The World From My Viewpoint

How does the mighty kingsnake overpower the even mightier rat snake? It uses its tremendous constriction power, a new study finds.

It may not be the largest snake, but the "king of snakes" earned its name because it eats other snakes, including the rat snake. The latter kind of snake coincidentally got its name because it eats rats, and some species can grow to be 10 feet (3 meters) long. But researchers could only guess how kingsnakes, which can reach a length of up to 6 feet (1.8 m), triumphed over larger snakes, so two herpetologists set out to solve the mystery.

"It doesn't make sense," said study lead researcher David Penning, an assistant professor of biology at Missouri Southern State University. "Kingsnakes should avoid rat snakes, because rat snakes should be stronger; they should be more dangerous; they should be able to defend themselves. But kingsnakes walk right up to the situation and then consume" the thing that is bigger than they are.

Serpentine experiments

Although kingsnakes eat many types of snakes  (including other kingsnakes), Penning and his colleague focused on three species of kingsnake (Lampropeltis californiae, L. getula and L. holbrooki) and three species of rat snake (Pantherophis alleghaniensis, P. guttatus and P. obsoletus) because all of these snakes share a habitat — the lower two-thirds of the continental United States.

However, the team wasn't quite sure where to begin. "We didn't have any idea of what to expect," Penning told Live Science. "No preliminary data."

To get started, they took a look at the snakes' anatomy.

"Are they different internally?" Penning wondered. "Like, are kingsnakes maybe housing more muscle?" To find the answer, Penning and study co-researcher Brad Moon, an associate professor of biology at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, compared the muscles of 36 kingsnakes and rat snakes that were preserved as part of a teaching collection.

But, after hours of complex dissection, "Lo and behold, there was no quantifiable difference," Penning said.

Next, the researchers tested the snakes' abilities to escape. Perhaps rat snakes were "just terrible" at escaping once kingsnakes had them in their grasp, Penning reasoned. To find out, they tested 98 live snakes by taping the snakes' heads to a flat surface and placing a pressure gauge at the other end of the snakes' bodies. But that experiment also failed to find a difference.

They learned, unsurprisingly, that larger serpents are stronger than smaller snakes, but that the rat snakes were just as strong as the kingsnakes.

"We were 0 for 2," Penning said.

Under pressure

Finally, the team tested the snakes' constriction strength — that is, the power snakes exert when they coil around prey to stop blood flow.

The scientists studied 182 snakes by giving them dead mice that were attached to pressure sensors. All of the snakes coiled around the prey one to three times, but the similarities ended there. Of the 89 kingsnakes, 91 percent formed uniform loops, like the coil of a spring (or of a curly french fry, Penning joked). These uniform coils may maximize the force with which the snake squeezes its prey, he said.

In contrast, just about 5 percent of the 93 rat snakes formed uniform, spring-like coils. The rest had varied postures, with loops at different positions and angles, Penning said.

These uniform coils may partly explain why the kingsnakes could squeeze prey with a force that was between 0.7 to 6 lbs. per square inch (5 to 41 kilopascal pressure units), while rat snakes had a lower range of 0.4 to 3 lbs. psi (3 to 23 kPa), the researchers said. 

"[This] indicates that kingsnakes win in predatory encounters because of their superior constriction performance," the researchers wrote in the study. However, there might be other factors at play. For instance, perhaps kingsnakes use different types of muscle contractions that are stronger than the rat snakes', the researchers said.

The study is an informative one, said Stephen Secor, a professor of biological sciences at the University of Alabama, who was not involved in the study.

"They are finding that the kingsnakes were able to induce much greater peak constriction pressure than the rat snakes and the corn snakes [a type of rat snake]," Secor told Live Science.

While traditional forms of marketing real estate fizzle out, a new era of digital marketing has dawned. Thanks to the global connectivity of the internet, people no longer have to turn to traditional media to market a home or condo or any other form of real estate. Gone are the days where consumers lack transparency into a market that once used to confuse and perplex everyday average individuals looking to buy or sell a home.

No. Today, consumers are savvy. As the internet has evolved, so has our unfettered access to information across the spectrum. In turn, the real estate market, which has been one of the most lucrative and profitable lines of business since the dawn of time, has seen an explosive growth of agents and owners vying for the buyer's attention through any form of digital marketing means.

Yet, like every other highly-saturated field, it's no longer simple to gain the customer's awareness. They've learned to weed out the nuisances and cancel the noise as they search for the perfect home on the web. With fierce competition in the marketplace, potential home buyers are armed with all the data they could possibly need, forcing real estate agents to compete and set themselves apart more fortuitously than before.

The truth? It's difficult to market a home on the internet. It's become excruciatingly painful to set yourself apart from the fray. With the biggest players in the market aggregating themselves through sites like Zillow, Trulia and others, most have come to realize that real estate marketing is an extremely complex field that requires weaving together a number of online marketing disciplines such as blogging, social media and search engine optimization, just to name a few.

While much of this has little to do with the everyday consumer, real estate agents are constantly searching for ways they can gain an edge in digital real estate marketing. To that effect, I pondered the question for a while about the future of real estate marketing. I wondered what realtors and owners were doing to set themselves apart in such a convoluted and competitive online space.

In a recent article where I covered virtual reality's impact on three different industries, one of those industries that I covered was real estate. The key player in that industry? Matterport. By far, this is one of the most innovative and impressive companies that I have come across and I wanted to dive in further to learn more about the product behind the company.

If you've never heard of Matterport, then prepare to be impressed. Their camera captures a 3D-dollhouse rendering of any space that can be toured and viewed, not only in virtual reality, but across any device. When real estate agents and home owners are looking for an edge in marketing their homes, condos, offices, yachts and anything else for that matter, they turn to Matterport.

I'm not often this impressed by a company's product or services. I've not been paid to endorse them and have no deals whatsoever in place. Yet, as a digital marketing sleuth and someone who is acutely vested in the real estate industry, I am always looking for the next best thing, so to speak.

In a brief conversation with Bill Brown, CEO of the company, he informed me that "Matterport’s mission is to give people the freedom to experience any place at any time...  establishing 3D and VR models as a primary medium for experiencing, sharing, and re-imagining the world."

So to ensure that I sated my ongoing lust for information about the company's product, I reached out. The otherwise-expensive camera that the company provides is at the center of its technology. With its previous iteration hovering around the $5,000 mark (recently reduced to $3,600), some would consider this a significant investment. So, I wanted to give a test drive on my own. I wanted to see what all this hype was about.

Matterport came through. I reached out and was connected with Sibyl Chen and Chris Hoang, who graciously shipped me a loaner camera to put the tech to firsthand use. The goal? I wanted to see just how difficult it was to capture a space in 3D. I wanted to know if this really was the cutting edge tech that lived up to all the hype. If you've never seen a Matterport scan or 'flown through' a Matterport home, then you can see a variety of examples in their gallery, here.

Chen informs me that Matterport has captured over 400,000 spaces in over 70 countries. This includes not only traditional real estate in the form of homes and condos, but also commercial real estate, hotels, retail shops, restaurants and even historical museums and other landmarks around the world. In total, these spaces have received over 100,000,000 million views. Here are some of the most interesting things that have been done with these spaces:

Real estate transactions (on homes with prices points as high as $8million)

Vacation rental bookings all over the world

Venue booking for corporate events, wedding, etc

Education of telemarketing staff on features in different hotels they “support”

Communications with facilities staff to to support maintenance needs

Construction documentation for commercial buildings

As built capture of major commercial buildings

Journalistic and immersive storytelling of culturally or historically significant real world locations (e.g. Iraq bomb site, Rosa Parks Bus, Martin Luther King church)

Interactive walk throughs of TV sets (e.g. Seinfeld set)

What Is Real Estate Marketing?

Okay, before I dive into my review of the Matterport system and capturing a space in 3D that can even be viewed in virtual reality, let's look at what real estate marketing actually is. Today, when we're talking about real estate marketing, we're primarily discussing online marketing in the digital realm.

For those that are acclimated to online marketing, marketing real estate is straightforward. However, it's clearly the exception rather than the norm. The truth is that real estate marketing is difficult because online marketing is difficult. Without an established audience and platform with real authority, getting the proverbial word out is a major hurdle.

However, clearly real estate marketing isn't just digital. Real estate agencies and realtors have been sending out direct mailers for ages and posting ads in traditional media. However, that kind of marketing is now dying off. As we complete the shift from paper to digital, traditional senses of marketing will also slowly evaporate. As more newspapers and magazines shutter, this becomes more apparent.

Today, marketing real estate isn't about sending out direct mailers; it's about launching email campaigns towards targeted buyers interested in homes in your area. To do that, you need an established and well-vetted list. To get that list, you need a squeeze page to attract buyers with something like a home appraisal tool or renovation tool to help them crunch some numbers in exchange for that lucrative email address.

