adidas makes shoes out of ocean plastic

We sold 1 million shoes made out of ocean plastic last year: Adidas CEO  6:05 AM ET Wed, 14 March 2018 | 00:42

Adidas sold 1 million shoes made out of ocean plastic last year, CEO Kasper Rorsted told CNBC on Wednesday.

The German sportswear giant launched last year three new versions of its UltraBoost shoe made out of plastic found in the ocean. It teamed up with environmental initiative Parley for the Oceans to create the shoe.

At the time, Adidas said it it wanted to create a million pairs of the UltraBoost shoes.

"We last year sold 1 million shoes made out of ocean plastic," Rorsted told CNBC in a TV interview.

Each pair of shoes reuses 11 plastic bottles.

Adidas reported quarterly earnings on Wednesday in which it said it expected another year of sales and profit growth, but at a slower pace than in 2017. cnbc

shop adidas and parley ocean plastic shoes!

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America's High School Graduates Look Like Other Countries' High School Dropouts

A new study confirms what many Americans already knew deep in their hearts: We're not good at math.

Not only that, but when it comes to technology skills, we're dead last compared with other developed countries.

The PIAAC study — the Program for International Assessment of Adult Competencies — looks at the skills adults need to do everyday tasks, whether it's at work or in their social lives.

"Clearly, we have some work to do in this country," says Peggy Carr, the acting commissioner of the government's National Center for Education Statistics. The study compared countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Japan and Finland led the group in literacy, math and technology skills, while the United States' performance was average or well below average in each category.

Literacy

Overall, Americans' everyday literacy skills were average. But if you zoom in and focus on just the young adults, a more complex picture emerges.

Americans who went to college and graduate school did well. They scored above their peers with similar degrees in other developed countries.

For young adults with a high school diploma or less, things did not look so good. These Americans performed significantly worse than those in other countries with the same education level.

"Postsecondary institutions should be happy," says Carr. "But on the other end of the continuum, we have young people coming out of high school — or not graduating from high school — that are struggling with everyday competencies."

Math

Carr says this pattern is even more obvious if you look at the math skills of young adults. This study found that Americans with a high school diploma performed about the same as high school dropouts in other countries.

"We need to think seriously about how to get them functioning better," says Carr.

She offers a sample math problem from the test: You go to the store and there's a sale. Buy one, get the second half off. So if you buy two, how much do you pay?

"High school-credentialed adults, they can't do this task — on average," says Carr.

Technology

When it comes to technology skills, the story gets worse. The U.S. came in last place — right below Poland.

The study looked at basic technology tasks: things like using email, buying and returning items online, using a drop-down menu, naming a file on a computer or sending a text message.

Across the board, Americans performed poorly on these tasks. However, there was a significant racial difference, with nonwhites scoring below whites.

"I don't think we were particularly shocked by that finding," says Carr. She points out that these racial differences are similar to what other national and international studies have found.

She says these findings should be concerning to everyone, especially leaders in the business community and in the K-12 school systems. npr

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Apple Tops Greenpeace Clean Energy Index

In the latest Clean Energy Index published by Greenpeace, Apple topped all technology companies when it comes to running its worldwide operations on renewable energy. Apple topped all of its peers in the index including – Microsoft, Facebook, Google, HP, IBM, Amazon, Oracle, Yahoo, among others.

Through its Clean Energy Index, Greenpeace has been evaluating the energy requirements and the consequent energy choices of the top internet and internet-related companies since 2010. The index evaluates companies’  energy dependence on clean, nuclear, coal, and natural gas.

 

Greenpeace segmented Apple’s internet-related activities into: iCloud and iTunes. Both of these internet-based services of Apple function on 100% renewable energy. The organisation also lauded Apple’s efforts in terms of building the largest privately owned solar farms at its North Carolina data center, working with its utility in Nevada to power its upcoming data center there with solar and geothermal energy, and purchasing wind energy for its Oregon and California data centers.

How A Bigger Lunch Table At Work Can Boost Productivity

The loft-like San Francisco office of software maker Atlassian has an open central amphitheater, where all-staff gatherings and midday boot camp exercises are held.

Jay Simons, Atlassian's president, says the building was originally a book printing factory. He describes it "as a big, two-story warehouse with a lot of steel girders, a lot of natural light."

But the office's rapid expansion to 300 employees has led to gripes about conference room shortages. "We're butting up on growing out of the space," Simons says.

So, early this year, Atlassian installed heat and motion sensors to track when and how often every desk, room and table was used. The result? Desks were used only 20 percent of the workday; conference rooms an average of 40 percent, with peak utilization at mid-morning.

Simons says tracking employees' movements in an anonymous way will help guide choices to convert desk space into meeting rooms, or to stagger meetings to accommodate a growing staff.

