MRP

• The Company received approval in March 2022 for a non-repayable $200,000 grant for the direct engineering costs of the Calgary Empower Facility under Alberta Innovates' Bioenergy Program.
• Mr. Aidan Mills, President & CEO and Director of Northstar, stated, "Alberta Innovates was the first public organization to support Northstar – recognizing the potential of and providing funding for the engineering of our first-of-its-kind facility.
• Having now completed the detailed design phase of our Empower Calgary Facility, and having Alberta Innovates recognize this accomplishment with their second government grant is very complimentary to the Company.
• The support of Alberta Innovates has been very welcome, and we look forward to delivering our first commercial facility that merits their support."

• Polls ahead of the UK election not only point towards defeat for the government, but a veritable trouncing.
• Some multiple regression and post-stratification (MRP) polls, which enable seat-level analysis, suggest record margins of defeat.
• A huge Labour majority is likely to come off the back of a disproportionately small number of votes.

Follow the losers

• It’s common for the number of seats in parliament that a party wins to be highly disproportionate to its share of the overall vote.
• Looking at the vote shares of election losers between 1929 and 2019, there is an almost perfect correlation of -0.9 between the losing major party’s vote share and the proportionality of the election outcome.
• I’ve plotted the vote shares of the losers against the Gallagher index, which is the most widely used measure of proportionality.

Basically, as the losing party’s vote share approaches 50%, which is when we are witnessing a highly competitive two-horse race, FPTP can produce very proportional outcomes, with Gallagher index scores of sometimes below 5 (scores more typical in proportional representation systems). But as the losing major party’s vote share drops below 40%, Gallagher index scores get into double figures.

Why so disproportionate?

• This is a very linear effect – the lower the vote share the second party gets, the more disproportionate the overall election result.
• The first scenario is when the party system fragments and more votes go to third parties.
• The other scenario is a very asymmetric two-party race, where the second-largest party heavily trails the winner.
• Whenever one party moves clearly ahead of the other, disproportionality reaches levels higher than ever witnessed in the UK.

2024: a perfect storm

• It is fragmented and there is significant asymmetry in the polling for the two main parties.
• But the expected disproportionality in the upcoming election will be down to the Labour lead more than the degree of fragmentation.
• In the UK’s FPTP system, both major parties’ seat shares depend heavily on how much of a lead the winner has over the loser.
• The difference of an increase in the Labour lead by just a couple of points can change a lot under FPTP.

For proponents of electoral reform, the upcoming election is set to provide a mixed bag. On one hand, a massive Labour win renders it unlikely that the party itself would contemplate reform. On the other, anything near a two-thirds majority for Labour on the back of a vote share barely above 40%, together with severe under-representation of the Conservatives, could expose the distorting nature of FPTP more than any election in living memory.
Heinz Brandenburg does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• Elevated Signals Inc. (“Elevated Signals”), a pioneering technology company offering modern manufacturing software, today announced a new strategic partnership with pH7 Technologies (“pH7”), a cleantech innovator in sustainable mining.
• Elevated Signals’ Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP) platform is used by pH7 to capture real-time data and facilitate data-driven analytics.
• However, these processes are complex and require highly precise inventory tracking—an area where Elevated Signals offers significant value,” said Amar Singh, CEO and co-founder of Elevated Signals.
• ft.
  “For fast-growing companies like pH7, the ability to streamline and automate complex processes with ease is key,” Singh added.

• Short for “Artificial Intelligence (AI) from Rootstock (RS),” this revolutionary AI-based solution designed to transform manufacturing decisions was unveiled at the Rooted-In Manufacturing Conference in New Orleans.
• AIRS marks a significant leap forward in harnessing data from the Signal Chain for predictive and generative AI power in decisioning.
• "AIRS is not just another AI tool; it's AI that truly matters to manufacturers," said Raj Badarinath , Chief Product & Marketing Officer at Rootstock Software .
• Manufacturers will be able to predict lead times, foresee production bottlenecks, more accurately allocate materials and resources, and reduce waste.