... 74% of e-commerce departments and businesses have increased their turnover since 2010 - with another 60% of e-businesses looking to increase staff numbers over the next twelve months. IMRG hails the increase in employment opportunities as "welcome news for the under pressure UK job market".

Bullish though all this might seem, the current employment figure is considerably lower than originally anticipated. Last year, over 80% of those surveyed said they hoped to recruit over the coming months. But the actual number of companies that recruited new members of staff is 17.45% lower than the predicted figure and - paradoxically - is likely to be attributed to the recent and rapid growth of the m-commerce market.

Explains Chris Russell, director at eDigitalResearch: “As we continue to see the popularity of smartphones and other emerging channels increase with consumers, retailers are beginning to merge and combine multiple departments and operations in order to create a coherent message across the board for all of their customers.

"This is not to say that the e-commerce jobs market is beginning to decline. It simply means that, along with everything else in the e-commerce industry, it is evolving in order to cope with the shifting consumer trends we are witnessing.”

Nearly half of the e-tailers surveyed (43.24%) suggested that up to 50% of their total revenue is generated via the internet. More importantly, another 40% (41.08%) indicated that 91-100% of overall revenue comes from e-commerce channels, an increase of 4% on the same figures last year.

It also reflects the continued growth of the e-commerce industry and the importance of dedicated e-commerce teams and staff members.
 

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... a multi-currency system worldwide. Emerging countries "are narrowing the gap with developed nations by developing their middle-class and improving their life quality," Camdessus said at the 14th Annual Meeting of the Christian Association for Company Directors in Argentina.

"By 2050 we can expect that close to 80 percent of the global economic growth will be a result of emerging countries,"he told delegates.

The monetary and finance system will in the future "be renewed so that emerging countries are recognized, changing from a dollar-dominated system to a multi-currency one," Camdessus opined.

[Editor's Note: Whether M. Candussus' prediction is to be taken seriously is open to question. The East Asian financial crisis, which occurred during his tenure at the helm of the IMF, triggered widespread criticism for failing to take into account the unique circumstances of the East Asian nations. This led to the imposition of a draconian fiscal regime that provoked turmoil and rioting in countries such as Indonesia.]

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... world climate change, which is likely to account for around half of the predicted increase.

The report calls on world leaders to improve regulation of food markets and invest in a global climate fund. Urges Ms Stocking: "The food system must be overhauled if we are to overcome the increasingly pressing challenges of climate change, spiralling food prices and the scarcity of land, water and energy."

The report identifies four "food insecurity hotspots" likely to trigger the crisis:

• Guatemala, where 865,000 people are at risk of food insecurity, due to a lack of state investment in smallholder farmers, who are highly dependent on imported food.
   
• India, whose inhabitants spend more than twice the proportion of their income on food than UK residents - paying the equivalent of £10 for a litre of milk and £6 for a kilo of rice.
   
• Azerbaijan, where wheat production fell 33% last year due to poor weather, forcing the country to import grains from Russia and Kazakhstan. Food prices were 20% higher in December 2010 than the same month in 2009.
   
• East Africa, where eight million people - with women and children the most vulnerable - currently face chronic food shortages due to drought.

Warns the Oxfam boss: "We are sleepwalking towards an avoidable age of crisis. One in seven people on the planet go hungry every day despite the fact that the world is capable of feeding everyone."

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... among them, perhaps, security and surveillance products, military hardware, wind turbines and Ashton Kutcher!   

Fischer and his colleague Tolga Ergin have for the past year worked with colleagues at at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology's Center for Functional Nanostructures [CFN] on refining the structure of the 'invisibility cloak' to such an extent that it is also effective in the visible spectral range.

Based on theoretical calculations, first attempts were started to produce such a material artificially. Among the early investigators were Sir John B Pendry (Imperial College, London, UK) and David R Smith (Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA and Imperial College UK), both of whom published the results obtained for an invisibility cloak for radar waves in 2006.

In 2008, Jensen Li (City University of Hong Kong) and Sir John B Pendry presented the theoretical idea of a carpet invisibility cloak. In 2010, Karlsruhe's Professor Martin Wegener and his team presented their first 3D invisibility cloak.

In invisibility cloaks, light waves are guided by the material so that they leave the invisibility cloak again as if they had never been in contact with the disguised object. Consequently, the object is invisible to the observer.

The exotic optical properties of the camouflaging material are calculated using complex mathematical tools similar to Einstein’s theory of relativity.

For more details on the invisibility cloak, click here.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... human fertility, which DESA cites as the main driver of population rates worldwide.

Introducing the UN report to journalists in New York, Hania Zlotnik, director of the Population Division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs [DESA] emphasized that although "the world is not about to collapse by adding so many people, what is important is that most of these people are being added in the poorest countries of the world".

Based on the report's medium projection, the number of people in the world (currently close to seven billion) will pass 8 billion in 2023, nine billion by 2041 and then 10 billion at some point after 2081.

Between 2011 and 2100, the population of high-fertility countries is expected to more than triple in size, up from 1.2 billion to 4.2 billion.

During the same period, the report estimates that the population of low-fertility countries will decline by around 20%, from 2.9 billion to 2.4bn. 

At present, 42% of the world's population live such countries: all European nations except Iceland and Ireland; nineteen in Asia including China; fourteen in the Americas; two in Africa; and Australia.

Meantime, closer to the here and now, DESA warns that the world population is expected to overtake the seven billion mark by October 31 this year.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... China’s economy set to surpass that of America in real terms in 2016 — just five years from now. 

