Global Acerola Extract Market Size Is Expected To Reach Over US$ 15763.8 Mn By 2017 To 2025 – Technorati

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According to a new market report published by Credence Research,Acerola Extract Market Growth, Future Prospects and Competitive Analysis, 2017 2025, theglobal acerola extract market is expected to reach over US$ 15,763.8 Mn by 2025, expanding at a CAGR of 7.9% from 2017 to 2025.

Market Insights

The global acerola extract market is expected to witness high growth during the forecast period 2017 to 2025. Growing preference for healthy fruit based products is anticipated to drive the demand for the acerola extract. The global acerola extract market is projected to reach US$ 15,763.8 million by 2025, expanding at a CAGR of 7.9% from 2017 to 2025.

Browse the full report at http://www.credenceresearch.com/report/acerola-extract-market

By form, acerola extract market segmentation includes powder and liquid forms; of which, in 2016, powder form dominated the market in terms of revenue contribution and is further expected to remain dominant during the forecast period of 2017 to 2025. Currently, growing demand for vitamins and health supplements, particularly in functional foods is fueling the demand for powdered form of acerola extract. However, liquid form segment is expected to register high growth in the near future. Owing to advantages such as natural color, rich vitamin C content, flavor, antioxidant property, and dough improvement, liquid formulations of acerola extract are anticipated to witness significant adoption among food and beverage manufacturers. Owing to growing consumption and rising demand for natural ingredients for preservation of meat products the demand for acerola extract in meat products is expected to gain adoption among manufacturers over the coming years.

On the basis of applications, the global acerola extract market is segmented into food supplements, beverages, confectionery, snacks, meat, bakery and others. Among these, food supplements segment dominated the market and accounted for 26.7% share of the global market in 2016. This segment is projected to maintain its dominance over the next eight years. Rising demand for organic and stable ingredients in food and beverage products is a key factor driving growth acerola extract market. Some of the other factors fuelling the acerola extract market growth (primarily in varied food applications) include demand for natural preservative solutions, ingredients with enhanced oxygen-scavenging properties in meat products, improved color and curing properties, maintenance of nutritional efficacy, particularly if used in cured and raw meat products.

For the purpose of this study, the global acerola extract market is categorized into regional markets viz., North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America and Middle East and Africa. In base year 2016, North America was observed as the largest market for acerola extract. In Asia Pacific, China and India serve potential markets for acerola extract in the next five to six years. Growing consumption of beverages and meat products especially in China and India, along with commercialization measures for acerola extract as an ingredient in various food and beverage products fuel the acerola extract market growth.

Furthermore, companies present in North America and Europe are extensively focusing on research and development for developing blend formulations comprising acerola extract in various food & beverages products and companies are focusing on expanding their business network, across regional markets. Amway, Blue Macaw Flora, DIANA NATURALS, Duas Rodas Industrial, Herbal Bio Solutions, Natures Power Nutraceuticals Corp., Naturex, Nichirei Corporation, NutriBotanica, Optimally Organic Inc., The Green Labs LLC. and Vita Forte Inc. are few key manufacturers in acerola extract market.

Key Trends:

Growing consumer inclination towards natural products

Increasing array of applications

Asia pacific is expected to register the highest growth rate

High prices of acerola extract products is acting as a restrain to growth of the market

Strong Demand from Emerging Economies

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Global Acerola Extract Market Size Is Expected To Reach Over US$ 15763.8 Mn By 2017 To 2025 - Technorati

Methylsulfonylmethane (MSM) Market Is Expected To Reach Over US$ 10 Bn By 2023, Expanding At A CAGR Of 7 … – Technorati

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According to a new market report published by Credence ResearchGlobal Methylsulfonylmethane (MSM) Market Growth, Future Prospects and Competitive Analysis, 2016 2023, theMethylsulfonylmethane (MSM) market is expected to reach over US$ 10 Bn by 2023, expanding at a CAGR of 7% from 2016 to 2023

Market Insights

The demand for methylsulfonylmethane (MSM) has grown globally owing to rise in cases of bone fractures, back and neck pain, arthritis, osteoporosis and rheumatism among others. This phenomenon has gained significant attention from people and government across the globe. Methylsulfonylmethane (MSM) helps the body to form new joint and muscle tissue while reducing inflammatory responses, which contributes to stiffness and swelling; therefore, it is considered as a prominent ingredient in food supplements category. Moreover, rising awareness regarding health concern and benefits associated with consumption of methylsulfonylmethane (MSM) is another factor contributing towards the market growth.

Browse the fullMethylsulfonylmethane (MSM) Market- Market Growth, Future Prospects and Competitive Analysis, 2016 2023 report at http://www.credenceresearch.com/report/methylsulfonylmethane-market

On the basis of application, the global methylsulfonylmethane market is segmented into food & beverage, pharmaceutical & dietary supplements, cosmetics & personal care, animal feed and other industries (agriculture, urban waste handling and etc.). Methylsulfonylmethane is widely used in pharmaceutical & dietary supplements industry as it functions as a pharmaceutically active agent. In 2015, pharmaceutical & dietary supplements accounted for the largest share of more than 55% of the total MSM market by volume.

Global Methylsulfonylmethane (MSM) market is segmented by geography into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America and Middle East & Africa. In 2015, North America led the global MSM market and was followed by Asia Pacific and Europe. Together, the regions accounted more than 80% share of the market. This is due to prominent ageing population in North America, Europe and certain countries in Asia.

Bergstrom Nutrition, Inc., Hubei Xingfa Chemicals Group Co., Ltd., Yueyang Xiangmao Medicines & Chemicals Co., Ltd., Makana Produktion und Vertrieb GmbH, Vita Flex Nutrition, ZhuZhou Hansen Chemical Co, Ltd., Panvo Organics Pvt. Ltd., Chaitanya Biologicals Pvt. Ltd, Tianjin Baofeng Chemical Co., Ltd and Hangzhou Dakang New Materials Co., Ltd. are few key manufacturers in methylsulfonylmethane (MSM) market.

Key Trends:

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Methylsulfonylmethane (MSM) Market Is Expected To Reach Over US$ 10 Bn By 2023, Expanding At A CAGR Of 7 ... - Technorati

Supplements & Nutrition Packaging: Food & Pharma Demand for Advanced Packaging on the Rise – Edition Truth

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Transparency Market Research describes the market for nutrition and supplement packaging in its entirety, including the factors that currently influence its growth and the ones that are likely to do so over the coming years. Supplements and Nutrition Packaging Market Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2017 2025, is thus a detailed account of the drivers, restraints, and opportunities shared by the leading players as well as new entrants alike, for the given forecast period. Supplements and nutrients are commonly consumed in most parts of the modern world as they improve the overall nutritive consumption rate of individuals on a regular basis. One of the key factors essential for the growth of this market is the increase in awareness among consumers and the knowledge of the various nutrients and their value when taken in supplement forms.

One of the primary drivers of the global supplements and nutrition packaging market is the surge in demand for advanced packaging options from the industries of pharmaceuticals, and food and beverages. This is because both industries are experiencing a nearly exponential rate of growth in the demand for nutritional additives as well as supplements. More and more consumers are taking to functional foods that are rich in specific nutrients as well as consuming supplements in order to maintain a rounded dietary routine. A large number of supplements require specialized packaging similar to pharmaceutical drugs to maintain product integrity, thereby increasing the scope of growth for packaging manufacturers in this field.

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The common types of packaging available in the global supplements and nutrition packaging market include canisters, blisters, bottles, and capsules. The choice of the type of packaging largely depends on what supplements or nutritive foods are in need. As the demand for these foods and supplements increases, so will the demand for their packaging, and it is very likely for the global supplements and nutrition packaging market to witness a generous CAGR over the coming years.

From a regional point of view, North America has consistently been at the top of the game, thanks to a larger urban population aware of the existence and benefits of supplements and nutritive foods, as well as the strong presence of some of the top players in the market. Over the coming years, Europe is expected to witness a phenomenal rate of growth in demand for supplements and nutrition packaging thanks to a high volume of the geriatric demographic as well as an increasingly aware population. Asia Pacific is also expected to show a high rate of growth over the coming years due to a booming growth rate of urban population in key countries.

The leading players in the global supplements and nutrition packaging market so far, have included Moluded Packaging Solutions Limited., Alpha Packaging, Container & Packaging Supply Inc., Arizona Nutritional Supplements, LLC, Graham Packaging Company, LP, Comar, LLC, and Packacre Enterprises Limited.

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Supplements & Nutrition Packaging: Food & Pharma Demand for Advanced Packaging on the Rise - Edition Truth

University of Missouri Extension Home

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July gardening calendar

Provide water in the garden for the birds, especially during dry weather.

Through partnerships with various units within the university, the Family Impact Center provides services to community members in Columbia in a variety of fields, including health, financial literacy and life skills.

Its summer and you're busy with picnics, camping and outside fun. If hand washing is not possible (no running water, soap, etc.), what is the next best option for cleaning hands before eating or handling food?

Hay quality varies based on forage species, maturity, management, harvest conditions, and insect or disease damage. Guessing the quality of hay fed to livestock could result in lower profits.

Every gardener knows the frustration of having a beautiful flower or vegetable garden decimated by four-legged critters.

FilmFest 4-H brings youth together with working members of the film industry.

Dicamba in all its forms gets prime focus at the University of Missouri Pest Management Field Day, July 7 at the MU Bradford Research Center. It's the first year for legal use of the weed-control system in Missouri.

School is out and many divorced/separated parents are making plans and preparing for their children's summer visitation.

Things like low refrigerant levels, dirty fans and filters, loose or worn belts, and clogged condenser coils can seriously hinder the A/C unit's cooling ability.

Selling locally is a way for producers to diversify revenue sources, reduce transportation costs and support their communities.

Once established, water lilies flower well into the summer and provide an exotic addition to any landscape.

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Why Dez Bryant Will Return To NFL Dominance In 2017 – Blogging The Boys (blog)

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If youve ever had the pleasure of watching Dez Bryant practice you can tell that football is extremely important to him. Everyone knows that Dez is an extremely passionate player, but few mention the type of leader he truly is.

Dez has never done anything in his life halfway, its full speed no matter the circumstance. He leads in a way very similar to the Cowboys Hall of Fame receiver, Michael Irvin. When you look at this team with the camaraderie they built last season, the commitment theyve all made to team football, its got Dezs imprint all over it. Hes led the charge, creating an incredible bond with his teammates and hes on the verge of something even more special.

Its no secret that Dez Bryant hasnt been his dominant self over the past two seasons. After signing his Cowboy For Life extension, he broke his foot in week one of 2015. Though he returned after six weeks, he just didnt have the same effectiveness, only occasionally looking like his old self. In 2016, he had to miss three games with a hairline fracture in his knee. About a month ago, our own Joseph.Hatz wrote about how Dez Bryants demise has been exaggerated:

The NFL certainly stands for Not For Long, so its understandable why many seem to have forgotten the type of talent that Bryant is and it explains why some have even suggested that he may not be in Dallas for much longer. There is no ignoring the injuries sustained over the last two years and of course you cant continue to absorb $15+ million cap hits on a player if theyre injured every season, but Bryant deserves much more benefit of the doubt than to suggest that he should be a cap cut in the near future.

Just to add to Josephs point, there are reasons to believe that Dez Bryant is not only back to being himself but should return to NFL dominance in 2017.

The chemistry between a receiver and quarterback is not built overnight. Before Dak Prescott took over for Tony Romo, he was passing to the guys trying to make the team. Dak and Dez barely had any time together before it was GO-time. Lets focus on the way Dez Bryant ended last season because its not always about how you start, its how you finish.

After returning in week eight, Bryant wasted no time in getting back on track. In a 29-23 overtime victory over the Eagles, Bryant averaged 28.3 yards per catch, had four receptions for 113 yards and a touchdown. In the final 10 games, Bryant scored seven of his eight touchdowns. He had dominating performances against the Steelers, Ravens, and Lions. Speaking of that Detroit game, Bryant scored twice but also threw his first career touchdown pass to Jason Witten in that 42-21 rout of the Lions.

In only one postseason performance, he was PFFs second-highest rated postseason receiver with a rating at 156.3. Of course, it was against the Packers, who were 31st in pass defense. Still, nine receptions for 132 yards and two scores is a big time performance. If youre one to criticize Dez for beating up on a weak defense, lets just remind you that Odell Beckham Jr. only had four receptions for 28 yards a week prior against that same defense.

