N.L. Hydro aims to reuse poles treated with toxic substance recently banned by feds
CBC
Fri, April 14, 2023 

Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro plans to dismantle about 2,400 poles from an out-of-service line between Churchill Falls and Muskrat Falls. It hopes to reuse the wood, even though it's treated with a soon-to-be banned substance. (Patrick Butler/Radio-Canada - image credit)

Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro says it needs to dismantle nearly 2,400 electrical poles and plans to reuse the wood, even though it's been treated with a toxic substance recently banned by Ottawa.

The Crown corporation must decommission a 269-kilometre power line linking Churchill Falls and Muskrat Falls that hasn't been used since 2021, according to environmental assessment documents filed last month.

NL Hydro hopes to keep the poles, despite the fact they are coated with a toxic substance called pentachlorophenol (PCP), for future emergency repairs elsewhere in its transmission system.

Health Canada announced last fall that wood treated with PCP, a material it says presents concerns to humans and the environment, can no longer be used as of next October.

NL Hydro is seeking a "legal remedy" exempting it from the new federal rules and plans to leave the base of each of the 2,372 poles in the ground, meaning thousands of pieces of wood treated with PCP would be permanently embedded in the soil.

"Excavation of the underground segment of the pole could disrupt existing vegetation and increase risk of sedimentation in the area. It is utility practice to cut the pole at the base to avoid any further disturbance around the structures," said Jill Pitcher, a spokesperson for the province's main electricity generator.

Pitcher's emailed statement added that "the potential reuse of some PCP treated materials in the short term will not negatively impact wildlife."

Canadian electrical utilities have used PCP to preserve electricity and telephone pole since the mid-1930s and PCP-treated poles installed prior to next October do not have to be removed or replaced under the new rules.

Striking a balance

Nicolas Reynier, a research scientist at Natural Resources Canada, said in a French interview with Radio-Canada that in an ideal world, each PCP-treated pole on the line would be removed in its entirety, as would the soil surrounding every pole's base. That material would then be sent to a specialized facility that could extract the PCP, as well as highly toxic byproducts known as dioxins and furans.

But such a process, as well as the transportation needed, would be extremely expensive, said Reynier, who studied PCP and soil decontamination for four years at Quebec's Institut national de la recherche scientifique.

In fact, N.L. Hydro's environmental assessment submission, prepared by Stantec Consulting, said it "investigated the alternative of transporting treated wood to an approved recycling facility out-of-province; however, this alternative was cost-prohibitive."

"From the point of view of the life cycle of the pole, these poles have already been treated, they've already been in service for several decades…. Disposing of them in a landfill [without removing the toxic substances] isn't much better environmentally," Reynier said.

"It's not a good idea to reuse these poles that contain PCP, but seeing it's been years or even decades since they were installed, the potential of this substance to make its way into the environment is very low. If there was any pentachlorophenol that could have 'escaped' from the pole, it has already," he said.

Pam Miller, the founder of Alaska Community Action on Toxics, a group fighting for a global ban on PCP, said despite the potential costs, "there should be no exemption given the known environmental and health harms associated with this substance and the fact that there are safe and available alternatives."

"I do think it's problematic to leave PCP-treated wood below ground level as it will continue to leach into surrounding soil and groundwater, potentially exposing wildlife and people to this highly hazardous chemical."

Supply chain concerns

Health Canada's ban on PCP was based on input from officials in Switzerland, New Zealand, and Japan, as well as the European Commission, according to the department's website.

N.L. Hydro said as a member of industry group Electricity Canada it's advocating for "continued use of PCP-treated materials to mitigate short term supply chain risk and potentially reduce landfill waste."

In a statement, Health Canada said it is currently reviewing a submission from Electricity Canada.

"Due to stakeholder concerns, this application is being fast-tracked," wrote spokesperson Nicholas Janveau in an email.

The decommissioning project, whose environmental assessment has only just begun, will take five years, with about 50 kilometres of work completed each year between May and September.

N.L. Hydro says many of the poles will not be reused "due to the age of the infrastructure."

UPEI classes to resume Monday after deal ends 4-week strike


CBC
Fri, April 14, 2023 

UPEI faculty members walk the picket line at a campus entry point on April 13. Rallies planned for Friday by the union and by students were cancelled in light of the news of a tentative agreement. (Laura Meader/CBC - image credit)

A tentative agreement reached early Friday has now been ratified, ending a labour dispute at the University of Prince Edward Island on the 26th day of a strike by the union representing faculty members.

UPEI Faculty Association president Michael Arfken said 98 per cent of members voted in favour of the agreement.

"That's a strong vote in support of the agreement and support of the union," Arfken said. "We're very pleased, and our members are excited to be going back to campus, and going back to campus with some of the supports they need to preserve the educational quality of our institution."

Among the highlights in the deal, Arfken cited:

UPEI committing to hire 20 additional full-time faculty members.


