Emc & Associates Limited

18/09/2026

HOW WRITING 3 PAGES COULD IMPROVE YOUR PRODUCTIVITY (www.thetimes.com/)
Writing down your thoughts in the morning could help prevent brain fog and improve productivity, experts have claimed.

A process called “morning pages”, where people write three pages of continuous consciousness first thing after waking up, could help to offload worries, boosting productivity later in the day.

Writing down your thoughts in the morning could help prevent brain fog and improve productivity, experts have claimed.

Dr Ravi Gill, a psychologist, told Stylist magazine: “Morning pages can act as cognitive offloading, helping move worries, unfinished tasks and competing thoughts out of working memory and on to paper. Our working memory has limited capacity, so writing down what is taking up space in our minds can reduce mental clutter and make it easier to prioritise, concentrate and make decisions.”

One study found that people had about 50,000 thoughts a day. Experts suggested that offloading some of these could aid productivity.

Research has also found that expressive writing helped anxious people perform better on tests. The 2014 paper, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, gave 80 students a maths test. Half wrote down their anxieties about the test beforehand and half did not, instead sitting quietly.

When students did not write down any thoughts before the test, those who were more anxious about being examined performed worse. When they wrote down their thoughts beforehand, the gap was significantly smaller. Researchers believe the writing exercise may have reduced intrusive thoughts and increased working memory.

“Writing also encourages metacognition,” Gill added, referring to the process of thinking about our own thoughts. “This helps as we can begin to notice repeated worries, assumptions, emotional triggers or patterns of behaviour that might otherwise operate automatically.

Writing down anxieties or competing thoughts helps regulate emotions, free up working memory and improve performance under pressure, psychologists say

07/09/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1Dgu1M7UwG/?mibextid=wwXIfr

03/08/2026

ELECTRICITY METERS FITTED BACKWARDS ‘COST US £100m A YEAR’ (www.thetimes.com/)
Customers are paying extra to operate the National Grid safely, because hundreds meters have been put in incorrectly at hundreds of sites.

Electricity users could be paying up to £100 million a year in extra costs to operate Britain’s national grid safely, because hundreds of power installations have their meters fitted backwards.

The “power flow metering polarity issue”, detailed in policy documents written by the state-owned National Energy System Operator (Neso), means hundreds of meters are telling the grid operator they are consuming power when they are actually generating it, or vice versa.

NESO documents said this made it harder to operate the grid within safe limits, and estimated it could add £100 million a year to its costs.

It also said the issue was contributing to “deteriorating accuracy in [grid] management”, causing “reduced … reliability impacting situational awareness” in the grid control room and is a “potential” breach of grid security standards.

The metering issue affects 416 offshore installations spread across up to 45 sites, all of which likely relate to offshore wind farms, according to an expert. Britain has 45 offshore wind farms, meaning all of them are potentially affected.
There are also backwards meters in a further 402 unidentified installations onshore, which could be anything from medium to large power plants to batteries, power management tools or substations. The issue affects 2.8 per cent of all installations of sufficient size to send real-time data to the grid operator. Neso has not said what total generating capacity they account for.
It has put the cost of fixing the issue anywhere between £4.5 million and £44 million. Although it is in the process of creating new standards to prevent it from getting worse, this will only affect new meters.
Andrew Larkins, an independent energy consultant who has advised Neso in the past, said the grid operator should show a greater sense of urgency. “If it’s costing us a hundred million a year you’d think that would be enough to put 20 people on it and fix it as quickly as possible. And it’s not only costing us, it’s a threat to system reliability,” he said.

Customers are paying extra to operate the national grid safely, because hundreds meters have been put in incorrectly at hundreds of sites

08/07/2026

THE DIGITAL TRADE REVOLUTION IS LEAVING SMALL BUSINESSES BEHIND (www.thetimes.com/)
Businesses meant to benefit from government legislation to digitise trade documents have been “untouched” by the changes, research for the government suggests.

While large companies and shipping carriers have taken advantage of the Electronic Trade Documents Act of 2023 to save money by shifting some transactions from paper to digital formats, smaller exporters have been left behind.

This is despite small and medium-sized businesses having been seen as the primary “beneficiaries of the reforms”, with reduced courier fees and administrative costs, as well as improved access to trade finance among the promised rewards.

Evidence collected across 23 interviews with traders and industry experts in March by Ipsos for the Department for Business and Trade concluded that the adoption of electronic trade documentation would only occur “once Customs authorities, carriers, and ports stopped issuing physical paper.”

They added that the common view of experts was that “voluntary adoption by small businesses would not scale, and that progress depended on co-ordinated action by the government and large supply chain actors.”

It has prompted the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) to call for a “phasing out” of paper-based documentation and more co-ordination with the UK’s leading trading partners to accelerate adoption.

The World Trade Organisation has estimated that a typical cross-border transaction requires the exchange of 36 documents and 240 copies of the paperwork.

