text:
Digital TV News: Chema Alonso
Telefónica announces Movistar Living Apps for its STBs
Nov 13, 2019 – Telefónica has announced the availability of Movistar Living Apps, proprietary apps and from third-party companies that offer new digital experiences to Movistar customers that have its Movistar+ UHD TV set-top-box.
News categories: Telefónica, Chema Alonso, Apps, Digital TV, Set Top Box, Smart Home, Spain
Telefónica announces partnerships for launch of Movistar Home
Oct 18, 2018 – Telefónica has announced Movistar Home, a home device that incorporates Aura, Telefónica's AI system. The unit is equipped with a display so that users can manage Movistar+ content as well as the communications and connectivity of the device.
News categories: Telefónica, Digital TV, IPTV, Satellite, Smart Home, Spain
Cognitive intelligence platform enables Telefónica customers to manage their own data
Feb 26, 2017 – Telefónica has announced a platform that will be the basis for a new relationship model with its customers. AURA will enable users to manage their digital experiences with the company and control the data generated by using Telefónica's products and services.
News categories: Telefónica, José María Álvarez-Pallete, Chema Alonso, Big Data, Digital TV, MWC20, Spain

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Students start the school year on Monday 4 February 2019 and end the school year on Thursday 19 December 2019.
Two of these days are before the school year starts for students and one day is after the school year ends for students (31st January, 1st February and Friday 20th December 2019).
Each school schedules another three days throughout the year in consultation with its school board and school community (Friday 22nd March, Monday 22nd July and Friday 1st November 2019).


text:
El Retrato de Tomás Moro es un retrato del teólogo, político, humanista y escritor inglés, Tomás Moro, realizado por el pintor alemán Hans Holbein el Joven en 1527. Las dimensiones del óleo son de 74,9 × 60,3 cm. Se expone en la Colección Frick, Nueva York.

Después de que en 1523 Holbein pintara el primero de sus retratos de Erasmo, la fama del pintor le llevó primero a Francia y después a Inglaterra en 1526, con una carta de presentación de Erasmo a Tomás Moro. El estadista inglés encontró varios clientes para Holbein, en esta, su primera estancia, incluyendo a William Warham, arzobispo de Canterbury, quien ya poseía un retrato de Erasmo pintado por el alemán. (Durante su segunda estancia, de 1532 a 1540, pintaría uno de sus cuadros más conocidos, Los embajadores, entre otros).

En diciembre de 1526 escribió a Erasmo afirmando que

Tu pintor, mi queridísimo Erasmo, es un artista maravilloso...

Además de este retrato, Holbein pintó otro cuadro de Moro con su familia, el cual se encuentra actualmente desaparecido, aunque sí existe un boceto preliminar y siete bocetos de los miembros de su familia, como el Estudio de un retrato de John More y el Estudio de un retrato de Elizabeth Dauncey.

Versiones
La National Portrait Gallery de Londres tiene una copia del cuadro, posiblemente realizado en Italia o en Austria a principios del siglo XVII.

Referencias

Cuadros de 1527
Retratos de Hans Holbein el Joven

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


This year we took place in the 6th edition of the fair.
The event has confirmed itself as a great showcase of production excellence and local services, a real opportunity to develop business possibilities. The numbers confirm the success of the fair; also Sinteris had the opportunity to make interesting and constructive meetings. See you next year!


The Landing Pad allows you to change the location of where you spawn when you teleport to an island. After crafting with the recipe below, you can place it anywhere you wish (4x4 flat clear space is required). After placing, 4 Blue Portal Stones (Or other colours depending on the level the island you're trying to place the pad on is) are required to activate the landing pad. The arrow visible before activation is the direction that the player will be facing after spawning.
If a new Landing Pad is activated, the original one turns into 4x4x1 Ruinstone Blocks.
4x4x2 blocks above a Landing Pad are waterproof.
This page was last edited on 5 December 2017, at 19:36.


text:
It's easy to celebrate suffragettes in 2018, but contraceptive rights are a harder battle
Opponents of women's rights over their own bodies remain in power.
By Julia Rampen
Follow @@JuliaRampenMM
A hundred years ago, some women over the age of 30 were allowed to vote for the first time, and women were allowed to stand for election as MPs. Without those two pieces of legislation, the annals of Parliamentary history would have no Barbara Castle, no Winnie Ewing, no Nancy Astor, no Alice Bacon, no Shirley Williams, no Mo Mowlam, no Diane Abbott, no Harriet Harman, and no Ann Widdecombe. No Anna Soubry would bark embarrassing questions at no Theresa May, and neither – hard to imagine – would come from the party of Margaret Thatcher. So there is no doubt that 1918 mattered.
But here's another year, one that is not learned in school, and does not merit speeches in Parliament: 1961. The year the contraceptive pill was invented.
Suffragettes chaining themselves to railings and stealing out of bourgeois homes to rallies is undoubtedly a better story than researchers in labs (and definitely a better story than the decision to use poor women from Puerto Rico as test subjects). They are also of far more interest to the current occupants of Westminster, who love nothing more than putting past political activists on a pedestal. But it's hard to imagine that a third of MPs would be women without access to birth control.
Until the late 1960s, an ambitious woman's chance of a career meant either sacrificing conventional love and a family life, or being somehow catapulted into the top echelons of society where childcare could be outsourced (Thatcher, who was born in 1925, had both the emotional and financial support of her husband, as well as an inordinate amount of self-belief and a university degree). A 2000 paper by Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz found that in the United States, women's enrolment in higher education jumped in the early 1970s, as did the age of first marriage among college-educated women. "A virtually foolproof, easy to use, and female-controlled contraceptive having low health risks, little pain, and few annoyances does appear to have been important in promoting real change in the economic status of women," the report concluded.
Of course, as the report was careful to acknowledge, the invention of contraception is only part of the story. The pill was initially restricted in circulation: in the UK, GPs were slow to prescribe it. Only in 1967 did Parliament pass the National Health Service (Family Planning) Amendment Act, which allowed unmarried women to get the same advice as married ones, although it took another seven years to be properly implemented. In the same year, Parliament passed the Abortion Act, which legislated that an abortion could take place if there were significant health risks to the pregnant woman or her unborn child.
As this suggests, the idea that women should be allowed to have control over their bodies remains far more controversial than the idea that they can look at a list of prospective MPs, and make a rational decision. More than 50 years on from the invention of the contraceptive pill, Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, talked about as a future Prime Minister, can declare that women who terminate a pregnancy after rape are committing "a second wrong". Women in Northern Ireland, now represented in Westminster almost exclusively by the anti-abortion Democratic Unionist Party, still cannot access abortion in their home country. Today, debates about democracy in the world, Saudi Arabia excluded, barely bother with the bizarre notion that the franchise should be extended only to men. Yet under Donald Trump, the US has eroded the rights of women to get access to contraception, both at home and in the developing world.
Women would not be as prominent in politics and other professions today, if not for both contraception and the legislation that gives them access to it. It's easy for those celebrating women in Parliament today to scoff at the men who, a hundred years ago, opposed women putting a cross on a piece of paper. But there are still those within Parliament who wield real power and oppose on principle the idea that women should have a say over their own bodies.
› Let's not forget the working class suffragettes
Julia Rampen is the digital news editor of the New Statesman (previously editor of The Staggers, The New Statesman's online rolling politics blog). She has also been deputy editor at Mirror Money Online and has worked as a financial journalist for several trade magazines.
Fatherhood and #MeToo: when daughters defend their dads
I'd like to propose a radical alternative to punish misogynistic men – a marriage strike
How gender fluidity went mainstream


text:
Alex Sharata
Menlo Park & San Francisco
Consumer & Internet
Go to Alex Sharata's Twitter
Go to Alex Sharata's LinkedIn
Alex joined NEA in 2020 as an investor on the technology team focused on early to growth stage investments across enterprise and consumer technology. Prior to joining NEA, Alex was an investor at Vista Equity Partners on the Private Equity team in Austin, Texas. While at Vista, Alex worked on a variety of LBO, M&A, and recapitalization transactions across enterprise software, tech-enabled services, data, and payments, and he partnered with management teams to drive growth initiatives and operating improvements.
Alex graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science and a minor in Economics. While at Hopkins, Alex co-founded mobile application security company Fractal Technology (acquired) and was an investor at A-Level Capital, a student-run venture fund. While at A-Level, Alex led numerous investments in early stage technology and healthcare companies founded by Hopkins students, alumni, and faculty, some of which went on to be acquired by Apple, Box, and Baidu, among others.
Enterprise Software in a Remote World: COVID-19's Continued Impact on Business NEA Blog
White Sand Beaches


Marie Morin's rice pudding recipe is also available in a family size!
This dessert is prepared using simple and authentic ingredients.
From the very first spoonful, indulge in its supple and balanced texture – obtained by slow-cooking the ingredients – and discover the wonderful Madagascan vanilla flavour that will make your taste buds shudder with delight.
This childhood vanilla-flavoured dessert is presented in a 500 g glass jar, for the delight of children and adults alike at any time of the day!
Breton whole milk 83%,rice from Camargue 7%, sugar, salted butter, Madagascar vanilla extract 0.8%. May contain traces of egs, gluten and nuts.


