Who needs microphones when you have cameras?
Originally shared by Winchell Chung
Article from 2014
The team’s processing algorithm lets them take a new tack: a completely passive recovery of the sound. By recording objects’ movements on high-frame-rate video, in ambient lighting—no laser needed—they are able to translate the vibrations caused by speech and music back to sound waves, with only a little bit of noise.
I happened to be reading this book both before and after Ursula Le Guin’s death, which converted the review into something of a tribute to an author I’ve long appreciated.
While bulk crops like wheat, rice, and soy will still need to be grown on large areas of land, growing 80% of America’s carrots in one sometimes drought-stricken county in California and shipping them for days in trucks is obviously not optimal. Growing vegetables close to consumers has all kinds of benefits.
Originally shared by Greg Batmarx
The urban farms sprouting up and across cities around the world aren’t just feeding mouths, they are “critical to survival” and a “necessary adaptation” for developing regions and a changing climate, according to a new study.
Urban farms, which include plain ol’ allotments, indoor vertical farms and rooftop gardens nestled amongst busy streets and skyscrapers, have become increasingly popular and important as the world’s population grows and more and more people move to cities.
The United Nations predicts that by 2030, two-thirds of the world’s population will be living in cities, with the urban population in developing countries doubling. That’s a lot of mouths to feed.
The new paper, published in the journal Earth’s Future and led by the Arizona State University and Google, finds that this expected urban population boom will benefit from urban farming in multiple ways.
As the Thomson Reuters Foundation explained from the study Urban farms could supply almost the entire recommended consumption of vegetables for city dwellers, while cutting food waste and reducing emissions from the transportation of agricultural products.
According to the study, urban agriculture can help solve a host of urban environmental problems, from increasing vegetation cover (thus contributing to a decrease in the urban heat island intensity), improving the livability of cities, and providing enhanced food security to more than half of Earth’s population.
After analyzing multiple datasets in Google Earth Engine, the researchers calculated that the existing vegetation on urban farms around the world already provides some $33 billion annually in services from biocontrol, pollination, climate regulation and soil formation.
The future of urban agriculture has even more potential, the researchers found.
We project potential annual food production of 100–180 million tonnes, energy savings ranging from 14 to 15 billion kilowatt hours, nitrogen sequestration between 100,000 and 170,000 tonnes, and avoided storm water runoff between 45 and 57 billion cubic meters annually the authors wrote.
In addition, we estimate that food production, nitrogen fixation, energy savings, pollination, climate regulation, soil formation and biological control of pests could be worth as much as $80–160 billion annually in a scenario of intense [urban agriculture] implementation.
Others have praised urban farming for its many benefits.
Urban agriculture won’t resolve all food production and distribution problems, but it could help take pressure off rural land while providing other advantages wrote environmentalist Dr. David Suzuki.
He cited an example of how one patch of Detroit land, where 12 vacant houses were removed to grow food, has supplied almost 200,000 kilograms of produce for 2,000 local families, provided volunteer experience to 8,000 residents and brought the area new investment and increased safety.
Local and urban agriculture can also help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and recycle nutrient-rich food scraps, plant debris and other ‘wastes’ Suzuki continued.
Because maintaining lawns for little more than aesthetic value requires lots of water, energy for upkeep and often pesticides and fertilizers, converting them to food gardens makes sense.
Writer and former Vancouver city councillor Peter Ladner also wrote in The Urban Food Revolution: Changing the Way We Feed Cities
When urban agriculture flourishes, our children are healthier and smarter about what they eat, fewer people are hungry, more local jobs are created, local economies are stronger, our neighborhoods are greener and safer, and our communities are more inclusive.
https://www.ecowatch.com/urban-farming-suzuki-2524555512.html
I disagree on using an apostrophe with numbers (“the 90s” is unambiguous, and perfectly logical and grammatical). But the rest of this chart is useful, assuming you already know what part of speech something is.
For a non-chart version that is, in my opinion, simpler, try my explanation at: http://csidemedia.com/wellpresentedms.
Originally shared by Writers Write
According to this article, the business case for asteroid mining is not to bring asteroid materials to Earth, but to build a space-based industrial infrastructure that makes it much cheaper to bring energy and data to Earth.
Attn: Brand Gamblin.
Originally shared by Singularity Hub
Want Faster Data and a Cleaner Planet? Start Mining Asteroids http://suhub.co/2mPQTTY
Spice up your fantasy setting with a completely ridiculous medical theory!
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/sham-medicine-orificial-surgery-edwin-pratt-vagina-phrenology
How close are we to “real” artificial intelligence, and how fast are we progressing?
Unsurprisingly, the answer is complicated.
Originally shared by Singularity Hub
How Fast Is AI Progressing? Stanford’s New Report Card for Artificial Intelligence http://suhub.co/2DNrJxA
Missing from this discussion, which mentions both David Brin’s Uplift books and the Planet of the Apes franchise, is a mention of Cordwainer Smith. His uplifted animals were basically second-class humans, treated as slaves. The Ballad of Lost C’Mel is probably the best-known story, in which an uplifted cat joins in a courageous and tragic fight for the betterment of her people. A more recent example is Barsk, by Lawrence M. Schoen, though it would be a spoiler to tell you how that plays out.
The other thing – and I can’t remember where I read this – is that if you take a great ape, say, and give it the genetic changes that are needed for it to be more intelligent and able to speak – including changing much of its physiology so that it can give birth to offspring with larger skulls – what you end up with is something that basically looks like a human. The article notes that guppies with larger brains ended up with smaller digestive systems and fewer offspring; you can’t just magically add more intelligence to a species in isolation from other physiological changes.
The other way this could be done, of course, is to hook both humans and non-human animals up to AI with neural nets. If the enhanced intelligence is not physiologically supported, but technologically supported, you’re in a whole different realm; you can leave the animals’ physiology largely as it is, but enable them to control devices for manipulating their environment, performing various forms of advanced mental processing, and communicating. But then, is that an animal with AI enhancement, or an AI with a biological peripheral?
Originally shared by Singularity Hub
If We Learn to Engineer Animals to Be as Smart as Humans—Should We? http://suhub.co/2mLHA8j
When the habitually utopian Singularity Hub declares a technology cool but a long way from being practical, it’s probably not one to rush out and invest in.
Originally shared by Singularity Hub
Are Solar Roads the Highway of the Future, or a Road to Nowhere? http://suhub.co/2mDuwB1
This is well worth a read.
Originally shared by Kymberlyn Reed
#morethan28days