The UK government suggested the reforms could generate £1.4 billion in net benefits for importers and exporters over 10 years, with bilateral trade to a country such as the US increasing by 6.8 per cent for non-agricultural goods.

However, the Ipsos researchers found that there was “low” awareness of the reforms among small business owners, who were typically led by the requirements of their couriers rather than instigating changes to trade documentation themselves.

The use of electronic bills of lading — a legally binding document issued by a carrier to a shipper that acts as a receipt, a contract and a document of title establishing legal ownership — has doubled since 2023, the researchers noted.

Large companies and shipping carriers have taken advantage of the recent Electronic Trade Documents legislation to save money by switching away from paper

03/07/2026

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17/06/2026

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/massimilianocervo_most-markets-are-still-mid-bridge-on-gas-share-7471531513361166336-rOID?utm_medium=ios_app&rcm=ACoAAAlTElkBAHZqJJrou4RIMDtvIItB607yUCc&utm_source=social_share_send&utm_campaign=facebook

14/05/2026

With the Gulf of Hormuz shut, approximately 50% of the world’s exports of Sulphur are not making it to international export markets. Countries like UAe, Qatar & Iran & Kuwait are major exporters of Sulphur to make SulphuricAcid

Sulphur is the key feedstock for Sulphuric Acid which is used especially in the production of Copper & Nickel, to strip the metal from its’ ore, which may put a halt on many Greentech projects until various oil & gas fields in Arabia return to production that are currently ‘Shut-in’ as ‘sour’ gas and oil fields contain sulphur which is common in Arabia.

Stocks of Sulphur & Sulphuric Acid may last most or all of this year and possibly some of 2027, but prices of both commodities have already risen 400-500% with no end in sight to the Gulf of Hormuz closure.

Copper and Nickel are widely used in electrical, marine and industrial applications as well as BESS & EVs putting a hold on every country’s Energy transition

America is the largest importer of sulphur, for its’ extensive agricultural and industrial needs, particularly Fertiliser production.
Ammonium sulphate is used to boost yields of Corn Wheat Rice & Soyabeans, so expect many country’s agricultural production to be significantly lower this year, possibly even Famines in East Asian countries which rely on Chinese exports of fertilisers.

14/05/2026

The Treasury department issued $25bn of new 30-year bonds on Wednesday, with the high yield at auction reaching 5.046%.

Earlier in the day, yields on US debt, which move inversely to prices, rose after official data showed wholesale inflation had jumped to 6% in April, its highest level since 2022.

“Financing the debt is getting much more expensive,” said Ed Al-Hussainy, a portfolio manager at Columbia Threadneedle.

The sale comes as the conflict in the Middle East drives a surge in fuel prices that has pushed up costs for businesses across the US. Inflation is corrosive to long-term debt, and concerns about the bout of higher price growth have helped drive the 30-year yield up roughly 0.4% since the start of the war.

April’s producer price index was up sharply from a 4.3% year-on-year gain in March and 3.4% before the war began in February, according to Wednesday’s data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“Everything that you buy is going to end up on a truck somewhere — and those trucks have to run mostly on diesel. So you’re seeing the broad-based influence of energy across the economy,” said Brett Ryan at Deutsche Bank. “It’s not looking to be a fun summer for US consumers.”

Wholesale prices are often seen as a forerunner of consumer inflation, which has already risen to a three-year high of 3.8% in April.

Good morning, Asia. While you were sleeping, one of our most-read stories was about the US Treasury department’s $25bn auction and what it means for markets and the economy. https://ft.trib.al/xoOlbh4

14/05/2026

With the Gulf of Hormuz shut, approximately 50% of the world’s exports of Sulphur are not making it to international export markets.

Sulphur is the key feedstock for Sulphuricacid which is used in the production of Copper & Nickel which may put a temporary halt on many Greentech projects until various oil & gas fields in Arabia return to production that are currently Shut-in as ‘sour’ gas and oil fields contain sulphur which are common in Arabia

Copper and Nickel are widely used in electrical, marine and industrial applications.

America is the largest importer of sulfur, for its’ extensive agricultural and industrial needs, particularly Fertiliser production, Ammonium Sulphate which is used to boost yields of corn, wheat, Rice & Soya beans

14/05/2026

With the Gulf of Hormuz shut, approximately 50% of the world’s exports of Sulphur are not making it to international export markets.

Sulphur is the key feedstock for Sulphuricacid which is used in the production of Copper & Nickel which may put a temporary halt on many Green tech projects until various oil & gas fields in Arabia return to production that are currently Shut-in as ‘sour’ gas and oil fields contain sulphur which are common in Arabia

Copper and Nickel are widely used in electrical, marine and industrial applications.

America is the largest importer of sulfur, for its’ extensive agricultural and industrial needs, particularly Fertilizer production. Ammonium sulfate which is used to boost yields of Corn Wheat Rice & Soyabeans