Telescope #135

SUSTAINABILITY

• Nearly 95% of countries have missed a UN deadline to submit new climate pledges for 2035, Carbon Brief analysis shows. DETAIL

• A group of Republican attorneys general have brought a lawsuit against New York state over its 2024 Climate Change Superfund Act, claiming it is unconstitutional. Under the law, signed by New York Governor Kathy Hochul in December, the biggest greenhouse gas emitters in the United States from 2000 to 2024 are required to pay the state a total of $3 billion per year for 25 years, reported The New York Times. New York lawmakers say the law’s reach extends to companies all over the world. DETAIL

• The Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), one of the key organizations focused on aligning corporate environmental sustainability action with the global goals of limiting climate change, unveiled its updated plans for the process to develop its new Corporate Net Zero Standard. DETAIL
• Climate change drove weeks of crop-withering temperatures last year in the West African countries that underpin the world's chocolate supply, hitting harvests and likely further stoking record prices, researchers said Wednesday. DETAIL

• In the United States, the Center for Biological Diversity estimates that the average wedding produces approximately 63 metric tons of CO2 emissions. DETAIL
• In the United Kingdom, the Sustainable Wedding Alliance reports that the average wedding emits around 14.5 tons of CO2, which is comparable to the annual carbon footprint of three households. DETAIL
• According to the Times, BP’s chief executive – under pressure from an activist investor – has pledged to “fundamentally reset” the company’s strategy, which is expected to involve a formal ditching of its target to cut oil and gas output and a further scaling back of its renewables projects. DETAIL
• A first-of-its kind German government report found that climate change poses an “existential threat” to the European Union due to its “destabilising and unequal” effects, reported Politico. DETAIL
• Carbon emissions from permafrost “may pose a considerable risk” to climate mitigation efforts, “even if net-zero and negative emissions are achieved”, according to a new study published in Science Advances. DETAIL

HEALTH

• A federal judge appointed by a Republican President has castigated Trump administration officials — and ordered them to immediately restore public health websites that they abruptly abruptly shut down. The lawsuit against the website removal, brought by a group of physicians known as Doctors for America, concerns sites operated by the Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration. Doctors for America says the scrubbing of the sites makes it more difficult for them to treat patients. DETAIL
• Anorexia nervosa is a serious mental health condition, characterized by restricted eating, fear of weight gain, and insidious body-image disturbances. Patients face increased risk of severe anxiety, depression, and malnutrition. According to a new study, anorexia may arise at least partly due to changes in neurotransmitter function within a patient's brain. DETAIL

DIGITAL / TECHNOLOGY / SCIENCE / ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

• Scientists have announced that the process of Africa's disintegration is progressing much faster than expected. The 56-kilometer crack that emerged in the Ethiopian Desert in 2005 continues to expand rapidly every year. Experts say that this disintegration will not only change the geography of Africa, but will also have wider effects. DETAIL

• Silicon Valley's next act: bringing 'vibe coding' to the world. It's an approach that defies conventional wisdom in the tech industry: that developing software demands virtuosic skill from engineers. DETAIL
• Fusing a design icon, classical literature and modern technology, BIC Brazil found an ingenious way to showcase the iconic Cristal ballpoint's durability. To celebrate the pen's 75th anniversary, the French manufacturer used a robotic arm to transcribe the entirety of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet using just one Cristal. The arm wrote for 63 continuous hours and still had ink to spare. Based on the sole surviving manuscript in Shakespeare's handwriting, BIC's team used AI to analyze the script and create over 20 versions of the bard's scrawl before landing on an authentic representation. The resulting work, a 212-page book, was donated to the Real Gabinete Português de Leitura in Rio de Janeiro. DETAIL

• Scarlett Johansson is calling for the U.S. government to reign in AI after she was featured in an anti-Kanye West video that’s going viral on social media. The AI-generated video features prominent celebrities including Johansson, Drake, Natalie Portman, Steven Speilberg, Sam Altman, and Woody Allen all wearing a white T-shirt bearing a cartoon middle finger that contains a Star of David. The finger floats above the word “KANYE.” DETAIL

• With AI agents showing promise, organizations have to grapple with figuring out if a single agent is enough, or if they should invest in building out a wider multi-agent network that touches more points in their organization. Orchestration framework company LangChain sought to get closer to an answer to this question. It subjected an AI agent to several experiments that found single agents do have a limit of context and tools before their performance begins to degrade. These experiments could lead to a better understanding of the architecture needed to maintain agents and multi-agent systems. DETAIL
• Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, has issued a stark warning — AI could achieve intelligence equivalent to an entire nation of top-tier thinkers within two years. He argues that current regulatory efforts are too slow, and democratic nations must lead AI development to counter risks posed by authoritarian states. DETAIL
• Two new studies have found eerily human-like sophistication in whale songs, challenging notions about our exceptionality and potentially shedding light on the evolution of language. DETAIL

• A Milky Way collision with a supermassive black hole might be closer than we thought. Hidden deep in the Large Magellanic Cloud dwarf galaxy that orbits the Milky Way on an ever-closing loop, signs of a massive invisible object clocking in at around 600,000 times the mass of the Sun have been detected. DETAIL
• Dancing turtles have proved for the first time that some animals use Earth's magnetic field to create a personal map of their favorite spots, scientists said Wednesday. DETAIL

• As the electric-vehicle war in China calms down, leaving a few established players to dominate the field, Chinese EV giants are expanding into humanoid robotics. The shift is driven by financial necessity, but also by the advantages these companies command in the new sector: strong existing supply chains and years of p building cutting-edge tech. The Chinese government is starting to promote and subsidize the transition, too. DETAIL

ENERGY / TRANSPORTATION

• High-energy particles rain down on Earth constantly, but scientists have now detected a doozy: a neutrino blasting in from deep space with an energy far greater than anything we've seen before. On 13 February 2023, an undersea detector off the coast of Sicily picked up a record-breaking neutrino event. The particle's energy was estimated to be a whopping 220 petaelectronvolts (PeV) – for reference, the previous record-holder is a paltry 10 PeV. Only a handful of astronomical objects are capable of accelerating particles to such extreme energies, such as supernovae or black holes. One possible culprit could be a blazar – a particularly active supermassive black hole that's firing a jet of radiation almost directly at Earth. DETAIL
• Turkey has one of the world's largest nuclear power development pipelines that could help it boost power output and limit future emissions, writes Reuters global energy transition columnist Gavin Maguire. DETAIL

CYBERSECURITY

• Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is wracking up writings, and the latest is from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). The EFF and several federal employee unions and privacy advocates sued DOGE, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), and Musk, alleging unlawful handling of federal employee data. DETAIL
• Russia is rapidly isolating its internet-connected infrastructure from the outside world. In less than a half year, over two-thirds of previously discoverable services and devices have vanished behind the ‘Great Firewall.’ DETAIL

CURIOSITY

• Tens of thousands of US civil servants were cleared to take a buyout from Trump's administration after a federal judge ruled the unprecedented downsizing effort could proceed. About 75,000 workers have accepted it already, a spokesperson for the US Office of Personnel Management said last night. DETAIL
• Five hundred years ago, Arabs, Jews, and Christians prospered together in this Spanish town—and painted. After centuries, restorers have found Renaissance treasures in a church here, with touches that were hidden by time. DETAIL
• Stephen King’s new book is incredibly unexpected. He's reimagining Hansel and Gretel with artwork by Where the Wild Things Are's Maurice Sendak. DETAIL