Latest news with #Schrodinger
Business Times
23-05-2025
- Business
- Business Times
Issue 149: Funds take lion's share of global blended finance volumes; Singapore upgrades sustainability reporting training syllabus
This week in ESG: Blended finance at critical crossroads, says Convergence; accounting regulator publishes guide for sustainability reporting trainers Sustainable finance Funds spark hope for scaling blended finance Fund structures have steadily become one of the most promising vehicles for scaling up blended finance, with Asia a key market for capital raising, according to the latest data by blended finance development group Convergence. Blended finance refers to funding structures that use concessional capital to improve the risk or return of a deal so that commercial capital is willing to take part. It's an approach that's especially impactful in mobilising capital for hard-to-finance needs in developing and emerging geographies. Like Schrodinger's cat, which is simultaneously alive and dead, the blended finance industry currently exists both in a state of strength and weakness. The total volume of blended finance deals worldwide stood at US$18.3 billion in 2024, Convergence data shows. Although this is down 21 per cent from a record US$23.1 billion financed in 2023, year-on-year numbers can be volatile due to the timing of large deals known as 'whales'. The broad five-year trend remains positive. A NEWSLETTER FOR YOU Friday, 12.30 pm ESG Insights An exclusive weekly report on the latest environmental, social and governance issues. Sign Up Sign Up However, the multi-year momentum is threatened with dimmer prospects for official development assistance (ODA) funding around the world, including cuts in France, Germany, the Netherlands and the US. ODA is the largest source of concessional capital in blended deals – in 2024 ODA accounted for US$3 billion of financing in blended deals – and the US Agency for International Development is one of the largest providers of development capital. Because concessional capital is critical to mobilising commercial funding, every dollar decline in ODA could be magnified in private money that cannot be mobilised. In a note, Convergence chief executive Joan M Larrea said: 'What we've seen is that despite the market growing in size, and more people than ever talking about the promise of blended finance, it remains plagued by its most intractable issues. In light of the ODA drop, it's more important than ever for those of us invested in and investing in blended finance to ensure change happens.' One of the promising changes happening in blended finance is the growth of blended funds. In 2024, blended funds accounted for US$5.1 billion of financing. This was more than any other vehicle type: bonds or notes, companies, facilities, financial institutions and projects. Blended funds are typically anchored by concessional investors who can help to limit losses or enhance returns for other investors in the fund. The TPG Global South Initiative, which aims to raise US$2.5 billion, taps the United Arab Emirates' US$30 billion Alterra climate investment fund to enhance returns for other shareholders. The TPG Global South Initiative is giving a boost to the East Asia and Pacific region, where blended finance volumes almost quadrupled to US$4 billion in 2024 from US$1.1 billion the year before. The other major blended fund in 2024 – Brookfield's Catalytic Transition Fund, with a fundraising target of US$5 billion – also had Asia connections; Singapore's GIC and Temasek are among the fund's investment partners. Convergence describes blended funds as 'the most scalable and replicable blended finance vehicle'. One of the reasons that blended funds have been successful in raising private capital is that the funds are managed by reputable firms with strong track records. This helps to unlock interest from institutional investors, which have to ensure that their investments meet their risk and compliance requirements. Convergence finds that institutional investors account for half of private-sector commitments in blended funds. Median deal size for funds has also increased to US$135 million in 2024 from US$48 million in 2022. Almost two-thirds of the blended funds focus on either, or both, climate mitigation and adaptation. Since investors' monies are pooled and allocated through the fund managers, blended funds also allow smaller projects to access institutional money even if they don't meet the institutional investors' minimum ticket sizes. Finally, funds can also be avenues through which local capital can get involved. Convergence has identified local capital as an important source of financing that needs to be developed. Could we see more blended funds in the years ahead in Asia? The signs are promising. For instance, Vietnam's Mekong Capital is using blended finance on its US$200 million Mekong Earth Regeneration Fund to invest in growth-stage private equity targets in regeneration agriculture and sustainable land use in Vietnam. Green economy A national syllabus for sustainability reporting training Singapore's looming deadlines for compliance with international sustainability reporting accounting standards have fuelled a demand surge for relevant skills training. Before everyone starts heading out into the wild to get that training, the Singapore Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (Acra) is hoping to set some standards for the standards teachers. A new guide on sustainability reporting sets out essential knowledge areas on sustainability reporting that are aligned with the IFRS