   

  The brand system before business

   
I’ve learned a lot from the development of NameLayer, and I’m ready to divulge every trick in my arsenal. In this guide, I provide realistic solutions to the frustrations encountered when naming a company. Plus, I’ll have some fun analyzing both good and bad company names.

   
Naming your business (thenextweb)

   

   
The scope of the current work was to identify the most important resistant bacteria at a global level for which there is an urgent need for new treatments. Mycobacteria (including Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the cause of human tuberculosis), was not subjected to review for inclusion in this prioritization exercise as it is already a globally established priority for which innovative new treatments are urgently needed.

   
Guide for Research (who)

   

   
This kind of long-term view, looking beyond short-term economic and political cycles, is par ticularly useful for policymakers and businesses in areas like pensions, healthcare, energy and climate change, transport, housing and other types of infrastructure investment. here is no silver bullet to address these concerns. They require determined efforts by governments to boost the quality of education and training, and address perceived unfairness through well-targeted fiscal policies.

   
Market flexibility and volatility (pwc)

   

   
Urine contains many nitrogenous compounds such as urea, ammonia, amino acids, and creatinine. These compounds can react with disinfectants (e.g., chlorine) in swimming pools to form DBPs, including trihalomethanes, haloacetic acids, haloamines, and halonitro-methanes., Exposure to volatile DBPs, specifically trichloramine, in indoor swimming facilities can lead to eye and respiratory irritation and has been linked to occupational asthma.

   
Health issues (acs)

   

   
The USG is a firewall for your USB ports. It connects between your computer and an untrusted USB device. The USG isolates BadUSB devices from your computer, while still passing through the data you need. The USG's firmware is fully open and auditable, so you can trust it. And when you use a USG, you no longer have to trust the opaque firmware of dubious origin running on every USB device you own.

   
Antivirus will not save you (github)

   

   
Robotics, AI, sensors, and cognitive computing have gone mainstream, along with the open talent economy. Companies can no longer consider their workforce to be only the employees on their balance sheet, but must include freelancers, “gig economy” workers, and crowds. These on and off-balancesheet workers are being augmented with machines and software.

   
Global human capital trends (deloitte)

   

   
Over the last 20 months, the EU has come under a great deal of criticism regarding its response to the refugee crisis. From outside of Europe, the EU has been accused of a lack of political will and common purpose. However, the external criticism was exceeded by far by the opposition from some of the Member States and its exag - gerated depiction as a policy of non-compliance by some of the media.

   
Fighting the root causes (kas)
    

   
Unless otherwise stated, references to ‘the Directive’ in this document refer to Directive 2010/75/EU of the European Parliament and the Council on industrial emissions (integrated pollution prevention and control). Forum members have nominated technical experts constituting the technical working group(TWG) that was the main source of information for drafting this document.

   
Final Draft 2017 (jrc)

   

   
Instead of receiving JavaScript code that Firefox needs to interpret, WebAssembly allows developers to pre-compile their code into low-level, machine-ready instructions that Firefox can run right away after finishing the download. With WebAssembly, web pages become both faster, but also more powerful, allowing developers to deliver more complex and optimized code to web users.

   
More faster & secure (bleepingcomputer)

   

   
Economists have always thought of new technologies as driving growth through their ability to enhance TFP. This made sense for the technologies that we have seen until now. The great technological breakthroughs over the last century electricity, railways and IT boosted productivity dramatically but did not create entirely new workforces.

   
The new factor of production (accenture)

   

   
The stakes are higher than ever. In an era of widespread business disruption, leaders aren’t using advanced analytics to simply improve existing activities—the strategic use of data is transforming traditional process driven organizations to help them become more competitive, increase revenues and profits, reduce risk, and guide them to new initiatives.

   
High stakes & High rewards (forbes)

   

   
The report highlights some of the office’s top achievements in 2016, including meeting Generic Drug User Fee Act (GDUFA) performance goals, which were established by he Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act of 2012 (FDASIA). These goals included the agency taking a first action on 90% of the 2866 ANDAs and 1873 post-approval studies (PASs) in process with FDA or industry prior to GDUFA enactment on October 1, 2012.

   
2016 Annual Report

   

   
TransferWise is an online money transfer service, which allows you to transfer money up to 8 times cheaper than with the bank & even enbeded with Facebook. The technology is based on a peer-to-peer system. If someone wants to convert their pounds to euros, TransferWise’s technology finds someone who wants to transfer money in the opposite direction (euros into pounds).

   
Is it safe? (telegraph)

   

   
The increasing occurrences of rare diseases has raised concern in Europe and policymakers are now stepping up efforts to address the situation. Some five to 8,000 rare diseases currently affect 6-8% of the population in the EU today between 27 and 36 million people according to estimates. Rare cancers, those with fewer than five cases out of 10,000, belong to this category.

   
Cracking the code  (euractiv)              US' list of orphan drugs in pipeline (phrma)

   

   
The battle over who has the rights to the gene-editing technology has been a long and tumultuous one for both parties. It began in May 2012 when Berkeley researcher Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier, of the University of Vienna, filed for a patent for CRISPR-Cas9. The pair later published a paper on CRISPR in the journal Science.

   
Patent trial (broadinstitute)

   

   
For all the improvements in computer technology over the years, we still struggle to recreate the low-energy, elegant processing of the human brain. Now, researchers at Stanford University and Sandia National Laboratories have made an advance that could help computers mimic one piece of the brain’s efficient design – an artificial version of the space over which neurons communicate, called a synapse.

   
A new organic artificial synapse (stanford)

   

   
When Fast Company’s first Most Innovative Companies list came out, Snapchat didn’t exist. Neither did Airbnb or Uber, Slack or Spotify. The rise of these businesses illuminates the risks that established industries face, and how tastes in modern culture are shifting faster than ever. Younger consumers expect newer, better products all the time.

   
10 lessons from 10 years (fastcompany)

   

   
Hired.com was founded by Mickiewicz, Douglas Feirstein, and Allan Grant. If you follow startups you probably recognize all of their names. Mickiewicz is known for co-founding 99designs, Feirstein for founding LiveOps.com, and Grant for co-founding Curebit. The idea for Hired.com came out of their own need for talent when their individual companies scaled.

   
IT workers shortage (techrepublic)

   

   
The Beijing Accelerator and others like it around the world represent the culmination of a strategy that Microsoft has pursued for about a decade. During this time, Microsoft has rolled out a series of ambitious partnerships with startups. The business case is clear: Engaging with startups enables a large corporation such as Microsoft to tap into exciting innovations just getting off the ground.

   
The tech giant’s partnership (strategy-business)

   

   
To understand how Australia became the world’s No. 1 source for camel meat — soothing the culinary homesickness of thousands of Somalis in Minnesota along the way — you have to understand why camels are a problem in the Outback: They’re totally feral, and have caused huge headaches. In the mid-1800s, the British introduced one-humped Arabian camels from Pakistan and India to help with transport across the vast, arid landscape of Australia.

   
The environmental benefits (thefern)

   

   
Global mobile data traffic grew 63 percent in 2016. Global mobile data traffic reached 7.2 exabytes per month at the end of 2016, up from 4.4 exabytes per month at the end of 2015. With the proliferation of mobile and portable devices, there is an imminent need for networks to allow all these devices to be connected transparently, with the network providing high-performance computing and delivering enhanced real-time video and multimedia.

   
Cisco Visual Networking Index (cisco)

   

   
The "ITF Transport Outlook" provides an overview of recent trends and near-term prospects for the transport sector at a global level. It also presents long-term projections for transport demand to 2050 for freight (maritime, air and surface) and passenger transport (car, rail and air) as well as related CO2 emissions, under different policy scenarios.

   
Outlook 2017 (keepeek)

   

   
Algorithms are aimed at optimizing everything. They can save lives, make things easier and conquer chaos. Still, experts worry they can also put too much control in the hands of corporations and governments, perpetuate bias, create filter bubbles, cut choices, creativity and serendipity, and could result in greater unemployment.

   
The Code-Dependent (pewresearch)

   

   
Increased flow of Thwaites Glacier (TWG) is responsible for around half of the ice-sheet mass loss from this sector; in response to these large changes, NSF’s AGASEA and NASA’s Ice-Bridge programmes have flown extensive surveys measuring ice thickness and bed elevation in this area, with the twin goals of measuring mass-balance changes and enabling accurate ice-flow modelling for the region.

   
Subglacial lake drainage connection (the-cryosphere)

   

   
The basics are familiar: Tesla built batteries for a 20-megawatt power facility in Ontario, California. The project, in part a response to failures of supplemental gas-powered power plants, will allow Southern California Edison to store and release power throughout the day, helping balance the system and make it more efficient. Power stored during the day can be released in evening hours, when energy is most needed (and most expensive).

   
Five Questions (smithsonianmag)

   

   
This roadmap focuses on the role of catalytic processes in reducing energy use and GHG emissions in the chemical sector. Around 90% of chemical processes use catalysts for efficient production. Catalysis is an important source of technology-based efficiency improvement potential; indeed, this work shows an energy savings potential approaching 13 exajoules (EJ) by 2050.

   
Energy and GHG reductions (icca-chem)

   

   
Globalisation and technology have jointly enabled a massive increase in trade and financial flows and global online traffic. This level of interconnectivity has raised engagement with stakeholders and forced society to think about how information is accessed and consumed. Increased transparency demands a new way of communicating, a higher level of accountability, an elevated approach to leadership.

   
What’s next ? (pwc)

   

   
Natural resources include all components of the natural world. These comprise renewable (biotic) and non-renew- able (abiotic) raw materials, physical space, area/land, environmental media i. e. water, soil and air, flow resources such as geothermal energy, wind power, tidal and solar energy, and all living organisms. This report observes and analyses data relating to extraction of used and unused materials.

   
Resources data & Environmental impacts (umweltbundesamt)

   

   
The problem, from the perspective of the browser makers, is that antivirus software is incredibly invasive. Antivirus, in an attempt to catch viruses before they can infect your system, forcibly hooks itself into other pieces of software on your computer, such as your browser, word processor, or even the OS kernel. You should certainly be aware that using antivirus software doesn't necessarily make your computer any more secure.

   
Antivirus software invasivity (arstechnica)

   

   
Additive manufacturing (AM) has existed for decades, largely used for prototyping or building demonstration models. More recently, driven in part by the advent of the Industry 4.0, a wider understanding of AM’s value potential in product manufacturing, supply chain configuration, and new business models has emerged.

   
Beyond the AM machinery (deloitte)

   

   
This is how the smart glasses work: a distance sensor in the bridge of the glasses uses infrared light to calculate the distance between the glasses and an object. The sensor then tells “actuators” to reshape how the liquid lenses are curved. Changing how the liquid lenses are curved allows the smart glasses to focus on whatever the wearer is looking at.

   
Adaptive eyeglass application (osapublishing)

   

   
The five Nordic countries have aggressive climate and energy policies in place and have already emerged to be leaders in renewable energy and energy efficiency. Denmark is renowned for its pioneering use of wind energy, Finland and Sweden bioenergy, Norway hydroelectricity and Iceland geothermal energy. All countries aim to be virtually “ fossil free ” by 2050.

   
Renewable energy deployment (sciencedirect)

   

   
Rolls-Royce anticipate that the first commercial vessel to navigate entirely by itself could be a harbor tug or a ferry designed to carry cars the short distance across the mouth of a river or a fjord and that it or similar ships will be in commercial operation within the next few years. And we expect fully autonomous oceangoing cargo ships to be routinely plying the world’s seas in 10 or 15 years’ time.

   
Robotic ships in sight (ieee)

   

   
We are now entering an exciting, unprecedented time in technology – with the pace of change and innovation continuing to accelerate. We are poised to drive the biggest change since the dawn of the information age. Technology will continue to transform the way we work and live, raising many questions about both opportunities and challenges.

   
Technology vision 2017 (accenture)

   

   
A non-volatile memory technology based on carbon nanotubes that's poised for commercialization in 2018 is expected to be more disruptive to enterprise storage, servers and consumer electronics than flash memory, according to a new report from BCC Research. "It is rare to see a technology catch fire after so long in development, but NRAM appears poised to do just that".

   
From silicon to carbon-based memory (computerworld)

   

   
A UK programme A UK programme of tidal lagoons at full-scale will focus on the two areas with ideal conditions for tidal lagoon infrastructure: the Severn Estuary and Liverpool Bay & the Irish Sea. The hyper-tidal ranges of the Severn Estuary reach up to 14m on a spring tide. The high tidal ranges of Liverpool Bay & the Irish Sea reach up to 10m on a spring tide.

   
The industrial opportunity (tidallagoonpower)

   

   
While the previous report in this series examined wage and income inequality from the perspective of households, this year’s Global Wage Report turns to enterprise-level dynamics. More specifically, the report analyses the extent to which overall wage inequality is the result of wage inequality between enterprises and wage inequality within enterprises.

   
Wage inequality in the workplace (ilo)

   

   
As the pace of technological change becomes exponentially faster, it is increasingly difficult to identify the major trends that could have profound effects on enterprises and consumers. To help address this challenge, we’re pleased to offer the 2017 version of Predictions from Deloitte Global, designed to provide insight into what may offer disruption and growth opportunities across the technology, media and telecommunications ecosystems.

   
From smart tech. to media (deloitte)

   

   
For the first time in human history not only individuals but humanity as a whole is ageing. Germans and Europeans, however, are particularly far advanced on this path. Together with the Japanese, they represent the oldest populations in the world. Besides the low birth rate, this is also due to a steep rise in life expectancy since the beginning of the industrial revolution.