It's a new page in my pursue of people writing movements with their bodies in the urban landscape. After the BmXer and skaters I shot in recent month suddenly appeared Ivig the free runner.
Cook student @ l'école hôtelière he came to Berlin for a short internship at his Oncle Berlin restaurant.
What he does after 8 hours of work in the kitchen is amazing. He reminded me of the circus artist I have worked with but his stuff is without net out of the arena.
He freely playing with the environment and defying gravity, and that is precisely what always fascinates me.


text:
The Race for What's Left
The Global Scramble for the World's Last Resources
Metropolitan Books
MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK
Driven by Depletion
In 1971, a Mexican fisherman named Rudesino Cantarell encountered an annoying problem while plying his trade off the Yucatán Peninsula: clots of oil, apparently seeping from underground seams in the Bay of Campeche, were clinging to his nets and reducing his catch. After putting up with this inconvenience for some time, Cantarell described his difficulties to officials of the government-owned oil company Petróleos Mexicanos, known as Pemex. This prompted Pemex to conduct an exploratory survey of the area where Cantarell's nets had been contaminated--and at this spot, in 1976, the company found the second most prolific oil field in the world. Whether the fisherman ever received any financial reward for his role in the discovery is not recorded, but the giant field was called "Cantarell" in his honor.1
For nearly three decades, the oil gushing from the Cantarell field was a veritable fountain of gold for the Mexican government. By 1981 the field was yielding an impressive 1.2 million barrels per day, and that amount continued to rise in the years that followed. Cantarell's prolific output allowed the Mexican state to significantly increase public spending and helped ensure the extended tenure of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (known as PRI for its initials in Spanish). Indeed, no other asset has contributed more to Mexico's economic vigor in modern times than the discovery and exploitation of Cantarell.2
Lying under shallow water some fifty miles off the western coast of the Yucatán Peninsula, the Cantarell field is located in the Chicxulub Crater, produced by a giant asteroid that struck the Earth some 65 million years ago. (Many scientists believe that this asteroid, one of the largest ever to hit the Earth, produced a global cloud of ashes and dust that blocked sunlight and destroyed the food supply for many species, including the dinosaurs, leading to their extinction.)3 The crater is filled with shattered rock and rubble, and this highly fractured geology has made it easy to extract the field's extensive oil reserves. In its best years, Cantarell yielded over 2.1 million barrels of oil per day--more than any other field in the world except the colossal Ghawar deposit in Saudi Arabia.4
But the same conditions that made it easy to pump out Cantarell's petroleum bounty also contributed to its rapid decline. As more and more petroleum was drawn from Cantarell, the field's underground cavities emptied out and the ambient pressure dropped, reducing the outflow of oil. By 1995, the yield had fallen to 1 million barrels per day, the lowest recorded in more than fifteen years. To restore higher levels of production, Pemex spent $6 billion on a daring scheme to inject massive volumes of nitrogen into the Cantarell reservoir, intending to boost the underground pressure. For a time, the plan worked as designed, and output rose again--reaching just over 2 million barrels a day in 2003 and 2004. But the use of extraordinary means to increase production only hastened the depletion of the field. By 2005, Cantarell was again in sharp decline, and in 2010 the field produced only 558,000 barrels per day--an astonishing 74 percent reduction from its 2004 peak. At this point, engineers at Pemex possess few options to reverse the slide, and so Cantarell's output is expected to keep falling.5
The rapid decline of the Cantarell field has profound implications for Mexico, the United States, and the world at large. In Mexico, the reduction in oil profits has meant a substantial loss of state revenue just as the government is trying to grapple with the global economic crisis and an escalating drug war. The problem is all the greater because Cantarell provided such a large share of Mexico's total oil output. With no other fields capable of replacing it, the country's total oil production has fallen from an average of 3.8 million barrels per day in 2003-06 to 2.9 million barrels in 2010.6 Since Mexican demand for oil is rising even as the production levels continue to fall, sometime before 2015 the country will switch from being a net oil exporter to a net importer, significantly damaging the country's economy.7 Meanwhile, the United States, which imported much of the oil produced at Cantarell, faces the loss of one of its most trusted and reliable sources of energy; as a result, more and more of America's imports will have to come from distant, unreliable suppliers in the Middle East and Africa.
The magnitude of Cantarell's decline--and the speed with which it has occurred--has understandably been a shock for Mexican officials, who must now grapple with the consequences. "I don't recall seeing anything in the industry as dramatic as Cantarell," said Mark Thurber, an energy researcher at Stanford University.8 But the field's degeneration also troubles global oil experts, who see in it a premonition of production declines at other major reservoirs, including Ghawar and similar "supergiants" in the Middle East. "The demise of Cantarell highlights a global issue," noted David Luhnow of the Wall Street Journal. "Nearly a quarter of the world's daily oil output of 85 million barrels is pumped from the biggest 20 fields.... And many of those fields, discovered decades ago, could soon follow in Cantarell's footsteps."9
In many ways, the story of Cantarell's rise and fall provides a microcosm of the global resource dilemma. Many of the world's principal sources of oil--and of coal, natural gas, uranium, copper, and assorted other vital materials--were, like Cantarell, discovered several decades ago and are now becoming less and less productive. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), all but a few large oil fields have already reached their peak output levels and now face long-term decline.10 Unless new reservoirs of comparable size and productivity are discovered in the years ahead, the global supply of oil will inevitably contract. The outlook is similar for other raw materials, even if the details vary slightly case by case. Since few discoveries can be expected in the world's existing, well-explored resource zones, any increase in worldwide output will require the development of untapped reserves in new and often inhospitable locations.
The decline of existing sources of supply and the hunt for new reserves in more remote and more dangerous areas is not a new phenomenon. Virtually all of the minerals and fossil fuels at the core of modern industrial civilization are finite materials that exist in deposits of varying degrees of size, richness, and accessibility. Almost always, producers begin by drawing on the deposits that are the easiest to find and exploit--typically, those that lie close to the surface, are located near major markets, and require minimal refining and processing. When these high-quality, easily accessed deposits are exhausted, resource firms inevitably must seek fresh reserves in places that are less convenient--usually deeper underground, farther offshore, in smaller and less concentrated deposits, or in far-flung areas of the globe. For a time, the development of new technology allows resources to be profitably extracted from these harsher, more difficult locations. But the logic of depletion is unyielding. Every fresh advance in mining and drilling techniques leads to the exploitation of hard-to-reach reserves, until those deposits, too, are exhausted--and then the cycle of exploration and production begins anew in even more demanding circumstances.
The depletion of existing resource deposits and the search for new sources of supply was in large measure the driving force behind European colonialism in Africa, Asia, and the Americas from the fifteenth century onward. But what occurred in the past over a lengthy span of time is now happening very rapidly: many of the world's main reservoirs of vital materials are facing systemic depletion at the same time, leaving corporations and governments urgently scrambling to find replacements. As the wholesale exhaustion of the world's natural resource base coincides with unprecedented demand for these materials, the race for what's left is set in motion.
The Great Postwar Resource Boom
The Cantarell oil field in Mexico, the Ghawar field in Saudi Arabia, and many of the other giant oil reservoirs that we rely on today for a large share of our petroleum supply--along with the biggest reserves of natural gas, copper ore, and other vital materials that we depend on--were mostly discovered in the decades after World War II, when giant energy and mining companies scoured the world in search of new reserves to supply the booming world economy. Between 1950 and 2001, the world's combined gross domestic product (GDP) increased by 600 percent in real terms, jumping from $5.3 to $37.2 trillion in 1990 dollars.11 This extraordinary surge in global economic activity produced an insatiable need for resources of all types: energy for transportation, manufacturing, and electricity generation; minerals for buildings, infrastructure, and consumer products; and food and water to sustain a growing (and increasingly urbanized) global population. As Table 1.1 shows, production of most of the basic resources rose dramatically during the postwar years. The amount of copper mined in 2000 was almost five times what it had been in 1950; the production of natural gas increased nearly twelvefold; and other natural resources showed similarly impressive gains during those decades.12
To achieve these mammoth increases in resource output, the world's extractive industries had to expand beyond the well-established reservoirs that they had been exploiting at the end of World War II--reservoirs located largely in North America, Europe, and the Soviet Union. Those existing mines, oil fields, and gas reserves were not remotely large enough to support the ever-increasing levels of output demanded by the burgeoning world economy, so the resource firms were obliged to seek new reserves in other parts of the world. As a result of this drive, many resource-rich areas were explored and brought into production for the first time.
