<![CDATA[Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum - Architecture, Design & Engineering]]>

<![CDATA[Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum - Architecture, Design & Engineering]]> https://www.scivillage.com/ Fri, 28 Aug 2026 02:38:23 +0000 MyBB <![CDATA[Europe's buildings are designed for a climate that no longer exists]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21167.html Mon, 24 Aug 2026 17:44:08 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21167.html Europe's buildings are designed for a climate that no longer exists – new open dataset offers a fix
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1141223

INTRO: The weather files engineers use to design buildings are built from decades of historical measurements. The data can be over 30 years old. But a building designed today is expected to perform well in 2080, and ideally beyond. Researchers from Norway and Portugal have now released future meteorological data covering more than 5,000 European locations. The files are reliable projections of Europe’s future climate, down to specific time periods and places. The entire dataset is freely available at climatedataforbuildings.eu.

“The gap between the climate conditions we use in our calculations and the climate the building will experience could exceed half a century,” says Professor Thomas K. Thiis of the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU). Together, researchers from NMBU in Norway and the University of Coimbra in Portugal, have developed and evaluated future weather files that allow buildings to be designed for the climate they will experience.

A Typical Meteorological Year, or TMY, is the standard climate input for every building energy simulation, from a single house to a hospital campus. TMYs are assembled from historical observations, so they describe the climate of the past. But buildings designed today will experience a different climate. A Future Meteorological Year (FMY) applies climate-change projections to the historical baseline. It produces an hourly weather file for a specified future period and an emissions scenario that can be used directly in existing simulation software.

Not all climate models are equal. In a new study published in the Journal of Building Performance Simulation, researchers have evaluated a large pool of global and regional climate models. They identified those that reproduce summer and winter conditions across Europe satisfactorily, and only these selected models were used to generate the FMYs. The resulting files rest on the most reliable projections available for the European continent.

FMYs were produced for mid-century (2036-2065) and late-century (2066-2095) under multiple emissions pathways, spanning CMIP5 (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5) and CMIP6 (SSP1-2.6 through SSP5-8.5) scenarios. The choice of scenario directly affects design conclusions. In effect, this makes it a risk decision for the building project rather than a purely scientific question.

Whether a building is designed for a low-emissions or a high-emissions scenario can influence design solutions, for example regarding solar shading and cooling... (MORE - no ads)]]> Europe's buildings are designed for a climate that no longer exists – new open dataset offers a fix
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1141223

INTRO: The weather files engineers use to design buildings are built from decades of historical measurements. The data can be over 30 years old. But a building designed today is expected to perform well in 2080, and ideally beyond. Researchers from Norway and Portugal have now released future meteorological data covering more than 5,000 European locations. The files are reliable projections of Europe’s future climate, down to specific time periods and places. The entire dataset is freely available at climatedataforbuildings.eu.

“The gap between the climate conditions we use in our calculations and the climate the building will experience could exceed half a century,” says Professor Thomas K. Thiis of the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU). Together, researchers from NMBU in Norway and the University of Coimbra in Portugal, have developed and evaluated future weather files that allow buildings to be designed for the climate they will experience.

A Typical Meteorological Year, or TMY, is the standard climate input for every building energy simulation, from a single house to a hospital campus. TMYs are assembled from historical observations, so they describe the climate of the past. But buildings designed today will experience a different climate. A Future Meteorological Year (FMY) applies climate-change projections to the historical baseline. It produces an hourly weather file for a specified future period and an emissions scenario that can be used directly in existing simulation software.

Not all climate models are equal. In a new study published in the Journal of Building Performance Simulation, researchers have evaluated a large pool of global and regional climate models. They identified those that reproduce summer and winter conditions across Europe satisfactorily, and only these selected models were used to generate the FMYs. The resulting files rest on the most reliable projections available for the European continent.

FMYs were produced for mid-century (2036-2065) and late-century (2066-2095) under multiple emissions pathways, spanning CMIP5 (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5) and CMIP6 (SSP1-2.6 through SSP5-8.5) scenarios. The choice of scenario directly affects design conclusions. In effect, this makes it a risk decision for the building project rather than a purely scientific question.

Whether a building is designed for a low-emissions or a high-emissions scenario can influence design solutions, for example regarding solar shading and cooling... (MORE - no ads)]]> <![CDATA[Buildings that cool like African elephants]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21135.html Wed, 19 Aug 2026 22:18:57 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21135.html https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1140610

INTRO: During sunny and sweltering summer days, much relief comes from sweat. As beads of moisture evaporate on the skin, they pull heat away almost invisibly. It feels like a nuisance, but this is one of the most efficient cooling systems in the animal kingdom.

But not all animals have the ability to sweat. The African elephant is one example, enduring intense heat out on the African savanna with dark gray, inches-thick skin. How does it stay cool?

“Wrinkles,” says Dorit Aviv, an associate professor of architecture in the Weitzman School of Design. “Elephants have a network of cracks in their skin that trap water. When they spray themselves, that water stays put and evaporates slowly, cooling them over time.”

The concept of cooling without sweat was first pitched to Aviv by her longtime collaborator Shu Yang, a materials scientist at Penn Engineering. The idea stuck with Aviv, whose research focuses on making the built environment more thermodynamically efficient in a warming world, because buildings don’t sweat.

In a paper published in Advanced Materials, Aviv, Yang, and Kun-Hao Yu of Syracuse University turned that insight into a new kind of cement-based tile that captures, holds, and slowly evaporates water, cooling surfaces without fans, compressors, or complex moving parts.

Under infrared heating and periodic watering, the temperature beneath these tiles remained a stable 89.6° Fahrenheit. By comparison, cracked commercial stucco rose to 107.6°, while non-cracked stucco climbed to 125.6°.

“In the United States, we spend roughly 90% of our time indoors, and buildings consume about 40% of primary energy—nearly half of that for heating, cooling, and ventilation,” says Yang. “A passive, bio-inspired cooling façade like this could lower surface temperatures by 10-20° Fahrenheit compared to traditional stucco.”

Unlike mechanical air conditioning, which consumes fossil fuels and contributes to outdoor heat buildup by dumping indoor warmth outside, this is a truly passive system that cools the building’s “skin” itself, she explains... (MORE - no ads)]]> https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1140610

INTRO: During sunny and sweltering summer days, much relief comes from sweat. As beads of moisture evaporate on the skin, they pull heat away almost invisibly. It feels like a nuisance, but this is one of the most efficient cooling systems in the animal kingdom.

But not all animals have the ability to sweat. The African elephant is one example, enduring intense heat out on the African savanna with dark gray, inches-thick skin. How does it stay cool?

“Wrinkles,” says Dorit Aviv, an associate professor of architecture in the Weitzman School of Design. “Elephants have a network of cracks in their skin that trap water. When they spray themselves, that water stays put and evaporates slowly, cooling them over time.”

The concept of cooling without sweat was first pitched to Aviv by her longtime collaborator Shu Yang, a materials scientist at Penn Engineering. The idea stuck with Aviv, whose research focuses on making the built environment more thermodynamically efficient in a warming world, because buildings don’t sweat.

In a paper published in Advanced Materials, Aviv, Yang, and Kun-Hao Yu of Syracuse University turned that insight into a new kind of cement-based tile that captures, holds, and slowly evaporates water, cooling surfaces without fans, compressors, or complex moving parts.

