Category: Science And Technology

A game-changer for content creation

Among the AI-related technologies to have emerged in the past several years is generative AI—deep-learning algorithms that allow computers to generate original content, such as text, images, video, audio, and code. And demand for such content will likely jump in the coming years—Gartner predicts that by 2025, generative AI will account for 10% of all data created, compared with 1% in 2022. 

“Théâtre D’opéra Spatial” is an example of AI-generated content (AIGC), created with the Midjourney text-to-art generator program. Several other AI-driven art-generating programs have also emerged in 2022, capable of creating paintings from single-line text prompts. The diversity of technologies reflects a wide range of artistic styles and different user demands. DALL-E 2 and Stable Diffusion, for instance, are focused mainly on western-style artwork, while Baidu’s ERNIE-ViLG and Wenxin Yige produce images influenced by Chinese aesthetics. At Baidu’s deep learning developer conference Wave Summit+ 2022, the company announced that Wenxin Yige has been updated with new features, including turning photos into AI-generated art, image editing, and one-click video production.

Meanwhile, AIGC can also include articles, videos, and various other media offerings such as voice synthesis. A technology that generates audible speech indistinguishable from the voice of the original speaker, voice synthesis can be applied in many scenarios, including voice navigation for digital maps. Baidu Maps, for example, allows users to customize its voice navigation to their own voice just by recording nine sentences.

Recent advances in AI technologies have also created generative language models that can fluently compose texts with just one click. They can be used for generating marketing copy, processing documents, extracting summaries, and other text tasks, unlocking creativity that other technologies such as voice synthesis have failed to tap. One of the leading generative language models is Baidu’s ERNIE 3.0, which has been widely applied in various industries such as health care, education, technology, and entertainment.

“In the past year, artificial intelligence has made a great leap and changed its technological direction,” says Robin Li, CEO of Baidu. “Artificial intelligence has gone from understanding pictures and text to generating content.” Going one step further, Baidu App, a popular search and newsfeed app with over 600 million monthly users, including five million content creators, recently released a video editing feature that can produce a short video accompanied by a voiceover created from data provided in an article.

Improving efficiency and growth

As AIGC becomes increasingly common, it could make content creation more efficient by getting rid of repetitive, time-intensive tasks for creators such as sorting out source assets and voice recordings and rendering images. Aspiring filmmakers, for instance, have long had to pay their dues by spending countless hours mastering the complex and tedious process of video editing. AIGC may soon make that unnecessary. 

Besides boosting efficiency, AIGC could also increase business growth in content creation amid rising demand for personalized digital content that users can interact with dynamically. InsightSLICE forecasts that the global digital creation market will on average grow 12% annually between 2020 and 2030 and hit $38.2 billion. With content consumption fast outpacing production, traditional development methods will likely struggle to meet such increasing demand, creating a gap that could be filled by AIGC. “AI has the potential to meet this massive demand for content at a tenth of the cost and a hundred times or thousands of times faster in the next decade,” Li says.

AI with humanity as its foundation

AIGC can also serve as an educational tool by helping children develop their creativity. StoryDrawer, for instance, is an AI-driven program designed to boost children’s creative thinking, which often declines as the focus in their education shifts to rote learning. 

This article is supported by the Adaptation Research Alliance.

[NAIROBI] Attempts by women in a Kenyan village to combat drought quickly ran into problems: they lacked money and know-how to construct a borehole and when they asked an NGO for help were thwarted by paperwork and bureaucratic procedures.

“The requirements for funding were too rigid. We could not even complete the paperwork, which was too technical,” says Peninah Awuor, the head of the village community group in Siaya County, about 400 miles west of the capital, Nairobi.

Their case illustrates the barriers many farmers face in seeking solutions to climate-related problems. But a financing initiative launched at the UN climate summit (COP27) in Egypt in November aims to break the blockage by supporting research-based, locally-led climate adaptation measures in the global South.

“Many of the existing policy frameworks to address global South woes including climate change don’t work because they were fashioned by people who are not in touch with the reality on the ground.”

Jeremiah Owiti, executive director, Centre for Independent Research, Kenya

The Grassroots Action Research Micro-Grants is the brainchild of the Adaptation Research Alliance (The ARA), a global coalition committed to scaling up the research for impact on climate adaptation.

“Funding for research conducted by organisations in the global South is still very low,” says Suzanne Carter, the ARA’s lead on partnerships and engagement with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change., an NGO in the ARA coalition that supports national and regional responses to climate change through policy and knowledge interventions.

