How much sugar is in your child’s lunch box?

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Mug shots are always used to identify trouble makers and criminals but police around the world have one problem: having only one shot of criminals’ faces makes it difficult to identify them on CCTV footage.
Police in Japan have come up with a solution. They are planning to use 3D cameras to take mug shots, making it easier to identify people from security camera footage.
According to the Asahi Shimbun news site, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police will be able to adjust the size and angle of the 3D mug shots. They can then compare shots with images taken from security cameras.
“As we can identify the suspects more quickly and accurately, our arrest rate is expected to become greater,” a high-ranking investigation officer of the MPD told the new site.
All 102 of the city’s police stations will be fitted with the 3D imaging tech from April this year.
It will allow cops to take 3D mug shots as well as well conventional pictures for their investigations.
Using the technology, pictures will be shot from three different directions. The image will then be illuminated with striped lighting to create a 3D effect.

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It’s an endless stream of this food gives you cancer and this food doesn’t slash now it does and the one that did now doesn’t.

This article titled “What is the real cancer risk from eating roast potatoes or toast?” was written by Nicola Davis, for theguardian.com on Monday 23rd January 2017 12.31 UTC

What’s the background?

The Food Standards Agency has warned that eating overcooked potatoes or burnt toast could increase the risk of cancer. They are urging people to reduce their intake of overcooked foods through a public health campaign, dubbed “Go for Gold” – essentially advising people to turn off the heat once your toast, potatoes or other starchy foods are lightly browned.

What is the problem?

A chemical known as acrylamide which forms from sugars, water and amino acids when they are heated together at high temperatures in a process known as the Maillard reaction. The higher the temperature, and the longer the heating time, the higher the levels of acrylamide.

What is acrylamide found in?

Quite a few household regulars. Besides roast potatoes, it’s in biscuits, porridge, coffee, crackers and bread. It is also found in tobacco smoke and is used in various industrial applications.

How big a cancer risk are we talking about?

According to Emma Shields, health information officer at Cancer Research UK, it’s simply too soon to say, while the FSA say they would not describe the risk as significant. “It’s a ‘probably’, not a definite,” says Shields of the warnings of the cancer risk from acrylamide. “Evidence from animal studies has shown that acrylamide can interact with the DNA in our cells so therefore could cause damage and go on to cause cancer, but when we look at studies in humans we can’t see a clear and consistent link.” The guidelines from the FSA are based on estimates of risks to humans drawn from analyses of animal studies. “We are not saying to people to worry about the occasional piece of food or meal that’s overcooked. This is about managing risk across your lifetime,” says FSA director of policy Steve Wearne.

Are there other issues with acrylamide?

In a 2015 report into acrylamide, the FSA noted that exposure to the chemical has also been linked to damage to the nervous and reproductive systems. But the risk assessment concluded that, “at the levels we are exposed to from food, acrylamide could be increasing the risk of cancer but not effects on the nervous and reproductive systems.”

So should I stop eating toast and spuds?

As the FSA notes, we cannot avoid exposure to acrylamide and they do not suggest that you should avoid potatoes or bread. They are, however, recommending that you eat them a little less brown. They also advise that potatoes should not be kept in the fridge since this can increase levels of certain sugars in the spuds that are involved in the Maillard reaction. Instead, they say potatoes should be kept somewhere cool and dark.

It seems like everything can give you cancer, from meat to potatoes. How do I reduce my risk?

As Shields points out, acrylamide has yet to be shown to cause cancer in humans; however, other risk factors are well established. “If people are smoking still, stopping smoking is the biggest thing they can do for their health,” she says. Reducing alcohol intake and keeping a healthy weight are also important, Shields adds. “Some of the largest sources of acrylamide are things like crisps and chips and biscuits which are things we shouldn’t be eating every day anyway,” she says.

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Volvo has developed the ROAR refuse collecting robot.

The Robot-based Autonomous Refuse handling (ROAR) project uses a system of drones that locates the various refuse bins in an area.

The robots then move to the pinpointed areas in order to collect those refuse bins and empty them.

The project is a collaboration between the Volvo Group, Chalmers University of Technology, Malardalen University, Penn State University and waste recycling company Renova.

It comes with an aerial drone that lifts off from the garbage truck’s roof to act as a pair of “eyes in the sky” for the ROAR.

That’s designed to tell ROAR where the garbage bins actually are, not just where they’re supposed to be.

The project has many safety features to ensure no one gets hurt.

For example, an emergency button immediately stops the robot if, for example, a child or dog runs in front of it. There is also a camera on the truck that detects if someone comes too close while the bins are being emptied. If this occurs, the process automatically stops.

