Big Problems – Page 9

Big Problems, Inventions, new technology, Science & Technology News, Solar Energy

This desalination device delivers cheap, clean water with just solar power

June 3, 2019

In a coastal city in Namibia, a small shipping container near the beach sits surrounded
by solar panels. Inside, new technology uses that solar power
to turn ocean water from the Atlantic into drinking water.

Namibia is in the middle of a prolonged drought. The president recently declared the second state of emergency in three years because the lack of rain is leading to severe food shortages. But if scaled up, this technology could help supply households and agriculture with fresh water. The basic tech that it uses for desalination, called reverse osmosis, isn’t new. But because the system can run on solar power, without the use of batteries, it avoids the large carbon footprint of a typical energy-hungry desalination plant. It’s also significantly cheaper over the lifetime of the system.

Continue reading… “This desalination device delivers cheap, clean water with just solar power”

Analysis, Big Problems, Food, Health & Fitness, Science & Technology News

It’s not just salt, sugar, fat: Study finds ultra-processed foods drive weight gain

June 1, 2019

An example of one of the study’s ultra-processed lunches consists of quesadillas,
refried beans and diet lemonade. Participants on this diet ate an average of 508 calories
more per day and gained an average of 2 pounds over two weeks.

Over the past 70 years, ultra-processed foods have come to dominate the U.S. diet. These are foods made from cheap industrial ingredients and engineered to be super-tasty and generally high in fat, sugar and salt.

The rise of ultra-processed foods has coincided with growing rates of obesity, leading many to suspect that they’ve played a big role in our growing waistlines. But is it something about the highly processed nature of these foods itself that drives people to overeat? A new study suggests the answer is yes.

The study, conducted by researchers at the National Institutes of Health, is the first randomized, controlled trial to show that eating a diet made up of ultra-processed foods actually drives people to overeat and gain weight compared with a diet made up of whole or minimally processed foods. Study participants on the ultra-processed diet ate an average of 508 calories more per day and ended up gaining an average of 2 pounds over a two-week period. People on the unprocessed diet, meanwhile, ended up losing about 2 pounds on average over a two-week period.

Continue reading… “It’s not just salt, sugar, fat: Study finds ultra-processed foods drive weight gain”

Big Data, Big Problems, Internet, Science & Technology News

Your internet data is rotting

May 25, 2019

The internet is growing, but old information continues to disappear daily.

Many MySpace users were dismayed to discover earlier this year that the social media platform lost 50 million files uploaded between 2003 and 2015.

The failure of MySpace to care for and preserve its users’ content should serve as a reminder that relying on free third-party services can be risky.

MySpace has probably preserved the users’ data; it just lost their content. The data was valuable to MySpace; the users’ content less so.

Continue reading… “Your internet data is rotting”

Analysis, Big Problems, Law Enforcement, Science & Technology News

New Research : Prison time doesn’t actually deter repeat offenders

May 22, 2019

The American penal system assumes that being imprisoned is bad enough to deter people convicted of a crime from breaking the law again. But there’s new evidence that prison time doesn’t deter future crimes nearly as well as people tend to assume.

That’s the result of a study published Monday in the journal Nature Human Behavior. In it, a team of scientists from across the country analyzed 111,110 felons’ cases and discovered that there was no correlation between having served a prison sentence and committing more crimes later on.

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Automobiles, Big Problems, Science & Technology News, Transportation

The technology that could transform congestion pricing

May 19, 2019

Motorists entering Manhattan will soon be paying for the privilege. How should the city administer their tolls?

As cities like New York move ahead with plans to charge motorists to enter certain urban areas, we need to think about the best ways to manage road tolling.

Now that New York City has adopted congestion pricing in an effort to rein in traffic and raise revenue desperately needed to upgrade public transportation, other American cities are taking a closer look at this often-contentious technique. San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle have all recently released requests-for-proposals to begin studying the possibilities and implications of congestion pricing. As cities study the ins and outs of charging motorists to enter central districts, there hasn’t been much attention devoted to one critical part of congestion pricing package: the technology. How will tolls be collected? How will cities insure compliance in the charging zone? And how will our data privacy be addressed and protected?

Continue reading… “The technology that could transform congestion pricing”

Analysis, Big Problems, Human Behavior, Law Enforcement, Science & Technology News

How Tech Empowers Dangerous Lone Wolves

May 9, 2019

Technology is democratizing the power of who gets to live and who does not. Are we ready for the consequences?

This is the second installment of “Privatizing the Apocalypse,” a four-part essay being published throughout October. Read Part 1: “The 50/50 Murder” here.

In 2015, a depressive young German named Andreas Lubitz killed himself, five co-workers, and quite a few strangers. He was one of perhaps 1,000 suicidal mass murderers to strike that year worldwide. But an unusual combination of two factors put Lubitz in a ghoulish class of his own.

First, he hatched and executed his plans without anyone’s help — which was not remarkable in itself. But the second factor was scale — in that he really killed a lot of strangers. As in 144 of them. Lubitz’s victims hailed from 18 countries and included infants, retirees, and all ages between. He killed dozens of times more people than most rampage murderers and almost three times as many as 2017’s Las Vegas shooter, who is (for now) history’s most prolific lone suicidal gunman.

