It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Wednesday, August 14, 2024
Delivery robots’ green credentials make them more attractive to consumers
Washington State University
PULLMAN, Wash. – The smaller carbon footprint, or wheel print, of automatic delivery robots can encourage consumers to use them when ordering food, according to a Washington State University study.
The suitcase-sized, self-driving electric vehicles are much greener than many traditional food delivery methods because they have low, or even zero, carbon emissions. In this study, participants who had more environmental awareness and knowledge about carbon emissions were more likely to choose the robots as a delivery method. The green influence went away though when people perceived the robots as a high-risk choice—meaning they worried that their food would be late, cold or otherwise spoiled before it arrived.
“Much of the marketing focus has been on the functionality and the convenience of these automatic delivery robots, which is really important, but it would enhance these efforts to promote their green aspects as well,” said lead author Jennifer Han, a doctoral student in WSU’s Carson College of Business.
Working with WSU researchers Hyun Jeong Kim and Soobin Seo, Han conducted an online survey with 418 adult participants recruited through MTurk, Amazon’s crowdsourcing platform. More than half were from urban areas, and many were already familiar with delivery robots, which are gaining in popularity in big cities. The participants watched short videos about automatic delivery robots and answered questions about carbon emissions as well as the robots themselves.
The researchers found a strong correlation between high ranked statements related to carbon emissions and the willingness to use the automatic delivery robots or ADRs. That connection broke, however, among people who thought using the technology was risky.
“When people had a higher perceived risk about using the ADRs, they didn’t really care about the environmental concerns, but people who had less perceived risk were more strongly attached to this decision mechanism,” said Han. “So, it was pretty clear that all these essential functional features have to work. Then the environmental issues come after that.”
The pandemic pushed an increase in online food ordering by 63%, according to Statista, which has in turn resulted in increased congestion and carbon emissions as more gas-powered vehicles hit the road to deliver the food. Many automatic delivery robots, which can travel on sidewalks and roads, are electric, and some rely on renewable energy sources like solar power. Other research has estimated that ADR-use can reduce congestion by 29% and carbon emissions by 16%.
More food service businesses are turning to automatic delivery robots to do so-called “last mile” delivery. Some companies like Dominos already have their own delivery fleets, but smaller restaurants are using them as well through services such as Grubhub and Starship Technologies.
ADRs may appeal to businesses simply because they help meet the growing demand for delivery services, but as this study indicates, their ability to curb carbon emissions may also prove a powerful motivator for consumers.
Han suggested that companies could highlight the delivery robots’ green credentials by displaying a calculation of the emissions of each delivery method.
“They could show consumers that they are reducing this much of carbon footprint through the delivery robot service. That would be one cue to promote those purchasing behaviors, if consumers have a big interest in environmental issues,” she said.
Hide your myopia away: John Lennon, contact lenses and cannabis
QUT optometry researcher and Beatles fan Professor Stephen Vincent has analysed John Lennon’s little-known, hit-and-miss use of contact lenses in the 1960s and found the superstar was probably right when he speculated his cannabis use helped them stay i
Queensland University of Technology (QUT) optometry researcher and Beatles fan Professor Stephen Vincent (pictured) has analysed John Lennon’s little-known, hit-and-miss use of contact lenses in the 1960s and found that the music superstar was probably right when he speculated that his cannabis use helped them stay in. Full story: https://www.qut.edu.au/news?id=195953
Hide your myopia away: John Lennon, contact lenses and cannabis
A Queensland University of Technology (QUT) optometry researcher has analysed John Lennon’s little-known, hit-and-miss use of contact lenses in the 1960s and found that the Beatles superstar was probably right when he speculated that his cannabis use helped them stay in.
Although Lennon’s look was later synonymous with his little round glasses, he rarely wore spectacles in public before 1967.
QUT Professor Stephen Vincent said during The Beatles’ first few years in the public eye, Lennon quietly experimented with contact lenses to ‘hide his myopia away’.
He said the only contact lenses available at that time were rigid ones made of polymethylmethacrylate.
But Lennon had astigmatism – an imperfection in the curvature of the cornea – which meant these early-era contact lenses often fell out unless modified to fit the shape of the eye.
“However, John also noticed his contact lenses stayed in place better when he was ‘stoned’, which was most likely a result of cannabis-induced upper eyelid ptosis (droopy eyelids), which would reduce the likelihood of lens ejection,” Professor Vincent said.
Professor Vincent’s ‘historical perspective’, You've got to hide your myopia away: John Lennon's contact lenses, is published in the September edition of the journal Ophthalmic and Physiological Optics and was co-authored by his wife Roz Vincent, a Brisbane optometrist.
