Year: 2019

Top 5 food tech innovations

Posted on by Jack Pearson

The food industry is undergoing a new wave of technological disruption. This is largely due to a recent spike in global investment activity. In 2018, SoftBank’s Vision Fund led a $200m investment round in agricultural technology. The year before, total investment was over $1.5bn – a record-breaking amount for the sector.

There is a unique sense of urgency behind this disruption. While population forecasts show demand for food will skyrocket in the next few decades, predictions for the rate of climate change show crop yields are expected to drop by a quarter in that time. Innovation is desperately needed in order to overcome this colossal challenge.

Lab-grown meat
Previously the stuff of science fiction, lab-grown or ‘cultured’ meat is soon to arrive on our dinner tables. When the first lab-grown burger was unveiled in 2013, it cost $280,000 to produce. Now start-ups believe these burgers could soon hit supermarket shelves for $10 each.

Around the world, demand for meat is expected to increase by 70 percent by the year 2025. The mass production of lab-grown meat could fill this critical gap in the food supply chain. AT Kearney predicts that by 2040, 60 percent of all meat consumed globally will come from lab-grown substitutes or plant-based alternatives.

The meat industry has increasingly come under fire for its contribution to global warming. The Adam Smith Institute has found that moving away from traditional animal farming and slaughter could reduce greenhouse emissions by up to 96 percent and free up to 99 percent of the land used in animal farming worldwide.

While forecasts show demand for food will skyrocket in the next few decades, predictions for the rate of climate change show crop yields will drop by a quarter in that time

Biodegradable packaging
We know that our addiction to plastic is unsustainable. Its prevalence is nowhere more apparent than in the food industry — but this is a difficult problem to solve. In the rush to adopt eco-friendly materials, many retailers and restaurants have started using packaging that, on closer inspection, still poses a threat to the environment. In one recent controversy, restaurant chain Chipotle was found to be serving food in their flagship compostable bowls, when in actual fact they contained high levels of the toxic compound fluorine, which made them non-degradable and possibly carcinogenic.

Many companies are now developing innovative biodegradable alternatives that harness waste products in the food industry, such as the six to eight million metric tons of shellfish waste produced every year. Scientists have found a use for this waste by turning the chitin from the shells of shellfish into chitosan, which serves as a biodegradable plastic wrap that could be used in food packaging.

Ghost kitchens
In the US, the restaurant delivery service industry makes up $19bn of the economy. However, the rising popularity of services like Deliveroo and Uber Eats can be bad news for local restaurants. Delivery charges can take around 25 to 35 percent in commissions, which can eat into restaurants’ already slim profit margins. Coupled with the costs of operating a restaurant, many are choosing to cut out the middleman and embrace a fully virtual restaurant model.

So-called ‘ghost kitchens’, or cloud kitchens, are focused purely on making fast-food deliveries. They have no dining area, meaning they can cut back on labour and rent costs. One of the major players in this sector right now is Rebel Foods, which operates 235 kitchens across 20 cities in India and is poised for global expansion.

Vertical farming
There are high hopes vertical farming could reinvent agriculture and meet rising demands for food. Vertical farming is the umbrella term for crops that are grown indoors in urban areas, usually inside huge warehouses. Urban farms present an attractive solution in countries where there’s very little arable land, or in countries that are very dependent on imported food. Vertical farms use much less land and water, and even produce 200 to 400 percent higher yields thanks to close monitoring of the plants’ nutrition intake. This also negates the need for pesticides.

However, in its current form, vertical farming uses a significant amount of energy, most of which is used to power hydroponic systems and artificial light. Until vertical farms can harness renewable energy on a large scale, a more sustainable option might be to harness the rooftop space in cities.

Super crops
In an increasingly challenging climate, people will require crops that are more resilient to extreme weather while also being richer in nutrition. This can be achieved through selective breeding and biofortification, where micronutrients are added to foods at the agricultural stage by crossbreeding standard plant varieties with their wild relatives. Genetic engineering is another option; scientists have found they could genetically modify crops to make them more drought-resistant.

Examples of such super crops include ‘scuba’ rice, which can survive even if submerged underwater for two weeks, and iron-rich beans that can withstand a temperature change of as much as four degrees. Scientists in Dubai are modifying crops like quinoa so they can thrive in the country’s salty and arid deserts. Crops like this could be transformative in areas like sub-Saharan Africa, where malnutrition and deficiency in vital nutrients – crucial for staving off disease and improving cognitive function – is prevalent.

