Advertising and marketing. Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a product or service. Advertising aims to put a product or service in the spotlight in hopes of drawing it attention from consumers
Cereals such as wheat and barley are important food plants, grown almost everywhere in the world. But they are susceptible to diseases and one of the most damaging is a fungal pathogen that causes the dreaded “wheat head blight” or “wheat scab.” Using modern gene editing technique scientists have discovered a new and effective way to fight the disease.
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From: MeNeedIt
Facebook and Mozilla are among the companies and organizations launching a $14 million fund to promote news literacy and increase trust in journalism.
The nonprofit, called the News Integrity Initiative, will be based at the City University of New York. It will run as an independent project of the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.
Others contributing to the fund include Craigslist founder Craig Newmark and the Ford Foundation.
Recent polls show the public’s trust in the news industry at a low.
False news and misinformation, often masquerading as trustworthy news and spreading on social media, has gained a lot of attention since the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Companies like Facebook are trying to address the issue.
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From: MeNeedIt
Japanese big manufacturers’ business confidence improved for a second straight quarter to hit a one-and-a-half year high in March, a closely watched central bank survey showed, a sign the benefits of an export-driven economic recovery were broadening.
Service-sector sentiment improved for the first time in six quarters and companies remained upbeat on their capital expenditure plans, the Bank of Japan’s “tankan” survey showed, offering hope the economic recovery will gather momentum in coming months.
The data, which will be among factors the BOJ will scrutinize at its next rate review on April 26-27, reinforces a dominant market view the central bank’s next policy move would be to reduce rather than expand monetary stimulus.
“The tankan showed a balanced improvement in corporate sentiment at manufacturers and service-sector firms,” said Yuichiro Nagai, an economist at Barclays Securities. “Overall, the results support the BOJ’s rosy view on the economy.”
The headline index measuring big manufacturers’ business sentiment rose to plus 12 in March from plus 10 three months ago, the tankan showed on Monday, falling slightly short of market forecasts but marking the highest reading since December 2015.
The index gauging big non-manufacturers’ sentiment improved 2 points from plus 20, rising for the first time in six quarters and hitting the highest level since March 2016, the survey showed.
Brexit, Trump cloud outlook
Big manufacturers and non-manufacturers expect business conditions to deteriorate slightly in the coming three months, as risks to global trade such as Britain’s decision to leave the European Union and U.S. President Donald Trump’s protectionist statements cloud the outlook.
Still, the survey found big firms plan to increase capital spending by 0.6 percent in the fiscal year ending in March 2018, compared with a median market forecast for a 0.1 percent drop.
“There has been talk about the risks of protectionism, but so far Japanese companies are not taking any specific steps related to this,” said Norio Miyagawa, senior economist at Mizuho Securities.
“This tankan will reinforce expectations that the BOJ is on hold for the time being. We certainly don’t see the need to ease or tighten policy,” he said.
Signs of life
Japan’s economy has shown signs of life in recent months, with exports and factory output benefiting from a recovery in global demand.
With inflation expected to accelerate later this year, a growing number of analysts now predict the BOJ’s next move would be to start scaling back its massive monetary stimulus.
The tankan’s sentiment indexes are derived by subtracting the number of respondents who say conditions are poor from those who say they are good. A positive reading means optimists outnumber pessimists.
From: MeNeedIt
Fed up with the theft of toilet paper from public bathrooms, tourist authorities in China’s capital have begun using facial recognition technology to limit how much paper a person can take.
The unusual move – part of a “toilet revolution” – is another step in China’s vast upgrading of public facilities.
Bathrooms at tourist sites, notorious for their primitive conditions and nasty odors, are a special focus of the campaign, a response to a vast expansion in domestic travel and demands for better-quality facilities from a more affluent public.
“Today in China, people are highly enthusiastic about tourism, and we have entered a new era of public tourism,” said Zhan Dongmei, a researcher with the China Tourism Academy. “The expectation of the public for the toilet is becoming higher.”
