Author: Charlotte Gill
Sustainable investing becomes more than a reputation game
Sustainable investing has long been a bit of PR window-dressing for banks trying to disguise their other, less palatable investments. Or at least that’s how many outside the financial services industry perceive such noble proclamations by banks. However, while many investors have looked at sustainable investment products as a niche part of their portfolio that carry some form of financial trade-off, recent trends suggest these types of investments are actually proving to be both environmentally beneficial and financially fruitful.
The market is said to have grown over the last three years by as much as 61 percent. According to a report by the Global Sustainable Investment Alliance, that increase represents total assets under management at the end of 2014 of $21.4trn, substantially higher than the $13.3trn of 2012.
Openness to sustainable investing by generation:
84%
Of millennial investors
79%
Of Generation X investors
66%
Of Baby Boomer investors
Green fields
One company that was pioneering the sustainable investment market long before it became popular among major financial institutions was leading US bank Morgan Stanley. Since it launched its sustainable investment operation in 2006, Morgan Stanley has helped to generate more than $61bn of capital for projects in the renewable energy sectors and other clean technologies. In 2012, the company launched its Investing with Impact strategy, which acted as a framework for its investment decisions to have a positive impact on the world.
In 2014, the bank launched its Institute for Sustainable Investing, which brings together its strategies for the sustainable investment space. Morgan Stanley’s Institute for Sustainable Investing CEO Audrey Choi says this was designed to speed up adoption of sustainable investments across the industry.
She adds: “There’s been a broad commitment that Morgan Stanley has made to sustainable investing. We’ve actually really been looking at the sustainable investing space for a number of years now, because we fundamentally believe that [it] is about good investing, and looking more broadly and comprehensively at environmental, social and governance factors that could either present a risk or return opportunity for companies.”
The bank has now unveiled a product it feels will give a major shot in the arm to the sustainable investing business: green bonds. Morgan Stanley believes the $500m green bonds whose issuance it announced in June represent a significant step for the market.
Choi says: “With green bonds specifically, we’ve seen a real growth in the market and also a real diversification in who the investors are. There are certainly investors who are very active in the green bonds space, who are specifically green or social responsible investors who have a history of managing those types of funds or portfolios. But we’ve also seen a very significant increase in mainstream institutional investors. The biggest institutional and asset manager names that you would think of are increasingly looking at green bonds.”
New generation
It appears younger generations are showing more interest in sustainable investing than those before them. According to a study by Morgan Stanley, 84 percent of individual millennial investors are open to sustainable investing, compared to 79 percent of Generation X investors and 66 percent of Baby Boomer investors.
Helping to combat the environmental challenges the world is facing is certainly a noble cause, but not one typically associated with major banking institutions. In the past, renewable energy and clean technology have been the focus of more niche players and passionate individual investors. However, with declining oil prices and a renewable energy market finally offering cost-efficient solutions, major investors are starting to take it seriously.
Morgan Stanley has helped develop a number of renewable energy projects, such as the 150MW Route 66 Wind Farm in Texas. It is an area Choi says has a lot of potential: “We really think that sustainable investing, with clean energy being one important component, is a clear and growing trend in terms of demand. We believe that, if you’re going to make a quality, sustainable investment, it has to make sense as an investment. We feel these types of projects do make sense as investments and that they have the additional, very significant, benefit of contributing to a clean energy economy.”
Answering sceptics
While investing in sustainable products has its benefits to the environment and society, Choi maintains it has to make financial sense for the investor: “When we talk about sustainable investing, we define that as investing that first and foremost obeys all the principles and best practices of investing, full stop.”
However, the sector has come in for criticism in the past from people who suggest it is merely a bit of green window-dressing for major financial institutions engaging in more unscrupulous transactions. Choi acknowledges that perception among the community is something that needs changing – not least the idea that sustainable investments have a financial trade-off.
The bank recently conducted a poll of individual investors to better understand how they perceived the industry: whether it was a passing phase or a growing trend. According to the study, 71 percent of investors were interested in the market, while 65 percent said they thought it was a real trend that was set to become more important within the next five years. However, 54 percent of investors had concerns there might be a financial trade-off with sustainable investing.
Taking the results, Choi’s team decided to look at whether those concerns were well founded, and discovered that in many cases they were not. “We looked at a class of funds that is widely available to average investors and took a data set of 10,000 mutual funds and seven years worth of performance. We compared the performance of the sustainable funds versus the traditional funds, and, when you actually run the numbers, you see that, more often than not, the sustainable investing funds performed the same or slightly better from a return perspective. What was really interesting was, more often than not, they performed similarly or slightly lower in terms of volatility. We found that they’re either the same or better on both risk and return.”
While the news was encouraging, Choi stresses manager selection for funds was still a vital aspect of the market: “Just because you have the word ‘sustainable’ in the product, it doesn’t mean that all the laws of investing are suspended!”
In the coming years, there is likely to be a growing emphasis on sustainable investing across the portfolios of major institutions. Indeed, Bank of America recently announced its own $600m green bond issuance. Choi says she welcomes other institutions taking sustainable investing seriously, and hopes Morgan Stanley’s work will act as a catalyst for the market. “We are certainly committed to accelerating the adoption of sustainable investing by the mainstream because we believe it is sound investing that will pay dividends to both investors and the overall economy and ecosystem. We’re very excited to see many different players across the ecosystem of sustainable investing bring more products and opportunities.”
Humans are the only ones putting the breaks on self-driving cars
According to the World Health Organisation’s Global Status Report on Road Safety 2013, the total number of road traffic deaths worldwide “remains unacceptably high”, with more than 1.24 million people killed each year. But worryingly, even in countries that do have the necessary laws in place – as is the case in the US – the number of road-related deaths each and every year still sits at just over 36,000. So when Google set out to design the world’s first fully autonomous vehicle, it wanted to create something that would “shoulder the entire burden of driving”.
In order to make that dream a reality, Google created a car that looks like something out of a child’s play set – but it is no toy. The tiny little prototype was designed around one thing: safety. It has sensors everywhere that allow it to remove all blind spots – something that is physically impossible for human drivers. These same sensors are capable of detecting objects from as far as 200 yards away, which is essential if the cars are to navigate their way through the hustle and bustle of city streets, packed public highways and tricky intersections. Not only that, but the prototype vehicle has been capped at 25mph, meaning that, if an accident does occur, the damage to it, and more importantly, to those in the other vehicles is dramatically reduced.
“On the inside, we’ve designed for learning, not luxury, so we’re light on creature comforts, but we’ll have two seats (with seat belts), a space for passengers’ belongings, buttons to start and stop, and a screen that shows the route—and that’s about it”, wrote Chris Urmson, Director of Google’s Self-Driving Car Project in a post on the company’s official blog.
1.24m
Annual road traffic deaths, globally
On the road
Prior to letting its prototypes loose on the streets around Google’s headquarters in California, the team behind the pint-sized prototype put its software and sensors through its paces, attaching it to a fleet of Lexus RX450h SUVs.
“That fleet has logged nearly a million autonomous miles on the roads since we started the project, and recently has been self-driving about 10,000 miles a week”, wrote Urmson. “So the new prototypes already have lots of experience to draw on – in fact, it’s the equivalent of about 75 years of typical American adult driving experience.”
But in the event that Murphy’s Law should manage to manifest itself, all the prototype cars, as well as being capped at 25mph, have been equipped with a safety driver, whose job is to act as a failsafe should anything go wrong.
