Monthly Archives: July 2021

The disposal will see KPS Capital Partners take a 50% stake in the new entity, which will consist of Tate & Lyles Primary Products business in North and Latin America and its interests in the Almidones Mexicanos and DuPont Tate & Lyle Bio-Products Company. The new venture, named NewCo, has an enterprise value of US$1.7bn, equivalent to a multiple of 5.1 times EBITDA. KPS will have board and operational control.

Tate & Lyle expects to receive gross proceeds of around UD$1.2bn (0.9bn) after adjustments and transaction costs. Of this, the company said 0.5bn will be returned to investors through a special cash dividend.

The balance will be retained to strengthen Tate & Lyles balance sheet, provide flexibility to invest to accelerate growth, the company said.

Todays announcement represents the next phase in the evolution of Tate & Lyle. Our one strong company will become two stronger businesses, both in a position to pursue new and exciting growth opportunities in their respective markets, Tate & Lyle CEO Nick Hampton commented.

By strengthening the balance sheet Tate & Lyle suggested it is creating a platform to re-focus capital towards both organic and inorganic growth opportunities, hinting at potential future portfolio adjustments.

The company has set itself the target of growing organic sales in the mid-single digits, while also expanding its operating margin by 50-100 basis points and delivering an organic return on capital employed improvement of 50 basis points.

Is it doable? Jeffries analyst Martin Deboo certainly sees some upside for a trimmed down Tate. "We have never thought about Tate as an 'organic growth plus margin' proposition but - in the spirit of the new zeitgeist - we note that, since FY2017, volumes in the going-forward business have grown 2-3%, margins have expanded by circa 60bps per annum and operating profits at constant [currency exchange rates] have grown circa 6% pa. Looking forward, Tate have the opportunity to leverage growth by elimination of stranded costs and reduce the central cost burden of circa 50m. Assuming for the sake of argument that 15m of that could be eliminated over three years, that would be accretive to EBIT growth to the tune of 3% per annum," he noted.

Focusing investment on its higher margin, higher growth, specialities business should also help in this regard.

The proposed transaction will transform Tate & Lyle into a purpose-led, global food and beverage solutions business, serving faster growing speciality markets. With our new focus and a step-up in R&D investment, innovation and solutions development, we will be able to significantly enhance how we serve our customers, and accelerate growth, Hampton said.

In particular, the chief executive highlighted, Tate & Lyles expertise in reformulation feeds directly into growing consumer demand for and industry innovation efforts in healthier and better-for-you product formulations.

Our deep scientific expertise, unique product portfolio and leading technical capabilities in sweetening, mouthfeel and fortification, position us very well to benefit from growing consumer demand for food and drink that is lower in sugar, calories and fat, and with added fibre. With the pandemic accelerating the trend towards healthier food, now is the right time to focus our business on capturing this growth.

Despite this growth story, Tate's long-awaited deconsolidation didn't have a big impact on the group's share price, which edged up just 0.2% today. While Deboo joked it could be a 'consequence of an ill-tempered post-Euro 2020 hangover for UK investors', with England losing in the final of the football tournament against Italy yesterday, more likely the lacklustre market response should be chalked up to the valuation, which Deboo said was 'lower than expected', as well as financial costs and Primary Product losses in Europe, which will stay with Tate.

While Tate & Lyle said it expects its core business which will retain the European Primary Products operations to benefit from the deal, the company added that maintaining a 50% stake in NewCo should also yield dividends.

It is expected that NewCo will generate significant and steady free cash flow and deliver meaningful dividends over time, the company said.

NewCo will become a leading provider of nutritive sweeteners, industrial starches, acidulants and other corn-derived products in North America and Brazil. The Company produces corn-derived products for a diverse set of end-uses, including carbonated beverages, confectionery products, packaging applications and animal feed.