PFF also gave Dez Bryant an 84.8 grade which was 11th among 115 eligible receivers. Were not saying that PFF is the perfect method but they did have another interesting showing of how Dez compares to his contemporaries:

Dez Bryant's most targeted routes in 2016 were the go, hitch and slant. Here's how his performance compared to the NFL average... pic.twitter.com/8k7G2WQOTb

For all you fantasy football lovers out there, Mike Tagliere penned a column over at Fantasy Pros about Bryant and how hes not done by a long shot:

"The transition to Dak Prescott turned out to be tougher than most expected, as Bryant and Prescott connected on just 16 of their first 41 targets in their first five games, or 39 percent.

If you ignore their first five games together, removing the Week 17 game where both Bryant and Prescott played one series, heres what their final eight games have totaled (playoffs included): 66 targets, 43 receptions, 646 yards, and eight touchdowns.

Thats a 65.2 percent completion rate, a far cry from the 39 percent over their first five games. Its also important to note that his targets per game didnt increase over this time, just his efficiency.

Mike believes that Dez Bryant may not be as valuable to fantasy owners as he was in the past but hes not giving up on the All-Pro:

If youre worried about Bryant, it has nothing to do with his recent performance, because he was arguably better than any wide receiver over the final eight weeks.

As Dak and Dez have more time together, their rapport is going to grow stronger. Bryant averaged 15.9 yards per catch last season, thats about a full yard more than his previous career high. Bryant also replaced Julio Jones in the Pro Bowl.

Another interesting side note: Do you know who was PFFs third-highest wide receiver based on passer rating when thrown to? Its not Dez Bryant, it was Terrance Williams (124.6). That just tells you the amount of respect that is paid to a guy like Bryant as his mere presence makes the offense better.

Guys like Josh Norman can talk about Bryant and say that hes just a guy but theyd be very wrong. In fact, I know were giving PFF a lot of love, but Sam Monson wrote seven months ago about why Bryant won against Norman on Turkey Day though his stats read only four receptions, 72 yards:

Of the three catches Norman did allow to Bryant, two of them moved the chains and the other picked up nine of the necessary 10 yards on first down.

It may not have been a great night for Bryant and the stat sheet might look like Norman got the better of the matchup between the two, but throw on the tape and you find a very different result. Bryant was too much for Norman to handle this time, and deserved the win even if he didnt get the stats.

He may not eclipse his amazing numbers of 2014 but this is still every bit of the All-Pro he always has been. Whether its game day, on the practice field, in the weight room, or an interview: Dez Bryant is special. The way he finished off his 2016 season shows you that there is plenty of gas left in this tank. This is the guy that is second in the league in touchdowns (67) since he was drafted in 2010.

This may be a new youthful Cowboys regime but it's one that Dez was instrumental in creating. Bryant doesnt need any critical comments to get him hyped for 2017. Though hes going face some of the leagues best cornerbacks, Dez is going to be Dez and there is no better description than the mans own words to leave you on:

The way that I feel now, Im not dealing with really anything. I feel damn good. I know once Im 100 [percent], Im something hard to -- I was about to say some bad words -- but Im hard to deal with. That confidence is just steady expanding. Ill tell you this: Ive never been [more] ready for training camp. Im excited. I cant wait for training camp. Im ready to lead. Im ready to get back, and Im ready for the season to start. Im praying every day. I just want me, this whole team to be injury-free just because we got something special. The sky can be the limit for us.

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Why Dez Bryant Will Return To NFL Dominance In 2017 - Blogging The Boys (blog)

Old 97’s’ ‘Too Far to Care’: Inside Alt-Country Heroes’ 1997 Breakout – RollingStone.com

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"We felt some kinship to the alt-rock scene of the early Nineties, but we wanted to do it on our own terms. We wanted to be able to love Hank Williams and love punk rock." While this sentiment from Old 97's frontman Rhett Miller isn't a strange concept today, it was still a relatively underground idea when he and his bandmates unleashed their raw-and-rowdy major label debut Too Far to Care 20 years ago this month and helped birth a whole new subgenre in the process.

Together with guitarist Ken Bethea and drummer Philip Peeples, Miller and Hammond mixed the explosiveness of punk rock and the raw sonics of alternative music with heavy doses of classic country swagger. Two albums 1994's Hitchhike to Rhome and 1995's Wreck Your Life quickly put Old 97's on the map outside of their native Dallas, Texas, and generated major label buzz.

By Miller's count, no less than 15 labels courted the band over a six-month period. "They were flying us to New York and Los Angeles and taking us to every major sporting event you could imagine," he says. "There was so much noise and so much ego inflation. I can see why so many bands get lost when their ship comes in."

It was a unique moment in time for both the band and also the unruly, amorphous musical scene of which they were a part. "It felt like there was something in the zeitgeist happening with this genre of music that everyone was still trying to find the right name for," he says of the nascent movement, which also included Uncle Tupelo (and its post-breakup offshoots Wilco and Son Volt), Drive-By Truckers and the Ryan Adams-led Whiskeytown.

Questionable terms like "yalternative," "honky skronk" "insurgent country" and "cow punk" (a holdover from the Eighties) were being thrown around to describe the sound, with the consensus eventually landing on "alternative country," often shortened to just "alt-country."

"It's like we all had the same education but were on different campuses," Hammond says of the scene and its like-minded bands. "We'd all gone through punk rock and Sixties garage rock and we all liked Johnny Cash and rediscovered country music around the same time."

Eventually signing with Elektra Records, Old 97's decamped for El Paso to record at the famed Sonic Ranch studio (then known as Village Productions). The bucolic setting near the Rio Grande helped inspire what would become Too Far to Care.

"When we finally wound up out in this little desert hacienda surrounded by a pecan orchard, it felt like one of those science-fiction movies where you get squeezed through a time portal," Miller says. Working with producer Wally Gagel, the band cut some of the most enduring songs of their career and refined their sound along the way.

Miller points to the boozy ballad "Salome" as a notable evolutionary step in the songwriting of the 97's. Sandwiched in between the full-throated chorus of "Broadway" and the twangy railroad chug of "W. TX Teardrops," the song features the pedal-steel work of guest Jon Rauhouse, who would also play on the band's 2014 effort Most Messed Up. "That song was a really big breakthrough because the live sound of our band was so caveman at that time," Miller says. "We went from being a band that was always at 9 or 10 on the volume and energy scale, to being a band that could make something work on the lower, quiet side."

Still, the group also raged, cutting the scorching album opener (and frequent live-show encore) "Timebomb." For the record's howling closer, "Four Leaf Clover," they enlisted Exene Cervenka of L.A. punk band X to sing harmony. "I was a little star-struck around Exene," says Hammond, "but now she's my buddy. I don't always know what to talk to people about, but with Exene I know I can always talk music and UFOs."

For Miller, it's two other subjects that remind him most of the Too Far to Care sessions: presidents and telephones. Both, he says, have evolved greatly in the last two decades.

"We play 'Barrier Reef' every night and I have to sing the line, "Midnight came, midnight went, I thought I was the president," he says of the album's second song. "When I wrote it, Clinton was in office but he hadn't yet gone through the Lewinsky scandal. When that happened, I would sing it and think that it was a sly, subtle reference to oral sex. Then when Bush was in office, I was personally not a fan of his policies, so that line changed to being about a warmonger. Now it's even more complicated because of our current president."

Miller is even more amazed by how anachronistic payphones have become. On the road in support of the band's early albums, the quarter-call was his primary source of connecting with loved ones. "When I wrote the line 'telephones makes strangers out of lovers' in 'Niteclub,' I was imaging a guy on the side of the road with trucks whizzing by in the rain and him getting yelled at by a girlfriend," he says. "Now when I sing it, I'm looking down at an audience full of people where the majority of them are on their cell phones. Telephones are still making strangers out of lovers, but it's because it's all we look at and all we think about."

The line about "calling time and temperature just for some company" in LP standout "Big Brown Eyes" is especially dated which Miller admits to realizing even at the time he wrote it. "It was already a joke in '97," he says. "It was just my way of shouting out to a past that was disappearing."

Surprisingly, that landline past came rushing back to Miller when he returned to the Sonic Ranch to record the band's latest album, Graveyard Whistling, released in February. Opening a drawer of a bedside table, he discovered a note containing the telephone number of the girl about whom many of the songs on Too Far to Care were written.

But for Miller, the legacy of Too Far to Care isn't about phone calls, ex-presidents or even alt-country. In fact, the "alt-country" tag gave him grief for quite some time. "It took me a bunch of years to come to peace with it, but I embrace it to some extent now," he concedes. "I feed my kids with alt-country who would've thought that was even possible?"

Rather, he credit's the album's staying power to a certain innocence and lack of irony. He and the 97's were writing, recording and playing from the heart.

"There was nothing calculated or self-aware about Too Far to Care," he says, "and that's what people still respond to when they hear those songs."

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Old 97's' 'Too Far to Care': Inside Alt-Country Heroes' 1997 Breakout - RollingStone.com

The Teen Actress Comeback: Inside Rachel Bilson, Alexis Bledel and Leighton Meester’s Television Reinvention – E! Online

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Getty Images/ E! Illustration

If television audiences were to turn on CMT right about...now, they would see a very familiar face onNashville.Rachel Bilsonhas officially joined the cast of the country crooner show in her first role sinceHart of Dixie wrapped. She'll be playing the chief strategy officer of the show's Highway 65 Records, a character that she described to E! News as a "strong, business-savvy woman."The actress has a five-episode arc planned for the drama, but industry observers and fans alike can't help but feel like it's the start of something big: A return to the screen, if you will, and an opportunity to come full-circle in the decade since she officially retiredThe O.C.'s Summer Roberts.

And when those same audiences start channel surfing (during commercial breaks, of course) they'll realize that Bilson is part of a movement. That all of the most popular (and fan-favorite) lady stars of the 2000s (if they were a band or a sports team they might call themselves the Aughts A-Listers) are in the middle of what can only be described as a heyday.

There's Bilson and her country revival, of course.Alexis Bledelbrought back her belovedGilmore Girls and is also catching critic and general public attention of the chillingHandmaid's Tale. And Leighton Meesterhas her first series regular gig since Blair Waldorf simultaneously charmed and terrified the world onGossip Girl. The woman behind the most famous eye roll in history has been largely off the airwaves since 2012, so her turn on Fox'sMaking Historyis something to be celebrated.

What binds these three actresses together is more than just the fact that they happen to have been on-air at the same time during a certain partof the decade. Rather, they were integral membersof the zeitgeist of the mid-aughts. To millennial women they were our role models, our obsessions, our constant sources of quoted material.You can't make people love you, but you can make them fear you. Nothing excites me before 11 a.m.And who could forget,Ew.These were the TV shows that we stayed up late binge-ing, that we turned to after a breakup or a failed test or a bad fight. The shows that guided us through countless hangovers and heartaches, and that kept us company as we snacked on literally everything possible.

The O.C.introduced a world of wealth and privilege and totally absurd individuals to young people all over America.Gossip Girldid the same, but with beachfront mansions swapped for historic townhouses.Gilmore Girlsshowed the charms of small-town America.The O.C.brought us the enduring appeal of the bad boy.Gossip Girl fought for the sexy mystery behind a lonely boy. The O.C.andGossip Girl brought cautionary tales of partying and rule-breaking, while the Gilmores peddled more in warnings against over-consumption of Chinese food delivery and diner coffee.

They made us realize how lucky we were not to have parents like Julie Cooper or Eleanor Waldorf. They made us realize how much we were dying to have parents like Lorelai Gilmore and Sandy Cohen. They gave us theme songs that will be stuck in our heads for the next decades, and the next and the next. The wordsCalifornia here we come orIf you lead I will follow orYou know you love me will forever bring us directly back to that exact moment in front of the TV. That and any mention of Chrismakkah.

But all that came to an end:The O.C.shut its beachside doors a decade ago,Gilmore Girlssaid its last breathless words (though notthe last four words) that same year, andGossip Girlfinally revealed itself in 2012. Since that era, there has barely been a single show that has represented the zeitgeist so well, let alone an entire group of shows. And with the downtime for the viewers came some downtime for the stars themselves. After spending a significant portion of their youth in front of the cameras, Bilson and her teen drama counterparts Meester and Bledel took a step back from the spotlight.

As Bilson told E! News, starring in an hour-long drama can take its toll as much as it can launch you into fame and fortune. "To do an hour-long drama and be one of the leads, that's your whole life," she said. "I really respect that and I'm grateful to have had that, but it's your life and the hours are no joke. Things have just changed [for me] now."

FollowingThe O.C., Bilson took on a few roles here and there, appearing in the futuristic filmJumper (where she just so happened to meet her fianc and the father of her daughter Briar) and in a few episodes ofHow I Met Your Mother. Then of course cameHart of Dixie, which was a cult favorite in and of itself, among Summer's biggest fans and those who had never seenThe O.C. alike. But most importantly she took time off to build her family. She has been with the aforementionedHayden Christiansen for a decade (with a few on-and-off periods), and in November, 2014 she welcomed her baby girl. They have been living what they describe as a quiet, family-oriented life since then, spending time in the country and cookingjust check her Instagram for proof.