At Beijing’s 600-year-old Temple of Heaven, administrators recognized the need to stock the public bathrooms with toilet paper, a requirement for obtaining a top rating from the National Tourism Authority. But they needed a means of preventing patrons from stripping them bare for personal use – hence the introduction of new technology that dispenses just one 60-centimeter (2-foot) section of paper every nine minutes following a face scan.
“People take away the paper mostly because they are worried they can’t find any when they want to use it the next time. But if we can provide it in every toilet, most people will not do it anymore,” Zhan said.
Launched two years ago, the revolution calls for at least 34,000 new public bathrooms to be constructed in Beijing and 23,000 renovated by the end of this year. Authorities are also encouraging the installation of Western-style sit-down commodes rather than the more common squat toilets. Around 25 billion yuan ($3.6 billion) has already been spent on the program, according to the National Tourism Administration.
The ultimate target, Zhan said, “is to have a sufficient amount of toilets which are clean and odorless and free to use.”
At Happy Valley, the largest amusement park in Beijing, around 4 million annual visitors rely on 18 bathrooms, each of which is assigned one or two cleaners who must make their rounds every 10 minutes on busy days.
“People come here to have fun, but if the toilets are disgusting, how can they have a good time here?” said Vice General Manager Li Xiangyang. “It is the least we should do to offer a clean and tidy environment for tourists to enjoy both the tour of the park and the experience of using our toilets.”
Going a step further, the financial hub of Shanghai even opened its first gender-neutral public toilet in November in order to boost convenience and efficiency.
“Women are stuck waiting in longer lines for stalls than men, and it is fair for men and women to wait in line together,” Shanghai resident Zhu Jingyi said after using the facility.
Zhan said the toilet revolution is about 90 percent complete, but warned that it has yet to be won.
“We can’t accept the situation that a lot of investments have been made to build toilets and they turn out to be unsanitary and poorly managed,” he said.
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From: MeNeedIt
Iraq’s oil minister said on Sunday that his country plans to increase daily crude oil production to 5 million barrels by the end of this year, up from the current rate of about 4.4 million barrels per day, to secure sorely needed cash for its ailing economy.
Iraq, where oil revenues make up nearly 95 percent of the budget, has been reeling under an economic crisis since 2014, when oil prices began their descent from a high of above $100 a barrel. The Islamic State group’s onslaught, starting in 2014, has exacerbated the situation — forcing Iraq to divert much of its resources to a long and costly war.
Addressing an energy conference in Baghdad, Oil Minister Jabar Ali al-Luaibi didn’t give details on which of the country’s oil fields would supply the increased output.
Late last year, Iraq joined a deal by OPEC and non-OPEC members to lower production for six months by 1.8 million barrels a day in order to prop up global oil prices. The mutual production decrease began on Jan. 1. Iraq’s share in the deal is to reduce output by 210,000 barrels a day to 4.351 million barrels.
“There are positive elements in that deal and we achieved a lot of its targets,” al-Luaibi told reporters on the sideline of the conference. “Work and cooperation are underway … to reach the 1.8 [million barrels a day] reduction,” he added, without divulging whether Iraq is going to support an extension to that deal.
OPEC Secretary-General, Mohammed Barkindo, said the compliance among the participants was 86 percent in January and 94 percent in February. Barkindo told reporters that OPEC members would consider whether to extend the production decrease agreement at a meeting next month.
The deal propped up the crude price to around $50 per barrel.
Iraq holds the world’s fourth-largest oil reserves. This year, it added 10 billion barrels, bringing its total reserves up to 153.1 billion barrels.
Al-Luaibi also said that more 15 billion barrels are planned to be added by 2018.
Iraq’s 2017 budget stands at about 100.67 trillion Iraqi dinars, or nearly $85.17 billion, running with a deficit of 21.65 trillion dinars, or about $18.32 billion. That’s based on an estimated oil price of $42 per barrel and daily export capacity of 3.75 million barrels.
Iraq is also grappling with a major humanitarian crisis. The U.N. estimates that more than 3 million people have been forced from their homes since 2014. It also faces growing dissatisfaction among residents of areas recaptured from IS who have had their properties demolished and suffer from scarce public services.