Our investment in NewCo will create a leading, independent and focused manufacturer of critical corn-derived ingredients for both food and industrial markets, Michael Psaros, Co-Founder and Co-Managing Partner of KPS, said.

The size and scale of NewCo, and the tremendous growth opportunities made available by serving as a critical supplier to the worlds preeminent food, beverage and industrial companies, forms the foundation of a tremendous investment platform. We will leverage our successful, multi-decade experience of investing in process industries, our commitment to manufacturing excellence and global network to drive increases in revenues, productivity and profitability.

Psaros said KPS intends to work alongside the existing management team to accelerate growth opportunities. He said this will be achieved through substantial investments in NewCos assets and operations, as well as synergistic bolt-on acquisitions.

We will invest in research and development in close cooperation with customers to introduce new products and product categories, in order to capitalize on long-term trends such as the transition to a more plant-based diet by consumers worldwide.

Tate & Lyle and NewCo have entered into 20-year long-term agreements to provide supply security and economic protection for Tate & Lyles Food & Beverage Solutions products made in NewCos facilities, and to ensure continued alignment of objectives between the two companies. Seventy-five percent of Tate & Lyles revenue in the year ended 31 March 2021 was generated from manufacturing facilities that will remain under its own control, the company noted.

Hampton concluded: We look forward to working with them under the long-term agreements we have established to provide supply security and economic protection to both the Primary Products Business and Tate & Lyles retained businesses.

Originally posted here:

'The next phase in the evolution of Tate & Lyle': Ingredients supplier spins-off bulk sweetener business - FoodNavigator.com