In the case of oil, for instance, more than half of the world's production in 1950 was derived from wells in the United States--with much of that oil coming from onshore sources in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and California. But U.S. reserves had grown by very little since the 1930s, and most geologists believed that it would be difficult to find significant amounts of oil elsewhere in North America. Accordingly, petroleum firms set out to develop new reserves in other oil-producing regions--or "provinces," as they are termed by oilmen--seeking to locate and exploit fields previously thought beyond their reach.13
This effort had its greatest initial successes in Saudi Arabia and neighboring areas of the Middle East. Although British geologists who first studied the region believed that there was little petroleum in Saudi Arabia, a number of American prospectors had higher hopes for the kingdom, and in 1933 the Standard Oil Company of California (SOCAL) acquired a concession to a large chunk of Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province, on the southern rim of the Persian Gulf. The outbreak of World War II made full-scale exploration of the area impossible, but once the war ended, SOCAL teamed up with Texaco, Mobil, and Exxon to form the Arabian-American Oil Company (Aramco) and began intensive development of the concession.14 In 1948, the joint venture made the greatest find in the entire history of oil: Ghawar, the world's largest field, which at its peak produced 5.6 million barrels per day. Three years later, Aramco found Safaniya, the world's third largest field (after Ghawar and Cantarell), with peak output of 2.1 million barrels per day.15
Eager to duplicate Aramco's great success, other oil producers undertook concentrated drives to find petroleum deposits in new producing areas. The French government, wary of excessive reliance on "Anglo-Saxon" oil firms like Aramco, British Petroleum, and Royal Dutch Shell, created oil companies of its own, which soon made major discoveries in the French colonies of Gabon and Algeria. Russian efforts to find more oil, meanwhile, succeeded in locating the giant Samotlor field in western Siberia, a major new producing area.16 Other large oil fields were also found during the 1950s in Libya, British-controlled Nigeria, and the Neutral Zone between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.17
Even with these new fields gushing oil, however, the continuous growth in international demand kept pushing the energy firms to seek out additional deposits. With many of the most promising landward sites already fully explored by 1960, they began exploiting oil reserves in coastal waters, usually adjacent to existing onshore fields. Major reservoirs of this kind were developed in the Gulf of Mexico and the Persian Gulf.18 Over time, improvements in technology gradually allowed the companies to venture deeper; in 1969, the North Sea field, one of the world's largest offshore oil deposits, was discovered in an area of that ocean shared by Norway and the United Kingdom.19
Technological innovation was also crucial for a few other petroleum projects at the time, such as the effort to exploit the mammoth Prudhoe Bay field in Alaska's North Slope area. Transporting the oil by pipeline from ice-clogged Prudhoe Bay to an open port in southern Alaska proved unusually challenging. Because the Prudhoe Bay crude oil is warmer than the Alaskan permafrost, any conduit laid directly on the ground could turn the frozen soil into mush, risking a rupture in the line and massive oil spills; to overcome this danger, much of the 800-mile Trans-Alaska Pipeline eventually had to be built on stilts.20 But throughout the twentieth century, such elaborate, costly efforts were very much the exception rather than the rule. For the most part, the newly discovered fields were located in fairly accessible territories, with most new oil wells being installed on shore or in relatively shallow waters.
A similar pattern is evident in the development of natural gas over the second half of the twentieth century, with production spreading from a mere handful of suppliers to a much larger constellation of major players. In 1950, the United States, a pioneer in the development of natural gas, accounted for an astonishing 85 percent of total worldwide output.21 But as the demand for gas rose, new fields were developed in Europe, Asia, Africa, and especially the Soviet Union.
In 1952, Soviet gas output was only 258 billion cubic feet, or roughly 3 percent of the 8 trillion cubic feet produced that year in the United States.22 Soon, though, Soviet energy commissars launched a systematic campaign to locate additional sources of natural gas--focusing in particular on western Siberia, where many of Russia's newest oil deposits had been discovered. In the 1960s, this search resulted in the discovery of a number of enormous fields, including Urengoy and Yamburg, currently the world's second and third largest gas reservoirs (exceeded only by the mammoth South Pars/North Dome field that is shared by Iran and Qatar). Major discoveries were also made in the Kazakh and Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republics (now the independent nations of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan). As these fields were brought on line, Soviet production soared, reaching 21.1 trillion cubic feet in 1990, just before the breakup of the USSR.23
The search for natural gas also led prospectors to North Africa and the Middle East, producing major discoveries in Algeria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. The discovery of giant fields in the North Sea area, meanwhile, made Europe a leading gas producer for the first time. By 1975, gas wells in the Dutch, British, and Norwegian sectors of the North Sea allowed those three countries to produce about 4.5 trillion cubic feet of gas altogether; in 2000, their combined total had reached 7.6 trillion cubic feet.24
And the pattern was the same when it came to industrial minerals. The great upsurge in industrial output after World War II encouraged mining firms to seek and develop fresh reserves around the world. This was true both for common industrial ores, such as copper, iron, and bauxite (used to make aluminum), as well as for rare specialty metals needed by the aerospace and electronics industries. Whereas the production of most basic ores was once concentrated at historic mines in North America, Europe, and certain colonies in Africa, before long mining companies began expanding their search to remote areas of the world. The hunt for new sources of copper, for example, led prospectors to Irian Jaya, the Indonesian half of the island of New Guinea. In 1969, the American firm Freeport-McMoRan began development of the Ertsberg mine, a mammoth copper and gold deposit found near the summit of Irian Jaya's 16,535-foot Puncak Jaya peak; later, Freeport developed a second mine, Grasberg, on an adjacent mountain.25
The specialty metals needed by burgeoning high-tech industries--such as titanium, a strong, lightweight metal widely used in aircraft and missile manufacture--were initially produced in only a handful of mines. But soon new sources of these minerals were being ferreted out worldwide. To satisfy the rising demand for titanium, for example, new or expanded mines for ilmenite and rutile (the ores containing titanium) were established in Australia, Egypt, India, and South Africa.26 A similar effort was conducted to develop new sources of cobalt, nickel, and manganese.
Mining companies paid special attention to columbium and tantalum, two rare minerals used in the production of high-strength steel alloys. The U.S. Bureau of Mines observed that these materials were "among the rare metals most vital in 1952 to the United States defense program," thus justifying special government efforts to secure adequate supplies of them.27 In subsequent years, tantalum also found increasing use in the manufacture of compact capacitors for lightweight electronic devices, including laptop computers and cellular telephones.28 To satisfy this growing need, new deposits were developed in Australia, Brazil, British Guyana, Mozambique, and South-West Africa (later Namibia).29
The development of the nuclear power industry, along with the continuing manufacture of nuclear weapons, produced a frantic search for new sources of uranium--the principal fuel for both reactors and bombs. In the postwar years, the United States obtained much of its uranium from the Belgian Congo and the Union of South Africa, two problematic areas (one the site of civil strife and UN intervention, the other ruled by a white supremacist regime) whose importance to the American nuclear program played a significant role in early Cold War politics.30 France, determined to secure uranium under its own control for both military and electricity-generating purposes, scoured its colonies in Africa, eventually finding rich deposits in Niger.
Whether petroleum or natural gas, copper ore or cobalt, tantalum or uranium, the pattern over the second half of the twentieth century was the same: growing worldwide demand prompted a global search for additional sources of supply, leading to the development of new deposits in previously unexplored areas. Between 1950 and 2000, these efforts led to a substantial increase in the production of raw materials of all kinds, allowing for the tremendous expansion in industrial activity around the world.
Wholesale Depletion
Today, the demand for natural resources continues to trend upward, driven in large part by surging economic growth in China, India, and other Asian dynamos. As before, this increasing demand places enormous pressure on producers to increase their output of raw materials. But while some of the existing reservoirs may prove capable of increased output, many are showing signs of starkly diminishing capacity.
The most worrisome signs concern the future availability of oil. Between 1950 and 2000, the discovery of giant new fields in Africa, Alaska, Iran, Kuwait, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the North Sea led to a nearly eightfold increase in oil output, from 10 million to 76 million barrels per day. As this period drew to a close, however, it became increasingly clear that many of these fields had passed the moment of maximum production--their "peak"--and were now in decline.
The first major oil province to exhibit signs of profound enfeeblement was the United States. Up until 1970, ever-increasing production in California, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas allowed this country to lead the world in total oil output. That year, total oil production in the Lower 48 states reached 9.4 million barrels per day--an impressive amount even by today's standards. After 1970, though, crude oil production in the Lower 48 suddenly stopped growing and then began a rapid decline, dropping to 7.1 million barrels in 1985 and a mere 4.9 million barrels in 2000.31 For a time, increased production at Prudhoe Bay in Alaska helped stem the decline in total U.S. crude output. But in 1988, Alaskan petroleum production reached its own peak, and then also began to drop off. Total Alaskan yield fell below 1.0 million barrels per day in 2000, and was running at about 650,000 barrels per day in 2009.32
