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Oil production in the US has skyrocketed since 2010, primarily due t0 due to hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and utilizing horizontal wells. However, the global supply of oil has far surpassed demand. As a result, oil prices have dropped dramatically, and oil companies are facing steep revenue losses.

To combat this, oil companies are utilizing Internet of Things technology to reduce their production costs by becoming more operationally efficient.

In a new report from BI Intelligence, we examine how oil companies are connecting their oil wells, rigs, and exploration devices to the internet in order to gain insights about how their assets are performing. 

Here are some key takeaways from the report: 

• Over the next three to five years, 62% of oil and gas executives worldwide say they will invest more than they currently do in digital, according to a recent Microsoft and Accenture survey. 
• Oil and gas companies will use IoT devices and their associated analytics to survey land for new potential drilling sites and extract the oil from the ground. Among oil and gas executives, 89% believe they can leverage analytics to improve business practices, according to Microsoft and Accenture.
• We estimate the number of devices used on oil extraction sites — primarily wells — will increase at a 70% compound annual growth rate (CAGR). The devices will primarily be internet-connected sensors used to provide environmental metrics about extraction sites.
• By fully optimizing the IoT solutions available, an oil and gas company with $50 billion in annual revenue could increase its profits by nearly $1 billion, according to a Cisco study. 

In full, the report:

• Explains the driving forces for the increase in oil production
• Examines how IoT analytics are being utilized by oil and gas companies in oil fields
• Identifies the types of networks needed to connect the devices
• Discusses the importance of mobile devices to control IoT devices

Interested in getting the full report? Here are two ways to access it:

1. Purchase & download the full report from our research store.» Purchase & Download 
2. Subscribe to an All-Access pass to BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report and over 100 other expertly researched reports. As an added bonus, you’ll also gain access to all future reports and daily newsletters to ensure you stay ahead of the curve and benefit personally and professionally.» Learn More Now

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Our subscribers consider the INSIDER Newsletters a “daily must-read industry snapshot” and “the edge needed to succeed personally and professionally” — just to pick a few highlights from our recent customer survey.

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NOW WATCH: Google’s self-driving car has a huge problem

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CFO Insider is a daily newsletter from Business Insider that delivers the top news and commentary for chief financial officers and other finance experts.

Growth-savvy CFO is well-placed at streaking Shopify (CFO.com)

Shopify became a publicly traded company in May. The e-commerce software company is now focused more than ever on growth and building new revenue streams.

Leading the charge for Shopify’s financial future is tech and finance veteran Russ Jones, who joined the company in 2011.

With more than 30 years experience in the finance space, CFO.com says Jones is the perfect person to guide the company towards responsible and quick growth.

From several high-profile acquisitions to launching the company’s IPO, Jones brings a wealth of knowledge and business sense to the table. The 56-year-old was “brought in partly to provide some ‘adult’ supervision to the team,” according to CFO.com.

“I get to work every day with people who are pretty much my kids’ age, which is kind of interesting,” Jones tells the publication.

Read the full article to learn why his job is about far more than just babysitting a bunch of young techies.

CFO skills prove critical to M&A success post-merger (Wall Street Journal)

The success of a merger or acquisition depends on the “skillful integration of disparate finances and work processes,” according to The Wall Street Journal.

CFOs are asked to ensure that the proper “cost synergies” are met, and they are often put in the driver’s seat to ensure a smooth transition for all parties involved. 

“No one else in the organization is going to put that emphasis behind [the integration],” Mary Henry, CFO of Foley Carrier Services LLC tells The Journal. 

Here’s why executives at unicorns are closely watching IPOs at other companies (Business Insider)

A recent panel of CFOs at the MIT Sloan CFO Summit highlighted why understanding the private and public markets is crucial for the success of a startup. 

SimpliVity CFO Tom Beaudoin said finance chiefs need to watch the IPO market to “gain a sense of what you aspire to do and to learn what it will take to find a similar level of success.”

Meanwhile, Thumbtack CFO Servase Tholen warned business owners to pay attention to the markets but to avoid news reports that sensationalize the facts.

You can connect with James on Twitter @JamesKosur and follow CFO Insider @CFOInsider.

SEE ALSO: 5 strategies finance departments need to embrace when pushing for tech evolution

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NOW WATCH: This 3-minute animation will change your perception of time

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Consumers with high incomes are increasingly making their purchases online. And contrary to popular belief, discount sites like Amazon are very popular among wealthy households.

• 83% of consumers who live in households earning $500,000 or more say “Amazon is better than other stores,” according to a 2015 survey conducted by Shulman Research Center. 

Wealthy consumers’ preference for Amazon suggests that they place a high value on convenience — an area that Amazon is competing heavily in by offering services like one-hour delivery, online grocery ordering, and product refills. Moreover, the appeal of a good deal cuts across incomes.

In a new report from BI Intelligence, we look at the habits of online shoppers across all incomes and assess how this behavior is driving growth in e-commerce. We also break down the demographics of US online shoppers by age, gender, and education, and take a look at what they’re shopping for, and how their behaviors differ. 