By Kaustov Kashyap

Technology-driven automation is omnipresent and pervading our lives like never before. From robots and chatbots to virtual/augmented reality, machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI) and beyond, the physical space is littered with digital influence.The impact of increased automation is already upon us and influencing our lives in all possible ways. Up till now technology adoption has never been so rapid, versatile and secular but the presence of connectivity has enabled this growth. The focus of this narrative will be to explore how exactly human life gets affected because of these inevitable technology trends. There are six such changes that look imminent.The newer technologies are enabling embryonic assessments in early stages, hence alleviating the need for morphological assessments where high degree of human skills was required. The issue is that morphological grading by humans leads to wide inter- and intra-operator variation. These long-standing difficulties may now be improved by using advances in AI. Thus, mathematical variables derived from time-lapse images of embryo development may now be used such that an algorithm can classify images of an embryos development automatically, and so remove the human variable from the crucial task of morphological assessment.This was also highlighted in a study presented on July 4, 2017 at the 33rd Annual Meeting of ESHRE in Geneva. Start-up Deep Genomics is leveraging AI to help decode the meaning of the genome and their learning software is developing the ability to try and predict the effects of a mutation based on its analyses of hundreds of thousands of examples of other mutations even if theres not already a record of what those mutations do. Another example is the case of actress Angelina Jolie where she had a one recessive gene in her genome that was predicted using deep learning algorithms on her DNA sequence using the data from past studies, which predicted that she is susceptible to breast cancer. She underwent pre-emptive mastectomy to prevent herself from cancer. The confluence of medicine and technology will bring unprecedented transformations in human life.Another biological victim of the digital automation will be ubiquitous handwriting skills. Already most of the content thats getting produced and published is digital. Handwriting skills have already suffered as most of the content gets digitally typed and then printed if at all needed in the physical format. Dematerialization has already inflicted the damage on the physical copy. It is now rare to write something on paper except when its your own signature, which is also digitally available now. Handwriting is almost nostalgic now. More and more people are digitally publishing the content online with handwritten notes becoming virtually non-existent. When was the last time you wrote a handwritten letter or note to your friends? The growth of virtual assistants like Apple Siri, Google Assistant or Cortana that can translate the verbal instructions into written word will further deteriorate the physical handwriting practice whatever is left so far. This may impact the anatomy of hand including the fingers, which may become less flexible, and thinner to aid typing. Maybe in the future the meta-carpel and carpel joints undergo significant changes as they are no longer used for writing purposes.The third biological influence will be on the eyes. The sheer amount of information flow thats happening is coming from social media apps, devices, digital displays or the web, which is exerting enormous strain on the eyes. Reading has exponentially multiplied, as is typical of information age where status quo is consistently challenged. The knowledge bust thats happening is fuelling the information fire. With faster and better technology, development and evolution is becoming possible in every sphere of our life, be it medicine, law, science, engineering, education, hence necessitating the constant need to upgrade and update. The concomitant impact of it will be largely borne by eyes. With so much to read and ingest, the shape of our eyes may get adapted over a period; they may become enlarged or may be more bulged. In fact, the underlying neuron system powering the vision may undergo subtle changes as well because of the way the things will be perceived and seen in the VR, AR-infected world.Another impact is going to be on the neck and the backbone. With the advent of smartphone the average time we are spending on the device is about 180 minutes. Yes, thats correct: three hours per day. We are continuously stretching our necks for longer periods of time, which is therefore bent most of the time. Now most of things can be auctioned, can be monitored or searched on phone, which is reducing physical movements all the time. For example, you can monitor your employees working remotely on your phone using the GPS and camera, thereby obviating the need for physically moving yourself. This is not only forcing your neck to constantly gobble up the data thats being ejected on your smartphone screens but also increasing your seating time, making you more sedentary than ever. Seating continuously for longer periods of time puts pressure on the spinal cord and the vertebrae. Hence all these lifestyle changes will have an anatomical impact on our spinal cord and neck in the time to come. As a result, the spine may become more rounded and short. It may be so that in future humans have few extra movements in neck due to some extra cervical spine joints.With the problem of plenty, memory will be worst affected. As more and more information is produced collaboratively and co-operatively on social platforms lesser and lesser will be retained. Also, with advanced search algorithms by our side, who needs to worry about remembering something? Learning by rote will be extinct in future. This will impact the memorability of human beings as lesser effort will be given to remember anything. The incentives that existed in the past to learn mathematical tables or capitals of the countries have ceased to exist. Society is now rewarding people who have application skills, who can combine expertise in multiple subjects to yield insights and solve layered business problems. The demand for people who can blurt out facts has completely evaporated. The processing thats required to memorize things will weaken during time, leading to complete adaptation of the neurons and brain functions that govern memory.With so much data floating around us and machine learning algorithms parsing them, AI is getting adaptive by the day. The rich data thats getting ingested is only leading to more informed choices and better decisions. The role of luck, or the unknown is getting subsumed by intelligent analytics or processed data that was earlier not available. The traditional belief structures rooted in religion of God are getting displaced by more data-centric approach or Dataism, as Yuval Harari calls it. So much structured and unstructured data is getting generatedbe it location data, emails, OCR processed reports, Facebook posts or likes, WhatsApp messages, tweets etc.which enables algorithms to do the data analysis and decipher the subterranean trends, patterns and phenomena underlying these data sets, paving the way for better understanding of society and things around us. As more and more evidentiary proofs are available for our actions, the needle of our belief will keep swerving away from the universality of God.

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Technology & automation - Impact on human evolution - The Shillong Times

Rare is the time that Tommy Rees will draw back on his playing days when tutoring his current quarterbacks. Sure, there is little that the Notre Dame offensive coordinator hasnt seen across his nine years as an Irish player and coach, but football has changed so much since he last put a helmet on in 2013 that Rees keeps those relatable conversations to the time-management realm of being a recognizable athlete in South Bend.

As for those football changes? Rees implemented some of them last season, his first year calling plays for the Irish after coming aboard as a quarterbacks coach in 2017.

Look, the easiest thing to point to is the RPO game, right? Rees said Tuesday on The Shamrock. We didnt run them when I played. Like you threw the bubbles, you threw to spots, but you didnt run I mean, we had maybe one, but you didnt really run the downfield RPO stuff as much.