   
Questions vs Answers (kas)

   

   
Most of the urban discussion, including on urban sanitation, is focused on capital cities. Yet, in less developed countries, more than half of all urban residents live in smaller cities of one million inhabitants or less (UNDESA, 2014). These smaller, but rapidly expanding, cities face specific development challenges, often having weaker political autonomy and more limited financial resources than the capital.

   
The urban sanitation problem (odi)

   

   
Blockstack received $4 million in funding from USV and others this month to try to establish that more open playing field. The startup is working on open-source software that will create a kind of parallel universe to the Web we know—one where users have more control of their data. Later this year, Blockstack will release software that lets you surf sites and apps created for this new digital domain using your existing Web browser.

   
How to control your own digital identity ? (technologyreview)

   

   
Living Services respond by wrapping around us, constantly learning more about our needs, intents and preferences, so that they can flex and adapt to make themselves more relevant, engaging and useful. Consumers demand this now as the standards are being set by the best of breed across the entirety of their experiences, not restricted by sector—hence liquid expectations.

   
What are living services? (fjordnet)

   

   
The pharmaceutical industry continues to face regulatory and reimbursement hurdles weighing on the research and development returns of pharmaceutical firms this year. The seventh annual pharmaceutical innovation study by the Deloitte UK Centre for Health Solutions looks at the challenges the industry faces in generating returns from its R&D investments.

   
The main factors (deloitte)

   

   
The biggest practical development in crypto for 2016 is Transport Layer Security version 1.3. TLS is the most important and widely used cryptographic protocol and is the backbone of secure Internet communication; you're using it right now to read this blog! After years of work by hundreds of researchers and engineers, the new TLS design is now considered final from a cryptography standpoint.

   
The speed of TLS 1.3 (eff)

   

   
Using a national sample of hospitalized Medicare beneficiaries, we found that patients who receive care from female general internists have lower 30-day mortality and readmission rates than do patients cared for by male internists. These findings suggest that the differences in practice patterns between male and female physicians, as suggested in previous studies, may have important clinical implications for patient outcomes.

   
Male vs Female physicians (jamanetwork)

   

   
It's an excellent instructional language for teaching programming to people who have no technical background. It's a superlative prototyping language for startups. It's an industrial-strength enterprise language used by businesses both big and small all around the globe. There are good reasons to consider using modern Smalltalk today, since much has changed in recent years to improve its prospects.

   
Why he is still very relevant? (techbeacon)

   

   
In a year full of exciting announcements and releases, only a handful of companies managed to make a splash and catch the attention of tech aficionados across the globe. This is our roundup of the most influential companies of 2016. For example Alphabet subsidiary Google laid out an ambitious plan for the rest of 2016 at its flagship Google I/O conference, which it hosted earlier in May.

   
Who stole the spotlight this year?  (thenextweb)

   

   
A major program of the IEEE Foundation, Smart Village grew out of a 2009 initiative to promote sustainable electrification in the developing world. It aims to reach more than 50 million people over the next decade. “But we have to do it sustainably,” says Ray Larsen, one of the group’s cofounders and an engineer at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.

   
Engineering trek in the Himalayas (ieee)

   

   
ThyssenKrupp's new $43 million elevator test tower soars 246 meters (808 ft) above the German town of Rottweil, but the company's lifts chief is not only thinking vertically. Dubbed by ThyssenKrupp as the MULTI, the new machine is just one way manufacturers including Switzerland's Schindler, United Technologies' Otis and Finland's Kone are re-imagining the 150-year-old passenger elevator.

   
Thinking outside the box (reuters)

   

   
The Technological change is creating historic shifts in industry footprints. Over the next ten years, we think this process will accelerate. Traditional industry classifications will need to be rewritten. Where industry boundaries begin, where they end and who are the main players will all be up for grabs in a number of sectors.

   
Bringing down the walls (pwc)

   

   
In the last decade, the field of neuroscience has been transformed by newfound capabilities to control and monitor neuronal biochemistry with light, using a suite of techniques collectively referred to as optogenetics. The unifying feature of these experiments is their use of either light-sensitive ‘actuator’ proteins or light-emitting ‘sensor’ proteins.

   
Delivering optical stimuli to neurons (biochemist)

   

   
Udacity works with its corporate partners to create courses intended to produce job candidates with skills those same companies find in short supply, such as machine learning and mobile app development. More than 30 companies, such as Intel and Samsung, have signed up with Udacity as “hiring partners” that gain access to graduating students before they hit the wider job market.

   
A gateway to a new job (technologyreview)

   

   
Key events such as the increase The state of cyber resilience in digital innovation, expansion of connected products, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, changing regulatory landscape, repeated financial crises, catastrophic product failures, terrorist attacks and the explosion in cybercrime are just a few examples of why organizations needed to evolve their defensive and protective measures.

   
Path to cyber resilience (ey)

   

   
Materials have always enabled new technologies. There would be no information age without silicon, no cell phones without vibrating ceramics, no commercial aviation industry without high-strength aluminum alloys, no skyscrapers without steel girders, and no solar energy without photovoltaic materials. About 20% of the energy consomtion was used to heat, cool, and light residential and commercial buildings.

   
To Sustainable Development (qualitydigest)

   

   
The intervention in a Chinese company’s bid to buy a German semiconductor company, Aixtron, comes after Chinese companies have spent billions to acquire technology in Europe and the United States. American officials have increasingly moved to stop such deals, but Chinese companies have shown growing adeptness in getting around those restrictions to strike up relationships that could someday lead to greater access to technology.

   
Getting around restrictions (nytimes)

   

  NgAgo gene-editing controversy

   
Gene-editing techniques that precisely disable or modify very specific sections of a genome have taken the biomedical world by storm. The technique described by Han’s team is one of several proposed alternatives to the most popular one, CRISPR–Cas9. The paper urges Han’s team to “clarify the uncertainty surrounding NgAgo and provide all the necessary details for replicating the initial, very important results”.

   
Replication failure (nature)

   

   
It is always a mistake to adjust or recalibrate a measurement process unless you have clear indication from a consistency chart that an adjustment is needed. In the absence of such a signal the measurements are already as consistent as they can be, and any adjustments to the measurement process will merely increase the variation in the measurements.

   
The measurement Systems (qualitydigest)

   

   
Every consumer wants a different experience when shopping and that ’experience’ has become the differentiating factor for many successful business models. However, businesses are finding it increasingly difficult to predict what consumers want as their expectations continue to change. Businesses need to become more agile and flexible to respond to consumer demands in real time.

   
A tool for differentiation (deloitte)

   

   
Today, a digital stethoscope has the ability to record and store heartbeat and respiratory sounds. Tomorrow, the stethoscope could function as an “intelligent thing” by collecting a massive amount of such data, relating the data to diagnostic and treatment information, and building an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered doctor assistance app to provide the physician with diagnostic support in real-time.

   
The intelligent future (gartner)

   

   
In the modern era, siting decisions for pharmaceutical production operations have been primarily driven by factors such as limiting tax exposure, access to talent, and surety of supply chains. However, an additional decision consideration appears to be taking the lead for some companies: ease of technology transfer through proximity to their dug development and research base.

   
How to optimize the facilities’ location ? (areadevelopment)

   

   
The Breakthrough Prizes, now in their fifth year, are the richest science awards on earth. They are worth $3 million to each winner, more than double the $1.2 million that comes with the Nobel Prizes. The awards, which total $25 million this year, are one of a number of mega-prizes for research that have been launched in recent years by wealthy donors.

   
The awards (washingtonpost)

   

   
PISA is not only an accurate indicator of students’ abilities to participate fully in society after compulsory school, but also a powerful tool that countries and economies can use to fine-tune their education policies. There is no single combination of policies and practices that will work for everyone, everywhere. Every country has room for improvement, even the top performers.

   
PISA 2015 results (oecd)

   

   
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in bacteria particularly that observed to ant i microbials used to treat infections in humans and animals is a major public health issue. This is due to the risk of treatment failure that could lead to an increase in duration of illness and, even death, of individuals and animals with infections caused by antimicrobial-resistant bacteria.

   
Risk assessment of exposure (food)

   

   
Research, based on a survey of public service technology leaders in nine countries (Australia, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, Norway, Singapore, the U.K., and the U.S.), reveals that intelligent technologies are already playing a pivotal role in helping agencies achieve their mission – and expectations of future gains are high. Technology is only one part of a wider program of profound change.

   
Smart move (accenture)

   

  Medical technology report 2016

   
The very definition of “medtech” continues to evolve. While there is clear demand for therapeutic focus and real-world data collection, companies’ strategic responses vary tremendously. Some continue to pursue innovative business models, bolstering therapeutic depth with new digital or service capabilities, often gained by innovative partnerships.

   
Pulse of the industry (ey)

   

   
Research by the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment, and Health concluded that the electricity generated from the world’s collective human feces could power up to 138 million households. And that’s where Sanivation steps in—providing an alternative cooking-fuel source to local small businesses and restaurants.

   
Expanding to the household market (iee)

   

   
The transcription factor Nanog plays a crucial role in the self-renewal of embryonic stem cells. Previously unclear was how its protein abundance is regulated in the cells. Researchers at the Helmholtz Zentrum München and the Technical University of Munich, working in collaboration with colleagues from ETH Zürich, now report in ‘Cell Systems’ that the more Nanog there is on hand, the less reproduction there is.

   
Stem cell factor Nanog regulation (innovations-report)

   

   
In 2015, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced a goal of linking at least 50% of Medicare spending to value-based payment models such as accountable care organizations.1 Health care providers are now scrambling to reorganize in a way that delivers value while preserving or enhancing commercial success. Although it’s not yet clear how providers will respond to value-based payment models.

   
Lessons from the Pharma. Industry (nejm)

   

   
Strategic agility is essential ingredient in a world where markets can transform in a very short timescale. Many tech businesses admit that a failure to adapt quickly to trends has cost them dearly. Neither are they leveraging the potential of partners like vendors and/or consultants who could help them move faster and more decisively.

   
Disrupting the disruptors (kpmg)

   

   
The study measures the amount of tax that the case study company bears and the time and effort required to deal with preparing and filing its tax returns. We can now look at trends in these measures over an eleven year period. In addition, this year, for the first time, the study includes a ‘post- filing index’ which measures certain processes that might take place after a tax return has been filed.

   
The best performing economies (pwc)

   

   
Several years ago Microsoft decided to overhaul the Windows platform. Ostensibly this was in the name of better ease of usage, security, performance and so on. Behind the scenes what Microsoft was up to was elegantly seizing niche markets: squeezing independent developers out of them, taking their place, and offering users their own products, which in many cases were in no way better.

   
From Eugene Kapersky Blog

   

   
You don’t have to look too far to find the reasons for the growth of fiber lasers for production applications. On price per watt, beam quality, electrical consumption, and maintainability required, fiber lasers typically score the lowest on the cost side and very high on the performance side. Applications continue to expand from the most basic laser machine alignment to traditional cutting, welding, drilling, and marking.

   
Applications (advancedmanufacturing)

   

   
Having invested heavily into new capacity during the upcycle, many metals and mining operations are now keenly searching for new growth opportunities to help absorb some of their spare production capacity. Yet while metals executives can (and will) invest into lower- cost locations to consolidate their operations, mining organizations will likely continue to struggle with high fixed costs and footprints.

   
Challenging the environment (kpmg)

   

   
What is the role of trade in services in economic transformation and what can be done to improve the contribution? This report seeks to answer these questions by reviewing what is known about the relationships between trade in services and economic development and identifying areas for further research, quantifying how these relationships work and exploring short case studies where countries have actively promoted exports of services.

   
Services role in the economy (odi)

   

   
While this report focuses on the cost of mitigation policies, the JRC is also carrying out research relat ed to detailed bottom-up evaluation of costs of climate change impacts and adaptation. Policies envisaging a shift away from fossil fuels will entail also a transformation of the structure of production and consumption. As as result, mitigation policies will have an impact on macroeconomic variables.

   
GECO 2016 (jrc.ec.europa)

   

   
Different industries have different patterns of market leadership; only if you understand the particular pattern in your industry can you position your company effectively. Apple and Spotify took over their industry not by disrupting it and changing it entirely, but by recognizing and working with the dynamics that were already there. And certain companies in every industry are poised to do the same.

   
How to Choose the right approach ? (strategy-business)

   

   
In common with many areas in pharma, drug development is in a state of constant change. The emergence of disruptive technologies combined with the powerful push towards patient-centricity are forcing companies to shake off inertia and consider radical new models. One such model would have been unthinkable a decade ago but now, interest in clinical trials taking place outside the clinic is growing exponentially.

   
Siteless (eyeforpharma)

   

   
Organizations around the world face common challenges. The confluence of technology, changing social norms, and the democratization of information and technology is highly disruptive. Economic volatility and uncertainty is creating financial risk in certain corners of the globe. Geopolitical changes continue to reshape the global marketplace.

   
From headwinds to tailwinds (deloitte)

   

   
The clinical syndromes comprising urinary tract infection (UTI) continue to exert signi fi cant impact on millions of patients worldwide, most of whom are other- wise healthy women. Antibiotic therapy for acute cystitis does not prevent recurrences, which plague up to one fourth of women after an initial UTI. In this review, we highlight contemporary advances in the field of UTI pathogenesis.

   
Pathogenesis & Outlook (cell)

   

   
In addition to the economic transformation towards a low-carbon economy, sustainable development also requires long-term profound economic and social changes (transformation) in climate adaptation, particularly in the case of increased climate change. Against the background of the establishment of a long-term strategic framework at EU level that also provides the impulse for national strategies implementing SDGs.