Meester and Bledel seemingly followed in her footstepsalthough, technically, it's hard to nail down who exactly led the way. In an adorably full-circle twist of fate, Leighton ended up falling in love with none other than the real-life Seth Cohen (that would beAdam Brodyof course), getting married in 2014 and having a daughter in September, 2015. Alexis fell forMad MenstarVincent Kartheiserafter she appeared in a few episodes of the show, marrying in June, 2014 and welcoming a son in the fall of the following year.

As far as acting goes, Meester has been largely absent from her place in front of the cameras. (She did star in the 2014 rom-comLife Partners, where she met her husband). Bledel starred in the two installments ofSisterhood of the Traveling Pants shortly after biddingadieu to Stars Hollow, but did mostly bit arts save for herMad Menarc. Until now, of course.

In case anyone needs it written out plainly, let's just review: All three actresses starred in outrageously popular teen dramas, all three met their actor-husbands during roles following those shows, and all three took time off from acting to take care of their now-toddlers. Uncanny? Yes. Fate? Definitely.

But now the heyday is back in full force. It's really never been a better time to have starred in a mid-2000's network television teen drama. Each actress did have their own path back to the big screen that's worth examining, however. Bledel's was perhaps the most obvious, withGilmore Girlsjumping onto the revival train early. There is no Stars Hollow without Rory Gilmore and the actresses obliged all of her adoring fans when she agreed to appear alongside the rest of the cast in the Netflix miniseries.

"We're all just so happy we got to do these episodes," she told E! at a press event for the revival this winter. "it's wild and very surreal. And we're excited that it means so much to people."

The actress is also in the midst of full-on critical acclaim for her turn as Ofglen inThe Handmaid's Tale, a piece of work that truly couldn't be more different than anything we've seen her in before. It's easy to question what it is about a project that makes someone decide to go for such a drastic change and she cited an interest in streaming platforms at this year's Television Critics Association gather.

"It's really new to me in a way because it's just this year I jumped into this realm," Bledel explained. "But I really do like telling a story from beginning to end, knowing what the whole story is going to be, and then revisiting it six months later."

For Bilson, the return to the screen was on account of finally finding a way to balance her career passions with her desire to devote herself to motherhood. She explained that having her daughter in her life has impacted who she chooses roles, and that how any potential job affects her being there for her daughter is a large part of the decision-making process.

"I'm very lucky to have had some success [in my career] and I just look for good roles and things that I want to spend my time doing," she says. "If I'm away from my daughter it has to be worth itall my decisions are based around her now."

Meester has echoed those sentiments in many interviews, citing a bit of a burnout after her time onGossip Girl. This spring she told Vulturethat she had no interest in doing a show with 20-plus episodes a year, nor did she want to do an hour-long program, explaining "That's now how I want to spend my time working."

The actress met with Fox and decided that it would be the perfect fit for her next network project and then the new seriesMaking History came along at the exact right time. "I've been working when the work comes for things I've been excited by," she described as her new career outlook. "There's been a natural progression of roles that seem to fit how I feel at that moment."

We would be remiss to continue a discussion of the biggest stars of the early aughtsand their current comebackswithout a pause to reflect on an actress who is having a full-on career renaissance. We speak, obviously, of oneMandy Moore. She wasn't on a life-changing teen drama but she did start her acting career with a series of pivotal roles during that period. It all started withThe Princess Diaries andA Walk to Remember (in 2001 and 2002 respectively) and she went on to appear in cult classics like 2004'sSaved and rom-coms likeBecause I Said So andLicense to Wed, both in 2007.

Things cooled down for the actress but with her star turn in the breakout hitThis Is Us, she has become one of television's most sought-after actresses. Put bluntly, she's having the best year of her life. She's the star of the biggest cult-hitof 2017, she has several movies coming up, and she was nominated for a Golden Globe (her first major award nod). Moore herself is in a state of relative shock in regards to her recent resurgence, as she told E! at this year's TCAs.

"I cannot believe I'm on a television show that's airing," she said. "It didn't get cancelled. I didn't film a pilot and have it not get picked up. Every other pilot I did I was like, yeah, this is going somewhere, and then it never does. But I'm a firm believer in everything happening for a reason."

So what's next for all these women? That's up to them, but one imagines it involves equal parts reveling in the moment and looking forward to the next step. And they'll also continue to process what life is like a decade out from their breakthrough successes. Their time on the screen, both big and small, has had a large impact on each actress. It's hard to shake the typecasting that comes with being a teen iconnot that they're all trying to.

For Mandy Moore it's all about having an appreciation for a time when everything was new (and scary). "I remember not knowing what I was doing onA Walk to Remember," she said at the TCAs. "I didn't know how to hit a mark or memorize lines or take stage direction. When I think back about that film I think about having to really step up and learn everything."

For Alexis Bledel her time onGilmore Girls(the original show) is something that she tries not to cling to. "I try to be present in the moment," she said of her acting past. "And just focus on whatever I'm supposed to be working on at that moment. That takes all my attention."

Bilson is seemingly as sentimental aboutThe O.C.as her fans. "It's really nice that people loved the show so much and embraced it so much," she gushed. "I'm still so grateful to this day for the opportunity to be a part of something like that. It's influenced everything, when it comes down to it. Itwas the launching pad and the starting point and it's where it all began for me."

For most of the show's fans, they could say the same thing.

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The Teen Actress Comeback: Inside Rachel Bilson, Alexis Bledel and Leighton Meester's Television Reinvention - E! Online

Why Obama’s First CTO Is ‘Hopeful’ About DC, Loves Twitter – PCMag

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Former US CTO Aneesh Chopra talks about big data, the importance of net neutrality, and why there's hope yet for getting things done in Washington, D.C.

For this week's edition of Fast Forward, I'm talking to Aneesh Chopra, the first Chief Technology Officer of the United States, but now the author of Innovative State: How New Technologies Can Transform Government and founder of NavHealth and Hunch Analytics.

We discuss how technology can change government, consumer privacy and most importantlyhis optimism about technology, government, and the direction in which the country is heading.

Dan Costa: I want to talk about the optimism that I have sensed from you about technology and government because frankly, that optimism is hard to find these days.

Aneesh Chopra: But it's grounded in reality. That's the best news. We have reasons to be hopeful we'll get into.

I will allow you to convince me. But first, you were the nation's first Chief Technology Officer. I understand that role is now open. Is there any chance you would like to serve again?

No. I will not serve in this role but I will say, I'm excited about the team that President Trump has already assembled in that office. His Deputy Chief Technology Officer [Michael Kratsios] is a phenomenally talented technology leader and has already begun making, I think, very positive moves to continue and build upon the work that we'd started.

So you were the first CTO. Can you just explain to the audience why the United States needs a Chief Technology Officer?

Well, let's begin with what the President had called for. President Obama ran for office and he basically said we've got to find a way to tap into the expertise of the American people to solve big problems. He didn't really believe Washington was going to be the center. And whether you voted for the President or not, that was his philosophy and he realized, early, that we have new technologies that allow us to communicate all over the world instantly

But...to influence [anyone in] Washington, you've got to hire lobbyists, you've got to be in some smoke-filled room in D.C. It didn't have the same sense of democratization, and so [Obama's] assignment on day one, when he was in the midst of the economic crisis, was to create a position called the Chief Technology Officer, who would help him advance a more open and transparent government. Not only to make the data the government held more available, but to listen to the American people's voices so we were more participatory and to find [a way] to collaborate between the public and private sector and nonprofit sectors to solve big problems. And that's exactly what we focused on in the first term.

We're going to get to the sort of government data sets in a bit, but I saw you gave a very optimistic speech yesterday. It's obviously a very polarized environment in Washington, D.C. right now, but your speech was filled with optimism that I think is really hard to find these days. Why do think things are getting better, at least in this particular respect?

Well it appears we're on a bipartisan trajectory to modernize the interface between the public sector and the private sector, and what that means is that both parties are in general agreement that we want to tap into the expertise of the American people, allow entrepreneurs and innovators to join hands. We may disagree on what we want them to focus on and we'll have a big political debate should it be on closing up our borders or advancing health care for everyone. That's a healthy debate. We're not going to see a lot of consensus potentially on an agenda, but if we have an underlying infrastructure that's open, there's no R or D highway lane.

We use it every day to advance commerce. So if we had that same construct in our infrastructure, increasingly our digital infrastructure, than I can bring my own device to school, I can have my kids connect their educational learning records to the Khan Academy so when they come home, we can watch the Khan videos that directly relate to the subject matter they're struggling with in the classroom and it can all work seamlessly. We're using these new technologies [to make] our personal lives better but [they can now] transform our health, our energy, our education, our financial services, the regulated sectors, and that's why I'm hopeful.

Are there more examples of common-ground issues that are not R versus D but really American ideals that can be advanced through technology?

I might be aggressive in suggesting that the strategy for American innovation that President Obama published and President Trump's new Office of American Innovation will likely have the same core elements. One, that the country's going to redefine its role in infrastructure, away from traditional roadways, railways, and runways but to expand it and include human capital, R&D, and digital infrastructure, which you can think of as broadband but can be more broadly, the digital electrical grid as well as the healthcare systems.

Second, that we have rules of the road. Whether we think they should be heavy or a light touch, there will be rules of the road to protect our security, engage on privacy issues, and make sure that we've got some competition policy that makes the digital economy work for everyone. Again, we may have differences of specific tools but the framework is that we need to have some collaborative view.

And then last but not least, this notion of opening up. That regardless of how we want to deliver government services, that the most efficient way is not to have everybody log in to one website but to have many choices. Some privately sponsored, some nonprofit sponsored, some public sector sponsored but with the premise of making sure people have all the information they need about the decisions in their lives, at each moment of a decision and at that moment, we have a country that's moving forward.

That's actually one of the things that I think you were most successful at during your tenureproviding access to these government data sets to consumers and businesses. Can you talk a little bit about that process, because we've come along way in a relatively short period of time?

Well, it started with what we've already known to be a successful case study, which is the weather industry. Going back 50+ years, there's been this consensus, not sure exactly if it was sort of master planning or just serendipity, but there had been the notion that we would invest the billions the country invests in satellites and sensors and other equipment, bring that information into an environment and then expose it. It was a judgment made going back over the last several decades that that information should be freely available.

At one point there was a debate, 'why do we need to have a weather.gov when we have weather.com?' That was sort of a naive understanding that weather.com is 100 percent powered by the open data sets that power weather.gov and that it's not an either or but it's reference of limitation that we compete on making it better. When we realized that that model works, we said let's shift the default. What President Obama's instructions to us were and our directive back to the agencies was three things.

One, immediate culture change. Make three data sets in your current environment openly available in 45 days. Two, develop a plan and engage the American people in the development of that plan so that you're listening to the data sets they value. And then three, we wanted to build some celebratory best practices and sort of honor those who've done it right to scale what works.

It turns out my successor, Todd Park, was the first awardee of our Best Practices because he didn't really focus on the supply of data. Can we add another data set to a website that no one ever heard of? But he went out and visited developers and said, 'Hey I've got a whole menu of data sets. Why don't you begin thinking about using it.' So he emphasized the use, not the supply, and that led to this movement. There are now thousands of people that convene in Washington every year in Health Datapalooza, and it's because people are now being engaged on the use of that data to build better products and services for people who need healthcare and that's something that we're seeing scale in every domain.

So that's the private sector taking public data and innovating with it and creating products and businesses?

That's right.

Does it flow the other way? Do private sector companies like Uber share their data sets with the cities they're operating in because it's got better traffic and commuter data than the cities themselves?

Yeah. Well, Waze struck an agreement with the City of LA exactly for that purpose. When we were grappling with what to do in the wake of emergencies, FEMA said, 'Well, what if we collaborated with utilities and others and we said let's crowd source information so that we can be smarter about what happens at every moment in time.'

In fact, data collection has always been a role of government. It's been a regulatory tool in government but we hadn't thought about it in the context of digital products. I just want to drive home in the fastest, safest way possible and if getting there is a combination of sensors in the roads when they're being built that can communicate speeds in combination with crowd sourced information, collected by a private entity or a group of them, the marriage of those two data sets could help me live a better life. This isn't the private sector doing it outside of the role of government. It's in collaboration with.

Thanks to the digital economy, there's no scarcity. It's not like I give you a copy of the data set and therefore I cannot give it somebody else. There doesn't need to be a single owner of the data. Copies can be made available more widely and let the marketplace decide how and where the best methods of information sharing might be.

So, it is most certainly coming back. We had a national broadband map where people began telling us where and how they were not getting access to broadband and that was informing policy about gaps. So this notion of crowdsourcing and collaborating can be done at the individual or corporate levels.