Clearly, online marketing trumps traditional marketing in forms of both effectiveness and potential for saturation, but how do you go about marketing a home or condo on the internet? If you're going to set yourself apart, not only do you need to understand the fundamentals and mechanics of digitally marketing real estate, but you also need to ensure you have something that accurately portrays your home.

Simply put, pictures just don't do it anymore. Everyone knows that videos have begun springing up across realtors' websites in an effort to better showcase a home. It's obvious that videos help. However, today, a simple video just won't cut it anymore, nor will great photos. Today, for realtors and prospective home owners to set themselves apart in the digital marketing fray, they need 3D models and showcases of their homes.

Why 3D Models Are Important

Humans are meant to implement all of our senses when observing an object. This is done genetically by design to perceive a threat or understand whether an object can help us to sustain life as in the form of food or to allow us to achieve some other innate goal such as provide shelter or water and so on. Up until now, the internet has largely afforded us the opportunity to use two of our senses. We can see and hear the internet in two dimensions.

While that's great for the time being, it doesn't provide the immersive experience that something like virtual reality can provide, especially when we can physically interact with a digital environment. Now, that doesn't mean you need virtual reality to market real estate. However, by using 3D modeling cameras to capture a space, you can better convey it with spacial recognition and capture the entire environment and provide a walkthrough that largely replicates being physically present.

Matterport's 3D camera capture 10 million points in space per second as it spins around, wildly stitching the environment together. When complete, the camera provides a realistic dollhouse model that anyone can fly through. It's an impressive tool that you can add to any real estate marketing arsenal on the web.

At first glance, I was under the assumption that the camera would be far more difficult to use than it seemed. It wasn't. The setup was simple enough. Place the camera on a tripod and turn it on. You need to sync with an iPad and download the Matterport application. Once that's complete, you can create scans and move the camera around to stitch the entire unit together. As you move to another floor, you simply indicate that you're adding a new floor.

The camera and software are clever enough to know when the camera has been moved too far. You need to ensure that you move it roughly 6 feet from the last point to stitch the space properly together. If the camera can't spatially link the two scans together, you need to do it over again. Each scan takes about 15-20 seconds so mistakes can cost you some time, but once you get acclimated to its use, it goes relatively smoothly.

During my test of the system, I scanned two projects. The first was a relatively "simple," 5-bedroom home in Beverly Hills. The second project, a massive yacht, was a little bit more challenging. The only issue that I had during the scans occurred while scanning the stairs and stitching together one floor with the next. However, after a few tries, I got it down.

My goal in conducting the scans was to do one that was super-simple and one that was highly complex. For the complex scan,  I used Howard Leight's yacht in Marina del Rey, aptly coined, Leight Star. Howard Leight is the billionaire founder of an intelligent hearing solutions business, a company that was long-ago acquired by Honeywell. Leight is also a prodigious real estate investor and owner of Malibu Rocky Oaks, a winery in Malibu often featured on some of the most influential Instagram accounts.

This was the second scan that I tried and for good reason. The scan of the yacht was far more complex than the home. But I figured if I could scan the most complex type of space, with the most abundance of light, then I could really master the system. It was nowhere nearly as good as the other scan that exists for another superyacht in Matterport's gallery called the Aurora Yacht, but I came pretty darn close for a novice.

Overall, out of the box, the system was simple and easy to use. Once the data was loaded onto the camera, all you have to do is upload it to Matterport's servers, where they process the files into the 3D dollhouse scan, which you can easily embed in a WordPress post, giving anyone with a blog or website to market their real estate online simply and effectively.

Both animals and plants have evolved in response to environmental factors such as climate and the availability of food, so the tissues and minerals making them up often boast mechanical properties not necessarily found in artificial materials. Researchers would like to mimic biomaterials such as tooth enamel and adapt these to make new, high-performance composites for real-world applications.

Tooth enamel is a special material in itself since its composition and structure is, unusually, the same across all species – from sea urchins to primates and dinosaurs, and modern and ancient walruses. The beak of the octopus also has a similar structure. “There must be some functional reason for this consistency across species,” says team leader Nicholas Kotov.

He and his colleagues have now recreated a tooth-enamel-inspired composite material by growing a “forest” of zinc oxide nanowires on a substrate. They then layer two polymers over the nanowire, spinning the substrate to spread out the polymer and baking it to cure it between coats. It takes 40 layers to build up a single micron of enamel-like structure, says team member Bongjun Yeom, who made the material. We then lay down another layer of zinc oxide nanowires and fill it in with 40 layers of polymer, repeating the whole process up to 20 times.

Comparable properties

The researchers found that their “abiotic tooth enamel”, as they have dubbed it, has a viscoelastic figure of merit (VFOM) and weight-adjusted VFOM that is similar to or higher than those of natural tooth enamels (of 0.6 and 0.8, respectively). VFOM is a measure of how resistant a material is to damage from vibrations.

They also measured the Young’s modulus and hardness with both “Berkovich” and conical probes at a depth of 400 nm in the nanocomposites with a 67% inorganic content by volume using static nanoindentation tests. The values were around 40 and 1.65 GPa, respectively. To compare, the values for tooth enamel with 85 vol% inorganic content are 62–108 and 1.1–4.9 GPa.

Columnar structure is important

Thanks to the results from their molecular modelling studies, Kotov and colleagues reckon that the composite’s outstanding combination of mechanical properties (high stiffness and viscoelasticity, but low density) come from confining the polymer molecules between the stiff nanowire columns. And from the fact that the polymer chains slip and slide at the interfaces between the columns and the matrix creating friction to dissipate energy from vibrations.

The same is true for tooth enamel itself, which is made of columns of ceramic crystals infiltrated with a matrix of proteins set into a hard protective coating. This layer is sometimes repeated and so made thicker in the teeth that have be tougher. “This structure is good at absorbing vibrations because the stiff nanoscale columns bending under stress from above create a lot of friction with the softer polymer surrounding them within the enamel,” explains Kotov. “The large contact area between the ceramic and protein components further increases the dissipation of energy that might otherwise damage it, something that might explain the evolutionary advantage of the ubiquitous columnar motif in living species.

“We expect that our findings could apply to all columnar composites and so help lead to the development of higher performance, lightweight, load-bearing materials,” he tells nanotechweb.org. “Besides applications in biomedical implants, these nanomaterials made from abundant inexpensive high-VFOM components could also find their way into many areas of technology. I hope to see them in airplanes and other environments in which vibrations are inescapable, protecting structures and electronics from ageing and cracking.”

One of the mightiest El Niño patterns in memory brought unprecedented drought and flooding in 2016, the hottest year on record. The planet also passed a grim milestone: an atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration of 400 parts per million, including remote Antarctica, which hasn’t seen that much CO2 for 4 million years. Climatologists target 350 ppm as the uppermost threshold before we see dire consequences, like catastrophic sea level rise. Some locations previously had topped 400 ppm on a seasonal cycle, but scientists say this time it’s permanent — and global.

Climate Change Around the World

Slush Dogs For the first time in the Iditarod’s 44-year history, organizers imported snow for the sled dog race via the Alaska Railroad, as winter and spring temperatures climbed 9 degrees F above average, shattering a decades-old record.

Western Drought . . . Still Hopes that El Niño would fill reservoirs crumbled when predicted precipitation didn’t reach the West. By summer, the Sierra Nevada snowpack — L.A.’s lifeblood — was half of normal. New models show it won’t recover until 2019, even with a few winters of heavy snow.

Arctic Sea Ice In September, Arctic sea ice reached its second-lowest extent ever recorded; 2012 holds first place.

Tinder Snub Another hot winter helped forest-eating southern pine beetles settle New England. And in California, beetles and drought have killed 66 million trees. A small silver lining: A study in April found that under certain conditions, dead trees killed by bugs are less likely to burn.

Southern Exposure A once-in-a-millennium rainfall landed in Louisiana in mid-August, while weeks earlier in West Virginia, record floods killed dozens. A new study from the National Academy of Sciences shows climate change moistens the atmosphere, increasing flood risk.

Climate Cruise Arctic sea ice vanished from the Northwest Passage this summer, letting the cruise ship Crystal Serenity take about 1,000 tourists from Alaska to New York for the first time.

Paris Accord On April 22, Earth Day, 175 nations agreed to keep global warming below 2 degrees C. But scientists say the non-binding Paris pact likely can’t hit its goal. And a study in March found that even a 1.5 degree C increase will severely degrade coral reefs and hurt crop productivity in the tropics.

Epic Heat Summer temperatures brought record heat to the Middle East. A site in Kuwait hit 129.2 degrees F in July; the World Meteorological Organization is investigating if that was the hottest temperature ever recorded in the Eastern Hemisphere.

Spiraling out Climatologist Ed Hawkins has a new way to look at rising temps. By laying out months like a clock, his plot shows the spiral toward a 2 degree C heat increase since 1880.

Farms and Famine Southern Africa entered the second year of extreme drought, which left cropland barren and helped increase food prices.