S1 and S2 standards, which apply to sustainability and climate reporting. Structured like a school syllabus, the guide is aimed at training providers to help them design specialised courses. To validate the guide, Acra ran it by more than 50 key stakeholders, including company preparers, assurance providers, professional bodies and training providers. The move comes as sustainability reporting-related skills are a growing need. SkillsFuture Singapore, the nation's lifelong learning agency, tracks historical jobs postings to assess priority skills based on how much demand they face and how transferable they are. On such a two-axis matrix, a recent SkillsFuture report observed that sustainability assurance, while still a low-demand skill, has steadily moved from moderate transferability to high transferability. That shift reflects Singapore's requirement for IFRS-aligned climate reporting from listed companies beginning this year and from 2027 onwards for large non-listed companies, SkillsFuture says. Beyond the data, SkillsFuture has also identified greenhouse gas accounting and carbon footprint management as skills that it expects to capture greater demand and transferability in the future. Other ESG reads
Yahoo
09-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
The academics incensed by the woke overhaul of Oxford's 800-year-old graduation ceremony
For centuries, Oxford students have graduated inside the sandstone walls of the Sheldonian Theatre. But this year, students have been sent scrambling back to their blossom-filled quads for their Latin textbooks, to see if they ought to be offended by the ceremonial language used in their upcoming graduations. Late last month, it was revealed that Oxford plans to make the Latin gender-neutral, to cater to those who identify as non-binary. The proposed changes, which will be voted on by Congregation, the university's governing body, on April 29, involve stripping out the grammatically gendered masculine or feminine words. Instead of referring to masters students as 'magistri' (masters) – a masculine word – the new text uses the term 'vos', which is the neutral term for 'you'. The word 'doctores' (doctors), which is also masculine, may also be changed. Congregation has a little more than 5,000 members, and a simple majority vote settles most matters. It is expected that these latest proposed changes will be passed with little fanfare, much to the annoyance of a number of esteemed Latin experts, Oxford students and university staff. 'It really is Schrodinger's Latin,' says David Butterfield, a professor of Latin, who officiated University of Cambridge graduation ceremonies in the ancient language for eight years. 'You cannot hide the fact that grammatical gender is baked into the language. If you want to be non-binary, you have to retreat to the neuter gender, which Latin uses for the subhuman and inanimate. But nobody wants to be an 'it', so Oxford has fudged things by removing any word that explicitly differs in form between the masculine and feminine genders. The result is incredible and weird Latin.' Prof Butterfield describes the new Latin as 'tortuous abstractions' that 'go against the simple spirit' of the ceremony. 'It reads more like legalese jargon than ceremonial celebration,' he says, adding: 'I regret that striking and beautiful phrases, such as Domini doctores, are being replaced with the empty, and rather abrupt, vos.' For many students, graduating in Latin is a great hallmark of Oxford tradition. Dressed in black and white, they line up in rows of four, bow to the vice-chancellor, and solemnly reply 'do fidem', meaning 'I agree', to the conditions of their degree. In the graduation ceremony, an official known as the dean of degrees takes the hand of a student and presents them to the vice-chancellor in Latin. Before, he would say: 'Praesento vobis hunc baccalaureum in artibus', which, for those of us who didn't study declensions hard enough at school, loosely translates as: 'I present to you this scholar of mine'. The proposed change removes the word 'hunc', a masculine word, and instead adds on 'hic adstantem', meaning 'standing here'. 'Hic is an adverb and has no gender, and the gender of ad stantem is not revealed, so it can sort of hedge as non-binary,' explains Prof Butterfield. The University of Oxford argues that 'the proposed changes before Congregation create a single text for each ceremony, covering all options students now have for registering genders in line with legal reporting requirements for higher education'. But for some academics who know their Catullus from their Pliny, the language change places tradition at risk. 'Oxford and Cambridge are not only elite in the academic sense, but elite and renowned in a historical sense. Whether you're a class-A Latinist or not, the fact that this change has been made shows that, little by little, the foundations of tradition are going to be eroded,' says one lecturer, who does not wish to be named. 'It's the start of a slippery slope, which once you've gone down, you're not going to go back.' Another senior fellow of an Oxford college likens the Latin used to the wording of the Book of Common Prayer, arguing that it should be 'protected' from any change. 'The language is set apart from modern colloquial English, and this protects it from the problems that can arise from the ways in which modern English is constantly changing in its nuances and implications,' he says. 