Two in three Americans think there is intelligent life on other planets

Fred Backus 

Most Americans think we're not alone in the cosmos — a belief that has grown over the past few years. Most of those who hold this opinion also think we will make contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life within the next hundred years. And, on the topic of UFOs, most think the U.S. government knows more than it is telling the general public.

© Credit: CBSNews intelligent-life-2.jpg

Sixty-six percent of Americans now believe that there is intelligent life on other planets — an increase of 10 percentage points since the last time CBS News asked this question in 2017. As recently as 2010, fewer than half of Americans believed this was so.

© Provided by CBS News

Moreover, a third of those who believe in sentient extraterrestrial life think human contact with beings from another world will occur during their lifetime (including 10% of Americans who volunteer that we already have). Another 24% think such contact will be made within the next hundred years. Thirty-six percent think it won't happen until further into the future, while 6% think that while there is intelligent life on other planets, we will never have contact with it.

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Though few Americans say they believe aliens have contacted us already, many more at least entertain the possibility. Fifty-one percent of Americans think UFOs — or Unidentified Flying Objects — might sometimes be the result of alien spacecrafts visiting Earth. This rises to 71% among those who believe intelligent life on other planets exists.

© Provided by CBS News

And most Americans think that whatever UFOs are, the U.S. government knows more than it's telling the general public. Just 20% think the government has told everything it knows about UFOs    

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© Provided by CBS News

This poll was conducted by telephone March 23-28, 2021 among a random sample of 1,009 adults nationwide. Data collection was conducted on behalf of CBS News by SSRS of Glen Mills, PA. Phone numbers were dialed from samples of both standard landline and cell phones.

The poll employed a random digit dial methodology. For the landline sample, a respondent was randomly selected from all adults in the household. For the cell sample, interviews were conducted with the person who answered the phone.

Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish using live interviewers. The data have been weighted to reflect U.S. Census figures on demographic variables. The error due to sampling for results based on the entire sample could be plus or minus 3.6 percentage points. The error for subgroups may be higher and is available by request. The margin of error includes the effects of standard weighting procedures which enlarge sampling error slightly. This poll release conforms to the Standards of Disclosure of the National Council on Public Polls.

Rare 'Alien' Isotopes in Earth's Crust Point to Recent Brush With a Cataclysmic Event
Mike McRae

Far down in the periodic table you'll find a list of heavy elements born in chaos. The kind of chaos you might find in an exploding star perhaps, or a collision between two neutron stars. 

© MEHAU KULYK/Brand X Pictures/Getty Images

Physicists have uncovered a pair of large, still-radioactive isotopes in samples of deep-sea crust pulled up from 1,500 meters (nearly 5,000 feet) below the Pacific Ocean.

We'd expect to see many heavyweight elements in the swirl of dust and gas that formed our planet eons ago - but most should have decayed into more stable forms long before now. So finding examples in Earth's crust close to the surface today raises some interesting questions.

The finding could tell us a thing or two about cataclysmic cosmic events taking place within a few hundred light-years from Earth, and relatively recently in our geological history. It could also shine a light on the way atomic heavyweights form.

You see, building atoms takes a lot of energy. Protons can be squeezed into helium under the kind of gravity you'd find in a star, but stellar fusion will only take you so far. To build a chunky behemoth such as plutonium, you'll need the kind of energy that can deliver a machine-gun burst of neutrons.

There are a few conditions in the Universe under which this 'rapid neutron capture', or r-process, can occur, including supernovae and neutron star mergers.

Over the history of the Universe, plenty of stars have crashed and popped to spill a thick dust of iron, uranium, plutonium, gold, and other fat atoms throughout the galaxy. So it's to be expected that planets like Earth would have scooped up a good amount of them.

But not all elements are born the same. Variations in the number of their neutrons make some more stable than others. Iron 60, for example, is a 'blink and you'll miss it' kind of isotope if you view it on the cosmic scale, with a half-life of just 2.6 million years before it decays into nickel.

Finding this short-lived isotope on our planet today – especially in the crust, just out of reach of modern artificial processes – would imply a relatively recent delivery of iron fresh from the cosmos.

Iron 60 has appeared in rock samples before, dating back just a couple of million years. It's also been seen in materials brought back from the lunar surface.

