Silicon Valley has led the options stampede, but has applied it more widely than other firms, as a way to pay the staff without spending much cash: 80% of options granted by high-tech companies went to employees below the top five executives.

ECONOMIST: A survey on pay

Most other image compression systems, such as the widely used Jpeg format, are applied after an image has been snapped.

BBC: Lens-less camera emerges from metamaterials work