That’s One Small Hole For A Probe, But One Giant Leap For NASA. This Past Weekend, The Space Agency

Earth Could Lose a Third of Its Topsoil

You might think that dirt doesn’t matter that much — after all there seems to be so much of it all over the planet.

But researchers warn that the world’s precious supply of topsoil — which we need to grow food crops, absorb excess carbon and supply us with new antibiotics — is being lost faster than it can be replenished through natural processes. And the decreasing supply of soil could have a catastrophic effect on agriculture and the world supply of food.

The UN, which designated 2015 as the International Year of Soils, warns that 33 percent of the planet’s soil resources are being degraded due to erosion, pollution, acidification and nutrient depletion — destructive processes that are caused by bad land management. And unless new approaches are adopted, the amount of productive farmland on Earth per person will only amount to one-fourth of the amount available in 1960.

In December, the UN is set to release a report on the state of the world’s soil, and it’s likely to present an even more grim picture, according to a preview in New Scientist. We’re losing soil at the rate of 30 soccer fields per minute, and if we don’t slow the decline, the planet’s entire supply of soil for farming could be gone by 2075.

I always choose a lazy person to do a difficult job because he will find an easy way to do it.

Bill Gates

A new online platform to promote women’s economic empowerment is here! UN Women and the Government of Canada recently launched an online platform, the Global Knowledge Gateway for Women’s Economic Empowerment, which aims to re-vitalize women’s economic empowerment by building connections, and providing users with tools and resources necessary to be empowered. Get the link to this exciting new initiative here: www.empowerwomen.org

Researchers at MIT have developed a new method for harnessing energy generated by very small bending motions, which could be capable of harvesting power from a broader range of natural human activities such as walking and exercising.

Yale Environment 360: New Device Harvests Energy From Walking and Exercising, Researchers Say

The problem comes from people whose opinions are actually misconceptions. If you think vaccines cause autism you are expressing something factually wrong, not an opinion. The fact that you may still believe that vaccines cause autism does not move your misconception into the realm of valid opinion. Nor does the fact that many other share this opinion give it any more validity… You can be wrong or ignorant. It will happen. Reality does not care about your feelings. Education does not exist to persecute you. The misinformed are not an ethnic minority being oppressed. What’s that? Planned Parenthood is chopping up dead babies and selling them for phat cash? No, that’s not what actually happened. No, it’s not your opinion. You’re just wrong.

Yes, Your Opinion Can Be Wrong | Houston Press

This whole article.

Education does not exist to persecute you. 

(via witch-boots)

Power-pylons that look like looming giants

Choi + Shine, an architecture firm, has proposed modifying Iceland’s existing power-transmission pylons to turn them into looming giants whose arms are poised to reflect their positions – pylons ascending a hill will be posed as though they were scaling its slopes.

The designers claim that it can be made cost-effective through clever engineering, and that the resulting aesthetic experience will be monumental. I agree with the latter statement and am unqualified to assess the former, though Iceland has a weird and cool relationship with power, as it is ia carbon-neutral country whose electricity comes from geothermal sources.

Read the rest

On April 26, 1986, a power surge caused an explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near Pripyat, Ukraine. A large quantity of radioactive material was released.

On May 2, 1986, the Soviet government established a “Zone of Alienation” or “Exclusion Zone” around Chernobyl – a thousand square miles of “radioactive wasteland.” All humans were evacuated. The town of Pripyat was completely abandoned.

But the animals didn’t leave. And a new study, published this month in Current Biology, suggests they are doing fine. “None of our three hypotheses postulating radiation damage to large mammal populations at Chernobyl were supported by the empirical evidence,” says Jim Beasley, one of the researchers.

In fact, some of the populations have grown. These photos (mostly taken by Valeriy Yurko) come from the Belarusian side of the Exclusion Zone, and area called the Polessye State Radioecological Reserve. Kingfisher, elk, boar, baby spotted eagles, wild ponies, moose, rabbits, and wolves all make their home in the park. In some ways, human presence is worse for wildlife than a nuclear disaster.

Image credits:

1986 Chernobyl - ZUFAROV/AFP/Getty Images

Wildlife photos - Valeriy Yurko/Polessye State Radioecological Reserve

Ponies in winter - SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP/Getty Images

Setting up any business is a challenge but in Ethiopia those range from daily operating headaches such as on-off internet to even more fundamental business challenges

“The internet goes out a couple of times a week — when that happens, there is not much we can do but rely on phone lines to take orders,” said Feleg Tsegaye, manager of Deliver Addis.

But he also believes the Horn of Africa nation — the second most populous on the continent — offers enormous opportunities.

Tsegaye was born and brought up in the US but moved to Ethiopia, the homeland of his parents, hoping to tap into a still largely untapped but swiftly growing market he believes is one of the most promising on the continent.

“The IT sector is still in its infancy — typically in these markets there is a way to transfer money very quickly and very easily, but here that doesn’t exist quite yet,” he added.

“Once you have a way for entrepreneurs to make money through technology, I think you are going to see that change very quickly.”

With a growth rate of nearly 10 per cent a year over the past decade, according to the World Bank, Ethiopia has attracted entrepreneurs eager to take their cut of a market with over 94 million potential consumers.

The Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa now has three “start-up incubators”, some supported by foreign investors, to help Ethiopian entrepreneurs launch their own business.

“We have an opportunity to re-think how we regulate city activities for the public interest. I think the big opportunity is to harness the data streaming out of all of these activities and use it to enable a more permissive, but more accountable, “2.0” regulatory regime.”

- Nick Grossman

By focusing on peer-to-peer urbanism, we would be able to create more functional and enjoyable communities while using less resources through sharing — both on and offline. By working collaboratively, there’s an opportunity to create solutions for the masses at a lower cost for the government, and therefore for tax payers. It’s problem solving by community.

Check out the interesting examples of user-generated urbanism, agile urbanism, and today’s peer-to-peer urbanism movement in Nick’s post. 

(via loyalcx)