Electricity consumption from the manufacture of artificial intelligence (AI) chips has soared by more than 350 percent worldwide between 2023 and 2024, according to new research from Greenpeace East Asia. In East Asia, the global hub for AI semiconductor production, growing electricity demand from AI chipmaking has been met primarily …
This paper assesses biofuels technology readiness and provides foresight to biofuels development in Southern Africa. Efficient conversion pathways, coupled with biomass from waste or high-yielding energy crops, reduces both the costs of biofuels production and the environmental impacts. Currently, most biofuels are more expensive than petroleum fuels and market uptake …
The objective of rapid development of rural population in a sustainable manner with a view to bridging the urban–rural divide would require leveraging knowledge and technology in an environment conducive for innovation. The concept of a CILLAGE that incorporates the best of a city in a village is developed with …
Technological innovations, along with macroeconomic trends and changing consumer behavior, are transforming the way resources are consumed and produced. A new report by McKinsey, Beyond the Supercycle: How Technology is Reshaping Resources, finds that these trends have the potential to unlock roughly $900 billion to $1.6 trillion in savings throughout …
This report, co-produced with the Columbia Center for Sustainable Investment, looks to the near and medium terms, exploring what will happen to the local employment and procurement components of the shared-value paradigm—and, by extension, to the mining companies’ social licence to operate—if technological change radically alters the amount of money …
Lower limb amputees often experience complications with the use of conventional socket-type prostheses, which further reduce their already compromised ability to perform the activities of daily living, or to participate in sporting activities. During the last two decades, a new technology of direct skeletal attachment (osseointegration) of prosthesis to the …
Limited recommendations of wheelchair configurations for court sports have been identified in the published literature. To accommodate the wide range of impairments in wheelchair rugby, players are given a point score that reflects their impairment. Players have regularly been grouped as high-, mid-, or low-point players in research, with high-point …
Novel interventions are needed to improve lifestyle and prevent noncommunicable diseases, the leading cause of death and disability globally. This study aimed to systematically review, synthesize, and grade scientific evidence on effectiveness of novel information and communication technology to reduce noncommunicable disease risk. Original Source
By 2030, the economies of top five Indian cities will each grow to equal the current sizes of middle-income economies, a report by the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) says. For instance, Mumbai’s economy will be bigger than the current size of Malaysia’s, according to the report titled India’s Ascent: Five …
Tech giants moving into health may widen inequalities and harm research, unless people can access and share their data, warn John T. Wilbanks and Eric J. Topol. Original Source
One of the major challenges of the 21st century is to achieve food security under marked shifts in climatic risks and roughly a doubling in food demand by 2050 compared to present. Increased frequency and severity of extreme events are threatening future harvests, especially challenging agricultural production systems in African …
Four Indian cities – Delhi, Mumbai Bangalure and Kolkata at the bottom of a global liveability survey of 181 cities prepared jointly by the Barcelona-based University of Navarrara’s IESE Business School and the Centre for Globalisation and Strategy. Mumbai was ranked at 167 followed by New Delhi (174), Bengaluru (176) …
Use of robotic systems for minimally invasive surgery has rapidly increased during the last decade. Understanding the causes of adverse events and their impact on patients in robot-assisted surgery will help improve systems and operational practices to avoid incidents in the future. By developing an automated natural language processing tool, …
Large magnitude earthquakes in urban environments continue to kill and injure tens to hundreds of thousands of people, inflicting lasting societal and economic disasters. Earthquake early warning (EEW) provides seconds to minutes of warning, allowing people to move to safe zones and automated slowdown and shutdown of transit and other …
Wearable sensor technologies are essential to the realization of personalized medicine through continuously monitoring an individual’s state of health. Sampling human sweat, which is rich in physiological information, could enable non-invasive monitoring. Previously reported sweat-based and other non-invasive biosensors either can only monitor a single analyte at a time or …
Appreciating India's Aadhaar digital ID, this World Bank report ssays that the initiative is estimated to be saving the government about $1 billion annually by curbing corruption as it underlined that digital technologies can promote inclusion, efficiency and innovation. More people around the world have access to mobile phones today …
Technology can contribute simultaneously to the economic, environmental and social dimensions of sustainability, according to findings of the UN Industrial Development Organization's (UNIDO) flagship publication, the 'Industrial Development Report (IDR) 2016.' IDR 2016, titled ‘The role of technology and innovation in inclusive and sustainable industrial development,' addresses the conditions required …
This paper applies a program evaluation technique to assess the causal effect of adoption of agricultural related technologies on consumption expenditure and poverty measured by different indices. The paper is based on a cross-sectional household level data collected during 2014 from a sample of 270 households in rural India. Sensitivity …
Nature has created excellent technologies around us, and as such, it is the chief mentor to humans on creativity and technology development. Nature uses fibre as a building block – natural structures like wood, bamboo, bone, muscle, etc. all have fibrous structure. Fibre spinning and weaving technologies are available in …
Heterogeneous photocatalytic oxidation (PCO) is one of the most active research areas in environmental purification. Recently, research on PCO technologies-based air cleaners and building materials has been intensively conducted for indoor/outdoor air treatment. The innovative technology is dedicated to decompose gaseous pollutants using photocatalysts under illumination of UV or solar …
Self-consciousness would seem to be a sine qua non for moral competence in a social world. You and we are morally competent in no small part because you know what you ought to do, and we know what we ought to do. A mouse, in contrast, cannot say to itself: …