Here are some of the key takeaways:

• E-commerce shopping and buying has gone mainstream — almost three-quarters of the US population now shops online — but the typical online shopper still looks somewhat different than the average US consumer. There are variations by income, education, gender, and age between those likeliest to buy online and on mobile and those likeliest to buy in-store.
• Online shoppers tend to live in households with higher-than-typical incomes and higher-than-average educations. Putting together a composite based on various demographic trends, the typical US online shopper is a 44 year-old female who holds a college degree and lives in a household earning $110,000 annually, whereas the typical US consumer is a 47 year-old female who has some high school education and lives in a household earning approximately $52,000 a year.
• 38% of e-commerce shoppers in the US live in households with incomes over $100,000, according to Experian, while the median household income in the US is around $50,000, according to the Census. 
• 41% of online shoppers last year had college degrees, compared to 30% of the US adult population.

In full, the report:

• Breaks down e-commerce behavior by income, education level, and age.
• Looks at how women’s and men’s shopping behavior differs.
• Examines mobile shopping tendencies by demographic.
• Notes how shopping behavior is changing among younger age cohorts, and explains what that means for brands and retailers.

Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through his personal investment company Bezos Expeditions.

Interested in getting the full report? Here are two ways to access it:

1. Purchase & download the full report from our research store. >> Purchase & Download Now
2. Subscribe to an All-Access pass to BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report and over 100 other expertly researched reports. As an added bonus, you’ll also gain access to all future reports and daily newsletters to ensure you stay ahead of the curve and benefit personally and professionally. >> Learn More Now

​

PS. Did you know…

Our BI Intelligence INSIDER Newsletters are currently read by thousands of business professionals first thing every morning. Fortune 1000 companies, startups, digital agencies, investment firms, and media conglomerates rely on these newsletters to keep atop the key trends shaping their digital landscape — whether it is mobile, digital media, e-commerce, payments, or the Internet of Things.

Our subscribers consider the INSIDER Newsletters a “daily must-read industry snapshot” and “the edge needed to succeed personally and professionally” — just to pick a few highlights from our recent customer survey.

With our full money-back guarantee, we make it easy to find out for yourself how valuable the daily insights are for your business and career.  Click this link to learn all about the INSIDER Newsletters today.

Join the conversation about this story »

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WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. factory activity fell last month, as the stronger dollar and low oil prices are cutting new orders and hurting production.

The Institute for Supply Management says its index of factory activity in November dropped to 48.6 from 50.1 in October. Any reading below 50 signals contraction and the index has tumbled below that critical level for the first time since November 2012.

A measure for new orders dropped to 48.9 from 52.9, while production fell to 49.2 from 52.9. Still, the report showed a rebound in hiring as its employment measure improved to 51.3 from 47.6 in the prior month.

U.S. manufacturers have been squeezed this year as a strong dollar and weak economies in China and other key foreign markets have cut into exports

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To get into his villainous character Kylo Ren in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” Adam Driver would yell before shooting, sometimes resulting in sound guys turning their microphones down.

This “wonderful ferocity” made him “perfect” for the role, director J.J. Abrams revealed during a Sirius XM Town Hall recording with People and Entertainment Weekly editorial director Jess Cagle after being asked which actor was more like their character. 

“Adam Driver, there are times when he’s so hard on himself as an actor,” Abrams said. Driver would have to rile himself up as mental preparation. 

In a 2014 cover story for GQ, Driver (also from “Girls,” “Lincoln,” and “Inside Llewyn Davis”) is described as having “equal amounts of twitchy intensity and feral grace,” applying both his military background and Julliard training to the roles he takes on. 

Abrams added that all of the actors, both old and new, “all brought themselves in an incredible way to each of the characters.”  

The full Sirius XM Town Hall with Abrams will premiere December 14 at 6 p.m. ET on EW Radio Sirius XM 105.

Listen to the clip below: 

SEE ALSO: George Lucas hasn’t looked at the internet in 15 years — this is why

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NOW WATCH: Here’s why Adele is the most popular musician on the planet

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A few weeks ago, my colleague Jim Edwards wrote about a mobile phone game I’d never heard of before called 1010!.

The mobile phone app from Gram Games, Edwards wrote, “is so addictive it will ruin your life and make your friends hate you.”

Instead of taking this as the warning it so clearly was, I was intrigued, and immediately downloaded the game myself.

Weeks later, I’m hopelessly addicted to 1010!. I play it on the subway. I play it in the elevator and when I’m waiting in line to pick up my lunch down the street. It’s the same kind of can’t-put-it-down addictive feeling you may have gotten when you started playing 2048 or Candy Crush for the first time.

Here’s how you play:

SEE ALSO: I Played The Kim Kardashian iPhone Game, And Now I Finally Get It

This is 1010!. You can download it in the App Store. The game was created last year by Gram Games, a Turkish game developer. Almost immediately, it started going viral in Asia.

Here’s the homescreen, where you’re shown your high score. Power users get ridiculously high scores on 1010! — some past 100,000 points — but if you’re playing for the first time, you might not crack 500 points. Don’t get too discouraged.