Scientists create world’s thinnest gold

Posted on by Helen

Scientists at the University of Leeds have created a form of gold that is only two atoms thick, making it the thinnest gold ever to be developed. The metal is one million times thinner than a human fingernail.

Because of its green appearance when underwater and its frond-like shape, the researchers behind the ultra-thin material refer to it as ‘gold nanoseaweed’. It is considered to be 2D, since it consists of just two layers of atoms.

Gold is highly effective as a catalytic substrate and is used to speed up chemical reactions in a number of industrial processes. This ultra-thin gold would be 10 times more efficient as a catalyst than the currently used gold nanoparticles, which are much larger.

Researchers believe the new ‘gold nanoseaweed’ could have a range of uses in the medical device and electronics industries

Researchers believe the new metal could have a range of uses in the medical device and electronics industries. It could also form the basis of artificial enzymes for use in water-purification systems and in point-of-care medical diagnostic tests.

It was announced on August 6 in the journal Advanced Science that the ultra-thin gold had been successfully synthesised. The journal paper’s lead author, Dr Sunjie Ye, described the work as a “landmark achievement”.

In 2004, graphene became the first 2D material to ever be created. It is promised to have a wide range of applications, from wearable technology and batteries to solar power. However, the fact that much remains unknown about the material’s potential 15 years after its discovery is testament to how long it can take for new materials to become widely adopted.

The research team behind the new gold is currently looking to scale up the synthesising process. It believes its work will not only open doors for the more efficient use of this precious metal across industries, but that it could also help material scientists to develop other 2D metals in the future.

What a sovereign internet could mean for free speech

Posted on by ashton

In June 1989, on a visit to London, US President Ronald Reagan condemned the Tiananmen Square massacre. Reagan offered a vision of hope. He celebrated the unstoppable march of democracy, claiming it would be fuelled by a revolution in communications technology. “You cannot massacre an idea,” he told his 1,000-strong audience. “The Goliath of totalitarianism will be brought down by the David of the microchip.”

Yet massacring an idea is exactly what China set out to do. Starting with the communications technology that Reagan had praised, China began to wipe away all evidence of the events in Tiananmen Square. To this day, Chinese search results for Tiananmen Square yield no mention of the massacre. Even coded messages, such as a hand of playing cards showing the year, month and date of the massacre (89/6/4) will not slip past the censor.

In its early days, techno-optimistic commentators saw the internet as a bastion for liberal democracy, exposing people all over the world to new ideas, democratising nations and gradually eroding authoritarian regimes. Few predicted the force for censorship the internet could become. Today, however, the Chinese model of the internet – protected by the Great Firewall – has been hugely effective and that model is now growing in popularity around the world.

Remodelling the Web
When it first emerged as a borderless, transnational entity, the internet seemed liberal by its very nature. It was as though the democratic principles of freedom, openness and individualism were hardwired into it. But China had a rather different vision for the internet.

Techno-optimistic commentators saw the internet as a bastion for liberal democracy, exposing people all over the world to new ideas

In 1997, Beijing enacted its first laws criminalising online content deemed harmful to national security or the interests of the state. Soon after, it began working on the Golden Shield Project, which provided the foundations for China’s Great Firewall. At the time, figures like Bill Clinton mocked China’s efforts to manage the flow of information within its borders (attempting to control the internet, he said, was like “trying to nail Jell-O to the wall”). But China has succeeded in building a virtual world that mirrors the lives of its citizens, through which the state determines what information its subjects can access.

James Griffiths, author of The Great Firewall of China, has set out to understand how China built the world’s most sophisticated system for surveillance and online censorship. “As information passes into and out of the country, the Great Firewall inspects it and blocks anything undesirable,” Griffiths told The New Economy. “It can also block tools to avoid censorship, such as virtual private networks. At a local level, Beijing relies on domestic tech firms to censor and survey users themselves. They are obliged legally to hand over data to the authorities when asked and are expected to follow unwritten rules and avoid invisible red lines on what to censor, which means most err on the side of over-censorship lest they face punishment.”

Now Russia is following suit. This year, Putin passed two bills to cut off the Russian internet from the rest of the world. Until recently, disconnecting from the global internet was thought to be impossible. After all, China created its own independent infrastructure from the start of the internet boom. Russia, by comparison, had baggage.