Coal Collapse Coal use has peaked in China, the world’s largest polluter, and is falling off earlier than expected, according to a Nature Geoscience analysis. That’s welcome news as another fresh study showed coal pollution prematurely killed 366,000 Chinese in 2013.

Zombie Spores Scientists blamed an anthrax outbreak among Siberian reindeer on an animal that died from the disease decades ago. Record heat melted permafrost and exposed the infected carcass, killing a child and sickening others.

Most sales emails sent by businesses are never opened by their intended recipients, according to recent research from HubSpot.

The report was based on an analysis of data from more than 25 million one-to-one (i.e., not to a list) emails sent via the HubSpot Sales platform by firms in 28 different industries.

Only 37% of sales emails are actually opened, on average, the analysis found.

The arts and entertainment industry has the highest average open rate (47%) for sales emails; construction ranks second (45% average open rate), followed by human resources (44%) and legal/government (44%).

The marketing and advertising industry has the lowest average open rate (25%) for sales emails.

An international research team made up of Junior Professor Fabian Pauly and Professor Peter Nielaba, who are theoretical physicists at the University of Konstanz, and their staff, has made a quantum leap toward in-depth knowledge on heat transport at the nanoscale.

The researchers achieved this by employing a system often used by nanoscience experimentalists and acts as the “fruit fly” for breakthrough findings - a chain of gold atoms. Using the gold atom chain, the researchers explained the quantization of the electronic part of thermal conductance.

In addition, the research demonstrated that Wiedemann-Franz law - a relation from classical physics which states that thermal conductance and electric conductance are proportional to each other - stays valid even down to the atomic level. The outcomes of the research were reported in the 16 February 2017 issue of the scientific journal Science.

Initially, a microscopic gold wire is taken as the test object. The gold wire is stretched up to the point where its cross section is just an atom wide and a gold atom chain is formed, before it gets eventually broken. The researchers passed electric current through the atomic gold chain, which is the thinnest wire ever possible.

Then, they used various theoretical models to predict the electric conductance value. The predicted conductance value was validated by experimental methods. The amount of charge current that flows upon applying an electrical voltage is indicated by this electric conductance. However, for gold chain atomic wires, the thermal conductance - that is, the amount of heat flowing with respect to difference in temperature - could not be measured until now.

Currently, the uncertainty is whether the Wiedemann-Franz law continues to be valid even at the atomic level. In general, heat transport is not only caused by electrons and but also atomic oscillations - vibrations or phonons. In order to explain electron as well as phonon transport, we have to apply quantum mechanics at the atomic scale.

However, the Wiedemann-Franz law explains only the correlation among macroscopic electronic properties. For that reason the physicists first had to discover the contribution of phonons toward the thermal conductance.

Jan Klöckner and Manuel Matt, doctoral researchers, carried out complementary theoretical calculations, which indicated that typically, the phonon contribution toward heat transport in thin atomic gold wires is less than 10%, and not a determining factor.

At the same time, the simulations corroborated the pertinence of the Wiedemann-Franz law. An efficient, but less precise, technique used by Manuel Matt produced statistical results for various gold wire stretching events to compute the electronic part of the thermal conductance value.

While the density functional theory was used by Jan Klöckner to calculate the phononic and electronic contributions in discrete contact geometries. As demonstrated by the experiment, the quantization of thermal conductance in gold chains is eventually due to the combined effect of three factors: the validity of the Wiedemann-Franz law, the marginal role played by phonons in heat transport, and the quantization of the electrical conductance value in units of the conductance quantum, which is equal to twice the inverse Klitzing constant 2e2/h.

Until recently, the theoretical calculation of the ways in which heat and charges flow through nanostructures could be carried out using computer models similar to those developed by the research teams of Fabian Pauly and Peter Nielaba. An exceptionally accurate experimental setup - similar to the one developed by Professor Edgar Meyhofer and Professor Pramod Reddy from the University of Michigan (USA) - was needed to compare the real-time measurements with theoretical predictions.

In the earlier investigations, the signals resulting from the flow of heat through single atom contacts were very minute. The research team from the University of Michigan was triumphant in enhancing the experiment. As a result, the actual signal can now be easily filtered out and measured.

The findings of the research team have enabled the analysis of heat transport in atomic gold contacts as well as other nanosystems. The findings also enable theoretical and experimental investigation of a number of fundamental quantum heat transport phenomena that can aid in the efficient usage of energy, for instance, by taking advantage of thermoelectricity.

Apparently "Battlestar Galactica" had it right all along. Technology mogul Elon Musk says the way to deal with advancing artificial intelligence is to merge with machines—or risk being made redundant.

At the 2017 World Government Summit in Dubai on Monday, Musk commented that “some kind of high-bandwidth interface to the brain will be something that helps us achieve symbiosis between human and machine intelligence.” The statement came during a question and answer session in which Musk had already articulated that, “There will be fewer and fewer jobs that a robot can’t do better.”

His argument is essentially that because computers, well, compute much faster than our sluggish cerebrums, we’ll need to somehow supercharge our brains to stay relevant in the age of artificial intelligence. It’s a pretty ambitious solution, given the current limitations of brain-computer interfaces, though it’s in line with the sort of fanciful ideas that media outlets love to quote Musk on.

Let's be clear here: What Musk is proposing may be far-fetched, but it’s a response to a very real problem that's going to affect a lot of people in the near future. Jobs that involve predictable manual labor are in danger of becoming obsolete. McKinsey & Company estimates that about 78 percent of those types of jobs (along with 69 percent of data processing and 64 percent of data collecting) could become completely automated. Driving-related jobs are likely to become increasingly automated as self-driving technology improves, and given that those were the most common jobs in 29 states as of 2014, we should absolutely be focused on finding a solution.

But Musk has also floated a much simpler—and more realistic—solution. And you won’t hear about in the headlines.

“What are we going to do about mass unemployment? That’s going to be a massive social challenge,” Musk told the crowd in Dubai. “Ultimately I think people will have to have some kind of universal basic income.”

Universal basic income is a minimum income that a state or municipality gives to each of its citizens or residents to ensure everyone's basic needs are met. The idea dates back to at least the 1970s, when the Canadian province of Manitoba briefly sent out checks as part of a program called Mincome. The idea has gotten more attention as fears around automation—and artificial intelligence—have made the spectre of mass unemployment more corporeal.

Switzerland recently toyed with a universal basic income, and though it was voted down the idea has still tempted plenty of world leaders. President Obama told Wired that “Whether a universal income is the right model—is it gonna be accepted by a broad base of people?—that's a debate that we'll be having over the next 10 or 20 years.”

Universal basic income isn’t necessarily the best solution to the rise of automation. A federal report entitled “Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and the Economy” from December 2016 argues that a better solution would be to simply prepare workers for an AI-dependent world. That means training low-skill employees to perform tasks that mesh well with automation. But universal income isn't a crazy idea. It could be realistically implemented in the next decade or so, it offers solutions to some of the problems we’re likely to face in an automated future, and it’s a policy decision rather than a technical breakthrough. And as the founder and CEO of two companies that rely heavily on manufacturing, Musk is smart to be thinking ahead about how he’s going to deal with an AI-dominated world.

As for Musk’s human-brain symbiosis, even he admits that stuff is “really getting into the science fiction world,” and he concluded his discussion on the topic with “this is esoteric.” Brain-computer interfaces show promise—especially when tackling issues like paralysis. But there’s little to suggest that they’d solve the bottom line issue of AI taking jobs, especially in the timeframe that we’d need to preempt the coming automation revolution. As Musk alludes, we need social and economic fixes—not just technical ones.

This whole discussion also assumes that there will be some kind of unemployment crisis. As that AI and the Economy report said, “The economy has repeatedly proven itself capable of handling this scale of change, although it would depend on how rapidly the changes happen and how concentrated the losses are in specific occupations that are hard to shift from.” We could very well be facing a future that will require drastic adaptations, but we just don’t know yet. And that’s exactly why we need reasonable solutions, not science-fiction based ones. It’s easy to make headlines by talking about crazy ideas with no real plan to implement them. It’s harder to address the complex social, economic, and technological issues that companies like Tesla and SpaceX will face in the coming decades. But the hardest thing—per usual—is also the right thing.

Maybe we should spend a little more time covering Musk’s more thoughtful ideas. He’s also talked at length about the psychological issues we’ll be faced with. In an automated future, humans will face perhaps the greatest challenge of all: boredom. And we’ll have to find a way to occupy our time. Or, as Musk puts it: “Life just can’t be about solving problems, or what’s the point?”

Influencer marketing exploded in 2016 with more brands turning to digital creators to reach new audiences, younger customers and to build buzz around their products.

It shows no signs of slowing down.

According to the 2016 Influencer Marketing Report, compiled by CHUTE and THUZIO, 66% of marketers have already introduced an influencer marketing strategy. According to the gen.video, “There will be an uptick in investment in influencer marketing: 50% of brands will significantly increase their investment in 2017."

We are in the Wild West stage of influencer marketing; so giddy up, it's going to be a wild ride.

