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The Obtain: Sensory cities and carbon trapping-crops

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That is right now’s version of The Obtain, our weekday e-newsletter that gives a each day dose of what’s occurring on the planet of expertise.

Why sounds and smells are as important to cities because the sights

When David Howes thinks of his house metropolis of Montreal, he thinks of the harmonious tones of carillon bells and the scent of bagels being cooked over wooden fires. However when he stopped in at his native tourism workplace to ask the place they suggest that guests go to scent, style, and take heed to the town, he simply acquired clean stares.

“They solely find out about issues to see, not concerning the metropolis’s different sensory points of interest, its soundmarks and smellmarks,” says Howes, director of Concordia College’s Heart for Sensory Research, a hub for the rising subject sometimes called “sensory urbanism.”

All over the world, researchers like Howes are investigating how nonvisual info defines the character of a metropolis and impacts its livability. Utilizing strategies starting from low-tech sound walks and scent maps to information scraping, wearables, and digital actuality, they’re preventing what they see as a limiting visible bias in city planning. Learn the complete story.

—Jennifer Hattam

These scientists need to seize extra carbon with CRISPR crops

The information: Vegetation are the unique carbon seize factories—and a brand new analysis program goals to make them more practical through the use of gene modifying. The Progressive Genomics Institute, a analysis group based by CRISPR co-inventor Jennifer Doudna, has introduced a brand new program to make use of the revolutionary gene-editing software on agricultural crops to spice up their aptitude for carbon storage. 

The way it’d work: One of many main objectives shall be to tweak photosynthesis so crops can develop extra rapidly. By altering the enzymes concerned, researchers might minimize out energy-sapping facet reactions, together with some that launch carbon dioxide. The researchers additionally hope they will discover methods to retailer extra carbon within the soil, for instance by encouraging bigger, deeper root techniques. 

Greater image: It’ll be a major problem to make these methods work, however the analysis is a part of a rising effort by scientists to search out methods to hoover up the carbon dioxide already within the environment with the intention to sluggish local weather change. Learn the complete story.

—Casey Crownhart

The must-reads

I’ve combed the web to search out you right now’s most enjoyable/vital/scary/fascinating tales about expertise.

1 The crypto market is in freefall 
With colossal quantities of cash at stake, crypto’s volatility now appears much less thrilling and extra worrying. (New York Magazine)
+ The value of Bitcoin has plunged to its lowest in 18 months. (Bloomberg $)
+ Even essentially the most bullish traders are freaking out. (Motherboard)
+ Crypto corporations are making main layoffs, too. (The Verge)
+ El Salvador has misplaced round half its Bitcoin funding. (Mashable)
It’s okay to choose out of the crypto revolution. (MIT Expertise Evaluation)

2 Massive Tech has agreed to reveal extra about disinformation
On a country-by-country foundation, one thing tech corporations have beforehand resisted. (FT $)
+ The EU is threatening to superb them for failing to cope with deepfakes. (Reuters)

3 What finding out strokes teaches us about dependancy 🧠


A selected neural community within the mind might maintain the important thing to quitting smoking. (NYT $)

4 The lengthy struggle to get unlawful, nonconsensual movies taken offline  
Survivors have struggled to get footage faraway from Pornhub. (New Yorker $)
+ Deepfake porn is ruining girls’s lives. (MIT Expertise Evaluation)

5 SpaceX has gained approval to launch its Starship rocket from Texas 🚀
However it has to fulfill stringent measures to guard the surroundings. (WP $)
+ This new child star has a sibling. (Phys)
+ Our maps of the Milky Means have simply acquired a significant improve. (Nature)

6 India’s officers are huge followers of facial recognition
Privateness advocates disagree with police claims it’s solely getting used to surveil criminals. (Motherboard)
+ Right here’s tips on how to cease AI from recognizing your face in selfies. (MIT Expertise Evaluation)

7 We have to change how we warn beachgoers about lethal currents 
Static warning indicators aren’t working. Programs that warn of fixing situations may. (Hakai Journal)
+ There’s a worldwide motion devoted to elevating consciousness of rip currents. (The Guardian)

8 Persons are more and more petrified of being canceled
Psychiatrists surprise if it’s a brand new manifestation of OCD centered round worry of social spoil. (Slate)

9 Electrical automobile designs are getting extra artistic
Whereas some have gotten extra luxurious, others seat solely two passengers. (The Guardian)
+ This startup desires to pack extra vitality into electrical car batteries. (MIT Expertise Evaluation)

10 What’s the purpose of consuming alcohol within the metaverse? 🥃
Drinks manufacturers are constructing digital bars—however there’s not a drop to drink. (WSJ $)

Quote of the day

“Older individuals go on the web for a few issues. For the youthful technology the web is ‘the issues.’”

— Payton Iheme, head of public coverage for courting app Bumble, explains to the New York Instances how completely different generations use expertise, and what which means for potential dangers.

The large story

Lunik: Contained in the CIA’s audacious plot to steal a Soviet satellite tv for pc

January 2021

In late October 1959, a Mexican spy named Eduardo Diaz Silveti slipped into the US Embassy in Mexico Metropolis. Tall and well-spoken with slicked-back hair, Silveti, 30, had discovered spycraft in Mexico’s secret police. Throughout the Chilly Struggle, the capital had grow to be so overrun by Communist spies that the CIA had enlisted the assistance of the Mexican secret companies of their struggle in opposition to the Soviet Union.

Winston Scott, 49, was the primary secretary of the US Embassy. That was his cowl; he was additionally the CIA’s most revered spymaster in Latin America. Secrets and techniques had been a stock-in-trade for the silver-haired Alabaman: he had arrived in Mexico Metropolis in 1956 and turned the CIA station into some of the profitable counterespionage operations on the planet.

He had referred to as Silveti to his workplace, in response to the Mexican, to supply him a top-secret mission that was “tremendously obligatory for the US.” In the event that they acquired issues fallacious, Scott warned that “World Struggle III might start.” They had been going to hatch a plot to steal a Soviet satellite tv for pc for a couple of hours so American consultants might research it. Learn the complete story.

—Jeff Maysh

We will nonetheless have good issues

A spot for consolation, enjoyable and distraction in these bizarre occasions. (Received any concepts? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)

+ This rumination on 40 years of ET is thought-provoking.
+ Like it or hate it, the texture of bouncy meals is an entire lotta enjoyable (thanks Charlotte!)
+ A wonderful joke for all of the feline feeders on the market.
+ A heartening story of how beekeeping helps psychiatric sufferers in Greece.
+ This photograph of Mars’ panorama taken by Perseverance is superb.



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