“A few years ago, most people would have said Russia’s internet was too entangled with the rest of the world’s and its citizens too used to online freedoms to head fully in the direction of China’s internet, but now that seems a lot less certain,” said Griffiths. “Recent moves by the Kremlin have severely tightened internet regulation and Russian officials are clearly basing their tactics on China’s.”

Russia has spent the past few years enacting laws that force international companies to store Russian data within the country’s borders. Now, the Kremlin is trying to produce a Russia-only copy of the internet’s DNS servers. A DNS server is the database that tells the internet how to translate hostnames into IP addresses. With a Russia-only DNS server, online users would be redirected from foreign sites, meaning they’d have no access to external information. If Russia succeeds in disentangling itself from the global internet, it will prove that the internet can be remoulded into an alternative model that values sovereignty over openness.

A tool for control
Under Chinese President Xi Jinping, cyber sovereignty has become a key part of China’s foreign policy. Through the Belt and Road Initiative, China is supplying many countries not just with roads and railways, but also advanced infrastructure such as broadband networks and data centres. In February, Chinese tech giant Huawei opened its first cloud data centre in Egypt. Meanwhile, in Morocco, China is helping to build the much-anticipated smart city Tangier Tech, which will host 200 Chinese companies.

Alone, these infrastructure projects do not prove that China seeks to influence cyber policy within these countries. However, China is also exporting a global vision for how the internet should operate in all nations. Every year, at the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, Xi Jinping makes the case for cyber sovereignty, arguing that every country should have the right to choose how they govern their internet.

The Chinese-sponsored initiative seems to be working. According to the Freedom of the Net 2018 Report by Freedom House, 26 out of 65 countries have seen a decline in internet freedom since June 2017. “More repressive governments are trying to use [the internet] for their own goals, which can often be to suppress dissent, silence journalists, silence civil society and better control their citizens,” said Allie Funk, a senior analyst at Freedom House and co-author of the report.

China is the key driving force behind this trend for digital authoritarianism. North African countries are increasingly implementing Chinese-style cyber policies. Nigeria recently enacted measures that require consumer data to be hosted within its borders and last year Egypt passed a law allowing it to ban social media accounts with more than 5,000 followers if these accounts publish ‘fake news’ or criticise the government.

The guise of security
The allure of a sovereign internet, particularly for poorer countries, is not so hard to understand. The revelations made by Edward Snowden, cyberattacks like WannaCry and the spread of misinformation have all eroded trust in an open internet. However, as Dr Tim Stevens, Lecturer in Global Security at King’s College London, pointed out, grouping fundamentally distinct issues like these is exactly what makes cyber sovereignty a problematic concept.

“You have two sets of problems,” said Stevens. “One is basically a hacking issue. The other one is a political issue. And I would resist the inclusion of one within the other. I wouldn’t count political issues around free speech, for example, as a computer security issue. But we’ve been told that internet sovereignty is the answer to this nonetheless… It’s not cyber attacks that are a problem from the Chinese perspective, it’s the spread of undesirable political ideas within its borders. That’s what’s motivated cyber sovereignty – nothing else.”

It is increasingly common for governments to move towards digital authoritarianism under the guise of a public concern such as national security. For example, the Kremlin claims that an independent Russian internet would better defend the nation against cybersecurity threats. But, in reality, Russia seeks to control the information its citizens can access.

Russian senator Yelena Mizulina defended the new internet laws at an internet safety forum in April, saying: “What are rights? They’re the biggest lack of freedom. I can tell you that the more rights you have, the less free we are. A ban is when the person is free because it says ‘this is impossible, but with everything else – [you can] do what you want’.” Many critics leapt on her backwards reasoning as eerily reminiscent of the slogan used in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four: “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”

It is increasingly common for governments to move towards digital authoritarianism under the guise of a public concern such as national security

Another public concern harnessed to convince governments of the benefits of a sovereign internet is fake news. In the last two years, Russia, Kenya and Singapore have all passed laws banning fake news. Such laws were criticised as attempts to muzzle the media. Funk argues that deploying censorship laws under the pretext of regulating fake news is becoming increasingly common: “Governments are taking a very serious issue and a genuine problem that we need constructive solutions to and manipulating it into a tool for censorship.”

A divided cyberspace
Cyber sovereignty isn’t just the preserve of countries with weaker democracies. All around the world, governments are establishing stricter digital borders. Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US have all called on organisations to create “access solutions” that would open security backdoors to company data.