Under infrared heating and periodic watering, the temperature beneath these tiles remained a stable 89.6° Fahrenheit. By comparison, cracked commercial stucco rose to 107.6°, while non-cracked stucco climbed to 125.6°.

“In the United States, we spend roughly 90% of our time indoors, and buildings consume about 40% of primary energy—nearly half of that for heating, cooling, and ventilation,” says Yang. “A passive, bio-inspired cooling façade like this could lower surface temperatures by 10-20° Fahrenheit compared to traditional stucco.”

Unlike mechanical air conditioning, which consumes fossil fuels and contributes to outdoor heat buildup by dumping indoor warmth outside, this is a truly passive system that cools the building’s “skin” itself, she explains... (MORE - no ads)]]> <![CDATA[What happened in Universe 25, the famous mouse utopia experiment? (psycho design)]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21092.html Fri, 14 Aug 2026 16:40:13 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21092.html Universe 24 experiment (Wikipedia) ...... California, Michigan lead nation in people who don’t want kids
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What really happened in Universe 25, the famous mouse utopia experiment
https://www.zmescience.com/feature-post/...xperiment/

EXCERPT: On day 560, the colony reached approximately 2,200 mice. Then growth stopped. The last mouse known to survive infancy was born around experimental day 600, approximately 1 March 1970. That was effectively Universe 25’s final viable generation.

The colony seemed to still function, but only superficially. The mice ate, drank, and slept. But they gave up on the social machinery entirely. They gave up on reproducing. And it gets even weirder.

Among the late-born mice, Calhoun noticed males with unusually pristine coats. They didn’t fight, so their bodies carried no scars. But they also didn’t court females. They spent their time eating, drinking, sleeping and grooming. Calhoun called them the “beautiful ones,” but it’s a chilling term, not one of endearment. They obsessed over their appearance, but showed no interest in the opposite sex.

Researchers tried moving small groups of late-stage mice into new, sparsely populated enclosures. The animals gained a lot of valuable space, but they still showed little interest in courtship, parenting, or organized social behavior — even when some received partners raised under uncrowded conditions. We shouldn’t anthropomorphize them, but the mice looked mentally broken.

By June 1972, only 122 mice remained, all relatively old. Universe 25 had become a retirement home without children.

What Universe 25 Tells Us. You’ll find all sorts of interpretations of the Universe 25 experiment. The most common one is that abundance itself caused the colony’s collapse: the mice had everything they needed, lost their purpose, withdrew from social life and eventually stopped reproducing. The mice received everything. They became decadent, society collapsed, therefore comfort corrupts.

It’s a seductive story, but also a misleading one. The mice enjoyed comfort in the beginning, but they lived in a sealed world where they couldn’t move around, and where there simply weren’t enough social roles. This lead to repeated violence and disruption that ultimately ended reproduction. Universe 25 was less a warning about luxury than about what can happen when material needs are met but agency, structure and meaningful social bonds break down.

People have used it to condemn cities, welfare systems, sexual freedom, consumer culture, falling birth rates and almost any social change they already distrusted.

Historians Edmund Ramsden and Jon Adams found that the popular story eventually overshadowed Calhoun’s more complicated interest in architecture, interaction and the design of healthier communities. The behavioural sink became a symbol of overpopulation rather than a question about how environments organise — or disorganise — social life.

Another interpretation places the blame not on abundance, but on inescapable crowding. But this doesn’t stand up too well, either. After all, there were still unused nesting boxes and ample food. Calhoun himself later stressed that population density alone was not the decisive factor; the frequency and quality of social interactions mattered more.

Others see the experiment as a story about damaged development. Young mice born during the colony’s decline encountered disrupted nests, aggressive mothers and unstable social groups. They failed to learn normal courtship, parenting and territorial behaviour. Moving some of them into less crowded surroundings was too late to restore these abilities, and more space also arrived too late: the behaviours needed to build a functioning colony had never fully developed.

Then, there is the architectural interpretation. The enclosure offered physical space, but little privacy, complexity or control. Calhoun’s wider research suggested that the design of an environment could either intensify forced contact or help animals manage it. In his own interpretation, this social collapse wasn’t unavoidable, and he became increasingly interested in how better-designed spaces might support healthier, more creative forms of group life.

Later studies seem to back the idea that more was happening.

Universe 25 became one of those studies that seemed to explain whatever people already believed. To some, it proved that overcrowding would destroy modern cities. To others, it showed that comfort breeds decadence, welfare erodes ambition or social isolation leads inevitably to demographic collapse. Each retelling stripped away another layer of complexity until the experiment became less a scientific study than a cultural Rorschach test.

The simplified version travelled well because it offered a clean moral: the mice received paradise and destroyed themselves. But Universe 25 was never paradise. It turns out, you can’t have paradise with no migration, no meaningful environmental change, and no way for young animals to create new territories beyond the reach of established adults. Food remained plentiful, yet control over space, relationships and social roles did not. Those too are important resources for a society.

But ultimately, Universe 25 was a mouse study, not a model of human civilisation. It examined one colony in an artificial, sealed enclosure, without the replicated groups and tightly controlled comparisons expected in modern experimental research. There was no control. Any attempt to turn Universe 25 into a direct prophecy about cities, welfare, technology or falling birth rates moves beyond what the experiment actually demonstrated.

But if there is an enduring lesson, then, it may not be that abundance destroys societies. It may be that material plenty cannot compensate for the loss of agency, privacy, belonging and a viable place in the social world. The myth survived because it promised a universal law. But the evidence is less tidy. If it does say anything at all, the evidence says that a population can’t survive while the structures that enrich life begin to fail. (MORE - missing details)]]> Universe 24 experiment (Wikipedia) ...... California, Michigan lead nation in people who don’t want kids
- - - - - - - - - -

What really happened in Universe 25, the famous mouse utopia experiment
https://www.zmescience.com/feature-post/...xperiment/

EXCERPT: On day 560, the colony reached approximately 2,200 mice. Then growth stopped. The last mouse known to survive infancy was born around experimental day 600, approximately 1 March 1970. That was effectively Universe 25’s final viable generation.

The colony seemed to still function, but only superficially. The mice ate, drank, and slept. But they gave up on the social machinery entirely. They gave up on reproducing. And it gets even weirder.

Among the late-born mice, Calhoun noticed males with unusually pristine coats. They didn’t fight, so their bodies carried no scars. But they also didn’t court females. They spent their time eating, drinking, sleeping and grooming. Calhoun called them the “beautiful ones,” but it’s a chilling term, not one of endearment. They obsessed over their appearance, but showed no interest in the opposite sex.

Researchers tried moving small groups of late-stage mice into new, sparsely populated enclosures. The animals gained a lot of valuable space, but they still showed little interest in courtship, parenting, or organized social behavior — even when some received partners raised under uncrowded conditions. We shouldn’t anthropomorphize them, but the mice looked mentally broken.

By June 1972, only 122 mice remained, all relatively old. Universe 25 had become a retirement home without children.

What Universe 25 Tells Us. You’ll find all sorts of interpretations of the Universe 25 experiment. The most common one is that abundance itself caused the colony’s collapse: the mice had everything they needed, lost their purpose, withdrew from social life and eventually stopped reproducing. The mice received everything. They became decadent, society collapsed, therefore comfort corrupts.

