RVCJS

Nodes & Links is a scheduling platform for large-scale infrastructure projects which works out when the nuts and bolts for the bridge (for example) should be delivered, and in what order. Unsurprisingly, complex infrastructure projects often get this wrong. The company has now raised an $11 million Series A funding round led by urban sustainability-focused fund 2150, alongside Zigg Capital and Westerly Winds, with participation from existing investors Entrepreneur First, ADV and Seedcamp. Launched in 2018, the company’s Aegis platform is used by Balfour Beatty, Costain and BAM Nuttal, and claims to have delivered millions in cost savings on infrastructure projects, because the building materials and assembly ends up being organized in the right order. Given that most major projects run significantly over time and over budget, scheduling correctly can make a huge difference to costs, as well as the impact on the environment. The company quotes a survey by Oxford University that f...

WASHINGTON — Three years ago, American investigators produced a 15,000-page analysis of atrocities committed in 2017 against the Rohingya, an ethnic Muslim minority group in Myanmar. The report documented survivors’ accounts of gang rapes, crucifixions, mutilations, of children being burned or drowned and of families locked inside their blazing homes as Myanmar’s military sought to exterminate them. That was not enough to convince the State Department during the Trump administration that the United States should officially proclaim the Rohingya to be victims of genocide and crimes against humanity. But now that the military, the Tatmadaw, has overthrown Myanmar’s civilian government, current and former American officials and human rights activists are demanding that President Biden do what the Trump administration would not: Formally hold the country’s military accountable for genocide and compel international protection of the Rohingya. “The same military leaders who orchestrated...

Amazon vans line up at a distribution center to pick up packages for delivery on Amazon Prime Day in Orlando, Florida. Paul Hennessy | NurPhoto | Getty Images Amazon’s carbon emissions climbed 19% last year, even as the Covid-19 pandemic spurred a sharp drop in global emission levels. In its annual sustainability report issued Wednesday, Amazon said its activities emitted the equivalent of 60.64 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2020. That’s up from 2019, when it reported 51.17 million metric tons, an increase of 15% year over year. Covid-19 has forced many people to stay indoors to avoid exposure to the virus. Last year, that shift in activity brought with it a drop in global greenhouse gas emissions. Global carbon emissions fell roughly 7% year-over-year in 2020, marking the largest decline on record, researchers found last December. Amazon said its emissions grew in 2020 as a result of the pandemic-fueled growth of its business. The company was one of the biggest...

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for June 30, 2021. It’s the last day of the quarter. It’s the last day of the first half of the year. It’s the halfway mark for your New Year’s resolutions. The kickoff of Q3 means that we are heading into yet another earnings season. To close the second quarter, a number of companies went public including Didi and SentinelOne. The TechCrunch take is that we’re seeing some interesting pricing differentials between companies from the United States compared to China. — Alex The TechCrunch Top 3 Robinhood fined ahead of IPO: While we count down to Robinhood’s IPO filing, long expected after a strong first quarter, the company was hit with $70 million in fines and penalties today for what the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) described as “widespread and significant harm suffered by customers.” Venture...

WASHINGTON — When a commercial plane carrying 2.5 million doses of Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine took off on Wednesday from Dallas for Islamabad, Pakistan, federal officials had just finished a dizzying bureaucratic back-and-forth to get them there. The United States had arranged a donation agreement with Moderna and Covax, the year-old vaccine-sharing initiative. Covax had previously worked out indemnity agreements with Moderna, which shield the company from liability for potential harm from the vaccine. American Embassy officials in Islamabad had worked with regulators there to evaluate the Food and Drug Administration’s review of the vaccine; Pakistani regulators had to pore over reams of materials on the vaccine lots and the factory where they were made before authorizing it for use there. Once they signed off, the result was a so-called tripartite agreement: a type of deal that has increasingly come to consume the Biden administration’s pandemic response efforts, underscoring ...