More research support for faculty.


More supports for sessional staff and the adjustment of clinical nursing instructor ratios.


An annual three-per-cent wage increase for union members over four years.

"Those are some pretty meaningful changes," Arfken said, adding that the wage increase is a "significant improvement" over what was originally offered.

"We recognize it's a compromise, but we're comfortable with where it landed for the time being."

Laura Meader/CBC

Classes resume Monday

With the agreement ratified, the strike will now end and faculty will return to work.

Classes are set to resume Monday, following an emergency meeting of the university's senate Friday afternoon to finalize a return-to-class plan.

Here's some of the major details of the university's plan:

There will be no formal final examination period, which allows for instructional and assessment times to be extended while keeping the winter semester end date the same.

The last day of instruction will be April 28. For the Atlantic Veterinary College, it will be May 5.

Instruction or assessments after April 28 will be virtual. Any instruction or assessments after April 15 for the classes of 2023 and 2024 will also be done online.


Assessments may happen during class time, through take-home, or online, until April 28.


The deadline to discontinue without academic penalty has been extended to April 18.


Students will have the option to appeal for their grades to be shifted to pass/fail after their final numerical grades are determined.

Convocation dates won't change.

Instructors agree to "make every reasonable effort" to accommodate the needs of individual students as related to issues arisen from the strike.

Steve Bruce/CBC

A UPEI Student Union survey sent out to full-time students found the vast majority of students preferred either a refund (53.9 per cent), or for credits to be awarded as normal or on a pass/fail basis (42.8 per cent).

Only 3.2 per cent of 2,273 respondents wanted an extended semester.

Premier meets with UPEI, faculty association

Premier Dennis King said he met with UPEI officials and faculty association representatives Thursday, and said he learned a settlement was reached shortly after midnight Friday.

"I commend representatives of both sides for putting the interests of students first and working hard to reach an agreement that works for both sides," King said in a news release.

"I want to thank both parties for hearing me out yesterday so that our students can get back to the classroom on Monday and finish their semester."

I think if the board of governors had been willing to work with us from Day 1, much if not all of this could have been avoided. - Michael Arfken, UPEI Faculty Association president

Faculty association members have been on the picket line for nearly four weeks, since March 20. The strike put a stop to university classes and left students wondering when — or whether — the semester might resume.

The UPEIFA's last collective agreement had been set to expire on July 1, 2020, but the parties signed a two-year extension that ended last June.

"I will say, it shouldn't have been necessary to go on strike for four weeks to achieve this agreement," Arfken said. "I think if the board of governors had been willing to work with us from Day 1, much if not all of this could have been avoided."

The two sides had been in negotiations on and off since April 2022.

The primary sticking points at the bargaining table were workloads, improved health and safety, higher pay, and the hiring of more full-time faculty members to cope with a growing student body.

ALBERTA 

FIRST IT WAS TAR SANDS TAILINGS NOW THIS

Coal mine wastewater spill spurs AWA’s call for better oversight

Local Journalism Initiative
Fri, April 14, 2023 

Two unreported incidents of coal wastewater releases by CST Canada Coal’s (CST Coal) operations in Grande Cache have prompted the Alberta Wilderness Association (AWA) to call for more stringent oversight by the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER).

“One of our major concerns is we're wondering when was the last time these facilities had a safety inspection done, and what was found during those safety inspections,” said Devon Earl, conservation specialist with the AWA.

The first incident occurred on Dec. 29, 2022 when approximately 107,000 litres of coal wash water was released from CST Coal’s Grande Cache mine site. The larger of the two incidents took place on March 4, 2023 when 1.1 million litres of coal fines (water and coal fine particles) were released into the Smoky River.

She referred to the AER’s Dam Safety Program Reports, which summarize safety inspections. The latest available report for 2021 doesn’t break down into inspections of specific facilities or what the results of each inspection were. Searching for “CST” or “Grande Cache” similarly revealed no results.

It does state, “In 2021, the AER received 243 dam-related regulatory submissions (e.g., plans, reports, notifications) and conducted 98 dam inspections. No critical safety deficiencies were identified.”

The 2021 report was published in April 2022, which infers that the 2022 report (that should include details of CST Coal’s first incident) would be published sometime this month.

“We would really like to see that especially for some of these spills,” Earl said.

“When was the last time those facilities were inspected? What did they find? I think that's really important for us to be able to know and for the public to be able to know just in terms of transparency. I think that's something that should be posted online and made publicly available. We haven't been able to find that.”

Coal wastewater is known to have detrimental effects on fish and aquatic ecosystems. Selenium is a common pollutant from coal mining, and can potentially cause deformities and reproductive failure for fish. Coal mining pollutants can also interrupt seasonal migrations and lead to extirpation in affected watersheds.

