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It was arguably the mass shift to remote working sparked by coronavirus lockdowns which saw Zoom rapidly become a household name – but now, three years later, even the tech giant itself is extolling the benefits of a physical office. The videoconferencing firm has now told employees who live within 50 miles of an office that they should commute in at least two days each week, in a plan due to come into force over the course of the next two months. The move to what Zoom calls a “structured hybrid approach” will impact thousands of employees at 12 offices across the world, including in the UK. A spokesperson said: “We believe that a structured hybrid approach – meaning employees that live near an office need to be onsite two days a week to interact with their teams – is most effective for Zoom. “As a company, we are in a better position to use our own technologies, continue to innovate, and support our global customers. “We’ll continue to leverage the entire Zoom platform to keep our employees and dispersed teams connected and working efficiently. Additionally, we will continue to hire the best talent, regardless of location.” The company was reported to have nearly 8,500 employees at the end of 2022, but like several other big tech companies was forced to let go 15 per cent of its staff in February, amounting to some 1,300 employees, as chief executive Eric Yuan took a 98 per cent pay cut. Zoom went from having 10 million daily meeting participants in 2019– a measure which fails to account for whether one person attends multiple meetings – to 300 million the following year, as social and working lives were pushed further online by health restrictions to curb the spread of Covid-19. But the tech firm has taken a hit amid a push by many firms to get employees back into offices, with its share price falling from a high of $559 in October 2020 to $68, lower than they were prior to the pandemic. Mr Yuan faced a series of questions from employees who expressed frustration about the time and money they’d waste while commuting, during a tense meeting about the new hybrid policy last week, one employee who was present told the New York Times. The company currently employs more than 200 people at its UK office, and has this week opened a new office space in central London, which is being billed as “laying down the foundations for Zoom as a successful hybrid business”, according to The Times. Read More Young people are sick of working hard for no money – and are using social media to vent The pandemic missing: The kids who didn’t go back to school Amazon, Microsoft and Google investigated by Ofcom over ‘competition concerns’ Breaking the office bias: smashing the stereotypes holding women back

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Scientists have used sugar to create a record-breaking battery capable of storing grid-scale energy for more than a year. The breakthrough could help speed up the transition to renewable energy sources, which require vast amounts of battery storage in order to avoid relying on fossil fuels to meet demand when solar or wind output is low. A team from the US Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) made the latest discovery while researching flow batteries, which use two liquid-filled chambers to produce an electrochemical reaction to store and release energy. Flow batteries have the potential to be scaled up to the size of football fields, capable of storing vast amounts of energy, however current methods for creating them rely on mined minerals that are difficult and costly to obtain. “This is a brand new approach to developing flow battery electrolyte,” said Wei Wang, a battery researcher who led the investigation into the new method. “We showed that you can use a totally different type of catalyst designed to accelerate energy conversion.” The researchers used a dissolved simple sugar called β-cyclodextrin, which is a derivative of starch, in order to boost their flow battery’s longevity and capacity. The system achieved 60 per cent more peak power than current methods, while also being capable of storing and releasing energy for more than a year continuously. The latest advance makes the next-generation battery design “a candidate for scale up”, according to the researchers. “We cannot always dig the Earth for new materials,” said Imre Gyuk, director of energy storage research at DOE’s Office of Electricity. “We need to develop a sustainable approach with chemicals that we can sythesize in large amounts – just like the pharmaceutical and the food industries.” A study detailing the research, titled ‘Proton-regulated alcohol oxidation for high-capacity ketone-based flow battery anolyte’, was published in the scientific journal Joule. Read More How tech could turn our homes into renewable energy power stations ‘Miracle material’ smashes solar panel efficiency threshold Mineral discovery could meet global battery and solar panel demand for next 100 years Why the Battle of the Boyne has made its way into your iPhone Twitter gets strange endorsement from Taliban over rival Threads

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