Connect with us

Tech

The Download: cattle’s deadly tick-borne disease, and molten salt batteries

Published

on

🍗


This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

A new tick-borne disease is killing cattle in the US

In the spring of 2021, Cynthia and John Grano, who own a cattle operation in Culpeper County, Virginia, started noticing some of their cows slowing down and acting “spacey.” They figured the animals were suffering from a common infectious disease that causes anemia in cattle. But their veterinarian had warned them that another disease carried by a parasite was spreading rapidly in the area.

After a third cow died, the Granos decided to test its blood. Sure enough, the test came back positive for the disease: theileria. And with no treatment available, the cows kept dying.

Cattle owners like the Granos are not alone. Livestock producers around the US are confronting this new and unfamiliar disease without much information. Researchers still don’t know how theileria will unfold, even as it quickly spreads west across the country. If states can’t get the disease under control, then nationwide production losses from sick cows could significantly damage both individual operations and the entire industry. Read the full story.

—Britta Lokting

Super-hot salt could be coming to a battery near you

The world is building more capacity for renewables, especially solar and wind power that come and go with the weather. But for renewables to make a real difference, we need better options for storing energy. That’s where batteries come in. And handily, there’s a wave of alternative chemistries slowly percolating into the growing energy storage market.

Some of these new players could eventually be cheaper (and in various ways, better) than the industry-standard lithium-ion batteries. Among the most promising is molten salt technology, which Ambri, a Boston-area startup, is convinced could be up to 50% cheaper over its lifetime than an equivalent lithium-ion system.

But, like its rivals experimenting with other forms of energy storage, Ambri is facing real barriers to adoption, with scaling presenting the main, ever-present hurdle. Read the full story.

—Casey Crownhart

Casey’s story is from The Spark, her weekly newsletter covering battery breakthroughs and other climate news. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Wednesday.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 What comes after Twitter?
Whatever the answer, downloading data and contacts is a smart move. (NYT $)
+ It’s unlikely, however, that you’ll be able to save everything. (Wired $)
+ A load of fired contractors aren’t planning on going quietly. (Bloomberg $)
+ One of its former data scientists is extremely worried. (Rest of World)
+ Twitter’s potential collapse could wipe out vast records of recent human history. (MIT Technology Review)

2 The ripple effects of FTX’s collapse
The crypto exchange’s poor practices are triggering fears about the industry’s future—and its employees are furious. (WSJ $)
+ Sam Bankman-Fried had an ill-advised chat with a journalist over Twitter. (Vox)
+ A class action has been filed against FTX in the US. (The Guardian)

3 The US’s bioweapon detection system is unreliable  
20 years after its introduction, it still costs $80 million a year. (The Verge

4 Telehealth sites are riddled with data trackers
They could reveal sensitive addiction information that’s ripe for abuse. (Wired $)

5 Activision Blizzard’s games are being pulled offline in China
It’s been unable to strike a deal with its Chinese distributor. (FT $)

6 Intel thinks it can catch deepfakes with 96% accuracy
By tracking the “blood flow” of video pixels to detect living humans. (VentureBeat)
+ A horrifying AI app swaps women into porn videos with a click. (MIT Technology Review)

7 We’ve ignored concrete’s carbon footprint for too long
It’s not as big a polluter as transport or energy, but it’s in urgent need of a greener overhaul. (Knowable Magazine)
+ How Joe Biden got away with passing the IRA. (The Atlantic $)
+ How hydrogen and electricity can clean up heavy industry. (MIT Technology Review)

8 Lab-grown meat is safe to eat
The FDA has green lit lab-grown chicken—but it needs to pass other tests before it can be sold. (NBC News)
+ Will lab-grown meat reach our plates? (MIT Technology Review)

9 Why NASA’s astronauts aren’t allowed to TikTok from space 🪐
Even though their European counterparts are. (Vox
+ NASA’s Artemis 1 launch was an oddly muted affair. (The Atlantic $)
+ Here’s everything the mission is taking with it to the moon. (IEEE Spectrum)

10 We could hitch a ride on a flying taxi one day 🚁
By the end of the decade, apparently. Let’s see. (Economist $)

Quote of the day

“Ireland really bet the farm on the future of tech . . . almost at the expense of everything else.”

