20/03/2024
9 Things what you didn't know
1. Home heating: Italy ships 70,000 tonnes of trash to Austria a year where it’s burnt and converted to electricity.
2. Cancer-sniffing robots: This year, Google and a Dutch university teamed up to use deep learning AI to detect cancer just as well as a human pathologist.
3. ShotSpotter: This software listens for the sound of gunfire and uses algorithms to pinpoint where it is coming from, before alerting the authorities.
4. Treating illness: More than 28,000 plant species are currently available for medicine – but fewer than 13% of them are regularly cited as being used in studies in regulatory publications. China is one country taking advantage of that other 87% to save lives by incorporating more traditional Chinese medicine in their healthcare system by 2020.
5. Feeding the world: Ethiopia has an ancient fruit called the enset that’s known as the ‘banana on steroids’ due to its similar appearance. It feeds more people per square metre than most cereals, and is weather-resistant, which is why it’s also called ‘the tree against hunger’.
6. Dutch trains now run 100% on wind power.
7. P*e power: In the developing world, it could be enough to charge a mobile phone or power indoor lighting, Bristol researchers say.
8. Robot mosquito killers: In Houston, Microsoft is rolling out high-tech death traps for Zika-carrying mosquitoes, that are run on machine learning and infrared sensors.
9. 3D-printed cities: By 2035, 40% of the planet will be living in cities, requiring 4,000 housing units to be built per hour – 3D printing provides a quick solution to meet this urgent need.