Comments MarketWatch's Brett Arends: "It provides a painful context for the budget wrangling taking place in Washington right now. [The IMF's forecast] raises enormous questions about what the international security system is going to look like in just a handful of years. And it casts a deepening cloud over both the US dollar and the giant Treasury market, which have been propped up for decades by their privileged status as the liabilities of the world’s hegemonic power."

Arends continues: "According to the IMF forecast, which was quietly posted on the Fund’s website just two weeks ago, whoever is elected US president next year — Obama? Mitt Romney? Donald Trump? — will be the last to preside over the world’s largest economy.

"Most people aren’t prepared for this. They aren’t even aware it’s that close. Listen to experts of various stripes, and they will tell you this moment is decades away. The most bearish will put the figure in the mid-2020s.

"But they’re miscounting. They’re only comparing the gross domestic products of the two countries using current exchange rates. That’s a largely meaningless comparison in real terms. Exchange rates change quickly. And China’s exchange rates are phony. China artificially undervalues its currency, the renminbi, through massive intervention in the markets."

In addition to comparing the two countries based on exchange rates, the IMF analysis also examined in depth the true, real-terms picture of the economies using “purchasing power parities” [PPP].

This compares what people earn and spend in real terms in their domestic economies.

Under PPP, the Chinese economy will expand from $11.2 trillion this year to $19 trillion in 2016.

Meanwhile the size of the US economy will rise from $15.2 trillion to $18.8 trillion. That would take America’s share of the world output down to 17.7%, the lowest in modern times. China’s would reach 18%, and rising.

Just ten years back, the US economy was three times larger than China’s.


 

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... revenue from online and mobile games will grow from a third to a half of the industry’s total revenues, at around $44bn, by 2014.

Within that total, China is predicted to account for up to half of global sales, meaning the Chinese games market will have risen from around 12% in 2010 to a quarter of the world’s total by 2014. Over the same period, America's share of the games market will fall from 26% to 22%.

In the interim, traditional console games – the business segment led by Activision-Blizzard and Electronic Arts – will be flat or even negative.

“We expect to see Chinese companies as major games consolidators in 2011,” forecasts Tim Merel, managing director of Digi-Capital. He cites as a taste of things to come the recent acquisition by Chinese giant Tencent of Los Angeles firm Riot Games.

Tencent’s domestic market already delivers huge volumes of online gamers – 20 million simultaneous players at peak time.

Merel predicts 18% compound annual growth rate for online and mobile games until 2014, powered by an influx of venture-capital investment.

Chinese games companies such as Shanda, ChangYou.com and Giant are already achieving billion-dollar stock-market valuations.

Merel paints a doomsday scenario for major US and European games companies. "Tencent’s market cap (around $50bn) is substantially more than Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, GamesStop, Take2, THQ, Atari, Game Group and Ubisoft combined,” he warns.

As a consequence of which Merel expects Asian companies to drive more of the international consolidation over the coming years as they expand beyond their home markets.
 

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... the plan aims to accelerate the conversion of scientific and technological research achievements into products available on the market.

To this end the academy will set up a series of research centers, including a space science center, a center for clean and efficient use of coal, and a research center for geoscience devices.

The Innovation 2020 plan aims to ensure that by 2020 over 5,000 top scientists will be working under the aegis of the China Academy of Science .

The CAS also intends to set up three major science parks, respectively in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong,

CAS deputy president, Bai Chunli, said 2011 will serve as a pilot and start-up period for the program, while breakthroughs in strategically important scientific fields, such as energy, health, environment and advanced materials, were expected in the following years.
 

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... the generation of revenue from high-impact patents - specifically those that make significant returns for companies in global markets.

The EU also needs to improve the functioning of its internal market for protected knowledge, the Commission says.

Citing the new report Innovative Union Scoreboard 2010, commissioner Geoghegan-Quinn calls for improvements in generating revenue from high-impact patents, specifically those that make significant returns for companies in global markets.

The EU also needs to improve the functioning of its internal market for protected knowledge, the Commission urges. It points to the dynamism of Chinese firms in particular, enabling that nation to "continue rapidly to narrow its performance gap with the EU".

However, the Scoreboard report, published February 2, is not entirely downbeat, revealing that the EU is outperforming the US in public R&D spending and exports of knowledge-intensive services.

Given that translation costs make patents in the EU much more expensive than in the US, the EC last year backed a move to launch a simplified and cheaper European patent system.

Germany, the UK and several other countries want a fast-track deal on patents under the "enhanced co-operation" procedure. The mechanism enables a minimum of nine EU countries to drive through such a measure, even if it has not been agreed by the entire EU membership of twenty-seven nations.


 

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... the global financial crisis has accelerated the shift in economic power to developing countries. And that China will overtake the USA as the world's largest economy by 2032.

The report also foretells that by the same date the economic output of such emerging markets as China, India, Brazil, Russia, Mexico, Indonesia and Turkey - the so-called E7 - will overtake that of the established G7 nations of the US, Japan, Germany, UK, France, Italy and Canada.

PwC also projects that India will achieve the most significant increase in share of global economic output, rising from just 2% now to about 13% by 2050.

And come 2050 it too could be close to catching the US.

In the three months to the end of September, India's GDP grew at an annual rate of 8.9%, while Chinese GDP expanded at an annual rate of 9.6%.

By contrast, the US economy grew at an annual pace of 2.6% during the same period, while the eurozone grew by just 0.4%.
 

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.