Data localisation is also becoming more prevalent. India wants foreign technology and payment firms to store their data locally, while France’s defence minister wants French intelligence agencies to use local alternatives to Palantir, the American data analytics company.

As nations move to protect their data, some argue that the disintegration of the World Wide Web is inevitable. In Rise of a Cybered Westphalian Age, authors Chris Demchak and Peter Dombrowksi posit that nations will increasingly seek to establish cyber territories. “No frontier lasts forever,” the authors claim. “No freely occupied global commons extends endlessly where human societies are involved.”

However, Stevens warns that the idea of an inevitable move towards cyber sovereignty may not be so straightforward. “This is a process not driven by any of the structural factors in the world system,” he said. “This is driven by politics, and where there is politics, other visions are possible.”

Furthermore, Stevens believes the international community must do more to engage in the debate around the role of the internet. “I think the interesting thing about cyber sovereignty is that it’s a very live diplomatic discussion,” said Stevens. “It’s Russia and China’s bid to lead the debate on this, on cybersecurity and around norms of state behaviour in this environment. It’s going to be really interesting to see what happens and how much traction China can get. You see, the Chinese model can often get dismissed in this debate because it’s not what we like. And I think that’s foolish. I think that’s absolutely counterproductive. We need to engage with it.”

Western governments have traditionally overlooked the idea that the internet could be a tool for totalitarianism. This complacency has fuelled the rise of digital authoritarianism. Perhaps liberal thinkers underestimated the force for hate speech and disinformation that the internet would become. Perhaps optimism allowed them to imagine that the internet would function as a self-regulating ecosystem. Whatever the cause, failing to recognise that the internet can be censored and controlled has contributed to a worldwide decline in internet freedom. The international community must accept the rising popularity of an alternative internet, before this basic human right is further undermined.

Amazon lets users disable human review of Alexa recordings

Posted on by ashton

Amazon has changed the settings on its Alexa app to allow users to stop their voice recordings being reviewed by the company’s employees. The policy change, which was announced on August 2, comes amid growing concerns surrounding the privacy risks posed by AI voice assistants.

Alexa records every exchange users have with Echo speakers and other devices so that Amazon can assess the assistant’s success in fulfilling user commands

Alexa records every exchange users have with Echo speakers and other devices so that Amazon can assess the assistant’s success in fulfilling user commands and improve its performance.

Previously, Amazon did not inform users that their audio recordings might be listened to by its human workers. Then, in April, a report by Bloomberg confirmed that Alexa’s services can only improve thanks to human review by thousands of its employees.

This process – known as data annotation – is a core part of machine learning. It ensures that data collected by the device can be correctly labelled and fed back into the system. This helps Alexa improve its understanding of slang and regional dialects.

According to Amazon, “only an extremely small fraction of voice recordings are manually reviewed”. However, since such reports have emerged, privacy advocates have called on tech companies to increase transparency around – or even halt – the practice.

A number of high-profile incidents have increased concerns. In July, one of the contractors hired by Google to review voice recordings leaked more than 1,000 Google Assistant recordings to the Belgian media.

Tech companies are starting to give in to pressure from regulators. Google has paused human review of audio recordings in the EU while it liaises with privacy regulators and Apple has paused the process altogether.

Amazon, meanwhile, is simply creating a clearer opt-out system. In a similar vein, the company also introduced an “Alexa, delete what I say today” voice command in May. Amazon’s latest move is a sign that tech companies are taking steps to improve transparency and give users more control over their data.

Start-up raises $3.5m to provide medical insurance to digital nomads

Posted on by ashton

Norwegian start-up SafetyWing, which offers medical insurance to digital nomads, has raised $3.5m in a round of seed funding, according to a report published by TechCrunch on August 1.

In recent years, a growing number of young people have taken up digital nomadism. Freelancers and tech workers, who need little more than an internet connection to do their work, are leaving the office behind to travel the globe. Living abroad, these digital nomads can enjoy all the benefits of a new environment, a self-governed lifestyle and cheaper living costs.

Since mandatory healthcare coverage is only available in one’s home country, many digital nomads are left without basic health insurance

However, one thing they forfeit is a social safety net. Since mandatory healthcare coverage is only available in one’s home country, many digital nomads are left without basic health insurance.

