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Mar 29, 2022

Taking Definitive Action on Your Sustainability Goals

Posted by in categories: climatology, government, policy, sustainability

This doesn’t mean you need to don an ushanka and start marching. You can start taking collective action by focusing on community groups and connecting with climate leaders. This will likely help you solve other issues, too, like waste disposal, recycling, and community clean-up projects in your locale.

Conclusion

Combating climate change requires all of us to reconsider our individual and collective climate responsibility. As an individual, you can do your part and let others know what you are doing. It has never been easier to connect with the world and share than it is today. You can join others in writing letters to the editor of your local newspaper, or your local and national government representatives. You can join groups like Citizens’ Climate Lobby and learn how to engage policy decision-makers. And in your daily routines, you can lead by example.

Mar 29, 2022

You’ll be injecting robots into your bloodstream to fight disease soon

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, robotics/AI

Science_Hightech — operanewsapp.

Mar 29, 2022

Aerial Photos Document the Expansive Greenhouses Covering Spain’s Almería Peninsula

Posted by in categories: food, materials

A follow-up to his series focused on the glow of LED-lit greenhouses, Tom Hegen’s new collection peers down on the landscape of Spain’s Almería peninsula. The German photographer is broadly interested in our impact on the earth and gears his practice toward the aerial, offering perspectives that illuminate the immense scale of human activity.

In The Greenhouse Series II, Hegen captures the abstract topographies of the world’s largest agricultural production center of its kind, which stretches across 360-square kilometers of rugged, mountainous terrain in the southern part of the country. The sun-trapping structures house plants like tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and watermelons that provide fresh produce to much of Europe year-round.

While 30 times more productive than typical farmland in the region, the facilities also function at a cost to the local ecosystems. “Groundwater is being polluted with fertilisers and pesticides. Some 30,000 tons of plastic waste are created each year,” Hegen tells Colossal, noting that the greenhouses are made almost entirely of plastic foil, which is shredded and discarded nearby once it’s no longer useful. “From there, wind and erosion transport it to the (Mediterranean Sea).”

Mar 29, 2022

Alien Life: What Would Constitute “Smoking Gun” Evidence?

Posted by in categories: alien life, chemistry

Multiple lines of evidence — physical, chemical, and biological — must converge for scientists to conclude that alien life has been found. This article was posted on Big Think. Check it out here: https://bigthink.com/hard-science/alien-life-smoking-gun-evidence

Mar 29, 2022

Evansville Man Spends Birthday Building Hydroponic Farm at Tepe Park to Feed Community

Posted by in categories: food, sustainability

An Evansville man spent his 27th birthday building a hydroponic farm at Tepe Park to help feed the community.

Mar 29, 2022

Quantum computing has a hype problem

Posted by in categories: quantum physics, robotics/AI

Quantum computing startups are all the rage, but it’s unclear if they’ll be able to produce anything of use in the near future.


As a buzzword, quantum computing probably ranks only below AI in terms of hype. Large tech companies such as Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft now have substantial research and development efforts in quantum computing. A host of startups have sprung up as well, some boasting staggering valuations. IonQ, for example, was valued at $2 billion when it went public in October through a special-purpose acquisition company. Much of this commercial activity has happened with baffling speed over the past three years.

I am as pro-quantum-computing as one can be: I’ve published more than 100 technical papers on the subject, and many of my PhD students and postdoctoral fellows are now well-known quantum computing practitioners all over the world. But I’m disturbed by some of the quantum computing hype I see these days, particularly when it comes to claims about how it will be commercialized.

Continue reading “Quantum computing has a hype problem” »

Mar 29, 2022

NVIDIA Releases GeForce RTX 3090 Ti: Ampere the All-Powerful

Posted by in category: computing

Back in January during their CES 2022 keynote, NVIDIA teased the GeForce RTX 3,090 Ti, an even more powerful version of NVIDIA’s flagship card for the high-end gaming and content creation markets. At the time, NVIDIA told us to expect more information later in January, only for January (and February) to come and go without further mention of the card. But now, in the waning days of March, the GeForce RTX 3,090 Ti’s day has come, as NVIDIA is launching their new flagship video card today.

So what is the RTX 3,090 Ti? In short, it’s every last bit of performance that NVIDIA can muster out of their Ampere architecture – the swan song for an architecture that has carried NVIDIA through the last 18 months. Whereas the original RTX 3,090 left a bit of performance on the table for yield or performance reasons, such as a couple of SMs or keeping TDPs to just 350 Watts, RTX 3,090 Ti leaves all of that behind. It’s all the Ampere that Ampere can be, with a fully-enabled GA102 GPU, better GDDR6X memory, and few (if any) limits on performance.

But Ampere unconstrained is going to cost you. While the original RTX 3,090 launched at an already high $1499, RTX 3,090 Ti ratchets that up further to $1999. And ongoing market distortions (i.e. the chip crunch) will likely compound that further, judging from RTX 3,090 prices. But regardless, the RTX 3,090 Ti isn’t priced to be competitive; it’s priced to be elite. NVIDIA never did produce a true Titan card for this generation, so the RTX 3,090 Ti is set to be the next best thing.

Mar 29, 2022

The military wants AI to replace human decision-making in battle

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, military, robotics/AI

DARPA, the innovation arm of the U.S. military, wants artificial intelligence to make battlefield medical decisions, raising red flags from some experts and ethicists.

Mar 29, 2022

Bill Gates and Blackrock are backing the start-up behind hydropanels that make water out of thin air

Posted by in categories: business, energy, sustainability

Source’s hydropanels are installed in 52 countries in 450 separate projects. The company has raised $150 million from investors including Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures, BlackRock, Duke Energy and the Lightsmith Group.

This type of technology is desperately needed in places like India, where an estimated 800,000 villages don’t have clean drinking water. Friesen cited World Health Organization, showing that by 2025 “half the world’s population will be in water stressed areas.”

There’s a domestic need as well. In the U.S, there are 1.5 million miles of lead pipes still in the ground, and about 750 water main breaks a day, according to Friesen. The business opportunity, he said, is enormous.

Mar 29, 2022

New Clues to Earth’s Formation From Ancient Helium Leaking From the Planet’s Core

Posted by in category: cosmology

Vast stores of helium from the Big Bang lingering in the core suggest Earth formed inside a solar nebula.

Helium-3, a rare isotope of helium gas, is leaking out of Earth’s core, a new study reports. Because almost all helium-3 is from the Big Bang, the gas leak adds evidence that Earth formed inside a solar nebula, which has long been debated.

Helium-3 has been measured at Earth’s surface in relatively small quantities. But scientists did not know how much was leaking from the Earth’s core, as opposed to its middle layers, called the mantle.