Here's what to expect in 2017 and the years to come:

1. It's Becoming Harder To Get Noticed: Does the world really need another makeup vlogger? How about a fitness influencer? Nope. That's why influencers are going to have to branch out in order to get noticed. Instead of focusing solely on one thing, more and more influencers are getting into the lifestyle segment. This takes them in all sorts of new areas and differentiates them in the marketplace. Max Polisar, Chief Revenue Office at AwesomenessTV, says, "In order to get noticed an influencer needs to be consistent on publishing, have a distinct point of view, and can't be afraid to be themselves."

2. There Will Be More Branded Content: This is still mind blowing to me: A whole series, that's basically a commercial? I guess it's no different than the old soap operas: They were created to sell soap, and they turned into pretty good entertainment. A great example of this is Awesomeness TV's hit scripted series Royal Crush, which is designed to both entertain and sell cruises to teens. Won't viewers get annoyed at watching a giant commercial? According to Max Polisar, "No. If you produce a great show, with interesting characters, then the viewer won't care. It's no different than a traditional TV show, being brought to you by sponsors. At the end of the day it's about telling worthwhile story."

3. Lines Blur Between Celebs And Influencers: I'm not sure what Chrissy Teigan does, yet I follow her on social because she's hilarious. Is she a model, a celebrity, an influencer? How about PewDiePie or Tyler Oakley. Are they influencers or celebrities? The big difference between influencers and traditional celebs is their level of engagement. Craig Lewis, VP Brand Partnerships at Disruptiv Agency, says, "The level of engagement is critical to truly pushing a brand forward. Celebrities are appreciated for the work they do. An influencer is more likely to be appreciated for who they are. The distinction is noticeable and is why you find a trend of "A List" celebrities establishing more of a presence via their social media.”

4. Live Video Will Continue To Grow: Everyone is still trying to figure out live video and you can tell. Most of the production is poor and so is the content. This will change as platforms figure out how to monetize live video. Facebook is testing 15-second mid-roll video ads inside live broadcasts, which will drive more content. Expect to see more of this from other platforms in the future.

5. Reevaluation Of Metrix: It ain't all about views and subscribers any more. According to Darby Barton and Nichole Brandt from XOMAD, "We've seen traditional marketing metrics applied to influencer strategies, leading to inaccurate expectations and campaign planning. Cost per engagement models will provide more accurate pricing and greater ROI for influencer strategies. Standards will emerge to allow reach and engagement across Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, etc. to be meaningfully compared to one another as well as to log monthly unique numbers."

The biggest trend of 2017 is fairly obvious: Influencer marketing will only get bigger. With the rise of ad blockers, the decline in traditional TV viewership, and the steady rise of social media, marketers need to fully embrace influencers in order to get their message heard in 2017 and beyond.

It is difficult to deliver genetic therapies, such as those made from RNA or DNA, into the correct cells in the body. For the past two decades, scientists have been producing nanoparticles from a wide range of materials and also by adding compounds like cholesterol in order to help transmit these therapeutic agents into cells.

However, the speedy development of nanoparticle carriers has resulted into a major blockage. This major bottleneck refers to the fact that the nanoparticles will first have to be tested in cell culture, before a minimal number of nanoparticles is tested in animals. Identifying the optimal nanoparticle to target individual organs was increasingly inefficient with millions of possible combinations.

Researchers from the University of Florida, Georgia Institute of Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology used DNA strands only 58 nucleotides long to develop a new testing technique that skips the cell culture testing on the whole and further permits the simultaneous testing of hundreds of varied types of nanoparticles in only a handful of animals.

The original research was carried out in the laboratories of Robert Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor, and Daniel Anderson, the Samuel A. Goldsmith Professor of Applied Biology, at MIT. The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health and was reported in the February 6th issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

We want to understand at a very high level what factors affecting nanoparticle delivery are important. This new technique not only allows us to understand what factors are important, but also how disease factors affect the process.

James Dahlman, Assistant Professor, Georgia Tech and Emory University

The researchers prepared nanoparticles for testing by inserting a snippet of DNA assigned for all types of nanoparticles. This was followed by injecting the nanoparticles into mice, whose organs were further examined for the existence of the barcodes. Several nanoparticles can be simultaneously tested by using the same technologies scientists use to sequence the genome, where each nanoparticle is identified by its unique DNA barcode.

Researchers show interest on which nanoparticles deliver the therapeutics in an extremely effective manner and also on which nanoparticles can deliver them selectively to specific organs. Therapeutics targeted to tumors, for instance, should be delivered only to the tumor and not to the tissues surrounding the tumor. Likewise, therapeutics for heart should selectively gather in the heart.

The researchers tested how 30 different particles were distributed in eight different tissues of an animal model even though most of the study focused on demonstrating control strategies. This nanoparticle targeting ‘heat map’ pointed out that a few particles were not taken up at all, whereas others entered multiple organs.

The testing included nanoparticles earlier shown to selectivity enter the liver and lungs, and the results of the technique were consistent with what was previously known about those nanoparticles.

The single-strand DNA barcode sequences are almost the same size as antisense oligonucleotides, siRNA and microRNA being produced for possible therapeutic uses. Other gene-based therapeutics are considered to be larger, and additional research will help determine if the technique could be used with them. In this week’s research, the nanoparticles were not used to deliver active therapeutics even though that would in fact be a near-term next step.

In future work, we are hoping to make a thousand particles and instead of evaluating them three at a time, we would hope to test a few hundred simultaneously. Nanoparticles can be very complicated because for every biomaterial available, you could make several hundred nanoparticles of different sizes and with different components added.

James Dahlman, Assistant Professor, Georgia Tech and Emory University

After identifying promising nanoparticles with the screening, these nanoparticles are then sent for additional testing in order to verify their potential for delivering therapeutics. In addition to accelerating the screening, the new technique may also need fewer animals, not more than three for each set of nanoparticles tested.

This new technique has a few limitations. Only structures firm in aqueous environments can be tested to prevent the possibility of merging of nanoparticles. It is possible to screen only nontoxic nanoparticles, and researchers must control for possible inflammation produced by the inserted DNA.

In Langer and Anderson’s laboratory, Dahlman worked with Kevin Kauffman, who remains at MIT, and Eric Wang, currently an assistant professor the University of Florida. Yiping Xing, Taylor Shaw, Faryal Mir and Chloe Dlott, all from MIT, are the other co-authors of the paper.

Nucleic acid therapies hold considerable promise for treating a range of serious diseases. We hope this technique will be used widely in the field, and that it will ultimately bring more clarity to how these drugs affect cells – and how we can get them to the right locations in the body.

James Dahlman, Assistant Professor, Georgia Tech and Emory University

In 1957, the Soviet Union tested the world’s first intercontinental ballistic missile. Its harmless payload, the beeping satellite Sputnik, flared bright across the night sky, a reminder to all the world of the missile that put it there. Sixty years later, North Korea is expected to be the fifth country to join that exclusive club, after the United States, China, and India. And while Kim Jong-un’s totalitarian state is quiet about the developments, there’s enough information available to the public that the question for 2017 isn’t will North Korea test a missile, but when?

In September 2016, experts warned that North Korea would have a working intercontinental nuclear missile by 2020. Between now and then, we’ve been in a period of uncertainty: North Korea may test a missile that may be capable of carrying a warhead that may be miniaturized enough to fit inside the missile.

“The language I often use is—as a scientist officially—no we don’t know if they have a warhead. They may, or they may not. We don’t have enough evidence,” says Melissa Hanham, a senior researcher at the James Martin Center for nonproliferation studies. “That being said, as a policymaker, I really suggest that we start behaving like they do.”

The evidence Melissa cites is not trivial: North Korea’s conducted five nuclear tests, with the most recent one just over a year ago. North Korea’s state-run paper published a picture of their dictator Kim Jong-un standing in front of a faceted silver sphere, which almost resembles a disco ball.

“We can’t see what’s inside that object, but we can view other things, we can take measurements, and we can make estimates of the weight and that kind of thing. That silver disco ball definitely fits into the payload of an ICBM or other shorter-range missiles too,” Hanham continued, “but whether it’s real or not is not something we can determine from pictures alone.”

Ballistic missiles are the main way countries threaten each other with nuclear weapons, but they’re not the only way. The only atomic bombs ever used in war were carried by bombers, but bombers come with several limitations. They have to fly close to the target to release the bombs, and they can be shot down by fighters and other anti-air weapons en route. Submarines, instead, can carry missiles secretly under the sea, and then launch their deadly payload without warning. North Korea is currently pursuing a submarine-launched ballistic missile, which went from a spectacular failure of a test in December 2015 to a modestly successful 300-mile flight in a test in August 2016.

Besides submarine missiles, North Korea’s arsenal includes short- and intermediate-range missiles, which can threaten nearby countries but still can’t cross the Pacific ocean to the United States. To strike at America, it’d need to travel several thousand miles, something only intercontinental missiles available to Russia, the United States, China, India, and maybe Israel can do.

