New’s of the week selected by Impactscool – June 17th

The update of SOS Alert could save your life

The Google Maps SOS Alert feature, which provides data on any natural disasters, has been updated to be more useful. Now he will be able to calculate automatically the best route to avoid hurricanes, dangerous areas during earthquakes or floods. The system will also show in real time the planned hurricane route, the epicentre of the earthquakes and the underwater areas during the floods.

AI helping agriculture

The Earlham Institute has developed an artificial intelligence platform based on machine learning called AirSurf-Lettuce that allows lettuce crops to be managed more effectively. Through images of drones and automatic recognition systems, the IA makes measurements, estimates of the quantity and size of plants and collects data to be provided to the farmer to ensure a more precise and effective harvest. In East Anglia about 30% of the lettuce crop is lost due to the inefficiency of the cultivation process, this system can help put into practice actions that avoid these losses. The good news is that this platform can be used for practically any type of harvest, a step forward towards a virtuous man-machine collaboration for the good of all.

Carobonium nanotube antennas for 5G

The antennas of our smartphones are small copper devices, thin sheets capable of connecting with the telephone network. With the arrival of 5G new competitors of this technology is entering the market, competitors made up of carbon nanotubes.
Unlike its copper counterpart, the new device is much thinner, so thin that it can be painted on devices, moreover, the extraordinary characteristics of carbon nanotubes make them much more flexible and at the same time resistant. Carbon nanotube antennas will be useful with the arrival of 5G, allowing smaller and more efficient devices to be created without giving up some of the frequencies used by the new network: these antennas would also be able to handle more frequencies than its predecessors would.

Bitcoin emit as much CO2 as Kansas City

Three researchers from Munich and MIT have calculated the environmental impact, in terms of CO2 emissions, of bitcoins. According to their estimates, the global production of this cryptocurrency emits as much CO2 as a city of half a million inhabitants. One of the ways to get bitcoins is to “undermine” them, a process that requires great computing power (which is why more and more often the best performing video cards are used to perform operations). Where there is a large calculation capacity there is a large consumption of electricity and therefore a release of CO2 in the atmosphere resulting from electricity production. In this case over 22 million tons of CO2 per year. “We do not question the efficiency gains that blockchain technology could, in some cases, provide – underlined Christian Stoll, first author of the paper – however, it is currently debating the benefits and more attention should be paid to the costs”.