“The AER needs to ensure that no fish have been harmed by these spills,” said Phillip Meintzer, AWA conservation specialist, in a prepared statement to The Fitzhugh. “If these companies are going to be permitted to operate, then they need to be held accountable for their actions, and our regulator needs to step up to the task.”

The homepage of the AER’s website, however, devotes a banner to the much-publicized Imperial Oil Kearl Oil Sands Incidents, which involves two Imperial Oil’s operations approximately 45 kilometres northeast of Fort McKay. That links to the AER’s page for Ongoing Investigations, which only includes information about the Imperial Oil Kearl incidents.

A general search for “CST Coal” on the AER site had no results regarding any of that company’s wastewater releases in Grande Cache. The site does, however, include a Compliance Dashboard page that includes 2,511 entries of incidents dating back to June 2013.

This page does include the two CST Coal incidents but leaves out the amounts involved. A tab for the AER’s Investigations does indicate that the two incidents are in Phase 1, which is when AER staff collect information and conduct a site and incident assessment.

This still leaves the AWA and the rest of the public out in the cold wondering about what happened and how bad it is.

The work of the AER is not just to regulate energy development, but in doing so it also upholds the responsibility of allocating and conserving water resources, managing public lands, and protecting the environment

Earl said that this form of public trust needs to be transparent in order for it to function for the public good.

“Their job is to make sure that industry is running in such a way that's not putting the environment and public health at risk,” Earl said.

“I think some of these incidents lately point to the fact that we might need to ramp up that oversight and make sure that we're holding companies accountable, and make sure that they're not putting human health and the environment at risk with their operations.”

CST Canada Coal Ltd. did not respond to the Fitzhugh’s request for comment by press time.

After the story went to press, however, the Alberta Energy Regulator provided an email response to several questions.

The AER confirmed that it was notified of the two incidents via the 24-hour EDGE reporting line on January 2, 2023 and March 6, 2023.

“Clean up has been complete by the CST Coal, as required. The area will be reinspected by the AER in ice free conditions,” read the statement.

When asked about the full environmental impacts of the two releases, the financial or other penalties that CST Coal faces, or how closely the AER would be following CST Coal to prevent such events in the future, the Alberta Energy Regulator said that it couldn’t comment further since these incidents are under active investigation.

Editor's note: The story was updated after publication.

Scott Hayes, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Jasper Fitzhugh

Teeth found in Dorset thought to belong to dinosaur never seen before in Britain

Joanna Davis
Fri, 14 April 2023 

Charmouth, where many fossils are found Picture: Tom Ormerod

Fossils of teeth found in Dorset, Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire are believed to be the remains of the earliest relatives of birds, a group of dinosaurs called maniraptorans.

The fossils could belong to a dinosaur never seen before in Britain, according to Natural History Museum research conducted with help from artificial intelligence.

The findings include the oldest evidence in the world of the therizinosaur dinosaur, a large herbivore with long scissor-like claws which featured in the most recent Jurassic World film.

The Natural History Museum and Birkbeck College used machine learning to train computer models to identify which extinct animal the fossils were most likely to belong to.

The researchers gave the computers data about thousands of teeth from different dinosaur species and made 3D models of the fossils to find out which extinct creatures they were from.

Maniraptorans are thought to have walked the earth between 174 million and 164 million years ago during the Middle Jurassic era, but the new research suggests some of the dinosaurs could have existed almost 30 million years earlier.

Fossils from this time period are rare and little is known about the origins of these dinosaurs.

Simon Wills, a PhD student at the Natural History Museum, said: "Previous research had suggested that the maniraptorans were around in the Middle Jurassic, but the actual fossil evidence was patchy and disputed.

"Along with fossils found elsewhere, this research suggests the group had already achieved a global distribution by this time.

"The teeth we analysed include what are currently the only troodontid (a small bird-like dinosaur) and therizinosaur fossils ever recorded from the UK and are the oldest evidence of these dinosaurs anywhere in the world."

The Natural History Museum believes learning technology could be used more often to find out more about dinosaurs and their fossils.

First near-complete sauropod dinosaur skull found in Australia hints at ancient links between continents

The Conversation
April 13, 2023

Sauropod (Shutterstock)

In May and June of 2018, Australia’s first near-complete skull of a sauropod – a group of long-tailed, long-necked, small-headed dinosaurs – was found on a sheep station northwest of Winton in Queensland.

I was part of the dig team from the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum that made the discovery, and subsequently had the privilege of leading the team that studied the skull. After years of work, our results are published today in Royal Society Open Science.

The skull belonged to a creature we have dubbed “Ann”: a member of the species Diamantinasaurus matildae which shows surprising similarities to fossils found halfway across the world, lending weight to the theory that dinosaurs once roamed between Australia and South America via an Antarctic land connection.


The ‘Ann’ Site, dug in 2018. Trish Sloan / Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum

A good skull is hard to find

The sauropod dinosaurs have been a source of lifelong fascination for me, and finding a sauropod skull was one of my childhood dreams. Sadly, the fossil record is biased towards preserving sauropod limbs, vertebrae and ribs, and heavily against skulls.