Other oil-producing regions around the world have followed a very similar pattern: steady gains after World War II, an eventual peak in output, followed by relentless decline. The diminishing production at the Cantarell field in Mexico, for example, has been paralleled by a slide in output in Venezuela, another major exporter to the United States. Venezuela's oil production reached a peak of 3.5 million barrels per day in 1998, but it fell to 2.4 million barrels in 2009, and further declines are likely.33 Production in Russia, meanwhile, reached a peak of 12.5 million barrels per day in 1988, dropped to less than half that level following the collapse of the USSR, and has never fully recovered since then. While the introduction of fresh capital and advanced technologies has restored some of the lost capacity--Russian oil wells produced 9.9 million barrels per day in 2008, and their output has edged up slightly since then--many of the country's giant fields are not capable of further increases.34
Signs of exhaustion are also widespread in the North Sea area, one of the greatest discoveries of the postwar era. Combined production in the British and Norwegian sectors of the region peaked in 1999 at 6.1 million barrels per day,35 but it is expected to drop to less than half that level in the near future. According to the most recent projections from the U.S. Department of Energy, the total British and Norwegian output is expected to fall to 2.8 million barrels per day in 2020 and only 2.6 million barrels per day in 2030.36
The decline in these and other major producing areas has generated considerable alarm among energy officials, since it means that the world will require new sources of petroleum on a large enough scale to both satisfy growing demand and compensate for the loss of output from existing fields. To calculate just how much additional production will be needed to offset the decline at existing fields, the International Energy Agency recently conducted a systematic analysis of the world's major producing reservoirs. The study examined historical production records at nearly all of the world's oil fields containing proven and probable reserves in excess of 500 million barrels; together, these reservoirs accounted for more than two-thirds of global crude output in 2007. The results, published in the 2008 edition of the World Energy Outlook, were startling.37
Extrapolating from their sample to calculate the average decline rate for all fields, the IEA concluded that between 2003 and 2007 the average "natural" decline rate for reservoirs that have passed their peak production was approximately 9.0 percent per year--substantially greater than many had assumed. Because oil companies often employ artificial means to boost production rates at declining fields (the way nitrogen was injected into Cantarell), the actual, "observed" rate of decline was somewhat smaller, an estimated 6.7 percent per year. Still, even the lower "observed" rate means that in the IEA's baseline year of 2007, the net decline from existing fields was about 4.7 million barrels per day, out of a total output of 82 million barrels. This is the amount of new production that had to be obtained from new fields in 2007 simply to maintain consumption at current levels; a like amount, of course, will be needed in every forthcoming year to replace lost output.38
Not only is production at existing fields declining more than previously suspected, the IEA discovered, but this rate of decline is itself getting faster every year. In 2003, the natural rate of decline was 8.7 percent per year, whereas by 2007 it had risen a full percentage point, to 9.7 percent annually.39 IEA analysts attributed this increase in the rate of decline to the progressive depletion of the world's giant oil fields and the resultant reliance on newer and generally smaller fields--which typically reach their peak and start declining much more swiftly than bigger fields.40 All in all, their analysis points to an inescapable conclusion: the major oil finds of the postwar era--those mammoth discoveries whose prolific output sustained rising global energy needs for nearly half a century--are no longer capable of satisfying the world's requirements. The combined output of the world's ten biggest oil fields (see Table 1.2) has already fallen by 30 percent, and this decline appears irreversible.41
The accelerating depletion of existing oil fields, along with doubts about how many new deposits the oil companies will find in frontier regions, has led to growing reliance on "unconventional" oil--Canadian tar sands, shale oil, extra-heavy crude, and other materials obtained from nonstandard petroleum deposits. According to the IEA, such materials will constitute 9 percent of the total world supply in 2035, up from a mere 3 percent in 2009.42 If this forecast proves accurate, the unconventionals will add 7.2 million barrels per day to global production. But this is not nearly enough to compensate for the expected decline in conventional production from known reserves, so pressure to develop new fields in problematic areas--such as the Arctic, Siberia, and the deep oceans--will only continue to grow.
A Consistent Pattern
The same pattern seen in the case of oil--a substantial increase in production in the second half of the twentieth century, followed by the wholesale depletion of existing reserves in the early years of the twenty-first--also holds true for many other resources, including natural gas and numerous key minerals.
Because natural gas was developed as an energy source later than petroleum and because the technology to exploit it has lagged behind that of oil, many of the large gas fields discovered in the second half of the twentieth century still retain a large share of their initial supply. Huge quantities of "unconventional" gas can also be extracted from shale rock and other challenging deposits. Even so, a number of the world's most intensely developed natural gas fields are now showing signs of pronounced decline.
The European producers are seeing some of the most dramatic indications of gas-field depletion. In 2000, the United Kingdom produced 3.8 trillion cubic feet of gas, making it the world's fourth largest producer (after Russia, the United States, and Canada). But UK production has diminished steadily since then, falling to 2.1 trillion cubic feet in 2009. The Netherlands, another major North Sea producer, has also experienced declining output as the giant Groningen field has been exhausted. The development of the Snøhvit field, located above the Arctic Circle in the Barents Sea, has so far allowed Norway to compensate for the decline in its other fields, but even with the addition of Arctic gas, net production in western Europe is expected to remain flat over the next five to ten years and then commence a long-term decline.43
Parallel declines have been occurring in many key Russian fields. Although Russia's net output continues to grow through the development of previously untapped reserves, the country's two largest gas fields, Urengoy and Yamburg, are clearly becoming depleted. Engineers from Gazprom, the Russian state natural gas monopoly, are trying to sustain output at these fields by drilling deeper into the earth and employing sophisticated production technologies, but this cannot halt their continuing decline. This means that Russia, too, will be able to increase its gas output in the future only if it develops new fields in the Barents Sea, the Kara Sea, and remote, nearly inaccessible regions of Siberia.44
The picture is roughly similar in the case of many key minerals. The worldwide hunt for new reserves that accompanied the great economic boom of the postwar era resulted in the discovery and development of rich deposits around the globe, substantially adding to international supplies. But many of these mineral deposits have been so intensively exploited over the past half century that--just like gas fields and oil reservoirs--they are now facing wholesale depletion.
Take the case of copper, one of the world's most important industrial materials. Propelled by soaring demand from China, world copper output jumped from 8.1 million metric tons in 1985 to 15.4 million in 2007.45 But many existing mines are showing signs of significant decline, often characterized by the exhaustion of high-grade ores and a growing reliance on less-productive, lower-quality supplies. Chile, the world's leading copper producer--accounting for as much as 36 percent of the world's total supply in recent years--has seen its total copper output level off even as world demand continues to grow.46 With ore qualities in steady decline, the Chilean Copper Commission predicted in 2008 that the country's net output would face an inevitable downturn.47
The situation in Indonesia is even more dire. In 2005, Indonesia produced 1.1 million metric tons of copper ore, nearly as much as the United States, the world's second leading producer after Chile. But production has fallen substantially since then, largely as a result of diminishing yields at Freeport-McMoRan's giant Grasberg mine. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, Indonesia's net output in 2008 was just 650,000 metric tons, down more than 40 percent in only three years.48 With the quality of ores in Grasberg continuing to decline, it is unlikely that Indonesia will be able to reverse this slide. A similar reduction in ore quality and net output has also been recorded in other key copper-producing countries, including Australia, Canada, Mexico, and South Africa.49 Several other suppliers, including Peru and Zambia, have so far succeeded in boosting their output, but any future expansion of the world copper supply will require the development of new mines in less-explored areas.
What is true for copper is true for other vital minerals, including bauxite, cobalt, nickel, titanium, and specialty metals such as tantalum and platinum. Existing supplies of these minerals may be sufficient for current requirements, but many key sources of supply are in decline even as worldwide demand is rising. Cobalt and nickel, for instance, are increasingly being used as alloys in steel manufacture; both are also used for making long-lasting batteries for hybrid and all-electric cars. Yet even with production of both minerals achieving record highs in recent years, their supply is barely sufficient to satisfy international demand.50 The hunt for new supplies of these metals has already sent miners to Cameroon, Kazakhstan, Madagascar, New Caledonia, and Papua New Guinea, among other places, and the scope of the search can only increase.51
