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One Concern Uses AI to Streamline Disaster Relief Efforts

Fri, 2018-11-16 23:25 — Kathy Gilbeaux

Image: One Concern

fastcompany.com - by Katharine Schwab - November 15, 2018

. . . One Concern is launching a machine learning platform that provides cities with specialized maps to help emergency crews decide where to focus their efforts in a flood. The maps update in real-time based on data about where water is flowing to estimate where people need help the most. It’s the latest in a wave of AI-powered tools aimed at helping cities prepare for an era of severe, and increasingly frequent, disasters.

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Our platform provides unprecedented situational awareness and actionable insights for decision-makers.

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What One Devastated Community Can Teach The World About Mental Health

Mon, 2018-10-08 16:13 — Maeryn Obley

An aerial view of homes that were destroyed by the Tubbs Fire on October 11, 2017 in Santa Rosa, California. Twenty-one people have died in wildfires that have burned tens of thousands of acres and destroyed over 3,000 homes and businesses in several Northen California counties. JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES

Image: An aerial view of homes that were destroyed by the Tubbs Fire on October 11, 2017 in Santa Rosa, California. Twenty-one people have died in wildfires that have burned tens of thousands of acres and destroyed over 3,000 homes and businesses in several Northen California counties. JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES

wired.com - October 8th 2018 - Matt Simon

A YEAR AGO, while on a tourist visit to Latvia, Sharon Bard was awoken at 4 am by a buzzing alert from her phone. It was an email from a friend who’d been checking on her home in Santa Rosa, California. Given the alarming news, the email's phrasing was rather gentle: A fire had broken out in the area, officials had ordered evacuations, and Bard’s country house at the end of a road might be affected.

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CLICK HERE - STUDY - Chem - 14.1% Efficient Monolithically Integrated Solar Flow Battery

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How a ‘Solar Battery’ Could Bring Electricity to Rural Areas

Thu, 2018-09-27 21:44 — Kathy Gilbeaux

New solar flow battery with a 14.1 percent efficiency. Photo: David Tenenbaum, UW-Madison

theverge.com - by Angela Chen - September 27, 2018

Solar energy is becoming more and more popular as prices drop, yet a home powered by the Sun isn’t free from the grid because solar panels don’t store energy for later. Now, researchers have refined a device that can both harvest and store solar energy, and they hope it will one day bring electricity to rural and underdeveloped areas.

The problem of energy storage has led to many creative solutions, like giant batteries. For a paper published today in the journal Chem, scientists trying to improve the solar cells themselves developed an integrated battery that works in three different ways.

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CLICK HERE - The GrowHaus

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This woman was struggling to find fresh food. She never expected this solution.

Sun, 2018-09-23 22:57 — Kathy Gilbeaux

Image via Upworthy

upworthy.com - by Sam Dylan Finch - August 31, 2018

How do you get healthy food on the table when you can't find any?

This is a question that Ortilia Lujan Flores had grappled with many times before.

She wanted affordable, nutritious food, but lived in a neighborhood that didn’t have an accessible grocery store.

Flores couldn't drive, which limited the few food options she had. "There was nowhere to go," she explains.

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CLICK HERE - STUDY - Ultrasound-assisted synthesis of sodium powder as electrode additive to improve cycling performance of sodium-ion batteries

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Super Cheap Earth Element to Advance New Battery Tech to the Industry

Thu, 2018-09-20 07:08 — Kathy Gilbeaux

Purdue researcher Jialiang Tang helped resolve charging issues in sodium-ion batteries that have prevented the technology from advancing to industry testing and use. Credit: Purdue University Marketing and Media

phys.org - by Kayla Wiles - September 19, 2018

Most of today's batteries are made up of rare lithium mined from the mountains of South America. If the world depletes this source, then battery production could stagnate.

Sodium is a very cheap and earth-abundant alternative to using lithium-ion batteries that is also known to turn purple and combust if exposed to water—even just water in the air.

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Mainland Miami Ponders Returning Neighborhoods to Nature In Order To Survive Rising Seas

Sun, 2018-09-09 07:57 — Kathy Gilbeaux

The annual king tides are rising in South Florida, causing some flooding in coastal areas. By Joey Flechas

miamiherald.com - by David Smiley - June 9, 2017

. . . In order to save Shorecrest, where million-dollar homeowners mingle with middle-class families and blue-collar renters, government officials across the region are now asking whether it ought to be redesigned rather than simply reinforced. Where climate change poster child Miami Beach is investing $500 million in pumps, streets and sea walls in order to fight for every inch of dry land, municipalities on the mainland are exploring what some communities would look like if they were made to accommodate rising seas rather than simply fight them.

One idea likely to be both controversial and expensive: demolishing properties and returning developed areas back to nature.

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CLICK HERE - STUDY - PNAS - Social learning and partisan bias in the interpretation of climate trends

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Political Anonymity May Help Us See Both Sides of a Divisive Issue Online

Wed, 2018-09-05 23:34 — Kathy Gilbeaux

techcrunch.com - by Devin Coldewey - September 3, 2018

Some topics are so politically charged that even to attempt a discussion online is to invite toxicity and rigid disagreement among participants. But a new study finds that exposure to the views of others, minus their political affiliation, could help us overcome our own biases.

Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, led by sociologist Damon Centola, examined how people’s interpretations of some commonly misunderstood climate change data changed after seeing those of people in opposing political parties.

The theory is that by exposing people to information sans partisan affiliation, we might be able to break the “motivated reasoning” that leads us to interpret data in a preconceived way.

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CLICK HERE - West Antarctic Ice Sheet Collapse – The Fall and Rise of a Paradigm

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A Radical New Scheme to Prevent Catastrophic Sea-Level Rise

Sat, 2018-09-01 08:08 — Kathy Gilbeaux

A Princeton glaciologist says a set of mega-engineering projects may be able to stabilize the world’s most dangerous glaciers.

theatlantic.com - by Robinson Meyer - January 11, 2018

. . . What if scientists could prevent one catastrophic symptom of climate change—a rapid rise in global sea level, for instance—without messing again with the weather?

Michael Wolovick, a glaciology postdoc at Princeton University, believes it may be possible.

For the past two years, Wolovick has studied whether a set of targeted geo-engineering projects could hold off the worst sea-level rise for centuries, giving people time to adapt to climate change and possibly reverse it.

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Electric Scooters’ Sudden Invasion of American Cities, Explained

Tue, 2018-08-28 08:51 — Kathy Gilbeaux

Turns out there’s a lot of latent demand for a quick and cheap way to get around.

vox.com - by Umair Irfan - August 27, 2018

. . . Amid the feverish passion for and against scooters, there’s a larger reckoning taking place about rapid changes to our cities and public spaces. The scooters are forcing conversations about who is entitled to use sidewalks, streets, and curbs, and who should pay for their upkeep.

They’re also exposing transit deserts, showing who is and isn’t adequately served by the status quo, and even by newer options like bike share. That people have taken so readily to scooters shows just how much latent demand there is for a quick and cheap way to get around cities.

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