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Excerpt from www.cio.com
Britain’s new Labour government is the latest legislature to consider how it might make it easier for digital workers using always-on technologies to turn them off at the end of the working day.
In Labour’s Plan to Make Work Pay, published before it won the UK’s July general election, it promised to address the issue, saying “We will bring in the ‘right to switch off’ so working from home does not result in homes turning into 24/7 offices.”
And this week it brought the issue back into the spotlight, with a government spokesperson telling the BBC, “Good employers understand that for workers to stay motivated and productive they do need to be able to switch off, and a culture presenteeism can be damaging to productivity,” a government spokesperson told the BBC on Monday.
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Excerpt from news.google.com
As global warming intensifies, people increasingly suffer from extreme heat. For those working in a high-temperature environment indoors or outdoors, keeping thermally comfortable becomes particularly crucial. A team led by Dr Dahua SHOU, Limin Endowed Young Scholar in Advanced Textiles Technologies and Associate Professor of the School of Fashion and Textiles of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) has developed first-of-its-kind thermally-insulated and breathable soft robotic clothing that can automatically adapt to changing ambient temperatures, thereby helping to ensure worker safety in hot environments. Their research findings have been published in the international interdisciplinary journal Advanced Science.
Maintaining a constant body temperature is one of the most critical requirements for living and working. High-temperature environments elevate energy consumption, leading to increased heat stress, thus exacerbating chronic conditions such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, mental health issues and asthma, while also increasing the risk of infectious disease transmission. According to the World Health Organisation, globally, there were approximately 489,000 heat-related deaths annually between 2000 and 2019, with 45% occurring in Asia and 36% in Europe.
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Excerpt from www.yourweather.co.uk
A team of researchers from the Department of Chemical Engineering at Pennsylvania State University (Penn State, U.S.A) has reengineered the makeup of solid-state lithium-ion (SSLiBs) batteries so that their components are completely recyclable.
Solid-state batteries and recycling hurdles
Unlike conventional lithium-ion batteries, SSLiBs use a solid electrolyte instead of a liquid electrolyte. Solid electrolytes are non-flammable and less hazardous than liquid electrolytes which incur a risk of fire and explosion if exposed to extremes in temperature. Solid-state batteries can hold more power in the same volume, resulting in a longer battery life. Furthermore, they have an extended lifespan and improved long-term stability.
SSLiBs use solid electrolytes containing strong ceramics and unique chemical constituents, which might represent distinct environmental risks if not properly treated. Their intricately connected layers make deconstruction difficult while preserving recyclable components. Furthermore, recycling these types of batteries is more costly than recycling normal lithium-ion batteries since it requires specialized equipment and techniques.
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Excerpt from www.theguardian.com
A court in south-west Spain has sentenced 15 schoolchildren to a year’s probation for creating and spreading AI-generated images of their female peers in a case that prompted a debate on the harmful and abusive uses of deepfake technology.
Police began investigating the matter last year after parents in the Extremaduran town of Almendralejo reported that faked naked pictures of their daughters were being circulated on WhatsApp groups.
The mother of one of the victims said the dissemination of the pictures on WhatsApp had been going on since July.
“Many girls were completely terrified and had tremendous anxiety attacks because they were suffering this in silence,” she told Reuters at the time. “They felt bad and were afraid to tell and be blamed for it.”
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Excerpt from www.wired.com
Network Rail did not answer questions about the trials sent by WIRED, including questions about the current status of AI usage, emotion detection, and privacy concerns.
“We take the security of the rail network extremely seriously and use a range of advanced technologies across our stations to protect passengers, our colleagues, and the railway infrastructure from crime and other threats,” a Network Rail spokesperson says. “When we deploy technology, we work with the police and security services to ensure that we’re taking proportionate action, and we always comply with the relevant legislation regarding the use of surveillance technologies.”
It is unclear how widely the emotion detection analysis was deployed, with the documents at times saying the use case should be “viewed with more caution” and reports from stations saying it is “impossible to validate accuracy.” However, Gregory Butler, the CEO of data analytics and computer vision company Purple Transform, which has been working with Network Rail on the trials, says the capability was discontinued during the tests and that no images were stored when it was active.
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Excerpt from technode.com
A Chinese AI content creator has challenged cybersecurity firm 360 Security Technology over its use of an image of a woman wearing an ancient costume, which he claims he created via an AI model to showcase a “partially redrawn feature” on the company’s search engine.
The argument between creator DynamicWang and 360 Security escalated as the two parties failed to settle, with the company’s vice president Liang Zhihui saying it is willing to resort to legal action.
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Excerpt from timesofindia.indiatimes.comTwo years ago, Natron Energy was gearing up to mass-produce its innovative sodium-ion batteries. Although they missed their initial 2023 target, they have now officially started production of their rapid-charging, long-life, lithium-free sodium batteries. This marks a significant milestone in the energy storage industry, offering a compelling alternative to traditional lithium-ion batteries.
One of the major advantages of sodium over lithium is its abundance. Sodium is 500 to 1,000 times more plentiful on Earth than lithium, making it easier and less environmentally damaging to source. Natron’s sodium-ion batteries are made from readily available materials like aluminum, iron, and manganese. This abundance ensures a more sustainable and less disruptive supply chain compared to the often problematic extraction of lithium. Moreover, the materials for Natron’s sodium-ion batteries can be sourced domestically within the US, avoiding the geopolitical risks associated with lithium-ion battery materials like cobalt and nickel. This makes sodium-ion technology not only more sustainable but also more reliable in terms of supply.
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Excerpt from www.techspot.com
Why it matters: Solar panels are meant to last for decades, with an estimated operational lifespan of 20 to 40 years. However, their efficiency and the ability to generate power will degrade over time. Surprisingly though, a new long-running test in France paints a positive picture of the longevity of solar panels in the wild.
In 1992, a small 1-kilowatt solar array called Phébus 1 was connected to the French grid by Hespul, a nonprofit renewable energy association based in Lyon, France. Over 30 years later, that same installation is still pumping out watts. After dismantling the vintage 10 square meter array last year, technicians ran the panels through rigorous lab testing per international standards and found astonishing results.
An average of 79.5 percent of the initial rated power output was still being achieved after 31 years of service. Solar panel manufacturers typically guarantee only 80 percent of original performance for up to 25 years. Phébus 1 blew right past that metric, with the decline coming in at just 0.66 percent per year on average over its 31-year lifetime.
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Excerpt from www.nytimes.com
Stuart Thompson collected and analyzed data on thousands of Facebook posts for this article.
On the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, Christopher Blair’s fake news empire was humming along.
Mr. Blair had been earning as much as $15,000 in some months by posting false stories to Facebook about Democrats and the election, reaching millions of people each month.
But after a mob of Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol, his growing enterprise came to an abrupt halt. Facebook seemed to recognize its own role in fomenting an insurrection and tweaked its algorithm to limit the spread of political content, fake and otherwise. Mr. Blair watched his engagement flatline.
“It just kind of crashed — anything political crashed for about six months,” he said.
Today, though, Mr. Blair has fully recovered, and then some. His false posts — which he insists are satire intended to mock conservatives — are receiving more interactions on Facebook than ever, surging to 7.2 million interactions already this year compared with one million in all of 2021.