It’s a seductive story, but also a misleading one. The mice enjoyed comfort in the beginning, but they lived in a sealed world where they couldn’t move around, and where there simply weren’t enough social roles. This lead to repeated violence and disruption that ultimately ended reproduction. Universe 25 was less a warning about luxury than about what can happen when material needs are met but agency, structure and meaningful social bonds break down.

People have used it to condemn cities, welfare systems, sexual freedom, consumer culture, falling birth rates and almost any social change they already distrusted.

Historians Edmund Ramsden and Jon Adams found that the popular story eventually overshadowed Calhoun’s more complicated interest in architecture, interaction and the design of healthier communities. The behavioural sink became a symbol of overpopulation rather than a question about how environments organise — or disorganise — social life.

Another interpretation places the blame not on abundance, but on inescapable crowding. But this doesn’t stand up too well, either. After all, there were still unused nesting boxes and ample food. Calhoun himself later stressed that population density alone was not the decisive factor; the frequency and quality of social interactions mattered more.

Others see the experiment as a story about damaged development. Young mice born during the colony’s decline encountered disrupted nests, aggressive mothers and unstable social groups. They failed to learn normal courtship, parenting and territorial behaviour. Moving some of them into less crowded surroundings was too late to restore these abilities, and more space also arrived too late: the behaviours needed to build a functioning colony had never fully developed.

Then, there is the architectural interpretation. The enclosure offered physical space, but little privacy, complexity or control. Calhoun’s wider research suggested that the design of an environment could either intensify forced contact or help animals manage it. In his own interpretation, this social collapse wasn’t unavoidable, and he became increasingly interested in how better-designed spaces might support healthier, more creative forms of group life.

Later studies seem to back the idea that more was happening.

Universe 25 became one of those studies that seemed to explain whatever people already believed. To some, it proved that overcrowding would destroy modern cities. To others, it showed that comfort breeds decadence, welfare erodes ambition or social isolation leads inevitably to demographic collapse. Each retelling stripped away another layer of complexity until the experiment became less a scientific study than a cultural Rorschach test.

The simplified version travelled well because it offered a clean moral: the mice received paradise and destroyed themselves. But Universe 25 was never paradise. It turns out, you can’t have paradise with no migration, no meaningful environmental change, and no way for young animals to create new territories beyond the reach of established adults. Food remained plentiful, yet control over space, relationships and social roles did not. Those too are important resources for a society.

But ultimately, Universe 25 was a mouse study, not a model of human civilisation. It examined one colony in an artificial, sealed enclosure, without the replicated groups and tightly controlled comparisons expected in modern experimental research. There was no control. Any attempt to turn Universe 25 into a direct prophecy about cities, welfare, technology or falling birth rates moves beyond what the experiment actually demonstrated.

But if there is an enduring lesson, then, it may not be that abundance destroys societies. It may be that material plenty cannot compensate for the loss of agency, privacy, belonging and a viable place in the social world. The myth survived because it promised a universal law. But the evidence is less tidy. If it does say anything at all, the evidence says that a population can’t survive while the structures that enrich life begin to fail. (MORE - missing details)]]> <![CDATA[Nazi Germany fleet emerges from Danube due to Europe's heatwave (old engineering)]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21033.html Wed, 05 Aug 2026 16:42:10 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21033.html Same thing three years ago. Get accustomed to it.
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Ghostly Nazi Germany fleet emerges from Danube due to Europe's heatwave
https://www.forcesnews.com/heritage/nava...g-heatwave

INTRO: The skeletal, rusty and sand-covered remains of several Nazi warship wrecks, laden with tonnes of unexploded ammunition and weapons, have resurfaced in the Danube River near the Serbian port town of Prahovo.

This phenomenon is occurring because the Danube is experiencing its lowest water levels in more than 50 years in certain areas of Serbia, largely due to a heatwave affecting Europe – the highest temperature recorded in Prahovo so far this summer has reached 40.0°C.

The heatwave has triggered a drought, disrupting shipping and energy production due to reduced water levels and has led to the discovery of historical artifacts, such as Nazi warships and what historians believe to be the remains of an ancient mammoth in Bulgaria.

About 200 Kriegsmarine, Nazi Germany's naval branch of the Wehrmacht, ships are resting on the Danube's riverbed because, in September 1944, Rear Admiral Paul-Willy Zieb ordered their deliberate sinking in a zigzag pattern to slow down the advancing Soviet Red Army.

The Danube, Europe's second-longest river, flows through four capital cities, links 10 countries and is considered by the European Commission as the "single most important non-oceanic body of water in Europe" and a "future central axis for the European Union".

However, the Nazi warships, which appear whenever the water levels of the Danube go down this low, have nearly halved the navigable width of the Prahovo channel – a narrow shipping route on the river... (MORE - details)

https://youtu.be/EgsRyXDuI38

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/EgsRyXDuI38]]> Same thing three years ago. Get accustomed to it.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Ghostly Nazi Germany fleet emerges from Danube due to Europe's heatwave
https://www.forcesnews.com/heritage/nava...g-heatwave

INTRO: The skeletal, rusty and sand-covered remains of several Nazi warship wrecks, laden with tonnes of unexploded ammunition and weapons, have resurfaced in the Danube River near the Serbian port town of Prahovo.

This phenomenon is occurring because the Danube is experiencing its lowest water levels in more than 50 years in certain areas of Serbia, largely due to a heatwave affecting Europe – the highest temperature recorded in Prahovo so far this summer has reached 40.0°C.

The heatwave has triggered a drought, disrupting shipping and energy production due to reduced water levels and has led to the discovery of historical artifacts, such as Nazi warships and what historians believe to be the remains of an ancient mammoth in Bulgaria.

About 200 Kriegsmarine, Nazi Germany's naval branch of the Wehrmacht, ships are resting on the Danube's riverbed because, in September 1944, Rear Admiral Paul-Willy Zieb ordered their deliberate sinking in a zigzag pattern to slow down the advancing Soviet Red Army.

The Danube, Europe's second-longest river, flows through four capital cities, links 10 countries and is considered by the European Commission as the "single most important non-oceanic body of water in Europe" and a "future central axis for the European Union".

However, the Nazi warships, which appear whenever the water levels of the Danube go down this low, have nearly halved the navigable width of the Prahovo channel – a narrow shipping route on the river... (MORE - details)

https://youtu.be/EgsRyXDuI38

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/EgsRyXDuI38]]> <![CDATA[1 in 10 Brits haven't had a bath in a decade as UK habits shift (bathtub removal)]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21009.html Sun, 02 Aug 2026 18:15:11 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21009.html I'm speechless. Few air conditioners, now this. Wink

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One in 10 Brits haven't had a bath in over a decade as UK bathing habits shift
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/on...h-37505761

INTRO: One in 10 Brits haven't had a bath in over a decade, new research has revealed. A survey of 2,000 adults found 51% believe bathing has become outdated. Nearly half (48%) now favour a shower, while 18% of people don't even have a bath in their homes. Others (14%) made this change specifically to help cut their water usage.

Recent studies, including the Shower Market Report, have recorded a rise in renovations being carried out to remove disused baths. A fifth of people have had a bath taken out of their homes in a bid to create a bigger shower space (43%), modernise their bathroom (42%), or convert to a walk-in shower (31%).

