Daily Archives: July 19, 2022

The UK should name heatwaves as part of an effective early warning system. Leading UK scientists believe this will protect the most vulnerable.

As the UK faces a heatwave and potentially record-breaking temperatures this week, with climate change increasing the frequency of such events in the future, The Physiological Society is calling for heatwaves to be named similar to storms.

The Physiological Society is the largest group of physiologists in Europe. Society is focused on understanding how the body works, including how the body copes in response to heat and extreme weather.

Calls for improved early warning systems for heatwaves are included in a report The Society is launching this Wednesday (13 July) at an event in London on the health policy implications of climate change. The report highlights policy priorities for the Government in response to climate changes impact on human health, as well as identifying areas of gaps in research that need to be addressed.

The UK Met Office currently names storms alphabetically to aid the communication of approaching severe weather through the media and government agencies. Seville has recently started naming heatwaves as excessively hot weather becomes more frequent.

Speaking ahead of the event on Wednesday, Professor Mike Tipton from The Physiological Society, said:

This week could potentially see record-breaking temperatures here in the UK. Just like preparing for a storm in winter, people need to take action to keep themselves and their loved ones safe.

Extreme heat isnt just a problem on your summer holidays, due to climate change we are increasingly seeing very hot weather here in the UK. Even one day of very hot weather can present a risk, but consecutive days of high temperatures triggers a heatwave that requires specific actions to keep people safe.

As part of raising awareness of the threat from heatwaves in the UK, heatwaves should be named in the same way as we name storms. It makes the risk to health clear and that people cant expect to continue as normal during the heatwave. This will aid the communication of approaching heatwaves through the media and government agencies. This is especially helpful for those who dont have as ready access to the internet or weather apps on smartphones.

As the science of how the body works, physiology explains the impact of hot weather on our health. We can use this knowledge to advise on ways to keep the body cool and design early warning systems that provide tailored advice to the most vulnerable or those who have to work in the heat.

UK scientists believe this will enable people to better plan ahead and take measures that could save lives. Such knowledge can also assist in smart building design and urban development, both of which will amongst the developments needed going into a hotter future.

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UK Scientists Call For Naming of Heatwaves To Save Lives - Longevity LIVE - Longevity LIVE

The stars of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills are spilling all their fashion secrets!

Garcelle Beauvais, Crystal Kung Minkoff, Erika Jayne, Dorit Kemsley, Kyle Richards, and Sutton Stracke are appearing again on a new season of the official Real Housewives of Beverly Hills After Show, which debuts this Wednesday (at 9 p.m. ET) on BravoTV.com.

PEOPLE has an exclusive first look at the show, in a clip that shows the ladies discussing their varying style approaches.

For Beauvais, who wears a magenta knee-length dress from Solace London on the show, she looks for garments that will have longevity. "I wanted something chic, easy that lives a long time because this lives a long time," the 55-year-old actress explains in the clip, pal Stracke noting that strategy is known as "slow fashion."

Stracke, 50, seems to have the opposite approach wearing a Dries Van Noten mini black dress with a statement piece of pink fabric cascading from the front to the floor.

RELATED: Sutton Stracke Reflects on Best RHOBH Style Moments: 'In Rome, I Couldn't Stop Staring at Erica'

THE REAL HOUSEWIVES OF BEVERLY HILLS -- Season:12 -- Pictured: (l-r) Diana Jenkins, Crystal Minkoff, Erika Girardi, Kyle Richards, Garcelle Beauvais, Dorit Kemsley, Lisa Rinna, Sutton Stracke

Tommy Garcia/Bravo/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty The cast of RHOBH

RELATED: RHOBH's Dorit Kemsley Breaks Down Her Style Secrets - and Reveals Her Husband Steals from Boy George's Closet

For Kemsley, 46, and Jayne, 51, their feelings around fashion change by the minute.

"I always dress according to my mood," says Kemsley, wearing a black pleaded mini skirt and neutral top. "It's like, I wake up in the morning and I just think, 'Okay, what am I going to? What am I doing? And how am I feeling?' This was just the vibe that I was feeling."

"I was feeling very Miami, tropical vibes," adds Jayne of her menswear inspired blue top, by Casablanca. "I always view things as fun."

Both ladies collaborate with their hair and makeup teams to create their final looks. And despite their reputation for always being dressed to the nines, Kemsley and Jayne agree they don't judge others for doing their own thing.

