Robocop, un pas plus proche :
Le robot de la firme sud-coréenne Hankook Mirae, pèse une tonne et demie et mesure 4m de haut.
▻http://phys.org/news/2016-12-avatar-style-korean-robot-baby.html
“Our robot is the world’s first manned bipedal robot and is built to work in extreme hazardous areas where humans cannot go (unprotected),”
Comme la zone démilitarisée ?
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Du5nyhSKra0
Même sujet :
▻http://www.futura-sciences.com/tech/actualites/technologie-method-2-robot-anthropoide-geant-fait-premiers-pas-6571
Pour l’instant, l’alimentation provient visiblement d’un câble qui le relie aussi à des ordinateurs. Method-2 est donc encore loin de sortir de son hangar de la banlieue de Séoul. Ce robot anthropoïde, cependant, est sans doute davantage qu’un caprice d’ingénieurs ou du patron de l’entreprise, Yang Jin-Ho, qui, enfant, rêvait de fabriquer des robots. Le projet, selon la société, aurait déjà coûté 242 milliards de won, soit plus de 190 millions d’euros.
Many GMO studies have financial conflicts of interest
▻http://phys.org/news/2016-12-gmo-financial-conflicts.html
Thomas Guillemaud, director of research at France’s National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA), told AFP that the team originally looked at 672 studies before narrowing down to the pool to 579 that showed clearly whether there was or was not a financial conflict of interest.
“Of this total, 404 were American studies and 83 were Chinese,” he said.
To determine whether there was a conflict, researchers examined the way the studies were financed.
Conflicts of interest were defined as studies in which at least one author declared an affiliation to one of the biotech or seed companies, or received funding or payment from them.
“The most important point was how we also showed there is a statistical link between the presence of conflicts of interest and a study that comes to a favorable conclusion for GMO crops,” Guillemaud said.
“When studies had a conflict of interest, this raised the likelihood 49 percent that their conclusions would be favorable to GMO crops.”
Among the 350 articles without conflicts of interest, 36 percent were favorable to GM crop companies.
Among the 229 studies with a conflict of interest, 54 percent were favorable to GM companies.
“We thought we would find conflicts of interest, but we did not think we would find so many,” Guillemaud said.
Compte-rendu en français : ►https://seenthis.net/messages/553150
Mapping migrations by using mobile phone data
▻http://phys.org/news/2016-11-migrations-mobile.html
Researchers from the Complex Systems Group (GSC) at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) have used mobile phone data generated by 9 million users to study the mobility of population from Senegal. Results show a clear correlation between the increase of telephone calls and the migratory flows with agricultural activities and religious holidays held in this country. The usage of this data to know the communication and migration patterns can be of great utility to detect extreme events such as natural disasters, and to provide complementary information in order to optimize the management resources of such events.
#cartographie #cartoexperiment #sénégal #circulations #déplacements #cartographie_participative
Warmer Mediterranean turns the Sahel green
▻http://phys.org/news/2016-07-warmer-mediterranean-sahel-green.html
Climate change can have mixed consequences: It would appear that the warming of the Mediterranean region, which has brought greater heat and drought to the countries there for around 20 years, is behind an increase in rainfall in the Sahel region. As researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg report in the current edition of the journal Nature Climate Change, due to higher sea temperatures in the Mediterranean more moisture from the eastern Mediterranean is reaching the southern edge of the Sahara at the start of the West African monsoon in June. Moreover, according to the current study, the future development of precipitation in the Sahel region is crucially dependent on the warming of the Mediterranean.
Researchers discover real reason why turtles have shells
▻http://phys.org/news/2016-07-real-turtles-shells.html
“Why the turtle shell evolved is a very Dr. Seuss-like question and the answer seems pretty obvious – it was for protection,” said Dr. Lyson, lead author of Fossorial Origin of the Turtle Shell, which was released today by Current Biology. “But just like the bird feather did not initially evolve for flight, the earliest beginnings of the turtle shell was not for protection but rather for digging underground to escape the harsh South African environment where these early proto turtles lived.”