SafetyWing’s founders, Sondre Rasch, Sarah Sandnes and Hans Kjellby, saw a gap in the market. Digital nomads themselves, they have travelled from their home country of Norway to Silicon Valley. The SafetyWing platform, they argue, is the first internet-based welfare state.

Venture capital firm byFounders, which focuses on the Nordic and Baltic regions, led the recent round of seed funding. CreditEase Fintech Investment Fund and DG Incubation also participated.

In previous funding rounds, SafetyWing received investment from the seed accelerator Y Combinator, as well as around $500,000 from investors such as NordicVest Angels and the Norwegian Investment Authority.

As many as 25 million people are estimated to make up the company’s target market. SafetyWing’s insurance is sold as a 28-day rolling subscription to suit the flexible lifestyles of these wandering workers. It covers hospital visits and prescriptions, but not pre-existing conditions like cancer.

Coverage starts at $37 every four weeks, although there is a $30 add-on fee for digital nomads in the US. As the founders point out, this is also a low-cost way for international workers in the US – who aren’t covered by the Affordable Care Act – to access basic care.

Saudi Arabia to test robo-advisory services

Posted on by ashton

Saudi Arabia’s capital market regulator gave approval on July 30 for two companies to test the use of computer-generated advice for investors. The two firms, Wahed Capital and Haseed Investing, will test automated platforms that provide their clients with advice on securities and investment schemes. The companies will also offer automated online discretionary investment management.

Approval of these tests comes amid Saudi Arabia’s drive to encourage the use of financial technology. Last year, the country partnered with the UAE to begin developing fintech for cross-border settlements.

In addition to providing tailored investment advice in a cost-effective and scalable way, robo-advisors could improve financial inclusion

Globally, it is estimated that between $2.2trn and $3.7trn in assets will be managed by robo-advisory services by 2020. Throughout the Middle East, many countries are preparing to capitalise on this trend.

The Central Bank of Bahrain has issued a set of directives for the regulation of robo-advisors. Earlier in July, Abu Dhabi launched a new governance and regulatory regime for computer-generated investment advice.

There are a number of benefits to these computerised investment services. In addition to providing tailored investment advice in a cost-effective and scalable way, robo-advisors could improve financial inclusion.

Historically, wealth management and investment services have only catered to those with sizeable assets. Robo-advisors, however, are typically designed for digital-first investors looking to keep costs low. Therefore, it’s hoped that they could make financial advice and asset management more accessible to the wider population.

These services are still in the early stages of development and some firms have struggled to unlock their potential. Additionally, customer acquisition can be a challenge without wider trust in the technology.

Investec is closing its robo-advisory service due to a lack of investor appetite, after reporting losses of £32m (€35m) over the course of two years. Moving forward, regulators will need to guarantee the objectivity and transparency of these services before the technology is successfully rolled out.

China’s Evergrande to bring electric car charging closer to home

Posted on by ashton

Evergrande wants to make it easier for electric car owners to charge their vehicles closer to home. The Chinese property developer announced on July 28 that it had established a joint venture with the State Grid Corporation of China to develop next-generation car-charging technology.

Owners of electric vehicles in China pay around three times more to use public-charging stations than they would if the technology were available at home. This is because public utility poles come with a high service fee.

Evergrande plans to integrate vehicle-to-grid technology into its electric cars, allowing users to charge their vehicles in residential car parks overnight

Moreover, charging points are relatively difficult to come by in China. There are only 2.3 chargers per vehicle, with many of them stationed outside residential areas.

Evergrande plans to integrate vehicle-to-grid technology into its electric cars, allowing users to charge their vehicles in residential car parks overnight, when electricity rates are cheaper. Users would then be able to sell electricity back to the grid.

The Chinese Government is driving a huge boom in its electric car market. It’s expected that electric vehicle sales could reach 1.6 million this year, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.

Valued at more than $100bn, Evergrande is thought to be one of the biggest real estate companies in the world. Recently, it’s been aggressively expanding into the automotive space. In June, the company announced a $23bn investment to build new production facilities capable of manufacturing one million electric cars a year.

However, there is some scepticism in the electric vehicle sector as to whether the company can meet its ambitious targets. In 2017, Evergrande Health agreed it would buy a 45 percent stake in Chinese electric vehicle firm Faraday Future, but reduced the amount to 32 percent Faraday CEO Jia Yueting was blacklisted by the government.

The company also fell behind on battery-powered car production this year because of technology issues. Although other electric car companies are facing similar hurdles, Evergrande’s acquisition-based approach may make it harder for the company to grow due to the challenges of business and technology integration.