'The university administrators are just pointlessly importing modern problems where they don't belong.' Nigel Biggar, a professor of theology at Oxford, also opposes the changes. ''Gendered' pronouns refer to objective biological sex, not subjective identities that endorse stereotypes or transcend them,' he says. Latin is the language of classical scholarship, dating back to the fall of the Western Roman Empire, around AD 476, when it served as the primary language of higher education and scholarship in Europe. And as such, it 'transcended normal bonds of kinship and belonging', explains Douglas Hedley, a professor of philosophy of religion at Clare College, Cambridge. 'It's a tradition grounded in the European idea for university, when the modern nation state was embryonic or, in some cases, non-existent, and Latin was the common language.' For him, the changes at Oxford are an 'attempt to address the latest fad and to try to impose it on an ancient tradition', which he describes as 'incongruous' and 'virtue signalling'. Oxford doesn't publicly release specific numbers of non-binary students, but according to a Times Higher Education survey in 2022, around 0.2 per cent of UK university students identify as 'other gender', which translates to roughly 14 students out of Oxford's 7,000 annual admissions. This was a 42 per cent increase compared with the number the year before, and more than double that in 2018-19. Henry Morris, a 20-year-old studying ancient and modern history at Somerville, is one of the 0.2 per cent identifying as non-binary at Oxford. 'It makes it a bit more personal,' says Morris, who has identified as non-binary since the age of 14. 'It's very nice to have tradition and celebrations, but Oxford is already an elitist institution which is fundamentally unwelcoming. Knowing that the language has changed makes it that bit more welcoming for me.' Though most Oxford students admit that they do not understand the Latin being spoken to them during the ceremony, Morris argues that 'most students would welcome inclusive language.' Other Latin dons at Oxford agree with Morris and say that despite being 'dead', the language should be allowed to evolve. 'There's absolutely no reason why the use of Latin shouldn't move with the times if one wants it to,' declares Armand D'Angour, a professor of classical languages at Jesus College, Oxford. 'After all, classical Latin had no use for the word 'universitas' other than to mean 'totality', but it became the standard word for a university in the 13th century, and now it's clearly indispensable.' He describes getting rid of the masculine and feminine genders in the ceremony as 'a neat solution'. Chris Pelling, a professor of Greek at Christ Church college, agrees: 'The proposed form is perfectly good Latin, and is arguably less clumsy than the form that has been used up till now,' he says. 'There have often been changes made before, most obviously when women were first awarded degrees, and the roof of the Sheldonian Theatre has not fallen in.' But to many students, being denied the privilege of partaking in tradition is a dismaying prospect, as they will be graduating in a different way to previous generations of Oxford students. 'It draws a line between us and them, rather than uniting us under one universal tradition,' says Lydia Dicicco, a 22-year-old student studying Spanish and Italian at St Catherine's College. She describes the changes as 'splitting hairs' in the language. 'When I hear words like 'guys', I never expect it to just refer to men, as it is just one of those words that includes everyone,' she says. 'Similarly, with 'magistri', it is obviously not just talking about men. Women have been graduating from Oxford for 100 years.' 'It feels like change for change's sake,' says Mitchell Palmer, 23, a history and economics student at New College. 'I don't particularly understand why this change needs to be made, seeing as most European languages are gendered. There's no need to throw millennia of linguistic evolution out the window due to a current political problem.' Over at 'the other place', Cambridge academics, while not quaking in their boots, are wary of a similar directive taking shape. 'It would be a travesty if this happened at Cambridge after 800 years of doing it a particular way,' says David Abulafia, a professor of Mediterranean history. He points out that Girton College has a male vice-mistress because it was originally founded as a female-only college in the late 1800s. 'Nobody is offended by those words, which signify legitimation.' According to Prof Hedley, if Cambridge were to initiate the change, there would be more at stake than some altered text: 'It would be a lamentable index of the decay of our civilisation.' Additional reporting by Flora Prideaux Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
09-04-2025
- General
- Telegraph
The academics incensed by the woke overhaul of Oxford's 800-year-old graduation ceremony
