PHILADELPHIA, Aug. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, cred.ai, a Philadelphia-based fintech company, introduced a new kind of consumer spending product that leverages proprietary technology to give users first-of-their-kind controls, convenience, and automatic credit score optimization. While customers never pay fees or interest thanks to the cred.ai Guaranty, they also receive a premium brand experience delivered through a solid metal Visa card, and mobile app anchored by the content of cred.ai's progressive media division crednews. cred.ai has operated in stealth for the past 3 years, and closed a successful Series A led by prominent investors including David Adelman, CEO of Campus Apartments; former CEO of AOL and president of Google America and current founder of DTX, Tim Armstrong; and executive chairman of Fanatics and partner with the 76ers, Michael Rubin, as well as a group of individual celebrity investors.

"Banking is so regulated, so antiquated, so daunting, it's understandable why consumer card products have barely changed over the past decade," said Ry Brown, cred.ai CEO and co-founder. "Thankfully, we're a crew of hackers, artists, and scientists, with just a couple recovering bankers in the mix." While cred.ai's in-house talent ranges from astrophysicists to 3D Animators, several of its "recovering bankers'' were the founders of ING Direct, the beloved $90 Billion "good guy" bank. "Our outsider perspective has been one of our greatest assets. We're not imprinted with traditional concepts of what's possible or expected, so we get to believe we can tackle any idea we dream up, as long as we have enough coffee."

The core cred.ai consumer product functions through the combination of an FDIC insured deposit account, the Unicorn Card Visa credit card, and the cred.ai mobile app. cred.ai real-time automation ensures the consumer experience is essentially like a superpowered debit card. User's never worry about fees, interest, or payments, while taking advantage of cred.ai's unique set of technology features and controls. WSFS Bank, the largest locally headquartered bank in the Philadelphia region, provides the FDIC insured deposit account and issues the Unicorn Card Visa credit card.

Exclusive features are introduced continuously, with the current roster including: self-destructing virtual "Stealth Cards" designed for risky transactions; "Flux Capacitor" allowing users to see future transactions and automatically spend or budget accordingly; "Check Please" eliminating the embarrassment of card declines at important rendezvous; Credit Optimizer (see details below); the "Friend & Foe" systems allowing users to directly manage the trust and permissions of individual merchants in real-time; and "High Security Mode" generating secure finite authorization windows. In addition to these exclusive tech features, all users receive a full face true metal card, 24/7 phone support answered by a human and not a robot, instant deposits, mobile check capture, payroll and other direct deposits two days early, and an onboarding process that allows users to start spending within minutes of applying.

Millennials and Gen Zers have a natural aversion to credit cards, due to a fundamental distrust of debt and the banking system overall. "The Apple Card is a stunning product, but if you're opposed to credit cards in general, it's just not a product for you," said Dylan Brown, cred.ai president and co-founder. For these credit card averse consumers, cred.ai's automatic credit optimization is their best way to build credit without fear. Other products that claim to build credit focus merely on reporting on-time payments, which minimally affects credit profiles, usually via commonly undesirable "secured" cards. Far more precisely, cred.ai's Credit Optimizer is able to affect credit utilization, which is known to be one of the most significant factors contributing to credit profiles. "The other products don't use an optimization algorithm or anything adaptive. Worse, they are attached to subprime products that don't provide much in terms of experience," said Dylan. The cred.ai CreditOptimizer was built to be card agnostic and is capable of managing and optimizing most third-party major credit cards, beyond just the Unicorn Card. cred.ai plans to publicly open third-party card management integration in Q1 of 2021.

"Millennials swipe a lot on social media, but this is a major swipe at disrupting banking. cred.ai is this generation's version of an Amex Black Card," said cred.ai investor Tim Armstrong, Founder of the DTX Company and former CEO of AOL, Oath, and President of Google America. " Millennials don't care about meaningless points and lounge access hiding amongst hundreds in fees, they care about becoming financially stronger, technology and features on the cutting edge, and companies with values they align with."

While cred.ai has plans to offer ongoing cashback and rewards opportunities, it is not designed for points aficionados. "Our users know that traditional cashback is a karma trap," said Dylan. "For an average user, the actual cash back earned winds up being very small, and gets outweighed by fees and interest. But the real issue is that those flashy rewards are supported and subsidized via the suffering of that bank's lower income customers. It's wealth redistribution in the wrong direction."

"We realized early on, that if you want to build something that changes people's lives, you need to actually build. The reason every bank and fintech card offers such sparse, identical features is because they are basically white-labeling the same stock platforms with a different logo," said Lauren Dussault, cred.ai chief banking officer. " Over two and a half years were spent building the banking technology and compliance foundation that makes the complex features of cred.ai possible. "We don't view infrastructure as merely a means to an end," said cred.ai Co-Founder and COO Todd Sandler. "We see it as another opportunity to build a phenomenal product, where we ourselves are the first customer. Operating like that allows us to iterate our consumer product faster, and derive value directly from the technology itself." The platform itself includes full compliance management, and was built modularly so that it can also be licensed to provide "bank in a box" operations for small banks and brands. "When we built ING Direct, our goal was to leverage technology to operate with 10% of the resources a traditional bank would use," said Jim Kelly, chairman and co-founder of cred.ai, and founding COO of ING Direct. "With what we've built at cred.ai, I think we get that down to 1%." Multiple licensing deals are currently in the works, with announcements expected in Q4 of 2020.

"I think cred.ai could one day be viewed as the Tesla of banking," said cred.ai co-founder and lead investor David Adelman. "We approached an antiquated and rigid sector as if limitations didn't exist, with the conviction that we could use hard work and creativity to rebuild it into something fundamentally better." That conviction also extends to cred.ai's views on social and world affairs, best displayed through crednews, the media division that produces the original documentaries and journalistic content that anchor the mobile app experience. This progressive spirit has attracted celebrity investors like John Legend and superstar athletes like Andre Iguodala. "It's a rare product they can proudly endorse for being altruistic, and then benefit from being users of the product themselves," said David.

"cred.ai will serve different purposes to different users," said Dylan. "For some it will be their solution to building credit without fear. Early adopters will see it as their gateway to the most advanced features. Stealth Card alone will be the reason many people sign up. Some will be drawn to our progressive beliefs, and others might just want a cool, free metal card. Regardless of the motivation, the fact that the product can be top of wallet for both a college student or a wealthy NBA superstar, says a lot about our mission to build a premium product for all people."

Today consumers can apply to join cred.ai's limited private beta, during which participants will be given the opportunity to share their view on how advanced financial technology would impact their life goals. Of the participants that share their stories, some will be selected to receive $10,000 from cred.ai to help them reach the goals they describe. See http://www.cred.ai/beta for official rules.

"Don't call us a bank. I don't even like being pigeonholed as fintech," said Ry. "Right now we're building products that help empower people financially, but next we could throw in education, health care, insurance, who knows. Whatever it is, we'll dream it, build it, and then give it away for free."

About cred.aiVisit http://www.cred.ai to apply for beta access. cred.ai is based in Philadelphia, PA and has been operating in stealth for over three years building free financial technology designed to empower consumers and elevate their financial services experience. The cred.ai deposit account is provided by Wilmington Savings Fund Society, FSB ("WSFS Bank"), Member FDIC. The Unicorn Card credit card is issued by WSFS Bank pursuant to a license from Visa U.S.A. Inc. and may be used everywhere Visa credit cards are accepted. Learn more at https://www.cred.ai

About WSFS Financial Corporation WSFS Financial Corporation is a multi-billion-dollar financial services company. Its primary subsidiary, WSFS Bank, is the oldest and largest locally managed bank and trust company headquartered in Delaware and the greater Philadelphia region. As of June 30, 2020, WSFS Financial Corporation had $13.6 billion in assets on its balance sheet and $20.8 billion in assets under management and administration. WSFS Financial Corporation operates from 115 offices, 90 of which are banking offices, located in Pennsylvania (54), Delaware (43), New Jersey (16), Virginia (1) and Nevada (1) and provides comprehensive financial services including commercial banking, retail banking, cash management and trust and wealth management. Other subsidiaries or divisions include Arrow Land Transfer, Cash Connect, Cypress Capital Management, LLC, Christiana Trust Company of Delaware, NewLane Finance, Powdermill Financial Solutions, West Capital Management, WSFS Institutional Services, WSFS Mortgage, and WSFS Wealth Investments. Serving the greater Delaware Valley since 1832, WSFS Bank is one of the ten oldest banks in the United States continuously operating under the same name. For more information, please visit http://www.wsfsbank.com.

Press contact:Matthew Mirandi[emailprotected]

SOURCE cred.ai

cred.ai – we make supercards

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cred.ai Emerges From Stealth Mode To Debut Technology-Powered Metal Card With Unrivaled, Premium Features For Millennials and Gen Zers That Guarantees...

Stafford-based Semantics 21 (S21) has developed artificial intelligence technology purely for digital forensics which is being used by police across the globe.

Its being deployed in cases of child exploitation, counter terrorism, human trafficking and other serious organised crime.

The technology is able to sift through evidence with the help of automated searches based on visual similarity or recognition of faces, age, emotion, nudity and a variety of object types.

It can work through millions of images in minutes to jigsaw together the smallest details to identify victims and perpetrators.

As well as helping rescue more victims, the AI is also helping to safeguard the mental health of many investigators who would normally have to examine horrific images to catch perpetrators and stop criminal gangs.

The duo behind the firm, which has worked with forces in the UK including Staffordshire Police as well as those in Canada and the US are Dr Liam Owens and Prof Claude Chibelushi, who are both from Stafford.

Although they cant reveal specific details of cases or forces, for legal reasons, the pair know their AI is responsible for helping one force solve more cases and find more victims in 12 months than the previous three years and for assisting another in reducing a case backlog of several months down to zero.