A spokesperson from leading smart Pay-As-You-Go energy supplier Utilita, which commissioned the research to support its award winning High5 tips series, including to keep showers to four minutes maximum, said: "Once a staple of the home, baths seem to have fallen out of favour for many across the UK.

"From homes getting smaller to costs getting higher, there are numerous reasons why this might be. But however you choose to clean and refresh, the most important thing is being conscious about your water usage, for the sake of both your pocket and the planet."

A fifth of those without a bath cite a lack of time to unwind, while 33% are too impatient for the time they take to run. Other reasons for the drop in popularity included not wanting to use excessive water for either cost-saving or environmental purposes, with 77% describing themselves as mindful of the amount of water they use.

Nine in 10 (90%) take deliberate steps to cut their water consumption, such as only filling the kettle with the water they need (55%), collecting rain to water plants (29%), limiting hosepipe use (29%), and re-using grey water (13%).

More than a third (35%) have ditched baths for showers for precisely this reason. Three quarters (76%) also believe this makes a difference to lowering their water bills, with 77% saying the same about taking shorter showers... (MORE - details)]]> <![CDATA[Free-range egg production could have bad results for climate (humane design problems)]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20971.html Wed, 29 Jul 2026 01:24:46 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20971.html 100% organic free-range egg production could have negative consequences for climate & nature
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1137740

INTRO: Using UK data, the study compared several possible scenarios for the egg industry, including shifts to barn, free-range and organic systems, while keeping egg output constant. The authors find that although cage-free systems may align more closely with public concern for hen welfare, they may also require larger hen populations and could increase environmental pressures.

Shifting to an entirely free-range and organic method of egg production from a business-as-usual scenario, for example, would raise emissions by 60% while almost doubling land occupation. These results highlight the need to integrate environmental outcomes when guiding future transitions toward non-cage egg production, the authors say.

“Our research highlights the importance of considering animal welfare, environmental impact and food production together when shaping the future of egg farming,” says author Dr Harriet Bartlett, Senior Research Associate at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford. “Being aware of these tricky trade-offs will help us make better decisions for the environment and animal welfare in the future,” she adds.

The global food supply chain creates 26% of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions and is responsible for 78% of eutrophication (excess nutrient enrichment of water), and 32% of terrestrial acidification (soil damage). Global production of eggs is a key driver of these impacts, having quadrupled over the past 50 years.

Meanwhile, advocacy for a wholesale transition away from cage-based husbandry systems has increased. “While this movement is driven by important concerns around farm animal welfare, differences in production performance among husbandry systems could lead to unintended outcomes,” says lead author Oliver Martinic, an independent researcher based in Croatia.

“This is not to say concerns around eggs from caged chickens can or should be dismissed or that we should return to restrictive caged systems. But we want farms and consumers to be aware of all the potential impacts when it comes to the methods by which we produce our food,” says Dr Bartlett. “By taking a broader view, we can find the best ways to balance these trade-offs as we pursue a more sustainable global food system.”

The authors also found a significant rise in mortality for 100% free-range and organic systems. However, they acknowledge the data used in the study were collected between 2009-10, and progress has been made since then. “This is an important limitation, and we are transparent about it in the paper. However, these data remain the most comprehensive available for laying-hen production systems in the UK,” says Martinic.. (MORE - long Q&A, no ads)]]> 100% organic free-range egg production could have negative consequences for climate & nature
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1137740

INTRO: Using UK data, the study compared several possible scenarios for the egg industry, including shifts to barn, free-range and organic systems, while keeping egg output constant. The authors find that although cage-free systems may align more closely with public concern for hen welfare, they may also require larger hen populations and could increase environmental pressures.

Shifting to an entirely free-range and organic method of egg production from a business-as-usual scenario, for example, would raise emissions by 60% while almost doubling land occupation. These results highlight the need to integrate environmental outcomes when guiding future transitions toward non-cage egg production, the authors say.

“Our research highlights the importance of considering animal welfare, environmental impact and food production together when shaping the future of egg farming,” says author Dr Harriet Bartlett, Senior Research Associate at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford. “Being aware of these tricky trade-offs will help us make better decisions for the environment and animal welfare in the future,” she adds.

The global food supply chain creates 26% of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions and is responsible for 78% of eutrophication (excess nutrient enrichment of water), and 32% of terrestrial acidification (soil damage). Global production of eggs is a key driver of these impacts, having quadrupled over the past 50 years.

Meanwhile, advocacy for a wholesale transition away from cage-based husbandry systems has increased. “While this movement is driven by important concerns around farm animal welfare, differences in production performance among husbandry systems could lead to unintended outcomes,” says lead author Oliver Martinic, an independent researcher based in Croatia.

“This is not to say concerns around eggs from caged chickens can or should be dismissed or that we should return to restrictive caged systems. But we want farms and consumers to be aware of all the potential impacts when it comes to the methods by which we produce our food,” says Dr Bartlett. “By taking a broader view, we can find the best ways to balance these trade-offs as we pursue a more sustainable global food system.”

The authors also found a significant rise in mortality for 100% free-range and organic systems. However, they acknowledge the data used in the study were collected between 2009-10, and progress has been made since then. “This is an important limitation, and we are transparent about it in the paper. However, these data remain the most comprehensive available for laying-hen production systems in the UK,” says Martinic.. (MORE - long Q&A, no ads)]]> <![CDATA[The first US city that is on track to run out of water (urban design)]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20948.html Sun, 26 Jul 2026 22:23:07 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20948.html https://www.sciencealert.com/tremendousl...t-of-water

INTRO: It seems inconceivable, even if you're aware of the perilous situation that the world's water supplies are in, but a developed coastal city in Texas that more than 300,000 people call home is now in serious danger of running out of water. The city is Corpus Christi, and difficulties with water scarcity are now coming to a head after years of concerns over shortages.

There are multiple issues combining here, perhaps most importantly the arrival of major industrial developments, off the back of the unlocking of vast oil and gas reserves that came with the shale revolution. One plastics chemical complex, built in 2022, uses as much water for cooling every day as all the Corpus Christi residents combined.

A planned seawater desalination plant, which was supposed to ease some of the pressure brought on by rising industrial water usage, never materialized, further compounding the problem of supply. And then there's climate change: Texas has been hit by a series of historical droughts in recent years. It all adds up to a scarcity of water that life and businesses rely on.

"Corpus Christi has come as close to running out of water as practically any city in the United States," says Dylan Baddour, a journalist at Inside Climate News. "They've rebounded a good bit since the beginning of this year, but they have about one year of water in storage right now, which would already be considered an emergency for any city." (MORE - details)]]> https://www.sciencealert.com/tremendousl...t-of-water

INTRO: It seems inconceivable, even if you're aware of the perilous situation that the world's water supplies are in, but a developed coastal city in Texas that more than 300,000 people call home is now in serious danger of running out of water. The city is Corpus Christi, and difficulties with water scarcity are now coming to a head after years of concerns over shortages.

There are multiple issues combining here, perhaps most importantly the arrival of major industrial developments, off the back of the unlocking of vast oil and gas reserves that came with the shale revolution. One plastics chemical complex, built in 2022, uses as much water for cooling every day as all the Corpus Christi residents combined.