The truck comes with GPS and numerous other sensors to help it find its target and avoid obstacles along the way.

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Amazon has entered the UK grocery market but instead of taking on the country’s supermarkets head on, it has struck with heavyweight supermarket Morrisons.’

With Morrisons, Amazon will be able to add fresh and frozen products to its existing offering of packaged grocery goods, allowing it to take on Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Wal-Mart’s Asda, as well as online specialist Ocado.

For Amazon, it’s an opportunity to boost the popularity of its Pantry service on the other side of the Atlantic.

Under the model, Amazon’s Prime subscribers can remotely order from thousands of products for next day delivery.

The products will also be available through Prime Now which is a one hour delivery service.

The deal is a significant boost for Morrisons, Britain’s fourth largest supermarket, which has struggled with online sales to the point where it’s had to outsource its own online food business to Ocado.

Amazon launched a fresh food offering in Seattle in 2007 and has since been offering it in a handful of other US cities.

But the struggle for Amazon has been finding the best pricing model, with fresh food proving one of the toughest markets to cover.

The deal with Morrisons could be the answer in the UK’s grocery market already hammered by price wars with discounters Aldi and Lidl stealing market share from the incumbents.

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Apple has had a big win in the courts with a US magistrate judge ruling that the US government can’t force the company to help law enforcement agencies unlock an iPhone.

The case in question was related to drug trafficking. The San Bernardino case is another matter altogether.

Nonetheless, it’s an important case for Apple because of its precedent value.

In his ruling, US magistrate judge James Orenstein said he did not have the legal authority to order Apple to disable the security of the iPhone seized during a drug investigation.

The significance of that is that this is similar to the submissions Apple has made in the San Bernardino case.

Judge Orenstein’s finding that a 1789 law called the All Writs Act cannot be used to force Apple to open the phone is pertinent here.

If the California case regarding the phone used by the gunman who killed 14 people in San Bernardino in December reaches the courts, it’s likely that Orenstein’s opinion may inform the court’s decision.

Orenstein was the first judge to look at what the government can and cannot explore.

The US government is expected to appeal.

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Avoiding real or perceived conflicts of interest between managers of funds and unitholders is critical to maintaining the integrity of Australia’s wealth management industry.   The appointment of independent responsible entities in that framework is an obvious solution to protect investors’ interests.

Harvey Kalman, the Executive General Manager of the part of the Equity Trustees business that provides independent responsible entity (RE) and trustee services, said there are many examples of internal RE functions causing issues.

“Reports of funds that are contested, or have experienced performance problems and investor unrest raise a number of issues with real or perceived conflicts of interest,” he said.

“Recent situations have highlighted that a fund manager cannot wear two hats – that of RE and fund manager – without facing potentially significant challenges. Having an internal RE resulted recently in investors in the products or investment vehicles of associated companies being excluded from voting on their own investments or the strategic direction of the Fund. The Australian system that allows these circumstances to exist is not aligned with the other major regulatory systems globally. This has to change.

“This problem was clearly identified as a barrier in The Second Johnson Report Australia as a Financial Centre: Seven years on which outlined the uniquely Australian approach to the funds management industry which allows the same entity to be both trustee of a fund, and an investment manager. Elsewhere, these functions are carried out by separate entities.

“The perception the ‘single responsible entity’ arrangement creates is ‘confusing and concerning for some Asian investors’ according to the report because on the surface there can be a perceived conflict of interest.

“Of course, we have regulations and practices which aim to mitigate against conflicts, but perception is critical to our reputation globally as a regional centre of excellence in funds management,” Mr Kalman said.

He added that independent RE’s brought additional benefits to those articulated in the Report.

“Funds that adopt a model which outsources the responsible entity to an independent fiduciary bypass the possibility that there is a conflict between the rights of unitholders and the investment manager of a fund, with the additional benefit of not having the associated regulatory and compliance costs that come with the RE function,” Mr Kalman explained.

“We are at an important moment in time for our industry,” he said. “We have the introduction of the new MIT’s and AMIT’s regimes which are enabling the flow of funds into Australia, and for us to export funds and expertise. We have the introduction of Collective Investment Vehicles (CIV’s) next year – all great initiatives. It is important that we ensure the two systems are compatible, and that we are competitive globally – functionally and in terms of perceptions,” he said.

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Science fiction is inching closer to reality with the development of revolutionary self-propelling liquid metals – a critical step towards future elastic electronics.