This makes sense when you consider the processes that act on an organism’s body after it dies, which paleontologists call taphonomy.

Large, robust limb bones are resistant to decomposition, and if they are buried rapidly they might fossilize quite readily. Vertebrae and ribs comprise a significant proportion of a vertebrate skeleton, increasing their odds of preservation.

By contrast, sauropod skulls were relatively small, made up of many delicate bones that were only loosely held together by soft tissue, and seemingly easily detached from the end of the neck. They might also have been prime targets for carnivorous dinosaurs: the only previously described sauropod braincase from Australia preserves several bite marks from fierce theropods.


The original skull bones of the sauropod dinosaur Diamantinasaurus matildae. 

Trish Sloan / Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum

The bones of the skull were found around two meters beneath the surface, scattered over an area of about nine square metres. Much of the right side of the face is missing, but most of the left is present. Sadly, many of the bones show signs of distortion (presumably a result of post mortem scavenging or trampling), which makes physical reassembly of the skull a delicate process.

Modern technology recreates an ancient animal

This being the case, we set out to reconstruct the skull digitally. We CT scanned the bones at St Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne. This enabled the internal features of each bone to be observed on a computer.

Inside one bone in the snout (which we also had scanned at the Australian Synchrotron), we found replacement teeth. It has long been known that sauropods, like crocodiles today, continually replaced their teeth throughout their lives.


CT scanning a sauropod skull at St Vincent’s Hospital, Melbourne. Adele Pentland

We also scanned all of the bones with a surface scanner, enabling detailed 3D models of each bone to be made on a computer. The skull could then be reassembled in a virtual space with no risk of damage to the fossils themselves.

The teeth in the new sauropod skull were very similar to those found at other sites in the Winton area. Comparisons with Australia’s only other fragmentary sauropod skull (also from Winton) revealed additional similarities.
Meet Diamantinasaurus matildae

Our skull belongs to the species Diamantinasaurus matildae. Diamantinasaurus would have been about as long as a tennis court, as tall as basketball ring at the shoulder, and weighed ~25 tonnes – about as much as two fire engines.

Diamantinasaurus occupies a low branch on the family tree of a group of sauropods called titanosaurs. Other members of the titanosaur group (from higher branches on their family tree) include the largest land animals that ever lived, such as Patagotitan and Argentinosaurus, which exceeded 30 meters in length. Titanosaurs were the only sauropods to live right until the end of the Cretaceous Period (66 million years ago), when the age of dinosaurs came to a close.

Diamantinasaurus has a rounded snout, typical of medium- to high-level browsing sauropods. Its teeth are robustly constructed, but those from other sites show little sign of wear by soil or grit, reinforcing the idea Diamantinasaurus preferred to feed some distance above ground level.


The reconstructed skull of Diamantinasaurus matildae, viewed from the left side. Stephen Poropat / Samantha Rigby

Only two replacement teeth are present in each tooth socket, implying that Diamantinasaurus replaced its teeth relatively slowly. And finally, the teeth are restricted to the front of the snout, meaning that Diamantinasaurus, like all other sauropods, did not chew its food.
Family resemblances

We compared our sauropod skull with others from around the world. The most similar skull was that of Sarmientosaurus musacchioi, which lived in southern South America. Diamantinasaurus and Sarmientosaurus lived at around the same time (about 95 million years ago), and at around the same latitude (50°S).

We had previously hypothesised that these two sauropods were close relatives, albeit on the basis of limited evidence. The new skull shores up that idea in a big way: bone for bone, the skulls of Diamantinasaurus and Sarmientosaurus are extremely similar. This might seem strange, given the great physical distance between South America and Australia today. However, back then each of those continents retained a lingering land connection with Antarctica.

Sauropods seemingly preferred warmer climates at low to medium latitudes. However, 95 million years ago the climate was extremely warm, even by the warm standards of the Cretaceous. With polar latitudes more amenable for sauropods, these scaly behemoths – and other landlubbing animals – could trundle through lush forests at the bottom of the world between South America and Antarctica.

It is a privilege to be able to finally put a face to the name Diamantinasaurus matildae. Future discoveries will hopefully help cement its status as one of the most completely understood titanosaurs worldwide.

Stephen Poropat, Research associate, Curtin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

BETTER THAN WORK FOR FREE INTERNSHIPS
Thriving digital marketing firm shows apprenticeships are the way forward

Rob Goulding
Sun, 9 April 2023 

At the High Sheriff's Awards for Enterprise 2023, from left to right: Boodles chairman, Nicholas Wainwright MBE; High Sheriff of Cheshire, Jeannie France-Hayhurst; award-winner, Joe Worthington; award sponsor Barlow's representive, Paddy Moran (Image: David Goadby)

A NORTHWICH digital marketing firm is showing how investing in young talent is the way forward when growing a modern business.