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Notre Dame OC Tommy Rees on offensive evolution, quarterbacks, recruiting and more - The Athletic

When Coroebus, a cook, won the first recorded event at the Ancient Olympic Games in 776 B.C., one could imagine the crowd that rushed to embrace him. Athletes ran naked those days at Olympia in Greece and Coroebus ran something like 200 yards on a sanded course to come up with the most glorious moment of his life. There is something fascinating about the sprint, for, the 630 feet race which roughly comes to 192m or about a length of the stadium those days, was the lone event at the Olympiad, held every four years, for some 13 editions. The race was called the stade and the word stadium came from that.

Centuries later, when the modern Olympics came into being in 1896 in Athens, Greece, the first race in the Games was the 100m and American Francis Lane won the first heat, becoming the first man to win a race at the Olympics. Another American Thomas Burke basically a quartermiler became the fastest man at the first Olympics, winning in 12.0s after clocking 11.8 in the semifinal. He was one of the few men using the crouching start then.

Frank Jarvis, a descendent of the first US President George Washington, beat Burkes time hollow clocking 11.0s for the gold at the next Olympics in 1900 after timing a world record-equalling 10.8s in the heat.

Digging a launch pad

Starting blocks, which helped sprinters accelerate quickly by giving them an extra push off the ground at the start of the race, were introduced in the Olympics only in 1948 but even before that athletes used to dig their own launch pad into the ground at the starting line.

Jesse Owens, the legend

The legendary American sprinter Jesse Owens, who entered Berlin as the world record holder in the 100, 200m and the long jump, won a historic four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics in front of an angry Adolf Hitler. But later, he was forced to run against horses and trains after being banned from amateur competitions by Avery Brudage, the president of the US Olympic Committee and the Amateur Athletics Union then, for refusing to fulfil commercial obligations.

For those looking for landmarks, American Jim Hines broke the 10-second barrier in the 100m in the 1968 Mexico Olympics where he took the gold. It came 72 years after the first Olympics and it took another 42 years for a white man to do a sub-10s run when Frenchman Christophe Lemaitre clocked 9.98s in 2010.

World champion Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, the fastest woman at the last two Olympics in London and Rio and the favourite for Tokyo with her 10.63s run the second fastest time in history in June, will be the one to watch this time. - Reuters

A phenomenon

Still, not many expected Usain Bolt the greatest sprinter ever to bring the world record to the amazing 9.58s that he did at the 2009 Worlds in Berlin. Many felt that it came at least 20 years too early.

But Bolt is one of a kind, a phenomenon, probably the greatest track and field athlete of all time.

Despite his 65 frame which many felt was not ideal for the short sprint, Bolt made it look all so easy and he completed a hat-trick of Olympic titles in the 100m and 200m (in 2008, 2012 and 2016). He could beat the others hands down which made the world expect a world record every time he ran in a major event. The sport too thrived when Bolt was in action, he pulled many to athletics and to sprinting.

What was Bolts secret of success?

It could be because, being tall, he took four or five fewer strides than his competitors to cover the 100m. Another theory was that his muscles, being slightly longer as he was nearly six inches taller than his rivals, generated more speed and velocity. Whatever it was, when Bolt ran, it was pure magic.

Dirtiest race in history

The greatest 100m rivalry could be the one between the legendary American Carl Lewis, who finished with nine Olympic golds, and Canadian Ben Johnson at the 1988 Seoul Games. But it turned out to be the dirtiest race in history after Johnson, who won the 100m with a world record, failed a dope test and was stripped of his gold.

That makes many look at some of the events biggest stars with suspicion. And if one runs through the all-time list in the mens 100m, seven of the top 10 sprinters Tyson Gay (US, 9.69m), Yohan Blake (Jam., 9.69), Asafa Powell (Jam, 9.72), Justin Gatlin (US, 9.74), Christian Coleman (US, 9.76), Nesta Carter (Jam, 9.78) and Steve Mullings (Jam., 9.80) have failed dope tests at some point in their career.