While building a shape-shifting liquid metal T-1000 Terminator may still be far on the horizon, the pioneering work by researchers at RMIT University is setting the foundation for moving beyond solid state electronics towards flexible and dynamically reconfigurable soft circuit systems.

Modern electronic technologies like smart phones and computers are mainly based on circuits that use solid state components, with fixed metallic tracks and semiconducting devices.

But researchers dream of being able to create truly elastic electronic components – soft circuit systems that can act more like live cells, moving around autonomously and communicating with each other to form new circuits rather than being stuck in one configuration.

Liquid metals, in particular non-toxic alloys of gallium, have so far offered the most promising path for realising that dream.

As well as being incredibly malleable, any droplet of liquid metal contains a highly-conductive metallic core and an atomically thin semiconducting oxide skin – all the essentials needed for making electronic circuits.

To work out how to enable liquid metal to move autonomously, Professor Kourosh Kalantar-zadeh and his group from the School of Engineering at RMIT first immersed liquid metal droplets in water.

“Putting droplets in another liquid with an ionic content can be used for breaking symmetry across them and allow them to move about freely in three dimensions, but so far we have not understood the fundamentals of how liquid metal interacts with surrounding fluid,” Kalantar-zadeh said.

“We adjusted the concentrations of acid, base and salt components in the water and investigated the effect.

“Simply tweaking the water’s chemistry made the liquid metal droplets move and change shape, without any need for external mechanical, electronic or optical stimulants.

“Using this discovery, we were able to create moving objects, switches and pumps that could operate autonomously – self-propelling liquid metals driven by the composition of the surrounding fluid.”

The research lays the foundation for being able to use “electronic” liquid metals to make 3D electronic displays and components on demand, and create makeshift and floating electronics.

“Eventually, using the fundamentals of this discovery, it may be possible to build a 3D liquid metal humanoid on demand – like the T-1000 Terminator but with better programming,” Kalantar-zadeh said.

The research, which has potential applications in a range of industries including smart engineering solutions and biomedicine, is published on 4 August in Nature Communications.

In the paper, first author Dr Ali Zavabeti details the precise conditions in which liquid metals can be moved or stretched, how fluid on their surfaces moves around and – as a result – how they can make different flows.

The work also explains how the electric charges that accumulate on the surface of liquid metal droplets, together with their oxide skin, can be manipulated and used.

Image caption: 

Continuous motion of a self-propelling liquid metal droplet under a pH gradient, shown at different time intervals. The droplet is placed in a fluidic channel, midway between two reservoirs filled with different electrolytes of acidic and basic nature.

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The increasing population have augmented the energy requirements of the country. In order to cope with energy demands more Oil and Gas E&P initiatives are being taken to cover the household and industrial energy requirement. With the products of oil industries & Gas manufacturing process fuelling various different industries from chemical to cosmetic hence it is necessary to use ensure that only quality product with minimum wastage is available . In order to ensure easy extraction, production a rich and refined product we use oilfield chemicals. With the use of Oilfields chemicals ensure an increase in efficiency oilfield activities such as drilling, completion, production, cementing and enhanced oil recovery (EOR). The Specialty oilfield chemicals impart unique attributes and functionality to the crude product to enhance their recovery of hydrocarbons from the well. Various categories of specialty oilfield chemicals include corrosion inhibitors, emulsion breakers (demulsifiers), surfactants and advanced polymers. Emulsion breakers are used to separate oil and water from crude oil water emulsions and corrosion inhibitors are those chemicals that inhibit corrosion of mild steel equipments in any aqueous medium. Hence, such agent help in increasing the export value of the crude oil thus are essential for use of the Oil and Gas industry.

Oilfield Chemical Market: Drivers & Restraints

To meet the ever increasing demands of energy more Onshore and offshore exploration initiatives are being taken therefore driving the market for oilfield chemicals The increase drilling activity and use of technologies such as hydraulic fracturing and enhanced oil recovery (EOR) boost the demand of oilfield chemicals on global basis to ensure efficient oil and gas recovery. The development in the Oil and Gas industry will directly affect the oilfield chemical market. In order to get premium crude oil with high hydrocarbon content the usage of EOR chemicals is also increasing. These efforts will boost demand for EOR chemicals and of stimulation fluids. Crude oil price volatility could prove as a restrain to the market of Oilfield chemicals over the forecast period. With developing fields of unconventional energy sources the over dependence on hydrocarbons is decreasing and hence the research for environment friendly and biodegradable oilfield chemicals provide promising opportunities in the market for industry participants.