From: MeNeedIt
Humans have always wondered why certain animals, such as tigers or pandas, have such unusual color patterns. Folklore usually explained it as a consequence of some dramatic event. But scientists say it has to do with the animal’s natural habitat, which is also the answer for panda’s black and white fur. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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From: MeNeedIt
Investors are plowing ever more into ethical funds to back their views on issues such as global warming and gender equality, but such investments can be confusingly similar to standard funds, except for higher fees and “green halo” marketing.
The $23 trillion “sustainable, responsible and impact” (SRI) investment sector has received a rush of money since the Paris climate agreement and, more recently, in protest against U.S. President Donald Trump’s plans to slash environmental regulations.
Europe is the dominant region for such investments, with $12.04 trillion, followed by the United States, with $8.72 trillion, while Asia lags some way behind.
U.S. investors have poured $1.8 billion into actively managed U.S. equity funds in the socially responsible category from November to January, according to Lipper data, while other funds saw a net outflow of $133 billion.
Even in fossil-fuel-rich Australia and New Zealand, SRI investment rose from $148 billion to $516 billion between 2014 and 2016, and from $729 billion to $1.09 trillion in oil-rich Canada, according to the Global Sustainable Investment Review released Monday.
Gavin Goodhand, a portfolio manager at Sydney-based Altius Asset Management, said the company’s sustainable bond fund tripled shortly after the 2015 climate accord, where nearly 200 countries signed up to measures designed to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
“The Paris conference was the line in the sand for many of our retail customers, particularly the millennial generation, who want to do the right thing for the environment,” Goodhand said.
Green funds may be not so green
Governments are also tapping the trend, selling green bonds to fund projects such as wind farms or low-carbon transport, with Poland, France and Nigeria making their debut this year.
Some managers, however, are skeptical.
“While environmental, social and governance factors should always factor into investment decisions, this is largely a marketing exercise,” said Steve Goldman, a global portfolio manager at Sydney-based Kapstream Capital, which has A$10 billion ($7.6 billion) of fixed-income assets.
Goldman said Kapstream did not have a responsible investment fund because its clients had not asked for it.
The bond market does not have commonly agreed standards or criteria for what constitutes a green bond, and there is no guarantee the proceeds go to the low-carbon project as claimed.
There are similar concerns over equity products.
Stuart Palmer, head of ethics research at Australian Ethical Investment, said there was a danger that some marketing departments would “greenwash” their products to lure investors into funds that were little different to standard products.
Higher fees
There are no agreed definitions on what is considered ethical, sustainable and socially responsible, but ethical investors are typically expected to cough up higher fees.
For example, retail investors pay more than a third higher fees for the sustainability and ethical funds at Sydney-based BT Investment Management (BTIM) than for its standard share fund equivalent.
The three funds hold six or seven of their top-weighted stocks in common, including major banks Australia and New Zealand Banking Group, Westpac Banking Corp, National Australia Bank and miner BHP Billiton , according to December filings.
A BT spokeswoman did not return requests for comment.
Due diligence difficult
For investors, it can be a minefield.
“I find it difficult as a consumer to do the due diligence I would like to do because even the ethical funds are not always totally transparent about what they define as ethical,” said retail investor Meraiah Foley, a Sydney academic.
“One of the ethical funds I have invests very heavily in retail banks in Australia, and those banks themselves may be underwriting projects that the fund itself would not invest in.”
There is also no standard practice on what to do when an existing fund stock breaches a manager’s policies. Some investment managers will sell, but others argue they can influence behavior by retaining their shareholding.
“We believe in engagement rather than divestment,” said Sam Sicilia, chief financial officer at the A$22 billion pension fund Hostplus. “When you sell a share in a ‘bad’ company, it’s a transfer of ownership and does nothing to the company that’s causing the issue, so divestment does not really work.”
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From: MeNeedIt
Acclaimed Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, whose work focused on war atrocities and denounced anti-Semitism and tyrannical dictators, has died. He was 84.
