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Unilever is pioneering a novel approach to fragrance creation by repurposing leftover plants and flowers that would otherwise go to waste. The consumer goods giant has partnered with scientists at the University of Nottingham and Bridge Farm Group which grows plants and flowers in over 60 acres of greenhouse space to pilot the extraction of essential oils from leftover petunias, roses and marigolds.If large-scale production is economically feasible, these oils could be used in a range of home and personal care products, from shampoos to cleaning solutions. The initiative not only addresses the issue of floral waste but also explores a more sustainable alternative to the petrochemical-derived ingredients that are currently used in many products.Compounds are being extracted from the flowers using a process that combines traditional methods with cutting-edge technology. As reported by The Independent, the scientists involved are using an energy-efficient and accelerated process that takes just 20 minutes, which is 40% faster than conventional techniques. Beyond essential oils, Unilever is also investigating extracting other high-value ingredients such as terpenes, lactones and ethers for fragrances, complex sugars for cleaning products and odor-neutralizing compounds for personal care items.
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Marketing and Advertising
As the world turns, so do the console generations. The Nintendo Switch is over seven years old, so its due for a refresh. Nintendo Switch 2 rumors have been swirling for years, but now they are really heating up. A sequel to Nintendo's most successful home console ever is coming and its likely coming sooner rather than later. Will it be a straight up sequel to the Switch with updated specs while retaining the same hybrid functionality or will Nintendo get weird with it? Will it even be called the Switch 2, or will the company go with something like the Super Switch or even the New Nintendo Switch? You can never tell with Nintendo. Heck, maybe itll call the thing the Switch U. In any event, recent weeks have brought feverish speculation regarding all aspects of the forthcoming gaming console. Its important to note, however, that very little information has been confirmed by Nintendo. The company operates on its own timetable. With that said, here are all of the rumors that are most likely to come true, given industry analysis. When will the Nintendo Switch 2 be announced? As previously mentioned, Nintendo marches to the beat of its own drum. We dont exactly know when itll hold an event to reveal the console. However, many are predicting that itll happen sometime this month. Why is this? The company recently shuffled around its normal Nintendo Direct schedule to make room for something in September, as indicated by Kotaku. September is also an important time in the Japanese video game calendar, as Tokyo Game Show is scheduled for the end of the month. Many members of the press have also heard industry whispers regarding a September reveal event. These include GamesIndustry.biz head Christopher Dring, who teased that something Switch 2-related would be happening this month. Editor-in-chief of VGC, Andy Robinson, concurred that a bunch of press have heard this but said that he wouldnt bet my house on it. No-one seems to have noticed the Nintendo assembler- Hosiden is spending 2bn on production equipment and 1bn on automation in FY3/25 for its major customer in amusement (Nintendo). I still expect Sept news and March 2025 release for next device. pic.twitter.com/APGEGGSyS8 David Gibson (@gibbogame) September 4, 2024 Even Nintendo has trouble keeping the lid on a major console release. There are parts that have to be sourced and shipments that have to be made. A senior analyst at MST Financial noted a spike in production equipment spending by Nintendo assembler Hosiden, so he also expects a September announcement date. When will the Nintendo Switch 2 come out? Once again, this is more or less a mystery. We arent totally in the dark, but its mostly rumor and speculation. One thing we know for sure is that Nintendo will announce the Nintendo Switch 2 (or whatever it chooses to call it) by March 2025, as the company confirmed that back in May. Some are saying there will be a March release date, which makes sense given the OG Switch came out on March 17, 2017. However, other reports put the consoles release window later in 2025. We can infer a lot from the announcement date. If the console gets announced this year, March is likely, given that the original Switch was officially confirmed in October of 2016. If the announcement doesn't come until next year, the launch probably wont come until after April. Will it even be a proper Switch sequel? Nintendo has a weird track record here. The baffling Wii U followed the massive success of the Wii. The Wii itself followed the more traditional GameCube. In other words, its possible itll be something out of left field and not exactly a true sequel to the Switch. However, this is unlikely this time around. As much as I would love to see wacky VR glasses or a completely bonkers console concept, all points indicate a more traditional approach. Nintendo Patent Points to (Another) VR Headset https://t.co/pofTjclgOt #LaboVR #Nintendo pic.twitter.com/A5WEZUG3kL The Escapist (@EscapistMag) September 10, 2019 Developers have already seen the hardware, though in a much earlier form, and it seems to be a regular old console. While Nintendo hasn't confirmed hybrid functionality, itd be a weird omission given the absolute financial firestorm of the Switch. Weve also heard rumors of a Mini-LED display, which would track for a hybrid console. Its highly likely this will be a straight-up Switch 2, or something like it, calling to mind the Super Nintendo. Is the Nintendo Switch 2 backwards compatible? If its a sequel to the Switch, the next question has to be about backwards compatibility. The Switchs library is absolutely massive, and continues to grow, so gamers would be rightfully peeved if they couldnt play Tears of the Kingdom on their new next-gen console. Theres good news on this front. Multiple sources have reported that the console will likely be fully backwards compatible, which is great. This should be true of both digital releases and physical cartridges. Even Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser seemed to indicate this during an interview conducted last year, saying that the companys goal this time around is to minimize the ip you typically see in the last year of one cycle and the beginning of another. Backwards compatibility would certainly get that done. Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa has also told investors that the company's revamped account system will make transitioning from Switch to its successor more smooth than previous generational leaps. What about specs? The rumors regarding specs are all over the place, so its tough to pin down. We know one thing for sure: Itll be more powerful than the ancient Switch hardware, which was already antiquated back in 2017. One analyst allegedly got a hold of a spec sheet from the Korean United Daily News that said the Switch 2 would boast an eight-core Cortex-A78AE processor, 8GB of RAM, and 64GB of internal eMMC storage. This tracks for me, as these specs are about as underpowered in 2024 as the original Switch was in 2017. Another source suggests that the eight-core CPU will be packaged inside an NVIDIA-produced Tegra239 SoC (system on a chip). Given the current Switch runs on an NVIDIA chip, that makes a lot of sense. The CPU will be more powerful, but it's the Switch 2's new GPU that will be a major differentiator. It's all-but-confirmed that the Switch 2 will support DLSS, NVIDIA's "deep learning supersampling" upscaling tech, which would allow the console to render games at a low resolution internally while outputting a high-resolution image. (Fun fact: We actually wrote about how perfect DLSS was for the Nintendo Switch 2 when the technology was announced alongside the RTX 20 series back in 2018.) There are still questions about the Switch 2 and DLSS: Will the system support newer DLSS features like frame generation? Will existing games be automatically tidied up by NVIDIA's algorithm? Regardless of the exact implementation, DLSS upscaling will be a huge leap over the rudimentary techniques available to Nintendo Switch developers. As for the display, there are many conflicting rumors. Early reports from solid sources suggested the Switch 2 would have an 8-inch display LCD display, but there have also been rumors about an 7-inch display with a 120Hz refresh rate. Some analysts have suggested this would be an OLED screen, while others have said it would be a Mini-LED display. A Mini-LED display is basically an LCD display that has a backlight made of (surprise!) mini-LEDs rather than edge lighting. This allows for local dimming, making the blacks more black. Im hedging my bets here. I think itll be a standard LCD, to cut costs, with an OLED or Mini-LED model coming later down the line. However, Mini-LED screens are slightly cheaper than OLED displays, so thats certainly a possibility at launch. How much will the Nintendo Switch 2 cost? We don't have too much information regarding price but we do have plenty of history to work with. The original Nintendo Switch launched at $300, which is pretty much the "magic number" when it comes to Nintendo console releases in recent years. The Wii U also came in at $300. However, there are plenty of rumors circulating that Nintendo could be upping the asking price for the Switch 2. Numerous outlets have reported it'll be $400, or potentially even more expensive. However, the same analysts who say the console will be $400 were also fairly certain it would be out by the end of 2024 and, well, it looks like that ain't happening. Dipping back into history, there is some precedence for a price uptick. The GameCube was $200 and the Wii was $250. The Wii U and Switch increased to $300 and, well, numbers like to go up. A $400 price tag would make it nearly as expensive as a PS5 and Xbox Series X. That would also put it at the same price as the 256GB LCD Steam Deck. Do we know about any launch games? Nope! But its certainly been a long time since weve gotten a proper 3D Mario adventure, right? That would be one heck of a system seller. Other than that, your guess is as good as mine. Past as prologue, we can expect something from Ubisoft and an off-the-wall title like 1-2-Switch. If theres a gimmick or hook involved with the console, well also get a game that takes advantage of that. A dual release of Metroid Prime 4, just like Breath of the Wild and Twilight Princess before that, is also a possibility. That's everything we know about the Nintendo Switch 2 today. We'll update this article with rumors we trust and with information we gather directly from sources. Any changes made to the article after its initial publishing will be listed below.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/nintendo-switch-2-everything-we-know-about-the-coming-release-110023903.html?src=rss
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Marketing and Advertising
The US government has noticed the potentially negative effects of generative AI on areas like journalism and content creation. Senator Amy Klobuchar, along with seven Democrat colleagues, urged the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Justice Department to probe generative AI products like ChatGPT for potential antitrust violations, they wrote in a press release. "Recently, multiple dominant online platforms have introduced new generative AI features that answer user queries by summarizing, or, in some cases, merely regurgitating online content from other sources or platforms," the letter states. "The introduction of these new generative AI features further threatens the ability of journalists and other content creators to earn compensation for their vital work." The lawmakers went on to note that traditional search results lead users to publishers' websites while AI-generated summaries keep the users on the search platform "where that platform alone can profit from the user's attention through advertising and data collection." These products also have significant competitive consequences that distort markets for content. When a generative AI feature answers a query directly, it often forces the content creatorwhose content has been relegated to a lower position on the user interfaceto compete with content generated from their own work. The fact that AI may be scraping news sites and then not even directing users to the original source could be a form of "exclusionary conduct or an unfair method of competition in violation of antitrust laws," the lawmakers concluded. (That's on top being a potential violation of copyright laws, but that's another legal battle altogether.) Lawmakers have already proposed a couple of bills designed to protect artists, journalists and other from unauthorized generative AI use. In July, three senators introduced the COPIED Act to combat and monitor the rise of AI content and deepfakes. Later in the month, a group of senators introduced the NO FAKES Act, a law that would make it illegal to make digital recreations of a person's voice or likeness without their consent. AI poses a particularly large risk to journalism, both local and global, by removing the sources of revenue that allow for original and investigative reporting. The New York Times, for one, cited instances of ChatGPT providing users with "near-verbatim excerpts" from paywalled articles. OpenAI recently admitted that it's impossible to train generative AI without copyrighted materials. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/us-senators-urge-regulators-to-probe-potential-ai-antitrust-violations-110012387.html?src=rss
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