It was while studying for a Ph.D. in digital forensics at Staffordshire University, under Claude, that Liam spent time working with investigators, where he quickly realised how a specifically designed digital forensics AI system could be a major boost to the polices crime-fighting armoury.

Liam, 32, who usually spends his time travelling the globe to support and train forces in its unique AI, said: During my university studies, and while working with some incredible investigators back in 2009, I saw the overwhelming backlog they were facing, and I was shocked by the complete lack of clever tech available to assist investigators, including a lack of AI for victim ID.

Like in many industries it sometimes takes an outsider with insider knowledge to patch the issue and that is what we developed this tech specifically for.

Claude exposed me to leading edge research available now, and the future of

the AI marketplace. But I saw first-hand that forces didnt have the opportunity to invest in tools harnessing the best computing AI had to offer to assist them there and then. We wanted to bring forces into the 21st century by bridging the semantic gap between humans and computer, hence the name Semantics 21.

So, we developed our own unique AI and innovative products specifically designed for digital forensics.

Our long term goal is for people to see us as global leader in digital forensics and AI across the world, we are pioneering the research and putting it out when tried, tested and proven ready to go.

Father-of-three Claude left lecturing at the university to run the company, which received a Queens Award for Enterprise, in the Innovation category, last year, full-time with Liam.

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Stafford duo helping police fight organised crime with their new AI technology - expressandstar.com

MOON TOWNSHIP, Pa., Aug. 7, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --Surface testing is now attainable for organizations and households throughout the nation thanks to Bactronix and its extensive franchise network.

Bactronix, a science based microbial control company, is the first to invest in advanced technology for testing coronavirus / SARS-CoV-2 on environmental surfaces. "Since the pandemic entered the United States in January of 2020 we have been working with manufacturers of laboratory equipment to develop a testing system for surface testing of coronavirus," stated Jos Kleynjans, President and CEO of Bactronix and one of the founders of the company. "Introducing this testing technology is exciting news for our franchisees, our customers, and everyone who will utilize our services in the future."

The company has been on the front lines of the pandemic since the beginning due to its environmentally responsible, sanitizing products and hospital-grade disinfection services, including the proprietary Bactronizing process. Bactronix also offers specialized air duct and dryer vent cleaning along with mold remediation, vapor barriers, and insecticide services.

Now, being the first company in the United States to have the ability to test for SARS-CoV-2 contamination on surfaces, Bactronix has set a new standard as a leading Microbial Control Company. "Not only do we have the ability to test the surfaces, we have a complete in-house laboratory set-up to provide quick turnaround time for test results," stated Kleynjans. According to Kleynjans, testing is applicable within a variety of settings. All tests are done by Certified Bionomic Specialists and can be done on both hard and soft surfaces in homes, schools, offices, restaurants, care facilities, medical facilities, vehicles, planes, and other settings.

Bactronix invites those interested in learning more about their testing services to their website atwww.Bactronix.com. For those wanting to learn how to become a part of the Bactronix franchise network, visithttps://bactronix.com/index.php/franchising-opportunities.

ABOUT BACTRONIX

Bactronix is an award-winning, science-based microbial control company that uses proprietary products and advanced equipment for a wide range of disinfection and mold removal services. Their certified personnel are highly trained in administering effective, eco-responsible disinfection treatments for commercial and residential facilities. For more information on their franchise opportunity, visithttps://bactronix.com/index.php/franchising-opportunities.

Media contact:Jos KleynjansBactronix412-375-7886http://bactronix.com

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Since last year, there have been a salient but serious war in the technology industry. This war is basically between the U.S. g0vernment and Chinese companies. The American government is dragging its allies into the war. Most recently, India also started a battle with Chinese companies. However, India seem to have its own agenda which is different from that of the Americans. As a competitor, other companies are indirectly linked with growing tech war. According to Nokias new CEO, Pekka Lundmark, competitors have to be careful. For the Finnish company, it does not want to be part of the trade and political conflicts. The new CEO of Nokia said that the company will eliminate geopolitical entanglement and maintain a neutral position.

Presently, the U.S. is using its prowess to prevent Chinese company, Huawei, from entering the global 5G mobile network market. This opens up more opportunities for Nokia in the 5G network equipment market. However, Lundmark, who took over the power of Nokia on August 1, is seeking his own foothold.

I think it would be a major mistake if a single company starts to promote their political agenda Lundmark said in an interview with the media on Friday. It is very important for companies to be straightforward and do what they should do. We have no political agenda, we are a pure enterprise.

The Donald Trump administration has been pressing its allies to ban Huaweis equipment citing security risk. Although there is no significant evidence and Huawei has to cope with bans in multiple regions.

Huawei is not the only Chinese technology company that is suffering from the ban by the U.S. A few days ago, Trump signed an order to ban TikTok, a foreign version of the Chinese app Douyin. This app is very popular among Americans especially its young users with over 90 million active monthly users. The ban also hit other Chinese apps like WeChat.

Nokia has since acknowledged that the ban on Huawei is bring some business to the company. In fact, the U.S. and U.K. will provide someassistance to Nokia and its Swedish rival, Ericsson. This is to ensure the competitiveness of its 5G equipment supply.

Nokia lags behind its competitors in the 5G network equipment market, which is why Lundmark was hired as the new head of Nokia. Just five days after taking up the position of Nokias new CEO, Lundmark said he is busy talking with customers and has begun to plan a way forward for the company. Nokias CEO added

It is extremely important to maintain good relations with almost all regions and governments in the worldWe communicate with governments in different regions of the world, and it is just as usual for us. What we have to do now is to preview the current plan and then formulate a new plan on how to develop it. I already have some theories and ideas in my mind, but its too early to talk about these theories. Im only five days old in the office and cant make deep statements. Nevertheless, my goal is firm, with regard to what should we do next in the market. We will say something more specific before the end of the year.

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Nokia will not be involved in the geopolitical technology war - Gizchina.com

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Cancer Targeted Technology (CTT), a privately-held Seattle-based biotechnology company, announced that the NIH awarded CTT $1.44M on the second year of a competitive Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase IIB grant. The three year grant commenced in 2019 and totals $3.3M and this second year of funding supports the current CTT1403 clinical trial.

The clinical trial, conducted at University of California, San Francisco with Dr. Rahul Aggarwal as Principal Investigator, is a 30-40 patient dose escalation/expansion trial in men with advanced castration-resistant prostate cancer. The trial is designed to show safety and efficacy of CTT1403 and is halfway through the initial dose escalation phase. To date there have been no safety issues with the drug and the pharmacokinetic data support the longer circulation time of CTT1403 in the blood stream as compared to other PSMA agents currently in clinical trials. "These PSMA-targeted agents are already transforming how prostate cancer is diagnosed and treated and we are very pleased that the NIH continues to support the development of these exciting new agents. CTT1403, with its longer circulating time and better tumor targeting characteristics, offers distinct advantages in this treatment arena providing the patient with cost and treatment benefits, commented Dr. Beatrice Langton-Webster, CTTs CEO and Principal Investigator on the grant. The unique chemical structure for CTT1403 was conceived of by Dr. Cliff Berkman, Professor at Washington State University (WSU).

CTT1403 targets Prostate Specific Membrane Antigen (PSMA) which is over-expressed on prostate cancer. Two features make CTT1403 unlike other PSMA-targeted drugs currently in development: 1) Due to a unique core scaffold, CTTs molecules bind irreversibly to PSMA and this distinctive mode of binding enables rapid uptake of the drug within the tumor; and 2) CTT1403 is engineered to increase the circulation time of the drug in the body which further substantially increases the dose of drug that accumulates at the tumor sites. CTT1403 is labeled with the radionuclide Lutetium-177 and once delivered to the tumor, the radionuclide acts to destroy the tumor cells.

CTT completed two clinical trials at UCSF with CTT1057, the companion PET diagnostic imaging agent to CTT1403, with excellent safety and imaging results for both prostate cancer and renal cell carcinoma. CTT1057 is undergoing further development for prostate cancer by CTTs licensing partner AAA/Novartis. CTT1057 and CTT1403 serve as a theranostic pair to both diagnose and treat solid tumors that express PSMA, and are being used together in the current clinical trial. More information on the trial can be found at clinicaltrials.gov.

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NIH grants $1.44M to Cancer Targeted Technology to Support the Ongoing Prostate Cancer Clinical Trial of a Promising New Radiotherapeutic, CTT1403 -...

Calyxt, a food technology company spawned by the University of Minnesota, said this week it will offer its gene-editing technology in licensing deals to other companies.

The company whose technology is known as TALEN and uses molecular scissors to remove undesirable traits in plants had until recently focused on contracting with farmers to grow their seeds and managing the manufacture of products made from the crops.

It is now in talks with several companies to license its technology or the specific traits in plants it has developed.

It would be a competitor to the CRISPR technology thats out there, but we believe we have a little cleaner commercialization plan with TALEN than what CRISPR has, said Travis Frey, the firms chief technology officer.

One high-profile example was high-oleic soybeans, which were converted into oil by a processor in Iowa and sold under the Calyxt brand Calyno.

In its new emphasis on licensing its technology and the traits it develops, Calyxt is pivoting away from managing the processing and sale of end products like oil, Frey said.

Most of the partners were looking at are probably going to put it under their own brand, Frey said. Theyre just much better at doing that, and the other thing is it helps us get revenue. We can earn cash sooner.

The publicly traded firm, launched in 2019, said it is in the advanced stages of developing improved-digestibility alfalfa, high fiber wheat, feminized and low THC hemp for fiber, food and CBD, gluten-free and cold-tolerant oats and pulses with improved flavor and protein.

Companies that want to develop products with that technology, or with traits developed by Calyxt, will now be able to secure a license.

Based in Roseville, the company got an exclusive license in 2015 to commercialize technology developed at the Us Department of Genetics, Cell Biology and Development.

Calyxt has not turned a profit since its inception and lost $39.6 million in 2019, but gene-editing is one of the hottest topics in agriculture.