Prior to the cars embarking on the journey into the unknown, Urmson explained how he was “looking forward to learning how the community perceives and interacts with the vehicles”. But, according to the department’s monthly report for June this year, a couple of drivers chose to get up close and personal with the autonomous vehicles, resulting in traffic accidents.
On both occasions, however, the Google car (which was driving autonomously at the time) was not at fault. In fact, the other drivers simply didn’t pay enough attention, rear-ending Google’s automaton at low speed. Both incidents caused only minor damage to the cars’ rear bumpers and sensors. But, perhaps most importantly, there were no injuries reported in either accident.
“Given the time we’re spending on busy streets, we’ll inevitably be involved in collisions; sometimes it’s impossible to overcome the realities of speed and distance”, said the report. “Thousands of minor accidents happen every day on typical American streets, 94 percent of them involving human error, and as many as 55 percent of them go unreported.
“In the six years of our project, we’ve been involved in 14 minor accidents during more than 1.8 million miles of autonomous and manual driving combined. Not once was the self-driving car the cause of the accident.”
Human error
Some of the worst disasters and accidents in history can be attributed to simple human error. Which is why, when attempting to create something for which reliability and safety are of the utmost importance, the optimal design tends to be the one that can eliminate humans from the equation altogether. People only need to look at the statistics for road traffic accidents to see the inherent benefit of having robots behind the wheels, not humans.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration examined approximately 2.2 million car crashes across the US, with the intention of identifying the primary cause of each incident. In the report, researchers noted the “critical reason, which is the last event in the crash causal chain, was assigned to the driver in 94 percent of the crashes”. The remaining six percent was evenly attributed to vehicular failure, the environment (adverse weather conditions, etc), and what the report calls “unknown critical reasons”.
The two million crashes that arose as a result of driver error were then broken down into smaller categories: “Recognition error, which included driver’s inattention, internal and external distractions, and inadequate surveillance, was the most frequently assigned critical reason. Decision error such as driving too fast for conditions, too fast for the curve, false assumption of others’ actions, illegal manoeuvre and misjudgement of gap or others’ speed accounted for about 33 percent of the crashes. In about 11 percent of the crashes, the critical reason was performance error such as overcompensation, poor directional control, etc.”
It is easy to let the mind wander when out on the open road, but, nowadays, there are even more things that have the power to distract people. Easily the most dangerous of them all is the humble smartphone. The American Automobile Association even released a video entitled Distractions and Teen Driver Crashes to highlight the dangers of using mobile phones while driving.
All this information makes one thing abundantly clear: the biggest threat to human life on the road and the integration of autonomous cars into wider society is human error and people’s reluctance to forfeit their automotive autonomy.
Google’s driverless cars have managed to travel more than 1.8 million miles without causing an accident, underscoring the proficiency of their software and sensors to adequately anticipate the actions (and mistakes) of human motorists. Equally, however, it also shows that those same motorists are inept at reacting to the actions of autonomous vehicles.
In an interview with The Guardian, Anuj Pradhan, a behavioural scientist at the University of Michigan, explained how there is a lot of data being collected about how autonomous vehicles react to human motorists, but very little to the contrary. “We do not fully understand the human reaction where self-driving cars are involved”, he said. “It’s an important question that we haven’t started looking at yet. Self-driving cars may have a ‘better’ driving style but it may not be a human driving style, and that could affect how we predict or react to them.”
All or nothing
Google is not alone in its ambition to create a car capable of shouldering the burden of driving. Jaguar, Volvo, Nissan and Lexus are all tirelessly working away to bring their own iterations onto the market, which means that, sooner or later, and whether they like it or not, people will be forced to share the tarmac with robots.
Google’s Self-Driving Car Project
6
Years since it began
1.8m
Miles driven
14
Minor accidents
One way to make the transition a little less painful (and hopefully reduce the number of collisions between man and robot) is to hide some of the driverless cars’ distinguishable features – mainly the abundance of sensors scattered on the top, tail, front and flanks of the vehicle. Pradhan even suggests coming up with a way of identifying the vehicles to encourage other drivers to exercise a little extra caution: “Should self-driving cars have a special marking so we can react accordingly? If I see a learner driver, I give it a little more following distance. Perhaps that’s how regular drivers would react to a self-driving car.”
No matter how the transition is managed, it will surely, as has been the case with practically every other groundbreaking piece of technology, generate much debate. Advocates of a world where people are free to text and drive will welcome them with open arms, while petrolheads who believe driving is best enjoyed with both hands firmly on the wheel will call them an abomination.
Such conflicting views about the future of motoring actually pose the biggest challenge to the proliferation of driverless cars. For the vehicles to be a true success, people must forgo their right to drive en masse.
So far, car designers have boasted about all the time that can be saved in a driverless world, but few have really shown what all those extra minutes could be spent on. Mercedes-Benz made a decent attempt of showcasing the more nuanced advantages to its driverless concept car, the F015 Luxury in Motion.
“Anyone who focuses solely on the technology has not yet grasped how autonomous driving will change our society”, said Dr Dieter Zetsche, Chairman of the Board of Management of Daimler and Head of Mercedes-Benz Cars in a statement on Mercedes’ website. “The car is growing beyond its role as a mere means of transport and will ultimately become a mobile living space.”
One of the most appealing things about driverless cars is improved safety, but that attribute is seriously undermined by the existence of other drivers on the road, who, as the data shows, find it difficult to read and react to the movements of their robotic counterparts. It is essential, therefore, that car manufacturers push home the wider benefits of driverless cars, as safety is simply not enough to tempt all motorists to forfeit their right to drive. The technology must be embraced wholeheartedly if it is to make a dent in the death toll.
The media sure knows how to scare us off food
Increasing numbers of supposedly health-conscious consumers are choosing products with ‘free from’ labels, from ‘BPA-free’ plastics to ‘non-GMO’ foods. But such labels do not increase public safety. On the contrary, not only are many of the scary-sounding ingredients perfectly safe, but manufacturers, in their haste to meet consumer demand, sometimes substitute inferior – or even harmful – ingredients or processes.
The blame for this situation lies mainly with activists and the news media for fanning unwarranted public fears. But a recent academic study demonstrates how manufacturers, by drawing attention to what they are omitting from a product, perpetuate spurious concerns that actually drive consumers to take greater health risks.
15%
Drop in EU canola harvest after neonicotinoids were banned
The labels lie
The study explores, mainly through the lens of product labelling, how people evaluate the risks of Bisphenol A (BPA) – a chemical that is commonly used to harden plastics and prevent the growth of bacteria in food cans – compared to its alternatives. It found that “people evaluate a situation in which scientific evidence is tempered by controversy similarly to a situation in which there is no scientific evidence at all”. In other words, because there have been questions about the safety of BPA, people disregard the scientific evidence altogether.
Concerns about BPA should have been put to rest long ago. Years of research and repeated assessments conducted by government regulators – including one earlier this year by the European Food Safety Authority – have concluded that BPA is safe in normal use. It is the removal of BPA from the cans’ lining, therefore, that may pose a threat to consumers’ health, by leading to an increase in foodborne illnesses from deadly bacteria like Clostridium botulinum (which causes botulism).
Most people found out that BPA existed only when they saw a “BPA-free” sticker on bottles at their local store. But that label has a profound impact: it sends the unmistakable message that BPA is a health hazard. After all, if it were not, why would manufacturers not only exclude it from their products, but also tout that they had done so?