700-year-old West African soil technique could help mitigate climate change
▻http://phys.org/news/2016-06-year-old-west-african-soil-technique.html
A farming technique practised for centuries by villagers in West Africa, which converts nutrient-poor rainforest soil into fertile farmland, could be the answer to mitigating climate change and revolutionising farming across Africa.
A global study, led by the University of Sussex, which included anthropologists and soil scientists from Cornell, Accra, and Aarhus Universities and the Institute of Development Studies, has for the first-time identified and analysed rich fertile soils found in Liberia and Ghana.
They discovered that the ancient West African method of adding charcoal and kitchen waste to highly weathered, nutrient poor tropical soils can transform the land into enduringly fertile, carbon-rich black soils which the researchers dub ’African Dark Earths’.
From analysing 150 sites in northwest Liberia and 27 sites in Ghana researchers found that these highly fertile soils contain 200-300 percent more organic carbon than other soils and are capable of supporting far more intensive farming.
Globalization made economic production more vulnerable to climate change
▻http://phys.org/news/2016-06-globalization-economic-production-vulnerable-climate.html
L’#économie plus fragile face au réchauffement
▻http://www.journaldelenvironnement.net/article/l-economie-plus-fragile-face-au-rechauffement,71364
L’économie mondiale devient de plus en plus vulnérable au réchauffement climatique, révèle une étude publiée dans Science Advances. La faute à la #mondialisation des échanges, qui répercute rapidement les pertes de productivité d’un pays sur les autres.
One in five of world’s plant species at risk of extinction | Environment | The Guardian
▻http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/may/10/one-in-five-of-worlds-plant-species-at-risk-of-extinction?CMP=twt_gu
One in five of the world’s plant species is threatened with extinction, according to the first global assessment of flora, putting supplies of food and medicines at risk.
But the report also found that 2,000 new species of plant are discovered every year, raising hopes of new sources of food that are resilient to disease and climate change. New finds in 2015 included a giant insect-eating plant first spotted on Facebook and a 100-tonne tree hidden in an African forest.
The State of the World’s Plants report, by experts at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, reveals that there are currently 390,000 species of known plants, with more than 30,000 used by people. However, more than 5,000 species have invaded foreign countries and are causing billions of dollars of damage every year.
▻http://www.kew.org/discover/news/state-worlds-plants-report-released-kew
#botanique #biodiversité #alimentation #forêt #déforestation #industrie_palmiste
The biggest factors threatening plant species with extinction are the destruction of habitats for farming (31%) - such as palm oil production and cattle ranching, deforestation for timber (21%) and construction of buildings and infrastructure (13%).
Climate change is currently a smaller factor - 4% - but is likely to grow. “I suspect we won’t actually see the full impact until 30 years down the line as it takes so long for plants, especially trees, to produce their offspring,” said Willis. One important crop that is already suffering is coffee, as rising temperatures make the beans impossible to grow and increase diseases in key countries such as Ethiopia.
From sweet potatoes to orchids: Kew report urges global scientific community to secure health of the planet
▻http://phys.org/news/2016-05-sweet-potatoes-orchids-kew-urges.html
Un cinquième des #plantes est menacé, selon un nouveau baromètre
▻http://www.swissinfo.ch/fre/un-cinquième-des-plantes-est-menacé--selon-un-nouveau-baromètre/42144422
Une nouvelle étude montre qu’un essaim de centaines de milliers de microrobots, plus petits que l’épaisseur d’un cheveu, peut être déployé dans les eaux polluées pour en retirer les métaux lourds toxiques, jusqu’à 95 % du plomb en une heure par exemple. #développementdurable #écologie #technologie
Oui @nicolasm it has begun : des libertariens s’inscrivent sur Seenthis. :D
Possible second Viking site discovered in North America
▻http://phys.org/news/2016-04-viking-site-north-america.html
A team of archeologists has found what may be the remains of a previously unknown Viking settlement on a south west shore of the Island of Newfoundland.
...
The team has been videotaping their work and a documentary of their efforts will be presented this month on PBS.