David Goadby, creative and managing director of Authenticity Digital, had to make his own way in life from age 16, but thanks to an apprenticeship, found himself director of a digital marketing company in his mid-30s.

Handling contracts for prestige firms like Rolex, Fiat, and Wolverhampton Wonderers, David began to wonder why it was him putting-in the hours and his boss driving around in the Bentley.


In 2019, the 39-year-old took the plunge and started Authenticity in Northwich, and based on his own experience of apprenticeships, believed he could make it work for his business.

Northwich Guardian: David Goadby (left) and Joe Worthington (right) putting their heads together

David Goadby (left) and Joe Worthington (right) putting their heads together (Image: David Goadby)

Now David first apprentice, Joe Worthington, has been named runner-up Apprentice of the Year for Cheshire at the High Sheriff’s Awards for Enterprise.

David said: “I found Joe through a Linkedin post by his mum, saying he was looking for an opportunity in digital marketing.

“He ticked a few boxes for me, so we had a quick chat, and I brought him on board.

“That was still during Covid, so it was all a bit stop-start. He was in the office one day, then at home the next, which when you’re trying to pick-up projects and clients in a small business means you’ve got to have a lot of heart.

“Having the character to get through that was really impressive, and now Joe is an integral part of the business.

"If he leaves tomorrow for something bigger and better, so be it. That’s the way it goes, and if I’ve given him a start in a career, then that’s great.

“Apprenticeships work fantastically for me because I’ve got a lot of experience working with young developers, programmers, and designers over the years.

“Someone gave me a fantastic opportunity, so I’ve got to pay it forward.”

Northwich Guardian: Runner-up Cheshire apprentice of the year, Joe Worthington, hard at work

Runner-up Cheshire apprentice of the year, Joe Worthington, hard at work (Image: David Goadby)

The awards ceremony took place at the prestigious Churchill House, home of the University of Chester’s business school, on Friday, March 31.

It was attended by the High Sheriff, Jeannie France-Hayhurst, the Lord Lieutenant of Cheshire, Lady Alexis Redmond, and additional sparkle was provided by Nicholas Wainwright MBE, chairman of renowned fine jewellers, Boodles.

Award-winner Joe, 27, said: "I'm incredibly grateful for this recognition and proud to be among the top apprentices in Cheshire.

"Thanks to everyone who has supported me on this journey, and congratulations to the winner.

"I may not have won the top prize, but I was a runner-up, and I'm pretty sure this means I'm officially allowed to add ‘almost award-winning’ to my LinkedIn profile."

Bank that opened world's first ATM given heritage status

Dalya Alberge
Mon, 10 April 2023

Comedian Reg Varney examines a bank note as he officially opens the world's first ATM in June 1967 - Mirrorpix

Just as high street banks and cash machines are being closed across Britain to the despair of customers, one branch is literally being consigned to history - with an extraordinary heritage listing.

Historic England has added a Barclays bank in the London suburb of Enfield to its National Heritage List for England, a unique register of the country's most significant historic buildings and sites, it will be announced today.

The Grade II listing recognises that it was the first bank in the world to be fitted with an Automated Teller Machine (ATM), while also acknowledging the building’s architectural interest.


Although the branch is still trading, its customers may be concerned by a sentence on Historic England’s website about its register, which notes: “The places on the list are protected by law and most are not open to the public.”

As the Telegraph reported in January, Barclays have closed nearly a thousand branches since 2015. Having been a familiar sight on Britain’s high streets for centuries, it has shut more branches than any other bank.

Last September another report warned that more than 37,000 free-to-use machines were at risk of closure.

The bank, in Enfield, London, was built in 1897 and opened the world's first ATM 70 years later

 - Chris Redgrave/Historic England Archive

Heritage listing 'ironic'

Simon Fell, the Conservative MP for Barrow and Furness, and co-chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Fair Business Banking, told the Telegraph: “We see bank branches closing all around us, so this heritage listing is somewhat ironic. Banks certainly are part of our heritage.

“Some of the most beautiful buildings in my own constituency are former banks, now transformed into wine bars and cafes. Regeneration is all well and good, but we need to maintain the link between the high street and access to finance.’

He added: “Not everyone can go online and deal with an AI chatbot to have their query answered, and certainly people in a rush who are concerned about their mortgages and loans should not have to wait in an endless phone queue to speak to a call centre overseas.”

Peter Dowd, Labour MP for Bootle and former shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, said: “I’m concerned about bank closures and what banks collectively might do to protect the service on the high street. The heritage listing is recognition of that building’s significance to the community. That is the irony.”

Crowds gather to catch a glimpse of the cash machine in action following its grand unveiling - Mirrorpix

The ATM at the bank was officially first opened in 1967 by the comedian Reg Varney. The machine issued a £10-note on receipt of a special paper voucher inserted by the customer.