Ginny Hensley, a spokeswoman for Hillcrest Medical Center in Tulsa, confirmed Yevtushenko’s death. Roger Blais, provost at the University of Tulsa, where Yevtushenko was a longtime faculty member, said he was told Yevtushenko had died Saturday morning.
“He died a few minutes ago surrounded by relatives and close friends,” his widow, Maria Novikova, was quoted as saying by the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti. She said he’d died peacefully in his sleep of heart failure.
Yevtushenko gained notoriety in the former Soviet Union while in his 20s, with poetry denouncing Josef Stalin. He gained international acclaim as a young revolutionary with “Babi Yar,” the unflinching 1961 poem that told of the slaughter of nearly 34,000 Jews by the Nazis and denounced the anti-Semitism that had spread throughout the Soviet Union.
Heard by huge crowds
At the height of his fame, Yevtushenko read his works in packed soccer stadiums and arenas, including to a crowd of 200,000 in 1991 that came to listen during a failed coup attempt in Russia. He also attracted large audiences on tours of the West.
With his tall, rangy body, chiseled visage and declaratory style, he was a compelling presence on stages when reading his works.
“He’s more like a rock star than some sort of bespectacled, quiet poet,” said former University of Tulsa President Robert Donaldson, who specialized in Soviet policy during his academic years at Harvard.
Until “Babi Yar” was published, the history of the massacre was shrouded in the fog of the Cold War.
“I don’t call it political poetry, I call it human rights poetry, the poetry which defends human conscience as the greatest spiritual value,” Yevtushenko, who had been splitting his time between Oklahoma and Moscow, said during a 2007 interview with The Associated Press at his home in Tulsa.
Yevtushenko said he wrote the poem after visiting the site of the mass killings in Kyiv, Ukraine, and searching for something memorializing what happened there — a sign, a tombstone, some kind of historical marker — but finding nothing.
“I was so shocked. I was absolutely shocked when I saw it, that people didn’t keep a memory about it,” he said.
It took him two hours to write the poem that begins, “No monument stands over Babi Yar. A drop sheer as a crude gravestone. I am afraid.”
Native of Zima
Yevtushenko was born in the Siberian town of Zima, a name that translates to winter. He rose to prominence during Nikita Khrushchev’s rule.
His poetry was outspoken and drew on the passion for poetry that is characteristic of Russia, where poetry is more widely revered than in the West. Some considered it risky, though others said he was only a showpiece dissident whose public views never went beyond the limits of what officials would permit.
Dissident exile poet Joseph Brodsky was especially critical, saying, “He throws stones only in directions that are officially sanctioned and approved.” Brodsky resigned from the American Academy of Arts and Letters when Yevtushenko was made an honorary member.
Donaldson invited Yevtushenko to teach at the university in 1992.
“I like very much the University of Tulsa,” Yevtushenko said in a 1995 interview with the AP. “My students are sons of ranchers, even cowboys, oil engineers. They are different people, but they are very gifted. They are closer to Mother Nature than the big city. They are more sensitive.”
He was also touched after the 1995 bombing of a federal government building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people. He recalled one woman in his class who lost a relative in the blast, then commented that Russian women must have endured such suffering all their lives.
“This was the greatest compliment for me,” he said.
Blais, the university provost, said Yevtushenko remained an active professor at the time of his death. His poetry classes were perennially popular and featured football players and teenagers from small towns reading from the stage.
“He had a hard time giving bad grades to students because he liked the students so much,” Blais said.
Lauded in Russia
Yevtushenko’s death inspired tributes from his homeland.
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on the Russian social media site Vkontakte: “He knew how to find the key to the souls of people, to find surprisingly accurate words that were in harmony with many.”
A spokesman for President Vladimir Putin said the poet’s legacy would remain “part of Russian culture.”
Natalia Solzhenitsyna, widow of the novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, said on Russian state television that Yevtushenko “lived by his own formula.”
“A poet in Russia is more than a poet,” she said. “And he really was more than a poet — he was a citizen with a pronounced civic position.”