Major seed companies are still working to dig out of the public relations and regulatory quagmire of genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. Gene-editing does not add foreign DNA to plants so the resulting products are not considered to be GMOs.

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Calyxt will license its plant gene-editing tech to other firms - Minneapolis Star Tribune

Today, with the new risks posed by Covid, how do we provide the best care for people with non-Covid- related disease? For diagnosed cancer patients, these risks may warrant a re-evaluation of the common standards of treatment.

While targeted cancer therapies are now more tumor-specific and less toxic, and offer new possibilities for tailoring cancer treatment, there are still so many missing pieces: often as not, oncologists are shooting in the dark, trying to tailor the right treatment for their patient with very limited data. With the shadow of Covid, and the multiple risks cancer patients now face, clinicians are increasingly concerned.

"There are very few good biomarkers that enable personalized treatment regimens and therefore, in ... [+] most cases, we have a one size fits all approach."

Today, we use protocols to treat our patients with lung or other kinds of cancers, says Dr. Ofer Sharon, a longtime physician and entrepreneur. There are very few good biomarkers that enable personalized treatment regimens and therefore, in most cases, we have a one size fits all approach. Treatment starts following diagnosis and staging and we start to follow up on patients using clinical capabilities. Then what he describes is rather disturbing. Doctors are left to speculate as to which degree patients are responding to treatment. Usually, response assessment happens after three and six months. During this period, there are a lot of uncertainties, and sometimes there are adverse events and associated costs. If the patient is not responding the way we had hoped, we lose valuable time. There is a consensus among clinicians, he notes, that not all patients are the same and theres a dire need for effective tools to differentiate between patients and personalize treatment according to their needs.

OncoHost, an Israeli precision oncology company is now in the final steps of finalizing a host response profiling platform for predicting patient response to cancer therapeutics.

With over 20 years of experience in clinical and commercial product development for startups in the health tech, biotech, and medical device industries, Dr. Sharon decided to join OncoHost, as its CEO, following a personal tragedy. Seven years ago my father-in-law was diagnosed with advanced-stage melanoma. At the time, I was the medical director for Merck (MSD) and involved in the phase 3 trials of Keytruda, a drug that treats melanoma. Unfortunately, my father-in-law didnt meet the inclusion criteria for the trial and passed away three months before we launched the new drug. The frustration, which arises from the fact that in most cases we just dont know in time which patients will benefit from treatment and which will not, kept me awake for many nights.

When he came across Oncohost, he realized there might be hope for others. I was fascinated by the concept and science. The opportunity to make such a crucial difference in the way we treat cancer was something I just couldnt pass up, and I decided to take on this huge challenge.

The companys technology is based on high-throughput protein analysis, machine-learning algorithms, and bioinformatics tools. Its product, PROphetTM, is currently under study in a multi-center international clinical trial to predict patient response to immune-checkpoint inhibitors for non-small cell lung cancer and melanoma.

"Potential combination strategies and alternative treatments that may mitigate treatment ... [+] resistance." Dr. Ofer Sharon

So far, it has successfully identified a 10-protein signature that distinguishes between responders and non-responders to anti-PD-1 monotherapy or anti-PD-1 and anti-CTLA-4 combination therapy for melanoma. The technology should elucidate protein patterns associated with resistance to immune checkpoint inhibitors and will fulfill the need for differentiating responders from non-responders while monitoring the immune checkpoint inhibitor specific protein expression scores such as tumor proportion score.

The system, now in the clinical trial stage, analyzes the patients response and provides the patient and physician with a response prediction. In cases where no response is predicted, it suggests potential combination strategies and alternative treatments that may mitigate treatment resistance. "We hope this platform will like a CT or MRI add much-needed clinical information to support the complex and in many cases, life-and-death decision-making process".

The technology for assessing response to lung cancer therapy is expected to become available in the U.S. by next year.

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By Next Year, Will Doctors Finally Have The Technology To Fully Personalize Treatments For Lung Cancer Patients? - Forbes

SHANGRAO, China, Aug. 7, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- JinkoSolar Holding Co., Ltd. ("JinkoSolar" or "Company") (NYSE: JKS) one of the world's largest and most innovative module manufacturers in the world, today launched its new generation of 610W Tiger Pro High-efficiency monocrystalline TR solar module and its BIPV solutions, Building Integrated Photovoltaics product series, which will be unveiled at SNEC 2020 in Shanghai.

As a PV company that has ranked first in global modules shipments for four consecutive years, JinkoSolar has always been committed to providing global customers with high-efficiency, top quality, and extremely reliable solar modules. The key behind the success of Tiger Pro 610W is the N-Type HOT 2.0 high-efficiency cell technology, independently developed by JinkoSolar. Thanks to the introduction of new technologies, such as HOT tunneling layer passivated contact and advanced metallization, the cell efficiency has reached 24.79%, setting once again a world record for the efficiency of large area N-Type monocrystalline silicon solar cells. At the same time, the use of 78 cell design and of TR technology, which helps reduce significantly the cell gap, as well as lower the electricity cost and improve the system compatibility, represents another milestone for the PV industry in its quest for grid parity.

JinkoSolar's module series have continuously broken the conversion efficiency record, starting from 2018, JinkoSolar Eagle PERC high-efficiency monocrystalline series, with a power of 390W and a conversion efficiency of 19.8%, followed by the Tiger HOT 1.0 high-efficiency monocrystalline series delivering a power output up to 475W and a conversion efficiency of 20.87%. The newest Tiger Pro HOT2.0, high-efficiency monocrystalline series, with its maximum output of 610W and a conversion efficiency of 22.3%, is setting once again new-standards for the industry and positioning JinkoSolar far ahead from its competitors.

Moreover, thanks to the great improvements made with the smart combination "PV + Architecture", during this edition of SNEC, JinkoSolar also unveiled its first version of colored BIPV module series.With a power output of up to 550W, this product series is available in a variety of colors and levels of translucence, incorporating modern architectural aesthetics for use as a building component.

Dr. Jin Hao, CTO of JinkoSolar, commented: "Reducing costs and increasing efficiency is the goal that the industry has always been striving for. JinkoSolar has always been committed to providing global customers with high-efficiency, top quality, and extremely reliable solar modules. We will increase our investment in R&D to ensure constant innovation in our technology, improve our products performance, and ensure the highest system compatibility. This will allow us to fulfill our commitment to offer the best service to our global customers and to allow the application of our solar modules in a variety of scenarios, further empowering the solar PV industry and achieving grid parity."

About JinkoSolar Holding Co., Ltd.

JinkoSolar (NYSE: JKS) is one of the largest and most innovative solar module manufacturers in the world. JinkoSolar distributes its solar products and sells its solutions and services to a diversified international utility, commercial and residential customer base in China, the United States, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, Chile, South Africa, India, Mexico, Brazil, the United Arab Emirates, Italy, Spain, France, Belgium, and other countries and regions. JinkoSolar has built a vertically integrated solar product value chain, with an integrated annual capacity of 17.5 GW for mono wafers, 10.6 GW for solar cells, and 16 GW for solar modules, as of March 31, 2020.

JinkoSolar has over 15,000 employees across its 7 productions facilities globally, 14 overseas subsidiaries in Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, India, Turkey, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, United States, Mexico, Brazil, Chile and Australia, and global sales teams in China, United Kingdom, France, Spain, Bulgaria, Greece, Ukraine, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Morocco, Kenya, South Africa, Costa Rica, Colombia, Panama, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam, Poland and Argentina.

To find out more, please see: http://www.jinkosolar.com

Safe Harbor Statement

This press release contains forward-looking statements. These statements constitute "forward-looking" statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as "will," "expects," "anticipates," "future," "intends, "plans," "believes," "estimates" and similar statements. Among other things, the quotations from management in this press release and the Company's operations and business outlook, contain forward-looking statements. Such statements involve certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Further information regarding these and other risks is included in JinkoSolar's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, including its annual report on Form 20-F. Except as required by law, the Company does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

For investor and media inquiries, please contact:

Ms. Ripple ZhangJinkoSolar Holding Co., Ltd.Tel: +86 21-5183-3105Email: [emailprotected]

SOURCE JinkoSolar Holding Co., Ltd.

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JinkoSolar reshapes PV technology scenarios with its new N-Type Tiger Pro 610W unveiled at SNEC 2020 - PRNewswire

As cities increasingly discuss the introduction of low emission zones, BMW is making another important contribution to boost the uptake and attractiveness of electromobility among consumers, by launching BMW eDrive Zones in London and Birmingham. With electric ranges of up to 54 miles, BMW plug-in hybrid models are built with cities in mind, as they can complete most commuting trips on pure-electric power. This new technology helps drivers do just that.

BMW eDrive Zones is a new digital service which automates the process of switching to electric-only power when a BMW plug-in hybrid vehicle enters a defined area of these cities. The service, unique in the worldwide automotive industry, also automatically ensures that the electric power is conserved for use during the part of the journey within the low emission zone, if the journey destination is entered into the vehicles navigation system.

This new technology ensures BMW plug-in hybrid models offer consumers the best of both worlds: electric-only driving in the city, where it makes the most difference and a highly efficient internal combustion engine to cover long distances.

This is the flexibility that customers want, as they make the transition to electromobility said Pieter Nota, BMW AG board member for Customer, Brands, Sales commenting on the UK launch of BMW eDrive Zones. A plug-in hybrid vehicle combines the best of two worlds: emission-free city-driving as well as long-distance capabilities. We urge governments to prioritise plug-in hybrid vehicles in order to encourage consumers to live a more sustainable lifestyle. BMW eDrive Zones technology supports customers to drive emission free in London and Birmingham. It improves air quality in cities fast and reduces running costs for drivers. Its win-win for everyone, Nota added.

The BMW eDrive Zones service, available as standard on BMW plug-in hybrid models running the latest BMW Operating System 7.0, uses geo-fencing technology via GPS within the vehicles navigation system. The eDrive Zones in London and Birmingham are highlighted graphically on the vehicles Central Control Display navigation screen, so drivers can see their location.

