Biomimicry Institute - Nature, Innovation + The future of design: https://biomimicry.org/
The Biomimicry Institute empowers people to create nature-inspired solutions for a healthy planet. We envision a world in which people view nature not as a warehouse of goods but as a storehouse of knowledge and inspiration for sustainable solutions.
Institute For Nature study: National Museum of Nature and Science, Shirokane, Tokyo, Japan:
http://www.ins.kahaku.go.jp/english/
The Institute for Nature Study is a preserve of broad-leafed evergreen forest in their natural state, in the heart of downtown Tokyo. Within a 20-hectare park, the Institute is home to 1,436 species of plant, 2,130 species of insect and 130 bird species. Research within the Institute for Nature Study is richly varied. Surveys of individual trees are carried out on a regular basis, as are studies of introduced plant species and phenological studies. Data on the living status of rare animals are accumulated through surveys that span many years.
OpenPlant - Synthetic Biology Research Centre: https://www.openplant.org/
Sharing tools for a sustainable future: Synthetic Biology offers the prospect of reprogrammed biological systems for improved and sustainable bioproduction. While early efforts in the field have been directed at microbes, the engineering of plant systems provides even greater potential benefits. In contrast to microbes, plants are already globally cultivated at extremely low cost, harvested on the giga-tonne scale, and routinely used to produce the widest range of biostuffs, from fibres, wood, oils, sugar, fine chemicals, drugs to food. Plants are genetically facile, and GM plants are currently grown on the >100 million hectare scale. Plant systems are ripe for synthetic biology, and any improvement in the ability to reprogram metabolic pathways or plant architecture will have far-reaching consequences.
OpenPlant Reports
OpenPlant Funds: https://www.openplant.org/fund
Responsibility and Sustainability in Brain Science, Technology, and Neuroethics in China—a Culture-Oriented Perspective: https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(19)30050-9
Scientists create mind-controlled hearing aid: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/may/15/scientists-create-mind-controlled-hearing-aid "could transform ability of hearing-impaired to cope with noisy environments"
'I've seen more self-aware ants!' AI: More Than Human – review: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/may/15/ai-more-than-human-review-barbican-artificial-intelligence
"They may be More Than Human but they are less than art. Mario Klingemann’s piece Circuit Training makes the process by which machines learn explicit. Klingemann creates art using a programme that can generate images and then criticise its own work. You can join in by deciding which images are “interesting” as human faces morphed by the machine flow by on screen. It’s one of the most boring works of art I’ve ever experienced. The mutant faces are not meaningful or significant in any way.""In Nexus Studios and Memo Akten’s Learning to See, you can move a pencil around on a surface and witness on a screen how an AI programme changes it into a multicoloured psychedelic image. It’s a nice effect, but not art. Meanwhile the fact that a minimalist sculpture called Totem by Chris Salter and numerous collaborators uses AI to control its pattern of twinkling lights feels utterly irrelevant."
"Does the banality of the AI “art” here tell us anything about the state of AI itself?
To be bored by the mindless doodlings and droolings of the AI artworks here is to know in your bones that AI does not yet possess anything like a conscious, let alone creative, mind. Is any existing robot or computer as self aware as an ant, for that matter? The question I’m left with is why so much is being invested in talking up the creativity of AI. Maybe we are all kids at heart who want a robot friend. Or maybe it suits powerful tech interests to bathe themselves in utopian, or even dystopian, glamour when all they’re really doing is using inert algorithms to manipulate consumers and mindless robots to replace a human workforce."
Big tech firms are racing to track climate refugees: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613531/big-tech-firms-are-racing-to-track-climate-refugees/
'Disastrous' lack of diversity in AI industry perpetuates bias, study finds: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/apr/16/artificial-intelligence-lack-diversity-new-york-university-study?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Tweet
Swarms of drones, piloted by artificial intelligence, may soon patrol europe’s borders:
https://theintercept.com/2019/05/11/drones-artificial-intelligence-europe-roborder/
Peter Thiel’s stealth start-up Palantir has unlocked a new opportunity to sell to the US military as revenue tops $1 billion: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/15/palantir-unlocks-a-new-opportunity-to-sell-to-us-military-ahead-of-ipo.html
Facebook busts Israeli influence campaign that targeted elections on 3 continents: https://www.rt.com/news/459542-facebook-israeli-influence-campaign-elections/
Facebook shuts down an Israeli firm’s effort to influence politics in West Africa: https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/16/18627776/facebook-election-interference-shut-down-west-africa-instagram-pages-groups-israeli-firm
Europe’s two-faced authoritarian right: ‘anti-elite’ parties serving big business interests: https://corporateeurope.org/en/2019/05/europes-two-faced-authoritarian-right-anti-elite-parties-serving-big-business-interests
Why Russia Wants to Break the Internet: https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/05/14/why-russia-wants-to-break-the-internet-a65570
Burger King To Deliver Food To Drivers Stuck In LA Traffic: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-05-16/burger-king-deliver-food-drivers-stuck-la-traffic
KISS frontman Gene Simmons delivers briefing at Pentagon podium that has not seen a spokesperson in almost a year: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/05/16/media/gene-simmons-pentagon-briefing/index.html
Modern art is money laundering: "A sculpture by US pop artist Jeff Koons has sold for $91.1m (£71m), breaking the record price for a work by a living artist":
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-48292277 #Art #Economic
Wood wide web: Trees' social networks are mapped: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/science-environment-48257315
"Scientists have mapped the underground network of fungi that provide trees with nutrients"
The "Global Forum of the convergent and nature-like technologies" took place in Sochi:
http://www.vstu.ru/eng/university/press-center/news/society/the_global_forum_of_the_convergent_and_nature_like_technologies_took_place_in_sochi/ #ClimateChange #Biology #Politics
Will Robot Tractors Save America's Farming Industry After It Crashes?: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-05-17/will-robot-tractors-save-americas-farming-industry-after-it-crashes
Robots Take the Wheel as Autonomous Farm Machines Hit Fields: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-15/robots-take-the-wheel-as-autonomous-farm-machines-hit-the-field #Robot #Food #FFHCI #Politics
AudioMoth: low-cost, full-spectrum acoustic logger for audible-ultrasonic frequencies, logs to microSD card at rates from 8,000 to 384,000 samples per second - for monitoring birds, bats, insects: https://www.openacousticdevices.info/audiomoth.
https://twitter.com/openbioeconomy "We research and build tools for an open, sustainable and equitable bioeconomy" - Directed by @jenny_molloy - #Biomaker
https://electrospaces.blogspot.com/
Here you can read about Signals Intelligence, Communications Security, Top Level Telecommunications - which means the equipment, from past and present, that makes that civilian and military leaders can safely communicate. The main focus will be on the United States and its National Security Agency (NSA), but attention will also be paid to other countries, like Germany and the Netherlands.