Their research analysed historical sources including early photos and video footage, a 1971 spectacles prescription belonging to Lennon, and anecdotes from Lennon, his first wife Cynthia, his fellow Beatle Paul McCartney and his childhood friend and first manager Nigel Walley.
“I was brought up on The Beatles’ 1962-1966 album (the Red Album), so my enduring mental image from childhood is John Lennon without glasses,” Professor Vincent said.
“When I watched Peter Jackson’s Get Back documentary in 2022, the recap of The Beatles’ history very clearly shows John without glasses from 1956 to 1966, then suddenly in glasses constantly from 1967.
“I thought he must have been walking around not seeing very much pre-1967, or he was wearing contact lenses.
“So, Roz and I started down this rabbit hole of research, and it turns out it was both.”
Professor Vincent said the contact lens problems that plagued Lennon in the 1960s were unlikely to arise 60 years later due to improvements in lens designs and technology to measure the topography of the eye.
“Soft contact lenses were invented in the early 1970s – after John had switched to spectacles – and are now worn successfully by millions of people around the world,” he said.
“Today ‘toric’ lenses are widely available in both rigid and soft contact lenses to correct astigmatism and imperfections in the curvature of the cornea.
“Bespoke lens designs can now also be manufactured to fit complex ocular shapes.
“Modern contact lenses are also much healthier than the oxygen impermeable rigid plastic lenses of the 1960s, which often led to corneal complications.”
Professor Vincent said it was estimated that around five per cent of the Australian population aged 15 to 64 now wore contact lenses because of a variety of eye conditions, including myopia.
An estimated 1.4 million Australians have astigmatism and around 6.3 million have myopia.
John Lennon 1969 (cropped) (IMAGE)
Queensland University of Technology
QUT research has revealed insights into how John Lennon, in the days before his trademark round glasses, attributed his cannabis use to helping him wear contact lenses. Credit: "John Lennon 1969 (cropped)" by Joost Evers / Anefo is marked with CC0 1.0.
Credit
"John Lennon 1969 (cropped)" by Joost Evers / Anefo is marked with CC0 1.0.
Credit: mikemacmarketing from Openverse Image Source Link: https://openverse.org/image/0a80051f-9e73-4478-86e1-77f62a1cbcb0?q=artificial+intelligence
The advent of artificial intelligence (AI) presents several new and exciting opportunities for improving the quality of education. While several ways of integrating AI into schooling have been explored, only a few of them consider changing the traditional school operations and educational practices.
In a recent article that was published on 23 July 2024 in the ECNU Review of Education, Professor Yong Zhao from the University of Kansas explored more radical changes that may be applied to traditional schooling to fully utilize the potential of AI technology for benefiting students. “Numerous publications have appeared, all trying to suggest, recommend, and predict the future of AI uses in education. However, most of the discussions, regardless of their scholarly quality, are primarily focused on using AI in the traditional arrangement of schools”, explains Professor Zhao. “The assumption is that everything the traditional school has operated with shall remain the same. AI tools, according to most of the advice, are to be incorporated into teaching by teachers just like previous technologies,” he notes.
By investigating a broader view of possible changes that can be applied to the current schooling system, the article not only suggested ways of utilizing the potential of AI technology better but also dealt with leveraging AI to support personalized learning. The article notes that although personalized learning has clearly demonstrated benefits, it has not been widely implemented in schools in its true sense. AI tools present a unique opportunity to implement personalized learning, customized to individual student needs harnessing their unique talents and potential.
Traditional schooling systems aim to create members of the workforce. However, AI has disrupted the job market, eliminated traditional career roles and created new roles. In the article, Professor Zhao noted that focusing and building on each child’s innate talents and unique strengths is essential for them to be successful in any career of their choice. Since any potential talent when sufficiently honed is valuable in the age of AI , he argued that educational systems must focus on students’ strengths rather than their weaknesses. Furthermore, the article suggested that the traditional curricula might need to change to make way for personalized education. Students could use AI and other resources to follow their interests and passion. This might also eliminate the requirement for age-based classes and promote learning with tools, resources, experts and peers aligned with the same interests rather than age.
Besides personalized education, AI can also be effective in facilitating project-based learning. The article noted that AI tools can help schools inculcate skills such as problem solving and independent thinking in students, transforming them into individuals with critical thinking and analytical skills. Integrating AI into the education system will also transform the role of teachers. They would become coaches and mentors who would work with the students to help them identify their strengths and potential and guide them to become the best versions of themselves. They would also need to be updated with the AI tools and help students utilize AI as a learning partner.