One of the things that often gets left out of these conversations is the idea of consumer privacy. It's great to share, but there's so many privacy issues that get brought up. Is that an area where we need more regulation?

For sure. President Obama asked our team to look into modernizing privacy in a digital age and we called it our Internet Privacy Bill of Rights. In the early parts of 2012, we put up a framework that said, 'Look, we need to move to a baseline regulatory standard.' And we used the Fair Information Practice standards inside government ... That's a basic principle that you've got to communicate and honor the wishes of your customer. So we thought one way to do that would be to shift the world from notice and consent where ... Have you read a user agreement online?

I have not. I have clicked through a ton of 'em.

It's like how fast can I find the agree button to move on? But if you have settings panel ... So if you go to Netflix.com/settings, it reminds you of all the places you've authorized to gain access to your Netflix account. Now, that may be sensitive to youlike what movies you watchand that may not be something you want advertisers to know when they hit you up on your magazine's properties. We did put forward a framework. It didn't make it through Congress, but there are two other ways we've had influence.

One, there are existing regulations for health privacy, education privacy, financial services and teller communications and so we said, 'Okay, in the regulated domains, let's get each expert agency to begin advancing the ball.' What we're starting to see is a more voluntary alignment. So let me give you an example. In the medical records space, when your doctor or your hospital holds your data, they're regulated. If you ask for a copy of that data and you want to put in your computer or on an app on your phone, unregulated. What that app does with your data might be benign. 'Hey, I'm just going to give you information about the time you have take your medications.' Or maybe a little bit untoward, which I'm going to sell the fact that you've got this health condition to advertisers so that they can more directly influence you.

Well, we put up a model privacy notice and what does Apple do? Apple says that any developer that wants to touch HealthKit must sign the Office of the National Coordinator Model Privacy Notice, which says 'Disclosure and choice on I'm going to sell your data or not, etc.' Doesn't dictate what knobs and dials are set but it just describes what you have to do. And if you do it and lie about it, the Federal Trade Commission can bring you up on existing statutes about not lying to your customer.

So that'll work in regulated industries.

That's right.

Do you think we need something that's broader?

Our opinion was, we're no longer in the administration, that a base line FIPS [Federal Information Processing Standard] for everyone in the internet economy and that led to questions like do not track, which was sort of a manifestation of that policy in action. I do think we still need to have that consumer internet privacy bill of rights, there may be a new framework besides the way we've described it. The new FCC approach to privacy is to deregulate and shift the responsibility over to the Federal Trade Commission so voluntary enforceable codes of conduct might be the regulatory path. I don't know. But again, we're going to see flavors of different parties' prioritizing different aspects, but we do think there needs to be some regime, even if it's light touch, that advances the baseline privacy principles.

Sticking with the FCC, Ajit Pai has announced his intention to pretty much dismantle all the neutrality regulations across the board.

Cray-cray. What's he thinking?

It's not unexpected, since it's been his position for a number of years. But now he's putting that position into effect. Can you explain why consumers should care about net neutrality protections?

So we have believed, universally, in a free and open internet. Frankly, both parties have been committed to a free and open internet. And their only debate is whether a preventive regulation might retain what we live today or whether we wait for a crisis to emerge and then respond.

Now, thoughtful people can have disagreement about the threat but what I would say to the American people, and frankly to those around the world, is if you believe a core value of our internet is that you can say what you want, you can consume whatever you want and it's your choice how and in what manner you engage, then why not instantiate that in our global framework? Not so much whether the US is more or less aggressive around this but also to protect our free and open internet when we travel around the world.

So having a baseline governance framework that says 'This platform is meant to be neutral.' Not to play favorites, one against the other. Then it give us more leverage around the world to say, 'Where there are developing country-specific internet infrastructure, that that's actually in violation of this broader movement.'

I think the consumer who wants to protect that right should rise up and tell the Federal Communications Commission to stand down on the dismantling of what I think is a really critical piece of regulatory infrastructure for free and open internet.

What's the worst case scenario? How is it going to affect somebody who goes home and logs online? How could their experience change if there are no net neutrality protections?

Well, let's begin by saying, let's presume you enjoy watching your videos on Netflix but your internet provider also happens to be your cable set-top box provider and they make the judgment that the experience, the speeds, the quality of the transmission will be worse if you stick with the Netflix path because you're hurting their revenues. Maybe you even choose to threaten to get rid of your cable account because you don't need it now. You can cut the cord. If they respond in the manner in which there is no net neutrality regulation, they may subtly weaken the quality of service that you have on one application to the betterment of the one that is preferenced in their economic stack.

That's not how we want access to our internet controlled. The internet is an open resource. It's free. It's available for us to connect. App developers have built products and services and if you believe in competition, free markets, entrepreneurship, you're going to want to retain that level playing field. And not have the person who you pay to provide the pipe to your home somehow dictate in what manner you can consume that information.

I think it's safe to say that Netflix would not exist if the cable companies were able to shut it down at an early level and prevent access.

They're in a very difficult spot because once you make it and you become a much needed application, the ability to discriminate against Netflix today is very, very hard. The consumer outrage would be off the charts. The fear is not Netflix, it's the second, third, fourth iteration of it that doesn't yet have scale that might give us a better experience that we'd never know because it was squashed prematurely and treated unfairly in today's market place. That's the fear.

Look, as far as I can tell, when the Title II regulations were promulgated, it's not like the internet stocks all crumbled. It's not like we saw a massive devaluation. It's not like anyone threatened to actually cut back their capital investments to build out networks. Quite the opposite. I love the transparency of our publicly traded markets. You have to report to your shareholders facts. No fake news allowed to your shareholders. They were asked explicitly, 'Does this regulation harm your growth plans for capital investment.' And it was an unequivocal no across the board.

Yeah, Verizon is on the record saying it had no effect and they don't think it's going to hurt their earnings at all.

So here we have rules of the road that we all broadly speaking, agree with. It didn't have the negative effects we were worried about and now we want to rip off the bandaid and start over? #Fail.

Let's talk about another disconcerting topic, which we talk about a lot on this show, which is automation. The technological revolution we're living in is amazing but the truth of the matter is, we're doing more with computers and automation and it's costing jobs. Entire industries are getting restructured because of automation. How big a problem is that? What is the appetite in Washington to actually deliver solutions?

So, three points. One, it is real but it is an area that has upsides and downsides. Industries that have been automated for 50+ years, i.e., manufacturing, [like] building a car in the era of the Model T, pre-automation [versus] building a car today. We still employ tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people across the automotive supply chain. Just the scope of work changes. More creativity, design, programming, quality assurance, less rote repeatable tasks.

We can produce cars with fewer people now than we could 10 years ago.

Yeah, and what that means is it unleashed the creativity of those who might've worked in the auto industry to now move from just being a worker, one shift and one role, to potentially being an entrepreneur, to take what they've learned and apply it to build out a feature that now could be part of the global supply chain. So there is a dynamism to the economy.

My second point would be if you look at the effects, one could either stall them, i.e., weaken the pace of change, or I would argue, double down and take those very same technologies and apply them to help us find the next big opportunity in our lives. We all have passions, talents that are unique to us and if we could share them with the very same automation tools that are going to help our industries be more productive, then they might say a niche. Every day there's a job opening somewhere in the country that's been built for you. Someone involved in a corporation could say 'Enough people in that region have so many talents. I might want to open up a new company just to take advantage of the human capital.' I think if we find a way to double down on the use of those technologies to help us make work force development decisions, that is a great role of government.

Last but not least, there is a movement to decouple the social safety net from a single employer. So the more we can say you're going to have some baseline income, you're going to have some access to health insurance, you're going to have some worker's compensation that's built around your needs, whether I take two or three jobs, start my own job, join a big company, I can have the stability and safety that I need while responding to the increasingly dynamic economy that might result in me having 10, 12, 15 jobs over the course of my lifetime. We need to have a more agile, personally driven social safety net to make these pieces work.

And part of it's the way the labor force has shifted to where unemployment's at a five-year low.

That's right.

But a lot of those new jobs that have been created are 1099 jobs. They're part-time jobs, they're gig jobs. They're not W2 jobs that come with a 401K and healthcare. And there doesn't seem to be something that's replacing that gap for that new class of worker.

Yeah and bipartisan leaders, including my mentor, Senator Mark Warner, are really focusing in Washington on how to think about a social safety net in the 21st century and again, I say to the point, my sense of hopeful optimism about where we're going, that may not make the headlines. The Russian investigation and the Comey hearing took over the oxygen this week, but that very same Senator Mark Warner, who led the Democratic response, if you will, to that hearing, has been working with his Republican counterparts on building a social safety net in the 21st century and you can have both Washingtons, the popcorn, kind of sugar high on the news, but the more fundamental collaboration that we so desperately need.

Before we get to my closing questions, I want go back to that initial point, because I think it's a really important one. You've got access to a lot of the government actors and agencies that are operating below the political level that are just trying to get stuff done. People look at all the noise and all the politics and all the recrimination, can you let people know what's really going on here at that next level down?

Let's take healthcare. We know we're having a raging debate about the future of healthcare reform yet there's a program called healthcare.gov that, by the way, is still operational and one could've made the case and I think politically many on the left are making the case, that the Trump administration is actively undermining the program. It's cutting marketing budgets for healthcare.gov, it may not be investing in its capabilities. Yet, quietly, only two or so weeks ago, the Trump administration announced, 'We're going to add application programming interfaces, APIs, so third-party health insurance online brokers can directly enroll people in healthcare.gov.'

So we may lament the weakening of marketing dollars for the website healthcare.gov, but we should be celebrating the Trump administration's decision to open up APIs. So if Governor McAuliffe in Virginia wants to build McAuliffe's healthinsurancestorefront.com, in partnership with one of the online brokers, we might increase our own marketing budgets and collaborate to get more Virginians enrolled this year than ever before, even if the Trump administration weakens the website.

So our view is, in the trenches, we proceed in promoting innovation and entrepreneurship in opening up of government, even in the Trump administration, and I think that should be celebrated. We may have a debate about 'don't cut Medicaid $800 billion' and let that be a healthy, vibrant democratic debate. Be hopeful that, 'Wow, this decision actually will increase the chance that people that need that health insurance subsidy will get it.'

That's a great example. Closing questions. What technological trend concerns you the most? What keeps you up at night?

Cyber security. We have very real, nation-state actors who are dedicating incredible resources into disrupting the use of our digital assets, whether it be in our elections for our democracy, our banking systems. Frankly, the operations of almost every sector of the economy are at risk. While the private sector can respond to private sector threats, private sector response to a nation-state actor is quite different.

I am very afraid that as we proceed to aggressively digitize every sector of the economy, including regulated sectors, that our capacity to protect our networks may not keep up with the pace of the attack vectors. DARPA called this asymmetrical warfare. You only need to write a few lines of code and to convince a few people to authorize you to get access to a network and disrupt a great deal of our global infrastructure while our defense systems have to be aware of the many, many, many versions of those small attacks. We can only build but so many moats, and I'm anxious about that issue. But I'm hopeful that we'll continue to collaborate to solve it but anxious.

What does the government need to do in order to protect itself?

I think it's three-fold. One, we've got to open up more information sharing and collaboration so the tools we have to protect our government network should be as widely available to protect commercial networks without it being a burden. Two, I think we need to keep investing in research and development to promote next-generation models. As an example, even if an attacker gets into your network, tools to mitigate the impact once they're in may be as important, if not more, than just protecting them at the edge. Building up a new cyber-security insurance market that builds standards so that we know who's a better or a weaker performer in this market, could clean up the system.

And then last but not least, I think we need to have a new understanding of digital infrastructure. India has given a billion people a unique digital identity. That means they can register for a bank account, schedule a physician appointment, maybe even vote in a future election, using their unique digital identity. And if they can do it for pennies on the dollar for a billion people, certainly the rest of the world can begin to think about digital identity as core infrastructure and that we find a way to get out of the user names and passwords rut that has been a complete disaster and a weakness of almost any application.

Politically, that would be labeled a National Identity Card.

One can do it in the private sector. You can have a national identity standard that's an acceptable standard so that today, when I want to use TSA Pre or I wanna get fast tracked through airport security, the private sector company CLEAR allows me to be identified and vetted to bypass the lines. So CLEAR is not an arm of the government. CLEAR met the industry's standards that were required of the government and were participating in that market place. So I think there is a way to do this that isn't Big Brother but a competing network of privately selected products and services that are acceptable forms of identification in the digital front door. That's the hope.

On a more optimistic note, what technology do you use that inspires wonder?