READ | Manpreet Singh on Indian men's hockey team's Tokyo Olympics preparations: We are ready

West African high

Coloured athletes enjoy a huge advantage when it comes to track events and runners of West African descent are the fastest humans on the planet. Its probably in their genes. And the records and the all-time ranking lists vouch for that.

Incidentally, Chinas Su Bingtian became the first Asian-born sprinter to go below the 10-sec barrier in 2015. And India is still waiting for somebody to achieve the same.

Long wait for women

Women came late to track and field at the Olympics, in 1928 in Amsterdam, and even Pierre de Coubertin was not keen about them competing in the Games. American Elizabeth Robinson, then only 16, won the gold in a world record-equalling 12.2s. She almost died in a plane crash three years later and when they found her, her legs were twisted, broken in three places and her left arm was injured badly too. But still she came back and helped the American 4x100m relay team to win the gold in the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

Amazing Blankers-Koen

The event had some very colourful characters too, like Francina Blankers-Koen. The Dutchwoman made her Olympic debut in 1936 finishing sixth in the high jump but made a stunning comeback 12 years later at the 1948 Games in London where she won the 100m, the newly-introduced 200m and the 80m hurdles and became the first triple gold winner in history.

This despite the fact that she was not competing in the long jump and high jump, where she was the world record-holder, as athletes could only take part in three individual events.

A fight against all odds

And in 1960, at the Rome Olympics, the amazing Wilma Rudolph had the stage all to herself. The 20th of her fathers 22 children, Rudolph was born prematurely and suffered from pneumonia and polio which left her crippled and she was fitted with metal braces at six.

But with her brother and sisters massaging her crippled left leg, Rudolph was out of her braces three years later and began excelling in basketball.

Her school coach felt that she was too fast and a little later, she found she loved running too. At the Rome Olympics, Rudolph emerged as the fastest woman and also became the first American woman to win three golds in a single Olympics after winning the 100, 200 and 4x100m titles.

Jesse Owens crosses the finish line to win the 100m event in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. - AFP

Wilma inspires Griffith Joyner

Wilma Rudolphs remarkable story inspired many young African-American athletes, including Florence Griffith Joyner who became the first American woman to win four golds in one Olympics in 1988 in Seoul.

Joyner, who still holds the womens 100m world record, looked like a pop star with her shiny leggings and brightly coloured hair and long painted nails.

However Joyners death at 38 from an epileptic seizure in her sleep, 10 years after her Seoul show, triggered allegations of doping though she had never failed a dope test.

READ | Olympics history: Biggest cheating scandals in the Olympics

Confessions of a champ

Twelve years later, Marion Jones emerged as the star and walked away with a golden treble, winning the 100m, 200m and 4x400m relay at the Sydney Olympics. But seven years later, she confessed to doping before Sydney and was stripped of her medals and was also jailed for lying to federal prosecutors.

World champion Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, the fastest woman at the last two Olympics in London and Rio is the favourite for Tokyo too. Her 10.63s run is the second fastest time in history.

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Fast, faster, fastest: The evolution of the Olympic sprint - Sportstar

A former fashion PR professional, Victor Chau is the creator of Empowered Flow, teaching a vinyasa style of yoga focused on inversions and conditioning bodies and minds to improve focus, confidence and conquer inner fear.

Chau also co-founded Mentorships Workshop to help and prepare newer teachers for a fulfilling career many of his 150+ graduates are now teaching at major yoga studios like Pure Yoga and Fivelements Habitat, as well as being brand ambassadors for Lululemon and Nike. Currently, Chau teaches in Sheung Wans Yoga Room and Fivelements Habitat in Causeway Bay.