   
Sustainable Development Goals at EU level (umweltbundesamt)

   

   
Today's fast-paced developpment of new technologies and products is quite remarkable. To remain competitive, businesses focus on design innovation. Many organizations rely on mathematical modeling and numerical simulation to get their designs right, or as close to real-world ready as possible, early in the development cycle. The benefi ts they have found are many, including shorter time to market and higher quality products.

   
Mulityphisics simulation (IEEE)

   

   
China’s traditional monopolies, state-run utilities and public services are gradually becoming accessible to private and even foreign investment. This opens new channels for foreign direct investment (FDI) into China, and provides Chinese outbound investors with the opportunity to form valuable synergies and linkages between their domestic and overseas businesses.here are three critical aspects of China’s socioeconomic development strategy.

   
Opportunities for Chinese & foreign businesses (kpmg)

   

   
The PwC Market Research Centre estimates that the number of non-cash transactions will grow by 69% from 2013 to 2020, which would represent over one million transactions happening every minute. However, new industry entrants, the so-called FinTechs, significantly disrupt the traditional payments business and pose serious threats. Pressure from the interchange regulation will result in revenue losses for card issuers.

   
Payments under siege (pwc)

   

   
We ask whether neural networks can learn to use secret keys to protect information from other neural networks. Specifically, we focus on ensuring confidentiality properties in a multiagent system, and we specify those properties in terms of an adversary. We demonstrate that the neural networks can learn how to perform forms of encryption and decryption.

   
How Google's "AIs" invent their own crypto? (arxiv)

   

   
The idea that development actors should experiment, learn and adapt is hard to disagree with. But how can this approach, referred to here as adaptive programming, be delivered through contractual arrangements with implementation partners? This paper surveys a branch of economics known as contract theory, with the objective of drawing attention to viewing adaptive programming from a contracting perspective.

   
From theory & design to implementation (odi)

   

  How "NO(x)" could trigger headache

   
Nitrates, such as cardiac therapeutics and food additives, are common headache triggers, with nitric oxide playing an important role. Facultative anaerobic bacteria in the oral cavity may contribute migraine-triggering levels of nitric oxide through the salivary nitrate-nitrite-nitric oxide pathway. Using high-throughput sequencing technologies, we detected observable and significantly higher abundances of nitrate, nitrite, and nitric oxide reductase genes in migraineurs versus nonmigraineurs people.

   
Oral microbes in the American gut (asm)

   

   
Akamai Technologies, the global leader in content delivery network (CDN) services, published new research from the company’s Threat Research team. Akamai researchers Ory Segal and Ezra Caltum have identified a recent spate of attacks whereby attackers are using Internet of Things (IoT) devices to remotely generate attack traffic by using a 12-year old vulnerability in OpenSSH, which we are calling SSHowDowN Proxy.

   
From IoT to internal network compromise (akamai)

   

   
The rise of populist parties across the globe has become a rising concern for executives. Nearly as many executives regard this as the most important risk to their business as cite capital market volatility. Companies are contending with growing uncertainty about tax policy, doubts about the direction of trade policy and fears about the return of national protectionism.

   
The top challenge to business strategies (ey)

   

   
The cannibalization of software defies easy explanation. Software is the motor of the world’s digital economy. Over the past 20 years, the program as artifact has vanished. Software battles now occur over platforms, which define an experience such as shopping (Amazon), searching (Google), or networking (LinkedIn). But software supremacy is neither the aim nor the result of the new game.

   
Software is eating the world & itself (ieee)

   

   
New technology, new market entrants, new customer expectations, and new business models. There are many ways the sector could develop to meet these challenges, some evolutionary, others more revolutionary. In this paper we discuss four key areas of disruption logistics companies need to focus on now, and explore some possible futures of the industry.

   
Risks vs opportunity (pwc)

   

   
For years, the Pentagon has been worried about the collisions that might be caused by an estimated 500,000 pieces of debris, taking out enormously valuable satellites and, in turn, creating even more debris. On Tuesday, the Defense Department took another significant step toward monitoring all of the cosmic junk swirling around in space, by delivering a gigantic new telescope capable of seeing small objects from very far away.

   
How to monitor flying objects ? (washingtonpost)

   

   
Two global partnerships were proposed in 2015 to push governments to make the massive investments required: Mission Innovation and the Global Apollo Programme. Mission Innovation has got countries to pledge to do more R&D on clean energy. But it is not binding and its targets are open to interpretation, being ‘bottom up’ and voluntary.

   
Smoke and mirrors (nature)

   

   
Social bots are software robots programmed by humans. They collect information and data, but also systematically introduce trends and key topics into social media without users being aware of it. The influencing potential the so-called “bot effect” is theoretically very large, but difficult to prove empirically. It is becoming ever more difficult to distinguish bots from real people. Bots operate with fake profiles, pretending to be human.

   
What does the future hold? (kas)

   

   
Theranos will close down its facilities in Arizona, Pennsylvania, and California. This is in order to focus on rebuilding its practices after multiple regulatory investigations. Moreover, a new executive team will lead the work. Various agendas taken up by this team are obtaining FDA clearances, pursuing publications in scientific journals and building commercial partnerships. This information is on the official website of Theranos.

   
It's a matter of quality assurance (industryleadersmagazine)

   

   
Today, we are at the dawn of a new revolution that will bring us yet another giant leap forward. Human kind has always striven to push the limits of machine construction and of what machines can do, and as a consequence attempted to build miniaturised machines of ever smaller size. The ultimate limit of this endeavour is to make molecular-sized machines, a research frontier that has intrigued scientists for many years, and that has required the creation of a range of new tools.

   
Molecular machines (kva)

   

   
The regulatory role of H2S in bacterial physiology still needs to be elucidated. Yet, interestingly, in E.coli and other bacteria tested, the ability to produce H2S was shown to enhance antibiotic resistance, thereby providing an adaptive advantage. the gut microbiota is routinely exposed to high levels of H2S, similarly to many other bacteria living in sulfide rich natural habitats.

   
Beneficial vs toxic effects (biochemist)

   

   
Democratic processes in several EU countries are suffering from systemic failure, with the result that the basic conditions of media pluralism are not present, and, at the same time, that the distortion in media pluralism is hampering the proper functioning of democracy . The study offers a new approach to strengthening media freedom and pluralism, bearing in mind the different political and social systems of the Member States.

   
A comparative analysis (statewatch)

   

   
Rooted in genetically engineered production cell lines, biosynthesis is increasingly a mainstay for industrial drug production, protein therapeutics (Dimitrov, 2012), fuels and other commodities, 2016). However, the reliance on living cellular hosts to operate the genetic programs that underpin biosynthesis is accompanied by biosafety regulations, practical hurdles, and specialized skills that limit their operation to laboratory settings.

   
How to make it portable & on-demand ? (cell)

   

   
This report does not stop at an assessment of a particular experience. It makes actionable recommendations as to how to scale up the application of DDD (Doing development differently ) principles in the Bank, taking advantage of the more permissive policy environment and the evolving architecture of projects and country programs that now exist thanks to a series of recent reforms.

   
Doing development differently (odi)

   

   
Africa’s rise over the past 15 years is real; what we have witnessed has been a structural evolution rath er than cyclical change that has marked previous boom and bust periods in Africa’s postcolonial history. Although exports from many African economies remain commodity-orientated, private consumption has become a key growth driver, as has investment in infrastructure.

   
Meltdown or Slowdown ? (ey)

   

   
Microbial' resistance can be present in our environment, in our livestock, in our food, and in us. Antimicrobial resistance threatens the effective treatment of an increasing range of infections. It has been estimated that the global impact of AMR could be 10 million deaths annually by 2050, and cost up to US $100 trillion in cumulative lost economic output. The FSA works to protect consumer interests in relation to food.

   
A holistic approach (food)

   

  How to protect product integrity ?

   
Applied DNA Sciences ( Applied DNA ), Inc. (NASDAQ: APDN), a provider of DNA - based supply chain, anti - counterfeiting, authentication , genotyping and anti - theft technologies, expanded its US cotton tagging business by 50 million pounds as part of its newly launched HomeGrown Lonestar™ program within the 2016 US cotton harvest. The cotton varietal tagged as Lonestar comes from the famous cotton territories of West Texas.

   
About tagging & testing (adnas)

   

   
Apple CEO Tim Cook, who early in his career spent 12 years working for IBM, told CNBC on the day the partnership was announced that he began chatting with current IBM CEO Ginni Rometty two years prior and found some commonalities in the challenges and opportunities their two companies face. They soon assigned teams from both companies to look into ways Apple and IBM might work together.

   
How the (unlikely) partnership works ? (fastcompany)

   

   
Over the past few years, the W3C has been working on implementing an HTML extension that would bring DRM to the web. The EME standard was mainly promoted by Netflix. At the time, the company was trying to eliminate the need for the Silverlight plugin, which Microsoft was about to kill. The promise of EME was that users would be able to stream Netflix videos without having to install any other plugin or app on their computers.

   
Making the legal illegal (tomshardware)

   

   
TensorFlow is an open source Python library for machine learning. It does mathematical computation using dataflow graphs. This article dwells on the use of TensorFlow as a forensic tool for classifying and predicting malware sourced from honeypots and honeynets. Machine learning has core tasks associated with classification and recognition, which are usually related to artificial intelligence.

   
Prominent soft computing approaches (opensourceforu)

   

   
Industrial 4.0 has already been introduced in many companies. In the »intelligent factories« of tomorrow, processes will be fully automated and manufacturing and logistics will become increasingly computerized. Therefore, more and more sensors, machines and control units must communicate with each other, which in turn leads to high amounts of data needing to be transferred.

   
The growing challenges of industrial networks (fraunhofer)

   

   
Technology consulting firm Gartner, Inc. projects that 6.4 billion connected things will be in use worldwide this year, up 30% from last year. And this number is expected to grow by more than three times to nearly 21 billion by the year 2020. Networked devices perhaps hold the most promise to cut costs and raise efficiency in production and manufacturing, offering the work itself smarter.

   
where IoT can have a transformational rol? (iso)

   

   
Modular equipment is attractive to pharmaceutical companies because it adds portability, ease of scale-up, and flexibility to facilities. As modular manufacturing becomes more popular, however, companies may face regulatory challenges, particularly when entering emerging markets. Taking a modular approach can significantly reduce time to install GMP manufacturing capacity.

   
New tools & approaches (pharmtech)

   

   
At a global financial services firm we worked with, a longtime customer accidentally submitted the same application file to two offices. Though the employees who reviewed the file were supposed to follow the same guidelines—and thus arrive at similar outcomes—the separate offices returned very different quotes. Taken aback, the customer gave the business to a competitor.

   
Noise vs Bias (hbr)

   

   
Microbeads are very small pieces of plastic in products such as facial scrubs and makeup. Some are visible to the naked eye, but others are as tiny as one micrometre. Conservationists have warned that they can affect fish growth and persist in the guts of mussels and fish that mistake them for food. The industry had argued that it was already phasing them out voluntarily.

   
Particular focus on seafood (efsa)

   

   
Technology readiness frames the technological potential of a really smart city—one that “uses digital intelligence to improve citizens’ lives,” as Carlo Ratti, director of the MIT Senseable City Lab, tells us. As a group, city gateway unlocks a physical door to a fluidly interconnected world while, technological readiness opens a digital portal to it.

   
Ecosystem geared toward smart cities (pwc)

   

   
Despite further improvement in Africa as an investment location, which may be accompanied by economic stabilisation in wide areas of Africa, the demographic development in both world regions will not lead to a decrease in migration in the medium to long-term. To improve this situation, increased economic and development-policy involvement by the EU and its member states throughout Africa is required.

   
New start of regional integration (kas)

   

   
The National Institutes of Health will fund six projects to identify biological factors that affect neural regeneration in the retina. The projects are part of the National Eye Institute (NEI) Audacious Goals Initiative (AGI), a targeted effort to restore vision by regenerating neurons and their connections in the eye and visual system. These projects will receive a total of $12.4 million over three years, pending availability of funds.

   
Neural regeneration (nih)

   

   
In 1959 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built Camp Century beneath the surface of the northwestern Greenland Ice Sheet. There they studied the feasibility of deploying ballistic missiles within the ice sheet. The base and its wastes were abandoned with minimal decommissioning in 1967, under the assumption they would be preserved for eternity by perpetually accumulating snowfall.

   
The abandoned ice sheet base (wiley)

   

   
Digital identity is widely recognized as the next step in identity systems. However, while many efforts are underway to solve parts of the identity challenge and create true digital identity, theres a need for a concerted and coordinated effort to build a truly trans formational digital identity system. This report will discuss different structures for identity systems and which configurations are best suited to solve different problems.

   
The digital identity landscape (weforum)

   

   
The world population would hit the 10 billion mark in 2053 if the assumptions underlying PRB’s 2050 projections are applied to subsequent years. “Despite declines in fertility rates around the world, we expect population gains to remain strong enough to take us toward a global population of 10 billion”. “Significant regional differences remain, though”.

   
Midcentury population projections (prb)

   

   
Why we sleep is a fundamental question. Why do we spend so much of our lives in this brain state? This work shows us that sleep is a highly active brain process and not a waste of time. The results are a boost for what is called the synaptic homeostasis hypothesis of sleep, which was developed by scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2003.