Although the prototype device has long been removed, a commemorative plaque marks its original location at the site, which is located at 20 The Town in Enfield.

Historic England said: “[This was] a major technological development in both banking practice and the general automation within modern society and is of worldwide significance.”

The listing also recognises the building’s “historic and architectural” significance.

William Gilbee Scott’s purpose-built bank won an 1896 competition held for the new branch of the London and Provincial Bank, and was once described as an “exuberant Flemish Renaissance” by architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner.

Will ChatGPT replace computational materials scientists?

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BEIJING INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY PRESS CO., LTD

 

IMAGE: SCIENTISTS FROM ZHEJIANG UNIVERSITY DISCUSSED THE POTENTIAL APPLICATIONS OF CHATGPT IN COMPUTATIONAL MATERIALS SCIENCE view more 

CREDIT: [LIZHE HU & ZIJIAN HONG, ZHEJIANG UNIVERSITY]

“ChatGPT is a very impressive tool,” said paper author Zijian Hong, professor at the School of Materials Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, China. “As a computational materials scientist, I’m always eager to embrace new tools, in particular, new tools in computer science and AI. Since the born of the new ChatGPT, I’m just wondering whether such a tool can assist us in computational materials science”

Hong explained that for a computational materials task, there are three main steps: building a model or a structure, writing codes for specific scientific software, and preparing data visualization scripts. To test the capability of ChatGPT, he examined it from these aspects.

“ChatGPT can help us prepare scripts to build atomic structure, i.e., the cif file, scripts for running a DFT calculation, and scripts for data visualization”, Hong said. “At least it is trying to help us from chat, although the scripts are not working at all when I accessed on Feb. 20, 2023.”

“But what surprised me is the ability to evolve and learn from communications”, Hong added, “When I accessed 20 days later, it gives me different answers, towards the correct answer. And if I give more hints, such as the correct lattice structure, it can correct by itself, just like a human being.”

“It is still not perfect for sure. For example, it still makes simple mistakes, the consistency of the output is not guaranteed, and the ethical concerns are still there.” Hong said. “But change is really near the corner, for computational materials science. We should embrace it rather than avoid it.”

This work is supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities and a startup fund from Zhejiang University.

JOURNAL

Energy Material Advances

DOI

10.34133/energymatadv.0026 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

ChatGPT for Computational Materials Science: A Perspective

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

12-Apr-2023

Japanese universities become latest to restrict use of ChatGPT

Vishwam Sankaran
Mon, 10 April 2023 

Japanese universities are curtailing students’ use of the OpenAI chatbot ChatGPT amid concerns about information leaks from the use of the artificial intelligence tool.

Tokyo’s Sophia University banned the use of the chatbot by students to write assignments such as essays, reports, and theses.

“The use of text, programme source code, calculation results generated by ChatGPT and other AI chatbots is not permitted on any assignments such as reaction papers, reports, essays and thesis, as they are not created by the student themselves,” the university noted in new guidelines published recently on its official website.

“If the use is confirmed by detection tools, etc, strict measures will be taken in accordance with the University’s Disciplinary Rules on Misconduct,” it added.

OpenAI released ChatGPT in November last year and the chatbot immediately gained prominence online with experts praising the AI tool’s ability to respond to user queries with human-like output.

The chatbot has demonstrated the ability to summarise research studies and answer logical questions and has also cracked business school and medical exams crucial for students to pass.

Citing some of these advances, several AI experts also have warned that there could be significant disruptions, especially in academia due to the breakthrough technology.

Others have also warned the AI’s nature to provide plausible-sounding but incorrect responses with glaring mistakes to some queries.

In areas where the AI does not have sufficient knowledge, experts have flagged that it may confidently provide incorrect answers that may mislead people, adding that its use may also result in copyright infringement.

Holden Thorp, editor-in-chief of Science journals, had warned earlier this year that text generated by “ChatGPT (or any other AI tools) cannot be used in the work submitted to the outlets, adding that violation of the new policies may constitute “scientific misconduct” in the same league as plagiarism.

The University of Tokyo also published a new document on its internal website with updated guidelines on the use of AI chatbots which noted that “reports must be created by students themselves and cannot be created solely with the help of AI.”

In a set of instructions for teachers, Tohoku University noted that while it is “not realistic” to completely eliminate the use of tools like ChatGPT, “especially after class hours,” there can be major problems for students’ own learning if they use generative AI for compiling reports that may lead to “strict grade evaluation.”

“Assuming that many students will use it, we will take measures as necessary,” the university noted.

The university also warned its teachers that while using generation AI tools for assessing and translating unpublished research results, the data can be unintentionally leaked to the service provider, “partially or completely”.

“By using input to generation AI and translation sites as learning data, it is presented as an answer to other users, and there is also a concern that information will be leaked. Please be very careful,” Tohoku University said, adding that a similar scenario may play out for other confidential information.