—Mark O’Connell, executive chair and founder of OCO Global, a trade and investment focused advisory firm, tells the Financial Times why the tech sector’s mass job cuts will hit Ireland particularly hard.

The big story

Bright LEDs could spell the end of dark skies

A view of Milky Way from the Grand Canyon

August 2022

Scientists have known for years that light pollution is growing and can harm both humans and wildlife. In people, increased exposure to light at night disrupts sleep cycles and has been linked to cancer and cardiovascular disease, while wildlife suffers from interruption to their reproductive patterns, increased danger and loss of stealth.

Astronomers, policymakers, and lighting professionals are all working to find ways to reduce light pollution. Many of them advocate installing light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, in outdoor fixtures such as city streetlights, mainly for their ability to direct light to a targeted area. But the high initial investment and durability of modern LEDs mean cities need to get the transition right the first time or potentially face decades of consequences. Read the full story.

—Shel Evergreen

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun and distraction in these weird times. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)

+ A luxurious train journey looks like the perfect way to unwind to me.
+ Nothing can replace the joy of picking out a great read from a bookstore.
+ It’s never too early to start planning for your next great adventure.
+ Olive oil? Good. Cake? Good. An olive oil cake?! GOOD!
+ The oldest known sentence written in the first alphabet is entertainingly domestic.



Tech

The hunter-gatherer groups at the heart of a microbiome gold rush

Published

on

The hunter-gatherer groups at the heart of a microbiome gold rush


The first step to finding out is to catalogue what microbes we might have lost. To get as close to ancient microbiomes as possible, microbiologists have begun studying multiple Indigenous groups. Two have received the most attention: the Yanomami of the Amazon rainforest and the Hadza, in northern Tanzania. 

Researchers have made some startling discoveries already. A study by Sonnenburg and his colleagues, published in July, found that the gut microbiomes of the Hadza appear to include bugs that aren’t seen elsewhere—around 20% of the microbe genomes identified had not been recorded in a global catalogue of over 200,000 such genomes. The researchers found 8.4 million protein families in the guts of the 167 Hadza people they studied. Over half of them had not previously been identified in the human gut.

Plenty of other studies published in the last decade or so have helped build a picture of how the diets and lifestyles of hunter-gatherer societies influence the microbiome, and scientists have speculated on what this means for those living in more industrialized societies. But these revelations have come at a price.

A changing way of life

The Hadza people hunt wild animals and forage for fruit and honey. “We still live the ancient way of life, with arrows and old knives,” says Mangola, who works with the Olanakwe Community Fund to support education and economic projects for the Hadza. Hunters seek out food in the bush, which might include baboons, vervet monkeys, guinea fowl, kudu, porcupines, or dik-dik. Gatherers collect fruits, vegetables, and honey.

Mangola, who has met with multiple scientists over the years and participated in many research projects, has witnessed firsthand the impact of such research on his community. Much of it has been positive. But not all researchers act thoughtfully and ethically, he says, and some have exploited or harmed the community.

One enduring problem, says Mangola, is that scientists have tended to come and study the Hadza without properly explaining their research or their results. They arrive from Europe or the US, accompanied by guides, and collect feces, blood, hair, and other biological samples. Often, the people giving up these samples don’t know what they will be used for, says Mangola. Scientists get their results and publish them without returning to share them. “You tell the world [what you’ve discovered]—why can’t you come back to Tanzania to tell the Hadza?” asks Mangola. “It would bring meaning and excitement to the community,” he says.

Some scientists have talked about the Hadza as if they were living fossils, says Alyssa Crittenden, a nutritional anthropologist and biologist at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas, who has been studying and working with the Hadza for the last two decades.

The Hadza have been described as being “locked in time,” she adds, but characterizations like that don’t reflect reality. She has made many trips to Tanzania and seen for herself how life has changed. Tourists flock to the region. Roads have been built. Charities have helped the Hadza secure land rights. Mangola went abroad for his education: he has a law degree and a master’s from the Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy program at the University of Arizona.

Continue Reading

Tech

The Download: a microbiome gold rush, and Eric Schmidt’s election misinformation plan

Published

on

The Download: a microbiome gold rush, and Eric Schmidt’s election misinformation plan


Over the last couple of decades, scientists have come to realize just how important the microbes that crawl all over us are to our health. But some believe our microbiomes are in crisis—casualties of an increasingly sanitized way of life. Disturbances in the collections of microbes we host have been associated with a whole host of diseases, ranging from arthritis to Alzheimer’s.