   
Data analysis (nature)

   

   
The technological breakthroughs megatrend is manifesting itself in a proliferation of technologies. To remain relevant and to succeed, emerging technology strategy needs to be a part of every company’s corporate strategy. The most pertinent technologies and the corresponding strategy will of course vary from company to company; but our analysis of more than 150 emerging technologies pinpoints the eight that most C-suites should start with.

   
In seight: 8 emerging tech. (pwc)

   

   
To meet the needs of ageing populations, significant changes are required in the way health systems are structured and health care is delivered. In many places, particularly in low and middle income countries, access and affordability are key barriers to care. New services and approaches will need to be developed in these settings. But globally, the services that are available are often a poor fit with the health needs of older people.

   
How to add health to years ? (who)

   

   
Decoupling material use and related environmental impacts from economic growth is essential for ensuring the prosperity of human society and a healthy natural environment. But in order to be successful, decoupling efforts need to go beyond simple efficiency gains that arise from maturing economies. With a rapidly expanding middle class in the coming decades, a prosperous and equitable world calls for transformative changes in lifestyles and consumption behaviour.

   
UNAP's assessment report (unep)

   

   
“Beneath the surface of a cyberattack” was created by Deloitte Advisory’s Cyber Risk practice in tandem with the organization’s leading forensic and investigations, and business valuation services. Looking at two samples cyberattack scenarios, the report demonstrates a model to quantify potential damage, and identifies 14 business impacts of a cyber incident as they play out over a five-year incident response process.

   
A deeper look (deloitte)

   

   
When wearable baby monitors burst onto the scene in 2014, few predicted how successful they'd become. Since then, devices like Snuza, MonBaby, Owlet and Mimo have become common baby shower gifts and early parent purchases, with hundreds of thousands of units collectively sold in the US and around the world, according to their developers.

   
Recommendation: Does vs doesn't (cnet)

   

   
The world’s most revered innovators, investors and thought leaders will gather later this year at the Ag Innovation Showcase to revolutionise what in some quarters remains an inefficient and environmentally destructive industry. The event brings together a diverse cross-section of opinions and directs attention towards the challenges and opportunities shaping – and reshaping – agriculture today.

   
Challenges and opportunities (theneweconomy)

   

   
SVB provides financial services to innovative companies — including leading-edge software and life sciences companies, as well as premium winemakers — and it often connects innovators and potential partners with one another. CEO and president Greg Becker is also noteworthy for his ability to see the big picture, the overall positive growth in technology, which encompasses activity at all the companies in the industry.

   
Where next big tech innovations will emerge ? (strategy-business)

   

   
Attracting tech talent will increasingly rely on job seekers’ preferences, including being in the locations that appeal to them most. This may mean setting up physical presences in these locations but could also mean that employers recruit in popular hubs despite their company’s base elsewhere, solving the talent gap by offering candidates the chance to work remotely.

   
Data Analytic from labor market (indeed)

   

   
The extracellular matrix (ECM) forms the complex and dynamic 3D environment that defines tissue structure and function. Matrix molecules provide much of the microenvironmental plasticity that dictates cell behaviour, and their dysregulated expression is associated with a wide range of diseases including cancers, and inflammatory and fibrotic conditions.

   
The extracellular matrix (biochemist)

   

   
It was only in the early 1900s that British doctors realised that the housefly could carry disease on its bristly legs: flies were a major transmitter of both typhoid and summer-sickness, causing thousands of deaths each year. After the hot summer of 1911, there was also rising public panic about the high levels of infant mortality from diarrhoea.

   
Risks & Costs (theguardian)

   

   
While it’s natural for seasoned, long- tenured executives to remain unruffled in the midst of uncertainty, there is another factor at play. We found that nearly half of CEOs expect their companies to be transformed into a significantly different entity within the next 3years. To do so, they are embarking on a transformation journey, reviewing strategies, implementing their own disruptive technologies and increasing their headcounts to recruit new skill-sets.

   
Now or never (kpmg)

   

   
The costs involved in the promotion of renewable energies in Germany – the total volume of the so-called EEG levy (based on the Renew­able Energy Sources Act) since its introduction in 2000 is set to pass the 150 billion euro mark sometime during 2016 – is justified as development aid under the heading of climate and energy policy.

   
After the Paris Agreement (kas)

   

   
Not all upstart threats are alike — and misdiagnosing your new competition can lead you to respond in a way that can bring further harm to your business. Incumbents often move early into new technologies, even if it means undermining or cannibalizing their existing businesses. Sometimes that’s the right thing to do. But other times it can backfire in devastating ways.

   
How to match & Absorb threats ? (strategy-business)

   

   
The year 2016, marking the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl catastrophe and the 5th year since the Fukushima disaster started unfolding, strangely might go down in history as the period when the notion of risk of nuclear power plants turned into the perception of nuclear power plants at risk. Indeed, an increasing number of reactors is threatened by premature closure due to the unfavorable economic environment.

   
Status report 2016 (worldnuclearreport)

   

   
FAO is continuously monitoring the status of El Niño. While it has declined in strength and a return to a neutral state is indicated, its impacts on the agriculture sector are still continuing. Climate models are now predicting an increasing likelihood of La Niña developing in 2016, which is an opposite phenomenon.In many of the affected countries, FAO is using early warning information to design and implement early action and response plans.

   
Preparedness and Response (fao)

   

   
Aerospace and defense sector performance sector returned to growth, with US defense subsector bottoming out, and profit margins remaining flat. This study analyzes the top 100 global aerospace and defense (A&D) companies, or business units of industrial conglomerates with A&D business, with reported revenue of more than US$500 million in 2015 with financial statements filed by 31 December, 2015.

   
Facts and figures (deloitte)

   

   
OECD GDP growth is projected to be just under 2% on average over 2016-17, broadly in line with outcomes in the previous two years. Supportive macroeconomic policies and low commodity prices should continue to underpin a modest recovery in the advanced economies, assuming that wage increases and business investment growth both start to pick up and tensions in financial markets do not reoccur.

   
Assessment of the macroeconomic situation (oecd)

   

   
Using mass empirical analyses with task-free fMRI data, we have found that the parametric statistical methods used for group fMRI analysis with the packages SPM, FSL, and AFNI can produce FWE-corrected cluster P values that are erroneous, being spuriously low and inflating statistical significance. This calls into question the validity of countless published fMRI studies based on parametric clusterwise inference.

   
Clusterwise VS Voxelwise (pnas)

   

   
A new anonymizing protocol from MIT may prove more resilient against such determined and deep-pocketed attackers.VThe potential problem with Tor is that if an adversary gets enough nodes on the network, they can work together to track the progress of packets. They might not be able to tell exactly what is being sent, but they can put together a breadcrumb trail tying a user to traffic coming out of an exit node — at least, that’s the theory.

   
MIT’s anonymous online communications protocol (mit)

   

   
If you’re producing small precision components, quality drives the entire manufacturing process. One of the ways to help ensure the quality of such products is through the use of automated inspection systems known as automatic visual-control systems (AVCs). These systems use computer visual technology to automatically check parts for many different defects.

   
Automatic visual-control systems (machinedesign)

   

   
Molecular isotopic engineering (MIE) is the directed stable-isotopic synthesis of chemical products for product authentication and security, as well as intellectual property protection. In tests involving naproxen manufacturing, results showed a generally excellent correspondence between observed and predicted stable-isotopic results (d13C, d18O, and dD) for directed synthesis of a racemic mixture from its immediate precursors.

   
Product identification, security & IP protection (pharmtech)

   

   
Researchers at Microsoft and the University of Washington (UW) said they have broken a world record by storing 200MB of data on synthetic DNA strands. Researchers said the impressive part about reaching the 200MB milestone is not just how much data they were able to encode onto synthetic DNA and then decode, it's also the space they were able to store it in.

   
How to access to the stored data ? (computerworld)

   

   
The 4th industrial revolution is undoubtedly artificial intelligence systems and the future is definitely here, even though it doesn't look like an episode of "The Jetsons" or "The Terminator" just yet. The current generation of artificial intelligence technology is most effective in the capacity of augmenting human intelligence.

   
The human-machine interfaces (developer)

   

   
The optic nerve is the eye’s data cable, carrying visual information from the light-sensing neurons of the retina to the brain. Like a bundle of wires, it consists of about a million axons that each extend from an individual retinal ganglion cell. A variety of optic neuropathies, such as glaucoma, cause vision loss when they destroy or damage these axons. In adults, retinal ganglion cell axons fail to regrow on their own, which is why vision loss from optic neuropathies is usually permanent.

   
Use it or lose it (nih)

   

   
This report has been prepared using depersonalized data processed by Kaspersky Security Network (KSN). The metrics are based on the number of distinct users of Kaspersky Lab products with the KSN feature enabled who encountered ransomware at least once in a given period. The term ransomware covers mainly two types of malware: so-called Windows blockers and encryption ransomware.

   
The evolution of the threat and its future (securelist)

   

   
Since 6000 BCE, when melting glaciers raised sea levels enough to create the English Channel, two fundamental facts have dominated British history—first, that the islands are at the edge of the European landmass; and second, that they stick out into the Atlantic. Insularity has never equaled isolation. People, goods, and ideas were moving constantly along the Atlantic coast from Spain to Scotland by 5000 BCE.

   
A brief history starting in 6000 BCE (hbr)

   

   
We will see much more productive R&D, with more rapid development of novel therapeutics and in greater volume. Researchers will get the ability to ask questions and get answers more quickly. This will allow them rule out more blind alleys at an early stage and get straight to productive insights. Although there are many different tools for data analysis, processing, or visualization, we bring it into one place.

   
The world's corpus of scientific knowledge (eyeforpharma)

   

  Beijing’s subsidence

   
Beijing is one of the most water-stressed cities in the world. Due to over-exploitation of groundwater, the Beijing region has been suffering from land subsidence since 1935. In this study, the Small Baseline InSAR technique has been employed to process Envisat ASAR images acquired between 2003 and 2010 and TerraSAR-X stripmap images collected from 2010 to 2011 to investigate land subsidence in the Beijing region.

   
A comprehensive spatio-temporal analysis (mdpi)

   

   
To fix a performance problem, researchers want to know what exactly is happening when a device—the battery, a solar cell, an engine—doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do anymore. If you want to fix the problem, you need to know how that problem happens. Much of science, in fact, is devoted to finding clever ways to intuit what atoms are doing based on the clues they leave behind—the effects they have on things around them.

   
Why scientists want to know ? (anl)

   

   
Between 2015 and 2030, the number of people aged 55 and above in high-income countries will grow by a quarter to around 500 million. It is good news that we are living longer, but rapid population ageing is also putting significant financial pressure on healthcare and pension systems.

   
Golden age index (pwc)

   

   
Machines are far better suited to handling large volumes of data, but far more reliant on everyone using the same syntax and vocabulary. Computers, it seems, need a common language of medicine. They need ‘interoperable’ data. There is now so much healthcare information being exchanged that a shift toward greater healthcare interoperability is as inexorable.

   
Toward standardizing information (eyeforpharma)

   

   
As robo, or automated, advice enters the mainstream within the retail and wealth segments in developed markets, regulators are considering whether they need to extend or clarify the regulatory perimeter to cover new digital distribution channels and, if so, how. Regulators are now focusing on investment management activities and the way that open-ended investment funds, in particular, are managed.

   
Responding to closer scrutiny ()

   

   
There is a striking difference in the way delivery capability manifests itself in low-income countries (LICs), as opposed to upper-middle-income countries (UMICs) and high-income countries (HICs). For LICs, some aspects of the finance ministry’s delivery function pose challenges, whereas in richer countries, delivery is so routine that it seems almost invisible.

   
The evolution of tasks and expectations (odi)

   

  How to change your customer experience?

   
Do you know the 12 Laws of karma? And did you know they can be applied daily to your customer experience (CX) efforts? If not, no worries, just read on. I’ll define them for you and tie them to this CX world we live in. It’s interesting that we always associate karma with bad things, i.e., payback for something rotten someone did. But it's also associated with good things.

   
The 12 Laws of Karma (qualitydigest)

   

   
The survey presents the views of 271 directors across 20 countries in the EMEA region, providing a unique perspective on the issues currently faced by boards of directors. The results highlight the changing focus of directors in today’s challenging business environment and how this differs across the region. The report illustrates what non-executive directors identify as key issues facing boards.

   
Regulations and practice (deloitte)

   

   
The Google prototype combines the two main approaches to quantum computing. One approach constructs the computer’s digital circuits using qubits in particular arrangements geared to solve a specific problem. This is analogous to a tailor-made digital circuit in a conventional microprocessor made from classical bits. Much of quantum computing theory is based on this approach.

   
From prototype to product (nature)

   

  Genome engineering

   
Over the last 3 years, the new generation of genome editing and engineering tools based on the bacterial CRISPR-Cas (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Palindromic Repeats and CRISPR-associated proteins) has attracted enormous attention in both the scientific community and the popular media. Although exaggerations certainly cannot be avoided along the way, the enthusiasm is well justified.

   
From nature to laboratory (biochemist)

   

   
In the second nuclear age, no less than the first, there are no realistic prospects for banning multiple-warhead missiles. China has started to deploy such missiles, and India and Pakistan are likely to cross this threshold as well. The motivations behind these steps will determine how extensively nuclear arsenals will grow and how pernicious the effects of stockpile growth will become.

   
From the first to the second Nuc. age (stimson)

   

   
Samsung Electronics Co. is considering introducing two new smartphone models that will feature bendable screens, including a version that folds in half like a cosmetic compact, people familiar with the matter said. Samsung, the biggest supplier of OLED panels for mobile products, has pioneered the development of new screen formats with its multi-sided Edge smartphones.