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"This is what I like to do. If someone else enjoys doing something else, I'm cool with that too," Jayne says. "I don't expect everyone to wake up and want to put on men's shirts, pumps and a pound of hair. ... When other people are like, 'Well, I don't need my glam' don't s--- on us because we like to have a good time."

"Absolutely," Kemsley says. "To each their own."

"And you can always tell when it's forced," says Jayne. "You can always tell when someone told them they should wear something."

RELATED: Erika Girardi Jokes She's Now Wearing Clothes Twice amid Legal Woes: 'Not the Worst Thing'

THE REAL HOUSEWIVES OF BEVERLY HILLS -- Pictured: (l-r) Crystal Kung Minkoff, Dorit Kemsley, Lisa Rinna, Erika Girardi, Kyle Richards, Kathy Hilton, Sutton Stracke, Garcelle Beauvais -- (Photo by: Nicole Weingart/Bravo)

Nicole Weingart/Bravo

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Kung Minkoff, 39, is one of those people who does her own thing. "I'm conservative, so I like to be covered up," she says in the After Show while dressed in a Zimmermann pink blouse, white Favorite Daughter pants and Joe's Jeans pumps. "I've been really busy so this is what I threw together."

Richards, 53, was equally busy. "My inspiration was I had no time so I grabbed two suits out of my closet and ran out the door," the Halloween actress says, pointing to her pink suit. "I don't have a stylist so sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't."

The full Real Housewives of Beverly Hills After Show episode premieres Wednesday on BravoTV.com.

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The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Cast Discuss Their Style Inspiration: 'To Each Their Own' - Yahoo Entertainment

We are excited to bring Transform 2022 back in-person July 19 and virtually July 20 - 28. Join AI and data leaders for insightful talks and exciting networking opportunities. Register today!

Its a simple and obvious fact: Businesses cant exist without customers. In no uncertain terms, they are their lifeblood.

Along with this, companies would be nothing without their first line of defense: Their customer service agents.

While this seems like a basic understanding, customer service has suffered in recent years with the advent of chatbots, online messaging and similar automated tools. While seemingly more convenient, these technologies are impersonalized and can lead to more customer frustration and sometimes even their abandonment of a company or brand altogether.

But human-centered customer experience (CX) is undergoing a renaissance of sorts what Jeff Fettes, founder and CEO of Laivly, calls self-service 3.0. To survive in this new landscape, organizations must arm their agents with the best possible tools, Fettes said. The company today announced the launch of its artificial intelligence (AI) platform, designed specifically for contact centers.

Your frontline team is dealing with your customers; they are the conduit to your customers, Fettes said. A good customer experience starts with a good agent experience.

According to Grand View Research, the global contact center software market will reach $149.58 billion by 2030, registering a CAGR of more than 23%. Likewise, according to Markets and Markets, the global cloud-based contact center market was $17.1 billion in 2022 and is expected to grow to $54.6 billion by 2027. This represents a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of just over 26%.

The Markets and Markets report emphasizes, Incorporating cutting-edge technologies such as AI, ML and analytics enables organizations to connect with their customers for better, efficient, and insightful customer experiences.

AI is powering this new era of CX, with companies such as Laivly, Zendesk, Genesys and Nice specializing in such tools. Some of the largest players have staked a claim in the growing market, as well, including IBMs Watson Assistant or Google Clouds Contact Center AI, for instance, or similar offerings from Microsoft and Amazon Web Services.

The pendulum is finally swinging back from hyper-automation to human-led conversation, but weve got some work to do, said Christina McAllister, senior analyst with Forrester. Organizations are beginning to embark on a journey to change the culture of their contact centers.Service delivered by human agents (not robots) is what drives positive customer outcomes.

Forrester predicts that companies will continue to leverage and accelerate AI programs, particularly when it comes to agent-facing use cases. As they do so, they must address agent burnout, advocate for agent career development, and transition from cost-centric key performance indicators (KPIs) to customer-centric ones.

Gone are the days of bolt-on AI applications, McAllister wrote. Forward-thinking companies will infuse AI across the employee workflow, facilitating greater collaboration among humans and their machine counterparts.

Laivlys platform dubbed SIDD (for systems integrated distributed dashboard) sits on an agents laptop and layers AI, ML and automation onto existing technology. This helps to streamline workflows, analyze customers in real-time and guide agents to the best outcomes, according to Fettes.