This feature, which is enabled in customer vehicles as of today, covers the same geographic area as the TFL Congestion Charge/ULEZ zone in London, whilst in Birmingham the service covers the citys planned Clean Air Zone, which is due to be implemented in 2021. BMW plans to introduce this technology in additional cities across the UK and Ireland in the future.

The BMW eDrive Zones service is now available as standard on BMW 330e, BMW 530e, BMW 745e and BMW X5 xDrive45e, with additional compatible models launching in the future. BMW eDrive Zones has also been made available via a free over-the-air software update for compatible BMW plug-in hybrid vehicles, meaning existing customers can also benefit from this technology.

The significant contribution plug-in hybrid vehicles can make to reducing tailpipe emissions in cities was demonstrated in an early trial of this technology, carried out in the Netherlands in 2018. Results of this research project showed 90 per cent of all routes within the trial zone in Rotterdam were driven in electric-only mode.

BMW Group production locations in the UK are also contributing towards the companys global electromobility goals. BMW Groups Hams Hall engine manufacturing plant, near Birmingham, assembles three-cylinder and four-cylinder petrol engines that are at the heart of a number of BMW and MINI plug-in hybrid vehicles. By the end of 2020, it is expected that one in five engines built by the company in Birmingham will be destined for a plug-in hybrid vehicle, rising to around 25 per cent of engines built next year.

At MINI Plant Oxford, the global centre of MINI manufacturing, production of the brands first battery-electric car started earlier this year. Last week, just before the plants annual summer shutdown, Plant Oxford hit a production milestone with 11,000 MINI Electric models built since production begun.

SOURCE: BMW Group

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BMW launches its world-first eDrive Zones technology in the UK - Automotive World

Building new infrastructure ( or for short) has recently become a top development priority for China and refers to infrastructure that is digital, smart, and innovative.

As part of its post-COVID-19 relief package, China is ramping up plans to construct new digital infrastructure across the country including building 5G networks, artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), intercity high-speed rail, and setting up research and development institutions.

In doing so, a new wave of government support for private sector participation can be seen through the issuance of special bonds, encouraging public-private partnerships, or extension of credit support.

These plans work in concert with Chinas other industrial policies like Made in China 2025 and China Standards 2035 Plan which together signal Chinas ambitious long-term strategy of becoming the global leader in high-tech and innovative industries of the future.

New opportunities now exist for early investors looking to participate in these fast-growing technology industries and subsectors. In addition, large industry players have the chance to invest in projects that will propel the commercialization of emerging technology.

Foreign investors should continue to follow-up on the latest policy developments in their target area of investment, as more government policies will likely be released shortly to guide the development of each of these new technologies.

In this article, we explain what we know about Chinas new infrastructure plan so far, along with the opportunities for investors to get involved.

At the 2020 National Peoples Congress, the CCP announced that in addition to doubling down on itsMade in China 2025andChina Standards 2035 initiatives, it would spend approximately US$1.4 trillion on a digital infrastructure public spending program.

The new infrastructure includes seven key areas: 5G networks, industrial internet, inter-city transportation and rail system, data centers, AI, ultra-high voltage power transmission, and new-energy vehicle charging stations.

Originally touted as a way for China to achieve domain independence and accelerate its industrial upgradation, the new infrastructure plan has transformed into a long-term national economic strategy.

However, in April 2020, the National Development and Reform Commission released a revised categorization of new infrastructure to include three broad aspects of next-generation technology:

Infrastructure with public benefits, which support science and technology infrastructure, science and education infrastructure, and industrial technology innovation infrastructure.This includes R& D institutions, research infrastructure, and innovation-focused industrial parks.

The foundation of this technological development and refers to technology that increases productivity, speed, accuracy, and breadth of information collected, stored, disseminated, and analyzed.This includes 5G, IoT, industrial internet, AI, cloud computing, blockchain, data centers, and internet communication network infrastructure.

Fusion infrastructure formed through the application of internet, big data, AI, and other technologies to support the transformation and upgradation of traditional infrastructure.This includes constructing inter-city high-speed rail and inner-city rail systems, charging stations for electric vehicles (EVs), and ultra-high voltage (UHV) power transmission.

Broadly speaking, these three categories have three main functions

According to estimates from analysts at the CCID Think Tank Electronic Information Institute, a government-affiliated think tank as well as Haitong Securities, a major Chinese securities firm, the investment associated with new infrastructure projects is expected to total around RMB 10 trillion(US$ 1.43 trillion) toRMB 17.5 trillion (US$2.51 trillion) for the next five-year period until 2025.

Since the NDRC clarified the scope of what is new infrastructure, 25 provinces have launched their own local plans.

Among them is the Shanghai plan, which set the total investment target for the next three years at RMB 270 billion (US$38.7 billion), while Guangzhou signed 16 digital new infrastructure projects with a total investment of RMB 56.6 billion (US$8.09 billion). Zhejiang province, home to tech giant Alibaba, also committed to a new batch of projects 61 percent of which are in the high-tech field, a 20 percent increase from the previous year.

Xu Xianping, former deputy director of the NDRC estimates that: the scale of upstream and downstream businesses in the industrial chain will see RMB 2.8 trillion (US$400 billion) in investment, with an average annual growth rate of 22.6 percent.

The same momentum can be seen across different types of technology, where for example, China has announced that by 2025, it will invest RMB 500 billion (US$72 billion) in UHV, RMB 100 billion in AI chips, and RMB 650 billion (US$93.4 billion) in the industrial internet. In terms of 5G networks, China has committed to constructing five million 5G base stations by the end of 2025 a 25-fold increase in less than five years.

Compared to the state-led investment push in traditional infrastructure in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, the biggest distinction in the 2020 stimulus package is that this time round the government is much more reliant on market forces and private investment.

Thus, there are many more opportunities for business stakeholders to participate in this next phase of Chinas development.

Still, each sector will see varying degrees of government investment. Consequently, private technology firms will need to assess whether they willing to align their participation with government directives to form partnerships with state-owned-enterprises.

For example, research and satellite communications will have a high government investment ratio, whereas application developments, virtual reality, 3D printing, and smart robot production will typically be comprised of private investments and have relatively low industry barriers for foreign investment.

Ultimately, openness to foreign investment will depend on whether the sector is mentioned in the Special Administrative Measures for Access to Foreign Investment Negative List (2020 Edition) or the Catalogue of Encouraged Industries for Foreign Investment Encouraged List (2019 Edition).

Based on these lists, foreign investment in internet data centers and 5G networks face the most stringent restrictions, while investment in industrial internet, NEVs, and AI are generally perceived to be the most foreign-investment friendly with many upstream and downstream subsectors featured on the encouraged list.

Recently, China also released the exposure draft of its Catalogue of Encouraged Industries for Foreign Investment (2020 Edition), which further encourages foreign-invested enterprises to participate in the high-tech development of its manufacturing industry.

The 2020 draft catalogue proposes to expand the list to include a further 56 items, adding manufacturing of LiDAR (light detection and ranging) and millimeter-wave (MMW) radars related to autonomous driving technology as well as manufacturing of charging piles. In the fields of computer, communication, and electronics manufacturing, the proposed list added manufacturing of smart wearable devices, intelligent unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), customer service robots, and smart home systems and equipment.

Though this draft catalogue is still currently undergoing its final round of public consultation, if implemented, it will further open up a range of high-tech sectors to foreign investors.

Foreign-invested enterprises who invest in encouraged industries will be subject to tariff exemptions, preferential land prices, looser regulation of land uses, and lowered corporate income tax. However, those industries that appear on the negative list will either be restricted or prohibited from foreign investment entry.

We will examine seven key sectors of Chinas new infrastructure, and their openness to foreign investment below.

Similar to the trend in other countries, Chinas small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have been a critical driver of innovation, and currently account for approximately 66 percent of the patents issued.

Though direct investment in infrastructure may not be a viable option for SMEs, there are many opportunities either upstream or downstream of the supply chain where they can participate.

There are two sides to the potential opportunities available for SMEs supply and demand. Businesses can either choose to participate in the construction and manufacturing of these new technologies or participate in the commercial application of these technologies across various sectors.

On the supply side, there are other opportunities that exist on the periphery of this large-scale infrastructure build.

For small-to-medium enterprises, many opportunities exist in the upstream (manufacturing of equipment) and downstream (program development) of the industry chain and are encouraged by the government.

Take 5G for example though investment in the network itself is, in practice, an area that is restricted to a few large Chinese players, there are opportunities that exist within the supply chain.

This is particularly true of the automobile industry; for example, 5G network giant Huawei recently announced that it willpartnerwith 18 carmakers, including FAW group, BYD, and T3 Mobility, to build a 5G-enabled automobile ecosystem in the automobile industry moving to accelerate the uptake of 5G technology in smart cars and achieving a significant transformation of its industrial capacity.

Investments into the upstream segment of supply chain attached to 5G networks continue to be in encouraged category for foreign investors, including:

On the demand side, there are a whole array of new use scenarios that will come with the advent of each new type of next-generation technology.

Using the same 5G example, which offers a combination of faster speed, higher capacity, and lower latency this will enable the digitalization of traditional business models. As 5G technology matures, there will be greater opportunities for it to be applied across industries.

Traditional industries, such as medical care, education, retail, manufacturing, services, and logistics will all inevitably have to shift towards digital business models that will adapt to the radical digital transformation or application of new technologies.

For example, CloudMinds Technology, a SoftBank-backed startup in Beijing,donatedrobots with 5G-enabled cloud-based systems to Wuhans hospitals. The robots worked 24/7 hours and undertook jobs like remote nursing, body temperature taking, heart rates and blood oxygen levels measurement, medication delivery, disinfection, and cleaning.

Though there are many opportunities in Chinas tech industry for investors, as the global technology industry becomes increasingly politicized, the challenges may amplify.