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From: MeNeedIt
President Donald Trump doubled down on his tough talk on trade with a pair of executive orders Friday, which he says are designed to level the playing field and reduce the $500 billion US trade deficit, more than half of which is with China. As Mil Arcega reports, the issue of unfair trade is likely to come up when the U.S. president meets with Chinese leader Xi Jinping next week.
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From: MeNeedIt
If you were a casual observer watching Argonne National Laboratory scientist Seth Darling work, it would be easy to miss the low-tech but groundbreaking invention he’s concocted in his brightly lit workspace.
It doesn’t have wires or circuitry, it doesn’t move, it doesn’t do much of anything. It is in fact, at least at first glance, simply a sponge.
“It looks real simple when you demonstrate it, right?” Darling explained as he lowered the small, dark-colored foam sponges into a bowl of water mixed with blue oil. “I mean, you just stick it down there and it works. But behind that is a lot of work.”
Darling explains that what we can see with the human eye — these dark-colored pieces of foam, or sponges — isn’t the major breakthrough.
It’s what’s in, and on, the sponges that is revolutionary.
“After we do our treatment to it, and we create this Oleo Sponge, you put it on there and it’s got a voracious appetite for oil. It just soaks that oil right up,” he said.
Cleaning, saving oil
While the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory in suburban Chicago is best known for its contributions to nuclear energy development, it is also an incubator for technological innovation and discovery, the very environment where Darling created the Oleo Sponge.
“So we’ve been working on this Oleo Sponge project for almost two years,” Darling told VOA. “The underlying technology is something that we’ve been working on for much longer.”
He explains the treatment that gives the Oleo Sponge that “voracious appetite” is the real innovation developed at Argonne — something Darling and his associates call Sequential Infiltration Synthesis, or SIS.
“It was just a new way to make materials,” Darling said.
SIS works at the nano level. When hard metal oxide atoms “with complicated nanostructures” are infused throughout the fibers of the foam, it gives it the extremely effective quality of allowing the foam to bind with the oil in the water, essentially separating the two liquids.
The breakthrough could dramatically change cleanup of oil spills, particularly the more difficult task of retrieving oil below the surface of the water.
“Once it all goes down below the surface of the water and you have clouds of droplets under the surface, I’m not aware of any technology today that can actually clean those up. And Oleo Sponge can,” Darling said.
But the Oleo Sponge doesn’t just clean up the oil — it saves it.
Oil spilled into water is usually burned off or unusable after cleanup efforts, but the Oleo Sponge can collect, separate and deposit the oil for further use.
Flood of interest
The sponge itself can also be re-used and recycled, all qualities that have brought a flood of interest to Argonne’s doors.
“It’s a wide variety of companies that are interested in it,” said Hemant Bhimnathwala, with Argonne Laboratory’s Business Development Group. “We’ve got inquiries from about 100-plus companies in the last few days … who want to be partners in a slew of things from manufacturing the foam to distribution.”
While oil spill cleanup in bodies of water is the most clearly identifiable use for the Oleo Sponge, the SIS technology behind it could offer breakthroughs in a variety of other ways, yet to be discovered.
“This application is just the tip of the iceberg,” Bhimnathwala said.
It is an iceberg Seth Darling and other scientists at Argonne are still delving into, while the Oleo Sponge continues to make its journey into the wider market — and hopefully the world’s bodies of water — in the coming years.
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From: MeNeedIt
Hotels offer congee and other Chinese staples for room service. Casinos train staff members on Chinese etiquette. Restaurants, tourist sights and shopping malls translate signs, menus and information booklets into Mandarin.
The American hospitality industry is stepping up efforts to make Chinese visitors feel more welcome, since they are projected to soon surpass travelers from the United Kingdom and Japan as the single largest overseas demographic.
And it’s not just the typical tourist hubs of New York and Los Angeles, where such efforts have long been commonplace. Smaller cities like Boston, Las Vegas, Seattle and Washington, D.C., are increasingly getting into the act, industry officials say.