But to get a good sense of the specific kind of r-process that produced these specimens, it would pay to see what other isotopes rained down with them.

Physicist Anton Wallner from the Australian National University led a team of researchers in search of new samples of iron 60 to see if they could identify isotopes of other heavy elements close by.

What they found was plutonium 244, an isotope with a half-life of just over 80 million years – stable for plutonium, but hardly the kind of element you'd expect to stick around since our planet came together 4.5 billion years ago.

In all, the team discovered two distinct influxes of iron 60 which had to have arrived within the past 10 million years. Both samples were accompanied by small but significant quantities of plutonium 244, each in a similar ratio.

Finding them together adds more detail than finding either apart. The amount of plutonium in them is lower than would be expected if supernovae were primarily responsible for their production, pointing to contributions from other r-processes.

Exactly what was behind this particular sprinkle of alien space dust is left up to our imagination for now.

"The story is complicated," says Wallner.

"Possibly this plutonium-244 was produced in supernova explosions or it could be left over from a much older, but even more spectacular event such as a neutron star detonation."

By measuring their respective radioactive fuses and making a few assumptions on the astrophysics behind their distribution, the researchers speculate the production of iron 60 is compatible with two to four supernova events going off between 50 and 100 parsecs (around 160 and 330 light years) of Earth.

This isn't the first time iron 60 has indicated a supernova taking place perilously close by in recent history.

By looking at the isotope in connection with other elements, we could slowly build a signature that tells us more about the crash-bang conditions of our neighborhood in the millions of years before humans started to pay close attention.

It'll take more hunting for alien isotopes, though.

"Our data could be the first evidence that supernovae do indeed produce plutonium-244," says Wallner.

"Or perhaps it was already in the interstellar medium before the supernova went off, and it was pushed across the Solar System together with the supernova ejecta."

This research was published in Science.

Habitat for endangered spiny softshell turtle protected southeast of Montreal

MONTREAL — The Nature Conservancy of Canada said Thursday it acquired two hectares of land southeast of Montreal to protect the habitat of the endangered spiny softshell turtle.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The conservation group said the properties along the water in Pike River, Que., about 70 kilometres southeast of Montreal, are close to one of the few known spiny softshell turtle egg-laying sites.

About 100 turtles were released into the water of the Rivière aux Brochets in Pike River on Thursday, joining more than 1,600 other turtles that have been reintroduced in the area since 2010.

Conservancy vice-president Joel Bonin said the newly protected land is critical for the future of the species that has been classified as endangered by the federal government in 2005.

Quebec Environment Minister Benoit Charette said on Thursday the provincial government gave the nature conservancy $40.1 million to help protect natural environments, and that part of that money went to purchase the two hectares of land.

"We are seeing another beautiful initiative that derives not only from the Quebec government through the projects … but also from the natural areas conservation program by the Canadian government," Charette said.

Lyne Bessette, federal Liberal member for the region, said the Canadian government wants to protect a quarter of Canada’s land and oceans by 2025. "It's important to take actions as fast as possible, for today and future generations," Bessette said.

One of the previous owners of the newly protected land in Pike River is David Gasser, whose family owned two dairy farms in the community. "We need to take care of the environment if we want it to take care of us," Gasser said.

Conservancy project coordinator Valérie René said a protected natural area offers a quieter place for turtles to grow safely.

She said that the spiny softshell turtles are slow to adapt, making it harder for them to survive in highly urbanized environments. It can take more than 12 years before a turtle’s reproduction process begins, René said.

“This gives them a protected oasis where they can continue to survive, eat and live their turtle life,” she said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published on May 13, 2021.

Virginie Ann, The Canadian Press

Scientists urge restoration of federal gray wolf protections

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) — A group of scientists urged the Biden administration Thursday to restore legal protections for gray wolves, saying their removal earlier this year was premature and that states are allowing too many of the animals to be killed.

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The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service dropped wolves in most of the lower 48 states from the endangered species list in January. The decision was among more than 100 Trump administration actions related to the environment that President Joe Biden ordered reviewed after taking office.

