Originally shared by Alan Stainer
France Declares All New Rooftops Must Be Topped With Plants Or Solar Panels
Excuse the pun, but this is good for the environment on so many levels.
Now why aren’t more governments doing this?
http://csglobe.com/france-declares-all-new-rooftops-must-be-topped-with-plants-or-solar-panels/
Three copies arrived yesterday.
It includes my story “Taking Pro”.
Key takeaway (one I see over and over): cheap general-purpose electronics and the accumulation of already-solved problems provide a platform from which we can solve entirely different problems relatively cheaply and easily.
Originally shared by Singularity Hub
Veo Gives Robots ‘Eyes and a Brain’ So They Can Safely Work With People http://bit.ly/2q8dTlG
Via Yonatan Zunger.
In the comments to Yonatan’s post, someone said (I paraphrase), “People of colour have been saying this for years, but now that a white man says it everyone finally listens.”
Without denying the truth of that, I’d point out that in his speech the mayor acknowledges how his black friends, by saying this for years, helped him understand the problem, so that he could use his power to solve it.
Originally shared by Rugger Ducky
If you haven’t read this transcript or heard the speech yet, do.
Landrieu hits the proverbial nail squarely on the head.
New Orleans was America’s largest slave market: a port where hundreds of thousands of souls were brought, sold and shipped up the Mississippi River to lives of forced labor of misery of rape, of torture.
America was the place where nearly 4,000 of our fellow citizens were lynched, 540 alone in Louisiana; where the courts enshrined ‘separate but equal’; where Freedom riders coming to New Orleans were beaten to a bloody pulp.
So when people say to me that the monuments in question are history, well what I just described is real history as well, and it is the searing truth.
And it immediately begs the questions: why there are no slave ship monuments, no prominent markers on public land to remember the lynchings or the slave blocks; nothing to remember this long chapter of our lives; the pain, the sacrifice, the shame … all of it happening on the soil of New Orleans.
I have a story (parked in need of more conflict) involving growing towers, so this kind of thing interests me.
Originally shared by Gadgetify
Garden Tower 2 Lets You Grow 50 Plants in 4 Sq. Ft Area
Via Isaac Kuo.
Originally shared by Randy Smith
A new startup is finding a way to grow crops indoors economically in the context of our current supply chain infrastructure, and with more tasty and nutritious varieties than are currently available through that infrastructure. Several things are coming together to let them do this, including substantial drops in the cost of LED lights, machine learning for placement of towers and lamps, and vertical planting allowing use of gravity to distribute water rather than pumps. The dense production (much much more produce per ft^2 than farms) allowing them to put production centers very convenient to grocery distribution centers, getting the produce to groceries much faster. That in term allows them to use varietals that are optimized for taste and nutrition instead of shelf stability (and just getting them to stores faster improves the nutrition). And being indoors means that they can minimize pests to the point where they can control them with ladybugs, avoiding pesticides.
I think there are a lot of implications to this, many positive, some disturbing.
+ It sounds like this is riding several technology curves (LED light, machine learning, IoT), so it’s only going to get more efficient.
+ It’s all technology all the time (the plants roots aren’t even in dirt, but a plastic growth medium made from recycled bottles), which may give it an “eww!” factor, but I suspect does produce nutritious, clean plants.
+ As it evolves, this technique could substantially raise the carrying capacity of the planet, which is good because AIUI convention farming with fertilizers depletes the soil and I’ve been concerned that’ll take us to a place where we suddenly have no ability to feed the people on the planet.
+ However, the same result means we’ll have less incentive to get a handle on our population growth. (Though simply getting countries through the demographic transition to wealthy societies will help here.)
+ And the same thing gives us much less incentive to take care of the environment.
So: Modified rapture?? :-} :-J
Amazon is about to start weekly charts, showing not only what books are most sold (across ebook, print book, and audiobook), but which ones are most read (ebook and audiobook).
Originally shared by Greg Batmarx
As electronics become increasingly pervasive in our lives, from smart phones to wearable sensors, so too does the ever rising amount of electronic waste they create.
A United Nations Environment Program report found that almost 50 million tons of electronic waste were thrown out in 2017, more than 20 percent higher than waste in 2015.
