Amazon Pay lets Alexa users buy digital goods by voice
Amazon Pay now lets customers buy digital goods and services by speaking to Alexa. The flow leans on Amazon Pay's existing rails and Alexa's voice recognition, so a user can...
Science & Energy
Combines lifecycle costs, hyperinflation, robotics, climate paradoxes, and battery science with energy technology.
UK shuts last coal plant, Ratcliffe-on-Soar
On 30 September 2024, the United Kingdom's last operational coal-fired power station, Ratcliffe-on-Soar in Nottinghamshire, shut down for good. The closure ended 142 years of burning coal for power and...
US rejoins Paris climate pact with 2030 goals
The Paris Agreement is the primary global legal instrument for addressing climate change. Adopted by 196 Parties at COP21 in Paris on December 12, 2015, it entered into force on...
Smart device trends 2019: voice, health, home
In 2019, the smart device market passed a threshold. Global smart speaker shipments exceeded 100 million units for the first time, according to Strategy Analytics, and the dominant players shifted...
Protos Energy Hub: Peel Environmental's Cheshire Cluster
Peel Environmental is turning a 54-hectare (134-acre) former industrial parcel near Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, into a strategic energy and resource cluster called Protos. The site sits inside the wider Cheshire...
Paperless Cost Savings for UK Financial Services
UK financial firms spend tens of millions of pounds each year on paper storage, printing, postage, and manual handling. The case for going paperless is not about environmental virtue. It...
Microsoft, Epic embed GPT-4 into healthcare EHR
Microsoft and Epic Systems are embedding generative AI from Microsoft's Azure OpenAI Service, including GPT-4, straight into Epic's electronic health record software. The initiative targets two tasks: drafting replies to...
What Makes a Currency Major? The IMF and BIS Lists Explained
A major currency is one that central banks hold in reserves, that dominates foreign exchange trading, and that is used to price global commodities. No single official list exists, but...
Tobacco giants shift to reduced-risk products
Philip Morris International launched IQOS in Nagoya, Japan, in 2014. The bet was that a device which heats rather than burns tobacco could keep smokers loyal while defusing the health...
Blippar collapses; lessons for AR startups
Blippar, once the UK's most visible augmented reality startup, entered administration in December 2018 after a shareholder blocked an emergency funding round. Its assets were sold in a pre-pack deal...
UK Energy: Net Zero Challenges, Grid Gaps and Investment
The United Kingdom has a legally binding target to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, a commitment enacted through the Climate Change Act 2008 (2050 Target Amendment) Order...
Exscientia AI drug DSP-1181 fails in Phase I
In January 2020, Exscientia announced that DSP-1181, a molecule designed entirely by its artificial intelligence platform, had entered Phase I human trials in Japan. It was the first time an...