The move didn't affect Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, where federal protections had been lifted years earlier and hunting is allowed. But it removed them elsewhere in the lower 48 states, including in the western Great Lakes and the Pacific Northwest that have wolf populations, and others where experts say the predators could migrate if shielded from human harassment.

The decision was premature because the species hasn't fully recovered, 115 scientists argued in a letter to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and Martha Williams, principal deputy director of the Fish and Wildlife Service. High numbers of state-approved killings since then have caused setbacks, the letter said.

“We've been shocked by the way states have been willing to go to all-out war against the wolves," said John Vucetich, a professor of wildlife conservation at Michigan Technological University.

Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman Vanessa Kauffman said the agency had no update on wolves. The agency has continued defending their removal from the endangered list against lawsuits filed by environmental groups.

Wolves were wiped out across most of the U.S. by the 1930s under government-sponsored poisoning and trapping campaigns. A remnant population in the western Great Lakes region has since expanded to some 4,400 animals in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

More than 2,000 occupy six states in the Northern Rockies and Pacific Northwest after wolves from Canada were reintroduced in Idaho and Yellowstone National Park beginning 25 years ago.

Wisconsin had a court-ordered hunt in February in response to a lawsuit from a pro-hunting group. Participants killed 216 wolves — nearly one-fifth of the state’s population, far exceeding the state’s quota of 119. Another hunt is planned for this fall.

Idaho Gov. Brad Little last week signed into law a measure that could lead to killing 90% of the state’s 1,500 wolves with methods such as using night-vision equipment, chasing them on snowmobiles and ATVs and shooting them from helicopters. In Montana, proposed legislation would allow the use of bait, night-vision scopes and snares.

The states "have clearly indicated that they will manage wolves to the lowest allowable standards,” the scientists said in their letter.

“The recent politicization of wolf management in states like Idaho and Montana puts long-term recovery of wolves in jeopardy by reducing the probability of such dispersals,” said Jeremy Bruskotter, a wildlife policy professor at Ohio State University.

The Fish and Wildlife Service contends it’s not necessary for wolves to be in every place they once inhabited to be considered recovered.

Livestock farmers and ranchers contend wolf numbers are too high and threaten their livelihoods.

Lawyers representing the government and groups suing to restore federal protections agreed this month to a scheduling plan intended to get matter resolved before hunts that might take place this fall.

John Flesher, The Associated Press

New Washington state law makes drug possession a misdemeanor

© Provided by The Canadian Press

OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) — The jeans were from American Eagle, via Goodwill, and they were too short for their new owner, 6-foot Shannon Bowman.

So Bowman stitched a couple inches of denim onto the bottom of the legs and put them on for the first time two days after her friend had given them to her. She didn’t notice the tiny, nearly empty baggie of methamphetamine in the coin pocket.

That fact more than four years later would lead to a Washington state Supreme Court decision striking down Washington’s drug possession law; the expected vacation of tens of thousands of criminal convictions dating back decades; and the overhaul of the state’s approach to drug possession signed into law by Gov. Jay Inslee on Thursday.

“It’s cool there’s a lot of people who are going to have a second chance to make things right,” Bowman said in a recent interview. “Hopefully they go down a good road.”

The bill signed by Inslee makes drug possession a misdemeanor, rather than the felony it was under the old law. Inslee said the measure will “help reduce the disparate impact of the previous drug possession statute on people of color.”

“It moves the system from responding to possession as a felony to focusing on the behavioral health response, which is a much more appropriate and successful way to address the needs that underlie drug abuse,” the governor said.

Oregon this year became the only other state to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of all types of drugs and increase access to treatment. Washington’s measure likewise aims to greatly expand treatment services and outreach, including to homeless people with severe behavioral health issues.

The Washington measure requires police to divert a defendant’s first two offenses to treatment before the case even made it to a prosecutor, and if a defendant’s case ever reached a prosecutor, the prosecutor would be able to divert as well. Regional “recovery navigator” teams will be set up to help provide “continual, rapid, and widespread access to a comprehensive continuum of care” to “all persons with substance abuse disorder.”

In two years, the provision classifying drug possession as a misdemeanor expires, reverting to current law with no prohibition. That’s designed to give lawmakers time to re-evaluate how the state’s new policies are working and potentially figure out a long-term strategy for drug policy.