Packages of Smithfield Foods Inc. bacon are displayed for sale inside a Kroger Co. grocery store in Louisville, Kentucky. Luke Sharrett | Bloomberg | Getty Images Smithfield Foods said on Wednesday it will pay $83 million to settle litigation that accused several companies of conspiring to limit supply in the $20 billion-a-year U.S. pork market to inflate prices and their own profits. The settlement with Smithfield resolves antitrust claims by “direct” purchasers such as Maplevale Farms that accused the nation’s largest pork companies of having fixed prices beginning in 2009. Smithfield’s settlement requires approval by Chief Judge John Tunheim of the U.S. District Court in Minneapolis. Keira Lombardo, Smithfield’s chief administrative officer, said the settlement eliminates a “substantial portion” of the Smithfield, Virginia-based company’s exposure in the litigation. She also said Smithfield denied liability in agreeing to settle, and believed its conduct was always law...

Lego has worked extremely closely with Apple over the years, experimenting with unreleased iOS tech and demoing it onstage at launch events like WWDC; this has included some pretty heavy tinkering on the augmented reality ARKit platform that they’ve integrated several of their play sets with, adding digital experiences to the physical toys. But one of the most impressive integrations between iOS tech and physical Lego bricks just popped up on the App Store, and it’s built by a team of fans. The new app Brickit is aiming to one-up what even the Lego Group has created with an app that uses computer-vision tech to quickly make sense of a mountain of bricks. All users need to do is haphazardly dump Legos into a single layer on the floor. From there the app is able to quickly analyze and identify bricks in the collection and serve up some fun little projects that users have all or most of the bricks they need to build. The most impressive element of the app is its speed — the app is able...

BUENOS AIRES — As some wealthy countries ease coronavirus restrictions, or make plans to in the near future, Latin America and the Caribbean continue to be hammered by increased infections and deaths, highlighting the stark inequalities in access to vaccines around the world, officials from the World Health Organization warned on Wednesday. “When we are seeing some reprieve from the virus in countries in the northern hemisphere, for most countries in the region, the end remains a distant future,” said Carissa Etienne, the director of Pan American Health Organization, which is part of the W.H.O. “Despite this worrisome picture, just one in 10 people in Latin America and the Caribbean have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19,” she added, calling it an “unacceptable situation.” Economic inequality, the huge informal economy and the difficulty of implementing public health measures in Latin America and the Caribbean have all been major obstacles to containing the coronavirus there,...

The modified 737 aircraft “Cosmic Girl” lifts off from Mojave Air and Space Port in California carrying a LauncherOne rocket on June 30, 2021. Virgin Orbit Sir Richard Branson’s private space venture Virgin Orbit launched its second successful satellite mission this year on Wednesday, with CEO Dan Hart telling CNBC the company now is focused on “ramping up” and expanding operations globally. “We’re on a really good trajectory to have another flight this year, and then double that cadence and have six flights next year and then increase from there,” Hart said. Virgin Orbit uses a modified Boeing 747 aircraft as the platform to launch its rockets, rather than from the ground like other companies. Wednesday’s launch – which took off from the California desert and flew to space from above the Pacific Ocean – marked the company’s first commercial launch, as the prior two launches were demonstration missions. The company currently flies out of the Mojave Air and Space Port in Ca...

SpaceX launched 85 satellites for external customers, as well as three Starlink satellites, to orbit on Tuesday, marking the second successful launch of the company’s dedicated rideshare missions. While the Transporter-2 mission will deliver fewer objects to space than the first rideshare mission (the Transporter-1 sent up 143 satellites, a new record), it launched more mass to orbit overall. The Transporter launches are part of the company’s rideshare business model. Announced in 2019, these missions split up the rocket’s payload capacity amongst multiple customers, resulting in lower costs for each – many of whom are smaller companies that may find the expenses associated with getting to orbit otherwise impossible to pay. SpaceX still ends up with a full launch and the revenue to operate it. The Falcon 9 rocket took off from Cape Canaveral in Florida at around 3:31 PM Eastern time. It’s the twentieth Falcon 9 launch in 2021 and the first launch this year that featured the first st...