“What consumers do not know”, the study’s authors point out, “is that BPA is often replaced with other, less-studied chemicals whose health implications are virtually unknown”, and thus may prove to be worse than the original material. Yet people remain so focused on the “BPA-free” label that they accept these potentially “regrettable substitutions”, exposing themselves to chemicals that they might otherwise reject.
GMOs (genetically modified organisms) face a similarly problematic stigma – one that compelled the American food-production behemoths General Mills and Post Foods to eliminate GMOs from their popular Cheerios and Grape Nuts cereals, respectively. In trying to meet a perceived consumer demand, the manufacturers have had to make regrettable substitutions – namely, marketing products that lack some added vitamins. It is ironic that, in order to please their customers, they have begun offering inferior products at higher prices.
Giving in to pressure
Of course, consumers are not the only ones whose inadequate consideration of the facts is resulting in regrettable substitutions. Governments, too, are making hasty, wrong-headed decisions that deny consumers a choice.
Consider the European Union’s politically motivated decision to ban, beginning in 2013, the state-of-the-art pesticides called neonicotinoids. Forced to resort to older, more toxic, and less effective pesticides (primarily pyrethroids, which had been largely phased out), Europe’s farmers are seeing a resurgence of insect predation. The damage may cause a 15 percent drop in this year’s harvest of canola, the continent’s primary source of vegetable oil used in food and biodiesel.
There are important lessons to be learned from such outcomes. First, when manufacturers and retailers allow their decisions to be guided by pressure from activists, not scientific evidence, they risk eventual consumer dissatisfaction and potential product-liability lawsuits. Likewise, policymakers should emphasise science over politics.
The public, too, has a vital role to play: maintaining a healthy skepticism regarding the claims of self-interested, self-styled ‘consumer advocates’. Putting science first now is the best way to ensure that we, as consumers, have no regrets later.
Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation fosters great talent
The world is facing increasingly complicated challenges and threats on many different fronts. Take the food we consume every day as an example: we see steroids injected into pork, and cooking oil recycled from leftovers in restaurant kitchens. These have rocked the public’s confidence in goods whose safety was taken for granted. With new food products entering our diet at a creative and rapid clip, scientists and regulators are struggling to catch up with solutions.
In response, one Hong Kong start-up, incubated by the Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation (HKSTP), is dishing up a cutting-edge method of improving food safety by sharply speeding up tests. Vitargent Biotechnology uses fish embryos to identify up to 1,000 toxins in one go, instead of the five to 10 detected at a time by traditional testing methods.
Leaping through the valley of death is a matter that
requires support
The start-up’s toxin detection work recently scooped the Grand Prix at the International Exhibition of Inventions in Geneva, where its solution was recognised as an innovative answer to the impending danger threatening us all – imagine a scenario where your daily consumption of estrogen is high enough to turn you infertile.
In 2010, Vitargent enrolled into our Incubation Programme and set up its operations at Hong Kong Science Park, the city’s leading research and commercialisation facility managed by HKSTP. Yet the core technology of its solution was a research breakthrough made by a professor at the City University of Hong Kong some 10 years ago. Rather than becoming a well-read academic paper, the scientific discovery found its way to commercialisation four years ago when a graduate of the university brought his R&D and business proposition to HKSTP. Through HKSTP’s incubation programme, Vitargent was able to complete its product development and move on to the early stage of business development in Hong Kong Science Park before it graduated from the programme last year.
Nerve centre
The New Economy has recognised Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation as the Most Innovative Technology Hub in the Asia-Pacific region. Established in May 2001, HKSTP has boosted the development of the city into a regional hub for innovation and growth.
As a nerve centre accelerating the crystallisation of R&D projects into solutions and products that add social and economic value to the planet, HKSTP draws its inspiration from science itself.
Consider the traditional composition of an ecosystem: a home where living organisms and non-living components interact as a functioning system. At Hong Kong Science Park, over 11,000 research and business specialists join hands to build a dynamic ecosystem, encompassing all that are needed to give wings to research and technology application.
In the world of innovation, it is always an individual’s insight and research endeavour that sparks an uncharted future. Yet leaping through the valley of death is a matter that requires support from different sectors in the value chain. HKSTP sees that enabling the right ties to be built between different parties within and outside Hong Kong Science Park is of utmost importance. Our ecosystem stretches from nurturing first-class research development and productisation at one end, to linking start-ups with angel investors and venture capital firms, as well as connecting growing enterprises with industrial users and buyers, at the other.
Take Vitargent’s case for instance: we connected them with mentors, angel investors and food manufacturing leaders in Hong Kong, and the company has just sealed a deal for Series A funding with California-based venture capital firm WI Harper Group, positioning the start-up for global commercial lift-off.
High-calibre commercialisation requires a well-structured back office: the delivery of legal, IP protection, financing, telecommunications and marketing. The availability of internationally recognised drug testing and approval facilities, the presence of a strong pool of academic and research experts in life sciences, as well as the provision of state-of-the-art R&D infrastructure required to usher through ideas from conception to commercialisation, are a prerequisite for progress.
Scientific pioneers and other firms gain uncluttered, yet considerable, access to China – Asia’s largest market. Combine the strengths of Hong Kong’s technically savvy population, low taxes, strong legal system and free access to the world’s second largest economy, and you have a persuasive combination for anchoring your R&D projects in Hong Kong Science Park.
Well-known semi-conductor and system solutions company Infineon Technologies chose Hong Kong as a neat and convenient springboard into the China market. Infineon has teamed up with HKSTP and the Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute. This three-way partnership is providing Infineon, a world leader in semi-conductors, with technical support, a shorter time to market and access to the fast-growing Chinese economy.
Scania, one of the world’s leading international manufacturers of heavy trucks and buses for heavy transport applications, as well as industrial and marine engines, anchored its first development centre in Asia at Hong Kong Science Park to further test and develop its Euro 6 engines so as to ensure optimal functioning in the Asian climate and terrain.
Eyeing Hong Kong’s proximity to China, Scania also set up its first fleet management centre in the park to further develop its vehicle black box (Scania Communicator), which monitors and provides intelligence to enhance the performance of drivers and their vehicles. The Material Analysis Laboratory and the Reliability Test Laboratory in Hong Kong Science Park are integral to these important tasks.
Connect, collaborate, catalyse
HKSTP is a keen supporter of firms that have the potential to deliver and add genuine social value. Five major technology trends have been selected as our key focus, namely ICT, electronics, material and precision engineering, biomedical technology, and green technology. Together, HKSTP delivers cross-disciplinary solutions that are set to meet the threats associated with global challenges such as energy conservation, pollution, ageing and personal health.
Let me cite a few examples. Five provinces and seven cities in mainland China employ Insight Robotics’ wildfire detection system. A graduated incubatee of HKSTP, Insight Robotics developed an early-warning threat detection system that combines thermal imaging and artificial intelligence technology. The method’s automation and early-warning patterns help save lives and valuable resources from destruction.
Our biomedical incubatees have also been taking on many challenges. Novoheart, a spin-off from the University of Hong Kong, is making breakthroughs in drug testing with its world-first artificial heart technology. eNano, another start-up focusing on holistic solutions for personal health monitoring, is working to enable us to stay attuned to our wellness through nanosensors, mobile devices and cloud-based data analytics.
These technology start-ups benefit from the numerous activities at Hong Kong Science Park organised by HKSTP. Without making frequent trips away from Hong Kong, they get to hook up with potential collaborators and investors from around the world through the year-round, one-on-one or group business matching events. They receive technology updates from renowned academic and industry specialists when the latter converge in Hong Kong through innovation summits and soft-landing programmes to examine the emerging trends and issues in global challenges and on the innovation scene.
