Items of Interest

How To Build A Forest

Catherine Cleary of The Irish Times tells the fantastic story about how her and her husband decided to build a forest by buying the cheapest suitable land they could find and plant 27 acres of native trees as a form of Climate Action.

Environment

Life

Motivation

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Detecting How Gravity Influences Antimatter

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Scientists at CERN developed an experiment to test if gravity influences anti-matter in the same manner as with matter. The elaborate technical experiment found, using lots of magnets, that anti-matter is indeed influenced by gravity.

Science

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Oasis ADHD Visor

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University of Limerick graduate Joël Olympio was named the national winner of the James Dyson Award in Ireland for his Oasis visor, which is designed to reduce visual distractions for ADHD sufferers using a film that dims the wearer's mid-to-far peripheral vision

Innovation

Science

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Plastic Eating Bacteria

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Researchers at North Carolina State University have engineered new bacteria that can break down Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic while in saltwater.

Environment

Science

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Aviation Emissions Scenarios

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Hannah Ritchie published an excellent two-part explainer on the reality of aviation emissions and how the sector can respond to the Climate Emergency. Part one looks at various demand scenarios coupled with action scenarios of varying degrees and methods of reduction. Part two investigates the current landscape of aviation biofuels and the scale at which it would need to increase to meet the different demand and reduction scenarios.

Environment

Life

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Everywhere Man

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Johnny Cash Has Been Everywhere is a fun website that maps all the places where Johnny Cash has been during the song I've Been Everywhere.

Data Vis

Music

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Crows Use Statistical Inference

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Dr. Melissa Johnston of the University of Tübingen trained crows to test and show how they use statistical inference to select images based on the probability of receiving a treat from experience. The crows got it right every time, even when tested a month later.

Science

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Modelling Societal Collapse

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Gaya Herrington, the Sustainability and Dynamic System Analysis Lead at KPMG performed a study that analysed the 1972 Club of Rome Limits To Growth model and compared it to the current state of the world. Her study found that using the Business As Usual (BAU) scenario, the world is on track from societal collapse by around 2040, and using the Comprehensive Technology (CT) scenario, a halt to growth is predicted within the next decade or so. In her own words;

Data Vis

Environment

Life

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Robots Learning Behaviours

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The Toyota Research Institute released details of their work towards developing a Large Behaviour Model (LBM) for robotics. The AI model learned 60 dexterous behaviours autonomously following a manual demonstration of each behaviour using physical simulation.

AI & ML

Innovation

Tech

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Audio Isolating Robot Swarm

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Researchers from the University of Washington developed a swarm of audio robots that autonomously position themselves around a noisy environment to create different audio zones, which can be isolated from each other. The robot smart speakers can be used to isolate and record or block out separate conversations, as the sound sources move around the environment.

Audio

Innovation

Tech

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