A planned seawater desalination plant, which was supposed to ease some of the pressure brought on by rising industrial water usage, never materialized, further compounding the problem of supply. And then there's climate change: Texas has been hit by a series of historical droughts in recent years. It all adds up to a scarcity of water that life and businesses rely on.

"Corpus Christi has come as close to running out of water as practically any city in the United States," says Dylan Baddour, a journalist at Inside Climate News. "They've rebounded a good bit since the beginning of this year, but they have about one year of water in storage right now, which would already be considered an emergency for any city." (MORE - details)]]> <![CDATA[The subtle signs you're not an introvert but an 'otrovert' (psychological design)]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20885.html Sat, 18 Jul 2026 17:44:35 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20885.html https://www.sciencefocus.com/wellbeing/otrovert-signs

INTRO: If you ever feel like you don't belong, a buzzy new term in popular psychology may help you find your place in the world.

Otroversion is a personality trait used by psychiatrist Dr Rami Kaminski to describe a person who doesn't fit in – not just in social groups, but in the existing personality types defined in the diagnostic manuals of professional psychology.

Kaminski says he’s an otrovert himself and developed the idea after recognising his own traits in patients. “When I was a child and teenager, I really felt different,” he says. “I was popular, I had no obvious deficiencies, but I didn’t understand why I could be in a social gathering and feel alienated and remote and very lonely.”

It’s this feeling of ‘otherness’ that Kaminski says defines the otrovert. They tend not to work well in groups. They don’t ask for advice from others. They might agree with you wholeheartedly one-on-one, but the idea of consensus baffles them. They distrust institutions.

And they struggle even to comprehend how groups of people think collectively, whether those groups are religious, political or social.

None of which is to say that otroversion is a cognitive or emotional disorder. Otroverts are usually friendly and altruistic people, Kaminski says, but they prefer to have deep relationships with just one other person.

That doesn’t mean it’s another word for introversion either... (MORE - details)]]> https://www.sciencefocus.com/wellbeing/otrovert-signs

INTRO: If you ever feel like you don't belong, a buzzy new term in popular psychology may help you find your place in the world.

Otroversion is a personality trait used by psychiatrist Dr Rami Kaminski to describe a person who doesn't fit in – not just in social groups, but in the existing personality types defined in the diagnostic manuals of professional psychology.

Kaminski says he’s an otrovert himself and developed the idea after recognising his own traits in patients. “When I was a child and teenager, I really felt different,” he says. “I was popular, I had no obvious deficiencies, but I didn’t understand why I could be in a social gathering and feel alienated and remote and very lonely.”

It’s this feeling of ‘otherness’ that Kaminski says defines the otrovert. They tend not to work well in groups. They don’t ask for advice from others. They might agree with you wholeheartedly one-on-one, but the idea of consensus baffles them. They distrust institutions.

And they struggle even to comprehend how groups of people think collectively, whether those groups are religious, political or social.

None of which is to say that otroversion is a cognitive or emotional disorder. Otroverts are usually friendly and altruistic people, Kaminski says, but they prefer to have deep relationships with just one other person.

That doesn’t mean it’s another word for introversion either... (MORE - details)]]> <![CDATA[Weird result: The 66 billion trees China planted in a huge wall (Gobi Desert design)]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20843.html Sun, 12 Jul 2026 00:28:35 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20843.html Something weird is going on with the 66 billion trees China planted in a huge wall
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technolog...r-AA27fS0e

INTRO: Over the past five decades, China has planted 66 billion trees in a massive wall that spans the Gobi and Taklamakan deserts. This reforestation effort intended to stop the deserts’ spread is working — but, it turns out, with a surprising twist.

In a new study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, researchers found that the trees planted in the so-called “Great Green Wall” appear to grow faster than trees in natural forests, possibly because they respond to the rising CO2 levels in our atmosphere better.

Still, it’s mysterious. Study lead author Yuhang Luo, a landscape ecologist at Peking University in Shenzhen, told Live Science that it’s unclear how the artificial forests different from the natural ones, raising questions about their effectiveness at sucking up carbon.

The Great Green Wall project began in 1978 and is expected to be completed by 2050. The original intent was to slow the desertification of the country’s grasslands, of which the Gobi devours over a thousand square miles every year. In its early stages, the initiative struggled to get off the ground, as some of the trees chosen for their quick growth turned out to be poorly suited for the environment and died off.

But Chinese scientists pushed on. In a monumental feat of planning and perseverance, the verdant barrier has continued to grow instead of dying off — a fate that commonly befalls other green wall initiatives that learned that you can’t brute force your way into planting as many trees as possible. Forest cover in the regions the wall touches has ballooned from 5 percent in 1978 to 14 percent in 2023, according to a Nature article, which has helped cut down on dust storms and improve the air quality in downwind cities, including Beijing.

The Great Green Wall, however, wasn’t originally intended as a climate change mitigation measure. So Luo and his colleagues were curious to see how the planted forests hold up in that regard... (MORE - details)]]> Something weird is going on with the 66 billion trees China planted in a huge wall
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technolog...r-AA27fS0e

INTRO: Over the past five decades, China has planted 66 billion trees in a massive wall that spans the Gobi and Taklamakan deserts. This reforestation effort intended to stop the deserts’ spread is working — but, it turns out, with a surprising twist.

In a new study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, researchers found that the trees planted in the so-called “Great Green Wall” appear to grow faster than trees in natural forests, possibly because they respond to the rising CO2 levels in our atmosphere better.

Still, it’s mysterious. Study lead author Yuhang Luo, a landscape ecologist at Peking University in Shenzhen, told Live Science that it’s unclear how the artificial forests different from the natural ones, raising questions about their effectiveness at sucking up carbon.

The Great Green Wall project began in 1978 and is expected to be completed by 2050. The original intent was to slow the desertification of the country’s grasslands, of which the Gobi devours over a thousand square miles every year. In its early stages, the initiative struggled to get off the ground, as some of the trees chosen for their quick growth turned out to be poorly suited for the environment and died off.

But Chinese scientists pushed on. In a monumental feat of planning and perseverance, the verdant barrier has continued to grow instead of dying off — a fate that commonly befalls other green wall initiatives that learned that you can’t brute force your way into planting as many trees as possible. Forest cover in the regions the wall touches has ballooned from 5 percent in 1978 to 14 percent in 2023, according to a Nature article, which has helped cut down on dust storms and improve the air quality in downwind cities, including Beijing.

The Great Green Wall, however, wasn’t originally intended as a climate change mitigation measure. So Luo and his colleagues were curious to see how the planted forests hold up in that regard... (MORE - details)]]> <![CDATA[Error-prone AI is already mediating between doctors & patients (health care design)]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20803.html Mon, 06 Jul 2026 15:58:05 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20803.html AI mistakes can cost doctors time when writing to patients
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1134481

EXCERPTS: Artificial intelligence is spreading rapidly in health care, with the goal of streamlining critical but onerous clerical tasks such as note-taking and charting so that physicians and nurses can devote more time to patients.

But even when AI can free up doctors to correspond with patients, it may fall short in helping them do it by introducing errors and extraneous details into their messages, according to a new Dartmouth study presented at the 2026 Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics and published in the conference proceedings.

The result is that physicians may spend more time editing responses than it would've taken to write them, the researchers report. "We find that AI can sound like a doctor but not think like one," says Sarah Preum, an assistant professor of computer science and the study's co-corresponding author with Parker Seegmiller, a graduate researcher in Preum's PersistLab at Dartmouth.