For centuries, Oxford students have graduated inside the sandstone walls of the Sheldonian Theatre. But this year, students have been sent scrambling back to their blossom-filled quads for their Latin textbooks, to see if they ought to be offended by the ceremonial language used in their upcoming graduations. Late last month, it was revealed that Oxford plans to make the Latin gender-neutral, to cater to those who identify as non-binary. The proposed changes, which will be voted on by Congregation, the university's governing body, on April 29, involve stripping out the grammatically gendered masculine or feminine words. Instead of referring to masters students as ' magistri ' (masters) – a masculine word – the new text uses the term ' vos ', which is the neutral term for 'you'. The word ' doctores ' (doctors), which is also masculine, may also be changed. Congregation has a little more than 5,000 members, and a simple majority vote settles most matters. It is expected that these latest proposed changes will be passed with little fanfare, much to the annoyance of a number of esteemed Latin experts, Oxford students and university staff. 'It really is Schrodinger's Latin,' says David Butterfield, a professor of Latin, who officiated University of Cambridge graduation ceremonies in the ancient language for eight years. 'You cannot hide the fact that grammatical gender is baked into the language. If you want to be non-binary, you have to retreat to the neuter gender, which Latin uses for the subhuman and inanimate. But nobody wants to be an 'it', so Oxford has fudged things by removing any word that explicitly differs in form between the masculine and feminine genders. The result is incredible and weird Latin.' Prof Butterfield describes the new Latin as 'tortuous abstractions' that 'go against the simple spirit' of the ceremony. 'It reads more like legalese jargon than ceremonial celebration,' he says, adding: 'I regret that striking and beautiful phrases, such as Domini doctores, are being replaced with the empty, and rather abrupt, vos.' For many students, graduating in Latin is a great hallmark of Oxford tradition. Dressed in black and white, they line up in rows of four, bow to the vice-chancellor, and solemnly reply ' do fidem ', meaning 'I agree', to the conditions of their degree. In the graduation ceremony, an official known as the dean of degrees takes the hand of a student and presents them to the vice-chancellor in Latin. Before, he would say: ' Praesento vobis hunc baccalaureum in artibus ', which, for those of us who didn't study declensions hard enough at school, loosely translates as: 'I present to you this scholar of mine'. The proposed change removes the word ' hunc ', a masculine word, and instead adds on ' hic adstantem ', meaning 'standing here'. ' Hic is an adverb and has no gender, and the gender of ad stantem is not revealed, so it can sort of hedge as non-binary,' explains Prof Butterfield. The University of Oxford argues that 'the proposed changes before Congregation create a single text for each ceremony, covering all options students now have for registering genders in line with legal reporting requirements for higher education'. But for some academics who know their Catullus from their Pliny, the language change places tradition at risk. 'Oxford and Cambridge are not only elite in the academic sense, but elite and renowned in a historical sense. Whether you're a class-A Latinist or not, the fact that this change has been made shows that, little by little, the foundations of tradition are going to be eroded,' says one lecturer, who does not wish to be named. 'It's the start of a slippery slope, which once you've gone down, you're not going to go back.' Another senior fellow of an Oxford college likens the Latin used to the wording of the Book of Common Prayer, arguing that it should be 'protected' from any change. 'The language is set apart from modern colloquial English, and this protects it from the problems that can arise from the ways in which modern English is constantly changing in its nuances and implications,' he says. 'The university administrators are just pointlessly importing modern problems where they don't belong.' Nigel Biggar, a professor of theology at Oxford, also opposes the changes. ''Gendered' pronouns refer to objective biological sex, not subjective identities that endorse stereotypes or transcend them,' he says. Latin is the language of classical scholarship, dating back to the fall of the Western Roman Empire, around AD 476, when it served as the primary language of higher education and scholarship in Europe. And as such, it 'transcended normal bonds of kinship and belonging', explains Douglas Hedley, a professor of philosophy of religion at Clare College, Cambridge. 'It's a tradition grounded in the European idea for university, when the modern nation state was embryonic or, in some cases, non-existent, and Latin was the common language.' For him, the changes at Oxford are an 'attempt to address the latest fad and to try to impose it on an ancient tradition', which he describes as 'incongruous' and ' virtue signalling '. Oxford doesn't publicly release specific numbers of non-binary students, but according to a Times Higher Education survey in 2022, around 0.2 per cent of UK university students identify as 'other gender', which translates to roughly 14 students out of Oxford's 7,000 annual admissions. This was a 42 per cent increase compared with the number the year before, and more than double that in 2018-19. Henry Morris, a 20-year-old studying ancient and modern history at Somerville, is one of the 0.2 per cent identifying as non-binary at Oxford. 'It makes it a bit more personal,' says Morris, who has identified as non-binary since the age of 14. 'It's very nice to have tradition and celebrations, but Oxford is already an elitist institution which is fundamentally unwelcoming. Knowing that the language has changed makes it that bit more welcoming for me.' Though most Oxford students admit that they do not understand the Latin being spoken to them during the ceremony, Morris argues that 'most students would welcome inclusive language.' Other Latin dons at Oxford agree with Morris and say that despite being 'dead', the language should be allowed to evolve. 