Uber Freight launches in Germany

Posted on by ashton

Uber is launching an on-demand freight platform in Germany, the company announced on July 24. This will be Uber Freight’s second launch in Europe after the platform went live in the Netherlands earlier this year.

Uber Freight is already an established trucking service in the US, where it connects 48 states and generates over $125m in quarterly revenues. If its execution in Germany is successful, the company plans to expand across Europe.

Uber Freight is already an established trucking service in the US, where it connects 48 states and generates over $125m in quarterly revenues

The trucking market in Europe is worth approximately $500bn. It is a sector ripe for innovation on account of its many logistical bottlenecks. On average, trucks are empty for 21 percent of the distance they travel and even after delivery trucking firms can spend weeks chasing invoices.

Working alongside the enterprise cloud company SAP, Uber has developed a logistics solution that includes real-time tracking of consignments and seamless data sharing between shippers, freight forwarders and carriers. Meanwhile, carriers can select loads that suit their needs and fit their schedules.

However, Uber is far from the sole player in this market. Germany’s trucking sector is already home to digital-first start-ups such as Flexport, which raised $1bn in funding this year and has garnered support from investors like the Softbank Group. Uber will be trying to gain a competitive edge over these successful local players.

In the past, Uber’s operations in Germany have caused controversy. When it initially tried to launch its ride-hailing services in the country, it ran into disputes with taxi companies and lawmakers.

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has been careful to involve German officials ahead of the new platform’s implementation in the hope that this will ease Uber Freight’s launch in the country.

A sustainable reimagining of the global construction industry

Posted on by ashton

The 20th century marked the age of the concrete jungle. Reinforced concrete, on account of its strength, durability and low cost, brought about nothing short of a revolution in architecture, enabling the construction of taller structures than ever and populating our skylines with high-rises and skyscrapers. But concrete’s popularity may be waning.

The built environment currently accounts for 39 percent of global CO2 emissions. This makes the construction industry one of the least environmentally friendly in the world. Extracting raw materials, such as virgin cement, is cheap and therefore very common within the sector, but it comes with a significant environmental cost. According to a report by Chatham House, cement alone creates about eight percent of global CO2 emissions. As part of global efforts to avert a climate crisis, our cities need to evolve away from their reliance on concrete.

Major players within the construction sector are becoming increasingly aware of just how unsustainable the industry’s practices are. Property firm Grosvenor and architects Foster and Partners, for example, have committed to making its buildings zero carbon by 2030. However, the pace of change is still slow. In its 2018 Global Status Report, the UN stated that not enough is being done globally to drive major change towards sustainable construction.

The built environment currently accounts for 39 percent of global CO2 emissions. This makes the construction industry one of the least environmentally friendly in the world

In this environment where major firms too often continue to conduct business as usual, the smaller players within construction are emerging as real innovators. Inspired to lower construction’s carbon footprint, a number of researchers and architectural studios are offering a vision of the new age of eco-friendly architecture

In pursuit of innovation
Soon the skyscrapers of Toronto will welcome an unusual new neighbour. Tree Tower, standing 62 metres high, is a reimagining of the high-rise for a greener future. First proposed in 2017, Tree Tower is named so because it will be constructed from cross-laminated timber and bamboo, while its long, staggered terraces almost resemble the branches of a tree.

For Chris Precht, the visionary behind Tree Tower and founder of architectural studio Precht, lowering the carbon footprint of buildings is as essential as creating beautiful architecture. “The ‘international style’ of [the] concrete structure and glass facade uniformed our cities and killed [a] thousand years of building intelligence and local building culture,” Precht told The New Economy. “We try to create buildings that give back space to nature on the facades and roofs, and create a link between people and plants. I think the time of ‘bigger, higher, larger’ in architecture is over and we [are entering] an era of vitality and health.”

Precht hopes his green architecture will encourage city dwellers to pursue a more sustainable lifestyle. He lives with his wife in the Austrian mountains, where they grow their own food and try to live as self-sufficiently as possible. Aware that this is not an option for many people living in urban spaces, they believe it’s important to incorporate gardens into their high-rise designs.

Precht is also among a new wave of architects championing cross-laminated timber, which many believe to be this century’s solution to cement. Cross-laminated timber consists of multiple layers of timber glued together at right angles. This gives it a high strength-to-weight ratio and a much lower carbon footprint than cement or steel. In addition to using eco-friendly materials, Precht’s buildings tend to be modular and prefabricated. The building’s units, each a standardised size, are assembled offsite, then delivered and stacked on top of one another, in a rapid construction technique that minimises waste.