I will say Twitter continues to be my application of choice because I'm able to see and witness and learn from voices I don't normally interact with in my private personal life. So the delight I get from following the Twitter feeds, capturing the zeitgeist of the moment by particular hashtags, that just gives me delight and educates me in ways that I'm very thankful for. And for a whopping zero dollar investment, right? We get this free public utility that is Twitter.

That's caused them some problems.

There is an argument to be made about Twitter as a utility because I'd be happy to pay a utility fee to get access to this unbelievably powerful resource.

You don't find the conversation too coarse or too noisy? How to manage the trolls?

It's funny, you know. You sort of witness what's going on. You figure out who you can avoid. You don't read a lot of the comments back. At the end of the day, I know the network of people whom I trust that tweet thoughtful information and they have a network and then they have a network and so you get exposed to sources of information that delight you every day. I think it's an unbelievable resource.

Other than Twitter, is there any other technology or device or service that you use that's changed your life?

Slack. At the end of the day, the internet is a communications mechanism and you think about the way we communicate in these regulated sectors. Could you imagine communicating with your doctor? Today, it's like you have to schedule an appointment eight months from now to do something and I just want to ask a question. Can't I just Slack my doc a question? We have not brought that simple, elegant communications experience, which is thriving in the commercial setting, into our interactions with teachers, our interactions with doctors, our interactions with our banks. So I think bringing Slack to the regulated sectors of the economy would be a phenomenal gift.

How can people find you online, track what you're doing, and keep up with you?

So I wrote a book called Innovative State and I keep on innovativestate.com updates about my policy proceedings and my points of view.

I also have a company, an incubator we call it, Hunch Analytics. So if you have ideas on what we should be investing in and focusing on [let us know]. We really hatch our own ideas, but we're informed by partnerships.

We also have a healthcare program called NavHealth that I'm currently putting the bulk of my time on. And we're trying to bring this open data framework to life, to help patients make better decisions at every step of their care journey.

So my hope is that if anyone who is interested in those areas, to engage among Twitter @aneeshchopra. I'm on LinkedIn, and I'm very keen to connect with as many people as have interested in this shared vision of the future.

For more Fast Forward with Dan Costa, subscribe to the podcast. On iOS, download Apple's Podcasts app, search for "Fast Forward" and subscribe. On Android, download the Stitcher Radio for Podcasts app via Google Play.

Dan Costa is the Editor-in-Chief of PCMag.com and the Senior Vice President of Content for Ziff-Davis. He oversees the editorial operations for PCMag.com, Geek.com, ExtremeTech.com as well as PCMag's network of blogs, including AppScout and SecurityWatch. Dan makes frequent appearances on local, national, and international news programs, including CNN, MSNBC, FOX, ABC, and NBC where he shares his perspective on a variety of technology trends. Dan began working at PC Magazine in 2005 as a senior editor, covering consumer electronics, blogging on Gearlog.com, and serving as... More

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Why Obama's First CTO Is 'Hopeful' About DC, Loves Twitter - PCMag

Professor talks Flathead Valley economy – Daily Inter Lake

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Economics professor Gregg Davis wasnt always interested in economics, though his interest in natural resources began at an early age. In high school, Davis got a job working in a landscape nursery and fell in love with working in nature.

I loved working with living things, he said.

A Columbus, Ohio native, Davis was the son of a stay-at-home mom and the president of a publishing company. Seeking to further explore his love for nature, Davis began looking at forestry programs when he discovered the University of Montana.

He started school in the early 70s to study to become a forester, but he only lasted a few quarters in the program before he realized that, despite his love for nature, forestry wasnt the right fit.

From that point on, he dabbled around in everything, he said. Taking courses in one program and then another, he majored in about every discipline there was.

He eventually landed on anthropology as he was finishing his bachelors degree, though an interest in economics is what brought him back the following fall to attend the graduate program.

During the Carter Administration, Davis worked for a health systems agency in Helena. Five years into the position, it became apparent that the agency was at risk of losing its funding. Davis decided that it would be a good time to pursue a doctorate degree. He was accepted to West Virginia University with a generous research apprenticeship to study mineral resource economics.

Davis worked in varying professorship positions in Illinois, Louisiana and West Virginia he even did a five-week teaching program in Hong Kong between positions. While teaching, he continued to work on his dissertation, which was on the effects of natural resource extraction. Davis found that when natural resources are exploited and leave the region they originated in, the money, too, leaves the region, and the value added occurs elsewhere.

The John Hopkins University Press picked up his dissertation, which eventually led to the publishing of a book with a forward by Wassily Leontief, one of the kingpins of input-output economics.

After spending five years in West Virginia, a friend told him about a position available at Flathead Valley Community College. Davis jumped at the opportunity to return to Montana, and moved back in 1993.

Davis continued working at FVCC before having a four-year stint in Missoula working on health-care economics for the Bureau of Business and Economic Research at the University of Montana. The position was entirely research-based, studying the affect on economics of the recently-passed Affordable Care Act.

While in Missoula, his wife and two sons stayed in the Flathead. They did the weekend warrior thing for four years before he returned home again.

Davis said its been an exciting time to teach economics, adding that economics is a topic that goes much deeper into common issues and topics than simply the looking at the numbers.

Where we are today, I certainly didnt see that 15 years ago, Davis said. I always knew tourism would be big, but health care just exploded. After the recession that is one of the fields weve continued to grow in and one of the top services we can offer [in the Flathead].

I thought wed always be the community that would have to drive to Missoula for some things, but now you can get just about everything here, he added.

Davis said that in some ways, Montana was lucky in the recession because it didnt have any of the large bank failures the rest of the country was experiencing. But it did have the real estate crash, he added, and the Flathead Valley was at the center of that crash.

Its taken the valley longer than the rest of the nation to get back to peak employment levels, he said, having only just reached the pre-recession level in 2015.

Though he said the valley is better positioned for the future since the crisis.

Compared to even 40 years ago, were transitioning from a natural resource economy to a service economy, which is good because natural resource economies are very boom and bust, he said. A service economy is not at risk as much for a recession.

At the center of the valleys service-based economy are the leading industries of health care and tourism.

He said the valley over the years has grown considerably an indicator of a healthy economy though he cautions growing too fast.

Hopefully well continue to have a steady growth, not robust growth, we dont want it to become a bubble because bubbles burst, he said.

For the Flathead Valley, however, Davis said the biggest struggle, in his opinion, isnt growing too fast, but growing in a way that destroys the valleys many natural amenities.

The greatest struggle this valley has is growth without destroying the beauty, he said.

Though Davis said its challenging to say what the future will bring, he is currently working on a developing leading index to better track the local economy. By surveying local businesses directly every six months, Davis hopes he will be able to pick up on trends faster and better predict where the economy is going.

Looking back on his career, Davis said his degrees in economics are what propelled him into every job he ever had, leading to a 32-year career as a teacher. He never had to hit the streets to find a job, he added.

When I graduated with a college degree that was kind of the Willy Wonkas golden ticket to getting a job, he said. Thats not the case for millennials today.

Though Davis advice to young workers today isnt to skip out on a higher education, but to pay attention to the trends and pick a field that will add value to the economy in the years to come.

Reporter Alyssa Gray may be reached at 758-4433 or agray@dailyinterlake.com.

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Professor talks Flathead Valley economy - Daily Inter Lake

Zim’s biggest resource for economic development is its people – Bulawayo24 News (press release) (blog)

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If we looked at countries' natural endowments as a measure of their potential for economic development, very few in Africa would stand toe to toe with Zimbabwe. For ours is one of those rare countries that boast a wide range of mineral deposits and natural potential.

Zimbabwe hosts the second largest platinum group metals as well as the largest high grade chromite resource base in the world on the Great Dyke. A notable global producer of lithium and chrysotile asbestos, the country is also possessed with significant deposits of gold and diamonds.

Add to that the millions of hectares of arable and grazing land, which has historically ensured successful mixed farming and may yet see the country's commercial agricultural sector bounce back to its former glory.

But with a literacy rate that has consistently topped all of Africa, and a massive pool of skilled human resources across all sectors, it goes without saying that Zimbabwe's biggest resource is its people. These are the potential drivers of the country's economic development, if fully harnessed and deployed towards production, innovation and service delivery. However, over the past two decades especially, we've not been spared the exodus of skilled professionals and many others who trekked off to more developed economies in response to globalisation's pull, as well as the push of national economic hardships and political insecurity. Indeed, unofficial estimates claim the country may have lost as much as 60% of its qualified professionals, while up to three million Zimbabweans are believed to have left the country.

In the UK where I live, estimates put the total population of the Zimbabwean community at 400,000 that's about four times the size of a micro-state like The Seychelles. The sheer determination of my compatriots to carve out a space for themselves in their adopted home and get their pound of flesh was the single most inspiring factor that led me to found the Zimbabwe Achievers Awards in 2011.

The awards body was to serve as both a celebration of those small, significant steps of success that Zimbabweans were making as they worked their way up the UK's socio-economic ladder, as well as inspiration and motivation towards even greater achievements. In the seven years of our existence, we've gone from celebrating small community businesses to awarding professional architects delivering multi-million dollar projects across Africa. We've recognised cutting edge tech-start-ups worth millions, freight services serving global markets, and healthcare companies servicing huge government contracts.

Collectively as the Zimbabwean diaspora, we've consistently remitted billions of dollars back home over the years and compelled the government to pay attention to our net contribution to the economy of our home country. Dollarisation has helped cut off the forex black market, ensuring that all remittances go through the official channels. However, remittances are only a fraction of the diaspora's capacity to contribute towards national socio-economic development. To illustrate the limits of remittances to achieve broader community transformation, a case study from Bangladesh is worth referring to. About 95% of all British-Bengalis trace their origins to Sylhet division in north-east Bangladesh. The region receives around US $1billion in remittances every year from expatriate Bengalis in the UK alone and should, in theory, be the wealthiest and healthiest part of the country.

However, as The Guardian reported, "Sylhet has worse literacy and school enrolment rates than all other regions, child malnutrition rates are well over the WHO emergency threshold of 15%, fertility rates are the highest in the country and expectant mothers are more likely to die during child birth in Sylhet than any other part of Bangladesh."

And the reason for this discrepancy between the high volumes of remittances and the overall state of the community is that remittances are transferred to individual households rather than to charity or community development. As the Zimbabwean diaspora, we also find ourselves locked in this phase of financial contribution and have yet to fully inhabit our economic potential by broadening our investment beyond the family to achieve wider developmental impact.

At the Zimbabwe Achievers Awards, we have spread out from our UK base to all major diaspora centres South Africa, USA, and Australia. Through this community vehicle, we've networked with both individual professional Zimbabweans doing great things in their careers as well as entrepreneurs, businesses, social enterprises and philanthropic organisations.

Throughout the networks we've built, the one pulsating passion that courses through all of us is a deep-seated desire to contribute towards Zimbabwe's socio-economic development and make a difference. We've formed partnerships with corporates based in Zimbabwe that are at the forefront of kickstarting the country's brain gain by employing experienced Diaspora professionals and bringing them back home.

This is a trend that we fully support and as we believe that Zimbabwe's critical professional skills are indispensable in the reconstruction of the country after decades of economic lethargy and the loss of much needed human resources. Innovative human resources companies need to step up and start engaging the diaspora labour market to harness key skills and bring them back home, as has happened elsewhere across the world.

In China, for instance, huge numbers of professionals who left their country to study and work, have returned. These so-called "sea turtles" have brought back desirable skills, invaluable networks of international business contacts and innovative ideas to energise the economy.

India, too, has enjoyed a significant brain gain in recent years, with scientists returning home to take advantage of the relative strength of the Indian economy and growing opportunities there. By 2013, according to the scientific journal publishers Elsevier, India had become a net importer of productive scientific talent.

But that does not just happen home governments need to communicate clearly that expatriates are wanted and needed back home. Policymakers need to understand the diaspora and incentivise its involvement in the country's development. Emotional ties alone do not cut it - governments can actively do away with obstacles and create opportunities for diasporas to engage in economic development. Governments must be on their front foot if they are to harvest real benefits from their diaspora.

Even more importantly, the role of the diaspora as investors is very much under-appreciated within our own Zimbabwean context. One of the most prominent examples of diasporas investing in their home country is that of the Chinese. Between 1985 and 2000, the Chinese diaspora accounted for 70 per cent of China's foreign direct investment, which helped fuel the country's rapid economic growth over this period.

There is need for the Zimbabwean diaspora itself, the corporate sector back home as well as the government, to work collaboratively to facilitate diaspora investment. Apart from sending money to families, many in the diaspora do not have the information they need to make decisions about investment, nor do they know what investment opportunities are available.

There is need for mutual encouragement to organise better to facilitate this investment. It is very feasible for health professionals in the UK, for instance, working with government facilitation, to invest in a state of the art hospital that can provide world class medical care and save the country millions in dollars that are spent towards health tourism to India, South Africa, Singapore and other popular destinations.