The 5-4 ruling in Bowman’s case - known as the Blake decision, because she was charged under a surname she hasn’t used in more than 20 years - held that Washington’s drug law was unconstitutional because it didn’t require prosecutors to prove that a defendant knowingly had the drugs. That left the possession of small amounts of drugs, including heroin, cocaine and meth, legal under state law, even for children.

The justices issued the ruling in February, well into the legislative session in Olympia. Lawmakers scrambled to write a new law.

Bowman, 43, now lives in a motor home on her parents’ property near Kettle Falls, north of Spokane. She has been working as a logger but the felony on her record long kept her from renting her own place, she said.

At the time of her arrest in 2016, she and her boyfriend, who was addicted to heroin, were renting a room in a Spokane house for $200 a month. They had recently been homeless.

Police took her to jail, where her blood pressure was so high that they sent her to a hospital. When she returned to the jail, guards searched her and found the baggie in her coin pocket.

Bowman told the AP she had kicked an addiction to pain pills and never used meth because of her blood pressure. Had she known the baggie was in her jeans, she would have ditched it while she was at the hospital, she said.

She didn’t think the outcome of her case made for good public policy.

“For there to be no punishment at all, I didn’t feel like that was going to help anything. But felonies for people like me? That was a little extreme,” she said.

Rachel La Corte And Gene Johnson, The Associated Press

Conspiracy theories swirl around Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine

Dan Patterson

The Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine became a target of conspiracy theories and disinformation campaigns as soon as it was announced, reaching millions of people on sites like Twitter, Reddit and 4chan, according to a recent analysis from a cyber defense firm.

COVID-19 conspiracy narratives, like the false belief that the vaccine was delayed for political reasons, flourished on social networks in the fall and early winter, according to the New York tech security firm Blackbird. The firm created an algorithm to analyze posts in real-time by hunting for signals of what CEO Wasim Khaled calls "synthetic amplification," which indicate activity by botnets and anti-vaccination influencers.


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How COVID-19 conspiracy theories reach millions of people online



These bogus notions about the vaccines, amplified by a relatively small number of fake accounts and real influencers, reached millions of people, Khaled said. © Provided by CBS News An algorithm discovered that COVID-19 conspiracies increased as the Pfizer vaccine was announced in 2020. / Credit: Blackbird AI

Botnets and inauthentic accounts — automated accounts not actively managed by humans — have behavioral signatures that are easy for AI to identify, but hard for social networks to eradicate. Companies like Facebook and Twitter use both machine-learning algorithms and human moderators to reduce the spread of conspiracies, but Khaled said botnets are effective because they're inexpensive and easy to deploy.

"Bots and influencers work in tandem," he explained. "We can't prove if they collude behind the scenes, but social media data shows clearly that they influence each other by sharing the same links, repeating the same phrases, tagging the same accounts and jumping in on trending hashtags."

For example, some botnets reach real influencers by spamming conspiracy links to trending hashtags. Another common tactic is to generate fake trends by synchronizing hundreds of posts using similar anti-vaccine and pseudoscientific claims.© Provided by CBS News Mainstream influencers can amplify COVID-19 vaccine misinformation and conspiracies. / Credit: Twitter

One common tactic is to co-opt trending topics by spamming content with provocative rhetoric that is intended to encourage engagement. This helps raise the visibility and reach of a piece of content, which increases the likelihood that a politically aligned influencer will further share the content. The content gains momentum by muddying the waters between facts and falsehoods. For example, themes that connect health restrictions like stay-at-home orders and mask-wearing with an assault on "freedom" and political "rights" prospered with bots and influencers for the duration of the pandemic.

Many online influencer accounts are famous and have millions of followers, but smaller accounts can carry a lot of clout as well. Khaled said that many of the conspiracies peddled by influencers use "anti-vax rhetoric and pseudoscientific messaging" to undermine people's confidence, such as the false notion mRNA vaccines alter human DNA, an idea that proliferated widely across Twitter when the Pfizer vaccine was announced last year.

The Twitter accounts @LotusOak2, @BrianGPowell, and @DVaugha49207961 reached millions of people by connecting COVID-19 vaccine conspiracies to existing anti-vaccination disinformation networks. These accounts pushed false narratives that the COVID-19 vaccine causes infertility by attaching them to the hashtags #InformedConscent, #sterilization, #BigPharma, #Genocide and #ExposeBillGates.

