Shipping experts say the big winter storm across a wide swath of the country should be business as usual--if their safeguards hold. Up to two-thirds of the US is facing down the threat of serious snow, cold, and ice this weekend, with the potential to snarl roads (and the businesses that depend on them) from Texas up to New York City . At this point, grocery stores, logistics experts, warehouse operators, and trucking companies have been prepping for days. Still, the effects on the supply chain--and the retail store shelves that depend on them--are yet to be determined. On one hand, this is winter business as usual.

A college seafood forensics class investigated some fishy labelling. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Sharks have been swimming in Earth's seas over 450 million years, but some struggling shark species may be ending up on grocery store shelves, in fish markets, and even sold online. Meat from shark species at risk of extinction is still available for sale in the United States, despite lawmaker's best efforts. "We found critically endangered sharks, including great hammerhead and scalloped hammerhead, being sold in grocery stores, seafood markets, and online," said Dr. Savannah J. Ryburn, a marine ecologist at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and co-author of a small study recently published in "Of the 29 samples, 93 percent were ambiguously labeled as'shark,' and one of the two products labeled at the species level was mislabeled." In the new study, a seafood forensic class at UNC bought 30 different shark products-19 raw steaks and 11 packages of shark jerky.

Inventory tracking -- that is, figuring out which products are in stock, which stock is likely to run low in the next week, and so on -- is a never-ending battle, as shoppers spend an estimated 40 billion hours picking things off store shelves. However, serial entrepreneur Richard Schwartz believes he has the answer, and it involves airborne drones with brace cages that resemble giant wiffle balls. Schwartz is the CEO and founder of Pensa Systems, an Austin startup developing a retail inventory system that taps computer vision algorithms to "understand" what's on store shelves. Pensa has already trialed its platform with Anheuser-Busch InBev -- a strategic investor -- along with several other brands and retailers in multiple countries. And at the New York Retail Federation's annual conference in New York, the company today announced that it has secured fresh capital it will put toward client acquisition.

There are plenty of toy robots out on the market, but few are as endearing as the upcoming Anki Vector. Its big bright eyes are most reminiscent of the Pixar character Wall-E. But as cute as its Wall-E-like personality is, it doesn't mean much if the robot isn't smart. That's where Alexa comes in. In a blog post by CEO and co-founder Boris Sofman, he notes one of the top requests on the Vector Kickstarter was to integrate Alexa.

"Digitizing" store shelves is a new imperative for Coca-Cola and other CPG companies. In the face of changing consumer behavior and the new retail playbook scripted by Amazon, CPG brands have raced to hop on the "digitization" bandwagon to erase the advantage e-commerce has over brick-and-mortar retail. Now add this area to their get-even list: store shelves. For decades, CPG companies like Coca-Cola have conducted manual audits and surveys to see if, how and where stores stock their goods on shelves, as well as find out if their goods are next to rivals' products and if any out-of-stock items have been replenished. Thanks to technology, this old-school and time-consuming process, prone to human errors, is increasingly being dropped as CPG brands seek to bridge the gap between what they can see in stores and online.

Nostalgic Nintendo fans who did not get in on the Nintendo Entertainment System Classic Edition craze of 2016 can rejoice. Nintendo announced on Sunday night that the miniaturized game console, which proved difficult to find on its first go-around, will come back to store shelves on June 29. The news came via a tweet from the official Nintendo of America account. This system and the #SNESClassic Edition system are expected to be available through the end of the year. Alongside the announcement that the NES Classic would return, Nintendo assured fans the Super NES Classic console would also be available.

Wal-Mart is rolling out shelf-scanning robots in more than 50 U.S. stores to replenish inventory faster and save employees time when products run out. The approximately 2-foot (0.61-meter) robots come with a tower that is fitted with cameras that scan aisles to check stock and identify missing and misplaced items, incorrect prices and mislabeling. The robots pass that data to store employees, who then stock the shelves and fix errors. The approximately 2-foot (0.61-meter) robots come with a tower that is fitted with cameras that scan aisles to check stock and identify missing and misplaced items, incorrect prices and mislabeling Out-of-stock items are a big problem for retailers since they miss out on sales every time a shopper cannot find a product on store shelves. Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer has been testing shelf-scanning robots in a handful of stores in Arkansas, Pennsylvania and California.

Ever since you got that alarm clock that adapts to your sleep cycle, your calendar, and the traffic report, you practically leap out of bed. You exercise, focusing on the muscles that the biometric sensor in your shirt says need some help. Not 10 seconds after you finish, the oven beeps--breakfast is ready. You need it, after all the drinking last weekend. As you eat, the TV streams headlines tailored to your interests.

Inc.'s $13.7 billion bid to buy Whole Foods was announced, John Mackey, the grocer's chief executive officer, addressed employees, gushing about Amazon's technological innovation. "We will be joining a company that's visionary," Mackey said, according to a transcript of the meeting. "I think we're gonna get a lot of those innovations in our stores. I think we're gonna see a lot of technology. I think you're gonna see Whole Foods Market evolve in leaps and bounds."