Traditional educational systems resist change, and now, with the advent of AI, there are several more incentives for changing how schools operate. In the article, Professor Zhao examines the question of whether and how educational systems can change in the age of AI. By considering broad-based changes to the schooling system, he suggests that the true potential of AI in learning can be unlocked. “AI is no doubt a powerful technology, but it is easy to underestimate its power. Uses in the traditional classroom to assist students and teachers in learning and teaching helps, but they also minimize the transformative power of AI,” Professor Zhao observes. “Schools could be transformed with the advancement of technology, especially generative AI. The changes should start with student-driven personalizing learning and problem-oriented pedagogy, “he concludes.
***
Reference
Titles of original papers: Artificial Intelligence and Education: End the Grammar of Schooling
ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs) cannot learn independently or acquire new skills, meaning they pose no existential threat to humanity, according to new research from the University of Bath and the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany.
The study, published today as part of the proceedings of the 62nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL 2024) – the premier international conference in natural language processing – reveals that LLMs have a superficial ability to follow instructions and excel at proficiency in language, however, they have no potential to master new skills without explicit instruction. This means they remain inherently controllable, predictable and safe.
This means they remain inherently controllable, predictable and safe.
The research team concluded that LLMs – which are being trained on ever larger datasets – can continue to be deployed without safety concerns, though the technology can still be misused.
With growth, these models are likely to generate more sophisticated language and become better at following explicit and detailed prompts, but they are highly unlikely to gain complex reasoning skills.
“The prevailing narrative that this type of AI is a threat to humanity prevents the widespread adoption and development of these technologies, and also diverts attention from the genuine issues that require our focus,” said Dr Harish Tayyar Madabushi, computer scientist at the University of Bath and co-author of the new study on the ‘emergent abilities’ of LLMs.
The collaborative research team, led by Professor Iryna Gurevych at the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany, ran experiments to test the ability of LLMs to complete tasks that models have never come across before – the so-called emergent abilities.
As an illustration, LLMs can answer questions about social situations without ever having been explicitly trained or programmed to do so. While previous research suggested this was a product of models ‘knowing’ about social situations, the researchers showed that it was in fact the result of models using a well-known ability of LLMs to complete tasks based on a few examples presented to them, known as `in-context learning’ (ICL).
Through thousands of experiments, the team demonstrated that a combination of LLMs ability to follow instructions (ICL), memory and linguistic proficiency can account for both the capabilities and limitations exhibited by LLMs.
Dr Tayyar Madabushi said: “The fear has been that as models get bigger and bigger, they will be able to solve new problems that we cannot currently predict, which poses the threat that these larger models might acquire hazardous abilities including reasoning and planning.
“This has triggered a lot of discussion – for instance, at the AI Safety Summit last year at Bletchley Park, for which we were asked for comment – but our study shows that the fear that a model will go away and do something completely unexpected, innovative and potentially dangerous is not valid.
“Concerns over the existential threat posed by LLMs are not restricted to non-experts and have been expressed by some of the top AI researchers across the world."
However, Dr Tayyar Madabushi maintains this fear is unfounded as the researchers' tests clearly demonstrated the absence of emergent complex reasoning abilities in LLMs.
“While it's important to address the existing potential for the misuse of AI, such as the creation of fake news and the heightened risk of fraud, it would be premature to enact regulations based on perceived existential threats,” he said.
“Importantly, what this means for end users is that relying on LLMs to interpret and perform complex tasks which require complex reasoning without explicit instruction is likely to be a mistake. Instead, users are likely to benefit from explicitly specifying what they require models to do and providing examples where possible for all but the simplest of tasks.”
Professor Gurevych added: "… our results do not mean that AI is not a threat at all. Rather, we show that the purported emergence of complex thinking skills associated with specific threats is not supported by evidence and that we can control the learning process of LLMs very well after all. Future research should therefore focus on other risks posed by the models, such as their potential to be used to generate fake news."
ENDS.
Video explainer Dr Madabushi describes his findings: https://tinyurl.com/vvhx38kp
Industries and chemical labs synthesise a wide variety of organic molecules every day. Most of these chemical reactions happen in the liquid phase to allow the substrates to interact easily. However, many substrates and catalysts are sensitive to water and undergo side reactions, yielding unwanted products. This forces synthetic chemists to use toxic organic solvents. More than 80% of the waste generated in chemical processes is derived from such solvents – and not all of it is disposed of properly.