As discussed in the Hinrich Foundations report titled Strategic US-China Decoupling in the Tech Sector, the global tech industry continues to see an a heightened sense of techno-nationalism, displayed through a set of mercantilist-like behaviors that link tech innovation and enterprise directly to the national security, economic prosperity and social stability of a nation.

This is especially so as China-US geopolitical competition reaches a tipping point, and mutual tariff hikes, US restriction on exports of high-tech goods and services to China, and targeted restrictions of large tech companies with strong national ties (Huawei and Tiktok) result in an inevitable reshuffling of technological supply chains between the two countries.

Going forward, a much clearer distinction will now be made between foreign and domestic players, a point strongly emphasized by the recent Hinrich Foundation report.

Subsidies, government-backed credit programs for customers, and the Digital Belt and Road Initiative [all] contributed to the meteoric rise of Huawei, and Chinese tech companies in general, the report explains. The US, EU and other state-actors will focus increasingly on countering Beijings economic nationalism with techno-nationalism initiatives of their own.

Countries around the world will continue to be locked in a race to become the first to successfully develop, commercialize, and thus set the standards for the many types of new generation technology that are set to emerge.

Indeed, this is already starting to precipitate with the emergence of the China Standards 2035 Plan, which is an initial blueprint of the standardized processes and specifications to ensure products in the tech industries worldwide are built to work together seamlessly.

Though a growing sense of techno-nationalism will inevitably follow, a complete technology decoupling is unlikely to prevail as technology supply chains still require the participation of many foreign players.

In China, one clear example of this is the semi-conductor industry where China still overwhelmingly relies on foreign companies for its supplies only 16 percent of its semiconductors are produced in the country as of 2019.

Although China has spent billions of dollars in earlier decades to create a domestic semiconductor industry a critical component of the technology supply chain this has come with little success. The chief difficulty for Chinese firms is not access to equipment but their lack of experience and know-how.

Therefore, foreign companies still have a large role to play where current domestic capabilities in Chinas tech industry fall short, particularly, where industries like the semiconductor industry have recently become beneficiaries of a slew of new government preferential policies.

Managers and strategic investors should seek out experts on the ground to craft an appropriate market-entry strategy that accounts for the newly arisen challenges in an increasingly competitive but opportunity-filled landscape.

About Us

China Briefing is written and produced by Dezan Shira & Associates. The practice assists foreign investors into China and has done so since 1992 through offices in Beijing, Tianjin, Dalian, Qingdao, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Ningbo, Suzhou, Guangzhou, Dongguan, Zhongshan, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong.

Please contact the firm for assistance in China at china@dezshira.com. We also maintain offices assisting foreign investors in Vietnam, Indonesia, Singapore, The Philippines, Malaysia,Thailand, United States, and Italy,in addition to our practices in Indiaand Russia and our trade research facilities along the Belt & Road Initiative.

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What is China's New Infrastructure Plan and Will it Benefit Tech Investors? - China Briefing

I could have looked up when kneeling to plant the little ash tree some 30-odd years ago. Then I might have considered the powerline high above me, strung from the transformer beyond the hedge to the pole beside the house.

But perhaps I just couldnt imagine the ambition locked up in the sapling I was firming in.

This summer, as the trees topmost twigs reached up to embrace the wire, I began to dread the approach of early autumn storms. It was time to consult the ESB.

Theyre jolly decent in these matters. If the offending tree is beyond the immediate domestic pole, they will, in good time, despatch a remedial team with a baby chainsaw on a very long pole.

This was, sadly, our second ash to come into conflict with technology. A tree planted closer to the house grew into a strong-muscled, shapely candelabra, beautiful in every season. But it came to obstruct the wireless beams by which we shared our broadband with neighbours. Its pollarding prompted final felling, to our mutual regret.

Meanwhile, the wayside ashes of the west stand as defiantly healthy emblems of their kind. Further east, and across the midlands, hedgerow ashes and forest plantations have been scarred by the single most devastating forest pathogen ever to hit the postglacial woodlands of Ireland. That was Teagascs blunt summation of Chalara ash dieback, wrought by the Asian fungus Hymenoscyphus fraxineus.

Since its first discovery in Co Leitrim in 2012, its airborne spores have had worst impact on young ash plantations, their leaves wilting and blackening into death. It is now established in all counties in Ireland, but as yet spares large reaches of the western seaboard, saved by Atlantic winds.

In 2013, the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine devised a reconstitution scheme to help in clearing affected plantations and planting them with alternative species. By 2018, this had cost some 5.8 million, for more than 1,000 hectares, but it stopped when scientists advised that eradication of ash dieback was no longer feasible.

After widespread damage throughout Europe, the research priority is finding the small minority of ash trees that are tolerant of the disease, passing on their tolerance genetically.

Actual resistance to the fungus has not been found in any common ash population. And even naturally tolerant trees, left to themselves, could take many decades or even centuries to evolve any widespread, rural equilibrium.

Thus, say geneticists working with Irelands Council for Forest Research and Development (Coford), the focus is on breeding from tolerant trees and spreading their progeny to forests and hedgerows over a much shorter time.

Even to identify tolerant trees needs an environment where the pressure of disease is high and their stubborn health quite evident. This is still unusual in Ireland, so most of the breeding programmes are in Europe.

However, Teagascs forestry researchers have had access to ash trees of widely varied Irish provenance already growing in six countries and planted for an earlier, unrelated trial. They include 1,000 trees in Lithuania and 14,000 in the UK. Using such material from Belgium ,they have identified chemicals in the ash that distinguish tolerant trees from those sensitive to dieback.

Two bark chemicals most strongly associated with tolerance belong to the family of coumarins, their sweet scent familiar from freshly mown hay. Such molecular signals are now helping to seek out tolerant trees in Irish stands.

Dr Gerry Douglas, just retired from Teagascs breeding ash research, puts such trees at 1 to 2 per cent. The best news, he says, is that this natural resistance in ash is heritable, and also highly stable in trees that are propagated vegetatively.

This is different, as he points out, from the restorative breeding of disease-resistant elms, which involves introduction of new genes from Asian elm species.

The ash-breeding programme will need large nurseries to propagate trees by grafting and for production of cuttings for rooting. A second stage begins with producing small amounts of seed from grafted trees grown in high polytunnels.

This needs controlled pollination of mother tree flowers from tolerant father trees. Later, more seed can come from orchards of tolerant trees grown from grafts and rooted cuttings.

All this will take years, as Coford sets it out, perhaps as long as 20. But Gerry Douglas is confident that the programme will produce resistant ash seed for sprinkling along the hedgerows.

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Another Life: Our second ash comes into conflict with technology - The Irish Times

This content is provided byRed Hat.

Every year or so, theres a big pushback that labels the cloud as just a fad. One popular argument posits that it doesnt even exist, since its really just someone elses computer. While your average hands-on-keyboards types tend to be more up-to-date on such technologies, its surprisingly common for executives to be less in touch, deciding to skip cloud technologies in favor of seeing what comes next. Within the historical context of IT advances, it becomes clear that this is a mistake; cloud is here to stay, and the next generation of technologies is already being built on its foundations.

There have been a lot of very specific steps over the course of history that have taken us from the mainframe days to where we are now. These steps have shaped our direction into the future, said Damien Eversmann, senior solutions architect for Red Hat Public Sector.

When enterprise IT began with the mainframe, the systems administrators did everything, and the code base was monolithic. But as technology sped up, it diversified, which led to servers. Data sat on one server, business logic on another, and sometimes there would even be a front end presentation layer in the form of a client application, or eventually web browser login. And each of those layers were overseen by a different specialist; as the technology layers diversified, so did the technologists.

Then the number of applications being created continued to grow, Eversmann said. And instead of having people specialize in one layer, people started to break things out into what we now call services oriented architectures. This is the precursor to microservices, one of the main things that were looking at with the cloud now.

Once things started getting broken down into individual services, people realized that those services could be reused. For example, everyone needs a login function. So why not write it once, and share it across all applications?

Now we can scale a much smaller, more granular piece to keep our entire application performing at its best. And this is where making that transition to the cloud was important, Eversmann said. Because the way things were with services oriented architecture, we had reached the limit of what could happen in your data center.

But some people like to point to the pendulum effect around where compute resides to justify waiting until the cloud fad passes. Compute moves from the core, to the edge, back to the core again. From mainframes to workstations to data centers to web browsers.

If the current utilization of cloud is just the pendulum swinging back to the core, albeit one that no longer exists in data centers, why not wait until the pendulum swings back, and skip cloud altogether?

Because it turns out the pendulum metaphor is a little simplistic. Eversmann has a better one.

You know in movies, the ninja that jumps up the alley by jumping back and forth between the buildings? Your pendulum is swinging back and forth but at the same time you keep popping higher and higher, Eversmann said. And thats whats happening here:as we go back and forth between this data at the core, data at the edge, were also leapfrogging the technology of the last time.

In fact, that hypothetical pendulum (or wall-jumping ninja, if you will) is already moving back in the other direction. Technological advancements like the Internet of Things and 5G are enabling so much data to be gathered at the edge that its stressing network bandwidth to send it back to a centralized location for processing. Accordingly, many federal agencies are already looking at and planning for the ability to push compute back out to the edge, so the data gets analyzed in the field where its collected, and the only thing that gets pushed back is the analysis itself.

And youd think that that was a contrary argument to the cloud, right? But its not because if you look at how you define the edge, its actually the cloud, Eversmann said. We now suddenly have the cloud on both sides of this pendulum swing. If we swung into far off servers that are really powerful, thats the cloud. As we need to bring computing closer to the masses, were not bringing it to their desktop anymore. Were bringing it to an edge computing node on the cloud.

Thats why you cant just skip the cloud and see what comes next. Cloud isnt the technology; its the platform.