The global demand for titanium is also likely to outpace supply. Prized by many industries for its low weight and high strength, titanium is derived from ilmenite and rutile, which are found in just a handful of locations. At present, the leading suppliers of these ores are Australia, Canada, China, India, Norway, and South Africa. But with many existing mines approaching depletion, production from current titanium sources is not considered sufficient to satisfy future requirements, inspiring efforts to develop new mines in Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, and a number of other countries.52 The situation is roughly the same for lithium, tantalum, and the platinum group metals: demand is rising, output from existing mines is falling, and new reserves will inevitably have to be found in the future.53
Looming shortages of rare earth elements--cerium, europium, lanthanum, neodymium, and other exotic metals critical for many high-tech applications--are a particularly worrisome matter. At one time these minerals were produced in significant quantities in the United States, but extracting them from their constituent ores typically requires using large amounts of acids and other toxic chemicals, so most U.S. rare earth mines have now been closed due to environmental concerns. In recent years, China has accounted for more than 95 percent of the world's rare earth supplies, but now it, too, is curbing production out of environmental (and other) concerns. That means that these indispensable minerals will be consistently scarce until new mines can be opened in such locations as Australia, Mongolia, and Greenland.54
Not every single mineral is destined to face depletion in the years immediately ahead; modern industrial societies consume a wide variety of metals, and some of them are not currently in short supply. By and large, however, the world's stockpiles of the most widely used minerals are facing a significant risk of contraction. As the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies suggested in a 2010 assessment, "there is no denying that the exhaustion of many existing mines and the shrinking size, increasing remoteness, greater depth, and lower ore grade of new mineable deposits pose a significant challenge to expanding global supplies" of many essential minerals.55
Unrelenting Demand
Wherever one looks, therefore, the picture remains the same: the key resource stockpiles that have sustained global economic expansion for the past sixty-five years are approaching wholesale exhaustion. Even if the global economy suddenly stopped growing altogether, the world would be on its way to painful shortages of critical materials. But aside from occasional bouts of recession, the world economy is likely to continue growing in the years ahead. According to a projection by the U.S. Department of Energy, worldwide GDP will grow by an estimated 3.4 percent per year between 2008 and 2035, climbing from $66 trillion to $162 trillion over the course of this period (in constant 2005 dollars).56 Demand for basic resources is bound to expand at a comparable pace, placing extraordinary pressure on energy and mineral producers to find and develop new sources of supply.
This search will be driven most urgently by the need for added supplies of energy, especially oil and natural gas. According to the most recent projections from the DoE, between 2008 and 2035 the world's consumption of liquid fuels will rise by 31 percent (to a total of 112 million barrels per day) and the consumption of natural gas will grow by 52 percent (to 169 trillion cubic feet per year).57 To meet this rise in demand, the energy industry must substantially increase the production of these resources. Some of the additional oil and gas will be extracted from fields in existing hydrocarbon provinces, such as the Persian Gulf and West Africa, but much of it will have to come from newly developed fields in the Arctic, Siberia, and ultra-deep waters.
The need to develop new sources of oil and natural gas will be particularly important for China and the United States, the world's leading consumers of energy. In 2035, the DoE predicts, China and the United States will jointly consume 39 million barrels of oil per day, or about 35 percent of total world consumption.58 Neither country is capable of satisfying its energy requirements from existing domestic sources, so both China and the United States will have to develop as-yet-untapped reservoirs within their own territories and gain access to new deposits abroad. To a considerable degree, the need for supplemental energy sources will push these countries to develop reserves in remote and challenging areas, and to place greater weight on unconventional hydrocarbons such as oil sands and shale gas.
The task of finding and exploiting these new deposits will be carried out to a large extent by the major private energy companies, which have long taken the lead in seeking out new sources of supply. Giant corporations such as BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Royal Dutch Shell are set to spend hundreds of billions of dollars over the next few decades to explore promising reservoirs in the Arctic, the deep oceans, and other formerly inaccessible areas. But governments, too, will become involved in the hunt for fresh reserves. Chinese leaders, wary of depending too much on Western-owned private firms for access to new sources of energy, have been pushing state-owned Chinese energy firms to undertake similar searches. This will mean a more conspicuous international role for the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), and the China National Petrochemical Corporation (Sinopec).59
A similar pattern is emerging in the case of industrial minerals. As with oil and gas, the demand for mineral ores is growing rapidly: in the first decade of the twenty-first century the global consumption of copper rose by 23 percent, while iron ore and aluminum each increased by 68 percent.60 With industrialization and urbanization continuing apace in much of the developing world, there is every reason to assume that such demand will continue to grow at comparable rates in the years ahead. The consumption of many specialty minerals--including lithium, platinum, tantalum, and the rare earth elements--is likely to experience even faster rates of growth, as various high-tech devices that rely on these metals become increasingly popular.61
Here, too, as in so much else, China is expected to play a dominant role. In recent years, the Chinese have been the first or second leading consumers of aluminum, copper, iron ore, nickel, tin, tungsten, and other vital minerals.62 While some of China's mineral requirements can be satisfied by its domestic mines, such rapidly growing demand has meant that an ever-growing share of the country's supplies must come from foreign sources.63 Many of the world's leading mining firms--BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto, and Vale of Brazil, among others--are scouring the world for new ore deposits in order to satisfy China's soaring mineral requirements. Just as in the energy field, however, the Chinese government is seeking to ensure a prominent role in these endeavors for the country's state-owned firms, such as the Aluminum Corporation of China (Chinalco) and the China Metallurgical Group Corporation (MCC).
But China is hardly alone in relying on government-backed enterprises to spearhead the search for vital resources. With demand growing for many critical materials and supply often failing to keep pace, other countries have also created special programs to enhance or supplement the endeavors of private companies. The Japanese government, for example, has established the Japan Oil, Gas, and Metals National Corporation (JOGMEC), whose stated aim is to ensure "a stable supply of natural resources for Japan." Among its principal functions is to finance efforts by Japanese mining companies to produce key minerals needed by the nation's industries, including copper, uranium, and the rare earth elements. Recognizing that Japan itself possesses few of these materials and that many traditional sources of supply have been exhausted, JOGMEC encourages Japanese firms to pursue mining opportunities in remote and unfamiliar locations abroad.64
Even the most basic necessities of life are not exempt from this hunt for the world's remaining resources. With world population expected to increase from approximately 7 billion people in 2011 to more than 9 billion in 2050,65 simply meeting the world's minimum food requirements will prove an extraordinary challenge. Currently existing farmland is wholly inadequate to support population growth on this scale, so new lands will have to be cultivated. Meanwhile, existing fields will be pressed to produce bigger yields--increasing the global demand for water, fertilizer, pesticides, and other inputs. All this will add to the pressure on commodity suppliers to seek out and develop new deposits of natural resources wherever they can be found.
As in the case of energy and minerals, the hunt for prime farmland and other ingredients in the production of food is being spearheaded by large private companies with particular expertise in the field. In recent years, vast tracts of agricultural land have been bought by such firms as Black River Asset Management, Bunge North America, Emergent Asset Management, and Hancock Agricultural Investment Group--companies that regard cropland as yet another dwindling natural resource, every bit as valuable as oil fields, copper mines, and the like. But here, too, government-backed entities are playing a conspicuous role. Fearing that their nations' domestic food output will prove inadequate to feed growing populations, the leaders of some countries--particularly in the water-scarce Persian Gulf area--have established special agencies to acquire farmland abroad. For the most part, these lands are being sought in poor and war-torn African countries, whose own leaders are desperate to attract fresh investment no matter how problematic the circumstances.66
This, then, is where we stand: many of the major resource reserves that have sustained global economic growth over the past sixty years are facing systemic depletion. Merely replacing the lost output from these exhausted deposits will require a major effort of exploration and development, while achieving any further growth will demand a truly unprecedented and often perilous undertaking. Because most of the world has already been scoured for readily accessible resource reserves, the only hope for finding more oil, natural gas, minerals, and farmland will lie in extending the search to previously inaccessible or inhospitable areas--the Arctic, the deep oceans, and countries long torn by war and internal strife.
Copyright © 2012 by Michael T. Klare