I started my first yoga class nearly 20 years ago but it wasnt love at first sight I wasnt very fit and attended that class after a spin class, thinking that yoga was just a stretch. I couldnt be more wrong. I hated every second of it. But I decided to give yoga a second chance and little did I know that it was yoga that gave me a second chance in life. I started to practice more and my body awareness started to increase. My mind became clearer and my body became more lean and stronger.

After moving to Beijing with my PR work, I started to practice yoga a bit more, which led me to my journey to India, where I did my teacher training in Sivananda Yoga Kutir, nestled right by the holy river Ganges. There I learned that happiness could be quite simple. Upon returning home in 2010, I started teaching and found sense of purpose. Six months later, I quit my job and became a yoga teacher and never looked back since. To this date, I still dont doubt my decision a yoga teacher to help hundreds of people improve their lives.

Like many yoga practitioners, I started trying many different styles of yoga, until I settled a little bit more with Vinyasa Yoga a style of yoga that has students flow fluidly from pose to pose. 4 years ago, I also created Empowered Flow, which encompasses inversions, core conditioning, some handstands, flexibility and above all, empowering people to be a better version of themselves.

This is what I practice and teach mostly now. It is a challenging practice but also accessible for new yogis. As you can guess, handstand and inversions are my favourite as they really challenge me to be physically strong and mentally focused. Most importantly, it helps me and my students conquer their deepest fears.

Setting an intention which can then help people find a purpose and truly transform into a better version of themselves.

Handstand. It is one that got my attention. I remember at my teacher training, I tried numerous times but to no avail. It took me many years of regular practice and falling down before I started to come up to a handstand.

Handstand (and any inversions for that matter), has taught me to be humble. Nothing will come easy and repeated hard work a prerequisite on a handstand journey. Although its the handstand shape that I am aiming for, at the end of the day, it is really about the technique, the mentality and also the patience behind the practice that really counts.

I am able to be detached from the handstand itself one day I can do it, some day I cant. And its okay. Just like anything in life, it comes and goes. The ability to let go is the source of true happiness, not handstand itself. And Im honoured enough to have taught hundreds of people handstand, watching them get stronger.

Hong Kong people have definitely become more interested in yoga and their awareness for physical and mental physical has grown exponentially in the last few years. You can tell from the increase in the number of sports supplies/apparel shops, and the number of gyms and studios has also slowly climbed up. People are also more receptive of alternative, non-mainstream ways of practices that could promote mental health, such as gong bath, sound and crystal healing, and reiki.

If there is a silver lining from Covid-19, it has taught us that health is the most important thing in life, a nine-to-five schedule is not the only way to work. Online classes might have been a hit big earlier but its already in decline because it lacks one of the most important parts of a live yoga class real human connection.

One of the most noticeable changes in the last few years is that people started to realise that going to the big gyms with big classes (30 to 40 plus students in one class) might not be the best way to learn, especially keeping in mind social distancingThis gave rise to the emergence of smaller yoga studios that ensure a higher teacher to students ratio (usually 1:10 or less) and they usually boast a personality that reflects that owner, usually a yoga teacher who is younger, adventurous and is more ready to take risks.

With a hectic schedule, I practice whenever and wherever I can. My favourite places would be my home, Yoga Room and my favourite place to film my yoga videos is Fivelements Habitats. But whenever the sun is shining, you will see me practice in the big lawn of Victoria Park or on any beach. When we are allowed to travel again, I would love to go back to India and practice along the Ganges, I did that every day at my yoga teacher training.

First and foremost, yoga can help correct bad posture (slouching, shoulders round, core not engaged when standing or sitting). It can remind us how to stand and sit properly: upright, shoulders relaxed and chin parallel to the floor. This alone can already relieve most of the aches and chronic pain caused by our sedentary lifestyle.