When they are ready to apply their innovation commercially, HKSTP pulls in the industry partners. As Hong Kong is famous as a city of high efficiency, the conglomerates and industrial leaders are eager to adopt technologies that will take their businesses to the next level. For instance, the Airport Authority of Hong Kong – the statutory body running one of the most efficient airports in the world – has given a boost to our homegrown innovators by shopping for technologies from Hong Kong Science Park from time to time.
In this way, Hong Kong and HKSTP are doing what we do best: bringing together the best of the East and the West to cater for new markets that no other city perhaps understands so well. This means drawing together the technological and business knowhow and thereby expanding links with the rest of the region and mainland China. In this way, we at Hong Kong can drive progress in technology and innovation, the pillars for a better tomorrow – for us and our future generations.
Geeks come in to resuscitate healthcare
In March, Apple launched ResearchKit, a platform that could revolutionise medical research, enable a deeper understanding of human health and even accelerate advances in medicine. In stark contrast to such spectacular possibilities, the technology itself is relatively simple, easily accessible and certainly cost-effective. ResearchKit does not involve wearing a separate or specialised device, nor is it limited to the confines of a hospital or even to one’s home. The platform is simply accessed through applications on an iPhone, making it available to hundreds of millions of Apple users.
ResearchKit’s open-source framework enables scientists to create apps that meet the needs of their specific areas of research, while presenting a host of opportunities to monitor users’ health and help them manage diseases. So far, five iPhone apps have been created by world-leading medical research facilities using the ResearchKit framework. Funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the five programs were already under development as web-based applications prior to Apple’s involvement. When the connection was made with Apple, the projects were turned into apps that can be used onto an iPhone, opening up a new realm of possibilities for medical research.
Wearable heart monitors, linked to electronic medical records, would be extremely helpful in picking up silent but important rhythm disturbances
Integrated technology
The beauty of Apple’s platform is that it taps into the tools and capabilities already built into the iPhone, so no further add-ons or costs are required to create or use the apps. ResearchKit uses the phone’s sensors, such as its gyroscopes, barometers and accelerometers, to take frequent measurements of an array of variables related to health. Every app varies in its features and methods, but, for each, sensors are used to collate data on the daily progress of individuals. These are combined with surveys and exercises that replicate the type of tests carried out by doctors. The results are then sent automatically to the relevant research facility. As the sensors and features integrated into the phones’ hardware are almost identical across the three models that can launch ResearchKit apps (the iPhone 5s, 6 and 6 Plus), the data collected can be normalised with relative ease.
The sensors used in conjunction with the apps reveal the sophisticated capabilities of smartphones, and the iPhone in particular, which herald a new period in medical research and health management. mPower, an app created by the University of Rochester and Sage Bionetworks, monitors individuals living with Parkinson’s disease, a degenerative condition that causes severe motion difficulties. “Perhaps the three most important sensing devices are the accelerometer (measuring forces in three dimensions acting on the phone), the microphone (measuring acoustic pressure) and the touchscreen (measuring finger movements)”, says Dr Max Little, Assistant Professor at Aston University and advisor to the mPower project. “These three sensors alone contain rich information about behaviour that is relevant to Parkinson’s signs and symptoms.”
Tasks carried out on the phone, which can be completed anywhere and at any time, offer researchers the chance to collect more information on a wider and more thorough scope than was previously possible. “One of the main aims of the app is to collect a lot of continuous-time, objective information about Parkinson’s signs and symptoms from a wide population of iPhone users”, says Dr Little. “One of the major limitations of current studies of the ‘natural history’ of the disease is that we don’t really have objective data about symptom progression in between visits to the clinic.”
The app also asks patients to complete the activities before and after taking medication, allowing scientists to accurately capture drug effectiveness. This simply was not possible before – and certainly not as practical. In this way, mPower is able to capture the progression of the disease in individuals with regularity and frequency over a long period of time, giving researchers a new level of insight, which can help them advance treatments.
So pragmatic
The convenience for participants is a fundamentel advantage of using a device they already have on their person at all times to retrieve information about their health. This entails great things for medical research in terms of the amount of data that can be collected from thousands and even millions of individuals on a regular basis – something that has never before been possible. Through the relevant app, iPhone users can gain a far better understanding of the variables that affect their wellbeing on a daily basis. Through the Asthma Health app and the phone’s existing GPS capabilities, asthma sufferers can be warned if they are about to enter an area with bad air quality that could cause discomfort, or even an attack.
Asthma Health monitors symptoms both during the day and at night and, consequently, how symptoms affect the physical activity of participants. The app can also record inhaler usage and triggers that affect participants, such as strong smells, intense exercise, dust and animals. Medical visits, planned or emergency, can also be recorded on the device as a way of keeping track, while reminders to take medication can help disease management. Tips on living with asthma and demonstration videos about inhaler use are also included in the app. Together, these features enable participants to better cope with the affliction and significantly enhance their standard of living. All the while, Asthma Health feeds information to Mount Sinai and Weill Cornell Medical College, helping researchers involved in the study better understand the condition and improve treatment methods.
700m
iPhones have been sold worldwide (as of March 2015)
There is strength in numbers and it is with this premise that ResearchKit can make a powerful contribution to medical research through the provision of more robust and frequent data, which can improve both wide-ranging and individual treatments. Not only does the framework allow researches to collect reams of data at an unprecedented rate, it also delivers the information in a far easier and more cost-effective manner; traditional paper questionnaires are time consuming for patients to fill out (a major dissuading factor), while data inputting is a costly and lengthy enterprise.
“I’ve been doing quality of life research for about 35 years and one of the challenges that we had was the ability to do any kind of daily diary monitoring”, says Professor Patricia Ganz, Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Fielding School of Public Health. “[It’s] very burdensome in terms of records and so forth; people would forget to do them, and they would be very challenging to analyse. But if you can just query someone once a day, or two or three times a day – when the patient comes in to to see you, just as you might look at their blood pressure monitoring or their glucose monitoring – you could look at how they were doing in terms of their symptoms. So I think it has great potential, if you’re only seeing a patient every two or three months, to be able review how they have done over that time, rather than having them to try to recall.”
Preventative opportunities
The MyHeart Counts app, which was developed by Stanford Medicine in collaboration with the University of Oxford, is designed to help users understand how their lifestyles and daily physical activity levels affect their cardiovascular health. “We have been very interested in the whole area of sensors and mobile health, using technology to capture information that might not otherwise be captured using traditional routes, and using that both to inform discovery – so, associations between behaviour or genetics and disease – and to provide new ways of improving health”, says Professor Martin Landray, a cardiologist and researcher at the University of Oxford, who is involved in the project.
Through the use of wearable technology, cardiologists can directly and accurately measure activity and how it improves health over longer periods. Furthermore, through long-term monitoring, new insight can be given into intermittent symptomatic episodes.
Wearable devices worn continuously thus infer possibilities for cardiology that are particularly exciting, especially in terms of preventative measures.
“Patients come to me each week describing their palpitations”, says Professor Landray. “One of the challenges for me is trying to work out what really is happening: what is the heart rhythm and what does the ECG tracing look like at the time that they’re having palpations? Wearable devices would really help me with that problem.