“There is a risk that information that should not be leaked to the outside, such as information about the entrance examination and personal information of students and faculty members, will be transmitted to service providers through generation AI, etc, and there is a risk that it will be presented as an answer to other users,” it said.

The university also advised faculty to check “how AI will respond before assigning exercises and reports” to students.

Italy previously banned the use of ChatGPT last month with data protection authorities saying the AI service would be investigated over privacy concerns.

Authorities said the AI system does not have a proper legal basis to collect personal information about the people using it.

Last week Germany also said it is considering a ban of ChatGPT due to privacy concerns.

Other data regulators across Europe, including watchdogs in France and Ireland, are also reportedly in conversation with Italian authorities to understand the basis for their ban.

GEN-Z-CRYPTO CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

FTX bosses joked about losing millions of dollars, damning report claims

Oliver Gill
Mon, 10 April 2023 

SBF - David Dee Delgado/Reuters

FTX bosses joked about losing tens of millions of dollars and signed off expenses with emojis, according to a damning official filing into the crypto exchange's collapse.

Founder Sam Bankman-Fried and senior executives are accused of “hubris, incompetence, and greed” in a 39-page report published by FTX's restructuring experts.

A tight-knit group of individuals “stifled dissent, commingled and misused corporate and customer funds, lied to third parties about their business, joked internally about their tendency to lose track of millions of dollars in assets”, the report found.


It said that Mr Bankman-Fried claimed FTX's trading arm Alameda Research was “hilariously beyond any threshold of any auditor being able to even get partially through an audit”

According to the report, Mr Bankman-Fried said: “Alameda is unauditable. I don’t mean this in the sense of ‘a major accounting firm will have reservations about auditing it’; I mean this in the sense of ‘we are only able to ballpark what its balances are, let alone something like a comprehensive transaction history.’

“We sometimes find $50m of assets lying around that we lost track of; such is life.”

The report goes on to reveal that money transfers were not properly documented.

It said: “To make matters worse, Slack, Signal, and other informal methods of communication were frequently used to document approvals. Signal and Telegram were at times utilised in communications with both internal and external parties with “disappearing messages” enabled, rendering any historical review impossible.

“Expenses and invoices of the FTX Group were submitted on Slack and were approved by ‘emoji.’ These informal, ephemeral messaging systems were used to procure approvals for transfers in the tens of millions of dollars, leaving only informal records of such transfers, or no records at all.”

Veteran restructuring executive John J. Ray III, who ran the insolvency of Enron two decades ago, is overseeing FTX’s bankruptcy proceedings.

Mr Ray’s “first interim report” includes the findings of more than one million company documents and 19 employee interviews.

Mr Ray said: “We are releasing the first report in the spirit of transparency that we promised since the beginning of the Chapter 11 process.”

FTX collapsed last November after analysts raised questions about its solvency.

As Mr Bankman-Fried’s empire imploded, further questions about alleged wrongdoing have been raised.

He has been charged with fraud and breaches of campaign-finance law and after pleading not guilty is due to face trial in November.

The debtors’ report found that FTX was operated at the most senior level by Mr Bankman-Fried, minority shareholder Gary Wang, and Nishad Singh, who joined from Alameda.

Mr Singh pleaded guilty in February to fraud as part of a cooperation deal with prosecutors.

Mr Wang and Caroline Ellison, Mr Bankman-Fried ex-girlfriend and former chief executive of Alameda, pleaded guilty last year to charges in connection to their roles at FTX and Alameda Research and are working with the US government.

David Attenborough’s online Wild Isles isn’t too hard-hitting for TV – it doesn’t go far enough

Dave Goulson
Mon, 10 April 2023 


It was with some trepidation that I began viewing the online-only episode of David Attenborough’s latest documentary series, Wild Isles. The episode, Saving Our Wild Isles, focuses on the threats facing British wildlife and those fighting to save it.

Rumours had abounded that the BBC dared not broadcast this final episode on television because it was too hard-hitting, with some suggesting it was too critical of government action or inaction. I braced myself, expecting images of rivers polluted with plastics, sewage and pesticides, tales of dwindling numbers of insects, birds and mammals, of ancient woodlands destroyed, overfished seas, mature urban trees felled, meadows ploughed, raptors such as golden eagles poisoned, the climate crisis running amok.

I need not have worried. Although there was passing mention of some awfully depressing statistics, the film is deliberately uplifting and overwhelmingly positive. It focuses on heartwarming projects that are restoring nature, from the London docklands to the arable fields of East Anglia, and north to the wilds of Cairngorm. These examples show that people benefit from and need nature, and that we can all get involved in protecting it.

I recommend that you watch it, but I worry.

We face an existential crisis. Those of us who have been on this planet for half a century or more have lived through the greatest loss of wildlife on our planet for 65m years, since a meteor wiped out the dinosaurs. Climate breakdown is accelerating. Our civilisation, our children’s health and wellbeing, and the future of much of the life that remains on our planet, hangs in the balance.