A lot of the poses in yoga emphasise core strength (headstand, handstand, downward facing dog), shoulders opening (bridge pose, wheel pose), spinal rotation (supine twist) and lateral stretches (triangle pose, side angle pose) all these can help improve our posture, ease the pain caused by bad postures. These can also improve our breathing because our breath is bound by the shape of our chests. When we breathe better, our health will improve too.

Mindful movement is a loose term to describe the movement, and non-movement of oneself done in a meaningful, purposeful and awaken way. This means that every step we take, every time we raise our hands, every speech we make have an intention behind them. This makes a huge difference in our life in that we have been told to act, behave in a certain way: get a degree, get married, have children, buy a house, go on a holiday (or staycation), buy designer clothes or bag all these things we think will make us happy. We almost never question why we do the things that we do. We are then merely existing, not living.

On the contrary, being mindful in every thing we do means we set an intention before we do them. For example, in a yoga class, you can set an intention for that particular practice: what is it that you are trying to achieve? What pose you are trying to learn? Or simply a state of mind you would like to be? Or simply learn how to relax more? Or be kinder to yourself and others? Or learning more about yourself. Then the class will become directional, theres a compass in your practice. The practice will become mindful, not just about the poses. And if you can bring this intention and mindfulness into your daily life, this is where real yoga begins.

(Images: Courtesy of Victor Chau)

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Victor Chau of Empowered Flow on the Evolution of the Local Yoga Scene - Prestige Online

Work from home isnt a trend it is the evolution of the work place that has been coming for some time. Covid-19 merely kick-started the process and woke everyone to the potential.

The Covid-19 pandemic has been the most traumatic event the world has witnessed since the Second World War. It has touched everyone. Nursing home residents, CEOs, every person, from every walk of life has been changed. The pandemic has caused priorities to be re-evaluated and expectations to be recalibrated.

Stress on a system tends to bring forth change and Covid-19 has accelerated it. In the language of the technology industry, Covid-19 requires companies to accelerate their digital business initiatives. Presented with that idea, many would nod sagely, pausing momentarily to take a sip of coffee before agreeing. Perhaps even waxing poetic about how digital business is the natural evolution of business and that the faster companies embrace it, the better they will be able to compete.

The conversation would then turn to the need for cyber security to evolve universal security, regardless of location in light of these pandemic-driven changes. More heads would sagely nod in agreement and more coffee would be sipped.

However, if the subject of work from home comes up, suddenly the coffee is put down with a clatter and fervent hand-wringing begins. What-about-ism suddenly is the order of the day. The very idea that a great number of workers simply do not *need* to be in the office puts everyone on edge and unsure as to what position to take. Office shelves groan under the weight of management book-of-the-month on how-to improve efficiency and employee retention *in* the office.

So while consensus is easily reached on the idea that Covid-19 has hastened the need for digital business, the jury was out regarding work from home.

However, work from home is no different than digital business. No different than the need for universal cyber security. It is the logical evolution of the workplace. After all, is this not just a natural extension of the always on call culture which has long been actively and enthusiastically encouraged?

This is where we were going, long before Covid-19 made it crystal clear that actually being in the office was superfluous for many employees. Nobody can deny that the forced work from home experiment succeeded for the vast majority of companies and their employees.

Change is always opposed by the weve always done it that way crowd. Commuting to offices was done because it was the *only* efficient way to communicate. At first, it gave employees access to the paperwork, the filing systems, typewriters, mimeograph machines, fax machines, and of course corporate mail. Of course, it also allowed the company to have meetings, both large and small, to communicate ideas, corporate initiatives, and general corporate information.

Then the very first wave of digitization hit. Suddenly, there was less actual paper. Accounting was done on the mainframe. Orders were entered, inventories tracked via terminals and early PCs. More and more moved to digital and employees came into work to use the expensive LAN and PCs to access systems in the data center.

Then the internet sparked the revolution of connectivity to the home. Cloud computing came on the scene. Companies began the transition of many corporate applications and productivity functions to the cloud. Today, there are no resources the average work must travel to the office for. The connectivity at home provides access to the tools and collaboration applications required to do their jobs.