[...] The team reports that AI-generated answers frequently misalign with what clinicians would actually write. This includes automated responses that are too long, don't ask follow-up questions, and use irrelevant or inaccurate medical details.

"There are smaller studies that say, 'Oh, AI is amazing,' but we realized there is a gap in the existing literature of a large-scale evaluation of this technology," Preum says. "We didn't just want to measure a platform's accuracy, but whether it actually helps with the workload, which in this case is measured by how much editing the physician is doing."

[...] The researchers show, however, that adapting AI to how individual physicians communicate can improve accuracy by 33% and reduce editing by 26%.

"If message generation is really efficient and high quality, if it asks the right things, then it really has potential to improve efficiency," says co-author Tim Burdick, an associate professor of community and family medicine in Dartmouth's Geisel School of Medicine and a family medicine physician at Dartmouth Health.

"I don't foresee a time when the portal can respond to a patient without a clinician editing it first. But as we make the models better, we'll be able to address portal messages much more quickly and with less mental energy," Burdick says.

The study shows that there are such things as "good" AI responses and provides a framework for implementing them into patient-physician portals, Preum says. These platforms are increasingly common among large health care systems and often customized, she says... (MORE - missing details, no ads)]]> AI mistakes can cost doctors time when writing to patients
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1134481

EXCERPTS: Artificial intelligence is spreading rapidly in health care, with the goal of streamlining critical but onerous clerical tasks such as note-taking and charting so that physicians and nurses can devote more time to patients.

But even when AI can free up doctors to correspond with patients, it may fall short in helping them do it by introducing errors and extraneous details into their messages, according to a new Dartmouth study presented at the 2026 Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics and published in the conference proceedings.

The result is that physicians may spend more time editing responses than it would've taken to write them, the researchers report. "We find that AI can sound like a doctor but not think like one," says Sarah Preum, an assistant professor of computer science and the study's co-corresponding author with Parker Seegmiller, a graduate researcher in Preum's PersistLab at Dartmouth.

[...] The team reports that AI-generated answers frequently misalign with what clinicians would actually write. This includes automated responses that are too long, don't ask follow-up questions, and use irrelevant or inaccurate medical details.

"There are smaller studies that say, 'Oh, AI is amazing,' but we realized there is a gap in the existing literature of a large-scale evaluation of this technology," Preum says. "We didn't just want to measure a platform's accuracy, but whether it actually helps with the workload, which in this case is measured by how much editing the physician is doing."

[...] The researchers show, however, that adapting AI to how individual physicians communicate can improve accuracy by 33% and reduce editing by 26%.

"If message generation is really efficient and high quality, if it asks the right things, then it really has potential to improve efficiency," says co-author Tim Burdick, an associate professor of community and family medicine in Dartmouth's Geisel School of Medicine and a family medicine physician at Dartmouth Health.

"I don't foresee a time when the portal can respond to a patient without a clinician editing it first. But as we make the models better, we'll be able to address portal messages much more quickly and with less mental energy," Burdick says.

The study shows that there are such things as "good" AI responses and provides a framework for implementing them into patient-physician portals, Preum says. These platforms are increasingly common among large health care systems and often customized, she says... (MORE - missing details, no ads)]]> <![CDATA[European cities short on shade as heat intensifies (urban design)]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20756.html Tue, 30 Jun 2026 15:27:19 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20756.html https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1134174

EXCERPTS: More than four in five homes and workplaces across 25 European cities have less nearby tree canopy than what is needed for meaningful cooling, according to an open-data analysis by an urban greening expert. Dr Thami Croeser from RMIT University in Australia has mapped tree canopy within 60 metres of 5.5 million buildings across France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Portugal, Greece and the UK.

His analysis found 84% of buildings fall below the 30% nearby canopy threshold identified in urban heat literature as important for reducing dangerous urban heat island effects. Croeser, from the RMIT Centre for Urban Research, said Europe's heatwaves are exposing a structural problem in the way cities have been designed.

"More than four in five homes and workplaces in the cities we analysed do not have the nearby tree canopy that urban heat research indicates is needed for meaningful cooling," he said. "When severe heat hits, a leafy park three blocks away is too far away to help an apartment building surrounded by baking asphalt."

Cologne and Hamburg performed best, with about 45% of buildings above the 30% threshold. Nice followed at 41%, largely due to hillside vegetation. After that, the picture deteriorates rapidly.

At the other end of the ranking, Sevilla, a city that regularly faces extreme summer heat, had 98% of buildings below the threshold. [...] Croeser said density is not the problem.

“When we compared neighbourhoods with similar dwelling densities, the areas with mature trees were up to 10 degrees cooler than nearby hotspots,” he said. “We found dense urban areas with apartments, shops, offices and activity centres that stayed much cooler because they had proper shade. The difference is whether trees were protected, planted and given enough space and water to grow.”

Croeser said cities needed to focus on three priorities: planting trees close to where people live and work, giving trees enough soil and water to thrive, and protecting mature canopy. “The trees cooling cities today were planted decades ago,” he said... (MORE - missing details, no ads)

PAPER: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-70723-6]]> https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1134174

EXCERPTS: More than four in five homes and workplaces across 25 European cities have less nearby tree canopy than what is needed for meaningful cooling, according to an open-data analysis by an urban greening expert. Dr Thami Croeser from RMIT University in Australia has mapped tree canopy within 60 metres of 5.5 million buildings across France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Portugal, Greece and the UK.

His analysis found 84% of buildings fall below the 30% nearby canopy threshold identified in urban heat literature as important for reducing dangerous urban heat island effects. Croeser, from the RMIT Centre for Urban Research, said Europe's heatwaves are exposing a structural problem in the way cities have been designed.

"More than four in five homes and workplaces in the cities we analysed do not have the nearby tree canopy that urban heat research indicates is needed for meaningful cooling," he said. "When severe heat hits, a leafy park three blocks away is too far away to help an apartment building surrounded by baking asphalt."

Cologne and Hamburg performed best, with about 45% of buildings above the 30% threshold. Nice followed at 41%, largely due to hillside vegetation. After that, the picture deteriorates rapidly.

At the other end of the ranking, Sevilla, a city that regularly faces extreme summer heat, had 98% of buildings below the threshold. [...] Croeser said density is not the problem.

“When we compared neighbourhoods with similar dwelling densities, the areas with mature trees were up to 10 degrees cooler than nearby hotspots,” he said. “We found dense urban areas with apartments, shops, offices and activity centres that stayed much cooler because they had proper shade. The difference is whether trees were protected, planted and given enough space and water to grow.”

Croeser said cities needed to focus on three priorities: planting trees close to where people live and work, giving trees enough soil and water to thrive, and protecting mature canopy. “The trees cooling cities today were planted decades ago,” he said... (MORE - missing details, no ads)

PAPER: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-70723-6]]> <![CDATA[SpaceX and NASA leaders hail antimatter propulsion rockets (engineering)]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20706.html Wed, 24 Jun 2026 15:24:55 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20706.html Seems like much ado over just a simple statement that no actual investment has been attached to yet.
- - - - - - - - - - - -

SpaceX and NASA leaders hail antimatter propulsion rockets for journeys beyond Mars
https://interestingengineering.com/innov...ys-to-mars

EXCERPTS: The world’s first trillionaire, Elon Musk, has predicted that trillions of dollars will be spent on antimatter propulsion in the future as humanity attempts to travel to other star systems. The idea was supported by NASA’s top boss, Jared Isaacman, setting the tone for what could come in the near future.