Far from a limitation, Precht regards the challenge of sustainability as a force for innovation in an industry that has so far been slow to change. “The question is if this change comes from us architects or from outside of our industry,” said Precht. “For the mobility sector, [for] example, it needed outside companies like Uber, Hyperloop or Tesla to bring a change.”

With this in mind, Precht has a warning for architects. “We need to be aware that if buildings are so replicable and detached from a place and climate, then in a couple of years they will be designed by artificial intelligence and not by architects,” he said. “Then, I fear, the architects of the future [will] not [be] called Rem [Koolhaas] or Bjarke [Ingels], but Google, Alibaba or Tencent. Rather than focusing on profitability and efficiency, we need to put human factors [at] the forefront.”

Fostering collaboration
Green architecture has given rise to a wave of innovative designs. Some engineers are reusing rainwater for toilet flushing and irrigation, while others are finding ways to use biodegradable materials wherever possible in place of toxic ones such as lead or mercury. One such ingenious method currently being developed by research and development company Biohm is to use mycelia, which is sourced from fungi, to create sheets and blocks for insulation.

There are also ongoing projects to harness the world’s waste for reuse in construction. Researchers at RMIT University have created bricks made of cigarette butts to lower production costs and CO2 emissions. Meanwhile, researchers at the University of Bath are experimenting with recycled duvets as insulation.

Evidently, technical know-how is not the main obstacle to creating a zero-carbon building. The greater challenge lies in making sustainability the industry norm. Construction projects tend to have a rapid turnaround, with almost no time allocated for research and development, while incentives to construct as cheaply as possible are high. As a result, the rate of change in the industry is slow.

For buildings like Precht’s Tree Tower to become commonplace, a huge amount of collaboration and governmental support is needed across the construction industry. For example, Canada is one of the countries currently at the forefront of building cross-laminated timber high-rises. While this is partly because Canada has an abundance of natural resources, it’s also a testament to the country’s reward schemes for buildings that exceed carbon footprint standards.

In a bid to foster such collaboration in the industry, the World Green Building Council (WorldGBC) brings together businesses and non-profit organisations with the aim of increasing the number of green buildings worldwide. It currently has 70 such councils around the globe.

“The building industry is a particularly fragmented sector,” said Dominika Czerwinska, Director of Membership and Regional Networks at the WorldGBC. “One of the key challenges is effectively translating the value of a sustainable investment to each of the stakeholders involved, based on where the value lies for them.”

According to Czerwinska’s colleague, James Drinkwater, Director of Europe Regional Network at the WorldGBC, meaningful change will only occur when every player across the value chain enjoys the benefits of sustainability. Drinkwater argues that demonstrating this value is not as difficult as one might think. “Significant carbon cuts on infrastructure projects are closely connected to resource efficiency, so it is possible to deliver win-wins for climate and cost control,” he said.

Driving change within the construction industry is a colossal feat, requiring not just innovation but also genuine collaboration on a global scale. This challenge comes at a time when urban expansion is happening at a faster rate than ever before. Regions like South-East Asia and sub-Saharan Africa are currently experiencing rapid urbanisation and are therefore projected to use huge quantities of cement and concrete in the years to come.

To revolutionise current practices, the public and private sectors need to work together closely. Perhaps what the industry needs most of all is a fundamental shift in mindset, moving away from minimising production costs at any expense and towards considering the long-term costs of all design decisions.

Equifax reaches landmark $700m settlement in data breach case

Posted on by ashton

Credit reporting company Equifax will pay $700m to settle US investigations into a data breach it suffered in 2017, it was announced on July 22. Despite being the largest settlement of its kind, consumer advocates argue that it is insufficient to repay the millions of Americans whose data was exposed.

Equifax is one of the ‘big three’ credit reporting agencies alongside Experian and Trans Union. In the summer of 2017, approximately 147 million Equifax customers were affected by the breach, which saw people’s Social Security numbers, driving licence data and addresses compromised.

While there is little evidence that the breach led directly to fraud, the families affected have spent time and money trying to protect their data

Hackers gained access to the information through a security flaw in a web application framework. Equifax later admitted that it had known about the vulnerability two months prior to the breach, but did nothing to fix it.