Leading the research is archeologist and National Geographic fellow, Sarah Parcak, who has been described as a “space archaeologist” because of her groundbreaking use of satellite technology to uncover Egyptian ruins. In this latest effort, she and her team have altered their methods to uncover what appears to be evidence of Viking iron smelting.
...
That led to an initial excavation which revealed an iron-working hearth (with 28 pounds of slag in it) and what appeared to be the remains of turf walls. Radiocarbon testing has dated the site to between 800 and 1300 AD, which would coincide with the time of the Vikings.
Prior to this possible discovery, the only site ever officially designated as evidence of Norse activity in the New World was L’Anse aux Meadows, hundreds of miles north, on the tip of the same island.
...
If additional excavation and testing indicate that the site was indeed made by Vikings, it will likely lead to changes being made to the history books—it would mean they found and settled North America almost half a century before Christopher Columbus arrived.
Encore les #Vikings ...
Ancient DNA shows European wipe-out of early Americans
▻http://phys.org/news/2016-04-ancient-dna-european-wipe-out-early.html
“Surprisingly, none of the genetic lineages we found in almost 100 ancient humans were present, or showed evidence of descendants, in today’s Indigenous populations,” says joint lead author Dr Bastien Llamas, Senior Research Associate with ACAD. “This separation appears to have been established as early as 9000 years ago and was completely unexpected, so we examined many demographic scenarios to try and explain the pattern.”
“The only scenario that fit our observations was that shortly after the initial #colonisation, #populations were established that subsequently stayed geographically isolated from one another, and that a major portion of these populations later became extinct following European contact. This closely matches the historical reports of a major demographic collapse immediately after the Spaniards arrived in the late 1400s.”
#Amériques #ADN #extinction #violence #Europe
The first European earthworm map is drawn
▻http://phys.org/news/2016-02-european-earthworm-drawn.html
La première #cartographie du #ver_de_terre en Europe
Despite the abundance of earthworms in soils all around the world, there is a lack of information concerning the geographical distribution of many lumbricid species. Researchers from eight European countries have collected information on earthworm communities to map the biodiversity of these invertebrates and to put soil conservation on the political agenda.
Even though we cannot see them, there are numerous, unevenly distributed organisms which are living in the top most layer of the Earth’s crust. The soil, considered a “forgotten resource”, is home to more than a quarter of our planet’s biodiversity. One single gram of healthy soil contains millions of organisms, one of the reasons why 2015 was named the International Year of Soils.
More people in #Europe are dying than are being born
▻http://phys.org/news/2016-01-people-europe-dying-born.html
Texas A&M Professor of Sociology Dudley Poston, along with Professor Kenneth Johnson, University of New Hampshire, and Professor Layton Field, Mount St. Mary’s University, published their findings in Population and Development Review this month.
The researchers find that 17 European nations have more people dying in them than are being born (natural decrease), including three of Europe’s more populous nations: Russia, Germany and Italy. In contrast, in the U.S. and in the state of Texas, births exceed deaths by a substantial margin.
Is freshwater supply more dependent on good governance than geography?
▻http://phys.org/news/2015-10-freshwater-good-geography.html
“The common occurrence of institutional vulnerability in our sampled nations is really interesting” continues Padowski. “It’s something that hasn’t been well-quantified at this scale—and adds weight to the argument that it’s not just how much water we have, it’s how we manage it that’s really important.”
The study reports that Jordan is the most vulnerable of these countries, identifying 5 of the 19 characteristics measured as being ’critically’ vulnerable. The findings also show that Turkmenistan is also highly vulnerable, which came as a surprise to the researchers.
“Turkmenistan is a country that has historically shown few, if any, reasons for concern in other country-level water vulnerability indices. Only by including this broader array of characteristics do we see that this nation not only has institutional vulnerability, but must deal with added (exogenous) vulnerability derived from their dependency, both in terms of quality and quantity, on water originating outside their borders”, added Padowski.