text:
Free Invoice Audit
Rate Increases for Parcel Carriers in 2019
by Nick Nowaczyk — Vice President, Phoenix
Section 1: Shipping Industry Rate Increase Outlook
Shipping rate increases in 2018 looked a lot like they did in 2017 and 2016. The U.S.'s four major carriers — UPS, FedEx, the U.S. Postal Service, and DHL — raised base rates by their usual amount. UPS and FedEx matched their changes from previous years by upping base rates at the usual 4.9 percent.
There's no reason to think that trend will change at any time in the near future. That's because base rates aren't where third-party shipping carriers really up their profit margins.
As 2019's rate schedules prove, the real money-makers are accessorial fees and surcharges, fuel surcharges, and holiday rates. Shipping carriers use blackout dates, when discounts can't apply, to force shippers to spend more than they bargained for.
Carriers also make invoices and refund claims processes as challenging as possible, in a not-so-veiled attempt to avoid paying out money they owe back to their clients.
In 2018, we saw a few key changes in the shipping industry. First, DHL announced that it would return to the U.S. domestic shipping space with Parcel Metro, a low-cost next-day or same-day delivery service in urban areas. Like many competitors in the tight-turnaround delivery market, Parcel Metro utilizes the Uber model: A network of on-demand contract drivers.
Second, the U.S. Postal Service announced its intention to raise prices by about 2.5 percent. The USPS has been in an increasingly difficult predicament in the age of Amazon. Although the USPS is a government agency, it does not receive tax dollars for its operating expenses. It must fully fund its services using revenue from sales of stamps and package delivery services. Yet it also has a mandate to serve all Americans, even those in far-flung rural areas. FedEx and UPS do not have to deliver along routes that are too inefficient to be profitable; USPS does. That helps it win customers, especially in the e-commerce market, but makes the math difficult.
USPS does provide one service that its competitors in the private sector began imitating this year: six-day delivery services at no extra cost. FedEx introduced that service during the 2018 holiday season and will continue it as a regular offering in 2019. At the end of 2018, UPS was working on a contract that would guarantee weekend delivery.
FedEx and UPS, for their parts, undertook pretty conventional rate increases this year. FedEx upped base rates by the usual 4.9 percent, plus hiked a total of 36 different surcharges.
Included in those increases are additional handling fees, address correction fees, oversize charges and residential delivery surcharges. FedEx did not announce any changes to its dimensional weight pricing schedule.
UPS increased fewer different surcharges than FedEx did, but increased surcharges on the largest packages significantly. The large package surcharge jumped from $90 to $110, the second $20 increase in just two years. And the over maximum limits surcharge is now $850 per parcel, up from just $150 two years ago.
Shipping is a complex industry, but in it is one absolute truth: Rates do not go down. Shippers are wise to treat not just these new numbers but these rates of acceleration as the norm. The large package surcharge may be $110 for now, but wise shippers will forecast for 2020 with the expectation that it could rise to $130. It could even be higher.
The shipping industry is facing significant challenges, however. Labor costs are rising. Automation is coming, and while it may save money in the long run, adaptation is expensive. The U.S. Postal Service, long viewed as an affordable and reliable option for inefficient rural deliveries, may be changing its rules.
To make matters more complicated, Amazon is reaching further and further into the shipping industry, threatening long-established carriers with new business models and slowly but surely taking control of the shipping it has long contracted out to FedEx, UPS and the U.S. Postal Service.
To make ends meet — and to make their shareholders happy — carriers need to continually generate more revenue. For the shippers on the other ends of those contracts, that means continually increasing prices.
Section 2: Shipping Rates in 2018 vs 2019
Why UPS and FedEx will increase their rates significantly in 2019
UPS and FedEx typically increase their base rates by 4.9 percent per year, and their 2019 rate schedules followed that pattern. But the U.S.'s two largest carriers are also facing some major headwinds as they approach the end of the second decade of the new millennium.
First, carriers are no longer subsidizing the high cost of home delivery through business delivery. The market for business delivery just isn't big enough to do so; or, rather, the home delivery market has gotten so huge that business delivery can't keep up. Home delivery remains the more expensive service to provide, however. As such, residential surcharges and fees that target home delivery — address correction surcharges, for example — are increasing more and more.
Both companies are going to have to make some big capital purchases in the coming years. FedEx and UPS are expanding and updating their aircraft fleets to keep up with increasing customer demand for two-day shipping, regardless of an item's origin.
As artificial intelligence takes over warehouses and trucking, those sectors will need to be updated too. Both companies have already touted new state-of-the-art fulfillment centers. While those warehouses might be more efficient in the long run — they require fewer employees and can optimize which trucks should arrive and depart when, for example — building them is very costly in the short term.
Further, ground shipping has gotten more and more expensive. Fuel costs were pretty steady in 2018, but labor costs have been climbing. Carriers are struggling to find truck drivers, and to compete for a limited labor pool have begun spending more and more on wages. Although trucks may be automated in the not-too-distant future, goods still need to travel on truck beds for now.
Beyond those industry challenges, both UPS and FedEx faced setbacks of their own in 2018.
UPS's corporate leadership struggled for months to finalize a contract with its unionized drivers. Negotiations became so tense that drivers nearly went on strike over the summer. And when Teamsters representation and executives finally did hammer out a contract, less than half of UPS's workforce voted to ratify it. (It will take effect anyway.) The final contract includes some good news for workers, who earned promises of relative job security in the face of automation and reduced the scope of a program that they felt would create a "second class" of drivers at lower wages and with fewer benefits. But for executives and shareholders, the contract represents rising expenses — expenses that have to be recouped from shippers.
FedEx has been hearing plenty of complaints from its shareholders as well. Back in Q1 of 2018, the company dramatically missed its earnings per share estimate, which threw the stock price into a noticeable slide. FedEx will need to prove its profitability to shareholders if it wants to succeed in Wall Street's eyes — and widening profit margins also have to be driven by shippers' payments.
As such, UPS and FedEx may begin raising rates even faster — or more often — than shippers are used to. There's nothing that requires shipping carriers to increase rates on January 1. They can impose rate increases with almost no notice at any time throughout the year.
For example, both companies have imposed holiday rate increases for the last two years, and there's no reason to believe they will stop that practice in 2019. In fact, rates are all but certain to rise. Both companies may even expand the holiday season or tack fees onto services that didn't carry them in 2018. Typically, UPS and FedEx have announced holiday rates in mid-summer.
USPS to increase rates significantly in 2019 for priority shipments
One of the reason shippers like USPS is that it charges flat rates for many shipments. And believe it or not, many shippers do actually like the Postal Service — it has been earning steadily higher ratings from patrons for years now. In 2017, a Parcel survey found that 84 percent of shippers had used USPS within the previous year, an 8 percent increase from the previous year. That meant USPS surpassed FedEx, which was used by 81 percent of shippers, and UPS, which was used by 78 percent of the market. Both private carriers saw declines from 2016 to 2017.
In contrast to its private-sector competitors, USPS doesn't charge any surcharges at all. That means shippers know exactly what kind of service they're going to get and exactly how much it's going to cost.
Prior to this 2.5 percent rate increase, USPS was most cost-effective for parcels weighing less than three pounds. If a product fit into Priority Mail packaging, it could be as much as $1 cheaper per package to ship with USPS than a private-sector competitor.
Even with these rate increases, USPS will remain significantly cheaper than FedEx and UPS. That's especially true for small businesses that have little leverage in negotiations with big carriers. Further, although USPS's fastest services are usually slower than those of FedEx and UPS, its slowest ground services are usually faster than private carriers.
USPS has promised that it will not begin charging holiday fees nor accessorial surcharges.
It's easy to see USPS's 2019 rate increase as a sensible one. The agency provides a service that nearly nine out of ten shippers find valuable enough to use. But the move has not come without pushback.
Several major online and remote retailers, including Amazon and QVC, formed a lobbying group called the Package Coalition in 2018. Their argument is simply that USPS is already profitable and does not need to raise prices. The inclusion of Amazon in the Package Coalition may actually hurt their argument with the Trump Administration, though: The president called out Amazon on Twitter several times in 2018, suggesting that the e-commerce giant ought to pay the Postal Service far more than it does.
It is true that USPS negotiates bulk contracts with large shippers, including Amazon. The details of those contracts are not public and USPS declined to release them in 2018. However, many industry watchers believe the source of President Trump's anger was not USPS's financial status, but the fact that Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post.
Regardless of the source of the feud, its outcome has now been determined: USPS is increasing its rates across the board, for nearly all of its services except international letters and domestic postcards.
Forever stamps will increase in price by about five cents. A small flat-rate Priority Mail box will climb from $7.20 to $7.90. A large Priority Mail box will jump from $18.90 to $19.95.
For Priority Mail envelopes, a regular envelope will increase from $6.70 to $7.35, and a padded flat-rate envelope will climb from $7.25 to $8.00.
Finally, USPS will impose zone-based pricing on its First-Class Package Service, which is typically used by businesses for order fulfillment.
DHL to increase shipping rates across the world to support global network
DHL is increasing its international and Express rates by an average of 5.4 percent in 2019.
The shipper is increasing base rates as well as modifying a number of surcharges. Some of those changes include a common tactic of shippers: not changing the numbers on their rate sheets, but changing what they mean. DHL's oversize package surcharge is jumping from $89 per shipment to $89 per piece in 2019. The non-stackable pallet charge is rising from $195 per shipment to $215 per piece.
Additionally, address correction surcharges, non-standard pickup charges, and dangerous goods charges (including the cost of shipping dry ice) are climbing.
Remote area delivery charges are increasing and changing, too. DHL's Remote Area Delivery fee is rising from 36 cents per pound with a $36 minimum to 38 cents per pound with a $38 minimum. Its Remote Area Pickup charges are rising by the same amount, but with charges on a half-kilogram basis rather than a per-pound basis.
The Germany-based shipper attributed the fee increase to its growing international network, which now serves 220 countries. Company executives say DHL has been investing in hub expansions in markets worldwide; while that increases shipping capacity and can reduce transit time, it also costs a lot of money.
Like FedEx and UPS, DHL is working on upgrading both its regional and its intercontinental air fleets. It is also introducing automated sorting technologies at warehouse facilities and working on better e-commerce integration.
Additionally, in 2018, DHL rolled out its Parcel Metro service in the U.S. Limited to a handful of dense urban areas, this service seemed designed to serve retailers who want to offer same-day and next-day delivery to their online customers. In other words, DHL is positioning itself as a last-mile fulfillment partner: It can move packages from retailers to customers, but has not expressed interest in getting involved earlier in the supply chain.
That will help keep the costs of providing this service down, because the company doesn't have to assume any of the high costs of long-distance fulfillment services. Parcel Metro also relies on a network of third-party contractors, which means the company doesn't have to invest in vehicles or in long-term employee benefits.
Parcel Metro is a direct competitor to UPS SurePost and FedEx SmartPost. But in some ways, it's more ambitious. For example, DHL is offering delivery times as short as two hours. Even if FedEx and UPS are able to make deliveries on such a short timeline, they typically don't promise it, because they have to cover so many longer-distance routes as well.
One Cowen & Co. analyst said that she suspects DHL is working with Amazon. "Amazon is growing 35-plus percent per year, and they need to figure out a way to get stuff to the buyers" Helane Becker told the business news channel. "FedEx and UPS have told Amazon they won't scale with them, meaning that Amazon has to figure out a way to support their delivery network themselves."
Section 3: Comparing shipping rate increases between carriers
The major carriers: UPS vs. FedEx
As usual, the U.S.'s two largest private carriers increased base rates in lockstep in 2019. Looking solely at rates by weight and zone, the two services look very similar, with slight variations depending on what shippers are sending and where it's headed.