“Americans traditionally lag behind what other international designations do for different cultures,” said Elliott Ferguson, CEO of Destination DC, the city’s convention and tourism organization, which last year launched “Welcome China,” a certification program for local businesses. “We just kind of assume that one size fits all. Quite frankly, that’s just not welcoming.”
Local tourism associations in those and other cities have recently launched campaigns aimed at getting their member hotels, restaurants and tourism companies to better incorporate Chinese language and customs into their offerings. They’re also embarking on tourism-focused sales missions to China and opening satellite offices in Chinese cities to strengthen ties and sell their city to trendsetters.
Sheraton Boston offers creature comforts
Some companies have already embraced the message.
The Sheraton Boston in the Back Bay neighborhood started offering in 2013 simple creature comforts many Chinese travelers expect, including slippers, robes, instant noodles, an electric kettle and green tea, and have since taken other steps to cater to Chinese guests, said Angela Vento, the hotel’s general manager.
The Four Seasons in D.C.’s Georgetown neighborhood makes similar gestures, as well as offering Chinese-language television and newspapers. It’s also working on offering more traditional Chinese dishes on its room service and restaurant menus, said Liliana Baldassari, a hotel spokeswoman.
In Las Vegas, Caesars Entertainment last year started offering guests at some of its affiliated resorts the option to book and pay for hotel rooms using WeChat, China’s most popular social media app.
“It’s made a really strong statement to the Chinese that these people really welcome us and understand us,” said Bruce Bommarito, the company’s vice president for international marketing, noting the Roman-themed casino has rolled out other China-focused initiatives in recent years, including training programs for staff on basic cultural etiquette for serving Chinese guests.
Those and other small touches are a step in the right direction, but more companies need to make an effort to recognize the growing importance of the Chinese market, said Justin Minggan Wei, a 27-year-old from Beijing who came to Boston in 2008 for college, an experience that inspired him to launch a consulting company helping local restaurants and businesses better serve Chinese customers.
Chicago Hilton reaches out
Zeng Wen, a 24-year-old who works part-time as a tour guide for Chinese-speakers in Chicago, said she has noticed recent efforts to reach out to Chinese tourists, like the Hilton hotel chain’s “Hilton Huanying” program, which derives its name from the Chinese words for “welcome.”
But Zhe Zhang, a 36-year-old from Guangzhou who visited Los Angeles this year, said he didn’t see any obvious outreach to Chinese visitors, outside of Chinese-run establishments. The most intimidating part, he said, was ordering food with his basic grasp of English.
“If possible, restaurants could provide a simple Chinese menu or pictured menu,” Zhang suggested.
Cities can’t afford to be caught flat-footed as China’s growing middle class — almost nonexistent two decades ago — flexes its spending power, industry experts say.
Chinese visitors already spend more in the U.S. than other international visitors, at roughly $7,200 per person, according to the U.S. Travel Association, an industry trade group. Travelers from the country are expected to more than double from about 2.6 million visitors in 2015 to nearly 6 million by 2021, the association said.
More direct flights from China to a wider range of U.S. cities in recent years is partly fueling the boom.
10-year visa a plus
Creation of a 10-year visa between the U.S. and China in 2014 has also made it easier for Chinese to travel more frequently to the U.S. That has allowed them to venture beyond must-see destinations like New York and Los Angeles to smaller and mid-size destinations and even the national parks, said Scott Johnson, a New York consultant working with Boston and other cities to grow their international presence.
The growing ranks of affluent Chinese are also staying longer and visiting more locations in the U.S. as they plan for their children’s college education or seek real estate and other investment opportunities.
U.S. tourism officials are working to assure partners in China that they remain welcoming even as the administration of Republican President Donald Trump tightens international travel policies and promises fundamental changes in the U.S.-China trade relationship, said Tom Norwalk, CEO of Visit Seattle, the city’s tourism organization.
“Security and travel don’t have to be mutually exclusive,” he said. “We’d hate to see us roll back the clock. We’ve been pretty loud and clear about that.”
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From: MeNeedIt