Research should be led by local people, not researchers flown from outside, she told SciDev.Net.

“Building capacity and skills may require that there are still roles for non-local researchers, but changing the power dynamic to a more southern-led model ensures that the local context is always kept foremost,” she added.

The initiative seeks to connect groups trying to help different communities adapt to global warming, says the ARA. By focusing on research that makes an impact, the programme hopes to generate evidence on adaptation solutions in collaboration with the people most affected by climate change, and with the urgency demanded by climate scientists.

Grants of £15,000 (US$182,000) will aim to address issues identified by local stakeholders, and identify and elevate knowledge gaps from the bottom up.

The result, it is hoped, will be a collaborative research process that explores appropriate responses.

‘Woefully short’

Improvement is needed in adaptation because current practice falls woefully short of what is required, in nature and extent, according to the latest United Nations Environment Programme Adaptation Gap report.

The report, “Too little, too slow”, says adaptation remains largely incremental, typically does not address future risks from climate change, and may reinforce existing vulnerabilities or introduce new risks—particularly for the most vulnerable—by inadequately involving stakeholders and not paying sufficient attention to local contexts and power dynamics.

International adaptation finance flows to developing countries are up to ten times below estimated needs, says the report, while estimated annual adaptation needs are projected to reach US$160-340 billion by 2030 and US$315-565 billion by 2050.

Some progress was achieved at the international meeting in Egypt, with additional contributions totalling more than US$230 million made to the Adaptation Fund, established in 2001 to finance adaptation programmes in developing countries.

Governments also agreed at the summit to develop a framework to advance the Global Goal on Adaptation, to increase climate resilience among the most vulnerable. The agreement will be completed at COP28 in 2023 and inform the first “global stocktake”, a two-year process for assessing the implementation of the Paris Agreement (the legally binding international treaty on climate change adopted in 2015).

Initiatives such as the ARA’s research micro-grants are seen as just a starting point in tackling a problem that needs addressing at every level. The grants are intended to help identify pressing issues facing communities and start the process of co-creating solutions.

“The value of these grants is small and is therefore only intended to kick-start the process,” says Carter. “The burning issue identified may need a much longer-term intervention to address.

“By bringing together all the relevant actors there’s a solid foundation to build from and apply for other grants, climate finance or development assistance as may be appropriate.”

Success stories

Bruce Currie-Alder, climate resilience programme lead at Canada’s International Development Research Centre, described the ARA model as “the next step in adaptation research, turning it towards implementation and connecting to the practical needs and demand for guidance, knowledge and inspiration on how to live well in a changing climate”.

He noted that there were many examples of success stories of radical collaboration following the so-called “research-for-impact principle” espoused by ARA. He cited as an example the Collaborative Adaptation Research Initiative in Africa (CARIAA), which involved over 450 participants across more than 40 organisations in 15 African countries.

“Within four years [IDRC] collectively contributed to more than 20 local or national plans and strategies, including insights on how people move away from coastal erosion to seizing opportunity for women agency,” he said.

Jeremiah Owiti, executive director of the Centre for Independent Research, a private research and policy think-tank based in Nairobi, welcomed ARA’s search for a bottom-up solution for climate vulnerabilities.

“It is this kind of bottom-up approach we in the public policy space have been agitating for many years,” Owiti, who is not involved in the ARA initiative, told SciDev.Net: “Many of the existing policy frameworks to address global South woes including climate change don’t work because they were fashioned by people who are not in touch with the reality on the ground.”

This piece was produced by SciDev.Net’s Global desk.

This article is supported by the Adaptation Research Alliance. The ARA is a global coalition which supports action-oriented research to inform adaptation solutions and reduce risks from climate change.

International Travel Support (ITS) Scheme provides financial assistance to Indian researchers for presenting a research paper in an international scientific event (conference, seminar, workshop etc.) held abroad. In addition, support is also provided to young scientists (age limit below 35 years as on date of start of the event) for attending training programmes, Short-term schools and Workshops. Economy class air-fare by shortest route, airport-tax and visa fees are provided under the scheme. 

Registration fee as per actual or Rs. 50,000/- whichever is less will be provided to young scientist (Age< 35 on the date of start of event) in addition to the above support. Applications can be submitted within the window of 60 – 90 days in advance from the date of start of the event. The system will not accept early or late submission of applications. However, applicant who has already submitted a proposal will not be eligible to apply again within next 90 days from the date of submission of the first application.