But surcharges take up about 35 percent of most companies' shipping budgets. Not every surcharge rises every year, but those that do can double or even triple almost overnight. And while not every surcharge affects every parcel, those that affect core products can force companies to make significant changes to their shipping budgets.
UPS's largest surcharge increases came on its largest packages. The shipper raised its large package surcharge by 22 percent, its over maximum limits surcharge by 31 percent, and its additional handling surcharge by 19 percent.
For two years now, UPS has stuck with the holiday strategy of tacking small fees onto every package it moves between Nov. 18 and Dec. 1 — a period that includes Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday — and between Dec. 16 and Dec. 22. In 2018, those rates ranged from 28 cents per ground shipment to 99 cents per air shipment. UPS also added extra holiday surcharges onto large packages and those that required additional handling.
FedEx raised rates for two surcharges midway through 2018. It upped its additional handling surcharge by 67 percent and its ground unauthorized package charge by 125 percent. The carrier also increased its fuel surcharge.
In its 2019 rate schedule, which was announced just weeks after the mid-year rate increases took effect, FedEx spread its surcharge increases across a variety of packages. It upped its oversize charge by 12.5 percent, for example, which was a much smaller increase than UPS's. But FedEx also increased everything from its address correction surcharge to the fee to print a return label.
FedEx has focused its holiday surcharges on the largest and heaviest packages, banking on gift-givers buying everything from furniture to workout equipment to heavy-duty tools for their loved ones. The carrier only charges holiday fees on packages that already carry oversize, additional handling, or ground unauthorized package charges. But those fees are huge — $27.50, $3.20 and $150, respectively. And remember, that's on top of existing surcharges.
Mid-year rate increases are a move shippers might reasonably expect from both FedEx and UPS in 2019. Both companies are facing internal struggles, as well as the industry-wide challenges that impact large and small shippers alike. If either or both companies disappoint investors this spring, they could announce targeted rate increases by summer to show shareholders that they are committed to maintaining or increasing profits.
And after two years, it appears that holiday surcharges are here to stay. Both FedEx and UPS doubled down on their 2017 strategies in 2018. If either were to try a new approach in 2019, it could suggest that they didn't perform as well in previous years as they hoped. Holiday rates are typically announced in late summer.
The U.S. Postal Service and DHL are the two largest competitors to UPS and FedEx in the United States. Nearly nine in ten shippers use USPS, which suggests that many if not most shippers use its services in addition to those of a private carrier.
USPS offers what is widely considered the industry's best deal on remote residential deliveries: The agency promises delivery to every address in the country and refuses to charge accessorial fees for those far-flung deliveries. However, a commission appointed by President Trump in 2018 reviewed that policy and suggested that USPS stop promising that service to business clients. Individuals could still send letters and parcels to friends, family and businesses far away at flat rates, but businesses would no longer be able to take advantage of those rates to ship their products.
That commission's recommendations are still under review, but shippers who use the U.S. Postal Service — especially to reach those faraway buyers — should consider developing one or several alternative plans in 2019.
DHL in 2018 launched Parcel Metro, its competitor to UPS SurePost and FedEx SmartPost. The service targets retailers with large numbers of customers in urban areas who want same-day and next-day delivery. The service utilizes the Uber model: a network of third-party drivers, who are independent contractors and who largely set their own hours.
If all goes well, relying on this third-party labor force will allow Parcel Metro to adjust to high- and low-demand periods efficiently, cutting fat from its spending. The carrier's "virtual delivery network" selects drivers that have the capacity to meet service levels along specific routes, promising efficiency and speedy delivery. DHL also offers retailers "a fully branded delivery experience," including a custom branded design of DHL's mobile interface, so that customers get the sense that their retailer is the one bringing their packages to their door.
For non-urgent orders, DHL says it will continue using USPS, as it has for years — even if those services get more expensive in 2019.
DHL Parcel Metro is one of several delivery services competing in the last-mile delivery space. The service relies on third-party couriers, as do food-and errands-focused services like Postmates, UberEATS and GrubHub. But so does one other major competitor: Amazon.
Amazon's delivery service, Amazon Flex, operates with a similar model. Individuals sign up to be Flex drivers, perhaps intrigued by the company's suggestion that they could earn $18 to $25 per hour. They can make their own hours, but are required to use their own vehicles. They exclusively deliver Amazon products from warehouses to customers' doorsteps and lobbies.
By some estimates, Americans make as many as half of their online purchases on Amazon. If the company can be responsible for even a fraction of those deliveries, that's millions of dollars it doesn't have to pay to FedEx, UPS, USPS, or DHL. That's great for Amazon — but it means FedEx, UPS, and their competitors bring in less and less revenue, and then have to charge every shipper who isn't Amazon even more. However, if Amazon then begins offering delivery service to all retailers, it can undercut the prices of traditional carriers.
The e-commerce giant has implemented a few links in its delivery service each year on its way to building what most analysts believe will be a full-service shipping carrier. Recently, Amazon Air purchased a fleet of jets and began building out hubs in Kentucky and Texas.
In other words, Amazon poses a major threat to the delivery industry, and one that will only grow more pressing in 2019.
Section 4: Carriers now increasing rates in an ad-hoc basis midyear and impose seasonal, surge pricing increases
The major American shipping carriers, which are beholden to shareholders, face ever-increasing pressure to maintain if not increase profit margins. As every part of their process gets more expensive — from labor to fuel to capital investments for the future — market forces require them to generate more revenue. And the way they generate revenue is by charging the retailers and manufacturers who use their services.
As Amazon and other competitors threaten traditional shipping and industry headwinds make providing these services more and more expensive, there may come a time when annual rate increases aren't enough.
We saw hints of this in 2017 and 2018, with the introduction of holiday surcharges in 2017 and FedEx's mid-year rate increase in 2018. And in shipping, once one carrier creates or increases rates a certain way, its competitors usually follow soon after. Shippers should not be surprised if UPS, FedEx or both announce a mid-year rate increase this year.
Fuel surcharges also increased midyear in 2018. Fuel surcharges fluctuate from week to week as oil prices change, since these fees are pegged to the costs of diesel and jet fuel. That is a longstanding practice, since oil prices can change overnight and begin eating into carriers' margins. But carriers don't apply every penny of fuel surcharges to fuel costs — they keep some as profit. Fuel costs were fairly low in 2018. That means carriers didn't collect as much revenue from fuel in 2018 as they did when oil prices were high.
In September 2018, FedEx upped its fuel surcharges. For air services, these fees used to start at 6.25 percent, when jet fuel was at its lowest rates; that jumped to 6.5 percent. On the high end, when jet fuel is most expensive, surcharges climbed from 9 percent to 9.5 percent.
For FedEx Ground, surcharges climbed from 4.74 percent to 5.75 percent at the low end and from 7.75 percent to 8.75 percent at the high end.
UPS increased its domestic air fuel surcharge by 0.25 percent for all thresholds at the end of 2018. But the carrier also found another way to increase its revenues from fuel surcharges: Apply them after some common accessorials, so they can squeeze another few dollars out of packages that are already very expensive for businesses to ship. As of Dec. 26, UPS began assessing fuel surcharges after additional handling, over maximum limits, signature required and adult signature required charges.
Shipping has also adopted a number of practices from companies like Uber. Using third-party contractors as drivers is the most obvious example. But it is not difficult to imagine a scenario in which UPS and FedEx implement "surge pricing" themselves and begin charging for shipping on their busiest days.
After all, that's the rationale behind holiday surcharges: FedEx and UPS move significantly more volume during those five weeks than they do during the rest of the year, and they need extra revenue to cover the costs of meeting that increased demand. It stands to reason that carriers may begin adopting seasonal rates during other peak sale times, like Memorial Day.
Section 5: Mitigating the cost increases of shipping rates in 2019
Just as in life, the only constant in shipping rates is change. But shipping-based businesses can take cues from the recent past to understand what might happen next.
For example, holiday pricing is not going away. We know that undoubtedly after two years. That suggests that the model has proven successful at generating revenue for carriers — which means it's probably a model they'll try in other parts of the year at some point, if not in 2019.
Further, between UPS's prolonged contract dispute and the growing supremacy of the Uber model, a growing third-party workforce in the shipping industry seems likely. That could save carriers money. While it's possible they could pass some of those savings on to shippers, it's far more likely they'll share them with shareholders instead.
If Amazon expands its shipping programs to provide services to businesses other than Amazon, it could pose an enormous threat to long-established shipping carriers. That could be good news for shippers, however. If Amazon enters the market as a low-cost provider, carriers may have to lower their prices to compete, which means shippers could have their pick of services at rates much lower than they're used to.
None of these trends are certain, but savvy shippers should pay attention to them. If the resources are available, they may even put aside some rainy-day money to address them.
Shippers can start immediately, however, by taking control of the present before rates rise again.
First, shippers need to be able to understand exactly how each announcement of rate increases will affect their business. That means they need to know exactly what they ship, where it goes, which surcharges apply, and how much they spend on each type of fee. Companies that have a detailed shipping profile at their disposal can quickly see which rate increases will impact them and calculate approximately how much they'll cost.
Second, shippers should ensure that they're squeezing every dollar out of their existing contracts. That means reviewing invoices to ensure that each package was delivered correctly and on time, and if not, identifying which refunds you qualify for. It also means taking the time to claim those refunds, which can be an arduous process. If your supply chain team simply doesn't have the hours available — and many don't — consider bringing in a third-party consultant to help manage these claims.
Third, shippers should comb those invoices for inefficiencies, which may change from year to year (or from month to month) as rates increase and carriers change the rules. Maybe a core product used to be priced by weight, but due to a carrier's change of the dimensional divisor, is now subject to dimensional pricing. Perhaps if the quantity of a shipment increased or decreased slightly, it would be priced according to a different minimum, or price floor.
Supply chain leaders who understand those details don't merely have to react to rate increases, although reacting quickly and nimbly is essential to shipping success. They can be proactive. Instead of accepting a new rate schedule when their carrier releases it, they can ask for a contract negotiation and target the rate increases that will take the biggest bites out of their bottom line.
Reveel exists to support shippers in all of these endeavors, from understanding how to analyze invoices to preparing for contract negotiations. Our expert consultants can help you save as much as 20 percent on shipping. If you're ready to fight rate increases in 2019, reach out today for your free invoice audit.
Ready to leverage the power of Shipping Intelligence for your company? Contact us today to schedule a consultation.
Find out just how much you can save with a complimentary preview of our Invoice Auditing service.
Carrier Price Increases
Reveel Services
Shipping Industry News
Cyber Monday Broke Records—Are You Prepared for the Shipping Repercussions?
Download the 2020 Shipping Rate Increase Guide!
UPS Announces 2020 Rate Increases
Ready for the Holiday Shipping Season? FedEx and UPS Peak Prices Are Here
Black Friday: Shipping and Shopping
About Reveel®
Our dedicated team gives you unmatched local knowledge with complete transparency and exceptional service.
Subscribe to Reveel®
Shipping insights directly affect your bottom line. Sign up now to receive updates from Reveel.
"It just does it itself. It's all in the background. I don't have to do anything. I get the statements about what credits I should get and make sure that I got them. I don't have to think about it."
Ira Fogelman CFO and VP of Operations – Connected Apparel
About Reveel
Since 2006, Reveel has been dedicated to providing Shipping Intelligence for the smartest business decisions possible. Founded by former DHL sales executives, Reveel was created to level the shipping playing field.
© 2019 Reveel. Privacy Policy