SIDD can draft email and chat responses, recommend and perform agent tasks, and can even block actions to avoid agent mistakes. For instance, disabling a refund button until it recognizes that an agent has worked through the designated workflow sequence. The tool also provides summaries of upcoming calls based on existing customer information and input, and guides them through the process of dealing with that particular case.

We liken it to a GPS system for a call center agent, said Fettes. SIDD really acts like a person would. It collects information using automation, reacts using automation, and it does it based on what is happening in real time. It is able to interrupt its own workflow intuitively.

The results, Fettes said, are simplified processes and task performances, consistent customer experiences, reduction in technical loads, and agents who are able to devote more of their attention to providing empathetic service.

Your AI is watching the screen all the time, providing additional oversight, assistance and support, he said.

The companys tailored orchestration layer ties an agents tech stack together without the use of back-end application programming interfaces (APIs), Fettes said, allowing for near-instant integration and the flexibility to change along with business needs.

Contact center systems typically have pretty extensive tech stacks, he pointed out anywhere from a handful to up to more than a dozen. We wanted to add AI, ML and/or automation anywhere inside that tech stack, he said.

Laivly employs human-in-the-loop AI, partnering its automated ML tuners with a team of human tuners. This creates a unique scenario and adds an extra layer of common sense to the tuning, Fettes said. It also allows companies and agents to gain insights more quickly.

Fettes described many existing AI and automation customer service tools as a little more fluffy and nebulous in terms of what they do. Many of these apply a top-down approach that is dependent on management teams to then take action on collected data.

Whats different about Laivly is its a bottom-up approach, Fettes said. Were starting right at the agents. Instead of being a management tool, Laivly is a performance tool.

The Winnipeg, Manitoba-based Laivly has quietly built its contact center technology since its founding in July 2017. This involved careful selection of its initial customers. According to Fettes, these have included top Fortune 500 companies in -commerce, technology and consumer goods.

Early adopters are already achieving 50% to 300% return on investment (ROI), he said, and are seeing dramatic gains when it comes to agent job longevity and job satisfaction. In a recent survey, 88.5% of agents using Laivly said it was helpful or very helpful in delivering a better customer experience. Furthermore, 78% of agents said they would be disappointed or very disappointed if they had to do their jobs without the tool.

The company is led by a team of data scientists, developers and researchers well versed in customer service. Fettes himself was a contact center agent and manager for more than 20 years, and in fact had his first exposure to the industry as a kid his mother owned a telephone answering service and he and his brother sometimes helped answer those calls. He most recently cofounded 24-7 Intouch. The global business process outsourcing company partners with brands on contact center strategy, recruiting, IT, HR and workforce planning.

Laivly is born of [a] group of people who managed call centers and were agents ourselves, Fettes said. I know what I would want to use if I was answering a call or a direct message. We know what (agents) need. We built a tool to be popular with the superuser.

Such technologies are filling spaces where fully automated tools have often failed, he said, describing an initial huge rush to self-service once such tools first became available, then an era of self-service 2.0 with the arrival of chatbots and messenger platforms.

Now, technology is coming together with people again, Fettes said, to create this self-service 3.0.

This technology is really starting to emerge, and its a game changer, he said. Within the next five to 10 years, companies like Laivly at the forefront will coalesce into something thats an industry standard.

Ultimately, Fettes predicted: Every single contact center program, or a vast majority, will be using a tool like this.

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Laivly adds AI, ML and automation to improve CX - VentureBeat

Pale Blue Dot, taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft, showing Earth captured as a pale dot suspended in a sunbeam from beyond Neptunes orbit prior to the Voyager team turning off the onboard cameras. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

NASA engineers will meet next month to discuss the possibility of shutting down scientific instruments to conserve power on the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft after 44 years of service. These twin probes have traversed the reach of our Suns magnetic field and are the farthest-traveled human-made probes. Although Voyager 1 has four instruments that are still operational, and Voyager 2 has five, the radioactive energy sources on the spacecraft are producing only 40% of their original capacity, causing scientists and engineers to consider further decreasing power requirements to extend the missions until the 2030s.