   
The "Project Valley" (bloomberg)

   

   
Ransomware is a type of malware that infects computer systems, restricting users’ access to the infected systems. Ransomware variants have been observed for several years and often attempt to extort money from victims by displaying an on-screen alert. Typically, these alerts state that the user’s systems have been locked or that the user’s files have been encrypted.

   
Things you can do (us-cert)

   

   
The group of Russian and French researchers, with the participation of scientists from the Lomonosov Moscow State University, has succeeded to synthesize nanoparticles of ultrapure silicon, which exhibited the property of efficient photoluminescence, i.e., secondary light emission after photoexcitation. These particles were able to easily penetrate into cancer cells and it allowed to use them as luminescent markers in the early diagnosis.

   
Diagnostic of cancer at its' early stage (innovations-report)

   

   
At the beginning, there are potential entrepreneurs – those individuals who possess entrepreneurial atti- tudes and who believe they have the sk ills and knowledge needed to launch their own company when they have found a suit able business opportunity. One of the factors that determines whether or not they take the next step is to what extent the society and economy of which they are members views entrepreneurs.

   
Why small businesses are vital? (kas)

   

   
You can't use drones to check whether your employee really is sick, or to take pictures of your neighbors, unless you're a news organization in which case the sky is the limit - or more accurately not the limit. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) – an arm of the Department of Commerce – has published a set of best practice guidelines for the use of drones by companies, individuals and news organizations.

   
Guidelines for three basic groups (theregister)

   

   
The U.S. manufacturing industry, increasingly propelled by advanced technologies, comprises a large portion of the economy. In order for companies to grow and succeed against aggressive global competition, manufacturers indicate advanced technologies are critical to company-level competitiveness by increasing differentiation through creating premium products, processes, and services that capture higher margins.

   
A Valuable “knock-off” effect  (areadevelopment)

   

   
Only a few years ago, Africa was being dubbed “the next Asia,” and multinationals watched with mounting interest as local economies boomed across the continent. Although a decline in global commodity demand has since ushered in a slowdown, Africa remains a promising long-term growth market. Its GDP grew about 3.4 percent in 2015, a full percentage point above the global growth rate, and is expected to increase to 4.2 percent in 2016.

   
A deep understanding of local context (strategy-business)

   

   
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved, for the first time, a manufacturer’s change in its production method from “batch” to continuous manufacturing.28 Modernizing manufacturing technology may lead to a more robust manufacturing process with 29 fewer interruptions in production, fewer product fail ures (before or after distribution), and 30 greater assurance that the drug products manufactured in any given period of time will provide 31 the expected clinical performance.

   
Guidance for industry (qualitydigest)

   

   
NASA has released a bunch of patents for its technologies so that anyone can use them. A total of 56 “formerly-patented” technologies developed by the government are now available in the public domain, meaning they can be used for commercial purposes in an unrestricted manner. To make it easier to find these technologies and others like them, NASA has also created a new searchable database that links the public to thousands of the agency’s now-expired patents.

   
Formerly-patented tech. (slashgear)

   

   
Pensions in Greece seem locked in a head-long race to the bottom. The failure to meet basic requirements of income security feed a loss of trust which, in turn, poisons future prospects. Despite repeated efforts since 2010, the cure appears not to be working. A number of questions arise: Some refer to the long term: Why has the performance of the Greek pension system been so bad for so long?

   
Wrong solutions to the wrong problem (kas)

   

   
Globally, an estimated 422 million adults were living with diabetes in 2014, compared to 108 million in 1980. The global prevalence (age-standardized) of diabetes has nearly doubled since 1980, rising from 4.7% to 8.5% in the adult population. This reflects an increase in associated risk factors such as being overweight or obese. Diabetes caused 1.5 million deaths in 2012.

   
WHO' report

   

   
PwC’s 2016 Global Industry 4.0 Survey is the biggest worldwide survey of its kind, with over 2,000 participants from nine major industrial sectors and 26 countries. The study explores the benefits of digitising your company’s horizontal and vertical value chains, as well as building your digital product & service portfolio. Based on the findings and our experience working with first movers, we’ve also crafted a blueprint for success.

   
Building the digital enterprise (pwc)

   

   
By “miracles” Gates doesn’t mean unanticipated gifts that appear undeserved from nowhere but, rather, technological breakthroughs “that are the result of research and development and the human capacity to innovate,” such as the personal computer, the Internet, and the polio vaccine2. He called upon students to “work extra hard in your math and sciences,” because the world needs “crazy-sounding ideas to solve our energy challenge.”

   
Questions & Answers (technologyreview)

   

   
While a substantial gap persists between global need and the scale of mobilized resilience finance, there is no doubt that donor countries are increasingly recognizing the importance of investing in adaptation to climate change. Perhaps the most prominent new mechanism for public resilience and adaptation funding is the Green Climate Fund, or GCF.

   
Recommendations for action (americanprogress)

   

  Manufacturing Competitiveness

   
Ensuring talent is “the” top priority : A focus on creating differentiated talent acquisition, development and retention strategies to be regarded as “employers of choice,” as well as identifying and nurturing new models of collaboration that leverage key sources of talent outside of the organization will be key. As talent is ranked as the most important driver of competitiveness by executives around the world, the competition among nations and companies is expected to be fierce.

   
Index 2016 (deloitte)

   

   
For epilepsy patients and attending physicians, it has been a challenge to correctly assess the frequency and severity of epileptic seizures without inpatient recording equipment. A consortium coordinated by the epileptologists of the University Hospital Bonn is now developing a mobile sensor that can detect seizures. A warning signal is designed to summon relatives or attending physicians to provide timely help.

   
Automated data and alarm (innovations-report)

   

   
Chinese online sales in 2015 massively shifted to mobile. Single’s Day—the 24-hour shopping festival that now dwarfs Black Friday in terms of sales—is often used as a bellwether for China’s e-commerce market. This year, Alibaba's Single’s Day online sales came in at $14.3 billion, a 60% increase over 2014. 2 Most significant, however, was the shift to mobile.

   
Innovation at retailers (pwc)

   

  HIV & CRISPR gene-editing tech.

   
At least half a dozen papers over the past three years have explored using the popular CRISPR–Cas9 gene editing technique to combat HIV, but the latest finding, described in a study published on 7 April in Cell Reports1, adds to questions about the feasibility of the approach. However, the researchers involved say that the discovery is a minor setback that does not preclude the idea altogether.

   
Mutations that resist attack (nature)

   

   
In the past, shareholders might have given management time to make course corrections. But today, capital markets are less patient, and investors are acutely focused on enhancing shareholder returns. Specialized private equity firms have devised models for driving cost reduction and margin expansion far in excess of what leading companies have been able to do on their own — by about 800 to 1,000 basis points in two to three years.

   
A Combined Approach (strategy-business)

   

   
Ultra-processed foods comprised 57.9% of energy intake, and contributed 89.7% of the energy intake from added sugars. The content of added sugars in ultra-processed foods (21.1% of calories) was eightfold higher than in processed foods (2.4%) and fivefold higher than in unprocessed or minimally processed foods and processed culinary ingredients grouped together (3.7%).

   
Representative cross-sectional study (bmj)

   

   
Audit has proved its worth over the years, to investors and companies alike. But as the events of the last decade have shown, it’s time for change – for a revolution in audit thinking and execution. Business has changed, shareholder needs have evolved, and audit needs to keep up. For audit to stay relevant, we need to start looking at what creates value in a business Shaping corporate reporting.

   
Shaping the future of corporate reporting (assets.kpmg)

   

   
The challenge of delivering best in class Compliance risk management in an era of constrained resources is not insurmountable. But it requires making important choices as to where limited investments should be placed to improve risk-based returns. Ongoing change in the ecosystem is only adding additional layers of complexity to these decisions and intensifying the clamour for decisive action.

   
2016 Compliance risk study (accenture)

   

   
There are many different approaches for assessing process parameter criticality, and statistics can play an important role in these evaluations. One particular challenge involves assessing when a relationship between a process parameter and a CQA represents a significant impact on that CQA. Assessing impact based solely on statistical significance (p-value) is not appropriate.

   
Aids from statistical tools (pharmtech)

   

   
The feasibility of economic transformation-that is, productivity-enhancing and employment-generating structural change has now been demonstrated in many different parts of the developing world. Taken as a whole, this experience does not point to a single pathway of institutional change. Indeed, it underlines the importance of countries discovering pathways and methods that work in their context.

   
Responding to emerging opportunities (odi)

   

   
New Zealand has undergone a huge transformation in workplace health and safety in the five years since the Pike River tragedy.This report is encouraging in that it reflects a strong commitment to health and safety by the CEOs who took part in the survey. The report provides a snapshot of what some of this good practice looks like. This includes examples of actions boards and chief executives take and practices they are putting in place.

   
NZ's H&S Business overhaul (deloitte)

   

   
The US productivity gains of the mid 90s began in the ICT sector and developed in the market services sector. Increased ICT use and organizational changes were the main driving factors as many small and unproductive firms were replaced by large and highly productive ones (the so-called Walmart effect). After the mid-2000s, productivity growth slowed down dramatically.

   
Microeconomic evidence & macroeconomic trends (strategie.gouv)

   

   
CEOs and HR leaders are focused on understanding and creating a shared culture, designing a work environment that engages people, and constructing a new model of leadership and career development. In competition for skilled people, organizations are vying for top talent in a highly transparent job market and becoming laser-focused on their external employment brand.

   
How to redesign the organisation ? (deloitte)

   

   
New breast cancer therapy has destroyed deadly tumours in just 11 days, trials have shown. Experts hailed the findings as “astonishing" and said it is the first time a drug for the disease has ever shown such a response. They suggested the results of the trial, in women with one of the most aggressive forms of breast cancer, could revolutionise future treatment of other types of disease.

   
How the new therapy works ? (telegraph)

   

   
Earlier this month, Amazon Education quietly opened an “Amazon Education Wait List,” where educators could sign up to get an alert for when a new, free platform opens for business. The development comes at an interesting time, with companies like Apple and Google also sizing up how their own platforms and hardware can play a bigger role in education services (and where they might not).

   
Transitioning to OER (techcrunch)

   

   
There’s a growing demand for greener, safer renewable energy sources. Sun, wind, water, biomass, waves and tides, and the heat of the soil, all provide alternatives to non-renewable energy. The following collection showcases some of the most amazing renewable energy projects and prototypes from the past few decades, including quite a few you’ve probably never heard of before.

   
From solar power to tidal energy (gizmodo)

   

   
If you have a quick Google for something like "Python vs. C," you will find lots of comparisons out there. Sad to relate, however, trying to work out which is the "best" language is well-nigh impossible for many reasons, not the least that it's extremely difficult to define what one means by "best" in the first place.

   
The programming landscape (embedded)

   

   
Many view EAP as a legacy approach. But when it was originally developed in the 1980s, EAP was a bold response to the same perennial problem: integrating technology with the business strategy. The information technologies of that era were bumping up against old, clumsy, bureaucratic processes and practices. EA projects were supposed to replace those practices with more elegant, streamlined renditions..

   
Architectural engineering and urban design (strategy-business)

   

  Early medieval muslim graves in France

   
The rapid Arab-Islamic conquest during the early Middle Ages led to major political and cultural changes in the Mediterranean world. Although the early medieval Muslim presence in the Iberian Peninsula is now well documented, based in the evaluation of archeological and historical sources, the Muslim expansion in the area north of the Pyrenees has only been documented so far through textual sources or rare archaeological data.

   
Palaeogenomic analyses (journals.plos)

   

  PDSA/PDCA, what's about?

   
Marketers are relentless in their efforts to seduce you with fancy tools, acronyms, Japanese terminology—and promises—about their versions of formal improvement structures such as Six Sigma, lean, lean Six Sigma, or the Toyota Production System, each with its own unique toolbox. We laugh when we hear people casually comment that PDSA and plan-do-check-act (PDCA) are the same thing. They’re not.

   
Why linear progress is a myth? (qualitydigest)

   

  Automotive executive survey 2016

   
With disruption arising from a new digitalized and connected world, it seems the center of gravity of the customer relationship in a connected car is rapidly moving towards tech giants from Silicon Valley. Auto executives are far less optimistic that they can stay in the center of the customer relationship than before.

   
Moving towards tech giants (assets.kpmg)

   

   
GPS uses the concept of trilateration to provide your location, but relies on Differential GPS and atomic clocks to vastly improve the accuracy. With such precision, GPS is being used in myriad applications including personal navigation and military missile guidance systems. Now, a team from the University of California, has developed a technique that augments the regular GPS data with on-board inertial measurements from a sensor.

   
A set of new algorithms (illumin.usc)

   

   
Social investment is clearly a priority for the EU as is evidenced by its flagship Europe 2020 initiatives, the European Platform against Poverty and Social Exclusion and the Agenda for New Skills and Jobs. In essence, as the Commission details, social investment focuses on ensuring social protection systems respond to people’s needs and preclude dire social conditions that lead to higher social spending.

   
For New Skills and Jobs (strategie.gouv)

   

   
These findings suggest that the phrase that best captures Americans’ views on the choice between privacy vs. disclosure of personal information is, “It depends . ” P eople’s views on the key tradeoff of the modern , digital economy – namely, that consumers offer information about themselves in exchange for something of value – are shaped by both the conditions of the deal and the circumstances of their lives.