And North Korea’s showing progress toward that end. From The World Weekly:

Joshua Pollack, editor of the Washington-based Nonproliferation Review, told The World Weekly that the North made two key technical advances in 2016. The first was a static test of a heat shield, a component designed to protect the nuclear warhead on the missile’s reentry into the atmosphere. The second was a static test of the first stage of a KN-08 mobile ICBM. According to Mr. Pollack, both tests (which were broadcast to the world) seemed “designed to correct common misconceptions in the West about North Korean ICBM technology.”

Because ballistic missiles leave the atmosphere before returning to hit their targets on earth, a working heatshield is vital to make sure that the nuclear payload survives the journey intact.

“What they haven’t done yet is test the vibrations on a dummy warhead,” explained Hanham. “And so, that’s probably going to be a component of their flight testing. They need to make sure—because the warhead itself will be somewhat delicate—that it isn’t shaken to pieces before it arrives at its destination.”

In addition, North Korea will likely want to make sure it has a working guidance system, so the missile can hit where it’s aimed. Unless, that is, North Korea sees value in the missile standing alone as a sort of terror threat, where the uncertainty about where it falls is sufficient for protecting the country from attack.

And because nuclear missiles are both weapons and symbols of national pride, what may look like test preparations on satellite footage could just be a political rally, notes John Schilling of the North Korea analysis blog 38 North. Indeed, that appears to be what happened on Jan. 19, 2017, when South Korean news service Yonhap reported a pair of North Korean missiles were placed on mobile launchers.

If North Korea’s likely future ICBM poses a political challenge to the United States, and it almost certainly does, what are the options for stopping it?

Missile defense is popular in Congress, despite having a very poor track record. In a report on one possible ICBM-destroying system in 2014, Congress recommended that further evaluation including realistic testing, which had so far not happened. A second problem is not just that some devices tested don’t work yet, but that the science of finding, tracking, and intercepting a missile is outright hard.

Lockheed Martin’s THAAD (for Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) is currently scheduled for deployment in South Korea to watch for a North Korean missile. While opposed by China, the deployment, set in motion by the Obama administration, is likely to happen; this week Secretary of Defense Mattis reaffirmed the Untied States commitment to the deployment. As designed, a radar for THAAD sees an incoming threat, relays that information to firing computers, and then tells a missile launcher to shoot a missile at the incoming missile. That’s a hard ask to begin with, even assuming THAAD is in place before North Korea tests an ICBM.

...And we don’t know what direction North Korea will even fire a missile when it tests one.

“North Korea has borders with Russia, China, South Korea, Japan is to the East, and it’s hard to know which way you would want to launch that thing and not get into trouble, while demonstrating range and reentry,” says Hanham.

“They do space launches by shooting from their west coast South, and that goes over the territorial waters of South Korea, Japan, and then the second stage usually lands around the Philippines. So ... they could do that. It would still make people very very nervous. But, shooting toward the United States, for example, it would be hard for people to determine whether this is a test or an attack. My guess is that they would probably shoot south, in which case the U.S.’ defense system isn’t necessarily set up to intercept going something going that direction. So it’s a quandary, really.”

William J. Perry, who served as the Secretary of Defense from 1994 through 1997, penned an op-ed early in January about exactly how to respond. Under his tenure in the Pentagon, the Clinton administration considered and ultimately decided against attacks on North Korea’s nuclear infrastructure, preferring instead to dissuade the program with diplomacy. Those negotiations ended in 2001, and since then North Korea’s built enough of an arsenal to drastically increase the costs of war against it, especially for South Korea, it’s long-standing rival and an American ally.

Perry’s op-ed, written for an audience of one, argues for diplomacy to pre-empt an ICBM test. Perry writes:

I believe it is time to try diplomacy that would actually have a chance to succeed. We lost the opportunity to negotiate with a non-nuclear North Korea when we cut off negotiations in 2001, before it had a nuclear arsenal. The most we can reasonably expect today is an agreement that lowers the dangers of that arsenal. The goals would be an agreement with Pyongyang to not export nuclear technology, to conduct no further nuclear testing and to conduct no further ICBM testing. These goals are worth achieving and, if we succeed, could be the basis for a later discussion of a non-nuclear Korean Peninsula. These objectives are far less than we would desire but are based on my belief that we should deal with North Korea as it is, not as we wish it to be.

Should that fail, Perry’s warning is simple and dire.

“If we don’t find a way—and soon—to freeze North Korea’s quest for a nuclear ICBM,” Perry concludes, “this crisis could all too easily spin out of control, leading to a second Korean War, far more devastating than the first.”

Each year, the marketing community confronts a few dominant themes. A couple of years ago, predictive analytics was all the rage. If you ask any B2B marketer what trends dominated in 2016, you'd likely hear "ABM," "one-to-one relationships," or "managing the customer journey"; marketers were investing more in an end-to-end experience, from awareness to advocacy.

However, if you were to ask any of those marketers to put aside trends and instead identify what their continual focus has been, year after year, you would hear, overwhelmingly, "revenue."

The truth is, when a CMO is preparing for the year ahead, the latest tactical trend isn't nearly as important as continually focusing on how best to optimize Marketing's contribution to revenue and business goals.

After all, regardless of the tactics they employ, CMOs are measured on their ability to drive growth for their company.

That growth is the crux of marketing performance management (MPM)—which Forrester describes as "a discipline that governs goal setting, monitoring, and continuous optimization of marketing's contribution to revenue and other priority business goals."

As we enter 2017, all roads lead to MPM; five key changes are occurring in our business environment that make MPM a greater priority than ever for B2B organizations.

1. Greater Scrutiny Over Marketing Investments

Marketing budgets are on the rise heading into 2017, up to 12% of revenue, as marketers manage more demand, Gartner has found. And "with power comes great responsibility. By taking custody of these dollars, CMOs are promising more and more back to the business," Gartner states.

Marketers must be prepared for greater scrutiny over their budgets; they must be ready and able to answer questions related to planning and returns.

For example, one of our software customers makes sure it's prepared to answer questions such as these:

How are you planning to deploy available budget? On what, where, and when?

How does what's actually occurring compare with that plan?

In what ways are you underfunded, and how does that compare to external benchmarks?

How many inquiries/leads/opportunities did your campaign tactic generate?

What tactics and combinations are working best?

2. Addressing the True Data Challenge: Context

Across the board, it's a challenging time to be in B2B sales or marketing. With so much competition and noise, it's harder than ever to get prospects on the phone or to respond to emails.

Yet, prospects are still buying software, proving that we are often blind as to what's working within the journeys our customers take toward a purchase. And so we struggle to understand where we should allocate more marketing dollars.

Though marketers are inundated with data (when a prospect sneezes, we know about it), the massive amounts of information collected have created a larger challenge: determining context.

Organizations often keep the world of investment data and results data separate, as they live in disparate systems (or, worse, in spreadsheets)—leading to confusion, misinformation, and guesswork.

In 2017, marketing organizations must take steps to clarify what investments lead to results—demystifying which activities are working, and helping to make better planning decisions about the touchpoints that need attention along the customer journey.

3. The Changing Role of the CMO

The tenure of a CMO continues to be tenuous. At least 30% of CEOs will fire their CMOs in 2017, according to Forrester.

In recent years, many CMOs have taken on the customer experience—an encouraging evolution that has helped Marketing drive the business's impact on the end-to-end customer lifecycle and gain respect for Marketing. But that's not enough.

The expectation today is for CMOs to prove business impact with confidence, and demonstrate stewardship over their marketing investments. (The same goes for their counterparts in Sales.) Those who are unable to do so will be out of a job; those who are able to do so will become business leaders in their company, taking on a more strategic role across the entire business (rather than a tactical marketing role).

In 2017, CMOs won't just be talking about earning a seat at the executive table. Successful CMOs will be helping to lead a groundswell of companies that realize they can't just be great product organizations—that they need to be great marketing organizations, with marketing leadership that has a strong handle on the full business.

In 2017, CMO's will understand that they can't just be great marketing leaders—that they must also be great business leaders who can truly run the business of marketing.

4. A Changing Budget

Where marketers spend their dollars year over year is a strong indication of what's driving results across the industry.

Gartner's CMO Spend Survey (which focused on large organizations) found that marketing tech comprised 33% of the marketing budget. The rest is allocated to labor (35%) and external marketing services, such as advertising, paid search, and consulting (32%).

Our own customers (together, they manage over $20B in marketing investment) provide an interesting perspective. Though for B2B marketers we also used to see a general breakdown of roughly 40% spent on people and 60% on programs and technology, the advent of more personalized tactics such as ABM are driving a more equal, 50/50 split.

Marketers are now looking at adding a different type of talent, not just more programs, because of the rise of more-targeted outreach. As the structure of our marketing organizations changes, instead of more money going to digital more is going to digital-oriented talent. That means more content marketing, more product marketing, and more targeted individualized approaches, with less broad demand generation.