© Provided by CBS News According to the algorithm, small influencers played a large role in spreading vaccine conspiracies on social media. / Credit: Blackbird AI

"When an influencer likes or shares a post, even if it's a low-quality bot post, algorithms pick up that signal and spread the fake content far and wide. This means that partisan and divisive content has an advantage. The sheer volume of synthetic activity on social media is staggering," Khaled said. The posts the company identified were political in nature and sought "to exploit growing partisan divides within American society."

Pfizer's vaccine, announced just two days after the contentious November 7 election, uncorked a torrent of political and health conspiracies. One prominent theory discovered by the AI falsely alleged that pharmaceutical companies deliberately delayed the vaccine's announcement to harm former President Donald Trump. Another claims falsely that the COVID-19 vaccine is part of a population control scheme.

The AI technology found that some of the top hashtags used by bots and influencers to spread conspiracies were #StopTheSteal, #VaccineGate, #MAGA, #BigPhrama and #SleepyJoe. The tags #StopTheSteal and #MAGA2020LandslideVictory were particularly effective at connecting the Pfizer-election theft conspiracy with broad conspiracies about election fraud.

The QAnon conspiracy theory group used social media influencers and bots to promote the conspiracy theory video "Plandemic," in which discredited scientist Judy Mikovits argues against vaccines and public-safety measures like wearing masks. QAnon also attached vaccine conspiracy theories to the New World Order population control conspiracy and to the Great Reset, a post-pandemic policy proposal drafted by the World Economic Forum.

© Provided by CBS News The algorithm discovered COVID-19 vaccine conspiracy theories that falsely allege the vaccine was delayed for political reasons. / Credit: Twitter

Khaled declined to attribute bot activity to a specific actor, saying that "social media is a dynamic and malleable battle space." Sophisticated botting tools are available for purchase at low cost, and hacking software is widely available for free on the dark web.

Disinformation spreaders are generally motivated by money or political influence. Some are large, organized networks. But many more are small or independent operators. In the U.S., accounts deliberately or inadvertently spreading COVID-19 conspiracies belong to spammers and for-hire cybercriminals, clout-chasing influencers, politicians and political entities, and agenda-driven grassroots organizations, according to Khaled.

Such parties uses conspiracies "to frame the world in terms of powerful and sinister hidden forces," Khaled said. "Our AI found that fear is a useful motivator."

Canadian maker of promising mRNA vaccine looks to test it against Pfizer in new trial

OTTAWA — A homegrown mRNA vaccine for COVID-19 shows promising results in its first small trial and its maker is hoping to test it directly against the vaccine from Pfizer-BioNTech.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Calgary-based Providence Therapeutics says its vaccine produced no serious adverse events and developed good antibodies against COVID-19 that "compare favourably" with the two mRNA vaccines already on the market from Pfizer and Moderna.

"We're extremely pleased," said Providence CEO Brad Sorenson.

The Phase 1 trial included 60 healthy adults between 18 and 64, with more than half of them receiving two doses of the vaccine, four weeks apart. The results have not yet been peer-reviewed.

Sorenson said the next step is supposed to be a Phase 2 head-to-head trial that would test the effectiveness of Providence against Pfizer. Most vaccines in Phase 2 have been tested only against a placebo, but Sorenson said in a pandemic he feels it is unethical to give someone a placebo when they could otherwise be vaccinated.

But to do the trial, Providence needs 500 doses of Pfizer, which he said neither the company nor the National Research Council has been willing to provide.

A spokeswoman for Pfizer said Thursday the company's focus is only on getting the vaccine to meet an "urgent public health need" and will only sell its vaccine to the federal government.

"As such, we are not providing supply of our vaccine to third-parties to study the vaccine in comparative trials," said Christina Antoniou.

Pfizer is the main component of Canada's vaccination campaign to date, accounting for two-thirds of the deliveries as of this week.

A spokesman for Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne said the government has informed Providence Ottawa is willing to help fund its Phase 2 trial, and continue to work with the company.

"Minister Champagne has spoken directly with Providence Therapeutics’ CEO and the chair of their board of directors to discuss our continued support for their work as they bring their vaccine candidate through the early stages of development," said John Power.