If you look at some of the functionality and the compute capabilities that live in these hyper-scalers, like AWS or Azure, its stuff that you cant really get in your data center without becoming a hyper-scaler yourself, Eversmann said. There are things that were doing now, with function-based computing and serverless computing that cant be matched without going to the cloud.

Read more:

Not just a fad, cloud provides the foundation for future technologies - Federal News Network

Bodles Taiwan Team Albert Tsai, TS Jen and Luc Lai with the SRD prototype panel at Taiwans ITRI

Oxford UK, 7 August 2020.Bodle Technologies Ltd has developed the worlds first TFT driven Solid State Reflective Display (SRD) fabricated on a GEN2.5 line at Taiwans Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI).

Led by Bodles VP for Manufacturing, TS Jen, the team in Taiwan transferred the designs and research activities directly from the Oxford based team to produce the test displays.

TS Jen comments: This is an important milestone for Bodle, giving us the confidence that our technology is manufacturable using standard processes. We are delighted to be doing this in an ecosystem where many new display technologies have been launched.

The SRD is an ultra-low power, colour reflective display, based on phase-change materials, which work over a wide range of temperatures. They have applications in areas such as mobile second screens, electronic shelf edge displays as well as personalized jewellery and watches.

New VP of Materials and Engineering, Andrew Pauza adds: To see this technology being scaled from a few pixels on R&D samples made on a lab coater to work on displays with nearly a quarter of a million pixels, made on a production coater is fantastic. Many of the materials and production processes are based on those used for rewritable optical disc, an area where I have worked for many years. We have been able to apply these processes to accelerate this move to a more manufacturable process for the SRD.

This step forward provides further impetus to the companys expansion and scale up plans within Taiwan as it looks to commercialise its technology within the coming years.

###

Picture caption:Bodles Taiwan Team Albert Tsai, TS Jen and Luc Lai with the SRD prototype panel at Taiwans ITRI

About Bodle Technologies Ltd

Bodle Technologies is developing SRD, the worlds first solid-state reflective display technology, based on phase-change materials. Providing vivid colour and video-capability, with zero energy use for static image storage, the technology is ideally suited to address the issues of poor outdoor readability and high power consumption associated with transmissive and emissive displays.

Invented at the University of Oxford, the science behind SRD was first published in Nature during 2014.

Bodle was founded the following year and has a growing IP portfolio covering this new display technology. Bodles investors are led by Oxford Sciences Innovation (OSI)

http://www.bodletechnologies.com

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Bodle Technologies announces world's first TFT driven Solid State Reflective Display fabricated on a GEN2.5 line - Digital Signage Connection

NEW YORK, Aug. 7, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Color Star Technology Co., Ltd. (Nasdaq CM: HHT) (the "Company"," we", or "HHT") is pleased to announce that American rapper, singer, songwriter and actor Machine Gun Kelly will join the Color World app owned by the company for its online concert "Fearless, Color World" on September 9th. As one of the leading talents in global pop music, alternative, and hip hop, he is sure to bring fans of all background a moment to be remembered.

"Fearless, Color World" online concert is a new type of concert launched by Color Star Technology which provides innovative art Training Service. The concert has invited many world-class artists to perform, hoping to make the audience feel the peace of the world, and the eternal love.

Machine Gun Kelly is an American well-known rapper, he embarked on a musical career as a teenager, releasing a mixtape in 2006. After he joined Interscope Records which is owned by Universal Music Group, his first major label debut album "Lace Up" reached number 4 on the Billboard 200 chart and sold more than 178,000 copies. In addition, his singles "Till I die" and "A little More" for his second studio album debuted at number four in the US, and "Bad Things" in his third studio album "Bloom" peaked number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100.In addition to his music career, he has acted in a number of Americanfilms.

Biao (Luke) Lu, CEO says "We are thrilled to partner with Machine Gun Kelly in the planned concert, a live event featuring colorful music, colorful life, and a colorful world. With warmth and hope, we celebrate our own lives and the hopes of the world. The performance brought by Machine Gun Kelly will channel through the Color World platform to reach hundreds of millions of potential audiences around the world. With dazzling stage design and top audio equipment, we believe that this online concert will definitely bring our platform users a brand-new online concert experience."

About Color Star Technology Co., Ltd.

Color Star Technology Co, Ltd. (Nasdaq: HHT) offers online and offline innovative education services for music and entertainment industries globally. Its business operations are conducted through its wholly-owned subsidiaries Color China Entertainment Ltd. and CACM Group NY, Inc. The Company's online education is provided through its Color World music and entertainment education platform. The Company also offers after-school entertainment tutoring inNew Yorkvia its joint venture entity Baytao LLC.

Machine Gun Kelly Biography

Colson Baker, also known as "Machine Gun Kelly," is a multi-hyphenate talent with an impressive career that started in Cleveland and has made him a globally known star in both music and film.

As Machine Gun Kelly, he burst onto the music scene with therelease of his first albumLace Upvia EST 19XX/Bad Boy/Interscope Records. The album debuted at number two on Billboard's R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. He won "US Artist About to Go Global" at the 2012 MTV EMA's and MTV's 2012 "Breaking Woodie" Award. The following year he was awarded "Woodie of the Year" beating out A$AP Rocky, Fun, Grimes and Kendrick Lamar. His 2015 sophomore album,General Admissionclinched a #1 spot on Billboard's R&B/Hip-Hop Album charts. He's performed on THE VOICE, THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH JIMMY FALLON, THE LATE LATE SHOW WITH JAMES CORDEN, ELLEN, BET's 106 AND PARK, THE NICKELODEON KIDS CHOICE AWARDS and several other programs and award shows. His songs have appeared in soundtracks for the feature films BRIGHT and WHY HIM?.

Spotify recently released that his songs were streamed 571,200,000 times in 79 countries in 2019. His most recent albumHotel Diablowas released July 5, 2019 and was supported by three singles: "Hollywood Whore", "El Diablo", and "I Think I'm Okay" (featuring Travis Barker and Yungblud). "I Think I'm Okay" became a certified Gold Single in December of 2019. In 2017, his albumbloomwent gold. The album track "Bad Things" featuring Camila Cabello, sold 8+ million worldwide, was nominated for a 2017Billboard Music Award and owned the Billboard 100 list for 16+ weeks in 2017. The song has had more than 245m+ streams with a radio audience of 145m, becoming RIAA certified 3x platinum (domestic) and 8x worldwide. "Machine Gun Kelly" was one of the top ten most searched artists of 2018 according to Google. In April 2020, he released "Bloody Valentine," the first single off his forthcomingTickets to My Downfall album, executive produced by Travis Barker. The two appeared on THE LATE LATE SHOW WITH JAMES CORDEN to perform the song, and the official video starring Megan Fox garnered over 4,000,000 views in under 24 hours.

On the acting side, he received critical acclaim as thelead role as Tommy Lee in the Netflix'sTHE DIRT, a biopic based on the rise of the band Motley Crue directed by Jeff Tremaine. He also starred opposite Sandra Bullock, John Malkovich and Trevante Rhodes in Netflix's thriller film BIRD BOX. In its first week of streaming, 45,037,125 Netflix accounts watched the film, making it Netflix's most streamed film at the time. He appeared in BIG TIME ADOLESCENCE from writer/director Jason Orley, also starring Pete Davidson, Griffin Gluck and Jon Cryer, which premiered in competition at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival and wasreleasedby NEONon Hulu inMarch 2020. He will next be seen in Netflix's PROJECT POWER from Henry Joost and Ariel Shulman also starring Jamie Foxx and Joseph Gordon-Levitt which will premiere globally inAugust 14, 2020.

Previously, Baker starred on Cameron Crowe's Showtime series ROADIES, playing Wes, a recently fired Pearl Jam roadie who joins his twin sister Kelly Ann (Imogen Poots) on tour for the fictitious Staton-House Band. The series also starred Luke Wilson and Carla Gugino and was executive produced by Cameron Crowe, JJ Abrams, Winnie Holzman and Bryan Burk.

He appeared alongside Dave Franco and Emma Roberts in the Henry Joost/Ariel Shulman Lionsgate film NERVE, opposite Gugu Mbatha-Raw in Gina Prince-Bythewood's BEYOND THE LIGHTS, and in James Merendino's PUNKS DEAD: SLC PUNK 2. Additional films include the Rupert Wyatt directed film CAPTIVE STATE with Ashton Sanders, Vera Farmiga and John Goodman.

At 6'4', the musician/actor has walked in New York Fashion Week, and his distinct look and love for fashion landed him a campaign as the face of John Varvatos for Fall/Winter 2017-2018. Combining his musical talents with the campaign, he played the opening of Varvatos' first ever store in Dubai in November 2018. He also collaborated with Reebok on their Club C sneaker campaign.

When not touring or filming, he resides in Los Angeles.

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements made herein are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements may be identified by the use of words such as "anticipate", "believe", "expect", "estimate", "plan", "outlook", and "project" and other similar expressions that predict or indicate future events or trends or that are not statements of historical matters. Such forward-looking statements include the business plans, objectives, expectations and intentions of the parties following the completion of the acquisition, and HHT's estimated and future results of operations, business strategies, competitive position, industry environment and potential growth opportunities. These forward-looking statements reflect the current analysis of existing information and are subject to various risks and uncertainties. As a result, caution must be exercised in relying on forward-looking statements. Due to known and unknown risks, our actual results may differ materially from our expectations or projections. All forward-looking statements attributable to the Company or persons acting on its behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by these factors. Other than as required under the securities laws, the Company does not assume a duty to update these forward-looking statements. The following factors, among others, could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in these forward-looking statements: there is uncertainty due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact it will have on HHT's operations, the demand for the HHT's products and services, global supply chains and economic activity in general. These and other risks and uncertainties are detailed in the other public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") by HHT. Additional information concerning these and other factors that may impact our expectations and projections will be found in our periodic filings with the SEC, including our Annual Report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2019. HHT's SEC filings are available publicly on the SEC's website at http://www.sec.gov. HHT disclaims any obligation to update the forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Color Star Technology Co., Ltd. Contact: Investor Relations FinancialBuzzIR [emailprotected]Tele: +1-877-601-1879

SOURCE Color Star Technology Co., Ltd.