5. Marketing Compensation in Alignment With Sales

Marketing is no longer an island unto itself; that's especially been the case with the rise of martech, highlighting the CMO-CIO relationship. In 2017, the relationship between the CFO and CMO will be the one that's interesting to watch.

One example of the shift is marketing compensation. There's much more incentive for the marketing organization to align with the approach of the sales organization. Just as traditional sales teams are rewarded on closing deals, in 2017 marketing accountability will be tied to the impact and results of marketing activity on business goals.

That means compensation for Marketing's ability to drive Sales-accepted leads, individual sales activity, overall bookings, and overall Sales and Marketing targets. It's truly about putting your money with your mouth is; and though it may seem unfamiliar to many organizations, it's an important evolution in building revenue-driven teams and processes.

* * *

We're entering an interesting phase in B2B marketing. Clearly, the new charter of CMOs is to run marketing like a business, making investment decisions with confidence and earning a more strategic role because of their ability to demonstrate business impact.

Are you ready?

Every year, humans produce millions of tons of electronic waste, or e-waste, which leaches toxic materials into landfills across the globe. And gadget-loving Americans aren't the only culprits. A new U.N. report finds that East and Southeast Asia are dumping more and more electronic devices—enough to increase e-waste production in these regions by 63 percent in five years.

Between 2010 and 2015, the U.N. think tank United Nations University tracked 12 Asian countries to see how much electronic waste they produced. On average, the volume of digital trash increased by nearly two thirds over this period, with certain countries worse than others. China, for example, doubled its e-waste. By the time 2015 rolled around, the region produced 22 pounds of e-waste per person per year. The worst culprit was Hong Kong, which trashed nearly 48 pounds per person, while more frugal Cambodians dumped fewer than 3 pounds per person.

This trend seems much less disturbing when you compare these Asian countries to Europe and the Americas, where the average person tosses about 34 pounds of electronics in the trash each year. But if the comparatively thrifty consumers in Asia continue to ramp up their e-waste, they could easily outpace Westerners. Asia already purchases about half of all electronic gadgets on the market. And the trends that the U.N. report credits for the increase in digital trash—a growing consumer class, more types of gadgets, more imported devices, and good ol' planned obsolescence—will only continue.

In Asian countries that lack an infrastructure for e-recycling (and laws that make it mandatory), most old electronics wind up in trash fires, backyards, or informal recycling systems that release harmful fumes into the environs. However, the report praises Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan for the e-recycling systems that they have already established. Other countries in the report have only recently begun dealing with their e-waste problem, while a few rely on private systems. Now they just need their Western counterparts to follow suit.

In 2017, B2B marketers will continue to deal with tangible growth and marketing ROI pressures. Below are 13 primary B2B marketing trends that deserve your time and attention and will help you address the challenges, opportunities, and complexities you’ll undoubtedly be presented with this year.

#1: Customer Experience Balance

Probably the most impactful B2B marketing trend in 2017 will be a tighter focus on improving the customer experience while driving growth. Strive to use a balanced approach to building customer loyalty. Instead of focusing solely on “customer-centric” methods based on your customers' lifetime value, offset it with “customer-focused” techniques that enable you to provide relevant experiences across all touch points and concentrate on what your customers value most. Symmetry between those two approaches will result in higher revenue combined with stronger customer loyalty.

#2: Executive Branding

Over the past decade, the Internet, mobility, and social media have upended traditional “command and control” marketing. The pendulum has shifted dramatically to individuals—individuals as buyers and individuals as the voices of their companies. As a result, traditional company branding and digital marketing efforts are no longer sufficient. Especially in B2B environments, executive branding is now considered a necessity.

Grant Wickes, an executive branding specialist, says, “Senior executives must create and develop their personal brand. Buyers want to know the ‘why’ and trust the leaders behind the companies they do business with. Some companies have adapted to this evolution, but many have not. And executives are most guilty of not embracing this new paradigm. Some feel there is no need, but 2017 will mark a watershed year for executive branding.”

#3: Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning

The integration of artificial intelligence and machine learning into B2B marketing playbooks will continue to increase this year. In late 2016, Forrester Research predicted that "AI will provide business users with access to powerful insights before they are available to them."

How?

Through the use of cognitive interfaces in complex systems, advanced analytics, and machine learning technology. Many vendors are already embedding components of cognitive computing capabilities into their solutions. This isn’t just technology for technology’s sake. AI will drive faster business decisions in marketing, e-commerce, product management, and other areas of the business by helping close the gap from insights to action.”

#4: Visual Content Marketing

According to HubSpot, B2C marketers still place more emphasis on the importance of visual content in their marketing portfolios, but B2B marketers are catching up quickly. The primary driver is the desire to make content more engaging, compelling, and shareable than just the written word. The most common forms of visual content that will be used in 2017 will be video (including 360-degree video), infographics, and images in blogs and social media posts.

#5: Influence Marketing

Influence marketing isn’t new, but it will begin to mature in 2017. Warren Whitlock, a noted influence marketing pro, says, “Everyone has influence. Influence marketing is the practice of finding the people who are already influencing your market. They will welcome your help to serve their audience better and reward you with reputation and trusted leads.”

Following the trend set by their B2C brethren, B2B marketers will continue partnering with influencers but will focus more on social channels like LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, etc. This year also will mark the rise of micro-influencers in the B2B space, which typically have fewer followers and less reach than their mainstream counterparts, but they also tend to be a lot more focused on one specific topic.

#6: Native Advertising

Native advertising refers to material in an online publication which resembles editorial content but is paid for by an advertiser and intends to promote the advertiser’s products or services. A viable alternative to traditional banner and interstitial advertising, native advertising is blurring the lines between advertising and content and will continue its upward growth curve in 2017.

It’s much less intrusive, can provide educational benefits for the reader, is more likely to be shared, and can be very cost effective for the advertiser. A number of leading B2B companies have figured out how to successfully leverage native advertising, including IBM, Teradata, Delux, Dell, and Intel.

#7: Agile Marketing

Every marketer says he or she wants to work smarter, not harder, right? Well, agile marketing is all about working smarter—and much more quickly. Originally developed by software engineers and now a hot trend in the marketing space, the goal of the agile process is to enable you to get the right things done at the right time.

The folks at Velocidi say that for most B2B organizations, “embracing agile marketing means letting go of traditional barriers between departments and adopting a far more collaborative approach, both within the organization and with clients. Although adjusting corporate culture to accommodate an agile model can be challenging, its benefits extend far beyond sales."

#8: Experiential Marketing

Instead of just sending a marketing message to a prospect, experiential marketing creates an opportunity for your customers and prospects to truly experience your brand, whether in a virtual setting or in person. As this trend grows in the consumer world, more and more B2B buyers will begin to expect the same from their suppliers.

Spend some time educating yourself about the latest experiential marketing strategies and techniques, and give some thought as to how you could integrate them into the interactions with your customers and prospects at trade shows, on their cell phones, etc., so they can “touch,” “taste,” and “feel” your brand. You might also want to consider how experiential marketing could be used within your own organization for engaging, educating, and energizing your employees.

#9: Social Media

In 2016, 39% of marketers reported significant ROI generated from social media marketing, contrasted with only 9% in 2015. While this data implies that challenges still exist, year-over-year increases show that B2B marketers are becoming more successful at converting social media activities into sales leads, and ultimately, revenue. Paul Slack, developer of the “social media tactical wheel,” agrees.

Paul is a firm believer in the role that social media will play in the B2B arena again in 2017. He says, “Social media is your marketing and sales teams’ best friend when it comes to opportunities to grab face time with tough-to-access people and to keep the referral pipeline well oiled. Those who are best at leveraging the tools and navigating the online culture have learned to optimize relationships within their communities to reach clients they never would have landed without their participation.”

#10: Mobile Marketing

Back in mid-2014, we reached the official tipping point concerning access to websites. At that time, mobile devices officially overtook desktops as the preferred method of viewing and downloading content on the web. By the 4th quarter of 2016, 50% of all B2B companies had implemented a responsive design for their websites, according to Gorilla Group. (Responsive design allows a website to be more easily viewed on smartphones, tablets, and notebooks.) That was almost double the percentage of sites with responsive design in 2015 (26%). That trend will undoubtedly continue in 2017, as more and more B2B marketers realize the necessity of deploying mobile-friendly sites.

#11: Next-Gen Automation

A number of studies conducted by Aberdeen Group, Ovum, Marketing Sherpa, and others have revealed that the adoption of marketing automation technologies continues to be one of the fastest growing marketing trends today. The next generation of marketing automation tools are now being used by all sizes and types of B2B organizations to accomplish a variety of objectives, such as driving e-commerce revenue, generating and nurturing leads, accumulating customer intelligence, managing cross-channel campaigns, and account-based marketing, among many others.

According to Forrester Research, 58% of the top-performing companies where marketing contributes more than half of the sales pipeline have adopted marketing automation.