A spokesman for the National Research Council said it doesn't have access to doses of Pfizer or Moderna to help Providence, but is discussing the request with other departments that might be able to help, including Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada.

Sorenson said Providence is also discussing with the World Health Organization the possibility of doing a Phase 3 trial in a developing country.

Sorenson said if Health Canada supports both trials, they could be wrapped up by the end of the year. But Sorenson said he doesn't feel supported by Ottawa and has threatened to take the business outside the country.

The company has production agreements in place that should be able to produce 200 million doses a year, he said.

Providence is one of six Canadian companies that received funding from the National Research Council for COVID-19 vaccines that were in early stages of development.

The company received $4.9 million last October to help fund its Phase 1 trial. It also received $5 million in January from the next-generation manufacturing supercluster to help scale up its manufacturing of mRNA.

Canada currently doesn't make any of the vaccines it is using — Pfizer is being made in Europe and the United States, Canada's doses of Moderna are all coming from Europe, and Oxford-AstraZeneca is coming from the United States, India and South Korea.

The only Canadian-made vaccine among the seven procured by Canada for COVID-19 to date is Medicago's plant-based protein vaccine, which is now in a Phase 3 trial and could be ready for mass production before the end of the year.

Medicago received $173 million in October to push its vaccine forward as well as an undisclosed sum for a contract to provide Canada at least 20 million doses if it is approved. Some of it will be made in Canada, but production will also take place in the U.S.

A lack of domestic drug manufacturing hurt Canada's vaccination program, particularly early on, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the government is intent on fixing that ahead of the next global health crisis.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 13, 2021.

Mia Rabson, The Canadian Press

Canada’s new manufacturing era trades dusty factories for robotics, 3D printer

When Tony Chahine’s father developed dementia, he wanted to stay connected with him while monitoring his worsening health.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Yet despite the hyper-connectivity of the world at large, Chahine realized some of the most vulnerable people were being left behind.

The former CEO of Cotton Ginny, a serial entrepreneur who more recently ran a boutique investment and consulting firm, developed a line of clothing with built-in sensors to measure everything from heart rate and body temperature to posture and location. It's now undergoing trials in several hospitals.

“With textiles we have the ability to capture information continuously,” says Ilaria Varoli, executive vice-president of the textile computing startup Myant Inc., which Chahine founded in 2010.

"The innovation starts at the yarn level, for example with extruded yarn or metal yarn … with sensors and actuators embedded into the textiles," she says. "The idea is to make textiles the interface, but then it's processed through our innovative software platform."

Myant is at the forefront of Canada’s new manufacturing era, one that trades dusty factories and assembly lines for state-of-the-art facilities, technology and research and development.

It’s an emerging field that includes robotics, 3D printing, machine vision and automation, and is expected to create thousands of jobs over the next decade.

But advanced manufacturing has an image problem, says Jayson Myers, CEO of the industry group Next Generation Manufacturing Canada or NGen.

“We have an outdated idea of what manufacturing is all about,” he says. “There’s this impression that it’s manual, repetitive work on assembly lines.”

A recent survey conducted by NGen and Abacus Data reflected that way of thinking. The survey found that most people believed jobs in advanced manufacturing are repetitive, unsafe and unfulfilling.

Those preconceived ideas have made it unattractive to pursue careers in manufacturing, creating a workforce shortage, Myers says.

But there’s hope.

“When we talk with young people about working with new technologies to address some of the world's biggest problems like climate change, life-threatening diseases and food insecurity, they get excited about it,” says Myers, a former CEO of Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters.

“We need to do a better job explaining what advanced manufacturing is and the jobs available."

At Myant, for example, the company now has about 130 employees, including engineers, data scientists, fashion designers, technicians and programmers.

But when Chahine came up with the idea of creating smart clothing, becoming a manufacturer wasn’t part of the equation, Varoli says.

“We didn't really want to be in manufacturing — at least not to begin with,” she says. “But then we realized the supply chain would all be overseas.”

The company struggled to find suppliers that operated in a clean enough environment to produce Myant’s high-tech textiles, since they would ultimately serve as medical devices.