A team of researchers from the Department of Inorganic and Physical Chemistry (IPC), Indian Institute of Science (IISc) has now come up with a solution. They have synthesised a surfactant from agricultural waste to help catalyse industrially relevant reactions in water instead of organic solvents, through a process called micellar catalysis. The study was published in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering.
The surfactant they designed, called CNSL-1000-M, is derived from cashew nut shell liquid (CNSL), an agricultural waste product generated during the roasting of cashews to separate the kernels. “Since we were aiming for the replacement of organic solvents, we felt that the substitute must be bio-based,” explains Pritesh Keshari, first author and PhD student at IPC. India is the second largest producer of cashew nuts in the world, hence the raw material is easy and inexpensive to source.
Surfactants are molecules that have a water-loving (hydrophilic) as well as a water-repelling (hydrophobic) component. The researchers combined cardanol, a hydrophobic compound found in CNSL, with m-PEG, a hydrophilic polymer, to create their surfactant. When added to water, the surfactant molecules rapidly self-assemble to form small, spherical structures called micelles. The hydrophobic parts of the surfactant turn inwards, away from the water outside, forming a water-free pocket. Substrates and catalysts like nickel complexes, which are normally sensitive to water, can move inside these micelle pockets and remain protected.
“Suppose you dip a football in a pond or sea. As long as the football doesn’t leak, it remains floating with no water entering inside the ball,” explains Susanta Hazra, Assistant Professor at IPC and corresponding author of the study. “We use the same analogy for micellar catalysis. When the substrate goes inside the micelle, it separates itself and the reaction product from the bulk water – and that’s where the chemistry happens.” This micellar catalysis mimics biological systems – many natural enzymes have a hydrophobic pocket much like the one in micelles.
The team used their surfactant to catalyse the formation of carbon-phosphorus bonds, an industrially important step used to make many compounds including the anticancer agent Brigatinib and organic LEDs. CNSL-1000-M led to 80% higher product yields in water compared to reactions carried out in organic solvents. Compared to existing surfactants, the new surfactant also gave 30% higher yields for reactions carried out in water. Using the surfactant can also help replace expensive catalysts like palladium with inexpensive nickel complexes, and facilitate reactions at lower temperatures.
The researchers are keen to work with industries to enable the transition from using toxic organic solvents to aqueous micellar technology as the sustainable and green alternative. “We hope to study micellar chemistry in more detail and use our technology at the industrial level,” says Hazra. “Rather than making new surfactants for various types of reactions, our target is to use the same surfactant as a general reaction medium for all possible reactions and chemical transformations, as that is better for sustainability.”
Credit: Chalmers University of Technology | Geo Philip Muppathiyil
Involving women in implementing solar energy technologies in developing countries not only has great climate impact. A new study published in Nature Energy and carried out by researchers from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, shows that empowering women through energy care work can change unjust, gendered norms and long-lived injustices.
Unlike going from fossil to renewable fuels within the transport sector, transitioning to renewable energy for electricity production is often done at the local level due to decentralised energy providers. Around the world, there are community-led programmes that provide solar, wind and hydro power, as alternative, greener energy sources. Whilst these programmes have the potential to help improve climate impact, they run the risk of maintaining deep-rooted gender imbalances through a lack of people-centred research and missing out the important, but often undervalued work of women within a community. The new study by Chalmers researchers, analyses what is needed to successfully implement a renewable energy transition programme and at the same time tackle systemic gender injustice.
“The climate crisis has put us in a position to stop and look back on our society, the rampant inequalities and the development planning being driven by over-consumption. As we chart a way out, it is important to emphasise that sustainability and justice go hand in hand. It is important to think of energy transitions as embracing social, economic and environmental aspects and here gender equality is a key”, says Kavya Michael, researcher at Chalmers University of Technology and lead author of the paper.
Technical training and female empowerment
In the recently published study “A conceptual analysis of gendered energy care work and epistemic injustice through a case study of Zanzibar’s Solar Mamas”, Kavya Michael spent time observing and interviewing women in a project led by Barefoot College International, in Zanzibar, Tanzania. The Solar Mamas-project provided women at the heart of the community with technical training to become energy providers in the transition to solar energy, giving them the skills and knowledge to install and maintain solar panels and bringing electric light to previously inaccessible spaces. This meant that businesses within the community could stay open after dark and women started occupying public spaces more in the evenings as there was light.
Through the training the women became ‘community caregivers’, and this meant that their work, both in providing solar panels and light to the community, and the work they continued to do within the household was valued and respected more.
