Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: sustainability – Page 453

In this talk, professor Bell breaks down the very foundations of AI –viewed as an inescapable and univocal technology- and opens up a space for other truths and possibilities by visiting AI’s alternative stories in the past, present and future. By doing so, she claims, we might make room for a more sustainable, safe and responsible AI, and ultimately a more human-centric one.

Genevieve Bell is a cultural anthropologist and technologist who has spent her career at the intersection between places, people and things. From growing up in indigenous communities in Australia’s outback to Silicon Valley, from Stanford University and Intel Corporation back to Australia’s only national university, she has always questioned what it means to be human in an increasingly digital world. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community.

Read more | >

NASA will broadcast key events, including an Artemis program update, of the 71st International Astronautical Congress (IAC), which takes place virtually Monday, Oct. 12, through Wednesday, Oct. 14. Coverage will air on NASA Television and the agency’s website.

During the conference, NASA will discuss international cooperation for the agency’s lunar exploration plans throughout the Artemis program, which includes sending American astronauts to the surface of the Moon in 2024 and establishing a sustainable lunar presence by the end of the decade.

In addition to participation in events outlined below, NASA will have a virtual exhibit featuring information on Artemis, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, and the International Space Station. Visitors also will have an opportunity to contribute to a digital mosaic of the space station on social media using #NASAVirtualExhibit.

Read more | >

But people need to be kept at the centre of it.

There is more than one reason that we need to reforest Planet Earth. Less than a fifth of Earth’s original forests have survived the rise of humans since the last glaciation, and over half of them are in just five countries (see figure below).

The biggest effect from loss of forests is loss of habitat and the resultant loss of biodiversity, even if you don’t care about climate change. We’re burning billions of acres of pristine Indonesian rain forests to plant palm oil trees (Scientific American) just to get a cooking oil with a better shelf life.

Forest biodiversity encompasses not just trees, but the multitude of plants, animals and microorganisms that inhabit forested areas — and their associated genetic diversity. Over a billion humans depend on dense forests for their survival, although all humans depend on forests in some degree for some aspect of their lives.

Read more | >

IKEA Poland has gathered a multidisciplinary team to imagine how we can integrate a more eco-friendly lifestyle into our future homes. In the centre of Szczecin, Poland, the results are showcased in the Home of Tomorrow — a spacious, plant-filled living environment where visitors can get inspired on how to turn their own homes into healthier and more sustainable spaces.

Read more | >

Autonomous tractors for farming.

OSAKA — Kubota has partnered with U.S. chipmaker Nvidia to develop highly sophisticated self-driving farm tractors, the Japanese machinery maker said Tuesday.

The tractors will be equipped with Nvidia graphics processing units and artificial intelligence, coupled with cameras to instantly process collected data.

The farming technology is expected to provide a labor-saving solution that will help address the shortage of workers in Japan’s agricultural industry.

Read more | >

It looks like our food for the future will be bugs. A factory in France will grow bugs as a food source.

Enter the insects. Or, more appropriately in this case, enter Ÿnsect, the French company with big ambitions to help change the way the world eats. Ÿnsect raised $125 million in Series C funding in early 2019, and at the time already had $70 million worth of aggregated orders to fill. Now they’re building a bug-farming plant to churn out tiny critters in record numbers.

You’ve probably heard of vertical farms in the context of plants; most existing vertical farms use LED lights and a precise mixture of nutrients and water to grow leafy greens or other produce indoors. They maximize the surface area used for growing by stacking several layers of plants on top of one another; the method may not make for as much space as outdoor fields have, but can yield a lot more than you might think.

Ÿnsect’s new plant will use layered trays too, except they’ll be cultivating beetle larvae instead of plants. The ceilings of the facility are 130 feet high—that’s a lot of vertical space to grow bugs in. Those of us who are grossed out by the thought will be glad to know that the whole operation will be highly automated; robots will tend to and harvest the beetles, and AI will be employed to keep tabs on important growing conditions like temperature and humidity.

Read more | >

Renewable energy is now richer than the Oil industry.

In yet another sign of the pace of the global energy transition – and the massive switch taking place in the investment community – the market value of company that describes itself as the world’s biggest producer of wind and solar power, US utility NextEra, has overtaken that of what used to be the world’s most valuable company, oil major ExxonMobil.

The flip occurred last last week, when NextEra overtook ExxonMobil to become the largest energy company in the US by market value. As Forbes reported, an investment in NextEra a decade ago would have delivered to return of 600 per cent, while an investment in ExxonMobil would have returned minus 25 per cent.

The shift is as significant as the one the world has seen in the auto industry, with electric vehicle maker Tesla overtaking the biggest car companies in the world in the last year, to the point where it is now valued at more than the next five biggest global car makers combined, despite producing just a fraction of the number of cars.

Read more | >