For at least 30 years it has been painfully obvious that we are heading for disaster, yet our response has been woefully inadequate. Successive governments have abjectly failed to grasp the importance of the threat we face. There have always been wonderful people swimming against the tide, defending the environment, but they are far too few.

Watching Saving Our Wild Isles, you might imagine that the tide is finally turning. It isn’t.

Recently, our government ignored the advice of its own scientific committee and granted a derogation allowing sugar beet farmers to use a banned neonicotinoid pesticide. Just last month it pushed back proposed bans on horticultural use of peat – a vital store of carbon that is extracted from a rare and biodiverse habitat – until 2030. Much needed reintroductions of missing species such as beavers are blocked or delayed.

The new farming subsidy known as environmental land management schemes (ELMs), which seemed quite promising when first announced, has been stalled, watered-down and botched in implementation such that most farmers have been left feeling bewildered and unsupported. Oil and gas exploration are being encouraged, and a new coalmine opened. Raw sewage is being dumped into England’s rivers on average 800 times a day. Environmental legislation inherited from Europe is being torched. Without support from government, the actions of a few individuals fighting for nature will never be enough.

Environmentalists have been saying “it is not yet too late” for a long time. In reality it is already too late to avoid much worse damage than we have already seen, and whatever we do now the climate crisis will continue to worsen.

Saving Our Wild Isles is charming, and perhaps it will inspire a few more people to do more for nature, but I was hoping for something different, something that might really wake us up to the dismal state of our country.

David Attenborough is a hero to many of us, and no one has done more to champion the wonders of our natural world. Perhaps he might yet persuade the BBC to commission the hard-hitting, kick-up-the-arse documentary we really need.

Dave Goulson is a professor of biology at the University of Sussex, where he specialises in bee ecology

UK spent almost £500,000 on unused support scheme for energy firms

Alex Lawson
THE GUARDIAN

Photograph: Andrew Milligan/PA

The Treasury spent almost half a million pounds on an unused emergency scheme for energy traders launched by Liz Truss that was quietly closed earlier this year.

The energy markets financing scheme (EMFS) was devised by the Treasury and the Bank of England as a £40bn government-guaranteed backstop fund to provide stability for energy and financial markets.

The scheme was designed to offer energy traders liquidity to deal with massive margin calls – demands from brokers to deposit further cash or securities to cover possible losses – but was shut in January as a sharp fall in wholesale gas prices earlier this year eased pressure on energy firms.

In response to a freedom of information request by the Guardian, the Treasury said it spent £465,000 on “external technical consultants to support the creation of the EMFS”.

It said that 11 commercial banks and 20 energy firms were invited to technical video calls with the Treasury relating to the scheme. Energy firms would have applied jointly with a bank but no applications were made during a window from October to late January.

FTI Consulting, the global management consultancy, received £400,000 for its advisory role, while the law firm Hogan Lovells received £65,000.

The government contract was originally worth up to £4.9m for FTI to provide market research and consultancy services, according to analysis by the data firm Tussell.

Truss announced the scheme in September as part of a package of measures to prevent the energy crisis causing further damage during the winter. The then prime minister also announced support for households and businesses, both of those schemes were later pared back to reduce the cost.

The Treasury said: “The scheme was introduced as part of a range of contingency measures to support the energy sector.

“Since the launch of the scheme prices in the wholesale gas markets have declined markedly and this has reduced some of the pressure facing eligible energy firms.”

It added: “Due to improvements in market conditions since the launch of the scheme, energy firms were able to access the necessary lines of credit from commercial lenders without the need for the government-backed guarantee.

“The EMFS was designed to supplement existing commercial financing where this alone was not sufficient with penal pricing and conditions upon drawdown set so it would only be used if commercial and competitively priced financing was unavailable on the market. It was not intended to replace commercial lending.”

The Bank of England refused to state how much it spent on its part in the creation of the EMFS.

Industry sources said that strict conditions preventing companies paying bonuses to executives or dividends to shareholders after using the scheme had also deterred energy companies.

The government’s spending on energy support schemes has been under intense scrutiny as households and businesses attempt to cope with the high bills inflated by the gas prices linked to the war in Ukraine.

In his budget, Jeremy Hunt made a U-turn on a plan to make household support less generous but has stuck with a cut in financial energy aid for businesses, which began on 1 April.

The support for firms has been labelled “scattergun” by business groups, which have warned that many are now considering closure in the face of unaffordable bills.

Kate Nicholls, the chief executive of UKHospitality, which represents pubs, restaurants and hotels, said: “The significant reduction in energy support comes as a hammer blow to thousands of hospitality businesses that are already struggling with extortionate energy bills that are already double what they were a year ago.

“This could not come at a worse time as venues continue to also grapple with record food and drink price inflation, which is showing no signs of slowing down.”