Likewise, a lot of the infrastructural projects in Zimbabwe can also harness the investment and participation of diaspora-based engineers, many of whom are members of diaspora chapters of the Zimbabwe Institute of Engineers. Many other types of diaspora investment, such as collective investment in community projects through hometown associations, can be fully explored and practical steps towards facilitating them taken.

Clearly, there is a lot of unexplored potential in the Zimbabwean diaspora, and a strong relationship needs to be fostered between the diaspora and the government as well as the corporate and charity/philanthropic sectors. To this end, ZAA International will be hosting a Zimbabwe Economy Forum in Dubai from 21-24 September this year to explore these and other key issues concerning our national economy.

One of the projects I hope to launch at the forum together with partners like Vavaki Architects is a holiday housing complex in the great Victoria Falls that Zimbabweans in the diaspora can buy into. This falls firmly within the greater vision to see a Victoria Falls that will be a leisure and tourist hub of the region, complete with state of the art facilities to complement its world heritage natural offering.

Conrad is Founder of Zimbabwe Achievers Awards and can be contacted via Conrad@cmgmedia.co.uk

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Daily Report: Automation’s Effect on Developing Tech Economies – New York Times

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Photo Sudhakar Choudhari was recently laid off from his job at Tech Mahindra. Credit Atul Loke for The New York Times

That many workers in the United States will eventually be replaced by technology seems inevitable. The question is when not if it will happen. For the workers counterparts in India, the concerns are similar.

Over the last decade or so, Indian outsourcing companies have managed to lure a number of jobs out of the United States, leading to a growing tech middle class in their home country.

Now those Indian workers are worried that automation artificial intelligence, in particular will replace them. As Nida Najar reports, processes that can now be automated may lead the fast-growing Indian information technology industry to shed jobs in the coming years.

So far, the impact is not clear. But a 2015 study released by the National Association of Software and Services Companies, the Indian technology industry trade group known as Nasscom, and McKinsey India found that 50 to 70 percent of workers skills would be irrelevant by 2020, Nida writes.

The hope is that new jobs could be created by that automation. Just like in the United States.

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Daily Report: Automation's Effect on Developing Tech Economies - New York Times

Infosys says it has released 11000 jobs due to automation – YourStory.com

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In its 36th annual general meeting held in Bengaluruon Saturday, IT giant Infosys admitted to releasing 11,000 jobs due to automation. According to Chairman R. Seshasayee, the revenue per full-time employee (FTE) increased by 1.2 percent as a result of automation, utilisation and productivity improvements.

[RELATED READ:The future of work: why all bets are on freelancing and robotics]

The rapid digitisation of everything around us is disrupting entire industries in an irreversible and profound way. As this revolution accelerates, the opportunity for us is two-fold, stated Seshasayee, the Economic Times reported.

The company has been actively encouraging the idea of bringing automation and software-led efficiencies to the core of their technological services for a while now. This, they said, would help them utilise the new technologies in order to innovate better, which in turn, would allow them to assist their clients through their own digital transformations.

Infosys annual report cited that the release of the 11,000 jobs on account of automation is a clear indication of the crucial role that software is to play in the business model of the second-largest IT company in India.

The meeting, which took place at Christ College, was an attempt by the company to clear up all the speculations that the media and others have conjured up, in the past few months. Another key issue that the company addressed was the accusations for wide compensation gap between its top management executives and employees. Recognising the fact that the administration could have worked more efficiently to reduce the gap, the company hoped to assure the masses by putting forth their plan of a restructured compensation package, which would include stock-based rewards.

Additionally, the company also announced their decision to undertake three key transformations for a better future for both itself and its clients. These include business transformation, cultural transformation and transition to independent board.

The first is business transformation from a traditional IT services to an innovation-led software-plus services company, which is formidable enough; second the cultural transformation that comes along when you induct global leadership talent; and third, the abrupt transition from the promoter-led Board to an independent Board, Seshasayee was quoted saying, at the meeting.

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Infosys says it has released 11000 jobs due to automation - YourStory.com

What jobs will still be around in 20 years? Read this to prepare your future – The Guardian

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According to a 2013 report from Oxford academics, 47% of workers in America have jobs at high risk of potential automation. Photograph: Mona Chalabi

The robots are coming, the robots are coming!

Regular reports warn us that an automation apocalypse is nigh. In January, a McKinsey & Company study found that about 30% of tasks in 60% of occupations could be computerized and last year, the Bank of Englands chief economist said that 80m US and 15m UK jobs might be taken over by robots.

Of course, not all jobs are created equally. In 2013, a highly cited study by Oxford University academics called The Future of Employment examined 702 common occupations and found that some jobs telemarketers, tax preparers and sports referees are at more risk than others including recreational psychologists, dentists and physicians.

In the past, reports of the death of human jobs have often been greatly exaggerated, and technology has created a lot more jobs than it has wiped out. Its called the Luddite Fallacy, in reference to the 19th century group of textile workers who smashed the new weaving machinery that made their skills redundant. Further, in the last 60 years automation has only eliminated one occupation: elevator operators.

While there have been optimistic predictions that new technology would increase prosperity and lower drudgery, very few of us are working the 15-hour work week that, in 1930, the economist John Maynard Keynes predicted would be the norm for his grandkids. If anything, were working 15-hour days.

Todays technological revolution is an entirely different beast from the industrial revolution. The pace of change is exponentially faster and far wider in scope. As Stanford University academic Jerry Kaplan writes in Humans Need Not Apply: today, automation is blind to the color of your collar. It doesnt matter whether youre a factory worker, a financial advisor or a professional flute-player: automation is coming for you.

Before we get too deep into doom and gloom, its worth stressing that automation isnt synonymous with job losses. Speaking to me over the phone, Frey was quick to point out that his work doesnt make any explicit predictions such as 47% of US jobs will disappear. It simply says that these jobs are exposed to automation.

In other words, the jobs themselves wont entirely vanish; rather, they will be redefined. Of course, as Frey concedes, from the perspective of the worker there is not much of a difference between work disappearing and being radically redefined. Its likely theyll lack the new skillsets required for the role and be out of a job anyway.

H&R Block, one of Americas largest tax preparation providers, is now using Watson, IBMs AI platform

Professor Richard Susskind, author of The Future of the Professions and Tomorrows Lawyers, echoes this distinction. What youre going to see for a lot of jobs is a churn of different tasks, he explains. So a lawyer today doesnt develop systems that offer advice, but the lawyer of 2025 will. Theyll still be called lawyers but theyll be doing different things.

So which professions are at greatest risk?

Martin Ford, futurist and author of Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future, explains the jobs that are most at risk are those which are on some level routine, repetitive and predictable.

Telemarketing, for example, which is highly routine, has a 99% probability of automation according to The Future of Employment report; you may have already noticed an increase in irritating robocalls. Tax preparation, which involves systematically processing large amounts of predictable data, also faces a 99% chance of being automated. Indeed, technology has already started doing our taxes: H&R Block, one of Americas largest tax preparation providers, is now using Watson, IBMs artificial intelligence platform.

Robots will also take over the more repetitive tasks in professions such as law, with paralegals and legal assistants facing a 94% probability of having their jobs computerized. According to a recent report by Deloitte, more than 100,000 jobs in the legal sector have a high chance of being automated in the next 20 years.

Fast food cooks also face an 81% probability of having their jobs replaced by robots like Flippy, an AI-powered kitchen assistant which is already flipping burgers in a number of CaliBurger restaurants.

Ford, the futurist, classifies resilient jobs in three areas.

The first is jobs that involve genuine creativity, such as being an artist, being a scientist, developing a new business strategy. Ford notes: For now, humans are still best at creativity but theres a caveat there. I cant guarantee you that in 20 years a computer wont be the most creative entity on the planet. There are already computers that can paint original works of art. So, in 20 years who knows how far its going to go?

The second area is occupations that involve building complex relationships with people: nurses, for example, or a business role that requires you to build close relationships with clients.

The third area is jobs that are highly unpredictable for example, if youre a plumber who is called out to emergencies in different locations.

You can see these parameters at play in the jobs The Future of Employment identifies as least at risk of automation, which include recreational therapists, first-line supervisors of mechanics, installers, repairers, occupational therapists and healthcare social workers.

While being in a creative or people-focused industry may keep your job safe for the next 10 years or so, its very hard to predict what will happen 20 years into the future. Indeed, Susskind stresses that we should be wary of downplaying just how much computers might change the working world.

She says she believes that the 2020s are going to be a decade not of unemployment, but of redeployment. Beyond that, however, the picture is far less clear: I dont think anyone can do long-term career planning with any confidence. As Susskind notes, we make assumptions about the indispensability of human beings, but machines are already doing things we thought only humans might be able to. Theyre composing original music, for example, and beating professional players at complex board games with creative moves.

Theyre even helping us with our relationships with God. While the clergy only has a 0.81% probability of automation, according to data from The Future of Jobs, Susskind believes even algorithms might one day replace the ordained. As he notes, there are already apps like Confession which offer drop-down menus for tracking sin.

Machines are already doing things we thought only humans might be able to: composing original music, for example

While weve been doing a lot of robot-bashing, it should be noted that automation isnt the only phenomenon having an impact on the job market. Saadia Zahidi, head of the education, gender and work system initiative at the World Economic Forum (WEF), says that we shouldnt forget that there are other drivers of change.

A 2016 WEF report identified such drivers as climate change, the rise of the middle class in many emerging markets, aging populations in certain parts of Europe and East Asia, and the changing aspirations of women as factors that will have significant impacts on jobs. Its really the coming together of these various drivers of change that then leads to disruptions in the labor market, Zahidi notes.

The report warns that were going to see significant ramifications from automation very soon. Zahidi explains: The next three years will be a period of flux and a period of relatively higher losses than gains. This is not meant to be alarmist in the sense that there will be heavy job losses. But if we do nothing then this will be where we end up.

Automation may also exacerbate gender inequality, Zahidi says. Women dont make up a large proportion of people who are going into science, technology, engineering and math (Stem) and IT fields, which are likely to be the areas in which jobs will grow. On the other hand, Zahidi notes, there do tend to be more women in care-related professions, such as healthcare and education, which are at a lower risk of automation.

In the long run, women may actually end up faring better from technological change. A recent PricewaterhouseCoopers report found that a higher proportion of male than female jobs are at risk of automation, especially those of men with lower levels of education.

Justin Tobin, founder of the innovation consultancy DDG, says he believes: More and more independent thinkers are realizing that when being an employee is the equivalent to putting all your money into one stock a better strategy is to diversify your portfolio. So youre seeing a lot more people looking to diversify their career.

Faith Popcorn, a futurist, echoes the idea that we will all have to become as agile as possible and have many forms of talent and work that you can provide the economy.

In the future, she says, well all have seven or eight jobs, with the average adult working for a number of companies simultaneously rather than working for one big corporation.

Were in the midst of this huge sweeping change that is going to impact all levels of society, Popcorn warns.

Predicting the future is Popcorns livelihood, and shes made herself a bit of a legend over the years doing so, but even she seems a little unsettled by the pace of change today. As she tells me with a world-weary sigh, it just makes you want to have some more tequila.

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What jobs will still be around in 20 years? Read this to prepare your future - The Guardian

Industrial Automation Market is expected to reach USD 15.52 billion by 2023 – PR Newswire (press release)

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The industrial automation market for oil & gas is expected to reach USD 15.52 billion by 2023, at a CAGR of 3.2% between 2017 and 2023.

Key driving factors for the growth of the industrial automation market for oil & gas are the need for optimum and effective exploration of aging reservoirs and the Internet of Things adding value to the industrial automation for the oil & gas industry.

DCS is expected to hold a major share of the industrial automation market for oil & gas during the forecast period.

Distributed control system (DCS) is expected to hold a major share of the market by 2023.

The distributed control system controls various components that are distributed in the overall system of industrial automation for oil & gas, enabling the maintenance of digital communication between various components such as distributed controllers, workstations, and other computing elements.

The DCS controls processes such as oil & gas refineries, pipeline transport, and extraction in the oil & gas industry.

Field instruments market expected to hold the largest size of the industrial automation market for oil & gas

The field instruments market is expected to hold the largest size of the industrial automation market for oil & gas in 2017.

Field instruments comprise three types of transmitterspressure, temperature, and flow, which are used for various processes involved in instrumentation.

Pressure transmitters are extensively used in the oil and gas sector for the measurement of flow, level, pressure, density, and viscosity, among which flow measurement is the most common application area.