   
The state & boundary of privacy (pewinternet)

   

   
Viruses reproduce by hijacking their host’s cells, using their natural processes to make copies of themselves. These copies then strike out on their own to infect more cells. When a virus interferes, the cells can’t function normally—the virus either kills the cells or prevents them from functioning well enough to report for duty. That makes viral infections especially dangerous for developing babies.

   
The spread of the Zika virus (smithsonianmag)

   

   
During the next 10 years, a philosophical tug-of-war between four generational mindsets will be a reality. On one side, Gen X and baby boomers adhere to more traditional forms of career progression. On the other, millennials and Gen Z, who tend to be more transient, idealize jobs where social impact plays a role. These two subsets will shape the future of the companies they work for.

   
Accenture Fjord trends (accenture)

   

   
Vagrant is a tool that allows you to programatically build an isolated environment for your application and all of its dependencies. The Vagrant environment is a virtual machine, so it enjoys complete isolation from both the host machine and any other Vagrant machines (VMs) you may be running.

   
How to manage your VMs ? (developer)

   

  Live TV in Search of Viewers

   
The cost of a 30-second commercial during this year’s Super Bowl 50 set a new record. Advertising Age reports that some advertisers are paying more than US$5 million, topping last year’s price of $4.5 million by more than 11 percent. In 2011, the same ad buy would have cost an advertiser $3.5 million. That’s a 43 percent increase in five years.

   
The trend in ad prices for live events (strategy-business)

   

   
The cyber-security professional is faced with the dilemma of selecting an appropriate set of cybersecurity defensive measures from a vast array of options, and this selection process occurs for most, if not all, professionals while operating with a limited set of resources to employ the measures. In this report, we aim to address these difficulties and help explain the menu of actions for defending an organization against cyberattack.

   
Programming & budgeting (rand)

   

  The hidden machinery of the cell

   
A hulking metal box, some three metres tall, is quietly beaming terabytes’ worth of data through thick orange cables that disappear off through the ceiling. It is one of the world’s most advanced cryo-electron microscopes: a device that uses electron beams to photograph frozen biological molecules and lay bare their molecular shapes. In labs around the world, cryo-electron microscopes are sending tremors through the field of structural biology.

   
The cryo-electron microscopy (nature)

   

   
Many CEOs do still see opportunities but they are looking to play things safe. The United States and China are far and away the most important markets that CEOs identify as offering the best prospects for growth, with Germany and the United Kingdom some way behind. That said, CEOs also see potential in India’s bullish business attitude and in Brazil despite its current political and economic struggles.

   
Complicated & multi-polar world management (pwc)

   

   
MIT researchers have developed a machine-learning system that can comb through repairs to open-source computer programs and learn their general properties, in order to produce new repairs for a different set of programs. The researchers tested their system on a set of programming errors, culled from real open-source applications, that had been compiled to evaluate automatic bug-repair systems.

   
Recognizing correct code (mit)

   

   
Fisheries data assembled by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) suggest that global marine fisheries catches increased to 86 million tonnes in 1996, then slightly declined. Here, using a decade-long multinational ‘catch reconstruction’ project covering the Exclusive Economic Zones of the world’s maritime countries and the High Seas from 1950 to 2010, and accounting for all fisheries, we identify catch trajectories differing considerably from the national data submitted to the FAO.

   
Fishery's surexploitation (nature)

   

   
The solar energy sector in Africa is relatively young when compared to grid-based electrification, but it is growing rapidly. Falling costs, combined with improvements in the energy efficiency of end-use technologies, including lights, and innovations in payment systems are helping the expansion of solar. This report considers the full range of solar devices.

   
Solar household solutions (odi)

   

   
This brochure takes stock of the progress achieved, identifies open issues and sets out next steps under each of the six building blocks: Strengthening the knowledge base and reducing fragmentation; Getting good ideas to market; Maximising social and territorial cohesion; Pooling forces to achieve breakthroughs: European Innovation Partnerships; Leveraging our policies externally; and Making it happen.

   
Strengthening the knowledge base (europa)

   

   
The report used a mix of qualitative methodologies aimed at reviewing the state of EU legislative and policy tools with implications for food waste. The methodology mix was designed to address the specific characteristics and constraints of each section of the work. Fifty-two legislative acts with implications for food waste have been issued and applied within seven of the twenty areas (Chapters) covered by EU legislation and policies.

   
Policies across the EU-28 (eu-fusions)

   

   
On a recent Saturday morning in Recife, the state’s capital, troops joined health workers going door to door in the Brasilia Teimosa neighborhood to warn residents against leaving water receptacles uncovered. They also spooned a powdered biological agent into tanks and drains in an attempt to kill any mosquito larvae. The microcephaly cases have occurred around the country.

   
The disease in Brazil (washingtonpost)

   

   
This 11th edition of "The Global Risks Report" is published at a time of profound change. Global risks materialize in new and unexpected ways and are becoming more imminent as their consequences reach people, institutions and economies. We witness the effects of climate change in the rising frequency and intensity of water shortages, floods and storms worldwide.

   
What actions could build resilience ? (euractiv)

   

   
China’s answer to the Airbus A320 and Boeing 737, is slated to have its first test flight somtime in 2016. Built by the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (Comac), the twin-engine airliner had its celebratory rollout in November of 2015 in Shanghai. But even if the upcoming flight-testing goes well, don’t expect to fly on a C919 right away.

   
The homegrown Chinese creation (ieee)

   

   
We find ourselves in the midst of the greatest information and communications revolution in human history. More than 40 percent of the world’s population has access to the inter- net, with new users coming online every day. Among the poorest 20 percent of households, nearly 7 out of 10 have a mobile phone. The poorest households are more likely to have access to mobile phones than to toilets or clean water.

   
From divided access to devided capability (worldbank)

   

   
An analysis funded by the National Eye Institute (NEI), part of the National Institutes of Health, has identified three genes that contribute to the most common type of glaucoma. The study increases the total number of such genes to 15. “Just in time for Glaucoma Awareness Month, this unprecedented analysis provides the most comprehensive genetic profile of glaucoma to date,” said NEI Director Paul A. Sieving, M.D., Ph.D.

   
Gene linking oxidative damage to glaucoma (nih)

   

   
Female millennials are set to play a critical part in future FS growth. At a time when 70% of FS CEOs see the limited availability of key skills as a threat to their growth prospects, 2 it’s clearly vital to make the most of all the available talent including women. But the importance of women goes further.

   
Female millennials (pw)

   

   
With disruption arising from a new digitalized and connected world, it seems the center of gravity of the customer relationship in a connected car is rapidly moving towards tech giants from Silicon Valley. Auto executives are far less optimistic that they can stay in the center of the customer relationship than before.

   
Service-driven digital universe (kpmg)

   

   
A polling of 28,000 consumers across 28 countries, the Igniting Growth in Consumer Technology survey finds that for nearly half (47 percent) of respondents, security concerns and privacy risks rank among the top three barriers to buying an IoT device and service. IoT devices include smartwatches, wearable fitness monitors, and smart home thermostats, among others.

   
The Igniting Growth (accenture)

   

   
A team of engineers from Oregon State University propose the use of bioactive glass (BAG) to improve the longevity of dental fillings. In a study backed by the National Institute of Health and published in the journal of Dental Materials, the team showed through in vitro experimentation that molars with BAG fillings are resistant to secondary tooth decay, or damage to the filling that usually occurs over some six years after it has been implanted.

   
How glass fillers can reduce bacterial penetration? (demajournal)

   

   
Several organizations that bring together manufacturers, technologies and information systems, organizations like MESA (Manufacturing Enterprise Systems Association), the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC), and the Smart Manufacturing Leadership Coalition (SMLC), are working on initiatives including the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and Smart Manufacturing to coordinate this convergence of technologies and realize the process improvement potential sooner rather than later.

   
Revolution in manufacturing business strategy (industryweek)

   

   
After 20 years of implementation, the European Commission decided to assess the overall functioning of this dual trademark system. In 2011, a study by the Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property and Competition Law, ordered by the Commission, concluded that the harmonisation had considerably reduced the risk that trade marks filed in different Member States are assessed differently from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

   
A second-reading agreement (europarl.europa)

   

   
The cosmos is full of places where the extreme is normal. In the core of Jupiter, for example, the pressure is more than 30 million atmospheres, planetary researchers have long suspected that hydrogen, which is the primary component of these gas planets, is metallic there. American physicists Eugene Wigner and Hillard Bell Huntington predicted this strange, solid state of hydrogen as far back as 1935.

   
Potential new findings for energy technology (mpg)

   

   
Five whys analysis is used in science to achieve a clear objective, the tool can be just as powerful in the business world as it is for children exploring their own surroundings. As a practicing Master Back Belt, we often use this technique to successfully arrive at the root causes of problems.

   
Applying five whys analysis (asq)

   

   
In 1994, the World Bank published a study that described inadequacy of laws, uncertainty in their application, arbitrary interpretation, deficient enforcement, inefficient and drawn-out processes and a lack of independence on the part of the judiciary as decisive barriers to development that discourage trade and investment, increase transaction costs and foster corruption.

   
Common value systems and legal ideals (kas)

   

   
There have been a growing number of drug patents rejected in India, one of the world’s largest countries by population (1.2bn in 2014), leading to concerns from the industry that its intellectual property is under threat. But there have been positives: a ground-breaking new way of ‘printing’ drugs personalized to each patient has been given the green light, while the FDA also approved the first biosimilar in the US, ushering in a new era of cheaper biologics.

   
Far-reaching stories of the year (eyeforpharma)

   

   
When it comes to the Internet of Things (IoT), you can believe the hype. In fact, IoT will likely be even bigger than most people think. But success in the IoT space will take more than slick applications; it will also require a robust approach to security, privacy and trust. For the technology sector, the message from businesses and consumers is clear: be innovative, be bold, and be secure.

   
Controls of devices & infrastructures (kpmg)

   

   
The European investment services landscape comprise s vari ous types of operators. There are a little more than 6 500 investment firms initially authorised and regulated by the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive ( MiFID ) . In number , j ust over half of these are based in the UK . The UK, Germany and France are the main jurisdiction s for over 70% of the investment firm population of the European Union (EU).

   
Activities & related risks (esma)

   

   
Which languages will dominate the future? Predictions vary, depending on your location and purpose. But here are a few ways to approach this question. "Spanish and Arabic score particularly highly on this indicator," the British Council report concluded for the U.K. However, when taking into account demographic trends until 2050 as laid out by the United Nations, the result is very different.

   
According to different angle of view (washingtonpost)

   

  Fastest growing tech. Companies

   
Catawiki secured first place in the 2015 Deloitte Technology Fast 500 Europe, Middle East & Africa program. Catawiki is Europe’s fastest-growing online auction house for special items headquartered in the Netherlands. In 2008, René Schoenmakers (CEO) and Marco Jansen (CTO) founded the company as a community for collectors, it has become the largest online destination for buying and selling special objects.

   
Tech. innovation, entrepreneurship & rapid growth (deloitte)

   

   
High performers in the post and parcel industry are taking advantage of digital technologies, such as mobility and analytics, to accelerate the pace of change, enable new competition, inspire new consumer expectations and, perhaps most importantly, drive growth in parcel volumes. Now, more than ever, it is important to not only embrace digital but to be digital.

   
Models focused on speed (accenture)

   

   
The paper at hand first discusses why the EU should not disregard the British demand for reforms. Secondly, it outlines the key demands of the UK, and thirdly, it looks at how Germany and the EU may be able to accommodate the UK’s demands. Several of the British government’s proposed reforms may in fact also be beneficial to Germany and the EU as a whole.

   
The challenges ahead (kas)

   

  In search of a European Google

   
The combined value of the top three internet companies in the Americas – so, basically, in America – is around $0.75tn (£0.5tn). In Asia, it’s around $0.5tn. In Africa, it’s $50bn. And in Europe, it’s just $25bn. when you look at the top of the tech market, the very top, Europe is lagging a long way behind.Take Tesla – we think of Tesla as being a ‘startup’, but it’s the same size as Audi.” Both companies are valued at around $30bn.

   
EU' new land of opportunity ? (theguardian)

   

  The Indian Ocean

   
While the Mediterranean was of preeminent significance in the Middle Ages and the Atlantic dominated in the modern era, the Indian Ocean is considered the most important ocean of the 21 st century. Its importance derives from its narrow access routes and its role as the transit ocean for global trade. Some 30 per cent of world trade already passes through the Strait of Malacca each year.

   
Maritime Security (kas)

   

   
The new ‘night-vision’ development by the MIT research team has the potential to be integrated in every smart phone and laptop. To achieve this potential breakthrough in thermal imaging technology, the MIT team focused on graphene and how it could be used to build a new category of infrared devices.

   
Infrared and night vision tech. (themanufacturer)

   

   
The European Union is the largest energy importer in the world. It is estimated that 53% of its energy supply comes from abroad at a cost of around 400 billion EUR. Approximately 1 trillion EUR needs to be invested into our energy sector by 2020 so that we meet the needs of generation, transport and distribution. The way we plan to address this field of strategic importance will have tremendous implications.

   
The main achievements (fusionforenergy)

   

   
In the mid 1900s, the most popular banana in the world—a sweet, creamy variety called Gros Michel grown in Latin America—all but disappeared from the planet. At the time, it was the only banana in the world that could be exported. But a fungus, known as Panama Disease, which first appeared in Australia in the late 1800s, changed that after jumping continents. The disease debilitated the plants that bore the fruit.