“A different area is around changes to heart rhythm that are asymptomatic or silent – quite a common problem in some patient groups. From time to time, their heart beats quite abnormally; the heart rhythm changes into something called atrial fibrillation, which is a risk factor for stroke. Because it’s often silent, it’s under-diagnosed. If only we knew the problem was there, treatments to reduce the risk of stroke could be started. Wearable heart monitors, linked to the electronic medical records, would be extremely helpful in picking up these silent but important rhythm disturbances.”
Tracking the journey
ResearchKit also enables a new level of understanding in recovery, which the Share the Journey app aims to capture. Built by Sage Bionetworks, together with the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and breast cancer expert Professor Ganz, Share the Journey follows the recovery of breast cancer patients through surveys and data collected via the iPhone’s sensors. The program monitors five common symptoms that occur following treatment for breast cancer: alternations in mood and cognition, sleeplessness, fatigue, and a reduction in exercise. “We know in behavioural intervention research that recording and tracking these things may be very useful”, says Professor Ganz.
Apple’s in-built HealthKit, which measures aspects of fitness, is incorporated into the Share the Journey app, so individuals can see how these activities interact with the self-reporting of their sleep patterns and mood. Not only does this provide a new horde of data while helping to identify what improves or falters symptoms during the recovery stage, it provides an invaluable tool to the individuals themselves: the app enables participants to track their own progress and see how their daily routine affects their symptoms, enabling women to significantly improve their quality of life.
“We are using the Share the Journey app to have women journal and talk about their experiences”, says Professor Ganz. “We have some programs available where we’re able to look at errors in the typing to see if that may have any relationship to cognitive function, which is a concern for some women after breast cancer treatment.”
Another app that gives users the ability to better understand their condition and the effects of their daily routine is GlucoSuccess, a medical research study using ResearchKit that was created by Massachusetts General Hospital. The project focuses on people living with Type 2 diabetes or a pre-diabetes diagnosis. GlucoSuccess again helps the participant understand how their behaviour impacts their wellbeing through tracking their diet and daily movement. The app enables users to compare their glucose levels before and after certain foods, helping them to make significant changes based on the results they see on their phone. Notifications can be sent to the phone about glucose levels, helping individuals to better manage life with the disease.
Health problems
As with any Apple innovation, the underlying assumption that frustrates the non-Apple-using world is the fact that not everyone has an iPhone. In fact, 81.5 percent of smartphone users in the world have a phone running the Android operating system. This, of course, means a large majority of the world’s population will be excluded from using ResearchKit apps and participating in this new revolution in medical research. Should Android bring out its own medical research platform, the differences between the operating systems would make it difficult and costly to normalise the information. In other words, there would be two distinct groups for those offering their medical data: Apple users and Android users. Hardly a fair study.
Furthermore, the demographics of Apple users could also obstruct a clear and inclusive picture of individuals suffering from ailments and disease. For example, in the US, iPhones are generally less common among poorer communities, yet there is a higher incidence of cardiac and cardiovascular diseases in those social groups. Then there is the age parameter: iPhone users tend to be much younger, yet it is older people who are affected by age-related conditions, such as Parkinson’s disease. The information collated through the iPhone apps could be extremely limited, to say the least.
Finally, there are some who argue that a lot of the information delivered through the ResearchKit platform will not actually be of use; perhaps the participants are unqualified patients, making the skewing of results a distinct possibility. With no blocks on who can sign up to take part in the app-based studies, it is easy for people to ‘play games’ with their new applications. Of course, the likelihood of people carrying out such fraudulent activities seems pretty low over a sustained period – particularly as there are no financial rewards or other gains in doing so – but the possibility of a fraction of people doing so cannot be refuted. For this reason, cyphering the noise from the actual data could be time consuming and may act as a distraction for medical practitioners.
Apple ResearchKit apps:
- Asthma
- Breast cancer
- Heart disease
- Diabetes
- Parkinson’s
A revolution
“We are in a revolution right now”, says Professor Ganz. “If you look at how we are going to work with patients or healthy people, it’s going to be much more interactive. There’s a whole movement towards patient-centred care and patient engagement.”
Through technology, this greater degree of interactivity between patients and medical practitioners could lead to a new era of understanding for all parties. Individuals can take greater control of their own well-being, doctors can provide better patient care and treatment, and researchers can gain a deeper insight, which could lead to unprecedented results and breakthroughs.
Although there are inevitable imperfections and teething problems, there is so much to be gained from a medical tool that is integrated into a mobile phone. “It is early days and the benefit of this kind of large-scale, ‘crowdsourced’ objective data collection is something that we are investigating”, says Dr Little. “Potentially, though, the kind of sensor data we can collect using smartphones could increase our scientific understanding of [Parkinson’s] disease substantially.”
It is important to note, however, that this revolution did not begin with Apple. Wearable medical tech is already in existence and has done great things for both patients and researchers. There are a number of tools that have been available for some time, including heart monitors, Health Care Originals’ Intelligent Asthma Management device, and the HealthPatch MD product, which helps healthcare professionals monitor vital information about their patients.
Ultimately, however, there is a significant difference in the amount of data the iPhone can obtain in comparison to other such devices. Nothing extra has to be bought or worn with ResearchKit, and the popularity of iPhones around the world needs no explanation. The Apple name raises the awareness of wearable health tech to a new level, putting the media spotlight on the five apps already in existence and any others that follow. This itself encourages more participation in these studies, which have a global scope and untold potential. It’s the Apple connection that ushers in the true possibilities of wearable health technology, and a new age of medical research that has unlimited possibilities.
ABC Medical Centre puts international standards of healthcare at a local level
For a medical centre to be considered excellent, it must actively participate in the teaching of different modalities, either by training new healthcare professionals or through educational and induction courses and programmes. It must do that not only for its physicians, but also for all its employees. The ABC Medical Centre has inaugurated a teaching hospital in alliance with one of Mexico’s most prestigious schools and is recognising prominent individuals who have contributed their knowledge to medical science.
It is also important to maintain a commitment to quality, innovation and medical practices. This can be seen in the construction of more modern facilities, the use of high specialty medicine, and national and international affiliations for community healthcare.
The ABC Medical Centre, through its research and teaching department, promotes constant innovation, excellence in processes and continuous growth by actively participating in the training of healthcare professionals in Mexico. This is why the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education and the ABC Medical Centre have joined forces to collaborate on the creation of the Tec-ABC Teaching Hospital, which will complement the medical physician programme currently offered by Monterrey Institute of Technology at its Mexico City Campus.
The purpose of this alliance is to train medical practice professionals committed to the social, cultural and economic development of Mexican society with a competitive, creative and innovative profile. It will combine the prestige of both institutions to offer cutting-edge study programmes (as well as clinical training programmes) and train professionals committed to health services.
The ABC has over 50 years of academic experience through its agreement with the National Autonomous University of Mexico, training healthcare professionals through its pre-grad rotating internship, 15 medical specialties and 12 highly specialised postgraduate courses at its Observatorio and Santa Fe Campuses.
For its part, the Monterrey Institute of Technology has managed a School of Medicine and Health Sciences for 35 years. The school is renowned for its great prestige and is considered one of the best schools for studying medicine in Latin America. Its graduates are distinguished by achieving the highest performance levels in national healthcare professional exams and for obtaining various awards for excellence.
Mexico has the greatest number of overweight people in all age groups
The synergy between both institutions leads, on the one hand, to visits from highly experienced specialised physicians who come to teach at this teaching hospital, and, on the other, a solid teaching programme that uses high quality clinical areas with state-of-the-art technology for medical training.