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Big Problems, Children, Human Behavior, Science & Technology News

More Teens are attempting suicide by poisoning. Here’s what parents should know

May 9, 2019

Suicide rates are on the rise in the U.S. across age groups and demographics. But in recent years, increases have been particularly pronounced among teenagers — especially girls, who die by suicide less frequently than boys but attempt it more often.

Intentional self-poisoning is the leading type of suicide attempt for adolescents (and the third-leading cause of suicide deaths), and a new study confirms that numbers here, too, are rising. The research, published in the Journal of Pediatrics, found that suicide attempts by poisoning have doubled in frequency among kids younger than 19, rising from almost 40,000 attempts in 2000 to almost 80,000 in 2018. Teen girls seemed to drive the increase in self-poisoning attempts, which can include intentional drug overdoses or exposure to other toxic substances.

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Agriculture, Big Problems, Green Friendly, Science & Technology News

Radical desalination approach may disrupt the water industry

May 9, 2019

Illustration describing fresh water production from hypersaline brines by temperature swing solvent extraction.

Hypersaline brines—water that contains high concentrations of dissolved salts and whose saline levels are higher than ocean water—are a growing environmental concern around the world. Very challenging and costly to treat, they result from water produced during oil and gas production, inland desalination concentrate, landfill leachate (a major problem for municipal solid waste landfills), flue gas desulfurization wastewater from fossil-fuel power plants, and effluent from industrial processes.

If hypersaline brines are improperly managed, they can pollute both surface and groundwater resources. But if there were a simple, inexpensive way to desalinate the brines, vast quantities of water would be available for all kinds of uses, from agriculture to industrial applications, and possibly even for human consumption.

Continue reading… “Radical desalination approach may disrupt the water industry”

Big Problems, Crime Prevention, Human Behavior, Science & Technology News

Oxford philosopher’s newest hypothesis predicts the rise of super villains

May 8, 2019

Oxford philosopher and founding director of the Future of Humanity Institute Nick Bostrom‘s latest research paper seems to indicate our species could be on a collision course with a technology-fueled super villain.

Will a deranged lunatic soon have the capabilities to take the entire world hostage? Can our nation’s leaders do anything to stop this inevitable tragedy? Will the caped crusader rescue his sidekick before the Joker’s sinister trap springs?

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Big Problems, Children, DNA, Parenting, Science & Technology News

CRISPR gene editing is coming for the womb

May 7, 2019

When an unborn baby is diagnosed with a life-threatening defect, it can be devastating. So some scientists hope to treat the fetus in the uterus, using gene editing.

WILLIAM PERANTEAU IS the guy parents call when they’ve received the kind of bad news that sinks stomachs and wrenches hearts. Sometimes it’s a shadow on an ultrasound or a few base pairs out of place on a prenatal genetic test, revealing that an unborn child has a life-threatening developmental defect. Pediatric surgeons like Peranteau, who works at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, usually can’t try to fix these abnormalities until their patients leave their mother’s bodies behind. And by then it might be too late.

It’s with the memory of the families he couldn’t help in the back of his mind that Peranteau has joined a small group of scientists trying to bring the fast-moving field of gene editing to the womb. Such editing in humans is a long way off, but a spate of recent advances in mouse studies highlight its potential advantages over other methods of using Crispr to snip away diseases. Parents confronted with an in utero diagnosis are often faced with only two options: terminate the pregnancy or prepare to care for a child who may require multiple invasive surgeries over the course of their lifetime just to survive. Prenatal gene editing may offer a third potential path. “What we see as the future is a minimally invasive way of treating these abnormalities at their genetic origin instead,” says Peranteau.

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Analysis, Big Problems, Housing, Science & Technology News

Over 13% of the homes in Japan are abandoned

April 30, 2019

Japan’s population is shrinking. Last year it fell by nearly 450,000 people. Not since records began in 1899 had so few babies been born (921,000). Before that, 2017 had also set a record. Meanwhile the number of people passing away last year set a post-war record. The figures are part of a larger pattern in which births have declined and deaths increased steadily for decades.

Less noticed is another alarming figure that’s been growing. According to the latest government statistics, the number of abandoned homes in Japan reached a record high of 8.5 million as of Oct. 1, 2018, up by 260,000 from five years earlier. As a proportion of total housing stock, abandoned homes reached 13.6%.

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Big Problems, Economy, Housing, Science & Technology News

Australia is on the brink of a housing collapse that resembles 2008

April 14, 2019

The U.S. has been an “island of stability” as economic woes grow all over the world. Other such islands exist, too.

Australia is high on the list. The last Down Under recession was 27—yes, 27—years ago in 1991. No other developed economy can say the same.

The long streak has a lot to do with being one of China’s top raw material suppliers during its historic boom. Australia has done other things right, too.

But all good things come to an end. While not officially in recession yet, Australia’s growth is slowing.

Continue reading… “Australia is on the brink of a housing collapse that resembles 2008”