"The industrial automation market for oil & gas is expected to exhibit significant growth potential between 2017 and 2023" The industrial automation market for oil & gas is expected to reach USD 15.52 billion by 2023, at a CAGR of 3.2% between 2017 and 2023. Key driving factors for the growth of the industrial automation market for oil & gas are the need for optimum and effective exploration of aging reservoirs and the Internet of Things adding value to the industrial automation for the oil & gas industry. However, the instability of the oil & gas market in Middle Eastern countries, increasing shift toward the adoption of renewable energy sources, and declining and fluctuating oil and gas prices are considered to be major restraints for the industrial automation market for oil & gas.

"DCS is expected to hold a major share of the industrial automation market for oil & gas during the forecast period." Distributed control system (DCS) is expected to hold a major share of the market by 2023. The distributed control system controls various components that are distributed in the overall system of industrial automation for oil & gas, enabling the maintenance of digital communication between various components such as distributed controllers, workstations, and other computing elements. The DCS controls processes such as oil & gas refineries, pipeline transport, and extraction in the oil & gas industry.

"Field instruments market expected to hold the largest size of the industrial automation market for oil & gas" The field instruments market is expected to hold the largest size of the industrial automation market for oil & gas in 2017. Field instruments comprise three types of transmitterspressure, temperature, and flow, which are used for various processes involved in instrumentation. Pressure transmitters are extensively used in the oil and gas sector for the measurement of flow, level, pressure, density, and viscosity, among which flow measurement is the most common application area.

"The industrial automation market for oil & gas in APAC expected to grow at the highest rate during the forecast period" The industrial automation market for oil & gas in APAC is expected to grow at the highest rate between 2017 and 2023. The demand for industrial automation for oil & gas is very high in APAC owing to the increase in the number of refinery plants and other related plants in the oil & gas industry. The implementation of automation is increasing in APAC because of the rising demand for high-quality products along with increased production rates. It also helps reduce labor costs and human interference.

Breakdown of the profiles of primary participants for the report has been given below:

By Company Type: Tier 1 = 49%, Tier 2 = 30%, and Tier 3 = 21% By Designation: C-Level Executives = 58%, Directors = 28%, and Others = 14% By Region: The Americas = 35%, Europe = 19%, APAC = 30%, and the Middle East and Africa = 16%

The key players in the industrial automation market for oil & gas include ABB (Switzerland), Emerson Electric Co. (US), Honeywell International Inc. (US), Schneider Electric SE (France), Siemens AG (Germany), Endress+Hauser AG (Switzerland), General Electric Co. (US), Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (Japan), Rockwell Automation Inc. (US), and Yokogawa Electric Corporation (Japan).

Research Coverage The research report analyzes the industrial automation market for oil & gas based on solution, instrument, and geography. The market has been segmented on the basis of solution into supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA), programmable logic controller (PLC), humanmachine interface (HMI), distributed control systems (DCS), safety automation, advanced process control (APC), and manufacturing execution system (MES). On the basis of instruments, the industrial automation market for oil & gas has been classified into field instruments, control valves, leakage detection system, and flow computer. The report covers the market segmented on the basis of 4 major regions: the Americas, Europe, APAC, and the Middle East and Africa.

Key Benefits of Buying the Report: Illustrative segmentation, analysis, and forecast for the market based on solution, instrument, and geography have been conducted to give an overall view of the industrial automation market for oil & gas. The value chain analysis has been utilized to provide an in-depth insight into the industrial automation market for oil & gas. Major drivers, restraints, opportunities, and challenges for the industrial automation market for oil & gas have been detailed in this report. The report includes a detailed competitive landscape along with key players and their revenue. Read the full report: http://www.reportlinker.com/p04960853/Industrial-Automation-Market-for-Oil-Gas-by-Solution-Instruments-and-Geography-Global-Forecast-to.html

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Industrial Automation Market is expected to reach USD 15.52 billion by 2023 - PR Newswire (press release)

Former Apple Engineer Opens up About the Future of Factory Automation – iDrop News

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June 26, 2017 2:03 PM PDT

Home / News / Former Apple Engineer Opens up About the Future of Factory Automation

Despite the awe-inspiring rate at which the technology and consumer electronics industries have grown and adapted over the years, the vast majority of products (including our iPhones and iPads) are still being built almost entirely by hand, according to one former Apple product design engineer, who recently opened up about her time working with the company in an exclusive interview. Moreover, she shared her personal experiences and applied them to how modern manufacturing and artificial intelligence-based machine learning will play a pivotal role in revolutionizing factories around the world.

Anna-Katrnia Shedletsky, who during her tenure at Apple played an integral role in the development of products like the original Apple Watch, several generations of iPod, and more, indicated in her interview with Cultofmacs Leander Kahney how she believes that AI-based machine learning will shortly begin shaking up the manufacturing sector as we know it. She argues that while the majority of electronic devices are still built by hand on Far East assembly lines, the days of assembly by hand are essentially numbered due to what she calls the impending sea of change wrought by robotics and machine learning.

Shedletsky argued that companies like Apple, in particular, would ultimately stand to benefit the most by modernizing their manufacturing processes. For example, by incorporating robotics and machine learning algorithms, she waged the case that companies like Apple can greatly improve the efficacy, accuracy, and consistency with which their new products are built, from start to finish.

Despite her optimistic overtures of a fully automated manufacturing future, however, Shedletsky acknowledge there are currently a myriad of obstacles standing in the way of that reality. Most notably, she outlined a number of issues concerning the advancement of products from prototype to production units, and how a big part of working out the kinks in a product is actually sampling and experimenting with it by hand before launching into large scale production. By blending certain aspects of software and hardware integration, however, current and future product design engineers will one day be able to virtually disassemble any problematic units while advanced machine learning can dichotomously be used in the process of manufacturing to help learn errors so they dont repeat themselves.

Of course, even when AI and machine learning begin taking over assembly lines, Shedletsky notes there will still be other challenges for the field of manufacturing, as a whole, to overcome. These include how to manage larger factories such as those currently in operation by Foxconn Apples primary iPhone assembly partner. She noted that, at present, Foxconn is running like a small city, which is effectively built around the factory and its vast workforce, and specifically how bringing automation to the table might disrupt processes currently in place.

Still, while challenges may persist, Shedletsky remains optimistic that the benefits of automation significantly outweigh the hurdles standing in its way.

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Former Apple Engineer Opens up About the Future of Factory Automation - iDrop News

Letter: Automation rapidly changing 21st century workplace – INFORUM

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President Trump promised to bring back the coal industry. Coal mining is now a highly-automated industry requiring far fewer miners than in decades past. However, Trump never discusses the fact that cheap abundant natural gas is replacing coal along with renewable sources. Modern combined-cycle natural gas plants are nearly twice as efficient as our older single-cycle coal power plants.

Most of our coal plants are 40 to 50 years old and are at the end of their life cycles. Wall Street banks refuse to finance new coal plants while the costs of renewable sources and natural gas power plants are replacing coal plants everywhere. The Sierra Club tracks coal plants saying over 200 coal plants have been shut down in the last decade with hundreds more coal plant closings on the way in coming years. The coal industry analysts say coal is on a bleak permanent decline that will never be reversed because natural gas, solar and wind turbines are more cost effective period.

The Trump cult also blames undocumented immigrants and global trade agreements for the decline of the manufacturing labor force in America. Most economists will tell you immigrants and global trade agreements make our country stronger.

Trump also promised to bring back labor intensive manufacturing jobs in the Rustbelt states. At least 85 percent or more of the decline of manufacturing jobs in the industrial Midwest over the last 30 years have been because of automation in the workplace.

Trump has promised to revive the steel industry as well. Modern steel minimills are now highly automated but produce large amounts of recycled steel with only a few highly-skilled workers. Most modern manufacturing plants only employ about one-fifth the number of workers they did 30 years ago. A General Motors plant that employed 25,000 workers in 1980 would today only employs about 5,000 workers to produce the same number of cars. Most industrial jobs require a worker to have excellent computer skills as a precondition of employment.

Automation will likely displace at least five million more workers by 2020. How will the cult of Trump compete against industrial robots and machine tools controlled by artificial intelligence in the 21st-century workplace?

We need a Medicare public option that makes health care more portable for workers with vastly improved vocational and technical retraining programs that help displaced workers find the high-tech jobs that exist. We must learn to adapt to automation in the information technology economy of the future. The Trump cult wants to go back to the industrial age of the 20th century that is the road to nowhere in the automated computer information age of the 21st century.

Stoutenburg lives in Moorhead.

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Letter: Automation rapidly changing 21st century workplace - INFORUM

Jubilant crowds, union members gather at Buffalo’s Juneteenth celebration – People’s World

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Photo courtesy of Push Green.

BUFFALO, NY Juneteenth, the mid-June holiday that commemorates the day in 1865 on which enslaved people of African descent in Galveston, Texas learned they had been freed by the Emancipation Proclamation two years earlier, has been growing in popularity. Buffalo, New York now hosts the third largest Juneteenth Festival in the nation, and the largest on the eastern seaboard. Filling Martin Luther King Park June 17 with a procession of music, drumming, and dance, the 2017 celebrations were jubilant. The smell of smoked foods swirled through the park as stands displayed traditional African-American clothing and handicrafts alongside various community organizations.

The holidays history is a bittersweet one. Led by the laboring base of the Southern economy, the revolution that won the Civil War established a Reconstruction of the South. Historian Eric Foner has called the Reconstruction period Americas unfinished revolution, because it was cut short with a counter-revolution: Jim Crow.

The system of convict leasing, which Pulitzer-Prize winning author and journalist Douglas Blackmon calls slavery by another name, also persisted into the twentieth century; todays version of subminimum-wage labor in prisons is its direct descendant.

In Buffalo, the celebration and parade included many labor groups including: New York State Nurses Association; Communications Workers of America Local 1168, the Buffalo Teachers Federation; the United Auto Workers Local 774, 897, and Region 9; and AFSCME D.C. 35 .

Also participating in the festival were the Young Black Democrats of Western New York, and open Buffalo, an organization which helps coordinate organizations and coalitions struggling for a more democratic Buffalo, including People United for Fair Housing (PUSH), Coalition for Economic Justice (CEJ), Prisoners Are People Too, Erie County Restorative Justice Coalition, VOICE-Buffalo, and others. Leaders of Community Voices Heard (CVH) were also represented in the CPUSA contingent.

Stacy Fernandez of the Buffalo News also noted an increased police presence at the festival this year.

The Young Black Democrats of WNY alerted festival participants of the need to vote for Bernie Tolbert for Erie County Sheriff. Tolbert is running to replace Timothy B. Howard. Under Howards watch, many people have reportedly died in jail while waiting for trial, the use of devices known as Stingrays have been used to tap peoples cell phones, and Howard himself spoke at a Trump rally with people holding the Confederate flag behind him.

The Community Voices Heard members, together with members of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), highlighted another piece of slaverys legacy: forced labor in the Work Exchange Program (WEP).

Put into place by the Clinton administration in 1996, WEP required people on public assistance to work without pay. Public workers received rewards for connecting people to poverty wage jobs at places like McDonalds, and after the six month period of working for free, public benefits recipients were frequently fired. Disproportionately affecting racially and nationally oppressed people, the work-for-free program resulted in a spike in homelessness in New York City, and was finally ended by a CVH-led campaign and a progressive Mayor, City Council, and Human Resources Commissioner at the end of 2016. However, a similar program called WeCare persists, and what appears to be a lack of communication between HRA and the Department of Homeless Services (DHS) has resulted in outcomes similar to those that followed WEP.

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Jubilant crowds, union members gather at Buffalo's Juneteenth celebration - People's World

Volte-Face Over Georgian Constitutional Amendments Triggers Uproar – RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty

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In the best soap-opera tradition, the ongoing process of constitutional reform in Georgia has yielded drama aplenty over the past week.

Just days after the Council of Europes Venice Commission of legal experts made public its final comments on the proposed draft amendments, the 115 lawmakers from the ruling Georgian Dream party unanimously approved a slightly different text in first and second readings at an emergency parliament session on June 22 and 23, ignoring appeals by President Giorgi Margvelashvili and NGOs to resume discussion of the draft with the aim of achieving the widest possible consensus.

The last-minute change, which triggered outraged protests from NGOs and opposition parties, reflected the decision taken by Georgian Dream on June 19 behind closed doors to postpone from 2020 until 2024 the proposed transition from the current mixed majoritarian-proportional electoral system to a fully proportional one. Observers attribute that volte-face to a rift within Georgian Dream, with a younger generation amenable to change being effectively held hostage by older majoritarian lawmakers averse to risking the loss of their mandates. One majoritarian, Kakha Okriashvili, is on record as telling the news portal InterpressNews on June 15 that the mixed system is better for Georgia and should not be replaced by a fully proportional system.

Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili and parliament speaker Irakli Kobakhidze, the constitutional lawyer who chaired the state commission tasked with drafting the amendments, have both hailed the parliament vote, which the three opposition parliament factions all boycotted, as a step forward in Georgias democratic development.