Donald H. Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense for Presidents Gerald R. Ford and George W. Bush, who presided over America’s Cold War strategies in the 1970s and, in the new world of terrorism decades later, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, died on Tuesday at his home in Taos, N.M. He was 88. The cause was multiple myeloma, said Keith Urbahn, a spokesman for the family. Encores are hardly rare in the Washington merry-go-round, but Mr. Rumsfeld had the distinction of being the only defense chief to serve two nonconsecutive terms: 1975 to 1977 under Mr. Ford, and 2001 to 2006 under Mr. Bush. He also was the youngest, at 43, and the oldest, at 74, to hold the post — first in an era of Soviet-American nuclear perils, then in an age of subtler menace by terrorists and rogue states. A staunch ally of former Vice President Dick Cheney, who had been his protégé and friend for years, Mr. Rumsfeld was a combative infighter who seemed to relish conflicts as he challenged cabinet rivals, membe...

Adam Mosseri, Facebook Beck Diefenbach | Reuters Facebook’s head of Instagram on Wednesday announced the social network plans to start showing users full-screen, recommended videos in their feeds. “We’re also going to be experimenting with how do we embrace video more broadly — full screen, immersive, entertaining, mobile-first video,” Mosseri said in a video posted on Wednesday. “You’ll see us do a number of things, or experiment with a number of things in this space over the coming months.” Specifically, Mosseri said Instagram has plans to show users full-screen videos in their feeds. This includes videos it recommends to users, including those from accounts they do not already follow. Users will start to see Instagram’s experiments with these changes over the coming months, he said. “We’re no longer a photo-sharing app or a square photo-sharing app,” Mosseri said. This represents a drastic shift for Instagram, which has until now primarily been an app where users can ...

Brian Turner, LEED-AP BD&C, leads strategic planning for product development and project work at Buildings IOT. Throughout his career, Brian has provided hands-on expertise to architects, engineers and building owners to design and implement integrated building systems. Everyone from investors to casual LinkedIn observers has more reasons than ever to look at buildings and wonder what’s going on inside. The property industry is known for moving slowly when it comes to adopting new technologies, but novel concepts and products are now entering this market at a dizzying pace. However, this ever-growing array of smart-building products has made it confusing for professionals who seek to implement digital building platform (DBP) technologies in their spaces, let alone across their entire enterprise. The waters get even murkier when it comes to cloud platforms and their impact on ROI with regard to energy usage and day-to-day operations. Breaking down technology decisions ...

Savannah Brinson  : Hi, Friends Today, I will be sharing more exciting information on the topic of Savannah Brinson. Please go on to the article, and I enjoyed reading it. Savannah Brinson Biography On August 27, 1986, she was born in Akron, Ohio, as an American Entrepreneur and Philanthropist.  Racheal is the daughter of  J. K. and Jennifer Brinson. She is the youngest of five children. Savannah Brinson Education She attends Buchtel High School in Akron, Ohio. There she was a Cheerleader and Softball Player. Savannah Brinson Career She always had a passion for Furniture Designing and Home Decoration. Savannah has a successful career as an Interior Designer. Along with her husband, she teams up with the furniture company called American Signature in 2010. She launches their furniture line, each product of which she designs for a different reason and purpose. The line ‘Home Court’ concentrates on creating style-forward choices for Kids. It includes in its Produ...

Singorama Essential Guide Reviews : Hi, Dear All Today, I will share much more exciting information on Singorama Essential Guide Reviews. Please moves on to the article and keep reading it. Singorama Essential Guide – The Ultimate Singing guide Singorama’s Essential Guide to Learn How To Sing was co-developed by Emily Mander. A team of music professionals from the down. It has quickly become one of the most popular downloadable singing courses. Available on the internet and is suitable for most beginners and mediate students. Singorama Essential Guide Learn How To Sing is a complete singing course. It will most confidently improve the way one sings. Like most Singing courses, it is mainly Audio-centric and contains lots of text information to complement the course. It will keep one learning for quite some time. One will always have the material available for reference. Learn how to sing in effective way Singorama Essential Guide Learn How To Sing provides a cost-effective way...