▻http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/10/104014/meta;jsessionid=FC6881BD15156ACACF365057C9387F2E.ip-10-40-2-121
#eau
In social networks, group boundaries promote the spread of ideas, study finds
▻http://phys.org/news/2015-06-social-networks-group-boundaries-ideas.html
Social networks influence how ideas and beliefs can spread around a society. In this study, the University of Pennsylvania’s Damon Centola shows that networks that are very diffuse (left) make it hard for ideas to catch on, while networks with very strong group boundaries (right) make it almost impossible for ideas to spread. A network that was moderately “grouped,” however, was most conducive to spreading complex ideas.
Credit: University of Pennsylvania
On notera que le titre de cette présentation de la publication de D. Centola n’est pas loin du contre-sens. Puisque, dans le graphique ci-dessus, c’est la situation du milieu qui est optimale.
Le résumé de l’article (juin 2015) le reste derrière #paywall
The Social Origins of Networks and Diffusion on JSTOR
▻http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/681275
Abstract
Recent research on social contagion has demonstrated significant effects of network topology on the dynamics of diffusion. However, network topologies are not given a priori. Rather, they are patterns of relations that emerge from individual and structural features of society, such as population composition, group heterogeneity, homophily, and social consolidation. Following Blau and Schwartz, the author develops a model of social network formation that explores how social and structural constraints on tie formation generate emergent social topologies and then explores the effectiveness of these social networks for the dynamics of social diffusion. Results show that, at one extreme, high levels of consolidation can create highly balkanized communities with poor integration of shared norms and practices. As suggested by Blau and Schwartz, reducing consolidation creates more crosscutting circles and significantly improves the dynamics of social diffusion across the population. However, the author finds that further reducing consolidation creates highly intersecting social networks that fail to support the widespread diffusion of norms and practices, indicating that successful social diffusion can depend on moderate to high levels of structural consolidation.
(...) these kinds of structures, in which group boundaries exist but overlap to some degree, are naturally occurring on the Internet. Distinct online communities sprout up among people with common interests, yet these groups also have interconnections across their membership.
“It could be that the #Internet is in fact set up and operates in such a way as to allow easier coordination on complex ideas,” he said.
High-fat diet made Inuits healthier but shorter thanks to gene #mutations, study finds
▻http://phys.org/news/2015-09-high-fat-diet-inuits-healthier-shorter.html
The low incidence of cardiovascular disease in Inuits has previously been linked to their high intake of fish oil and omega-3s. However, it may be that the genetic #adaptation of the Inuits to their diet, rather than the diet itself, explains this protection. While researchers and health officials have long believed that fish oils protect against heart disease, the new study challenges this. It may be good for the Inuits to eat a huge amount of omega-3 fatty acids, but not for all of us.
’Tree of life’ for 2.3 million species released
▻http://phys.org/news/2015-09-tree-life-million-species.html
A first draft of the “tree of life” for the roughly 2.3 million named species of animals, plants, fungi and microbes—from platypuses to puffballs—has been released.
Californie : Drought-Plagued California Readies For El Niño Storms - Economies d’eau : en juillet, les Californiens font mieux qu’en juin - Californians cut water without state imposing fines.
▻http://kearth101.cbslocal.com/2015/08/26/drought-plagued-california-readies-for-el-nino-storms
▻http://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2015/08/28/economie-d-eau-en-juillet-les-californiens-font-mieux-qu-en-juin_4738828_324
▻http://phys.org/news/2015-08-california-percent-july-drought.html
#Californie #sécheresse #dossier
Mentionné dans : Californie, Canada, Carcassonne, Cours = ▻http://oxymoron-fractal.blogspot.fr/2015/08/californie-canada-carcassonne-cours.html
Amazon slowly eaten away by gold rush’s illegal mines
▻http://phys.org/news/2015-08-amazon-slowly-eaten-gold-illegal.html
“Although gold mining deforestation is usually less extensive than deforestation for agriculture, it happens in some of the most biodiverse tropical regions,” said lead author Nora Alvarez-Berrios of the University of Puerto Rico-Rio Piedras.
