The AlphaGalileo Blog 03/08/2022
August eNews
Welcome to this month's eNews.
This month we have our top 5 most read items from July 2022, our Editor's choice and our image of the month.
If you have any questions or want to get in touch please email the News Team
All the best,
News Team
Top 5 July 2022
1. Nitrogen Footprint: Heavy Pollution and Resource Losses Due to Liquid Manure, published by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology on 15/07/22
Factory farming for meat production is harmful to the environment. In addition to its direct emissions of methane, its use of liquid manure releases climate-damaging nitrogen compounds such as ammonia and nitrous oxide into the atmosphere and pollutes the groundwater with nitrates. Researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have analyzed how the liquid manure produced by livestock farming, which is often used as fertilizer, affects its nitrogen footprint. They showed that the nitrogen pollution caused by liquid manure from the production of beef is three times higher than that for pork and eight times higher than that for poultry.
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2. KAIST Honors BMW and Hyundai with the 2022 Future Mobility of the Year Award, published by KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) on 14/07/22
BMW ‘iVision Circular’, Commercial Vehicle-Hyundai Motors ‘Trailer Drone’ selected as winners of the international awards for concept cars established by KAIST Cho Chun Shik Graduate School of Mobility to honor car makers that strive to present new visions in the field of eco-friendly design of automobiles and unmanned logistics.
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3. New study: How social protection systems facilitate demographic change in Sub-Saharan Africa, published by Berlin Institute for Population and Development on 29/07/22
More than 1.1 billion people live in Sub-Saharan Africa today, and this number is expected to double by 2050. Yet many governments in the region already struggle with providing sufficient schools, hospitals, food and clean water for their populations. Many countries are trapped in a vicious cycle of population growth and poverty. Social protection systems offer hope to break free of this cycle. They can lift the most vulnerable out of poverty, accelerate progress in education, health and nutrition, and thus indirectly impact fertility rates – the average number of children per woman. A new study from the Berlin Institute for Population and Development reveals how social protection systems in Sub-Saharan Africa can influence demographic change.
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4. IPBES assessment report: 50,000 wild species meet needs of billions worldwide; experts offer options to ensure sustainable use, published by Terry Collins & Assoc on 8/07/22
A new report by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) offers insights, analysis and tools to establish more sustainable use of wild species of plants, animals, fungi and algae around the world.
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5. Extensive training on virtual universes from supercomputer simulations produces AI-assisted analysis of three-dimensional galaxy distribution in our Universe, published by Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe, The University of Tokyo on 22/07/22
A neural network method machine-learning technique has enabled researchers to develop a very fast and highly efficient software program that can make theoretical predictions about structure formation in the universe.
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Editor's Choice
New study in children with language deficits highlights importance of voluntary imagination in language evolution published by Pensoft Publishers on 14/07/2022
On the basis of children studies, neurological observations, archaeological findings, combinatorial sign language invention by Nicaraguan deaf children, and variety of sound boxes in birds, Dr. Andrey Vyshedskiy, a neuroscientist from Boston University, argues that the evolution of hominin speech apparatus must have followed (rather than led to) the improvements in voluntary imagination. Contrary to the common assumption, it is voluntary imagination rather than speech that appears to define the pace of combinatorial language evolution.
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Image caption: Chimpanzees make use of cobbles to break nuts, but they do not modify them. Homo habilis was one of the earliest hominin species that intentionally modified cobbles to manufacture the crude, Mode One choppers. Homo habilis was only able to break out large flakes from a cobble; its voluntary control of its mental template was quite crude. Homo erectus, on the other hand, was able to break off much smaller flakes and produce the fine, symmetrical, Mode Two hand axes. Therefore, Homo erectus was most likely capable of finer voluntary control of its mental template. Image credit: Andrey Vyshedskiy, licensed under CC-BY
Image of the month
Orchid helps insect get a grip published by Kobe University on 29/07/2022
White egret orchid evolved frilly petal to support pollinator hawkmoth
The wild orchid Habenaria radiata’s pure white petals resemble a white egret in flight (hence its common name white egret orchid). H. radiata has been loved by people since ancient times but the adaptive significance of the flower’s characteristic jagged shape has been unclear until now. A multi-institutional research group has been working for three years to solve this mystery by conducting field experiments in which the feather-like fringe was removed, and detailed behavioral observations of the orchid’s pollinators.
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Image caption: The white egret orchid (Habenaria radiata) resembles a dancing white egret.