'There's absolutely no reason why the use of Latin shouldn't move with the times if one wants it to,' declares Armand D'Angour, a professor of classical languages at Jesus College, Oxford. 'After all, classical Latin had no use for the word 'universitas' other than to mean 'totality', but it became the standard word for a university in the 13th century, and now it's clearly indispensable.' He describes getting rid of the masculine and feminine genders in the ceremony as 'a neat solution'. Chris Pelling, a professor of Greek at Christ Church college, agrees: 'The proposed form is perfectly good Latin, and is arguably less clumsy than the form that has been used up till now,' he says. 'There have often been changes made before, most obviously when women were first awarded degrees, and the roof of the Sheldonian Theatre has not fallen in.' But to many students, being denied the privilege of partaking in tradition is a dismaying prospect, as they will be graduating in a different way to previous generations of Oxford students. 'It draws a line between us and them, rather than uniting us under one universal tradition,' says Lydia Dicicco, a 22-year-old student studying Spanish and Italian at St Catherine's College. She describes the changes as 'splitting hairs' in the language. 'When I hear words like 'guys', I never expect it to just refer to men, as it is just one of those words that includes everyone,' she says. 'Similarly, with ' magistri ', it is obviously not just talking about men. Women have been graduating from Oxford for 100 years.' 'It feels like change for change's sake,' says Mitchell Palmer, 23, a history and economics student at New College. 'I don't particularly understand why this change needs to be made, seeing as most European languages are gendered. There's no need to throw millennia of linguistic evolution out the window due to a current political problem.' Over at 'the other place', Cambridge academics, while not quaking in their boots, are wary of a similar directive taking shape. 'It would be a travesty if this happened at Cambridge after 800 years of doing it a particular way,' says David Abulafia, a professor of Mediterranean history. He points out that Girton College has a male vice-mistress because it was originally founded as a female-only college in the late 1800s. 'Nobody is offended by those words, which signify legitimation.' According to Prof Hedley, if Cambridge were to initiate the change, there would be more at stake than some altered text: 'It would be a lamentable index of the decay of our civilisation.'
Yahoo
28-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Quantum Breakthrough: Amazon Launches 'Ocelot' Quantum Chip
Feb 28 - Amazon (AMZN, Financial) Web Services (AWS) on Thursday revealed its new quantum computing chip, Ocelot. The chip is engineered to slash the costs of quantum error correction by up to 90% compared with current methods. Warning! GuruFocus has detected 2 Warning Sign with AMZN. Ocelot leverages the innovative cat qubit design, a nod to Schrodinger's famous thought experiment, to harness the unique capabilities of quantum bits, or qubits, which can exist as both 0 and 1 simultaneously. This breakthrough is expected to accelerate complex computations, including drug discovery and other intensive processes. Major tech rivals are ramping up their quantum efforts, and the announcement follows. The introduction of these chips highlights that the world is on the brink of quantum computing becoming available to the public. But Amazon says its new design is based on scalable manufacturing techniques imported from the microelectronics industry and incorporates error correction from the ground up. However, unlike other quantum computers, the researchers emphasized that Ocelot is the first chip to house all of the cat qubit technology along with other error correction components in one microchip. The researchers see this development as a major step forward for the real race in quantum computing. It suggests that there is a growing race in the emerging quantum arena between tech giants to be its leader. This article first appeared on GuruFocus. Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
27-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Amazon Bets Big on Quantum Computing With Ocelot-Fewer Qubits, Faster Results
Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) Web Services just introduced Ocelot, its latest quantum computing chip, and it's aiming to shave up to five years off the timeline for building a commercially useful quantum computer. Quantum computing has long been seen as the next big thing, with the potential to solve complex problems in minutes that would take today's computers millions of years. But the challenge? Qubitsthe building blocks of quantum computersare incredibly unstable and prone to errors. Warning! GuruFocus has detected 3 Warning Sign with AMZN. That's where AWS thinks it's making real progress. Ocelot uses "cat" qubits, a nod to Schrodinger's famous thought experiment, to drastically reduce the number of physical qubits needed for a working machine. While industry estimates say a million physical qubits are required, AWS believes it can get there with as few as 100,000. The announcement, which comes alongside a peer-reviewed paper in Nature, puts AWS in the race with Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), and startups like PsiQuantum, all working to push quantum computing forward. For now, Ocelot is still a prototype, but AWS sees it as a major step toward making quantum computing commercially viable sooner than expected. This article first appeared on GuruFocus. Sign in to access your portfolio
