From January on average, families with many children will have to pay about £742 per month for gas and electricity, compared to £246 in January 2022. At the same time, every Briton with an average annual income will spend about 12% of his salary next year on electricity at an average consumption. And those who live in a separate house, which means they spend a lot of electricity, will give about 17% of their income to pay for it. Those who spend a lot of electricity but have a low income will be forced to spend about 37% of their earnings.
Bills are expected to rise sharply after tariff changes in October and then again in January. This is happening against the backdrop of continued increases in food prices, basic necessities and gasoline, as well as rising mortgage rates.
As recalled by the publication, the marginal price of electricity limits how much suppliers can charge consumers at a standard rate. The UK Gas and Electricity Markets Authority (Ofgem) sets a tariff every six months, taking into account changes in wholesale gas and electricity prices, from October this period will be reduced to four months.
The previous rise in prices came in April. Then the annual electricity bill increased by £700. However, since this coincided with a summer heating shutdown, the British will not fully feel the rise in prices until October. According to energy consultancy BFY, the price cap will rise by £1,269 to £3,240 in October and rise to £3,850 in January. Whereas in January of this year the limit price was £1277.
However, British politicians are trying to find ways to protect consumers. Contender Party leadership contenders Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss have vowed to cut VAT on electricity bills or eliminate taxes on green energy. The measures will be in addition to those already announced, such as £400 support for low-income families to pay their electricity bills. However, critics argue that all this is not enough to support the British amid a crisis in the cost of living.
“It is clear that urgent action is needed to get everyone through this winter. Consumers are in for an extremely difficult winter, and the latest forecasts for the upcoming electricity price cap only bring more bad news,” warned Uswitch expert Richard Neudegg.
The Financial Responsibility Office predicts that household incomes in the UK will fall at the fastest pace on record this year, writes The Times.
A year ago, DeepMind caused a stir with the announcement of the ability to solve the main mystery in biology - to predict the structure of any protein. At the same time, DeepMind created an open database with data on 350 thousand proteins, the shape of which was predicted by the AlphaFold package. Today, the company announced the discovery of the forms of almost every protein known to terrestrial science - more than 200 million proteins from all spheres of life known on Earth. This is a real revolution in biology.
Knowledge of the spatial shape of a protein can help find the perfect cure for diseases and make many other discoveries in biology. Before the advent of AI algorithms, scientists experimentally determined the shape of proteins, which is very, very difficult and time consuming. The algorithm proposed by DeepMind determines the spatial shape of one protein from 10 to 20 seconds. Thanks to this, the company was able to bring the database of spatial forms of proteins from 350 thousand to more than 200 million in a year.
It should be clarified that predicting the shape of a protein does not mean being 100% accurate. However, AlphaFold showed significant accuracy in determining shapes, which is enough to get started. All the routine work was done by a computer, and it took all the scientists of the world before that 50 years to unravel about only 10% of protein structures.
It is estimated that approximately 60 million smart cellular phones were sold in China between April and June. This is 14.2% less compared to the second quarter of 2021.
The local market reached a minimum in almost ten years: sales were below this figure only in the fourth quarter of 2012.
According to the results of the quarter, as already noted, Vivo became the leader: its share was 19.8% against 21.1% a year earlier. In second place is the Honor brand, which sharply increased sales: over the year, the share increased from 7.7% to 18.3%. Oppo closes the top three with a score of 17.9% against 22.0% a year earlier.
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