“Women in Zanzibar were traditionally responsible for domestic energy provisioning such as collecting firewood or buying kerosene, but these were never jobs that were considered or valued. By placing a value on the roles that were previously taken for granted by the female members of the group, their role in society was advanced”, explains Michael.
The training also provided the women with a conducive environment to facilitate empowerment and change.
“What is unique about the programme at Barefoot Zanzibar is that, as well as the technical training, there was a module called ENRICHE which is part of the Solar Mamas training curriculum where they are provided with a safe space to reflect on unjust gendered norms and social practices. The women are given education about their rights, reproductive health and financial literacy, among other things. This module plays a huge role in ‘unlearning’ the systemic injustices that are prevalent in their societies”, says Michael.
Support from all levels key for success
The study shows that there is potential for locally led energy transitions to break established gender norms and successfully combine a move to renewable energy, with a gender-just society. The findings illustrate the need for energy transitions research, policy and practice to be deeply informed by lived experiences, diverse practices of care within the energy webs and valuing of multiple voices.
“I believe lessons from the Zanzibar case can give valuable insights in driving forward gender-just, locally led sustainable transitions in other settings. However, these initiatives are often not backed up by the state and hence fail to make a significant impact. In this study, we see change actually happening because the whole process of the programme, from community meetings, to recruitments, to training and follow-ups are done together with the state. Whenever there is a bottleneck, for example when male partners prevented their wives from joining the training after they were selected, the state intervenes. The truly unique part of this study, which could be recreated elsewhere, is the empowerment of women, in combination with the change of men and the whole community, working together towards energy transitions. Zanzibar is a very patriarchal space, if it can work in Zanzibar, then there is the potential for it to work in many other places as well”, concludes Michael.
A new concept focusing on energy and care
The theoretical framework used to understand this case study is unique. Using four key themes – care, knowledge, power and energy – Michael and the team from Chalmers, created a list of ‘codes’ from the interviews they conducted with the Solar Mamas, Barefoot College Staff and Government representatives. This coded framework allowed the researchers to analyse the data from the qualitative research and understand the dynamics of the project.
The findings from the study place a great value on the concept of care* and the importance in valuing this fully within a community in the transition to renewable energy. An innovative concept of gendered energy care work is described in the paper, which puts a value on the role of women in providing energy within a community to help chart a way out of the climate crisis.
“Energy and care are deeply connected in two key ways, energy can either enable or hinder care work, and care work influences energy demands. For a just energy transition that supports and fairly distributes care, it's crucial to include care in energy transition analyses,” says Kavya Michael.
This innovative approach using a lens of energy and care, helps to understand and value gendered energy care work, specifically women’s previously invisible work, as involving skilled labour in everyday life.
More about the study’s definition of care*:
In this paper Kavya Michael and Helene Ahlborg draw on the concept of care as defined by Fisher and Tronto as an activity encompassing everything we do to maintain, continue, and repair our world to live in it as well as possible. This world includes our bodies, ourselves, and our environment, all of which we aim to weave into a complex, life-sustaining web. Building on this definition, the researchers introduce the concept of ‘energy care work’, referring to the daily practices at household and community levels that involve provisioning, sustaining, maintaining, repairing, and ensuring the availability of energy carriers and services for everyday life. This perspective on energy care work not only focuses on caring for people but also on the infrastructures and technologies, and their environmental impacts. It is based on the lived experiences of dependence and relationships within energy networks, recognising the intricate connections between individuals, energy systems, and the ecosystems that support their daily activities.
More about Barefoot College International:
Initiated in 1997 by Barefoot College in Rajasthan, India, the Solar Mamas programme now spans more than 90 countries worldwide.
The project’s mission is to make vocational and educational opportunities accessible to women and girls from the most marginalised communities around the world. The organisation believes that providing these opportunities to women is the solution to ensuring long term climate, economic and social resilience for rural communities globally.
The article is written by Kavya Michael and Helene Ahlborg, and they are both active at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden.
This study has been funded by the Swedish Energy Agency and is conducted under a larger project ‘Empowering all: gender in policy and implementation for achieving transitions to sustainable energy’ under the User-Centred Energy Systems (UsersTCP), part of the IEA Technology Collaboration Programme, task on Gender and Energy.
The researcher speaks English and may be available for live and pre-recorded interviews. At Chalmers, we have podcasting studios and film equipment on site and can assist requests for TV, radio, or podcast interviews.
Solar Mamas working on solar panels at Barefoot College Zanzibar
Credit
Chalmers University of Technology | Barefoot College Zanzibar | Olga Timokhin