#12: Alignment and Collaboration

Although the need seems obvious, most B2B organizations still aren’t willing—or don’t know how—to align their marketing and sales efforts. You can argue that customer experience should be added to the equation as well, so that all three functions are marching to the same drummer. That approach will help tear down the inherent silos that exist in most organizations and will encourage everyone to turn their focus to the customer.

Also, experiment with incorporating shared goals in your compensation programs for your marketing, sales, and customer service teams. It’s amazing what financial incentives can do to change behavior when it comes to alignment and collaboration.

#13: Outsourced Marketing Executives

In an age where digital and social tools are all the rage, B2B companies in the SMB space are more frustrated than ever because they’re not getting what they want. B2B marketing firms are frustrated as well, as their clients sometimes paint complex—and often conflicting—pictures of what they want. Outsourced CMO Eddie Reeves says, “The businesses that will be successful as this confusion grows will be those which proactively build into their structure, function, and culture an overt bias towards multidisciplinary execution.

By bringing to bear seasoned professionals from outside their own organizations who offer deep levels of proven expertise across a wide expanse of sectors and industries, they can more quickly and efficiently realize significant, profitable growth.”

Dr Alex Lord and Professor Steve Wilks from the Centre for Nanohealth led the collaborative research published in Nano Letters. The research team looked at ways to engineer electrical contact technology on minute scales with simple and effective modifications to nanowires that can be used to develop enhanced devices based on the nanomaterials. Well-defined electrical contacts are essential for any electrical circuit and electronic device because they control the flow of electricity that is fundamental to the operational capability.

Everyday materials that are being scaled down to the size of nanometres (one million times smaller than a millimetre on a standard ruler) by scientists on a global scale are seen as the future of electronic devices. The scientific and engineering advances are leading to new technologies such as energy producing clothing to power our personal gadgets and sensors to monitor our health and the surrounding environment.

Over the coming years this will make a massive contribution to the explosion that is the Internet of Things connecting everything from our homes to our cars into a web of communication. All of these new technologies require similar advances in electrical circuits and especially electrical contacts that allow the devices to work correctly with electricity.

Professor Steve Wilks said: "Nanotechnology has delivered new materials and new technologies and the applications of nanotechnology will continue to expand over the coming decades with much of its usefulness stemming from effects that occur at the atomic- or nano-scale. With the advent of nanotechnology, new technologies have emerged such as chemical and biological sensors, quantum computing, energy harvesting, lasers, and environmental and photon-detectors, but there is a pressing need to develop new electrical contact preparation techniques to ensure these devices become an everyday reality."

"Traditional methods of engineering electrical contacts have been applied to nanomaterials but often neglect the nanoscale effects that nanoscientists have worked so hard to uncover. Currently, there isn't a design toolbox to make electrical contacts of chosen properties to nanomaterials and in some respects the research is lagging behind our potential application of the enhanced materials."

The Swansea research team used specialist experimental equipment and collaborated with Professor Quentin Ramasse of the SuperSTEM Laboratory, Science and Facilities Technology Council. The scientists were able to physically interact with the nanostructures and measure how the nanoscale modifications affected the electrical performance.

Their experiments found for the first time, that simple changes to the catalyst edge can turn-on or turn-off the dominant electrical conduction and most importantly reveal a powerful technique that will allow nanoengineers to select the properties of manufacturable nanowire devices.

Dr Lord said: "The experiments had a simple premise but were challenging to optimise and allow atomic-scale imaging of the interfaces. However, it was essential to this study and will allow many more materials to be investigated in a similar way."

"This research now gives us an understanding of these new effects and will allow engineers in the future to reliably produce electrical contacts to these nanomaterials which is essential for the materials to be used in the technologies of tomorrow.

"In the near future this work can help enhance current nanotechnology devices such as biosensors and also lead to new technologies such as Transient Electronics that are devices that diminish and vanish without a trace which is an essential property when they are applied as diagnostic tools inside the human body."

Asteroid impacts have the distinction of being one of the few sci-fi concepts that will definitely happen at some point. But despite the clear and present (although potentially far off) danger of getting smacked by an asteroid, we’ve devoted few resources to averting such a catastrophe.

As Discover reported in 2013, NASA’s budget for such operations is barebones, and it’s unclear how that might change under the Trump Administration. NASA in 2015 cut funding to the Sentinel mission designed specifically to pinpoint incoming asteroids, and similar asteroid defense projects are largely dependent on private donations. In a new report, a coalition of federal agencies is making the case to increase support for detection and deflection efforts, laying out a multifaceted, long-term blueprint to defend Earth from rocky invaders.

The interagency working group comprises members of NASA, FEMA, the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security, among others. The coalition convened in January 2016, and its first report was released on the heels of an asteroid impact response simulation conducted by NASA and FEMA in California.

The Big One

A rock 40 or 50 meters across could take out a city, and something substantially larger — a kilometer or so across — could lay waste to an entire continent. The 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor, just 20 meters across, exploded over Siberia, shattering windows and injuring hundreds as a result. The 1908 Tunguska event, also in Siberia, leveled over 700 square miles of forest and exploded with a force equal to approximately five to 10 megatons of TNT. In both instances, there wasn’t an impact.

While we don’t know what a potential impact might look like, simulations of a large rock hitting both the land and the water hint at the frightening aftermath.

Still, there’s a roughly 1 in 100,000 chance that an asteroid will hit Earth will country-leveling force. But Chelyabinsk-size objects, big enough to cause damage, yet small enough to potentially escape detection, are cause for worry. If history is any indicator, we’re due for one of them once or twice a century, and a Tunguska-size event every few centuries.

“The big gaping hole, as pointed out in this report, are asteroids between the size of something only large enough to destroy a city and all the way up to 140 meters,” says Ed Lu, a former astronaut and CEO of B612, a advocacy group focused on asteroid impacts.

Eyes On the Sky

Lu points to a space telescope called NEOCAM currently being developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, to scan the areas of the solar system nearest to Earth. The project was passed over for funding from NASA’s Discovery Program, which would have provided extra support for the mission. The telescope is meant to locate and track smaller asteroids that fall into the 20-140 meter range, and, when it’s completed, will be a complement to the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope currently under construction in Chile, Lu said. LSST is optimized to find smaller objects in our solar system, and is set to begin operations in 2021.

The asteroid defense working group estimates that there are around 10 million near-earth objects 20 meters or smaller, and some 300,000 larger than 40 meters that we don’t know about yet. NASA currently lists only 15,413 near-Earth objects, of which 1,763 are classified as Potentially Hazardous Asteroids.

How To Prevent the Apocalypse

The working group crafted a seven-part plan that addresses dangerous asteroids and the potential aftermath of an impact. The full proposal is set to be released at a later, unspecified date.

Their first recommendation: Improve detection and tracking technologies. A space-based observatory dedicated to scanning the solar system for incoming asteroids would be optimal. Theoretically, it would give humanity enough time to hatch a defense plan. The group also called for improved models of asteroid behavior and composition to understand how any objects we find might respond to potential interventions.

Emergency plans for the days leading up to, and following, a collision are also necessary, according to the working group. This entails building an international alert system and a means of coordination between national and international agencies. That means establishing protocols for communication and data sharing between international agencies. The report heavily stresses the primacy of international cooperation in the event of an asteroid impact — such an occurrence would surely require even rival nations to work together for the greater good.

Finally, scientists need to study various ways to deflect an incoming asteroid from its path and save the planet, according to the report. This could take many forms: ramming a spacecraft into the asteroid, breaking it up with nuclear bombs, detonating explosives nearby to partially vaporize it and let the gases push it off course, or even painting parts of it black or white to allow the sun’s light to push it in a different direction.

Getting some practice is also part of the plan: The working group recommended conducting missions to asteroids to test technologies that would enable asteroid herding. This includes a nimble propulsion system, onboard artificial intelligence and monitoring systems for up-to-date assessments of the asteroid.

We’ve already gotten a head-start. In addition to several asteroid rendezvous over the past two decades or so, the OSIRIS-REx mission, launched in September 2016, will make contact with with the asteroid Bennu in August 2018. The goal is to collect samples from Bennu and return them to Earth, a mission that will also test some of the protocols necessary for an asteroid-deflection mission, should it ever become necessary.

Detection Is the key

But before we get into the deflection business, we need a target. This is why Lu and others are pushing for better detection capabilities now. It could take more than a decade to fully design and equip a mission to coax an asteroid off its path toward Earth, so early warning will be key.

Lu says that projects of this sort need to be viewed as more than just scientific missions, which has often doomed them to funding shortfalls.

“It should not be judged in a pure science competition against other scientific missions with the criteria being how much novel new science you are doing,” he says. “This is really something that is not just science, but it’s really about protecting life.”

The money involved would barely make a dent in NASA’s budget, to say nothing of larger agencies like the Department of Defense.

“We’re talking half a percent of the budget of a small agency like NASA,” Lu says.