State Bank of India Locker Charges : Hi, Dear all. Today I will be sharing some exciting information on the topic of State Bank of India Locker Charges. Please go on the article and enjoy reading it. State Bank of India Locker A locker can operate by a person alone or jointly with someone; Hindu Undivided Families, Firms, and Trusts the applicant may have to open a bank account in the branch before allowed to apply for a locker. The Safe Deposit Lockers are one of the essential facilities.  A bank offers lockers that come in different sizes and are used to safekeeping valuable items; only the locker hirer or joint hirers can operate the safe. The country’s top person that lends money to the State Bank of India is SBI, had hiked the rental charges for its safe deposit lockers across India existing on the date of 31 March.  State Bank of India branches offers cheaper locker services in semi-urban and rural areas, such as a small locker in a metro or urban city. The ren...

The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday stood by advice that people fully vaccinated against the coronavirus do not need to wear masks in most situations, but added that there are instances where local authorities might impose more stringent measures to protect the unvaccinated. The comments came after the World Health Organization recently reiterated longstanding guidance that everyone, vaccinated or not, wear masks and take other precautions, following a global surge in infections of the highly contagious Delta variant. On Monday, Los Angeles County recommended that even fully vaccinated people wear masks indoors. In May, the C.D.C. advised that fully vaccinated Americans could forgo masks in most settings. The agency’s director, Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, said during multiple television appearances on Wednesday that local changes to masking and distancing rules were consistent with those guidelines. “We have always said that this virus is an o...

IAS CEO Lisa Utzschneider IAS Ad tech company Integral Ad Science climbed 18% in its stock market debut Wednesday, trading under the ticker “IAS.” Shares opened at $22, up from its IPO price of $18, valuing the company at close to $3.3 billion. IAS calls itself a “verification company” for digital ads. Its technology claims to help advertisers ensure ads are viewable, non-fraudulent, in the correct geography and “brand-safe,” or not running near content that advertisers might deem problematic.  “Think of a Coke ad running on YouTube,” CEO Lisa Utzschneider said in an interview Wednesday. “We verify that the ad has been viewed by a human, it ran adjacent to brand-safe and brand-suitable content. And we also offer a contextual targeting solution helping the Cokes of the world seek out content that is appropriate for their brands or content that they want to avoid.”  IAS competes with DoubleVerify, which went public in April. DoubleVerify has jumped 31.5% since its I...

The most complex life forms ever developed entirely in Petri dishes can pump blood through tiny beating hearts, gradually growing nerves and muscles in a laboratory. These little collections of mammalian cells form rudimentary mouse embryos, built from scratch out of stem cells – cells that have the potential to develop into any other cell type in the body.   While scientists have successfully been creating synthetic organs called organoids for a while now, these lack the full variety of cell types found in the real deal. This human-built mouse embryoid is a whole lot more intricate. “Watching an embryo develop is a marvelous thing to behold,” said developmental biologist Christine Thisse from the University of Virginia, one of the authors of the study. “What is amazing is that we can get the variety of tissues that are present in an authentic mouse embryo. [This] model shows that we are able to induce cells to execute complex developmental programs in the right successi...

This is your opportunity to get a glimpse of the future of iOS, iPadOS and watchOS. Apple just released the first public beta of iOS 15, iPadOS 15 and watchOS 8. Those releases are the next major versions of the operating systems for the iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch. Unlike developer betas, everyone can download these betas — you don’t need a $99 developer account. But don’t forget, it’s a beta. The company still plans to release the final version of iOS 15, iPadOS 15 and watchOS 8 this fall. But Apple is going to release betas every few weeks over the summer. It’s a good way to fix as many bugs as possible and gather data from a large group of users. As always, Apple’s public betas closely follow the release cycle of developer betas. Apple also released the second developer beta of iOS and iPadOS 15 today. So it sounds like the first public beta is more or less the same build as the second developer build. But remember, you shouldn’t install a beta on your primary iPhone or iPad. ...