Category: Big Problems

Impact Lab > Big Problems
Big Problems, Environment, Recycling

Ocean plastic is a huge problem. Blockchain could be part of the solution.

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It’s all about stopping the flow of plastic into the marine environment.

Plastic Bank uses blockchain and cryptocurrency technology to give people living in impoverished areas an incentive to recycle.

The world’s oceans are awash in plastic, and the problem is only getting worse. Each year, 8 million metric tons of plastic debris ends up in the oceans, and that’s on top of the 150 million metric tons already in marine environments. The debris ensnares seabirds, starves whales and infiltrates the entire marine food chain — including humans, too, when we eat seafood.

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Batteries, Big Problems, Breakthrough Thinking, Energy

Scientists turn nuclear waste into diamond batteries

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They’ll reportedly last for thousands of years. This technology may someday power spacecraft, satellites, high-flying drones, and pacemakers.

Nuclear energy is carbon free, which makes it an attractive and practical alternative to fossil fuels, as it doesn’t contribute to global warming. We also have the infrastructure for it already in place. It’s nuclear waste that makes fission bad for the environment. And it lasts for so long, some isotopes for thousands of years. Nuclear fuel is comprised of ceramic pellets of uranium-235 placed within metal rods. After fission takes place, two radioactive isotopes are left over: cesium-137 and strontium-90.

These each have half-lives of 30 years, meaning the radiation will be half gone by that time. Transuranic wastes, such as Plutonium-239, are also created in the process. This has a half-life of 24,000 years. These materials are highly radioactive, making them extremely dangerous to handle, even with short-term exposure.

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3D Printer, Big Problems, Housing, Inventions

Will 3D printing solve the affordable housing crisis?

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3D printing’s impact on construction is slowly materializing.

Owning one’s own house—a dream of human beings ever since Cro-Magnons looked out of their caves at the retreating glaciers—has been sometimes more, sometimes less affordable. Currently, we’re in one of the less affordable phases. With construction accounting for almost 60 percent of the cost of a new single-family home, measures that reduce labor and simplify material needs may make the dream more accessible for many.

Cue the 3D-printing evangelists. The 2010s have been ringing with the hosannas of houses extruded from a 3D printer in hours, sometimes many of them per day. The options seem limitless, with made-to-order versions in concrete, like Icon’s tiny house in Austin; ABS plastic and carbon fiber, like Branch Technology’s prototype home in Chattanooga; and recycled materials, like Chinese manufacturer WinSun’s five-story apartment building in Suzhou. By simplifying construction, we’re told, 3D printing can provide affordable shelter to everyone from the working poor to refugees.

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Big Problems, Climate Change, Environment, Weather

2 gonzo ideas for slowing down a hurricane that might actually work

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Scientists are looking into ways to weaken hurricanes early on.

Hurricane Michael is expected to bring life-threatening winds and storm surge to Florida’s Gulf Coast.

As heavy winds from Hurricane Michael begin to lash Florida’s Gulf Coast, forecasters are urging residents of the panhandle, Big Bend, and Nature Coast to prepare for life-threatening storm surge and flooding.

With so much potential devastation, one may wonder whether anything can be done to stop Michael in its tracks.

It’s quite a daunting challenge, given that the average hurricane’s wind energy equals about half of the world’s electricity production in a year. The energy it releases as it forms clouds is 200 times the world’s annual electricity use.

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AI, Artificial Intelligence, Big Problems, Computer Security, Future

8 predictions for the near-future of artificial intelligence

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An artificial Intelligence project utilizing a humanoid robot from French company Aldebaran and reprogramed for their specific campus makes its debut as an assistant for students attending Palomar College in San Marcos, California, U.S. October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake

No one disputes the potential impact AI will have across a wide range of business sectors.

At this year’s Annual Meeting of the New Champions (AMNC) in Tianjin, China, PwC unveiled a report detailing eight significant predictions for the future of artificial intelligence (AI), called 2018 AI Predictions – 8 insights to shape business strategy. No one disputes the potential impact AI will have across a wide range of business sectors, and PwC has drawn on its own research and experience to lay out what it believes the short-term future holds for this exciting and sometimes anxiety-raising technology.

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Big Problems, Drone, drones, Terrorism

Remote weapons come of age

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During a military-related event on Aug 4, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro came close to being assassinated by a pair of drones. While Maduro escaped unscathed, the attack managed to injure seven soldiers. Various media outlets noted that this was the first known drone assassination attempt on a president. This development was however long in the offing.