Request for sample report: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1479

Oilfield Chemical Market: Segmentation

The Oilfield chemicals can be segmented on the basis of its function as:

•Drilling Fluids

•Water-Based Muds

•Oil-Based Muds

•Synthetic-Based Muds

•Work over and Completion Fluids

•Cementing Chemicals

•Stimulation Chemicals

Oilfield Chemical are segmented on the basis of Enhanced Oil Recovery Chemicals as:

•Alkali Surfactant Polymer Flooding

•Low-Salinity Water Injection

•Water Shut-Off Chemicals

•Carbon Dioxide Flooding

•Microbial IOR

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Oilfield Chemical Market: Regional Outlook

The Middle East being one of the largest markets for crude oil applications such as oil-based power plants, petro refineries, and sludge oil treatment and with the discoveries of more fields in different regions will be one of the strongest and largest market for oilfield chemical and will project greatest growth potential over the forecast years. The growth potential for the regions of Russia will prove to be strong and positive reinforcement for the oilfield market. The shale gas production in U.S. is expected to provide a boost to the Oilfield chemical market.Growth in Latin America, particularly in Brazil and Venezuela, has been significant but could be influenced by the political instability. In Asia Pacific, the emerging economies of China and India are said to one of the most promising market for oilfield chemicals with increase in oil extraction activities.

Oilfield Chemical Market: Key players

Some of the key players in the Oilfield chemical market are Schlumberger, Stephan Company BASF SE, Dow Chemicals Co., The Lubrizol Corporation, Azko Nobel N.V.

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Streaming taking its toll on online music purchases

Once upon a time, music fans bought their favourite artists’ work on shellac 78 rpm records. Then came vinyl records on 33 and 45 rpm, music cassettes, CDs, minidiscs (anyone remember them?) and, more recently, online music downloads. From physical items to disembodied digital files, music as a commodity – and where it can be purchased — has undergone a dramatic evolution. And this evolution is continuing even now, with online CD and music download sales losing ground to the growing popularity of streaming, as the latest figures from Roy Morgan attest.

While the popularity of online shopping continues to skyrocket in Australia, with 41.2% of Aussies 14 making at least one purchase via the internet in an average four-week period (up from 31.6% in 2012), CDs and music downloads have not kept pace with this growth. In fact, both products have been on a downward trajectory over the past few years.

In the 12 months to March 2012, 6.1% of the population paid to download music and 2.1% purchased CDs online in any given four-week period. As of March 2016, these figures had slipped to 4.6% and 1.1% respectively. In the meantime, the proportion of Aussies who streamed music online in an average four weeks grew dramatically, from 10.3% in 2012 to 19.7% in 2016. Streaming radio also gained popularity, with 9.6% of the population now doing it (up from 6.1%).

Buying music online vs streaming: the recording industry’s ongoing evolution

online-music-trends

Source: Roy Morgan Single Source (Australia), April 2011-March 2016, average 12-monthly sample=50,952

However, in this shrinking market, certain consumer groups remain well above average for purchasing music online: for example, people who also buy other entertainment products online. Most strikingly, Australians who purchase movie or TV show downloads are almost 10 times as likely as average to buy music downloads as well!

Music download purchasing by other online entertainment products purchased

other-entertainment-purchases-online

Source: Roy Morgan Single Source (Australia), April 2015-March 2016, n=50,392

Norman Morris, Industry Communications Director, Roy Morgan Research, says:

“Ever since CDs knocked vinyl from its perch back in the 1990s, the music publishing industry has been evolving at a vertiginous rate. While record stores still exist (and vinyl is making a comeback), online shopping changed the face of music retail just as it did many other retail categories. But now, things are changing once more. The online space remains as crucial as ever to our music consumption, but the advent of streaming – whether free (eg. radio station apps) or by subscription (eg. Apple Music) – has impacted sales of downloads and CDs.

“However, music downloads in particular still have some devoted buyers. As discussed above, people who buy other entertainment products online in an average four weeks are dramatically more likely to also purchase music downloads, representing an irresistible opportunity for internet retailers to cross-promote their products.

“And this is just the tip of the iceberg. With the deep data provided by Roy Morgan Single Source, music publishers and online retailers can explore consumers’ demographics, attitudes, leisure activities and online-shopping habits to identify precisely who is more and less likely to continue buying music downloads and/or CDs online – and tailor their marketing campaigns accordingly.

“For example, Roy Morgan data reveals that Australians who go to see live rock/pop music in any given three-month period are more than twice as likely as the average Aussie to purchase downloadable music in an average four weeks. What’s more, an above-average proportion of people who stream radio or music also buy music downloads…”

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