Telescope #101

Weekly horizon scan…

It is better to try and fail than to not try at all. (Faik Byrns, Beyond Dreams)

SUSTAINABILITY

• Petit Pli is a company established in England.  Its aim is to stop waste and fast-changing fashion in the textile industry.  In this regard, it produces clothes that grow with children.  Children can wear clothes produced with a special technology for 4-5 years, during the period when they develop most rapidly.  While production is done ethically, recycled fibers are used.  In this way, water is saved while a significant amount of carbon emissions are prevented.

• China's power generation from fossil fuels fell in May, Bloomberg reports, as hydroelectric and solar power surged, indicating that the country “may have peaked emissions” years before its goal to do so by 2030. DETAIL

• A US judge has dismissed a lawsuit brought by ExxonMobil against activist shareholders, who were “pushing for the oil giant to reduce greenhouse gas emissions”, the Guardian reports. DETAIL

• The conflict in Gaza has created unprecedented soil, water and air pollution in the region, destroying sanitation systems and leaving tons of debris from explosive devices, a United Nations report on the environmental impact of the war said on Tuesday. DETAIL

• The Global Weather Report reveals that air pollution is the second most common death risk, causing 8.1 million deaths worldwide in 2021.  The report shows that children and vulnerable groups are especially at risk, and points out that climate change will worsen the situation. DETAIL

• Dutch brewery Jopen has partnered with canned water brand SEA Water to create the world's first IPA brewed using desalinated North Sea water. The collaboration, dubbed Life's a Beach, aims to offer a refreshing and sustainable drinking experience while raising awareness about freshwater scarcity and marine biodiversity. DETAIL

• The European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs) have proposed new categories for financial products under the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) to address greenwashing and improve clarity for investors. The proposed categories, “Sustainable” and “Transition,” aim to provide clear criteria for sustainable investments and enhance consumer protection. DETAIL

• Just Stop Oil activists have sprayed two jets with orange paint at a private airfield in Stansted where they say Taylor Swift's plane landed before her shows at Wembley stadium. The group said on X: 'Private jet users are responsible for up to 40x as much carbon emissions compared with a commercial flight'. DETAIL

• "Deposit Management System" studies carried out by the Turkish Environment Agency (TÜÇA) have been completed.  With this system, which will be implemented nationally in 2025, disposable packages with a volume of 0.1 to 3 liters will be recycled.  25 kuruş will be paid for each bottle or box and these money can be used for shopping.  Payments will be made to the "e-wallet" account opened through the infrastructure of Türkiye Emlak Katılım Bankası. DETAIL

HEALTH

• Deliberately exposing people to the coronavirus behind covid-19 has helped scientists understand why some people seem to be immune to catching the infection. As part of the first human covid-19 challenge study carried out in 2021, a group of international researchers looked at 36 people with no known health conditions who had neither tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 nor been vaccinated against it. The work reveals that some people have unique cell responses to the virus. The results suggest that high levels of activity of an immune system gene called HLA-DQA2 before SARS-CoV-2 exposure helped prevent a sustained infection. DETAIL

• About 64 million people globally have heart failure.  Researchers from Michigan State University say losing the sense of smell may help predict a person's risk of developing heart failure.  on the other hand, scientists did not find a link between loss of smell and heart disease or stroke risk. DETAIL

• The World Health Organization on Thursday issued warnings on fake drugs claiming to contain the active ingredient found in Novo Nordisk's diabetes drug Ozempic and weight-loss treatment Wegovy. DETAIL

DIGITAL / TECHNOLOGY / SCIENCE / ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

• Large areas of farmland around the Chernobyl nuclear reactor that are officially classed as contaminated now appear to be safe to use for growing food, as surveys show radiation levels have fallen below the levels regarded as unsafe according to Ukrainian regulations. Changing the status of this land could help compensate for farmland lost as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. DETAIL

• Bayer's crop science division is increasingly turning to artificial intelligence in its battle against crop killing weeds, the company told Reuters. Weeds are growing resistant to the herbicides already on the market, and agribusiness companies like Bayer are in a desperate search for new modes of action to help farmers kill them. DETAIL

• Just a month after Ilya Sutskever officially left OpenAI, Safe Superintelligence Inc.  He founded a new company called (SSI).  Sutskever, who served as OpenAI's chief scientist for a long time, founded the new company together with former Y Combinator partner Daniel Gross and former OpenAI engineer Daniel Levy. DETAIL

ENERGY / TRANSPORTATION

• With demand for EVs slowing, it'll soon be the end of the road for the Ford Model e dealership business in the US. Ford’s EVs will now be available at all Ford dealerships in the US. DETAIL

• Last year, Porsche Engineering began developing digital twins for high-voltage batteries. The engineering subsidiary of the German luxury carmaker is now reporting rapid progress, including an initial function called "Repair Prediction". DETAIL

CYBERSECURITY

• Advanced Micro Devices said on Tuesday it was looking into claims that the company's data was stolen in a hack by a cybercriminal organization. DETAIL

• The US will ban Kaspersky software and the company that makes it Thursday because of a believed connection to the Russian government, Reuters reports. DETAIL

• European Union lawmakers are set to vote on a new proposed law known as Chat Control, which was first introduced in 2022.  If this bill is approved, tech companies will have to scan all your private messages looking for child sexual abuse material (CSAM). DETAIL

• Booking.com is warning artificial intelligence (AI) is driving an explosion in travel scams. The firm's internet safety boss, Marnie Wilking, said there had been "anywhere from a 500 to a 900% increase" in the past 18 months. She said there had been a particularly marked increase in phishing - where people are tricked into handing over their financial details - since generative AI tools like ChatGPT burst onto the market. DETAIL

• Russians on Thursday reported some problems with processing payments at major banks after a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on Russian banks, Russia's Kommersant newspaper reported. DETAIL

HUMAN / CURIOSITY

• Just in time for Juneteenth, genealogy website Ancestry has published a new resource called Articles of Enslavement that allows descendants of enslaved people to discover crucial information about their ancestors. In partnership with newspapers.com, Ancestry employed artificial intelligence to analyze and extract meaningful data from over 38,000 articles and advertisements published before 1900. The collection provides details like names, names of enslavers, locations, occupations, relationships and physical characteristics of more than 183,000 enslaved individuals — crucial information boosting people's efforts to track their ancestors and piece together family histories that have long been obscured. In addition to aiding personal genealogy research, Ancestry also hopes to enrich everyone's understanding of American history and the African American experience during enslavement. DETAIL

• Bosses have always made more money than workers. But the gap between CEOs and employees is growing. The median CEO in the S&P 500 was paid 196 times as much as the median employee in 2023, according to an analysis by Equilar and The Associated Press. DETAIL

• In his statement to the AA correspondent, Kazım Ergün, Chairman of the Turkish Pensioners Association, stated that more than 16 million 154 thousand people received retirement and old-age pensions from SSI, and that some of the retirees continued to work for economic reasons.  According to SSI's March 2024 data, 1 million 943 thousand 579 retirees continue to work by paying social security support premiums to SSI. DETAIL