The type of drone used in the Venezuelan attack was reportedly a DJI M600 model that can be ordered online for $5,000. Each drone allegedly carried 1 kg of C-4 plastic explosives which itself can be confected from online DIY tutorials – if one knew where and how to look for them.Imagine what would happen if a few C-4 laden drones crashed into an oil tanker truck at a congested traffic stop or an oil refinery itself?Or even a crowded children’s playground? A month since the assassination attempt on Maduro, terrorists in Syria’s Idlib province have begun using drones against Russian military bases in the region.

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Analysis, Big Problems, Environment, new technology, Software Development

Software predicts landslides in weeks, not hours, in advance

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Researchers have developed a new software tool that predicts the boundaries of where landslides will occur two weeks before they happen.

Landslides—masses of rock, earth, or debris moving down a slope—happen everywhere. The effect on communities, the economy, and most importantly, lives, can be devastating. A recent landslide at a jade mine in Myanmar, for example, claimed at least 27 lives.

In open pit mines, landslides are particularly common. In 2013 a 20 meter towering wall of dirt and rocks, deep enough to bury New York City’s Central Park, came crashing down when Bingham Canyon, one of the largest copper producing mines in the United States, gave way. Astonishingly no one was hurt, thanks to advance warnings.

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Artificial Intelligence, Big Problems, Films, Human Behavior, Science & Technology News

Carnegie Mellon researchers create the most convincing deepfakes yet

Ever heard of “deepfakes”? Videos generated with artificial intelligence (AI) that learn to superimpose the face of one person onto the body of another have been used to swap Harrison Ford for Nicolas Cage in countless movie clips, and for far more nefarious purposes, like fake celebrity porn and propaganda. Now, for better or worse, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have developed a new AI system that’s more powerful — and versatile — than previous attempts.

It’s called “Recycle-GAN,” and the team described it as an “unsupervised, data-driven approach” for transferring the content of one video or photo to another. “Such a content translation and style preservation task has numerous applications, including human motion and face translation from one person to other, teaching robots from human demonstration,” the researchers wrote, “or converting black-and-white videos to color.”

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Analysis, Big Problems, Healthcare

The doctor is out? Why physicians are leaving their practices to pursue other careers

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“After 20 years, I quit medicine and none of my colleagues were surprised. In fact, they all said they wish they could do the same,” said one doctor.

The Association of American Medical Colleges projects a shortage of 42,600 to 121,300 physicians by 2030.

The news that New York University will offer free tuition to all its medical school students, in the hope of encouraging more doctors to choose lower-paying specialties, offered hope to those wishing to pursue a career in the field.

However, becoming a doctor remains one of the most challenging career paths you can embark upon. It requires extensive (and expensive) schooling followed by intensive residencies before you’re fully on your feet. The idea, generally, is that all the hard work will pay off not only financially, but also in terms of job satisfaction and work-life balance; then there’s the immeasurable personal benefits of helping people, and possibly even saving lives. In terms of both nobility and prestige, few occupations rank as high.

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Analysis, Big Problems, Healthcare

The five universal laws of human stupidity

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In 1976, a professor of economic history at the University of California, Berkeley published an essay outlining the fundamental laws of a force he perceived as humanity’s greatest existential threat: Stupidity.

Stupid people, Carlo M. Cipolla explained, share several identifying traits: they are abundant, they are irrational, and they cause problems for others without apparent benefit to themselves, thereby lowering society’s total well-being. There are no defenses against stupidity, argued the Italian-born professor, who died in 2000. The only way a society can avoid being crushed by the burden of its idiots is if the non-stupid work even harder to offset the losses of their stupid brethren.

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Analysis, Big Problems, Food, Human Behavior

It’s easy to become obese in America. These 7 charts explain why.

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“In America, the unhealthiest foods are the tastiest foods, the cheapest foods, the largest-portion foods.”

It’s no secret that Americans have gotten much, much bigger over the past few decades. The signs are all around us, from XXXL clothing sizes to supersize movie seats and even larger coffins.

According to an analysis from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the average American man now stands at 5-feet-9 1/4 inches tall and weighs 196 pounds — up 15 pounds from 20 years ago. For women, the change has been even more striking: The average female today stands 5-feet-3 3/4 inches and weighs 169 pounds. In 1994, her scale read 152 pounds

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