   
When plant and pathogen clones meet (plos)

   

   
The IBM Swift Sandbox is an interactive website that lets you write Swift code and execute it in a server environment – on top of Linux! Each sandbox runs on IBM Cloud in a Docker container. In addition, both the latest versions of Swift and its standard library are available for you to use. With the movement of Swift to open source, we’re opening the doors on what we are working on at IBM with Swift.

   
Swift Meets Linux (developer.ibm)

   

   
Space debris is a pressing problem for Earth-orbiting spacecraft, and it could get significantly worse. When the density of space debris reaches a certain threshold, analysts predict that the fragmentation caused by collisions will trigger a runaway chain reaction that will fill the skies with ever increasing numbers of fragments. Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, propose to build an engine that converts space debris into propellant.

   
Chinese engineering process (arxiv)

   

   
In 2011, the world was declared free from rinderpest, one of the most feared and devastating infectious diseases of animals. Rinderpest is the second infectious disease, after smallpox, to have been eradicated. However, potentially infectious rinderpest virus material remains widely disseminated among research and diagnostic facilities across the world and poses a risk for disease recurrence should it be released.

   
The viral disease of cattle  (cdc)

   

  A powerful future for CFO

   
Even the most decisive CEO needs the strategic input of their finance team. The CEO of US-based Johnson Controls, for example, has been divesting some businesses and investing in the core operations he plans to keep and grow since taking the reins in 2013. Planning and executing divestitures at a company with 130,000 employees spread across six continents requires a strategically minded CFO.

   
Understanding a customer’s business model (kpmg)

   

   
The regulatory challenge with combination products is that there are many different combinations of products, which means that no one set of manufacturing rules will apply to them all. The FDA’s draft guidance is an attempt to clarify how to apply the agency’s rules to different situations. After an industry study revealed there were concerns over communication and coordination issues.

   
An increasingly complex formulations (qualitydigest)

   

   
Einstein’s greatest success came in 1919, when Arthur Eddington did the experiment that Freundlich had set out to do, and ascertained that lights in the heavens were all askew during an eclipse, bent by the sun’s dark gravity, just as Einstein had predicted. Asked what he would have done if general relativity had failed, Einstein said, “Then I would have been sorry for the dear Lord. The theory is correct.”

   
A Century Ago (nytimes)

   

  Overcoming compliance fatigue

   
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) have continued to lead the way in robust domestic and extraterritorial proceedings relating to a wide range of offenses, including financial statement fraud and bribery. The SEC’s Financial Reporting and Audit Task Force is starting to deploy cutting-edge forensic data analytics tools to mine corporate big data for fraud.

   
Commitment to ethical growth (ey)

   

   
Historically, there has been a strong relationship between energy use and economic growth. Because fossil fuels are a basic input in nearly every facet of economic production and life in industrialized societies, economic ac tivity generates carbon dioxide emissions, although the amount of carbon dioxide per unit of GDP (referred to as “carbon intensity”) has decreased over time in OECD economies.

   
GHG emissions (csis)

   

   
It was only in the last few years that ‘Big Data’ became the buzz phrase that confused many and overwhelmed many more. Two years ago, most executives and IT departments were still struggling to understand what the data revolution meant for them and their business; many were just fighting to keep their heads above water as the data deluge surrounded them. Today, data and analytics (D&A) has clearly entered the mainstream.

   
Going beyond the data (assets.kpmg)

   

   
This document portrays the major land and soil degradation assessments of the past and critically evaluates their results. Another section is devoted to the various methodologies that can be applied, including their strengths and weaknesses. It finally explores promising potential corner stones of future assessments, with particular reference to the SDG target of Land Degradation Neutrality.

   
An Evaluation of Methods (umweltbundesamt)

   

   
The Chinese government funds, organizes and distributes the majority of the country’s healthcare. The national healthcare insurance scheme, a key outcome of previous healthcare reforms, now covers more than 90% of the population. However, this increased breadth of coverage has pushed the system to breaking point, exacerbating the shortage of supply and triggering calls for more and better services to be provided.

   
Undeveloped private sector (social.eyeforpharma)

   

   
Finland not only saw its economic interests represented most effectively through its membership in the European Single Market, but also considered the EU a security guarantee. The country thereby abandoned its stance of political neutrality while retaining the concept of military non-alignment, at least formally.

   
Finland' non-alignment  (kas)

   

   
The biggest issue vexing tax leaders is that governments can’t agree on what the digital economy is, let alone how to tax it. Some want to tax it right. Most, unfortunately, want to tax it right now. Because no consensus can be reached on how to tax digital activities, companies have to deal with a patchwork of national approaches, with new direct and indirect taxes emerging at the city, state or national level on a weekly basis.

   
Assessing the impacts of new taxes (taxinsights.ey)

   

  UK' science budget

   
There are many sources of public funding and support for the science and innovation ecosystem in addition to the ‘science budget’, presenting a complex support structure for researchers and innovators. These include innovation spending, R&D tax incentives and research in Government departments. The complexity of the science and innovation landscape can act as a barrier to researchers and innovators.

   

Research and industry (publications.parliament)

   

  Youth entrepreneurship

   
Unemployment disproportionately affects youth. As a result, many young people turn to self-employment. Youth entrepreneurship can provide young people with a sustainable livelihood. This paper presents the review findings and recommendations, and draws lessons for others contributing to tackling youth unemployment in developing countries.

   
Building paths (odi)

   

   
The first half of 2015 saw a decline in the level of deals into high growth markets (HGMs), after a year of recovery. “Despite a relatively stable global M&A market, both developed and high growth markets have cut their investments into HGMs significantly compared with 6 months ago, including into previous hot spots such as India and China”.

   
HGM losing for corporate acquierers (assets.kpmg)

   

   
The in tention behind this paper is to contribute some novel ideas to the important debate about donor engagement with the private sector and draw attention to some old ideas that tend to be overlooked. There is much more to be said. In particular this paper avoi ds the question of how to allocate subsidies amongst alternative investment propositions.

   
What donors are trying to achieve? (odi)

   

   
Digital technology is changing the way we all perceive value. Customer priorities are moving faster than ever. Competitors are appearing with entirely new business models. The ground is shifting – and this is a challenge for everyone on the leadership team. Operations, in its broadest definition could be the secret ingredient in helping companies win in this environment – if operations itself was better aligned to business strategy and across functional domains.

   
Insights from leaders (pwc)
   

   
In 2015, all countries will report their national emission pledges as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs), which are expected to become the basis of a future international agreement on climate change. This study concludes that it is relevant and timely to develop an operational capacity-driven system to observe and to monitor fossil fuel CO2 emissions.

   
How to monitor fossil CO2 emissions ? (copernicus)

   

   
Starting in 2016, tech companies can tell law enforcement in California to get a warrant if they want access to digital data. That’s because California Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act (CalECPA), a landmark digital privacy law that requires California police to obtain a warrant from a judge before they can access electronic information about people’s data.

   
California is winning the battle (techcrunch)

   

   
SOEs are likely to remain an important instrument in any government’s toolbox for societal and public value creation given the right context, collaborating with other stakeholders for this purpose in the ‘penta helix’ of private companies, not-for-profit organisations, academia, public sector and citizens. For instance may increasingly turn to SOEs as a tool to better position themselves for the future in the global economy.

   
Public value creation (pwc)

   

   
The Georgia Institute of Technology put together a list of its top four cybersecurity threats for 2016. These include the ever-expanding list of technology companies that are weakening privacy, the growth of Internet of Things (IoT) devices that aren't secure, a lack of well-trained security professionals, and cyber espionage.

   
Georgia Tech com. (tomshardware)

   

   
Generating a PET (Positron Emission Tomography) image requires an injection with a modified version of some essential molecule in the particular metabolic pathway you want to examine. To see rapidly metabolizing tumors that might be taking up a lot of glucose, for example, you get a radioactive version of that sugar known as fluorodeoxyglucose.

   
Democratizing PET electronics (extremetech)

   

   
Our research reveals clear signs that 2015 is a tipping point. While we see some regional differences across the globe, business leaders are poised to unlock real competitive advantage through their digital investments. Where enterprise technology used to be the sole domain of the Chief Information Officer (CIO), there’s a shift happening in many organizations, with the traditional CIO role fragmenting across new and existing leaders.

   
What do the digital signs reveal? (pwc)

   

  What drives success in R&D

   
In 2015, R&D spending by the Global Innovation 1000 increased 5.1% to $680 billion, the largest year - over - year increase since 2012. R&D spending is now in line with the long - term trend of R&D spending growth of 5.4% over the last 10 years.Strategy& | PwC Computing & electronics , healthcare , and auto continue to be the three largest industries in terms of total R&D spend.

   
10 Most innovative companies (strategyand.pwc)

   

  The era of living services

   
Living Services are highly sophisticated and able to constantly learn and evolve, almost as if they are alive. They will transform and improve the way we live, both by removing mundane tasks and o ff ering services that surprise and delight us. By being physically close to us and wrapping themselves around the everyday things we do, Living Services will intuitively learn our habits.

   
Designed for life (accenture)

   

   
US, one of the most significant markets in the global chemical industry, offers a significant snapshot of the talent issues facing the industry. In companies across all product lines, mass retirements are expected in the near term. In fact, within the next 10 years, 23% of the chemical workforce will be eligible to retire. On average, the workforce in the chemical industry is older than that of all other industries.

   
The talent imperative (deloitte)

   

   
This Good Practice Review identifies and discusses the principles and practice of disaster risk reduction (DRR), drawing on experiences from around the world. It gives guidance on the main issues that should be taken into consideration when carrying out projects and programmes, and ways of addressing these issues in practice.

   
10 things we should know (goodpracticereview)

   

   
There’s a long list of traits that experts say leaders should never exhibit. But given how broken our workplaces have become,these supposedly bad behaviors are actually good for the people who practice them. Sometimes, they’re even good for an organization as a whole: Immodesty, Narcissists, Inauthentic leaders, Lying, Trust-violating, Leaders “eat” first

   
Connecting "theory & practice" (strategy-business)

   

   
Produced by the University of Lincoln's aviation engineering specialists, research in the school of engineering, new research attempts to show how calculating the quickest and most fuel efficient routes could transform ground handling. By using a database of pre-computed routes, consisting of 'building blocks' that can recreate any route airport taxi-way.

   
Calculating the most efficient route (airport-technology)

   

   
Learning to effectively use and troubleshoot geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T) analysis can be a saving grace when you’re faced with the question, “Why did my check fail?”. This article will explain the fundamental principles of GD&T evaluation and provide practices to visualize and troubleshoot your results. It will also help clarify the requirements of two standards: ISO 1101.

   
Basic concepts (qualitydigest)

   

   
As our research shows, there is more work to do. While the numbers may be on the rise in particular countries, if you dig deeper you can see that things are not always what they seem. When you compare the number of women on boards with the number of women chairs, for example—often a much more meaningful indicator of where power lies on a board—countries with high numbers suddenly look less inspiring.

   
A global perspective (deloitte)

   

  EU' digital economy

   
The Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) is a composite index that summarises relevant indicatorson Europe’s digital performance and tracks the evolution of EU member states in digital competitiveness. In DESI 2015, the European Union as a whole scores 0.48, which represents an improvement in digital development in comparison to last year, when it scored 0.45.

   
Europe’s digital performance (ec.europa)

   

  Telomerase' clearest-ever images

   
scientists from UCLA and UC Berkeley have produced images of telomerase in much higher resolution than ever before, giving them major new insights about the enzyme. Their findings, published online today by the journal Science, could ultimately lead to new directions for treating cancer and preventing premature aging.

   
Enzyme that plays key roles (innovations-report)

   

  The digital amnesia

   
The act of forgetting is not inherently a bad thing. We are beautifully adaptive creatures, and we don’t remember everything because it is not to our advantage to do so! Forgetting becomes unhelpful when it involves losing information that we need to remember. The act of memorization is a skill, and its importance as one the tools in our cognitive toolkit is dependent on how relevant memorization is for us to effectively navigate our world.

   
Why we need to protect ? (kaspersky)

   

  Understanding the "Dragon Shield"

   
5 Introduction China has received growing attention over the last ten years for its activity in modernizing and expanding its strategic offensive nuclear forces , both land - and sea - based developments and deployments . 1 At the same time, little attention has been paid to Chinese activities in developing ballistic missile defenses (BMD).

   
The chinese strategic B.M.D. (fas)

   

   
PwC’s Advisory operations posted very strong growth in FY15 increasing by 18% to US$11.2 billion. Advisory now accounts for over 30% of PwC’s revenues, and the company anticipate that it will continue to grow strongly into the future as more and more PwC firms around the world further develop their capacity to provide Advisory services to clients.

   
Global annual review (pwc)

   

   
One of the burning issues on the agenda for many technology project managers and pre-sales specialists is how to master the art of estimating app development projects. The key problem is how to make estimates as competitive and as accurate as possible, while involving a reasonable amount of team efforts and securing a fair chance of meeting the figures that you have come up with.

   
Setting up the right team (developer)

   

   
Gathering together the best available projections, we provide a ‘scorecard’ against 17 targets – one per goal. This shows that, without increased effort, none of the goals and examined targets will be met. The scorecard reveals how much faster progress will need to be, classing targets as needing ‘reform’, ‘revolution’ and ‘reversal’.

   
A wake-up call (odi)

   

  Convincing America to eat bugs

   
With organizations such as Eat Yummy Bugs, World Enthomaphagy and the United Nations educating people about the environmental and health benefits of eating insects, bugs are spreading their wings in the food world – or at least carving themselves a small niche beyond that of kitchen nuisance.