You might initially mistake 1010! for Tetris because the game board looks similar. You’re also shown shapes that are similar to those in Tetris. But unlike Tetris, where you’re forced to fit falling shapes into complete lines to make them disappear, you control the pace of this game. In 1010! you’re shown 3 pieces at a time, and you fit them into the big grid. The goal is to create complete columns and rows. You get points for every complete column or row you create, and after you complete each line, it disappears.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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For centuries, people have clung to the belief that there’s something inherently different between the male brain and the female brain.

But in a new study, scientists combed through the brain scans of more than 1,400 people, and found that while there are some distinct brain differences between men and women, there’s no such thing as a distinctly “male” or “female” brain.

“Our study demonstrates that, although there are sex/gender differences in the brain, human brains do not belong to one of two distinct categories: male brain/female brain,” the researchers wrote in the study, which was published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

‘Male’ and ‘female’ brains

It has long been assumed that men and women have different brains.

And some previous research had supported that notion, finding some differences in the structure of male and female brains. A 2014 study of 949 people found that men’s brains had more connections within each brain hemisphere, whereas women’s brains had more between connections between hemispheres.

But other research had defied the notion that human brains can be divided into simple “male” and “female” categories.

To get at an answer, Daphna Joel, a psychologist at Israel’s Tel-Aviv University, and her colleagues analyzed MRIs scans from four separate studies comprising a total of more than 1,400 people.

The researchers scored the study participants on a number of variables like personality traits, relationships, activities, and attitudes. Then, they took traits that were more commonly seen in a subset of men or women, and defined male/female categories based on scores for those traits. They also had a category classified as “intermediate” for those who scored somewhere in between.

Next, the researchers determined whether each brain fit into one of their three categories: male, female, or intermediate. If it didn’t, meaning it had at least one trait at the “female end” and one trait at the “male end,” it was said to show “substantial variability.”

A mental mosaic

The differences between male and female brains were minimal, the researchers found. Depending on the data set, between a quarter and more than half of the brains they studied showed substantial variability. In comparison, 8% of brains or fewer fit neatly into the categories. 

This graphic shows the volumes of brain regions in 42 adults, revealing how much overlap there is between male and female brains (green = large, yellow = small):

The fact that there was so much overlap between characteristics of “male” and “female” brains suggests that most people don’t fit into one of these two categories.

Instead, the researchers wrote, each brain “is a unique mosaic of features, some of which may be more common in females compared with males, others may be more common in males compared with females, and still others may be common in both females and males.” 

Margaret McCarthy, a neuroscientist at the University of Maryland who was not involved with the study, said it offered the first strong evidence that there’s no such thing as a male or female brain. That’s not to say there are no sex differences in the brain, but these differences are not uniformly different in any one individual, she told Business Insider in an email.

Like any study, of course, this one has its weaknesses as well. For one, it looked at patterns of brain connectivity, but did not connect those patterns to behavior, McCarthy pointed out. In other words, we won’t know whether people whose brains fit mostly in the masculine or feminine zones also act typically masculine or feminine.

NEXT UP: The first results of a brain study reveal something fascinating about smart, successful people

CHECK OUT: Here’s what the brain of an extremely selfish person looks like

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NOW WATCH: 9 facts about the brain that will blow your mind

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WASHINGTON (AP) — A unanimous Supreme Court has ruled against a California woman who wanted to use American courts to sue the state-owned Austrian railway for grievous injuries she suffered while boarding a train in Innsbruck, Austria.

In their first decision of the term, the justices ruled Tuesday that Carol Sachs’ lawsuit could not go forward in U.S. courts.

The railroad company OBB-Personenverkehr AG appealed to the Supreme Court after federal appellate judges in San Francisco said the suit could proceed because Sachs purchased her train ticket from a Massachusetts-based Internet site.

But Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that all of Sachs’ claims “turn on the same tragic episode in Austria” in which her legs were crushed.

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Linden Gledhill uses high-speed photography, microscopes and magnets to capture the quirks of ferrofluid. An oily suspension of magnetic nanoparticles, the liquid’s response to magnetism is, well, highly attractive.

By: Sophia Epstein,

Continue reading…

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“The Good Dinosaur,” Pixar’s latest movie, was the highest-grossing new release this past weekend, and has won critical praise.

However, parents are taking issue with the film.

Parents are complaining that the movie, marketed as an animated film for kids, is not at all suitable for young children. One parent even wrote that it shouldn’t be watched by anyone under the age of 15.

The movie is about a dinosaur that befriends a human boy. While its cute, wide-eyed characters are child-friendly, parents argue that the plot is not.

“Children were crying and leaving the theater. My little one asked me to never see it again,” one parent wrote on CommonSenseMedia.com, a site that allows parents to rate activities for children.

Parents are angry about scenes depicting death, vicious dinosaur attacks, and emotionally harrowing events.

“My husband’s sleeve was soaked from my 10-year-old’s tears, the 2-year-old was terrified, and I could hear the 5- and 8-year-old crying throughout the movie,” another parent wrote on the rating site.

“The Good Dinosaur” is not the first Pixar film to deal with death. The movie “Up,” released in 2009, was also criticized for its surprisingly dark opening.

Story and editing by Andrew Fowler

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