Lizard Island on Australia's Great Barrier Reef faces alarming coral loss following 2024 bleaching

Sydney, (IANS) Lizard Island on Australia's Great Barrier Reef has suffered one of the world's worst coral die-offs, with 92 per cent of surveyed corals lost after the 2024 bleaching event, new research has revealed.Researchers used drone imagery to assess the Fourth Global Coral Bleaching Event in 2024 at Lizard Island, where 96 per cent of corals were bleached and mortality averaged 92 per cent, with some sites losing over 99 per cent of corals, according to a statement released recently by Australia's Griffith University."This marks one of the highest coral mortality rates ever documented globally," said the study's lead researcher Vincent Raoult from Griffith University's School of Environment. Raoult described the mortality as "unprecedented," especially given that Lizard Island experienced less heat stress than other parts of the Great Barrier Reef.Drone technology enabled precise mapping of the widespread bleaching, said Jane Williamson from the Macquarie University in Sydney, also the study's senior author, who stressed the urgent need for climate action, warning that repeated heatwaves could irreversibly damage coral reefs, Xinhua news agency reported.Lizard Island's reefs remain fragile after years of repeated damage, such as bleaching, cyclones, and Crown-of-Thorns outbreaks, and scientists will monitor them through 2026...
Read More........

The Third Eye: Moving from Information Age to ‘Age of Intelligence’

New Delhi, (IANS): The success of Information Technology revolution caused the transition of the world from the Industrial Age to the Age of Information but the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is expediting another transformational shift- from the Information Age to the Age of Intelligence propelled by the basic fact that ‘all intelligence is information but all information is not intelligence’.This shift is compelled by the reality that there was no competitive gain from having information that everybody else also had and that it is the ownership of ‘exclusive knowledge’ called Intelligence that gave one advantage over the others.AI applications are becoming a means of generating and accessing such knowledge largely through Data Analytics. Any information of intelligence value has to be ‘reliable’ but also ‘futuristic’ in the sense that it indicates the ‘opportunities’ and ‘risks’ lying ahead and thus opens the pathway to gainful action. To the extent a system of algorithms can be put in place to produce ‘insights’ during the analysis of data, this came closer to bridging the gap between ‘Artificial’ and ‘Human’ intelligence. Fundamentally, however, AI was an ‘assistant’ for and not a ‘substitute’ for human intelligence.Someone rightly said that Artificial Intelligence backed by Large Language Models(LLMs) can become the...
Read More........

Mercury Emissions Fall 70% Over the Last Four Decades Thanks to UN Treaty, Coal Phase-Out

A coal power plant in India – credit RawpixelA study examining mercury concentrations in the leaves of alpine plants has revealed that humanity has reduced worldwide exposure to this most toxic of heavy metals substantially.Controlled via a UN treaty called the Minamata Convention on Mercury Emissions, mercury (Hg) enters the atmosphere through a variety of natural and anthropogenic avenues.Artisanal and small-scale gold mining, coal burning, and cement and nonferrous metals production all release several thousands tons of mercury into the atmosphere every year.Much like carbon dioxide, the oceans also emit mercury—between 400-1,300 metric tons per year. Terrestrial sources include volcanic eruptions and other geothermal features, the weathering of mercury-containing rocks, soil erosion, and wildfires, and contribute around the same amount as the oceans.Anthropogenic sources, however, contribute as much as the land and oceans together; or at least they once did.A team of Chinese scientists from schools in Tianjin, Beijing, Tibet, and Nanjing has found that Hg concentrations in the atmosphere reduced by 70% since a peak in the year 2000. For the next 20 years, the levels continually dropped, corresponding with a reduced reliance on coal for power and the implementation of the Minamata Convention in 2013.The scientists were able to...
Read More........

Japan, Korea develop prototype nuclear batteries

The uranium battery concept (Image: JAEA)The Japan Atomic Energy Agency has developed what it says is the world's first "uranium rechargeable battery" and that tests have verified its performance in charging and discharging. Meanwhile, South Korean researchers have developed a prototype betavoltaic battery powered by the carbon-14 isotope.The uranium storage battery utilises depleted uranium (DU) as the negative electrode active material and iron as the positive one, the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) said. The single-cell voltage of the prototype uranium rechargeable battery is 1.3 volts, which is close to that of a common alkaline battery (1.5 volts).The battery was charged and discharged 10 times, and the performance of the battery was almost unchanged, indicating relatively stable cycling characteristics."To utilise DU as a new resource, the concept of rechargeable batteries using uranium as an active material was proposed in the early 2000s," JAEA noted. "However, no studies were reporting the specific performance of the assembled uranium rechargeable batteries."It added: "If uranium rechargeable batteries are increased in capacity and put to practical use, the large amount of DU stored in Japan will become a new resource for output controls in the electricity supply grid derived from renewable energy, thereby contributing...
Read More........

World's first baby born via AI-powered IVF system in Mexico

A baby has been born following a form of in vitro fertilisation (IVF) largely carried out by a machine, in what researchers say is a world first.The development could signal a major shift in how fertility treatments are performed, The Express Tribune reported.The machine, developed by New York-based biotech firm Conceivable Life Sciences, was used to complete 23 critical steps of a procedure known as intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI). A human operator supervised the process remotely via livestream, initiating each step with the press of a button."This level of automation could reduce the chance of human error and fatigue affecting the outcomes," said Jacques Cohen, co-founder of the company and an expert in assisted reproduction.In ICSI, a single sperm is injected directly into an egg, a technique often used when male infertility is involved. However, the manual nature of the process requires extreme precision and concentration, making it prone to errors.To test the automated system, researchers recruited a couple struggling with infertility. The male partner's sperm had limited motility, and the female partner received donor eggs due to ovulatory issues.Of the eight donor eggs, five were fertilised using the automated system, and three through conventional manual ICSI. All eight developed into embryos. An AI model then evaluated...
Read More........