The main benefits will be for students, who will be able to observe medical practice at the ABC Medical Centre, receive classes from excellent physicians, be guided in the use of the latest high-end medical technology, use the best tools provided for their training, and benefit from the best medicine programmes provided by an institution as prestigious as the Monterrey Institute of Technology. As part of this programme, students will spend the first four semesters at the Mexico City Campus of the Monterrey Institute of Technology. From the fifth semester, they will transfer to the ABC Medical Centre Teaching Hospital to continue their studies. Finally, students will carry out their rotating internship at different hospitals in Mexico or abroad.
The innovative infrastructure at the ABC Medical Centre Santa Fe Campus consists of eight classrooms, one simulation center, laboratories, a newspaper library, advisory rooms and individual study cubicles, as well as open areas, offices and parking. It also houses six classrooms for developing the didactic technique of ‘Problem-Based Learning’, a creativity room and two laboratories: one for pathology and the other for developing surgical skills and clinical practice. It also has a digital library, a Gesell chamber, an area for physical examinations, a consulting room and a hospital bed.
The Tec-ABC Teaching Hospital brings to fruition one of the proposals for the strategic expansion of the ABC Medical Centre and its goal of helping to solve medium term health problems in Mexican society. At the same time, it fulfills one of the main objectives of its vision: teaching.
Leaders and legends
Every year, the ABC Neurological Centre stages an important academic conference called ‘Legends of Neuroscience’. This conference has been used each year to celebrate important and distinguished members of the neuroscience community who are in some way linked to our institution.
This year we will be honouring Dr Andrés Miguel Kanner, a legend of neuroscience with particular significance for the activities of the ABC Neurological Centre. Dr Kanner was born in Mexico – in fact at the ABC Medical Centre – has worked in the US and currently has links to the University of Miami. He has distinguished himself over the course of several decades through his studies of behaviour and the nervous system, and, in particular, for the way behaviour changes in persons with epilepsy. He is an internationally renowned doctor who has published dozens of papers, and enjoys the respect and admiration of the international scientific community.
Following the proposal for expansion included in the ABC Medical Centre’s 2020 Strategic Plan, it is necessary to evolve and adapt in order to continue as leaders in private medicine in Mexico. One of the projects for the renovation and expansion of our facilities includes the replacement of certain areas at the Observatorio Campus.
To achieve cutting-edge medical advances and safety in patient care by increasing our adherence to the highest international standards in quality and safety, a new tower will be built that will have 11 floors equipped with the latest high-end technology. This new building will include: eight operating theatres equipped with the latest high-end technology and areas for new surgical trends; 10 intensive care rooms; 10 intermediate care rooms; 10 cardiovascular intensive care rooms; 10 intermediate cardiovascular care rooms; 11 paediatrics rooms; eight haematopoietic cell transplant rooms; one specialised mixtures centre; intraoperative pathology rooms; an inhalotherapy unit; and support services. Construction is scheduled to begin this year and is estimated to take 24 to 27 months.
In addition to this project, institutional expansion plans include the opening of the ABC Sur (South) and Norte (North) Specialties Centres to offer certain services to patients living in these areas of Mexico City, using the same quality and safety standards as our two main campuses. The services offered are nutrition and obesity, physical therapy and breast cancer diagnosis. The ABC Norte Specialties Centre will also offer a clinical analysis service.
At the ABC Medical Centre we are building the future today, with planning, and in accordance with our organisational culture and values.
Transformation of healthcare
True to the vision of the ABC Medical Centre as a leading organisation in the transformation of healthcare, for 11 years we have offered the option of haematopoietic cell transplants for those suffering from certain types of cancer, congenital immunodeficiencies and hematologic conditions. The unit is staffed by specialised professionals whose technical and material resources include a physical area suitable for more complex procedures. In this way, we can continue to offer an excellent service. We improve quality of life through a multidisciplinary team of experts in transplants and cutting-edge technology.
The ABC Medical Centre is also deeply concerned about obesity in Mexico (the country has the greatest number of overweight people in all age groups). Being overweight and obese not only affects the physical image of a person, but also impacts their health and finances. The centre offers multidisciplinary medical or surgical programmes based on individual needs. These programmes feature specialists in the areas of internal medicine, psychology, nutrition and sports medicine at the ABC Nutrition and Obesity Centre.
ABC’s affiliations
Through its affiliations, the ABC Medical Centre has joined networks that offer a model and benchmark for local and international hospitals. This enables us to share knowledge and resources for community healthcare by offering better-trained physicians, nurses and technicians with a multidisciplinary vision that provides patients with our characteristic safety, humane treatment and warmth. Our affiliations include Methodist International, the Texas Children’s Hospital, Seguro Popular (Public Health Insurance), and the Kessler Institute of Rehabilitation.
In 2007, the ABC Medical Centre signed an affiliation agreement with Methodist International of Houston, Texas for the purpose of bringing the services currently provided into line with international standards. The ABC Medical Centre and Methodist International collaborate in areas that focus on patient safety, research, state-of-the-art technology, quality, specialisation and teaching, so that medical and hospital practices exceed patient expectations.
Methodist International is the international branch of the Methodist Hospital in Houston and assists patients, physicians and healthcare organisations around the world. It has a history of over 90 years of major success. The US News & World Report’s 2006 listing of America’s Best Hospitals ranked it among the top hospitals in the US for six major specialties. Among the highlights of its history, the first multi-organ transplant in the world was performed there in 1960.
Kardias AC was founded in 2000 by a group of people concerned with improving the quality of comprehensive medical care for children suffering from congenital heart disease and to meet the needs of the National Paediatrics Institute’s Paediatric Cardiovascular Surgery Programme. It is extremely important that such programmes are equipped with cutting-edge infrastructure so they can offer good service.
Kardias and the ABC Medical Centre have joined the federal government programme ‘Para los Niños de Corazón’ (‘For Children with a Heart’) by creating a High Specialty Centre with a permanent programme for the treatment of congenital cardiopathies. Every year it will provide services for hundreds of children from low-income families referred to it by the National Paediatrics Institute and the health sector. The patients will be seen by a team of multidisciplinary specialists responsible for restoring their health.
Consequently, in 2012, Kardias and the ABC Medical Center reached an agreement concerning the Paediatric Cardiopathies Surgical Programme for the creation of a High Specialty Centre. The objective is to provide care for patients with congenital cardiopathies referred to it by public sector institutions. It will provide care for the most marginalised sectors of the population (as well as private patients), employing the best safety practices and with international-level clinical results.
These operations require specialists such as cardiovascular surgeons, nurses and intensive care specialists, who must have received training in paediatric cardiovascular surgery and intensive care for paediatric patients undergoing heart surgery.
In November, the first goal was accomplished: the performance of over 100 operations. Consequently, a second goal was proposed: to increase the volume of cases seen and to provide care for more complex cases.
With this goal in mind, the ABC Medical Centre signed an agreement with the Texas Children’s Hospital for specialised technical advisory services and the training of physicians and nurses. This will ensure quality care for the ABC Medical Centre’s patients while strengthening the unit so it can become a centre of excellence in the region.
In its constant striving to meet the highest quality standards, as well as the best medical practices, in 2012 the ABC Medical Centre inaugurated an Intensive Rehabilitation Unit at its Santa Fe Campus. This cutting-edge intra-hospital intensive rehabilitation concept has achieved excellent results for patients with orthopaedic and neurological conditions.