   
Food Makers & Nutrition (entrepreneur)

   

   
The shift towards powering the car industry by electricity has sped up in recent years. Thanks in large part to a number of innovative new companies, electric cars are finally beginning to emerge as a genuine choice for the average car user. According to the US Geological Survey, demand for lithium could triple by the middle of the century as a result of electric vehicles taking off in popularity.

   
Heavy demand (theneweconomy)

   

   
New measures and techniques may emerge, science and technologies are continuously developing and new or emerging processes are being successfully introduced into the industries. In order to reflect such changes and their consequences for BAT, this document will be periodically reviewed and, if necessary , updated accordingly.

   
Working draft on BAT from IPCC (eippcb.jrc.ec.europa)

   

   
The exploitation, production, labelling and marketing of bottled drinking water is governed by EU law. The primary pur pose of EU food and drink composition law is to protect the health of consumers, prevent consumers from being misled and to ensure fair trading and free movement of food and drink across the EU.

   
Bottled drinking water consultation (consult.defra)

   

   
Agriculture is confronted by many risks, particularly the increasingly common and severe climate hazards, as well as price volatility on the markets. These difficult circumstances make farmers in developing countries particularly vulnerable. Farmers must respond to the increasing demand for food in Africa, and prepare to feed two billion mouths by 2050.

   
A growing challenge (euractiv)

   

   
There were, according to an estimate by the International Labour Organization ( ILO ), 2.34 million deaths in 2013 as a result of work activities. The greatest majority (2 million) are associated with health issues, as opposed to injuries. The Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, IOSH , estimates there are 660 000 deaths a year as a result of cancers arising from work activities.

   
ISO 45001 briefing note (iso)

   

   
Currently, the global market for cybersecurity insurance policies is estimated at around $1.5 billion in gross written premiums, according to reinsurance giant Aon Benfield. Approximately 50 carriers worldwide write specific cyber insurance policies, and many other carriers write endorsements to existing liability policies.

   
The cyber insurance boundary (cacm.acm)

   

   
Auditors look for evidence of conformity, not evidence of noncompliance: This is one of the basic principals of management systems auditing. Most auditors will typically mention this during the opening meeting, as it’s a good way to put the client’s mind at ease. The objective for the auditor is to gather enough evidence to support a recommendation for certification, while making you aware of any nonconforming situations as they arise.

   
5 points to remember (qualitydigest)

   

   
It’s not simply economic fundamentals that worry CEOs. Over-regulation is cited by 78% as a concern. And these concerns are not limited to industry-specific regulations but go much broader into areas like trade and employment. Cyber threats have increased markedly and are likely to become even more prominent in the wake of the recent high-profile attacks on entertainment networks.

   
The prospects for the global economy (pwc)

   

   
The current iteration of the Theory of Change approach emerged from both evaluation and informed social practice, and has become a mainstream discourse, tool and approach. Outlining a Theory of Change involves at its most basic making explicit a set of assumptions in relation to a given change process. The most useful definitions help reflect the need to move beyond static ‘programme theory’ and into a more reflective and adaptive understanding of change.

   
Collaboration between researchers and practitioners (odi)

   

   
Here’s a breakdown of the new British superlabs: what makes them unique, what business opportunities they throw up, and how they’re going to transform the landscape of global biomedical and data research. As the name suggests, the 100,000 Genomes Project will collect and sequence the genetic information of 100,000 British patients, selected to study the roots of rare genetic diseases such as congenital hearing loss, as well as various cancers like breast and colorectal.

   
One-of-a-kind dataset (telegraph)

   

   
FDA has been ramping up inspections of international drug manufacturers during the past decade to improve drug safety. The heparin recall of 2007–2008, which resulted when oversulfated chrondroitin sulfate was used to substitute for the active ingredient in heparin, illustrates the serious harm that substandard pharmaceutical drug products can cause to consumers.

   
Lessons Learned (pharmtech)

   

   
Before long, billions of digital records about ordinary people’s online activities were being stored every day. Among them were details cataloging visits to porn, social media and news websites, search engines, chat forums, and blogs. The mass surveillance operation — code-named KARMA POLICE — was launched by British spies about seven years ago without any public debate or scrutiny.

   
The scope of the B.A.’s surveillance (theintercept)

   

  Science Isn’t Broken

   
If you follow the headlines, your confidence in science may have taken a hit lately. Peer review? More like self-review. An investigation in November uncovered a scam in which researchers were rubber-stamping their own work, circumventing peer review at five high-profile publishers. If we’re going to rely on science as a means for reaching the truth — and it’s still the best tool we have.

   
Researcher degrees of freedom (fivethirtyeight)

   

   
Nasa is working with Lockheed Martin and Boeing to design airplanes that break the sound barrier more quietly. From 2020 to 2025 it may be possible that airplanes could then exceed the sound barrier over populated land without causing a major disturbance. In Europe, Steelant’s team tested their 300-seat design, albeit a 1:120 scale model, at speeds of Mach 8 within a wind tunnel.

   
The market for hypersonic airliners (bbc)

   

  A comprehensive tree of life

   
Humans, bacteria, daffodils: We’re a diverse bunch on the surface, but trace each and every Earthling back far enough, and you’ll arrive at a common ancestor. For the first time, scientists have built a comprehensive tree of life that binds us all together. It shows how all of the major branches relate to one another and traces each individual group back to its shared beginnings in a prebiotic soup 3.5 billion years ago.

   
A draft of the 3.5-billion-year history (pnas)

   

   
Usely, your morning defines the rest of your day. If you can optimize your morning routines, you’ve set yourself up to have a productive day ahead of you. We all wake up with a fresh slate each morning, and have the opportunity to make it a great one, no matter how unproductive your previous mornings have been. First of all let’s debunk some of the big myths out there.

   
Designing your morning routine (thenextweb)

   

   
When tech and medicine meet, everyone benefits. The tech doesn’t have to be a new MRI or laser printed organs, either — even the lowly bandage can benefit from an upgrade. Different researchers worldwide are using their particular expertise to develop a host of newer, smarter, more effective bandages; many of which are steadily making their way out of the lab and into the real world.

   
Bandage tech that you can expect to see (digitaltrends)

   

  The world’s 300 largest pension funds

   
The P&I/Towers Watson global 300 research, conducted in conjunction with Pensions & Investments, a leading US investment newspaper, shows that by individual region North America had the highest five-year combined compound growth rate of around 8% compared to Europe (over 7%) and Asia Pacific (around 4%). The research also shows that the world’s top 300 pension funds now represent around 43% of global pension assets.

   
The global pension asset study (towerswatson)

   

   
The marriage of modern Internet technologies such as Cloud and mobile computing, advanced analytics and ubiquitous connectivity with traditional plant systems, people, equipment and sensors is the Industrial Internet. And it’s leading to significant improvements in asset and operational performance, an uncharted territory to manufacturers.

   
How to improve manufacturing productivity? (rdmag)

   

  The US Open economy, past & present

   
The U.S. Open employs 7,000 seasonal workers to ensure the event runs smoothly. These people hold jobs in food services, security, and ticketing. Also factored into the tournament’s economic earnings: transportation to and from the event, including those taking the 7 train and paying Metro Card fares and paying for Long Island Railroad tickets.

   
Looking back and forward (fortune)

   

  The engineering nowadays

   
Every industry is affected by automation. It’s not just cars that are being made by robots now. Our power plants are becoming increasingly automated. Our food is grown and processed in automated farms, storage units, and factories. Buildings are prefabricated by machines. In the modern factory, smart machines talk to each other and notify their human masters when they need attention.

   
The new industrial revolution (qualitydigest)

   

  The US-EU energy trade dilemma

   
The diverging paths in terms of energy self-sufficiency between the US – among the world largest producers – and Europe – highly dependent on imports – appear to create opportunities for exchanges of oil and gas between the two shores of the Atlantic. On the oil front, recent market developments are putting pressure on US decision-makers to remove the outdated oil export ban that was adopted in the mid-1970s.

   
TTIP from an energy perspective (iai)

   

  Stanford & S.V. interdependency

   
It’s hard to imagine Stanford passed over as an innovation hub today. Stanford has outpaced some of the biggest Ivy League universities in prestige and popularity. It has obliterated the traditional mindset that eliteness is exclusive to the Ivy League. Stanford has lapped top schools by centuries. It ranks in the top 3 in multiple global and national rankings.

   
Building the tech boom of today (techcrunch)

   

  Brazil's water resources governance

   
Water is abundant in Brazil, but unevenly distributed across regions and users. Remarkable progress to reform the sector has been achieved since the 1997 National Water Law, but economic, climate and urbanisation trends generate threats that may jeopardize national growth and development. The consequences are particularly acute in regions where tensions across water users already exist or are likely to grow.

   
How to cope with future risks ? (keepeek)

   

  6 Apple Patents for tech industry

   
It's not atypical for big players – your Googles, Apples, Microsofts – to add thousands of them to their portfolios every year. While many are granted only to remain unused, the most interesting ones offer sneak peaks at possible future products. Apple may not lead the tech pack in terms of quantity, but many of its patents have a distinctive 'it' factor.

   
The market place (entrepreneur)

   

  Telus: Consistency drives success

   
During the last 15 years, few companies have delivered as consistently on almost all metrics that matter. Telus’s revenue has doubled from US$4.5 billion in 1999 (CAD$5.9 billion, using 2015 dollars) to $9.2 billion (CAD$12.0 billion) today. The company has become the global leader in total shareholder value creation among incumbent telecommunications companies worldwide.

   
The Confidence to execute (strategy-business)

   

   
For many businesses their global third party ecosystems (known as extended enterprises in some organisations) have in recent years become important sources of strategic advantage and business value. These organisations see their business partners as their second-most valuable organisational asset. Yet they are partners that bring risk.

   
Turning risk into opportunity (deloitte)

   

   
Interest rates are at historic lows and the markets are going haywire. Conditions could hardly be better for entrepreneurs in search of investors, according to a recent analysis conducted by the consulting firm Ernst & Young. A new study confirms Berlin is the start-up capital of Europe but for those responsible for the sector's success it is no time to rest. Tagesspiegel reports.

   
London outranked by Berlin (euractiv)

   

   
Buggy software and other oversights can cause major problems, such as a significant and unexpected company expense. Here is a collection of high profile quality assurance issues that happened in the past 25 years along with information on some of the solutions that resolved them. Despite the severity of these errors, most of the companies and organizations were able to survive the issues and learn from the mistakes.

   
Learning from their issues (developer)

   

   
There is a significant disconnect between the evidence that pharma and biotechnological firms are producing and the type of information that decision makers – particularly payers – want, according to GSK’s Rafael Alfonso. “The reason for that is that we have focused so much on regulatory decision makers and not the payers,” he tells eyeforpharma. “That is where we have to change.”

   
Three key analytics tools (social.eyeforpharma)

   

   
Risk is not a straightforward concept. Definitions of risk vary, even within documents published by the International Organizations for Standardization (ISO). One ISO definition indicates that risk is the “effect of uncertainty on an expected result.” Risk is now addressed by ISO 9001:2015, “Quality management systems—Requirements,” scheduled for publication next month.

   
The effects of uncertainty & How to address? (qualitydigest)

   

   
There is rising worldwide interest in graphene, there are questions about the positioning of this emerging technology and when promised applications will materialise. From a UK perspective, significant public investments are being made to support the research and commercialisation of graphene and other novel advanced materials. But concerns have already been raised about economic returns.

   
Enterprises involved in graphene (nesta)

   

   
A recent study, published in the Journal of Aging and Health, has linked those of a higher intelligence with the capacity to physically age better. Researchers tested almost 3,000 middle-aged men, using simple mobility tests to gauge their physical aptitude, strength and co-ordination. From the results, Meincke believed that she could correctly identify which individuals were more likely to remain independent as they aged.

   
Exercise tests predicting mortality (telegraph)

   

   
Back in July, Mozilla disclosed plans to modernize its Firefox browser. Today, the organization made those plans more concrete, with a tentative timeline for introducing long-desired improvements such as the creation of a process per tab—and with it, a timeline for the end of support for traditional Firefox add-ons. Mozilla has been working on a multi-process architecture for years.

   
The end of Firefox-add-ons (arstechnica)

   

   
Men like Edward Mooradian are saving California. Indeed, there would hardly be any water left without them. And without water California, now in the fourth year of an epic drought, would be nothing but desert. That's why it's such a cynical joke and, most of all, a tragic reality, that men like Mooradian are also destroying California. In fact, they are actually aggravating the emergency that they are trying to mitigate.

   
The misuse of our most valuable resource (spiegel)

   

  NYC’s Tech Profile

   
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York published a new report that arguably provides the most accurate measurement of the city’s tech sector, using a definition that restricts tech employment to seven industries "in which firms use technology as their core business strategy." In this analysis, we use the Fed’s definition as a jumping off point to provide a more complete portrait of New York’s tech sector.

   
Analysis profile by age/sex/race~ethnicity (nycfuture)

   

   
The' silver economy' covers a host of different but interlinked strands; together these can improve the quality of life and inclusion in society and involvement in economic activity of the ageing population through developing innovative policies, products and services to meet their needs, bringing more growth and jobs. The concept has been emerging over the years, and recently gathered momentum with the EU.

   
Opportunities from ageing (europarl.europa)

   

   
In an age in which automotive manufacturers are seeking quality gains through latest-generation automation, and taking more and more decision making out of the hands of assembly workers, Infiniti has implemented a very human countermove: Every employee who comes to work at the plant must first learn to build an entire engine by hand -- just as the master takumi do in Yokohama.

   
The engine-building course (autonews)