By contrast, parliamentary and extraparliamentary opposition parties alike have denounced what they perceive as an attempt to codify changes aimed solely at facilitating the preservation indefinitely of Georgian Dreams constitutional majority. The Alliance of Patriots, which has six mandates in the 150-member parliament, and the extraparliamentary Free Georgia party have threatened to launch street protests, the news portal Caucasian Knot reported.

The planned transition from the current mixed majoritarian-proportional system, in which 73 of the 150 lawmakers are elected from single-mandate constituencies and the remaining 77 under the proportional system, to a fully proportional system is one of the two issues that proved most contentious during the four-month discussion of the proposed amendments that got under way in January. The second is the role of the president, including as head of the National Security Council, and the planned abolition of direct presidential elections.

Those two provisions consequently figured prominently in both the preliminary comments and the more detailed and critical subsequent evaluation of the draft amendments handed down by the Venice Commission. With regard to the electoral system, the Venice Commission expressed overall approval of the planned transition to a proportional system, noting that a mixed system tends to lead to the governing party receiving an overwhelming parliamentary majority.

At the same time, it strongly criticized three related provisions that its experts perceived as deviating from the principles of fair representation and equality of the vote. Those were the imposition of a ban on electoral blocs, together with the preservation of the existing 5 percent threshold to qualify for parliamentary representation, with the party that polled the largest number of votes being granted an additional bonus in the form of those mandates that remain unallocated as a result of votes cast for parties that fail to surmount the 5 percent hurdle. In the five parliamentary ballots between 1999 and 2016, an average of 12.85 percent of votes were cast for parties that failed to qualify for representation; in 2016, the figure was 19.82 percent.

The Venice Commission said that, taken together, those three mechanisms limit the effects of the proportional system to the detriment of smaller parties and pluralism, and deviate from the principles of fair representation and electoral equality to a larger extent than seems justified by the need to ensure stability. It further questioned whether the winner-take-all model for distributing unallocated mandates serves to guarantee political pluralism.

The commission therefore strongly recommended considering other options that would ensure a more equitable division of parliament mandates. Those alternatives included lowering the threshold for representation to 2-3 percent and/or establishing a maximum upper limit for the number of wasted votes allocated to the winning party so that the latter has a workable, but not an overwhelming, parliamentary majority.

Alternatively, the commission suggested, the constitution could provide that 9/10 of the parliament seats (i.e. 135 out of 150) shall be distributed to the parties that have received more than 5 percent of the votes according to the principles of proportional representation, while the remaining 15 seats will be given to the winning party (or the winning party and the second party) as premium.

With regard to the election of the president, the Venice Commission expressed approval of the decision to delay the transition from a direct to an indirect ballot from 2018 until 2023. But it also advocated checks and balances to ensure that a ruling party with a large parliamentary majority would not automatically be in a position to engineer the election as president of its preferred candidate, thereby undermining the role of the president as an impartial arbiter.

In the event, Georgian Dream tweaked the draft amendments on June 21 to lower the barrier for representation under the proportional system in the 2020 parliamentary election to 3 percent. In line with the Venice Commission recommendations, it agreed on the maximum number of additional parliament mandates the winning party will receive as a result of votes cast for parties that do not qualify for representation. Indirect presidential elections will require a qualified majority in an open vote in the first round. In addition, candidates for the Supreme Justice Council and the Constitutional Court, and for the post of public defender, must receive three-fifths of the vote in parliament.

Sixteen opposition parties from across the political spectrum, including the former ruling United National Movement and European Georgia, which split from it earlier this year, have nonetheless addressed a statement to the Council of Europe secretary-general, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), the Venice Commission, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and foreign ambassadors in Tbilisi calling for a halt to parliamentary discussions of the draft (which the three parliamentary opposition parties boycotted last week) and the submission of a revised draft to the Venice Commission, all of whose recommendations would then be incorporated into the final version. They characterized the amended constitution unilaterally endorsed by Georgian Dream as antidemocratic, adding that it does not reflect the will of the Georgian people, and cannot be considered a legitimate document.

The 16 signatories warned that failure to reopen the discussion and amend the draft could undermine democratization and long-term political stability.

Meanwhile, 16 of the 23 NGOs aligned in the Coalition for a European Georgia launched a parallel appeal to suspend discussion of the proposed amendments in order to enable foreign experts to advise on those provisions, such as the planned abolition of the National Security Council hitherto chaired by the president, that directly affect the countrys defense capacity.

Individual opposition parties and political figures have been even more outspoken in their criticism. European Georgia, which has collected 150,000 signatures in support of its demand that the proposed constitutional amendments be submitted to a nationwide referendum, branded the document approved by Georgian Dreams parliament faction as not the constitution of Georgia, but that of constitution of Georgian Dream and [its founder, billionaire] Bidzina Ivanishvili.

(European Georgia split earlier this year from the former ruling United National Movement, which in 2010 similarly pushed through parliament, disregarding opposition criticism and without the monthlong public debate Georgian Dream conducted, constitutional amendments intended to enable then-President Mikheil Saakashvili to remain in power as prime minister after the end of his second presidential term.)

Opposition claims that the text of the amendments voted on by the Georgian Dream parliament faction last week was completely different from that approved by the Venice Commission appear to be a classic example of Georgian hyperbole. Similarly open to question is the opposition parties claim that during the discussion of the proposed changes by the state constitutional commission, not a single proposal by the president, the public defender, or opposition parties was taken into consideration.

That assertion is at odds with parliament first deputy speaker Tamar Chugoshvilis statement that 80 percent of such proposals were taken into account. It also ignores the fact that President Margvelashvili and his staff chose to boycott the work of the commission from the outset, a decision that the Venice Commission deemed regrettable.

Among the concessions Georgian Dream made in the course of the discussion were the postponement from 2018 to 2023 of the transition from direct to indirect presidential elections and that beginning in 2023 the president should be elected not by the 150 lawmakers as initially envisaged but by an electoral college that would also include representatives from all of Georgias regions, including the breakaway republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Under the existing constitution, the proposed constitutional amendments will be submitted for a third and final reading at the start of the autumn parliamentary session. The hypothetical possibility thus exists for further revisions to be made. Whether the widest possible consensus, which both the Venice Commission and President Margvelashvili have called for, is realistic is questionable, however, in light of the intense animosity that exists between Georgian Dream and the United National Movement on the one hand, and between Margvelashvili and his team and parliament speaker Kobakhidze on the other.

Minister for Internally Displaced Persons Sozar Subari, who in 2009 publicly excoriated then-President Saakashvili for turning a blind eye to corruption and police brutality, summed up the perception that the United National Movement and its offshoot European Georgia systematically challenge and criticize every single statement by Georgian Dream, regardless of its merits.

Reaching consensus with the United National Movement is impossible...If we announced that tomorrow we shall win back [the breakaway republic of] Abkhazia, they would stand up and walk out of parliament [saying] You shouldnt do that, InterpressNews quoted Subari as saying on June 22.

As for the well-documented hostility between Margvelashvili and Kobakhidze, the two crossed swords yet again last week: When Kobakhidze invited the president to engage in a live televised studio debate about the merits of the proposed constitutional changes, Margvelashvili countered by proposing that a debate be held in the presidential palace in the presence of representatives of all political parties and NGOs, an audience that would be largely on his side. Kobakhidze rejected that format, complaining that the presidents role with regard to amending the constitution has been destructive from start to finish. Margvelashvili for his part complained that the only substantive constitutional changes are directed against the president.

Venice Commission President Gianni Buquicchio is scheduled to travel to Georgia later this week, Caucasus Press reported on June 23, quoting Buquicchios spokesperson. Whom he intends to meet with is not clear. Kobakhidzes credibility may have been damaged by the postponement of the transition to a fully proportional system, given his constant assurances, which the Venice Commission noted with satisfaction, that the Georgian authorities would not adopt any proposed amendment that the commission assessed negatively.

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Volte-Face Over Georgian Constitutional Amendments Triggers Uproar - RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty

Torture must end – The Express Tribune

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The effectiveness of torture to obtain information is a myth that needs to be refuted

The writer is Ambassador of the European Union to Pakistan

Today, on the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, I would like to reiterate the strong commitment of the European Union against the use of torture under any circumstances and remember the sufferance of the victims and survivors of torture throughout the world, no matter whether innocent or guilty of a crime.

Thirty years ago, on this day, the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment came into effect. Ratified by a large majority of the world countries (159 in total), the Convention prohibits the use of torture under any circumstances.

Stopping torture is one of the priorities of the European Unions foreign policy. The absolute ban on torture and ill-treatment enshrined in core United Nations human rights conventions is reflected in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, which states that No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

As an absolute right in the international human rights framework, the freedom from torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment cannot be limited for any reason. No circumstance justifies a qualification or limitation of absolute rights. No state of emergency is relevant to suspend or restrict them.

The European Union is concerned about the fact that in recent years, this absolute requirement of freedom of torture and the correspondent obligation of states to ensure this freedom has changed drastically around the world.

The war on terror that was declared after 9/11 and the attacks by radicalised individuals and groups contributed greatly to this change of mindset. Today, many people believe that freedom of torture is no longer a key guarantee for every citizen in a democratic state. More and more torture is said to be justified under certain circumstances such as national security or the fight against terrorism. Torture is increasingly considered by some state actors as legitimate interrogation technique for suspects of crimes while it should remain a despicable act considered as a crime under international law.

Torture is particularly destructive for the victims, but is also degrading for the ones who perpetrate it and harmful for the whole society. This is why it deserves to be eliminated globally.

In addition, the effectiveness of torture to obtain information is a myth that needs to be refuted. In this matter, it is even blatantly inefficient: not only is the information obtained widely unreliable, but is also extremely difficult, if not impossible, to verify. In many cases, the use of torture to obtain confessions is even more useless since it generally leads to false confessions.

Beyond the sole victims, torture also damages its perpetrators: if agents of a state carry on torture acts, it will damage the justice system as a whole, allowing it to work on the basis of unreliable forced confessions. Authorities carrying on torture will also see their moral authority damaged, giving legitimacy to its opponents.

The use of torture by the state institutions strengthens indeed the insurgencies. It gives voice to their claim of an unfair, immoral and inhumane justice system, consequently fuelling and giving credit to their propaganda. Torture has the capacity to turn the population against the state, depriving it of the popular support it needs to fight terrorism and insurgency, widening the recruiting grounds of militants. Torture is thus counterproductive. It is a failure of the authorities towards their own population: states should protect, not oppress, not torture.

Unfortunately still in a number of countries an improvement of the situation is mostly obstructed by a general climate of impunity. The lack of accountability of the state institutions pushes further away the possibility to punish them. Eradicating impunity after torture allegations will also require a strong and independent judiciary able to hold the other institutions accountable after a fair inquiry.

Putting an end to torture is not only the responsibility of the judiciary, it is the matter of everyone civil society, media and families of the victims as well as the rest of the population to make people aware of the existence of such deeds. It should also be remembered that the elimination of torture, when carried out, should never be taken for granted. A backsliding is always possible, annihilating decades of efforts.

The European Union has from its beginning pledged against the use of torture, and for the abolition of torture around the world. It has encouraged the adoption of legal guarantees, the reporting of torture acts, the judicial proceedings against perpetrators, but also the rehabilitation of victims. The recent review by the United Nations Committee Against Torture has shown that a lot of work remains to be done. The EU will continue to stand by those courageous individuals and institutions fighting to end torture around the world.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 26th, 2017.

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Torture must end - The Express Tribune

Technology Week Recap – The White House (blog)

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This week was Technology Week at the White House,and the Trump Administration held events focusing on modernizing government technology and stimulating the technology sector.

On Monday, the White House invited major tech leaders and university presidents for the inaugural summit of the American Technology Council. Hosted by the White House's Office of American Innovation, the event consisted of multiple breakout sessions to discuss ways to modernize the government byretiring out-of-date legacysystems and increasing the use of shared services.

On Tuesday, United States Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin and Director of the National Economic Council Gary Cohn held a listening session with technologyleaders to discuss tax reform in the United States and the implications of a new tax plan on the technology sector.

On Wednesday, President Trump traveledto Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He toured Kirkwood Community College and spoke about agricultural innovation and empowering the American farmer.

On Thursday, the White House hosted the American Leadership in Emerging Technology Event, where American tech industryleaders demonstrated technologies like advanced drones and 5Gwireless networks to the President.

On Friday, President Trump signed the Department of Veterans Affairs Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act of 2017.

After a successful week of addressing American innovation and meeting with leaders of the technology sector, next week the Trump Administration will turn its focus to energy.

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Technology Week Recap - The White House (blog)