Lifeboat Foundation

Refractory organic pollutants, including phenols, perfluorinated compounds, and antibiotics, are abundant in various industrial wastewater streams such as chemical, pharmaceutical, coking, and dyeing sectors, as well as municipal and domestic sources. These pollutants pose significant threats to ecological well-being and human health.

The imperative to achieve complete removal of organic contaminants from water and facilitate water recycling is paramount for enhancing environmental quality and ensuring sustainable economic and social progress. Addressing the efficient removal of recalcitrant organic pollutants in water is not only a focal point in environmental chemical pollution control research but also a pivotal technical challenge constraining industrial wastewater reuse.

Advanced oxidation processes (AOPs), especially heterogeneous AOPs, yield strongly reactive oxygen species including ·OH, ·O₂^-, and ·SO₄^- to oxidize organic pollutants under ambient conditions, are appealing wastewater treatment technologies for decentralized systems. AOPs often need excessive energy input (UV light or electricity) to activate soluble oxidants (H₂O₂, O₃, persulfates), thus more cost-effective AOPs are urgently required.

Joining space technology and the automotive industry brings new economic and environmental benefits, but more investments and a faster pace are needed in Europe.

Humankind on the verge of evolutionary traps, a new study: …For the first time, scientists have used the concept of evolutionary traps on human societies at large.

For the first time, scientists have used the concept of evolutionary traps on human societies at large. They find that humankind risks getting stuck in 14 evolutionary dead ends, ranging from global climate tipping points to misaligned artificial intelligence, chemical pollution, and accelerating infectious diseases.

The evolution of humankind has been an extraordinary success story. But the Anthropocene—the proposed geological epoch shaped by us humans—is showing more and more cracks. Multiple global crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, food insecurity, financial crises, and conflicts have started to occur simultaneously in something which scientists refer to as a polycrisis.

Continue reading “New research maps 14 potential evolutionary dead ends for humanity and ways to avoid them” »

As part of pioneering the security of satellite communication in space, NASA is funding a groundbreaking project at the University of Miami’s Frost Institute for Data Science and Computing (IDSC) which will enable augmenting traditional large satellites with nanosatellites or constellations of nanosatellites.

These nanosatellites are designed to accomplish diverse goals, ranging from communication and weather prediction to Earth science research and observational data gathering. Technical innovation is a hallmark of NASA, a global leader in the development of novel technologies that enable US space missions and translate to a wide variety of applications from Space and Earth science to consumer goods and to national and homeland security.

With advances in satellite technology and reduced cost of deployment and operation, nanosatellites also come with significant challenges for the protection of their communication networks. Specifically, small satellites are owned and operated by a wide variety of public and private sector organizations, expanding the attack surface for cyber exploitation. The scenario is similar to Wi-Fi network vulnerabilities. These systems provide an opportunity for adversaries to threaten national security as well as raise economic concerns for satellite companies, operators, and users.

Ken, a 36-year-old Uber and Lyft driver in Houston, drives about four to five hours per day — in addition to his full-time analyst job — to supplement his income. Last year, he earned a combined $25,000 driving for Uber and Lyft from about 2,000 trips, according to screenshots of earnings documents viewed by Business Insider.

While he accepts most rides, he said he prioritizes trips that pay at least $0.80 to $1.00 per mile, excluding vehicle expenses — a ride’s base pay and distance are displayed on the app. He also tries to avoid trips that take him too far out of Houston because he worries he won’t be able to find trips for the ride back. He calls these “empty miles.”

“I have seen a 50-mile trip that only $20 was offered,” Ken previously told Business Insider. “I wouldn’t be doing that.” He asked that his last name not be included for fear of professional repercussions.

More than a century ago, a wild-eyed, vegetarian, free love-promoting German entrepreneur and self-taught economist named Silvio Gesell proposed a radical reformation of the monetary system as we know it.

A long-forgotten German economist argued that society and the economy would be better off if money was a perishable good. Was he an anarchist crank or the prophet of a better world?

Two major powers are coming together to reach an agreement to limit technology for the greater good of humanity.

Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping are poised to pledge a ban on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in autonomous weaponry.

WhiteHouse/ European Commission.

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Kynikos Associates founder and legendary short seller Jim Chanos has highlighted the disparity between the public perception and actual performance of Tesla Inc. TSLA.

What Happened: In an interview with the Institute for New Economic Thinking, Chanos pointed out a common misbelief held by many Tesla admirers. He said the electric vehicle giant is seen as a multi-faceted entity — an AI firm, an alternative energy business, and a robotics organization.

This image, Chanos argues, is a result of Elon Musk’s compelling portrayal of Tesla as a future-focused company.

Meta has joined forces with Hugging Face, an open source community-driven platform that hosts machine learning models and tools, and Scaleway, European cloud leader for AI infrastructures, to launch the “AI Startup Program”, an initiative aimed to accelerate the adoption of open-source artificial intelligence solutions within the French entrepreneurial ecosystem. With the proliferation of foundation models and generative artificial intelligence models, the aim is to bring the economic and technological benefits of open, state-of-the-art models to the French ecosystem.

Located at STATION F in Paris, the world’s largest startup campus, and with the support of the HEC incubator, the programme will support 5 startups in the acceleration phase, from January to June 2024. A panel of experts from Meta, Hugging Face and Scaleway will select projects based on open foundation models and/or demonstrating their willingness to integrate these models into their products and services.

The startups selected will benefit from technical mentoring by researchers, engineers and PhD students from FAIR, Meta’s artificial intelligence research laboratory, access to Hugging Face’s platform and tools, and Scaleway’s computing power in order to develop their services based on open source AI technology bricks. In addition to LLMs – large language models – startups will also be able to draw on foundation and research models in the field of image and sound processing. Applications are open until 1 December 2023.