Eligibility :

• Applicant should be an active Indian researcher engaged in R&D work in recognized academic institutions or research laboratories in India.
• The applicant should have an invitation for presenting an original scientific paper. Similar invitation is required in the case of young scientists attending training programmes such as short term courses, summer/​winter schools, workshop etc.
• The applicant should not have availed financial assistance under this Scheme during the last three years.
• The scientific event should be of an international character. Invitation of personal nature such as for carrying out post-doctoral work, informal training programmes/​courses, internship, observer-ship etc. will not be eligible for support.
• Applicant must have obtained Master’s degree in Science or Bachelor’s degree in professional courses from a recognized University by the time of submission of application.

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To mine the deep sea means long—and costly—expeditions to the middle of the Pacific Ocean, with technology that’s still being tested. Shallow waters on the continental shelf, however, are more attractive for prospective miners. Glimmering in the shallows are gemstones such as diamonds, along with phosphorites, metallic minerals like gold and tin, and polymetallic nodules—small rocks that contain cobalt, nickel, manganese, and copper.

A recent study mapped the mineral resources off coastlines on every continent except for Antarctica, where mining is banned. Some shallow-water mining operations have been in place for decades. In Namibian waters, companies have mined for diamonds since 2002. And tin dredging off the coast of Indonesia is the largest marine metal mining operation in the world. In contrast to deep-sea miners who are looking for polymetallic nodules at depths beyond 3,500 meters, a Swedish company plans to test-mine the sea that separates Sweden and Finland—at depths of less than 150 meters. Most shallow-water mineral resources remain unexploited, but for how long?

The study argues that there is practically no debate on the impacts of shallow-water mining. Mining could affect ecosystems on the seafloor and the water column with recovery taking years to decades. While shallow-water ecosystems recover faster than deep-sea communities, the effects of mining are still significant in coastal areas. Mining could remove seabed habitat, potentially causing local extinctions, and sediment plumes can suffocate marine organisms and affect water quality. Shallow-sea mining operations risk affecting local people, either through infrastructure on land or through negative impacts to the marine ecosystems that they rely on.

Coastal environments are already overburdened by the cumulative impact of climate change and various industries. Coastal mining is yet another industrial layer, one that has significant knowledge gaps. Mining in shallow waters is also what the study authors term a “regulatory gray area.” While still a work in progress, international law—the Mining Code—applies to deep-sea mining. Shallow-sea mining, however, relies on nations for regulation and not all countries have strong environmental laws in place. The study finds that shallow-sea mining is not a low-risk panacea to meet society’s demand for minerals.

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Elham Shabahat is a writer and researcher interested in conservation, cities, forests, and the climate crisis. Her work has been published by CBC News, Sapiens, Mongabay, and others.

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Elham Shabahat “In Graphic Detail: Mining the Shallow Seas,” Hakai Magazine, Nov 25, 2022, accessed November 25th, 2022, https://hakaimagazine.com/videos-visuals/in-graphic-detail-mining-the-shallow-seas/.

We’ve seen 3D-printed houses in the past before, and we’ve even seen that they can already be cost-competitive with conventional houses. But those houses were 3D-printed with concrete. Meanwhile, researchers from the University of Maine have unveiled a

The entire structure was printed in four modules and assembled on-site in a few hours. Electricity was installed just two hours after the assembly, and the house was essentially usable within a day after being brought on-site.

The house features 3D-printed floors, walls, and a roof that consist of wood fibers and bio-resins. The entire house measures 600 square feet (just under 60 meters) and is insulated with wood. The building process eliminated construction waste almost entirely, and unlike concrete houses (both conventional and 3D printed houses), this one can be fully recycled.

The official presentation of the bio-printed house was made with fanfare, with university as well as government officials present at the site.

“Our state is facing the perfect storm of a housing crisis and labor shortage, but the University of Maine is stepping up once again to show that we can address these serious challenges with trademark Maine ingenuity,” said Gov. Janet Mills. “With its innovative BioHome3D, UMaine’s Advanced Structures and Composites Center is thinking creatively about how we can tackle our housing shortage, strengthen our forest products industry, and deliver people a safe place to live so they can contribute to our economy.”

Indeed, the advent of 3D-printed houses couldn’t come at a better time. With the pandemic causing massive disruption in supply chains, construction materials have surged in price over the past couple years. There’s also a worker shortage and we’re headed for a potential global recession — so having access to easily built and affordable housing has never been more important.

However, it’s not clear just yet how affordable this house would be. It’s still a prototype, and the researchers focused on creating it using recycled, locally sourced wood fiber feedstock. This makes it more resilient to disruptions from supply chains and worker shortages.