Outsourcing also means a slower turnaround of prototypes.

So the startup switched gears, importing 3D robotic knitting machines from Germany and Italy to its nearly 7,500-square-metre facility in Etobicoke, Ont.

“Instead of waiting a month for prototypes to come back from China or India, we could produce three prototypes in a day,” Varoli says.

The company’s in-house brand, SKIIN, is a line of smart clothing, including underwear, bras, base layers, socks, mattress covers and seat covers.

The garments collect information about a person through sensors knitted into the fabric, and a small electronic pod tucked into the band or edge of the garment sends that information to a mobile device, where it's tracked using an app.

Myant now has clinical trials with Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., Southlake Regional Health Centre in Newmarket, Ont., and SickKids in Toronto.

Yet the company has also run into challenges finding workers.

It recently partnered with Ryerson University, putting a machine at the school in the hopes of training students and developing a curriculum.

“We’re trying to democratize and standardize this new industry,” Varoli says. “Advanced manufacturing is going to be a huge component of our future.”

Another example of Canada's new-age manufacturers is A&K Robotics.

The Vancouver-based company has invented a system that can attach on to anything with wheels and turn it into a self-driving robot.

Its “mobile autonomous navigation platforms” are used in the janitorial industry, automating floor cleaners in commercial and public spaces like airports, malls and schools — a particularly helpful technology given the demand for increased cleaning during the pandemic.

“We’ve retrofitted floor scrubbing machines to turn them into self-driving robots,” says Jessica Yip, co-founder of A&K Robotics.

The value of having a robust manufacturing sector was made clear during the pandemic, Myers says.

“It’s shown the importance of having advanced manufacturing capabilities in Canada," he said, pointing to the production of vaccines, test kits and personal protective equipment.

NGen has developed a website, careersofthefuture.ca, to help students, parents and teachers learn more about advanced manufacturing.

It's also launching a contest called Manufacturing the Future that will award 10 bursaries valued at $10,000 each to Canadian residents between the ages of 15 and 18 based on a 500-word essay on advanced manufacturing.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 13, 2021.

Brett Bundale, The Canadian Press

Renewables evolution or revolution? 

Pace of tech investments will decide

© Reuters/PASCAL ROSSIGNOL FILE PHOTO: An aerial view shows power-generating windmill turbines in a wind farm in Graincourt-les-Havrincourt, France

By Divya Chowdhury


(Reuters) -

Global investment in energy transition technologies needs to more than double over the next few decades to significantly reduce the cost of renewables, which are set to provide around 60% of the world's energy needs by 2050, industry officials say.

A breakthrough in commercial technology to decarbonise projects could reduce both project time and costs, policy advisors and company executives told the Reuters Global Markets Forum, during sessions held last week.

"The 2020s have to be a decade of innovation and early deployment - of low-carbon hydrogen - to get costs down," said Tim Gould, head of division for energy supply outlooks and investment at the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie forecast that low and zero-carbon sources including renewables are set to provide 63% of world energy demand by 2050 (not 60% by 2030), if the Paris Agreement's most ambitious goal of limiting the rise in average global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius are met.

Scaling up and commercializing hydrogen produced from renewable energy for carbon capture and storage (CCS) will help many heavy industries such as green steel, fertiliser and cement, as well as heating, to decarbonise, said Wood Mackenzie's chairman and chief analyst Simon Flowers.

"The tech is oven-ready," he said.

However, attracting investments to fund this transition is a key issue.

Gauri Singh, deputy director-general at the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), said global investments in energy transition technologies need to more than double to $4 trillion annually until 2050, from $1.8 trillion in 2019, to achieve goals set under the Paris climate accord.

"The total energy investment required is $131 trillion... $98 trillion is already planned, but not aligned with the transition," she said.

David Holmes, chief technology officer-energy at Dell Technologies, said the world needs a broad range of technologies across the entire energy ecosystem to meet its aggressive climate goals.

"There is no silver bullet solution," he said, but the returns from investing in artificial intelligence (AI) - to help companies integrate disparate systems and interpret vast amounts of data - can "often be very fast."

John Markus Lervik, co-founder and chief executive at Cognite, said digital technologies can help new renewables projects reduce time-to-market and cut capital expenditure costs by 8%-12%.