text:
Eine K-konvexe Funktion ist einer Verallgemeinerung des Begriffes der Konvexität einer Funktion auf reell-vektorwertige Funktionen. Dazu wird die strikte Ordnung auf  abgeschwächt und es wird mit Halbordnungen auf  gearbeitet, den sogenannten verallgemeinerten Ungleichungen.

Definition
Gegeben sei ein abgeschlossener, spitzer und konvexer Kegel  mit nichtleerem Inneren und  bzw.  die von diesem Kegel induzierte Halbordnung bzw. strikte Halbordnung. Des Weiteren sei  eine konvexe Teilmenge des . Die Funktion

heißt K-konvex auf der Menge  genau dann, wenn

gilt für alle  und alle . Die Funktion  heißt strikt K-konvex auf der Menge , wenn

für alle  und alle  in  gilt.

Beispiele und Eigenschaften
 Setzt man , ist die Funktion also reellwertig, und wählt als Kegel die Menge , so sind die K-konvexen Funktionen genau die konvexen Funktionen. Dies liegt daran, dass die von dem Kegel induzierte Ordnung die gewöhnliche Ordnung auf den reellen Zahlen ist.
 Wählt man hingegen als Kegel die Menge , so sind die K-konvexen Funktionen genau die konkaven Funktionen, da der Kegel die Ordnung auf den reellen Zahlen umkehrt.
 Ist der Kegel die Menge
, so ist die induzierte allgemeine Ungleichung das komponentenweise kleinergleich. Die K-konvexen Funktionen sind dann die Funktionen, deren Komponenten alle konvex sind.
 Affine Funktionen sind immer K-Konvex, unabhängig vom verwendeten Kegel. Dies folgt direkt aus der Linearität der Funktion und der Reflexivität der verallgemeinerten Ungleichung.
 Die Subniveaumenge einer K-konvexen Funktion ist eine konvexe Menge.
 Eine Funktion ist genau dann K-konvex, wenn ihr Epigraph eine konvexe Menge ist. Der Epigraph wird in diesem Fall mittels der verallgemeinerten Ungleichung und nicht mit dem herkömmlichen kleinergleich definiert.

Alternative Charakterisierungen

Über Dualität
Die K-Konvexität einer Funktion lässt sich auch gut mittels der von dem zu  dualen Kegel  induzierten Halbordnung beschreiben. Eine Funktion ist genau dann (strikt) K-konvex, wenn für jeden vom Nullvektor verschiedenen Vektor  mit  gilt, dass  (strikt) konvex im herkömmlichen Sinne ist.

Für differenzierbare Funktionen
Ist  eine differenzierbare Funktion, so ist diese genau dann K-konvex, wenn
 für alle . Hierbei ist  die Jacobi-Matrix.

Verkettungen von K-konvexen Funktionen
Die Kompositionen von K-konvexen Funktionen sind unter gewissen Umständen wieder konvex.
 Ist  K-konvex und  konvex und ist die erweiterte Funktion  K-monoton wachsend, so ist  konvex. Insbesondere müssen die beiden Kegel, welche die K-Konvexität und die K-Monotonie definieren, übereinstimmen.

Matrix-konvexe Funktionen
Betrachtet man Abbildungen vom  in den Raum der symmetrischen reellen Matrizen , versehen mit der Loewner-Halbordnung , so heißen die entsprechenden K-konvexen Funktionen auch Matrix-konvexe Funktionen. Eine äquivalente Charakterisierung der Matrix-Konvexität ist, dass die Funktion  konvex ist für alle  genau dann, wenn  Matrix-konvex ist.

Beispielsweise ist die Funktion , definiert durch , matrix-konvex, weil  konvex ist wegen der Konvexität der Norm.

Verwendung
K-konvexe Funktionen werden beispielsweise bei der Formulierung von konischen Programmen oder Verallgemeinerungen der Lagrange-Dualität verwendet.

Verallgemeinerungen
Teilweise werden auch Abbildungen  zwischen zwei reellen Vektorräumen betrachtet und  nur mit einem Ordnungskegel  versehen, nicht mit einer verallgemeinerten Ungleichung. An die Abbildung wird die Forderung

für alle  und  aus der konvexen Menge  gestellt. Dann wird die Abbildung  wieder eine konvexe Abbildung genannt.

Literatur

Konvexe Optimierung
Mathematische Funktion


In an effort to streamline, digitize and automate the processing of invoices and vouchering, the Office of the CFO and UF Disbursements have introduced a new Accounts Payable solution—myUF Payment Solutions.
The system went live on March 1, 2014. myUF Payment Solutions provides a new supplier portal in myUFL that enables electronic vouchers to flow directly from vendors to UF Disbursements, eliminating extra steps and reducing paper in the process.
NOTE: This security role also grants access needed to create expense general ledger journal entries. Therefore completion of PST956 Online Journal Entry is also required for this role.


Kathy Zagzebski, the President and Executive Director of The National Marine Life Center will be our guest speaker for the January 5th meeting of BARS.
The BARS Annual Volunteer Appreciation Dinner /Christmas Party will be held on Tuesday, December 1 at the Fox Hole in Osterville beginning at 5:00 PM. It will again be a catered by Wimpy's Restaurant.
Due to election day BARS November meeting will be in the basement at Our Lady of Victory Church. Our speaker for the evening will be Joshua Wrigley, Education Coordinator, at the Mass Audubon's Long Pasture Wildlife Sanctuary on Barnstable Harbor. He also works for the National Marine Fisheries Service and is a deputy Shellfish Warden for the Town of Sandwich.
If you are serious about shellfishing, especially oysters, don't miss BARS' October, 2015 meeting. All BARS meetings are open to the public.
The BARS picnic scheduled for this Saturday, October 3 has been cancelled because of the inclement weather of thunderstorms and high winds expected that day.
BARS will be at Marstons Mills Village Day. This is our last scholarship fundraiser for the summer.
Our speaker for the evening will be Dr. Robert Cook, Wildlife Ecologist, at the Cape Cod National Seashore, who will make a presentation on the rarely seen birds and animals at the Cape Cod National Seashore.


The rent at 7125 N 19th Ave Apartments ranges from $950 for a two bedroom to a $1,150 two bedroom. Apartments in this building are about 22% less expensive than the Phoenix average. This is a pet-friendly apartment.
7125 N 19th Ave Apartments is a five minute walk from the LTRL Valley Metro Rail at the 19TH AVE/GLENDALE LIGHT RAIL STATION stop.
This apartment is in Phoenix. Nearby parks include Washington Park, Zuni Park and Royal Palm Park.
7125 N 19th Ave Apartments has a Walk Score of 57 out of 100. This location is Somewhat Walkable so some errands can be accomplished on foot.
Perfect Location, Stainless Steel Appliances, New Renovations Our community offers a great location and spacious two bedroom apartments for rent. 85021. Our Incredible location is just a short distance from the I-17 Freeway and Light Rail.?
We have a spacious 2-bedroom/ 1-bathroom available to move in!
Our rents include water, sewer, trash, tax, 1000 sq. ft.
Explore how far you can travel by car, bus, bike and foot from 7125 N 19th Ave Apartments.
7125 N 19th Ave Apartments has good transit which means many nearby public transportation options.
View all Phoenix apartments on a map.
Search for homes in Phoenix or find a Phoenix real estate agent who knows walkable neighborhoods. Links will open on our partner site Redfin.com.
7125 N 19th Ave Apartments is in the city of Phoenix, AZ. Phoenix has an average Walk Score of 41 and has 1,445,632 residents.