Blogs and Opinions
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Turning coffee into sneakers, blockchain hype and other top stories of the week
Friday 19th of July 2019
Get ready for 10 billion. How and where global population is growing. ⇒ Explore: Cities and UrbanizationSiberia is melting. How the thaw could impact us all. ⇒ Explore: Climate Change
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In a world of autonomous vehicles, this is why we’ll need more public transport than ever
Friday 19th of July 2019
The media is fascinated by autonomous vehicles (AVs), in particular their safety and when or if they will arrive en masse. A bigger and more important question is how AVs will work together as fleets and whether they work with public transport to move more people with fewer vehicles to solve our urban congestion and pollution challenges.
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Smart glass: the future of powering smartphones
Friday 19th of July 2019
AI Glass
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As rural communities age, their public transport is shrinking. It’s time to fix this
Friday 19th of July 2019
In rural areas of Japan, the use of traditional public transport is falling dramatically due to a decreasing and aging population and a higher dependence on private vehicles. In many regions, train, buses and taxis are operating at a loss. The situation is only expected to worsen with low birth rates and an increasing lack of drivers, as the population ages beyond the ability to drive. The ability to maintain public transport in these regions is expected to be further weakened by a shrinking tax base.
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3 strategies for Africa to thrive in this new era of globalization
Friday 19th of July 2019
Africa’s contribution to global scientific knowledge stands at 1.1%. Currently, the ratio between scientist and inhabitants stands at 79 scientists per million inhabitants, the lowest in the world. At the same time, scientists trained in Africa often end up working elsewhere due to the lack of infrastructure and availability of resources.
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Climate change: having the right combination of tree ‘personalities’ could make forests more resilient
Friday 19th of July 2019
Every tree in a forest has a neighbour. In many forest neighbourhoods, the same species are often found living together, especially when the growing conditions are similar. Sometimes these neighbours are close and sometimes far apart, but collectively they form part of a community, with some species naturally being more dominant than others, especially in terms of biomass production. But what happens when the going gets tough? A drought is coming and there’ll be winners and losers.
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Your company’s goals have more in common with the Moon landing than you might think
Friday 19th of July 2019
Fifty years ago, President John F. Kennedy famously challenged NASA to land a man on the moon by the end of the decade. That vision galvanized thousands of employees with vastly different roles — everyone from astronauts to cleaning crew members — around the common goal of a lunar landing.
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Anxious gorillas, thirsty koalas and lame cows – how climate change is making animals miserable
Friday 19th of July 2019
From wildfires in California to devastating floods in South Asia, we all know the effects of climate change on human habitats: precious belongings swept away; lungs scorched from smoke inhalation; lives to piece back together.
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NASA has released new photos of the Apollo 11 moon landing
Friday 19th of July 2019
Half a century ago, while those on Earth were enjoying a lazy Sunday in the summer of ’69, some 384,000 km away, two men were climbing down the steps of their spaceship – onto the surface of the moon.
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Business could learn plenty about cybersecurity from the secret state
Friday 19th of July 2019
The national security apparatus – the secret state – of many countries has long recognized the risk of cyberattack and has sought to be at the leading edge of trends in cybersecurity. Increasingly, business leaders all over the world are now also coming to recognize that cyberattacks form one of their top business risks. In the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2019, survey respondents put cyberattacks among the top five risks for both likelihood and impact.
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4 crazy things that are happening in the Arctic right now
Friday 19th of July 2019
A number of unusual events are sweeping across the Arctic as global warming disrupts weather patterns, the landscape, and the way of life in the icy wilderness.
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These airports are now opening their doors to non-fliers
Friday 19th of July 2019
Long queues, crowded departure lounges, tight security – airports aren’t always the most welcoming of places.
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Timber skyscrapers: high-tech ‘tree’ houses could be the sustainable buildings of the future
Friday 19th of July 2019
Recent innovations in engineered timber have laid the foundations for the world’s first wooden skyscrapers to appear within a decade, a feat that is not only achievable—according to the Centre for Natural Material Innovation—but one they hope will beckon in an era of sustainable wooden cities, helping reverse historic emissions from the construction industry.
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In India, toddlers are writing computer code before they can talk
Friday 19th of July 2019
Nothing distracts Rishi Shiv P when he is writing computer code. The five-year-old’s eyes remain fixed on the screen and his little fingers dance across the keyboard, as he unfurls drop-down menus and builds nested loops.
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This is how trees could help solve the climate crisis
Friday 19th of July 2019
There are 300 additional gigatonnes of carbon in the atmosphere as a result of human activity since the start of the industrial revolution. As the climate warms, the activity of micro-organisms in the soil increases and this further increases carbon emissions. Given that the vast majority of the Earth’s carbon is stored in our soils, these so-called feedback loops are beginning to speed up climate change.
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Here are 10 of Nelson Mandela’s most inspirational quotes
Thursday 18th of July 2019
Nelson Mandela would have been 101 today.
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Here are 6 remarkable new World Heritage Sites
Thursday 18th of July 2019
From the ancient mystery of Stonehenge to the singular beauty of Venice and the unrivalled majesty of India’s Taj Mahal, there are more than 1,000 World Heritage Sites across the globe.
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‘Eco-shaming’ is on the rise, but does it work?
Thursday 18th of July 2019
How are your green credentials? Unless they’re whiter than white, you may encounter a new phenomenon: ‘eco-shaming’.
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How can the EU hit net-zero emissions?
Thursday 18th of July 2019
The recent failure of EU leaders to commit to a goal of net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050 exposes remaining political divisions. The bloc’s major economies are pledging to eliminate emissions, bringing them into line with the global temperature stabilization goals of the Paris Agreement. But the alignment of all 28 member states remains elusive – several countries fear voter backlash if living standards are threatened.
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As Alan Turing makes the £50 note, how do countries design their currencies?
Thursday 18th of July 2019
Six years after his posthumous royal pardon for being convicted of homosexual activity in the early 1950s, World War Two code breaker Alan Turing is due to appear on England’s £50 banknote.
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This robot interviewer is helping Sweden recruit without bias
Thursday 18th of July 2019
Tengai doesn’t care about your family background or how old you are, what you’re wearing or how you sound – just whether you can do the job.
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Why climate change is threatening our ability to address other global issues
Thursday 18th of July 2019
Relentless global warming threatens the potential success of a sweeping set of goals established by the United Nations to tackle inequality, conflict and other ills, officials have said.
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It’s official: happy employees mean healthy firms
Thursday 18th of July 2019
A growing number of companies claim to place a high priority on the wellbeing of their workers – and there is a fast-growing industry of firms selling products related to employee wellbeing. But does investing in employee wellbeing actually lead to higher productivity and are there any tangible benefits to the business bottom line? Experimental evidence such as Oswald et al (2015) suggests that the answer is yes, but until now, real-world evidence has largely been missing.
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How fixing broken food systems can help us meet all the SDGs
Thursday 18th of July 2019
Global leaders have set themselves a series of ambitious goals and targets in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Ending hunger by 2030 (SDG 2) or reducing premature mortality from non-communicable diseases by a third (SDG 3), for example, will be no mean feat. Faced with such a plethora of commitments, policy-makers should see fixing global food systems as a treasure trove of opportunity.
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A Cambodian businessman’s solution to plastic pollution
Thursday 18th of July 2019
As Southeast Asia grapples with massive tides of rubbish hitting its beaches, a Cambodian coffee shop owner is looking to build a business out of some of this waste as a way to promote sustainability.