Some might not be completely gone, though. Scientists believe many might still be hiding inside the intestines of people who don’t live in the polluted, processed environment that most of the rest of us share. They’ve been studying the feces of people like the Yanomami, an Indigenous group in the Amazon, who appear to still have some of the microbes that other people have lost. 

But there is a major catch: we don’t know whether those in hunter-gatherer societies really do have “healthier” microbiomes—and if they do, whether the benefits could be shared with others. At the same time, members of the communities being studied are concerned about the risk of what’s called biopiracy—taking natural resources from poorer countries for the benefit of wealthier ones. Read the full story.

—Jessica Hamzelou

Eric Schmidt has a 6-point plan for fighting election misinformation

—by Eric Schmidt, formerly the CEO of Google, and current cofounder of philanthropic initiative Schmidt Futures

The coming year will be one of seismic political shifts. Over 4 billion people will head to the polls in countries including the United States, Taiwan, India, and Indonesia, making 2024 the biggest election year in history.

Continue Reading

Tech

Navigating a shifting customer-engagement landscape with generative AI

Published

on

Navigating a shifting customer-engagement landscape with generative AI


A strategic imperative

Generative AI’s ability to harness customer data in a highly sophisticated manner means enterprises are accelerating plans to invest in and leverage the technology’s capabilities. In a study titled “The Future of Enterprise Data & AI,” Corinium Intelligence and WNS Triange surveyed 100 global C-suite leaders and decision-makers specializing in AI, analytics, and data. Seventy-six percent of the respondents said that their organizations are already using or planning to use generative AI.

According to McKinsey, while generative AI will affect most business functions, “four of them will likely account for 75% of the total annual value it can deliver.” Among these are marketing and sales and customer operations. Yet, despite the technology’s benefits, many leaders are unsure about the right approach to take and mindful of the risks associated with large investments.

Mapping out a generative AI pathway

One of the first challenges organizations need to overcome is senior leadership alignment. “You need the necessary strategy; you need the ability to have the necessary buy-in of people,” says Ayer. “You need to make sure that you’ve got the right use case and business case for each one of them.” In other words, a clearly defined roadmap and precise business objectives are as crucial as understanding whether a process is amenable to the use of generative AI.

The implementation of a generative AI strategy can take time. According to Ayer, business leaders should maintain a realistic perspective on the duration required for formulating a strategy, conduct necessary training across various teams and functions, and identify the areas of value addition. And for any generative AI deployment to work seamlessly, the right data ecosystems must be in place.

Ayer cites WNS Triange’s collaboration with an insurer to create a claims process by leveraging generative AI. Thanks to the new technology, the insurer can immediately assess the severity of a vehicle’s damage from an accident and make a claims recommendation based on the unstructured data provided by the client. “Because this can be immediately assessed by a surveyor and they can reach a recommendation quickly, this instantly improves the insurer’s ability to satisfy their policyholders and reduce the claims processing time,” Ayer explains.

All that, however, would not be possible without data on past claims history, repair costs, transaction data, and other necessary data sets to extract clear value from generative AI analysis. “Be very clear about data sufficiency. Don’t jump into a program where eventually you realize you don’t have the necessary data,” Ayer says.

The benefits of third-party experience

Enterprises are increasingly aware that they must embrace generative AI, but knowing where to begin is another thing. “You start off wanting to make sure you don’t repeat mistakes other people have made,” says Ayer. An external provider can help organizations avoid those mistakes and leverage best practices and frameworks for testing and defining explainability and benchmarks for return on investment (ROI).

Using pre-built solutions by external partners can expedite time to market and increase a generative AI program’s value. These solutions can harness pre-built industry-specific generative AI platforms to accelerate deployment. “Generative AI programs can be extremely complicated,” Ayer points out. “There are a lot of infrastructure requirements, touch points with customers, and internal regulations. Organizations will also have to consider using pre-built solutions to accelerate speed to value. Third-party service providers bring the expertise of having an integrated approach to all these elements.”

Continue Reading

Copyright © 2021 Seminole Press.