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Color Star Technology Announces Machine Gun Kelly will join its "Fearless, Color World" Online Concert - PRNewswire

Digital brokerages have dominated headlines in recent years, but some old standbys continue to perform. And for some of them, like XPO Logistics (NYSE: XPO), the idea that digital brokerages represent a new way of moving freight masks the fact that many traditional brokerages have remained at the cutting edge, and even in the lead, of the digital revolution.

We dont think of ourselves as an incumbent broker, Lou Amo, president of Freight Brokerage and Expedite at XPO Logistics, told FreightWaves. We like to think of ourselves as one of the first digital brokers.

Amo, who joined XPO in 2012 as vice president of brokerage operations, said the company has invested in technology since day one. Technologies such as XPO Connect and Drive XPO are just the latest iterations of technological achievement for the company as it strives to continue its leadership position among global brokerages (XPO is the second largest brokerage operation in the world) with an eye on being customer-centric with solutions.

Frost & Sullivan has predicted that Trucking-as-a-Service (TaaS), which includes digital freight brokerage, will grow from $11.2 billion currently to more than $79.4 billion by 2025. Digital freight brokerage alone will account for $54.2 billion of that, the firm said. That technological growth is important as freight brokerages moved 23% of all loads in the U.S. in 2018, according to Goldman Sachs.

During a special appearance on FreightWaves popular show What The Truck?!?, Amo said technological innovation continues at XPO at a rapid pace with the brokerage business utilizing artificial intelligence and machine learning to create more visibility into pricing, capacity and tracking with the goal of driving customer value.

Were doing exciting things with our digital platform XPO Connect automation, artificial intelligence and machine learning are at the core of XPO Connect and in todays environment, our largest customers are asking us for accurate, real-time pricing and committed capacity, and technology allows us to do that, he said. More broadly, XPO has been investing in technology since the beginning and technology is our secret sauce.

First launched in 2018, XPO Connect, which now has more than 60,000 carriers globally on the platform, is used by shippers to track and trace their shipments, request a quote and manage their spend with XPO. Along the theme of continued advancement, XPO has continued to add features to the platform, including last-mile deliveries in late 2019.

Amo said XPO Connect is an example of how the company is combining automation and artificial intelligence into a customer-driven solution. The platform allows users to find capacity and book loads, plan future moves to reduce empty miles, and increase visibility and overall control of the supply chain through insight into engagement metrics and tracking tools.

Technology is allowing more of this process to be automated. At XPO, Amo said a typical transaction may require 10 pieces of information, and 90% of our orders have at least one automated piece of the transaction.

XPO Connect, with the goal of automating brokerage from end to end, is continuing to evolve and now includes high levels of integration with customer transportation management systems.

That integration allows us to provide real-time pricing and tracking information through APIs, and we leverage machine learning to make sure our pricing and capacity algorithms are getting smarter all the time, Amo said.

We dont think of ourselves as an incumbent broker. We like to think of ourselves as one of the first digital brokers.

Brokerages have to manage both ends of the transaction, though, and ensuring carriers are equally efficient goes a long way to creating a more effective supply chain. To meet that need, XPO developed the Drive XPO app, which has been downloaded more than 150,000 times, to integrate with XPO Connect.

Drivers use the app to bid on transactional freight and dedicated freight; they can submit paperwork and receive payments electronically; and they can do all this from their trucks if they want to, Amo said.

Drive XPO includes several customer-focused features, including the ability for counter-offers when bidding. The functionality generates digital counter-offers to carrier bids that are not accepted, based on real-time market conditions as determined within the XPO Connect platform. Users can also see load details including pickup and drop-off windows, locations, equipment and handling requirements, and rate per mile. Track-and-trace capabilities eliminate the need for check calls and carriers/drivers with available capacity can post that through the app to receive automatic load recommendations.

Technology is just one tool, though, as Amo noted the additional resources XPO has thrown at brokerage over the years.

We have dedicated resources and a team focused on carrier integration, he said. There is not one magic bullet. We integrate with carriers through API, EDI, direct to ELD devices, and we use cellphones for our app. One area where integration tools have really paid off is in real-time tracking. Our auto tracking functionality is up over 60% year-over-year.

Brokerages need to think about technology in a way that enables them to benefit customers, not only themselves, though. When we think about digital, were constantly focused on automation and productivity to benefit our customers and carriers, Amo said.

And while XPO and others have pushed the technological boundaries, the current COVID-19 pandemic has underscored just how important continued advancement of technology is to the future.

Tech is more than an initiative for us; we see technology as the future of the industry, Amo said. Today with COVID-19, its driving customers to rethink their supply chains and visibility and touchless transactions. The intelligent technology is building momentum because the customers are demanding it.

More here:

Technology is changing the way freight brokerages operate - FreightWaves

Rolling Hills Elementary calls itself the "pride of Pine Hills." This fall, the principal says they feel like they will truly live up to that name.Principal Farah Henderson showed WESH 2 News the top of the line, digital smart boards now available in every classroom at her school. She says there's not a chalkboard on the property after the school got a massive makeover."This original campus was built in 1961, so the facilities we were in for past several years were really old and we did our best to make sure it was welcoming but we missed some of the newer technologies that we have now so having this facility makes a huge difference," Henderson said.Henderson says everywhere from the school's media center to the classrooms has the newest and latest technology.Among the highlights are chilled water bottle fillers which are more sanitary than the traditional fountains. Henderson said the school is unique for its deep sense of community. All of her students live within walking distance and all of them come for free breakfast and lunch. She says having such an impressive new school will give the community something to feel good about."We call ourselves the pride of Pine Hills which is always excited cause kids a parent know it so now with this new facility we look like what we say we are, Henderson said.

Rolling Hills Elementary calls itself the "pride of Pine Hills." This fall, the principal says they feel like they will truly live up to that name.

Principal Farah Henderson showed WESH 2 News the top of the line, digital smart boards now available in every classroom at her school.

She says there's not a chalkboard on the property after the school got a massive makeover.

"This original campus was built in 1961, so the facilities we were in for past several years were really old and we did our best to make sure it was welcoming but we missed some of the newer technologies that we have now so having this facility makes a huge difference," Henderson said.

Henderson says everywhere from the school's media center to the classrooms has the newest and latest technology.

Among the highlights are chilled water bottle fillers which are more sanitary than the traditional fountains.

Henderson said the school is unique for its deep sense of community.

All of her students live within walking distance and all of them come for free breakfast and lunch.

She says having such an impressive new school will give the community something to feel good about.

"We call ourselves the pride of Pine Hills which is always excited cause kids a parent know it so now with this new facility we look like what we say we are, Henderson said.

See the article here:

Pine Hills elementary updated with the latest technology for students this fall - WESH 2 Orlando

Benefytt Technologies (NASDAQ:BFYT) is an online insurance platform where consumers can shop for health insurance. The company announced in mid-July that it will be acquired by private equity firm Madison Dearborn Partners in an all-cash take-private transaction valued at $31 per share.

The company's stock price is considerably lower than it was two years ago -- is this a good time to sell?

In July, Benefytt announced a private equity-backed take-private deal. Take-private buyouts, also known as leveraged buyouts (LBO), are financial transactions where a private equity buyer -- in this case, Madison Dearborn -- acquires a company at an attractive price or a company it believes it can improve in the private market.

LBOs are notorious for the amount of debt raised and put on an acquired company, causing many companies to go bankrupt in the process. Unlike a deal with a competitor that may involve operational synergies, LBOs are primarily financial transactions where a buyer believes it is paying a good price or can finance a transaction cheaply with debt to make the deal math work.

Madison Dearborn is paying a 59% premium to Benefytt's 30-day average trading price.Taking a quick gain by accepting a buyout offer is always appealing to shareholders; however, Benefytt's stock price was much higher a couple of years ago. This makes one wonder if shareholders are getting the short end of the stick or if the company would be better off private.

Image source: Getty Images.

Benefytt Technologies had a strong 2019. The company posted revenue of $381 million and income from operations of $48 million. The company had ambitions to grow sales at a double-digit rate in 2020 but the COVID-19 pandemic and changes to business strategy threw a wrench in those plans.

Historically, the company has posted strong revenue growth. From 2016 to 2018, it grew sales each year in excess of 30%. However, growth notably slowed in 2019 and cash flow was negatively impacted due to changes in the company's business strategy. Benefytt decided to focus on its Medicare insurance offerings and de-emphasize other types of insurance plans.

BFYT Revenue (TTM) data by YCharts

With revenue growth flattening out and business cash flows in decline, it is no wonder that the company's stock price hasn't performed well over the past couple of years. The stock may be cheaper than it was, but the business doesn't appear to be heading in the right direction. Perhaps a new owner can improve the state of the business.

Just like Billy Joe and Bobbie Sue in the Steve Miller Band's hit single, shareholders should probably take the money and run. Benefytt's shareholders benefit from the 59% premium over where the stock traded a month ago. Furthermore, the uncertainty created by the COVID-19 pandemic makes this a dangerous time to own an insurance technology company with deteriorating financial results.

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Why Benefytt Technologies Is Going Private and What to Do With the Stock - The Motley Fool

In the 20 years of the war on terror Australia has led from the front in expanding powers for law enforcement and ramping up surveillance at the expense of public rights and freedoms.

Among the seemingly endless barrage of national security legislation and surveillance that creeps into every aspect of our personal lives, more and more of our public spaces have been smothered by surveillance cameras and facial recognition technology. Corporations large and small, towns and cities, federal and state government departments and agencies have deployed these systems, snooping on us all wherever we go without any of us getting a say. State and federal law enforcement officers are accessing these technologies without any oversight.