Using antimatter propulsion to travel to far-away solar systems might sound straight out of science fiction, but that’s exactly how big ideas come to life. A human settlement on the Moon has been used multiple times in sci-fiction, and it is most likely to become a reality in the coming decade, if not earlier.

Musk’s own success in recent years has come from pushing ideas that sound straight out of science fiction into reality. Whether the electric car or a rocket powerful enough to send a human mission to Mars, Musk has been predicting them to come true. Recently, the SpaceX founder and CEO shared a new prediction about antimatter propulsion on the social media platform X and received overwhelming support.

[...] As Gizmodo pointed out, startups like Positron Dynamics have already claimed that their positron-based technology makes rocket engines 1,000 times more efficient than state-of-the-art ion thrusters.

This is where Isaacman’s support could help. While NASA has supported theoretical research on antimatter, if Isaacman and the team at NASA could sharpen the focus on antimatter propulsion, more money could flow into its research... (MORE - missing details)]]> Seems like much ado over just a simple statement that no actual investment has been attached to yet.
- - - - - - - - - - - -

SpaceX and NASA leaders hail antimatter propulsion rockets for journeys beyond Mars
https://interestingengineering.com/innov...ys-to-mars

EXCERPTS: The world’s first trillionaire, Elon Musk, has predicted that trillions of dollars will be spent on antimatter propulsion in the future as humanity attempts to travel to other star systems. The idea was supported by NASA’s top boss, Jared Isaacman, setting the tone for what could come in the near future.

Using antimatter propulsion to travel to far-away solar systems might sound straight out of science fiction, but that’s exactly how big ideas come to life. A human settlement on the Moon has been used multiple times in sci-fiction, and it is most likely to become a reality in the coming decade, if not earlier.

Musk’s own success in recent years has come from pushing ideas that sound straight out of science fiction into reality. Whether the electric car or a rocket powerful enough to send a human mission to Mars, Musk has been predicting them to come true. Recently, the SpaceX founder and CEO shared a new prediction about antimatter propulsion on the social media platform X and received overwhelming support.

[...] As Gizmodo pointed out, startups like Positron Dynamics have already claimed that their positron-based technology makes rocket engines 1,000 times more efficient than state-of-the-art ion thrusters.

This is where Isaacman’s support could help. While NASA has supported theoretical research on antimatter, if Isaacman and the team at NASA could sharpen the focus on antimatter propulsion, more money could flow into its research... (MORE - missing details)]]> <![CDATA[Hard drives & RAM are costly & scarce due to data centers (surveillance design)]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20669.html Thu, 18 Jun 2026 22:29:04 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20669.html https://youtu.be/aXy8mQeuObk

VIDEO EXCERPTS: Now, I typically use solid-state hard drives that are 4 to 8 terabytes, and the kind I use are Samsung. When I bought these, let's say a year ago, they costed, I don't know, $250 for a 4TB and maybe $430 for an 8TB.

So, I haven't bought any in a while. And I was like, I'm going to buy some stuff [...] So, I go into this place. ... I look in the cabinet, I see $2,000.

And I said to the guy, "$2,000? What's that for?"

He goes, "That's for the 4TB hard drive."

I'm like, "$2,000? That's insane." And I see the 8TB one. $4,000 for an 8TB. $4,000. They had a couple of them in there. I said, "What's up?"

He said, "Oh, yeah. Uh, they've gone up 1000% since last October."

1000%? And you have almost none in there.

Yeah, because we can't even get them anymore. .. Because they're using them in the data centers. They've already been bought up. They're buying them before they even get manufactured.

So, they can't even get any. The same thing is happening with RAM. Go try and buy RAM at places. It's incredibly expensive if they even have it. So, if you're trying to build a computer, it's almost impossible to do that. SD cards for cameras have tripled in price, too.

[...] And the manufacturers, the people that build these computers, Apple, Google, HP, Microsoft, all these companies are building computers that can run local LLMs because 90% of what most people need to do, they can just run on their computer on a local LLM. You don't need a data center to do that.

Now, another thing is going on at the same time. Kids, not only my kids, all my kids' friends and college students ... so many people I've talked to, they hate AI. They don't just hate AI slop, AI videos, things like that. They hate the concept of AI. They hate AI music. Anytime they see anything related to AI, they want to run from it as quickly as possible.

I'm not saying that people are not using AI or kids not are not using AI, but there's a real anti-AI movement out there, as you can see from these clips of people...

[...] So, if kids don't want to use AI and you can run AI locally on your computer, not connected to the internet, what are these data centers for? Obviously, you need to train these AI programs, but do you need data centers that are the size of 60 football fields for that?

[...] there cameras are basically taking your license plate. They can do all this surveillance stuff. ... You go to the airport, you have your picture taken getting on the plane, you have it taken getting off the plane, you go to another country, they take your pictures. All of it is facial recognition. All this stuff is being stored. I guess it's being stored at these data centers. I don't know why they need it. I need hard drives to store my videos on so I can make stuff for YouTube here...

I was right about AI ... https://youtu.be/aXy8mQeuObk

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/aXy8mQeuObk]]> https://youtu.be/aXy8mQeuObk

VIDEO EXCERPTS: Now, I typically use solid-state hard drives that are 4 to 8 terabytes, and the kind I use are Samsung. When I bought these, let's say a year ago, they costed, I don't know, $250 for a 4TB and maybe $430 for an 8TB.

So, I haven't bought any in a while. And I was like, I'm going to buy some stuff [...] So, I go into this place. ... I look in the cabinet, I see $2,000.

And I said to the guy, "$2,000? What's that for?"

He goes, "That's for the 4TB hard drive."

I'm like, "$2,000? That's insane." And I see the 8TB one. $4,000 for an 8TB. $4,000. They had a couple of them in there. I said, "What's up?"

He said, "Oh, yeah. Uh, they've gone up 1000% since last October."

1000%? And you have almost none in there.

Yeah, because we can't even get them anymore. .. Because they're using them in the data centers. They've already been bought up. They're buying them before they even get manufactured.

So, they can't even get any. The same thing is happening with RAM. Go try and buy RAM at places. It's incredibly expensive if they even have it. So, if you're trying to build a computer, it's almost impossible to do that. SD cards for cameras have tripled in price, too.

[...] And the manufacturers, the people that build these computers, Apple, Google, HP, Microsoft, all these companies are building computers that can run local LLMs because 90% of what most people need to do, they can just run on their computer on a local LLM. You don't need a data center to do that.

Now, another thing is going on at the same time. Kids, not only my kids, all my kids' friends and college students ... so many people I've talked to, they hate AI. They don't just hate AI slop, AI videos, things like that. They hate the concept of AI. They hate AI music. Anytime they see anything related to AI, they want to run from it as quickly as possible.

I'm not saying that people are not using AI or kids not are not using AI, but there's a real anti-AI movement out there, as you can see from these clips of people...

[...] So, if kids don't want to use AI and you can run AI locally on your computer, not connected to the internet, what are these data centers for? Obviously, you need to train these AI programs, but do you need data centers that are the size of 60 football fields for that?