Troubled by this mounting waste, Stanford engineer Zhenan Bao and her team are rethinking electronics.
In my group, we have been trying to mimic the function of human skin to think about how to develop future electronic devices Bao said.
She described how skin is stretchable, self-healable and also biodegradable, an attractive list of characteristics for electronics.
We have achieved the first two [flexible and self-healing], so the biodegradability was something we wanted to tackle.
The team created a flexible electronic device that can easily degrade just by adding a weak acid like vinegar. The results were published May 1 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
This is the first example of a semiconductive polymer that can decompose said lead author Ting Lei a postdoctoral fellow working with Bao.
In addition to the polymer, essentially a flexible, conductive plastic, the team developed a degradable electronic circuit and a new biodegradable substrate material for mounting the electrical components. This substrate supports the electrical components, flexing and molding to rough and smooth surfaces alike.
When the electronic device is no longer needed, the whole thing can biodegrade into nontoxic components.
Biodegradable bits
Bao a professor of chemical engineering and materials science and engineering, had previously created a stretchable electrode modeled on human skin. That material could bend and twist in a way that could allow it to interface with the skin or brain, but it couldn’t degrade. That limited its application for implantable devices and, important to Bao, contributed to waste.
Bao said that creating a robust material that is both a good electrical conductor and biodegradable was a challenge, considering traditional polymer chemistry.
We have been trying to think how we can achieve both great electronic property but also have the biodegradability Bao said.
Eventually, the team found that by tweaking the chemical structure of the flexible material it would break apart under mild stressors.
We came up with an idea of making these molecules using a special type of chemical linkage that can retain the ability for the electron to smoothly transport along the molecule Bao said. But also this chemical bond is sensitive to weak acid, even weaker than pure vinegar.
The result was a material that could carry an electronic signal but break down without requiring extreme measures.
In addition to the biodegradable polymer, the team developed a new type of electrical component and a substrate material that attaches to the entire electronic component. Electronic components are usually made of gold. But for this device, the researchers crafted components from iron. Bao noted that iron is a very environmentally friendly product and is nontoxic to humans.
The researchers created the substrate, which carries the electronic circuit and the polymer, from cellulose. Cellulose is the same substance that makes up paper.
But unlike paper, the team altered cellulose fibers so the “paper” is transparent and flexible, while still breaking down easily.
The thin film substrate allows the electronics to be worn on the skin or even implanted inside the body.
From implants to plants
The combination of a biodegradable conductive polymer and substrate makes the electronic device useful in a plethora of settings, from wearable electronics to large-scale environmental surveys with sensor dusts.
We envision these soft patches that are very thin and conformable to the skin that can measure blood pressure, glucose value, sweat content Bao said. A person could wear a specifically designed patch for a day or week, then download the data. According to Bao, this short-term use of disposable electronics seems a perfect fit for a degradable, flexible design.
And it’s not just for skin surveys: the biodegradable substrate, polymers and iron electrodes make the entire component compatible with insertion into the human body. The polymer breaks down to product concentrations much lower than the published acceptable levels found in drinking water. Although the polymer was found to be biocompatible, Bao said that more studies would need to be done before implants are a regular occurrence.
Biodegradable electronics have the potential to go far beyond collecting heart disease and glucose data. These components could be used in places where surveys cover large areas in remote locations.
Lei described a research scenario where biodegradable electronics are dropped by airplane over a forest to survey the landscape. It’s a very large area and very hard for people to spread the sensors,” he said. “Also, if you spread the sensors, it’s very hard to gather them back. You don’t want to contaminate the environment so we need something that can be decomposed. Instead of plastic littering the forest floor, the sensors would biodegrade away.
As the number of electronics increase, biodegradability will become more important. Lei is excited by their advancements and wants to keep improving performance of biodegradable electronics.
We currently have computers and cell phones and we generate millions and billions of cell phones, and it’s hard to decompose he said. We hope we can develop some materials that can be decomposed so there is less waste.
We could always just call it “magic”.
Originally shared by Singularity Hub
The Next Great Computer Interface Is Emerging—But It Doesn’t Have a Name Yet
We give things names so we can talk about them. Most of the writing phenomena on this page are common mistakes, but I’m glad to say that I’ve written Mrs Brown, more than once, and I’ll do it again.