An AI analysis of 500,000 studies shows how we can end world hunger

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An Indian farmer dries harvested rice from a paddy field in Assam.

Ending hunger is one of the top priorities of the United Nations this decade. Yet the world appears to be backsliding, with an uptick of 60 million people experiencing hunger in the last five years to an estimated 690 million worldwide.

To help turn this trend around, a team of 70 researchers published a landmark series of eight studies in Nature Food, Nature Plants, and Nature Sustainability on Monday. The scientists turned to machine learning to comb 500,000 studies and white papers chronicling the world’s food system. The results show that there are routes to address world hunger this decade, but also that there are also huge gaps in knowledge we need to fill to ensure those routes are equitable and don’t destroy the biosphere.

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Futurism: a driver for new businesses

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Futurism won’t provide us winning lottery numbers, but it can tell us what the next scenarios may be for your company, market or customers, mapping the biggest threats and opportunities. It can help you contain risks and respond quickly in order to build sustainable success.

In this article, in addition to understanding what Futurism is, you’ll see how it’s related to innovation. You’ll also see how you can apply it to guide your business.

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How Stockholm is leading the way for smart cities

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‘Being smart is about working in a smarter way with different partners and empowering citizens’

Stockholm is one of the world’s most connected cities, and a beacon for innovators and international talent. We are also a forward-looking city, leading the environmental and smart city agendas. By 2040, we have the ambition to be both carbon neutral and the smartest city in the world.

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Why sun-grown cannabis will make the marijuana industry greener and richer

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The future of cannabis cultivation isn’t in massive grow facilities with high-tech lights and complex temperature control systems. It’s out in the open air, according to proponents of the sun-grown movement.

The sun-grown movement is being led by companies like Flow Kana, who consider outdoor cultivation essential to the sustainability of the cannabis industry. Embracing the small, independent farm system infrastructure that exists in California, the company works with craft farmers to help scale their product and extend the range of distribution.

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73 Percent of Millennials are Willing to Spend More Money on This 1 Type of Product

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It’s not even close to avocado toast.

In 2015, Nielsen polled 30,000 consumers in 60 countries around the world. They wanted to know more about what influences how people feel about brands, and how those feelings impact buying behavior.

One overwhelming conclusion of the report? That across the board, consumers are willing to pay extra for one thing: sustainability.

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Walmart wants to start a conversation on sustainability with its new Green Blog

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Walmart is going green?

So Walmart has launched a green blog, The Green Room, “that we hope to develop into a vibrant conversation about helping people live better around the globe.” So says Andrea Thomas, who leads sustainability at Walmart.

Right now there are just a few questions to start the conversation. What do you think are the biggest challenges in sustainability? What do you wish we, as a company, could do to address an environmental or social issue? How could we help you reach your own sustainability goals?

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Eating makes You Emit 2 Tons of CO2 a Year ?!

I’ll give you one guess were the CO2 was released from in this photo

Every person emits the equivalent of approximately two tonnes of carbon dioxide a year from the time food is produced to when the human body excretes it, representing more than 20% of total yearly emissions. That is what a study by the Universidad de Almería says, confirming for the first time that human excrements contribute to water pollution, primarily with nitrogen and phosphorus.

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Northern Forests Do Not Benefit from Lengthening Growing Season, Study Finds

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Forest in Finland.

Forests in northern areas are stunted, verging on the edge of survival. It has been anticipated that climate change improves their growth conditions. A study published in Forest Ecology and Management journal shows that due to their genetic characteristics trees are unable to properly benefit from the lengthening growing season.

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Termites Create Sustainable Monoculture Fungus Farming

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Macrotermes workers tending fungus garden nodules.

Food production of modern human societies is mostly based on large-scale monoculture crops, but it now appears that advanced insect societies have the same practice. Our societies took just ten thousand years of (mainly cultural) evolution to adopt this habit and we are far from convinced that it is sustainable. Farming ants and termites had tens of millions of years to evolve their fungus farming systems and here monocultures are apparently evolutionary stable.

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Advance In ‘Nano-Agriculture:’ Tiny Stuff Has Huge Effect On Plant Growth

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Tomato seeds exposed to carbon nanotubes (right) sprouted and grew faster than unexposed seeds (left).

With potential adverse health and environmental effects often in the news about nanotechnology, scientists in Arkansas are reporting that carbon nanotubes (CNTs) could have beneficial effects in agriculture. Their study, scheduled for the October issue of ACS Nano, found that tomato seeds exposed to CNTs germinated faster and grew into larger, heavier seedlings than other seeds. That growth-enhancing effect could be a boon for biomass production for plant-based biofuels and other agricultural products, they suggest.

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