Driven by a cosmic alignment that occurs every 176 years, NASAlaunched the Voyager spacecraft in 1977 to take advantage of a fortuitousalignment of the outer planets that lessened travel time to Neptune from 30 to12 years. Having successfully navigated obstacles such as crossing the asteroidbelt unscathed and performing repeated gravity assists, the missions werespectacularly successful. The Voyager spacecraft revealed that the satellitesof Jupiter and Saturn are not dead, icy bodies as previously thought, butinstead are dynamic, geologically active worlds. Additional discoveries includedthe wide variety of geologic terrains across the different moons and gas giants,which continue to inspire planetary scientists to expand our collectiveknowledge of these distant regions.

NASA began culling less-critical components of the spacecraft in 2019, turning off heaters and specific scientific instruments to maximize their longevity while continuing to collect plasma and magnetic data about interstellar space. Voyager 1 and 2 will continue their outward journeys long after their missions officially end. Each probe carries a gold-plated phonographic record encoded with images, sounds, and greetings from Earth in case intelligent life finds and collects the probes as they continue their journeys, in the very human hope that we are not alone in the universe. READ MORE

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Voyager 1 and 2 Spacecraft Enter Final Phase of Their Mission | Planetary News - Planetary News

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As the sun rose on Monday over southeast England, three bison emerged from a corral into a new woodland home as part of an ambitious project to transform the natural environment.

The trio immediately began munching birch tree leaves in the ancient woods near Canterbury, to restore and manage the area with their behaviour -- and minimal human interference.

It marks the first time in millennia that European bison -- the continent's largest land mammal and the closest living relative to ancient steppe bison that once roamed Britain -- will live in wild conditions once again.

"(It's a) really momentous occasion today," Mark Habben, of the Wildwood Trust which is leading the five-year conservation project, told AFP.

"It couldn't have gone any better... they took a glance back, looked at us and then disappeared into the woodlands," he added, moments after the release.

The female bison -- one matriarch and two younger cows -- will now graze, eat bark, fell trees and take so-called dust baths, churning up the ground in the woods.

This creates a multitude of benefits, helping other species forge habitats as the bison become the perfect "ecosystem engineers".

"We're doing this to restore the environment and restore a native English woodland and everything that thrives in and around that kind of habitat," explained Habben, saying it was "critically important".

"We don't want to be using machinery... using native resources, ecosystem engineers as we like to call them -- in the form in this case of the European bison -- is exactly the right thing to do."

The female bison, which arrived after living on smaller enclosures in Ireland and the Scottish Highlands, will be joined by a bull at the site, owned by the Kent Wildlife Trust charity, in the coming months.

The bull's arrival from Germany was delayed due to Britain's post-Brexit bureaucracy for importing animals.

The herd will initially have 55 hectares (136 acres) of fenced woodland to roam within, before their habitable space is eventually increased to 200 hectares.

It is hoped the bull will breed with the females to increase the size of the herd, with the Kent site licensed to hold up to 20.

The bison will also soon be joined by other grazing animals including ponies from Exmoor, southwest England, Iron Age pigs and Longhorn cattle, which will aid the bid to create a variety of natural habitats.

"This is a model for what we would hope could be rolled out much (more) broadly across the UK, to similar landscapes, utilising bison," said Habben.

"I like to think bison that we bred on this project by the time they reach maturity... there'll be other projects looking to do the same kind of thing.

"And we can move bison around to continue this really amazing work that these animals are going to do."

After roaming the continent for millennia, the last wild European bison became extinct on the continent in 1927, due to hunting and habitat loss.

However, 50 animals remained in captive collections which have provided the basis for an extensive and intensive breeding programme, according to the project's conservationists.

The trio now calling the Kent woodland home are some of their descendants.

"The bison that we've selected are part of the European endangered species breeding programme," said Habben.

"We selected the animals based on their genetics... but also their location and source of origin was very important".

Another central aim of the habitat restoration project -- costing 1.1 million ($1.3 million) and largely funded by donors -- is to help British ecosystems cope with climate change and severe biodiversity loss.

The bison's impact will gradually alterthe forest away from a monoculture and create wetter areas that will store carbon, reducing emissions driving up temperatures, while also reducing flood risk.

In a sign of the stakes, their release Monday coincides with a heatwave sweeping parts of Europe that is set to break Britain's all-time temperature record early this week.

Habben calls the coincidence "extremely relevant".

"It's an incredible story, really, that we're releasing bison to help restore ecosystems, which help restore the environment and hopefully have some impact on climate change".

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European Bison Reintroduced To Roam Freely In Britain - Barron's