[...] there cameras are basically taking your license plate. They can do all this surveillance stuff. ... You go to the airport, you have your picture taken getting on the plane, you have it taken getting off the plane, you go to another country, they take your pictures. All of it is facial recognition. All this stuff is being stored. I guess it's being stored at these data centers. I don't know why they need it. I need hard drives to store my videos on so I can make stuff for YouTube here...

I was right about AI ... https://youtu.be/aXy8mQeuObk

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/aXy8mQeuObk]]> <![CDATA[Soil fungi would stretch a billion times from Earth to Sun (ecosystem engineering)]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20621.html Thu, 11 Jun 2026 20:30:29 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20621.html One billion times the distance from the Earth to the sun: First global map of mycorrhizal fungi reveals true scale of underground networks across the planet
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1131131

INTRO: Mycorrhizal fungi form underground networks that sustain plant life and help regulate Earth’s climate by drawing carbon into soils. In a study published today in Science, an international team of researchers produced the first global maps estimating the distribution and mass of the Earth’s arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal networks.

Published alongside an interactive visualization that helps reveal the scale of this underground fungal infrastructure, the research will help scientists and decision makers understand where these vital fungal systems are thriving and where they are threatened.

Researchers found:

Global topsoils contain ~110 quadrillion kilometers of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal network - made up of tubular cells known as hyphae. This distance is almost a billion times the distance from the Earth to the sun.
Grassland ecosystems are home to an estimated ~40% of Earth’s arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal infrastructure. The flooded grasslands of South Sudan, the Everglades in Florida, and the Tibetan plateau have exceptionally high predicted network density.
AM fungal networks transport an estimated ~4 billion tons of CO2e into soils each year (equivalent to 11% of all human-related carbon-dioxide emissions).
On average, large-scale agricultural crop lands are predicted to be associated with ~50% lower network densities. While more work is needed to link specific farming practices to mycorrhizal health, scientists worry that less dense networks diminish a soils’ ability to store carbon, cycle nutrients, and resist stress.

Global topsoils contain ~110 quadrillion kilometers of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal network - made up of tubular cells known as hyphae. This distance is almost a billion times the distance from the Earth to the sun.
Grassland ecosystems are home to an estimated ~40% of Earth’s arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal infrastructure. The flooded grasslands of South Sudan, the Everglades in Florida, and the Tibetan plateau have exceptionally high predicted network density.
AM fungal networks transport an estimated ~4 billion tons of CO2e into soils each year (equivalent to 11% of all human-related carbon-dioxide emissions).
On average, large-scale agricultural crop lands are predicted to be associated with ~50% lower network densities. While more work is needed to link specific farming practices to mycorrhizal health, scientists worry that less dense networks diminish a soils’ ability to store carbon, cycle nutrients, and resist stress.

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (known as AM fungi) form symbiotic trade relationships with ~70% of plant species on Earth. The fungi provide nutrients and water in exchange for carbon produced by plants.

As ecosystem engineers, these networks form a critical living infrastructure that draws carbon into soils and supports much of life on Earth. Last year, in Nature, researchers published global analyses of the diversity patterns of underground mycorrhizal fungal communities accompanied by a digital tool, the Underground Atlas, to help decision-makers locate predicted underground biodiversity hotspots. But until now, no-one has attempted to predict and visualize the physical density and global distribution of AM fungal networks... (MORE - no ads)]]> <![CDATA[Test on Bohmian mechanics continues to spark debate (experiment design)]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20588.html Fri, 05 Jun 2026 19:13:44 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20588.html Experiment that may or may not disprove Bohmian mechanics continues to spark debate
https://physicsworld.com/a/experiment-th...rk-debate/

EXCERPT: Despite these philosophical differences, Bohmian mechanics makes the same predictions as the Copenhagen interpretation. Except maybe it doesn’t. Occasionally, a bright theorist hypothesizes that, under very specific circumstances, one could distinguish them. Very occasionally, a bright experimentalist conducts an experiment that claims to actually do so.

This is what happened last year when Jan Klärs and colleagues at the University of Twente in the Netherlands sent photons from a laser down one of two coupled waveguides towards a potential step. When the photons reached the step, they could pass through it by quantum tunnelling. They could also pass into the other waveguide. The researchers interpreted the distance the photons travelled through the barrier before tunnelling into the other waveguide as a measurement of their speed.

The key result was that, when the wave functions on both sides of the barrier were the same, the photons still tunnelled at, ahem, light speed – matching the Copenhagen notion that tunnelling occurred equally in both directions. However, the Twente team calculated that Bohmian mechanics predicted that photons inside the step – where the guiding equation didn’t have a real-valued frequency – would be at rest and get stuck. Interferometric measurements showed that wasn’t happening.

Game, set and match to Copenhagen? Er, no. Proponents of Bohmian mechanics immediately disputed the team’s definition of velocity. “It’s just an operational definition,” says Aurélien Drezet of the CNRS University of Grenoble-Alps in France. “It has the units of velocity…but that doesn’t mean that Bohmian mechanics can interpret the result.”

In a “Matters Arising” article in Nature, Drezet and two colleagues at the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa now add an experimental qualm. The fact that the Twente team was able to produce an image shows that radiation must be leaking out of the cavity, Drezet claims: “If you go to higher approximations and include cavity losses, you explain the experiment completely using Bohmian mechanics,” he says.

Klärs, who is preparing a formal response, is unconvinced... (MORE - missing details)]]> Experiment that may or may not disprove Bohmian mechanics continues to spark debate
https://physicsworld.com/a/experiment-th...rk-debate/

EXCERPT: Despite these philosophical differences, Bohmian mechanics makes the same predictions as the Copenhagen interpretation. Except maybe it doesn’t. Occasionally, a bright theorist hypothesizes that, under very specific circumstances, one could distinguish them. Very occasionally, a bright experimentalist conducts an experiment that claims to actually do so.

This is what happened last year when Jan Klärs and colleagues at the University of Twente in the Netherlands sent photons from a laser down one of two coupled waveguides towards a potential step. When the photons reached the step, they could pass through it by quantum tunnelling. They could also pass into the other waveguide. The researchers interpreted the distance the photons travelled through the barrier before tunnelling into the other waveguide as a measurement of their speed.

The key result was that, when the wave functions on both sides of the barrier were the same, the photons still tunnelled at, ahem, light speed – matching the Copenhagen notion that tunnelling occurred equally in both directions. However, the Twente team calculated that Bohmian mechanics predicted that photons inside the step – where the guiding equation didn’t have a real-valued frequency – would be at rest and get stuck. Interferometric measurements showed that wasn’t happening.

Game, set and match to Copenhagen? Er, no. Proponents of Bohmian mechanics immediately disputed the team’s definition of velocity. “It’s just an operational definition,” says Aurélien Drezet of the CNRS University of Grenoble-Alps in France. “It has the units of velocity…but that doesn’t mean that Bohmian mechanics can interpret the result.”

In a “Matters Arising” article in Nature, Drezet and two colleagues at the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa now add an experimental qualm. The fact that the Twente team was able to produce an image shows that radiation must be leaking out of the cavity, Drezet claims: “If you go to higher approximations and include cavity losses, you explain the experiment completely using Bohmian mechanics,” he says.

Klärs, who is preparing a formal response, is unconvinced... (MORE - missing details)]]>