“Many technologies are being developed to 3D print homes, but unlike BioHome3D, most are printed using concrete. However, only the concrete walls are printed on top of a conventionally cast concrete foundation. Traditional wood framing or wood trusses are used to complete the roof,” said Dagher, ASCC executive director. “Unlike the existing technologies, the entire BioHome3D was printed, including the floors, walls, and roof. The biomaterials used are 100% recyclable, so our great-grandchildren can fully recycle BioHome3D.”

Ultimately, though, as promising as this technology is, it’s going to boil down to cost and durability. Having a 3D-printed house is pretty cool, but no one really wants to pay more for a house and/or face structural problems down the line. But if 3D-printing can make durable, cheap, bio-based homes — it could be a massive game changer.

The celebrated gene-editing tool CRISPR started out as a bacterial defense against invading viruses. But it turns out the intended targets have stolen CRISPR for their own arsenals. A new study reveals that thousands of the bacteria-attacking viruses known as bacteriophages (phages, for short) contain the CRISPR system’s genetic sequences, suggesting they may deploy them against rival phages. The finding is a testament to the molecular weapon’s power—and may make CRISPR even more valuable as a laboratory gene editor.

The discovery “opens doors for possible new applications of CRISPR systems,” says genomicist Mazhar Adli of Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, who wasn’t connected to the research.

Like other viruses, phages cannot reproduce on their own. Instead, they hijack bacteria’s molecular machinery, often killing their hosts in the process. The CRISPR system enables bacteria to fight back. It includes repetitive stretches of DNA that match sequences of previously encountered phages. If these same phages attack a bacterium again, it uses this repetitive DNA to encode strands of RNA that can steer a partner enzyme, which acts like a pair of genetic scissors, to cut the phage’s genome at specific places. For about the past decade, scientists have been working to turn this immune defense into a gene-editing technique for myriad uses, including improving crop defenses, detecting pathogens, and fighting diseases such as cancer.

Characteristic DNA that encodes components of the CRISPR system had previously turned up in a handful of phages. But scientists regarded these finds as mere “curiosities,” says structural biologist Jennifer Doudna of the University of California (UC), Berkeley, who shared the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for showing how to tailor the CRISPR system to target particular sequences. “But they got us wondering if these systems were more common.”

To find out, Doudna, UC Berkeley geomicrobiologist Jillian Banfield, and their colleagues went looking for additional examples of CRISPR in the phage world. They probed DNA plucked from a variety of environments that are rich in bacterial hosts for the viruses, including soil and the human mouth. This trawl uncovered more than 6000 types of phages that contain CRISPR system DNA, the scientists report online today in Cell. They also examined phage genome sequences that had been posted to online databases and found even more instances of the CRISPR-carrying viruses. Although fewer than 1% of phages sport the sequences, the researchers did not expect “such a broad distribution of an anti-phage system in phages,” Doudna says.

Why would phages acquire a system that evolved to thwart them? The most likely reason, Doudna says, is to beat the competition. Multiple viruses can attack a bacterium at the same time, leading to “phage wars” inside an infected cell, she says. Bacteria are also vulnerable to rogue DNA strands known as plasmids that coerce the cells into copying them. By destroying these rivals with the CRISPR system, phages “can have the replication machinery all to themselves,” Doudna says.

The phages presumably swiped these CRISPR system sequences from their microbial victims, she says. Since then, the viruses have customized the systems for their own ends. For instance, some phages seem to have lost the capacity to generate certain molecules that can kill bacteria, possibly to preserve their hosts to produce more phages.

The phages’ gene-editing tricks may inspire new biotechnology. For instance, most CRISPR-based approaches now rely on the enzyme Cas9 to cut DNA. However, Cas9 is so large it cannot fit into some viruses used to genetically modify cells. A number of phages, however, boast a slimmed-down version known as Cas-lambda that is about 50% smaller, Doudna’s and Banfield’s team found. Adli says this smaller enzyme could allow new gene-editing applications for CRISPR, such as altering plant genomes, though researchers would first need to overcome several bioengineering hurdles.

Microbiologist Joseph Bondy-Denomy of UC San Francisco says Doudna and Banfield displayed a “[John] Lennon-[Paul] McCartney” level of synergy in ferreting out so many CRISPR-bearing phages that had eluded other scientists. Still, he wants to see evidence that phages actually put their CRISPR systems to use when they invade bacteria. Bondy-Denomy also suspects many more phages that wield CRISPR are waiting to be discovered. “The next step is more,” he says.