The problem may lie in the way that we as humans assess risk. We seem to have a tough time grappling with the consequences of events that we haven’t personally experienced, and sometimes fail to take the necessary precautions. The 2011 Fukushima disaster and the failure of the levees after Hurricane Katrina are prime examples.

“It’s not as small as you think, it’s just that it’s longer than a generation,” Lu says. “If it didn’t happen in your lifetime, you naturally discount it.”

In e-commerce, it's hard to increase your conversion rate, even with lots of online traffic. But being able to effectively increase it is among the major factors determining the future success or failure of your business.

Increasing your conversion rate will enhance your return on investment (ROI). You'll need to start by offering a better user experience and using persuasion principles. You should also look to various marketing methods online, such as up-selling, cross-selling, and down-selling.

Up-Selling

Up-selling encourages customers to spend more money than they initially intended. It usually consists of a recommendation of a product or service costing more than the one a customer is considering.

Benefits. Up-selling results in higher regular order totals, exposure to higher margin product/service, increases in revenue. You're also likely to improve customer satisfaction rates because you would be helping customers find products or services suited to their interests. Customers appreciate that you put in time and effort to understanding their wants and needs.

Moreover, up-selling boosts customer lifetime value (CLV). For example, when the auto insurance company GEICO made an up-sell to Chris Yeh, the VP of Marketing for PBWiki, with a 15-minute call, the result was in incremental lifetime revenue of $2,000.

How and when to use. One of the best ways you can up-sell your products or services is by displaying the savings of a bigger purchase—i.e., revealing how much money the customer can save when making the purchase.

Offering free delivery is another good tactic. Some retailers may face financial challenges when paying for shipping, but you can easily remedy that problem by establishing a free-delivery threshold: Determine the average amount customers spend on your products; then, display a catchy message such as "spend another $3.50 to get free delivery."

Example. Eyewear brand Toy Shades was able to increase its conversion rate 113% by showing a "popular in category" section at the product page level and giving upsell suggestions at checkout. According to a case study on Toy Shades, the average order value of the brand rose 16% as a result.

Cross-Selling

Cross-selling is similar to up-selling, except it's used for encouraging customers to buy products or services that aren't directly related to the initial item purchased.

Retailers that use cross-selling often display recommended products or services that were purchased by other customers who bought the same item. Basically, it introduces customers to complementary products.

Benefits. Cross-selling is a great way to not only increase conversion rate but also build customer equity. It helps differentiate your brand from your competitors and improve your market position. Cross-selling enhances customer loyalty and deepens attachment to your business.

How and when to use. One of the most effective cross-selling tactics is bundling and saving packs—i.e., you offer multiple complementary products at a lower, bargain rate. This approach helps boost the amount of money spent on one order. For instance, with a laptop order you could bundle peripherals, such as headphones, laptop tables, computer games, and anti-virus software. Doing so will increase the sale value.

Another way to cross-sell your products or services is by recommending to your customers which other purchases were made by those who bought a similar product. A simple message such as "Customers who bought this also bought..." could help to increase conversion rate.

You may take the cross-selling method even further by allowing customers to personalize their bundles by selecting the exact products they want instead of getting stuck with anything they don't really need.

Example. A case study was conducted by Loyalty Builders on a major pharmaceutical company in 2011. Although sales were growing, the numbers weren't growing as fast as management expected. Many buyers were purchasing from a limited set of SKUs. The company started contacting customers through postcards and emails in a yearlong series of monthly cross-sell campaigns to expand the breadth of products purchased. For every postcard, it brought in revenue of $10; each card cost $0.50 to print and deliver. Each email got a $3 ROI; each email cost around $0.01 to send. Three years later, the results were even better:

Another case study by Quick Pivot found that cross-selling benefited a client that provides information solutions to professionals. By launching a multichannel campaign with a series of emails, the client was able to present numerous ways for contacts to discover products on their own. During the first six months from launch, the revenue per product increased 5%.

Down-Selling

Businesses tend to be familiar with up-selling and cross-selling, which are relatively popular methods for increasing conversion. However, you can also use a technique called down-selling, which is relatively unknown.

Down-selling involves making a one-time offer of a product or service that's less expensive than the one a customer initially considered.

Benefits. It's true that a higher-priced item will have a better profit margin, but down-selling can still be beneficial. If a customer cannot afford a premium product, offering a lower-priced product is a great way to build brand loyalty. Also, you'll still be making a sale even if the customer didn't purchase the item you'd originally wanted her to buy. Down-selling allows you to access more clients with varying budgets.

How and when to use. The best time to use down-selling is when you're very certain the customer isn't going to buy the initial product or service offered. Be careful to avoid introducing the lower-priced offer too early; doing so can confuse potential customers and cause them to decline both offers.

Down-selling is also a good option when you find that sales are dropping because many consumers in your targeted market are unable to afford certain products. That's an ideal time to introduce lower-priced items instead of slashing prices on more expensive ones.

It's also important to keep in mind that when you down-sell, your intent should be to up-sell in the future.

Example. Crazy Egg is a Web analytics service that gives marketers the valuable chance to determine exactly where visitors click on a website. According to a case study by Conversion Rate Experts, the company was able to increase conversion rate and improve lifetime customer value through down-selling. It offered a 30-day free trial and then provided a 40% discount on a one-year plan if a customer canceled within that window. Some 25% of customers accepted the one-time offer. Crazy Egg was able to increase its annual revenue without introducing new services and adding to overhead.

Marketers should try making use of all three methods when selling their products or services to increase conversion rate and revenue. However, ensure that you're creating a strategy to better understand users' wants and needs. Show up-sell and down-sell offers at the right time to gain long-term customer relationships. Remember that these tactics are beneficial not only to e-commerce websites but also to subscription- and service-based websites.

Implement up-selling, cross-selling, and down-selling techniques in a way that improves customer loyalty and builds your brand image. Carefully plan the offers you're making by using products or services that your customers will actually find useful. Your customers are likely to appreciate the time and effort put into selecting products or services that are truly relevant for them.

The discovery could also help the rural sector in the fight against pesticide resistance in certain crops.

The spray is known as 'BioClay' and was developed by the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation (QAAFI) and the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN).

"It will produce huge benefits for agriculture in the next several decades, and the applications will expand into a much wider field of primary agricultural production," Professor Xu from AIBN said.

Agricultural biotechnologist and research leader, Neena Mitter, said the clay spray contained molecules that helped protect crops from invading pathogens.

"BioClay is a beautiful combination of biology and nanotechnology," she said.

"Once it is applied, the plant thinks it is being attacked by a disease or pest insect and responds by protecting itself from the targeted pest or disease.

"It is a [pest] control measure, which is environmentally sustainable, ecologically safe, stable, and easy to be adopted by farmers to protect their crop from diseases."

In the trials the researchers were able to protect a crop of tobacco from invading diseases for up to 20 days using the BioClay spray.

The team also trialled the spray on cowpeas and capsicums, and think it could also work for cotton and a range of other crops.

Chemical companies and researchers around the world, including Monsanto, are in a race to develop and commercialise similar technology.

However, the QAAFI and AIBN team is the first to produce long-lasting results, and to have the findings published.

Professor Mitter said she hoped to have a commercial product on the shelves in three to five years.

"There is a lot of work going on in using gene silencing in a spray, but I think we are fairly progressed in our own BioClay product," she said.

How it works

The clay contains molecules of double-stranded ribonucleic acid (RNA), a sibling of DNA, which can switch off gene expression and prevent plants from being susceptible to a virus.

The clay helps the molecules stick to the plant, and then peels off over time.

This means once a virus comes into contact with the RNA on the plant, the plant will kill the pathogen.

Using RNA as a defence against disease is not a new concept, and researchers have applied it to crops before.

However, the new aspect is Professor Mitter's invention of the spray on clay to help bind the RNA molecules to the plant.

RNA is traditionally used to silence genes in the genetic modification process.

However, Professor Mitter said her BioClay process did not genetically modify plants, because the process involved collecting RNA from a virus and turning it against itself, rather than changing the genome of a plant.

"We are using that RNA to silence a gene in the pathogen and that RNA has nothing to do with the plant, and has no similarity to the crop," she said.

"We are not modifying the genome of the plant, we are not doing genetic modification; we are just spraying it with RNA."

The researchers hope BioClay can be used as an alternative to traditional chemicals, to prevent crops from building up pesticide resistance.

"If you use a chemical, pathogens are clever and can adapt, but with BioClay we use RNA from the pathogen to kill the pathogen itself." Professor Mitter said.

"So we are strongly placed in terms of addressing the issue of pesticide resistance."

Can farmers afford it?

Finding a cost-effective way of applying RNA pesticides to plants has been difficult until now.

A criticism of using RNA to protect crops in the past has been that the technology was too expensive, but Professor Mitter said it was becoming cheaper and farmers would be able to afford it.

"The aim is to make it affordable because the clay part is cheap to manufacture," she said.

"The production of RNA could be expensive but companies around the globe are working on mass producing RNA at a very cheap scale.

"I'm hoping this product will be commercially viable."