Industrial businesses that are transitioning can save even more, Lervik said. "For existing assets, we readily see improvements of 15%-18%."

An IRENA analysis shows that annual capacity deployment of renewables needs to increase four-fold by 2030 from its current pace of around 200 gigawatts (GW) if the renewables industry is to be on track to meet 2050 Paris climate accord goals.

An acceleration is expected to begin showing in the next 24 months, said Assaad Razzouk, chief executive at Sindicatum Sustainable Resources.

POWERING THE FUTURE

COVID-19 has changed patterns of electricity consumption and e-commerce, and the recovery from the pandemic is likely to be "greener, exemplified by 'build back better'," said Philip Lowe, executive chair of the World Energy Council's Energy Trilemma initiative.

IRENA's Singh predicted electricity will become the main carrier of energy by 2050, with the share of renewables within it increasing to 90%, from around 25% currently.

As grids become increasingly powered by renewables, they will need to be modernised, made more secure and reliable.

For this to succeed, governments need to start setting up regulations and frameworks to deal with issues like frequency control, said Gero Farruggio, head of global renewables at Rystad Energy.

IRENA forecasts solar photovoltaic and wind power will dominate the future energy system with a combined 63% share by 2050, with an additional 6% coming from nuclear power.

Along with a negative public perception, nuclear energy is seen as less economical and slower to reverse carbon emissions, even as existing fossil-fueled plants continue to emit CO2 while awaiting substitution.

"Nuclear has to be part of the solution... it's super-dependable and (has) zero emissions," Wood Mackenzie's Flowers said. He predicted a 10% share for nuclear within the renewables pie despite social and political opposition.

Nuclear energy has a role to play, but it won't be "leading the charge in the near term," IEA's Gould said, adding that investments in nuclear energy by advanced economies had reduced considerably, with China being the only major growth area.

Farruggio said the power mix of the future will be clean. "What we don't know is whether this transition will be a soft evolution – or indeed a revolution over the next five to 10 years."

(These interviews were conducted in the Reuters Global Markets Forum, a chat room hosted on the Refinitiv Messenger platform. Sign up here to join GMF: https://refini.tv/33uoFoQ)

(Reporting by Divya Chowdhury in Mumbai and Lisa Pauline Mattackal in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Aaron Saldanha and Supriya Rangarajan in Bengaluru; Editing by Susan Fenton)

JPMorgan debuts carbon reduction goals for clients

By Elizabeth Dilts Marshall 

© Reuters/BRENDAN MCDERMID A sign outside JP Morgan Chase & Co. offices is seen in New York

NEW YORK (Reuters) - JPMorgan Chase & Co on Thursday set out mid-term, carbon reduction goals for clients, as banks face pressure to align their financing activities with their climate change commitments.


The U.S. bank is asking clients in the electric power and auto industries to meet carbon intensity reduction goals and for oil and gas clients to meet operational and end-use carbon intensity reduction goals by 2030.

"We are taking steps to address the emissions of the clients we finance," Marisa Buchanan, JPMorgan's global head of sustainability, told Reuters.

She said the targets signal the bank's expectations that its clients operate responsibly and take the steps necessary to invest in a lower carbon future.

JPMorgan is asking electric power and automakers to reduce their direct carbon emissions, such as those produced from their buildings, plus emissions from companies that provide energy or other services necessary for these businesses to operate.

The bank is asking oil and gas clients to reduce the intensity of direct and indirect emissions, plus emissions from the combustion of oil and natural gas.

Banks face growing pressure to disclose more about emissions from activities they finance.

JPMorgan along with the wider financial services industry has long been a target of climate activists which say the industry's backing for carbon-heavy projects run contrary to support of the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change.

Last month, JPMorgan said it aims to lend, invest and provide other financial services for up to $2.5 trillion of banking business to be done for companies and projects tackling climate change and social inequality over the next decade.

The bank's new carbon reduction goals for clients were welcomed by at least two environmental groups, EDF and CERES.

"We welcome the move to interim targets," said Ben Ratner, senior director at EDF. "We see JPM is starting the journey from pledges to progress."

(Reporting By Elizabeth Dilts Marshall; additional reporting by Ross Kerber. Editing by Jane Merriman)