The programme was established through a strategic alliance with the Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation, which has been ranked as the second best rehabilitation hospital in the US for 21 years and has enjoyed great prestige due its achievements over 63 years of service.
This alliance offers ABC Medical Centre patients comprehensive, highly specialised treatment using state-of-the-art technology, enabling individuals with spinal injuries, traumatic brain injuries, VBD, amputations, neurological disorders, and orthopaedic problems to have functionality restored and be reincorporated into the community. For this reason, our physical therapists are responsible for assessing and preparing a rehabilitation programme tailored to the needs of each of our patients. The Kessler Institute is committed to supporting this unit through a permanent training program for physicians, therapists and nurses.
Working in the community
The ABC Medical Centre is a not-for-profit private healthcare institution (institución de asistencia privada, IAP) governed by a board of trustees comprised of members of the community who provide their support on a voluntary and altruistic basis. As an IAP, we dedicate financial resources and human talent to private healthcare programmes, including health clinics and educational and research projects.
Through the ABC Brimex Clinic we support economically vulnerable communities near the Observatorio Campus with medical services, offering over 16,000 medical consultations a year as well as laboratory and imaging studies, emergency services, surgeries and hospitalisations, as well as intra- and extramural vaccinations. Among the programmes offered by the ABC Brimex Clinic is the Cleft Lip and Palate Clinic, which performs over 170 surgeries a year, while providing the child patients with medical, psychological, nutritional and dental consultations.
At the ABC Amistad Clinic, we offer medical activities and programmes to promote healthy communities among low-income families, offering consultations in such specialties as family medicine, dentistry, nutrition and psychology. We also have a mobile clinic that offers health services in areas of difficult access near the Santa Fe Campus and through the ‘Healthy Schools’ programme.
In addition to these two clinics, we bring our highly specialised surgery programmes to low-income patients: kidney transplant surgery; joint replacement surgery (hip and knee); brain tumour surgery; bariatric surgery; movement disorder surgery; KARDIAS paediatric heart surgery; and chemotherapy. We are many hands working with one heart.
Toyota recalls more cars after software glitch
Having withdrawn almost five million vehicles in May due to faulty airbag inflators, the world’s number one automaker has announced that it will recall a further 625,000 hybrid cars – this time in relation to a suspected software glitch. Of the total, approximately 340,000 are in Japan, 160,000 in Europe and the rest in North America, though there have been no reports yet of crashes, injuries or fatalities linked to the issue.
The danger for Toyota now is that its reputation for delivering safe and reliable products is
in jeopardy
The faulty settings are believed to result in higher thermal stress in parts of the power converter, which could then damage the part and, in limited cases, shut the vehicle down. Only those with a Prius v or Auris Hybrid, manufactured in the period through May 2010 to November 2014 are affected, and drivers need only take their vehicles to their local dealer to update the software for both the motor/generator control ECU and the hybrid control ECU.
The danger for Toyota now is that its reputation for delivering safe and reliable products is in jeopardy, with millions of owners having been alerted in the past year to faults of various sorts. The impact has been dampened somewhat by the mere fact that rival brands have suffered the same fate, with Honda and GM having taken cars off the road also. The BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands study in May saw the automaker retain its title as the world’s most valuable car brand, although it was down two percent on the year previous to $28.9bn and slip-ups much like the software glitch threaten to sully Toyota’s hard-earned reputation.
Never underestimate the threat of cybersecurity attacks
Why investing in security is essential
Enterprises are often reluctant to invest in securing their computing systems because security is mistakenly considered to be an expensive investment with no associated revenue. If a company invests in enriching its catalog or improving the user experience, the revenue is immediate and tangible. On the other hand, investing in security is expensive and does not generate any new business. In order to improve security, it is necessary to hire security experts, purchase new hardware and software to enforce security at every system level, and most likely change the design and implementation of existing web and mobile applications, and yet none of such changes is going to increase a company’s revenue.
Security is the most important investment that a company can
ever make
Nevertheless, security is the most important investment that a company can ever make. While it may be true that an investment in security is unlikely to generate new business, it cannot be denied that investing in security will prevent a company from experiencing seri-ous financial losses and seeing its reputation compromised, perhaps irremediably. The damage can be so significant that even established companies have gone out of business after a cybersecurity attack.
Security as a holistic approach
It is often said that security, just like the proverbial chain, is only as strong as its weakest link. Therefore, when it comes to protecting a computing system, companies must take a holistic approach and secure every single component of the system: hardware, software and network.
Hardening the software component is particularly tricky because security vulnerabilities can be nested deeply into software application code, which makes it difficult to discover and eliminate them. This is the main reason why hackers are constantly searching for new ways to attack a system by exploiting vulnerabilities in its applications. As a consequence, a system deemed to be secure today may be found to be exposed to a new type of attack tomorrow.
The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) is a community dedicated to enabling organisations to securely design, develop, and maintain applications. Once a year, OWASP reports the most common security vulnerabilities in web and mobile applications. Such vulnerabilities can be classified into three major categories: information flow, access control and configuration.
Information-flow vulnerabilities
Information-flow vulnerabilities are those that lead to integrity and confidentiality violations. An integrity violation occurs every time a piece of untrusted data is used as input to a security-sensitive computation without having been properly validated. For example, if data entered by an end user in a text field of a web page is used to form a database query without proper validation, there is the potential for an injection attack. The programmer must make sure that the text entered by the user does not contain pieces of Structured Query Language (SQL) code, which may lead to the creation of unintended SQL commands. Such commands can compromise the integrity of an entire database and/or expose confidential data.
If the text entered by the user is intended to become part of an HTML page, the risk is for attackers to embed JavaScript code into the input text. That JavaScript code, in spite of be-ing text, will not be rendered by the browser as normal text, but passed to the JavaScript runtime and executed. This attack, known as Cross-site Scripting (XSS), can give an attacker the power to execute arbitrary JavaScript code on the victim’s computer, with the potential of causing extensive damage, such as impersonating the victim in social-network systems, making purchases online on behalf of the victim, and accessing and modifying the victim’s bank-account data.
If input data is used to form a URL without having been properly validated, the application can point to unintended contents, with the potential of stealing end users’ private infor-mation and compromising the reputation and reliability of a company. These types of at-tacks are known as unvalidated redirects and forwards. Typically, a user is redirected to a malicious web page that, on the surface, looks exactly like the page the user expects to see. Under the covers, however, the code of this page steals the private information entered by the user and shares it with unauthorised servers on the internet.
A confidentiality violation occurs every time private data is exposed to unauthorised observers. This can happen when an application does not properly protect the data of the user, or when an application stores user data in a file system or cloud-based location also accessible by other applications.
Access-control vulnerabilities
Access control deals with restricting access to computer resources based on the identity of the user requesting access. The two main components of an access-control system are authentication and authorisation.
A form of access-control vulnerability, known as broken authentication and session management, occurs when an application cashes user authentication information in session tokens that are not properly protected, thereby allowing attackers to hijack active sessions and assume the identity of authenticated users.
An insecure direct object reference occurs when a developer exposes a reference to an internal implementation object—such as a file, directory, or database key—without an access-control check. Attackers can manipulate such references and access unauthorised data.
Configuration vulnerabilities
Good security requires having all the applications, libraries, frameworks, application servers, Web servers, databases, firewalls and operating systems properly configured. Default configurations are often unsecure. Secure settings should be defined, implemented, and maintained. Additionally, software should be kept up to date. When these requirements are not properly implemented, a security-misconfiguration vulnerability may occur, with the potential of causing integrity and/or confidentiality attacks.