“Equifax put profits over privacy and greed over people, and must be held accountable to the millions of people they put at risk,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James.

The Federal Trade Commission concluded that Equifax had failed to protect people’s information, ruling that at least $300m of the agreed sum would be paid as compensation to those whose data was exposed. While there is little evidence that the breach led directly to fraud, the families affected have spent time and money trying to protect their data in the aftermath of the breach.

Some feel that the settlement does not go far enough. Democratic US Senator Sherrod Brown said it was “just a drop in the bucket” of what Equifax’s failure could cost US families. Moreover, given the sheer scale of the breach – which was one of the largest in US history – it could be argued that the settlement is inadequate as a deterrent against companies neglecting to safeguard consumer data.

Although a landmark settlement, for Equifax, which is valued at $16.7bn, this is little more than a slap on the wrist for the credit-reporting giant.

Google increases its rewards for hackers

Posted on by Helen

On July 18, Google increased its financial rewards for hackers who reveal vulnerabilities in Chrome and Google Play. So-called ‘bug bounty programs’ have become an established method among tech companies for incentivising individuals and hacker groups to find flaws in their systems. They help companies like Google to not only improve their services, but also disincentive hackers from selling or exploiting the flaws they uncover.

Google first began its bug bounty program in 2010. Since then, it has paid out over $15m. The Chrome Vulnerability Rewards Program alone has received more than 8,500 reports and given security researchers over $5m.

Bug bounty programs have become an established method among tech companies for incentivising individuals and hacker groups to find flaws in their systems

Needless to say, the work can be relatively lucrative for these researchers. One of the success stories of 2018 was Tomasz Bojarski from Poland. After discovering a security bug that could allow an attacker to alter a website, steal private data and even perform actions on behalf of a user, he earned enough reward money from Google to open a lodge and a restaurant.

Now Google is making its rewards even more tantalising. The company is tripling the maximum baseline reward from $5,000 to $15,000 and doubling the maximum reward from $15,000 to $30,000 for reports it deems to be of a high enough quality. For Chrome OS, Google is increasing the standing reward from $100,000 to $150,000 for revealing attacks that could compromise a Chromebook or Chromebox in guest mode. The company has also added reward categories for finding bugs that allow attackers to bypass Chrome OS’ lock screen.

Although these may seem like eye-watering sums of money to give to non-contracted workers, the programme is reasonably cost-effective for Google: hiring even a single programmer can often cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. More importantly, the financial and reputational damage that cyberattacks can cause more than legitimises this expenditure. When it comes to security, Google simply can’t afford to tighten its purse strings.

Artificial snow could save the Antarctic, researchers suggest

Posted on by Helen

A new study released on July 17 put forward a radical plan to slow down climate change. Its authors propose bolstering the melting ice caps with 7.4 trillion tons of artificial snow, in a process known as ‘surface mass deposition’.

The gigantic West Antarctic Ice Sheet is melting at a faster rate than scientists previously predicted. If it disintegrates – as it is currently on course to do – it could cause the global sea level to rise by at least three metres, potentially submerging coastal cities such as Shanghai, Tokyo and New York.

The study proposes using wind turbines to power pumps that would transport vast amounts of seawater to the surface of the ocean. The water would then be desalinated and frozen into ‘snow’

The new study, which was published in the journal Science Advances, proposes using 12,000 wind turbines to power pumps that would transport vast amounts of seawater 1,500m up to the surface of the ocean. The water would then be desalinated and frozen into ‘snow’. The scientists behind the study argue that this snow would weigh down the ice sheet and slow its disintegration.

This is far from a foolproof solution, as the authors themselves point out. Pumping seawater up to the surface would require enormous amounts of energy and could risk dropping the global sea levels by several inches or disrupting the ocean’s circulation patterns.

The fact that this drastic proposal is being put forward is testament to an increasing sense of urgency and desperation among climate scientists. Until recently, geoengineering projects like this were usually dismissed on account of their costliness and impracticality. However, the scientific community is increasingly viewing such radical interventions as necessary to stave off a climate catastrophe.

“We are already at a point of no return if we don’t do anything,” Anders Levermann, co-author of the study and a professor at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told Reuters.

Nonetheless, climate scientists warn that interventions like this should not be used as an excuse to forgo much-needed economic and societal changes, such as switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Ultimately, governments need to prioritise tackling global warming at its root cause rather than treating the symptoms.