As anti-police protests spread around the world, tools and processes that exacerbate racist bias and the wasteful spending and abuses of power that comes with it within law enforcement and judicial systems have fallen under renewed scrutiny. Once again, Australia is lagging behind the debate.

Numerous investigations have shown that facial recognition surveillance technology simply does not do what it is supposed to do and is frequently misused by the many agencies that access it. Were told its for community safety yet it frequently reports false positives about vulnerable people in our community, most particularly people of colour.

In two recent cases, facial recognition surveillance led to false accusation and imprisonment in the United States. A surveillance mechanism that sees Black people as indistinguishable, inevitably leading to false arrests, presents a fundamentally different risk to these communities than it does to white people. This is not just an American problem. An Aboriginal person understandably responding with surprise and anger at wrongful arrest will quickly be in real danger.

Some of the most powerful technology companies in the world have recognised the damage facial recognition surveillance is doing. Google, Microsoft and IBM have withdrawn their systems from sale or ceased working on the technology altogether. Even Amazon has placed a moratorium on the sale of its rekognition tool to police forces. These companies know the risks and limitations better than anyone and have become vocal detractors.

The tech giants have joined largely as a response to the seismic shift in public sentiment and the PR issues that come with it a chorus of social justice and human rights groups calling on governments to ban the use of facial recognition surveillance technology. Additionally, there is agreement on the need to establish regulations and safeguards to protect peoples privacy, guard against misuse of the technology and ensure that any future technologies do not further entrench systemic injustice.

Members of US Congress and some states have supported the initiatives but it is city governments that have led the way; several have blocked the use of the technology in their jurisdictions. Even the tech industry hotspot San Francisco has banned facial recognition surveillance. The City of Sydney became the first in Australia to commit to the UN Cities for Digital Rights initiative, and councillors in others are advocating for their local governments to follow.

At the federal level, there are virtually no safeguards or limits on this technology, and no accountability. This is why senior officials from the Australian federal police can declare that they have not accessed Clearview AI, then have to correct the record later to reflect the fact that several officers have in fact used it. That there was no protocol in place to prevent individual officers using untested technology was a horrifying revelation. Use of the technology needs to be banned, and safeguards and accountability mechanisms within agencies and across governments need to catch up.

The joint investigation into the use of Clearview AI is welcome but needs to be watched carefully because it could be an attempt to generate a social licence for the use of the tool by law enforcement. Scrutiny of the notoriously opaque platform is a useful step but there is so much more to do.

Scaremongering from surveillance and law enforcement agencies is ramping up in response to the Covid-19 crisis. The blueleaks documents in the US revealed that Homeland Security is alarmed that widespread mask wearing will thwart facial recognition systems, seemingly oblivious to the existing shortcomings of the systems. There are growing calls within those agencies to legislate to ban facial coverings at protests. Less scrupulous vendors are seizing the opportunity to claim that new and improved facial recognition systems can identify people wearing masks.

In Australia a push to expand the role of the Australian Signals Directorate to spy on Australians from Peter Dutton came under the guise of a call for public debate about domestic surveillance. In June Home Affairs launched the Enterprise Biometric Identification Services system without any such debate. This is a new tool allowing it to match the facial images and fingerprints of anyone wanting to enter the country. Another attempt to implement the national biometric matching system, The Capability, cant be far behind.

Legislation for that system was scrutinised by the bipartisan (and normally compliant) parliamentary joint committee on intelligence and security. Its report said the bill was critically short of detail and that a significant amount of redrafting and not simply amending was required to redesign the legislation to ensure privacy, transparency and robust safeguards. The committee report also stated that the system needs to be subject to parliamentary oversight.

That is true of the entire apparatus. It is imperative that our governments follow the lead of cities here and abroad to suspend the use of facial recognition surveillance, and commit to developing a regulatory and legal framework that protects people and privacy, and prevents abuse. Federal and state governments must engage with civil society, industry, other experts and the public in a transparent process to put these constraints in place before this technology gets beyond our capacity to control it.

The rest is here:

Australia needs to face up to the dangers of facial recognition technology - The Guardian

This data layer did not exist in US agriculture previously, said Dan Ryan, CEO, CIBO Technologies.

While the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) provides an important signal to national markets, CIBO says it can offer deeper and more detailed decision-ready insights from county to farm and field.

The company said the new capability allows for comparisons and experiments to be done on parcels of farmland, benefiting farmers and others in the agriculture ecosystem of buyers, lenders and operators who want to know how any parcel will perform in the future under different scenarios.

Users can determine whether a certain weather event for the coming growing season will likely affect a fields yield, or how a field will perform based upon its historical performance, the factors that might affect when crops mature, or how fields a user is not familiar with compare to each other.

Relying on proprietary machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), as well as data sets in soil, weather, and agronomy, the technology does not require input from individual farmers.

We have three key elements of technology, on the science side. One is ecosystem and crop level simulation - that engine simulates the growth of the plant on a daily basis based on current weather, historic weather, what happens in the soil, what happens with the sun, what happens with the moisture. That is our fundamental science. The other technological element is the use of satellite imagery using computer vision on that satellite imagery, we can identify what crops were growing in a parcel, we can identify, in the case of sustainability, what was the tillage used, and we are also able to leverage that to identify field variability. We carry out machine learning and AI on data as well.

Coming into those core engines are data sets, mostly public, on weather, soil, owner and parcel information, along with tax information and satellite information. This is a huge amount of data, you probably could not have done this 10 years ago as there was not the infrastructure available to process that level of data,Ryan told us.

The two NOAA future climate scenarios for the next 50 years are included in those data sets.

CIBO was founded in May 2015 by Flagship Pioneering, a venture fund primarily focused on biotech but with a growing focus on ag and sustainability areas in the past few years, said the CEO.

CIBO was based, initially, on the ecosystem simulation capability it licensed from Michigan State University and Dr Bruno Basso, one of the leading experts in the ag simulation space. They spent three years building on that core technology capability.

With a software development background, Ryan joined the company over a year ago, last January. His objective was to determine how to turn a powerful science driven core technology into a commercial product.

I concluded that the key value proposition for CIBO was that it was able to look at any parcel of land in the US [it is limited to the US right now] and provide fairly rich insights about the land without having any local inputs. We did not need to ask farmers about their land, we could help people evaluate a parcel of land with information like yield, valuation, productivity, and the environmental impact of that parcel, we could do that for every parcel in the country without local data.

So what we decided to do was to give such data a scoring system, and users could use those numbers to evaluate or compare different parcels of land. While we were doing that, we built a very powerful map- based and search- based internet platform that lets users look at land anywhere in the country and do searches, then drill down to the parcel level when they find the kind of results they want, explained the CEO.

The business model is a 'freemium' based one.

We want to get users on the platform and continue to improve it; the typical users will be anyone around the land ecosystem, it could be a farmer, it could be a lender that is trying to evaluate land, or a land buyer, an insurance company, or an ag input or seed retailer.

It is the kind of the reverse of agtech, which is often about precision agriculture, about enabling farmers to better manage their land. We are not in that business. We are more about enabling anybody that wants to understand land or wants to evaluate land from a risk or an opportunity perspective or just a customer relation perspective, to do that.

The CEO said this information can drive efficiencies in land and related markets by connecting participants to objective information, and to each other.

Would this kind of technology support the trend for large-scale farming in the US?

If you are looking to buy new land, we can help you identify new land and connect you to the owners. If you are looking to lease 1,000 acres that you have never farmed before, we can also help you qualify that land, we can give you historical yields, the productivity, the risk, the variability of that land.

So, yes, it is to help people who are scaling.

But it is also designed to help [other categories of users] - every year a farmer gets an operating loan, every year they get crop insurance, every year they buy seeds and fertilizers and other inputs, so now a lender has another tool to carry out an appraisal of land, to understand that field, before giving a loan to a prospect.

Taking its core platform, CIBO is looking to build additional capabilities around land investing and carbon offsetting programs, and other aspects, and will, eventually, be adding more marketplace features.

Additionally, CIBO has created a data set that includes past and in-season management practices and yields and allows users to assess the impact of various management practices on the future productivity and value of a parcel.

CIBO Labs allows a user to go in a simulate on a field, what a change in inputs such as nitrogen would do to the yield.

He said the tool is also intended to drive more sustainable farm management practices in the future.

One of the areas that we are focused on is really the whole notion of regenerative and organic practices, mostly management practices that look to [protect] the soil, to prevent nitrogen leaching and to lower greenhouse gas emissions, said Ryan.

He said a lot of farmers CIBO talks to are increasingly interested in conservation practices, with the idea they will, long term, not have to use or can, at the very least, reduce their use of fertilizer.

We are working on ensuring that farmers can be compensated for good practices."

See the article here:

US technology innovator offers deep dive on farmland risk and opportunity - FeedNavigator.com

Kia's entry-level sedan and hatchback, the Rio, will continue on for 2021 and is likely to receive the same styling and technology updates as the Europe-spec model. Kia told C/D that the 2021 model will begin production at the end of this year. The 2021 Rio will continue to compete in the shrinking subcompact market amidst many recent model cancellations including the Chevy Sonic, Honda Fit, and Toyota Yaris.

Although U.S.-spec details aren't available yet, we assume that the 2021 Rio headed to our shores will look similar to the recently facelifted European model pictured here. It has tweaked front- and rear-end styling and a more modern interior with upgraded infotainment compared to the current Rio that arrived in the U.S. for 2018. What we probably won't get, however, is the newly available 48-volt hybrid powertrain offered in Europe.

Currently, the American version of the Rio offers a 1.6-liter inline-four paired with a continuously variable automatic transmission. This powertrain is likely to continue unchanged for 2021, as will the sedan and hatchback body styles. We can expect prices to rise slightly compared with the 2020 model, which starts at $16,815 for the sedan and $17,455 for the hatchback.

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2021 Kia Rio to Get Styling and Technology Updates - Car and Driver