Software modules—such as libraries and frameworks—almost always run with full privileges. Using components with known vulnerabilities can facilitate data loss or server takeover. A recent example of this is the remote-code execution with Expression Language injection vulnerability that was discovered in January 2013 in the Spring Framework for Java. A fixed version of the framework was published shortly after the vulnerability was discovered. However, it is estimated that 29.8 million downloads still contain the known vulnerability.
Broken-cryptography attacks take place when an application uses non-standard, non-tested cryptographic algorithms, or applies cryptography incorrectly. In June 2014, a broken-cryptography vulnerability in the Android Platform V4.3 allowed attackers to obtain from end users’ Android devices all sort of sensitive credentials, including cryptographic keys for banking services and virtual private networks, and PINs or patterns used to unlock the devices.
Program analysis
To prevent their applications from being attacked, enterprises must make security part of all the phases of the software lifecycle, and proper code review must be in place. Obviously, manual code review is tedious, time consuming and error prone, not to say infeasible, especially for large applications. A valid, alternative solution is to automate the code-review process by combining static and dynamic program analysis.
Manual code review is tedious, time consuming and error prone, not to say infeasible
With dynamic analysis, an application must be installed in a testing environment and executed multiple times with different input parameters, looking for vulnerabilities to be exposed. The advantage of this approach is that any detected vulnerability is a true positive. The disadvantage is that this approach can have false negatives, due to the fact that it is often impossible to explore all the possible paths of execution with all the possible inputs, causing some of the vulnerabilities to remain undiscovered, perhaps until the application is in production.
When static analysis is used, there is no need for the application to be installed. The static analyser parses the application code and builds a mathematical model that over-approximates the application execution. The analyser detects the vulnerabilities based on that model. The advantage of this solution is that it is fully automated and has potentially no false negatives. On the other hand, static analysis is conservative by construction; false positives are possible, and so each result must be manually reviewed in order to filter out the false positives and correct only the actual vulnerabilities.
A combination of static and dynamic analysis mitigates the disadvantages that arise when static and dynamic analysis are executed individually.
Enterprises must take a holistic approach when it comes to security. Since most cybersecurity attacks take place at the application level, which is unique to each individual company, it is critical for organisations to secure software application code. A combination of static and dynamic program analysis is the recommended solution to detect and correct application-level cybersecurity attacks.
Platform billionaire buys chemicals firm Alent
Led by Martin E Franklin, Florida-based Platform Speciality Products has agreed to buy chemicals producer Alent for $2.1bn.
According to a press statement released by Platform, Alent’s shareholders will receive 503 pence per share in cash – a premium of 43 percent from Friday’s closing price. Alternatively, shareholders have the option of receiving Platform’s common stock instead of a cash payout.
Platform hopes to expand its product portfolio, particularly in surface treatment, as well as its global network
British firm Alent supplies engineered materials and speciality chemicals for industrial, automotive and electronic applications. Through the acquisition of Alent, Platform hopes to expand its product portfolio, particularly in surface treatment, as well as its global network. The group expects the acquisition to earn pre-tax savings of $50m per annum, following a three-year transition period. Alent will be integrated into the same division as rival MacDermid – a previous acquisition, which Platform purchased in 2013 for $1.8bn.
“The proposed acquisition of Alent marks a further step in the Platform strategy of building a portfolio of best-in-class ‘Asset-Lite, High-Touch’ businesses in the specialty chemicals industry”, Franklin said in the press release. “Alent is a terrific fit and rebalances the portfolio as we continue to build the company.”
The deal is expected to close by the end of this year or early 2016, following shareholder and regulatory approval.
Franklin, who also heads consumer brands group Jaden, established Platform in 2013 in order to purchase chemical firms. The Alent buy-out is the latest in a string of deals that has enabled Platform to grow its reach and widen its product offerings considerably. In just two years, the investment group has become a big player in the global speciality chemicals market.
Nokia refuses to give up on its mobile business
Fresh from a $7.6bn writedown and 7,800 in additional job cuts, Microsoft’s Nokia has responded to media speculation about mobile devices and confirmed that it could re-enter the market using a brand-licensing model in the near future. In a statement, the Finnish company said that it was in the hunt for a “world-class partner” to take on the responsibilities for manufacturing, sales, marketing and customer support, though stopped short of naming a potential suitor.
The Nokia deal, pushed through in a time when Steve Ballmer was in the top spot, has greatly impacted Microsoft’s performance
“That’s the only way the bar would be met for a mobile device we’d be proud to have bear the Nokia brand, and that people will love to buy”, according to a spokesperson for Nokia technologies.
The company sold the entirety of its devices and services business to Microsoft in April of last year, including its manufacturing, marketing and channel distribution capabilities, which essentially stripped it of the ability to make and sell phones. “The Nokia that exists today remains focused on the connected world, through mobile network infrastructure, location and mapping services, and technology development and licensing”, according to the statement. “We also aim to continue bringing our iconic design capabilities and technology innovation to the mobile space, and in the form of amazing products people can someday hold in their hands. However, we’ll do it in a completely different way from before.”
The Nokia deal, pushed through in a time when Steve Ballmer was in the top spot, has greatly impacted Microsoft’s performance, and the setbacks – namely writedowns and job cuts – are due to the rapid rate at which the mobile market has evolved and the company’s inability to keep pace. Once the world’s leading cell phone maker, Nokia has been shunted aside by new market entrants Samsung, Apple and, in China, Xiaomi, with the company struggling to rediscover its household name status.
The Nokia brand has suffered a great deal in recent months and years, though the latest announcement shows that the company is not yet prepared to give up on its mobile business. “We will look for the right partner who can take on the heavy lifting and work closely with us to deliver a great product. As we agreed with Microsoft, the soonest that could happen is Q4 2016 – so it’s safe to say Nokia won’t be back (at least in phone form…) before then.”
Gamers mourn as Nintendo president Satoru Iwata dies
Today the world’s biggest video game manufacturer, Nintendo, has announced the passing of its president, Satoru Iwata, from bile duct cancer. Itawa led Nintendo since 2002 when he succeeded legendary Hiroshi Yamauchi – the man responsible for transforming Nintendo from a playing card producer into the gaming giant it is today.
A greatly revered figure in the industry and former game developer himself, Iwata is known for his work on worldwide successes The Legend of Zelda, Super Smash Brothers, Kirby and Pokemon. “On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer,” Itawa famously said during a speech at the 2005 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.
Since the news was announced, tributes from fans from around the world have been pouring in online
With a passion for making family-friendly games that could be enjoyed by all ages and varying skills, under Itawa, Nintendo dominated the market with products such as the Wii and the DS. Through Nintendo’s library of educational games, multi-player tournaments and fitness platforms, Itawa is responsible for expanding the gaming market and global customer-base onto a whole new level.
Despite its consistent success for decades, Nintendo recently entered into its most trying era as customers transition to mobile gaming. Amid falling profits, as well as greater competition from Sony and Microsoft, Iwata reportedly halved his salary last year. Then in March, Nintendo announced made the long-awaited announcement that it was finally bowing down to market pressure and would begin adapting games for smartphones, which would feature many of its beloved characters.
Since the news was announced, tributes from fans from around the world have been pouring in online, many of which have been posted via social media website Twitter.
A successor has not yet been named, but the company press release stated that Representative Directors Genyo Takeda and Shigeru Miyamoto will remain in their posts, thereby acting in the interim in accordance with Japanese law.