The world of business has evolved, just like it always has. Moving to a work from home environment for every possible employee is the direction we are heading, no matter how many people want to pump the brakes. While its right to acknowledge the fear of change, the benefits to the employer and to the employee are simply too great to ignore.

People who do not spend time commuting, spend more time with their families. They spend more time working too, instead of being in a car or on a train. Money spent by businesses on expensive real estate and all the support equipment can be saved. Some of it will go towards accommodating work from home employees, but overall, it is a huge cost saving. For employees and their families, money spend on transportation is saved. This reduces the overall corporate carbon footprint as well.

Lastly, it opens up the labor market. No longer do employees need to deal with only local employers. Location is suddenly far less important. For employers, that means access to talent outside of their geographic area, a much larger pool of employees to choose from. Win-Win.

Many will counter with nostalgic discussions about water-cooler collaboration, or days of camaraderie in the cube-farm. They will say that face-time is invaluable. Managers, particularly middle managers, worry that the unwatched employee is the unproductive employee. They also secretly worry that this evolution will mean that there is a need for fewer managers overall, the last being a legitimate concern.

But the evolution is upon us. If you embrace digital business, employees working from home, or indeed *anywhere* is just as much a part of it as digitizing the sales and customer support processes. If employees and businesses work together, we can all evolve to a better way to work that saves everyone money, time, and precious resources.Related Report Download the full report from GlobalData's Report StoreGet the Report

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Work from home is more than just digital business it's business evolution - Verdict

In a new study of a dinosaur fossil, researchers have discovered a unique breathing mechanism used by Heterodontosaurus. The discovery crushed the popular belief that dinosaurs used the same mechanism as birds to breathe. However, according to the data gathered from European Synchrotron Radiation Source (ESRS), the reptileshad tooth-pick-like bones called gastralia paired with sternal bones and ribs to form a tennis racket-like structure.

A team of researchers namely: Victor J Radermacher, Vincent Fernandez, Emma R Schacher, Richard J Butler, Emese M Bordy, Michael Naylor Hudgins, William J de Klerk, Kimberly EJ Chapelle, and Jonah N Choiniere published their observations in the eLife journal on July 6, 2021. The finding stated that the garoup of international paleontologists studied a fossil of Heterodontosaurus tucki, a small herbivore dinosaur from the Eastern Cape region of South Africa in 2009.

The Heterodontosaurus expanded its chest and belly and used its paddle-shaped ribs and small tooth-pick-like bones to breathe. The function of the breathing bones was studied using ESRF X-rays combined with high energy beam-line configuration, said Vincent Fernandez, a scientist at Natural History Museum in London. Weve long known that the skeletons of ornithischian dinosaurs were radically different from those of other dinosaurs, explained Richard Butler, from the School of Geography, Earth, and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, UK. This amazing new fossil helps us understand why ornithischians were so distinctive and successful, he added.

The group of scientists from the Evolutionary Studies Institute at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa came together in 2016 and used the synchrotron light source to scan the complete skeleton of the fossil. A farmer friend of mine called my attention to the specimen, says de Klerk, and when I saw it I immediately knew we had something special on our hands. The scientists virtually reconstructed the skeleton and prepared a structure that showed the breathing biology of the 200-million-year-old-plant-eating-dinosaur.

Heterodontosaurus is one of the oldest and first-evolving Ornithischians. It is the group that includes favorites like Triceratops, Stegosaurus, and duckbilled dinosaurs. Heterodontosaurus lived in the early Jurassic period, about 200 million years ago, surviving an extinction at the end of the prior Triassic period. Understanding how the breathing anatomy of these dinosaurs would also help paleontologists to figure out the features the helped certain dinosaurs to survive or go extinct.

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Study of Dinosaur fossil sheds light on evolution of a unique breathing technique - Republic World