"If we're using data to make an environment that people can be more productive in, ultimately that saves us money or helps us make more," he says.

One of Waber's clients found that software developers who ate lunch in large groups wrote 10 percent more code than those who ate solo or with fewer colleagues. Salespeople with more relationships across an organization sold measurably more. That led to larger lunch tables and more strategic placement of coffee machines.

"Where do you spend time, who talks to who and those patterns are so critical when it comes to how effective we are and how happy we are at work," he says.

Waber's company carefully tracks its own employees. Even for things like determining which free snacks tend to draw people into break rooms.

Congdon says designing the ideal workspace is well worth the effort. When Steelcase redid its own offices, she says workers ended up happier with the various options for working and meeting. And, as a bonus, the company reduced its real estate footprint by 48 percent. npr

iCoast: Did the Coast Change?

Hurricane season started again in June. Do you know what happens to our coasts after these extreme storms? The U.S. Geological Survey has launched a new crowdsourcing application called “iCoast – Did the Coast Change?” to show you these coastal changes from extreme storms.
 
Since 1995, the USGS has collected more than 140,000aerial photographs of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts after 24 hurricanes and other extreme storms. For Hurricane Sandy alone, more than 9,000 aerial photographs were taken a week after the storm. iCoast allows citizen scientists to identify changes to the coast by comparing these aerial photographs taken before and after storms.
 
Crowdsourced data from iCoast will help USGS improve predictive models of coastal change and educate the public about the vulnerability of coastal communities to extreme storms. Currently, USGS’s mathematical models are derived from dune elevation and predicted wave action during storms. Adding the human observations will allow the scientists to validate the models and to provide better predictions of damage before storms occur.  scientific american

http://coastal.er.usgs.gov/icoast/

iPlover

Help track and save Piping Plovers- they love the beach more than you do and the future of their species is dependent on whether they have beach to nest on. Their habitat is threatened by everything from storms and sea level rise to you driving your cars/trucks on the beach, not watching where you're walking, and natural predators like foxes.

iPlover

iPlover is a new app from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) for data collection about habitats on coastal beaches and the environment surrounding them.

That sounds like a really difficult and important task, but luckily for us, the app is designed for trained and vetted professionals. It is an example of another federal crowdsourcing app, but for experts. The app is actually intended for use by USGS officials and partners and will not function without an approved log-in.

To understand and manage dynamic coastal landscapes for beach-dependent species, such as the totally adorable Piping Plover (the app’s namesake!), research scientists require biological and geological data across a whole range of environments and habitats.

This can be very difficult; many existing data collections focus on either the biology or the geology, are collected by non-specialists, or lack observational uniformity.

This is where iPlover shines. The iOS-based app uses sensors on the iPhone to simplify and help ensure consistent data collection and data management. new-usgs-app-helps-save-the-piping-plovers

the acoustics of glacial melting

If a glacier cracks and nobody hears it, does it still make a sound?

"Oh, they moan and they groan," says Grant Deane, a researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. "They crackle and rumble and fizz, and they have all kinds of amazing sounds that they make."

Deane is one of the authors of a new study that interprets the acoustics of glacial melting.

"Yes, it's like they're speaking to us, but it's a language that we don't yet understand well," he says.

So Deane and his team set out to find what the glaciers are saying. They used underwater microphones to record the sound of massive sheets of ice breaking away from glaciers — a phenomenon called calving — and they used time-lapse photography to observe how the glaciers changed above water.

The study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, found three types of glacial calving, each with its own distinct sound.

"Imagine if you will, a wall of ice in the ocean, and it extends from pretty much all the way to the bottom of the fjord, through the water, and then on up into the air," Deane says.

The ice can fall off above the water in a clean break, or in a messy crumble. When it breaks off beneath the surface, it's almost impossible to see.

"But the sound propagates very well," he says. "So although we can't see the calving event, we can hear it."

That means Deane and the other researchers can tell how much ice is breaking off, and ultimately, how much it's contributing to global sea-level rise. By the sounds they make, Deane says, the glaciers may just reveal their secrets.

"We also want to be able to predict, 50 years from now, how much ice is going to be melting into the ocean, and that is a far more subtle thing," he says.

singularity

Some people argue that we will one day reach a point when our machines, which will have become smarter than us, will be able themselves to make machines that are smarter than them. Superintelligence — an intelligence far-outreaching what we are in a position even to imagine — will come on the scene. We will have attained what is known, in futurist circles, as the "singularity." The singularity is coming. So some people say.

There are singularity optimists and singularity pessimists. The optimists — I think we can rank Ray Kurzweil in this camp — envision a future in which real artificial intelligence helps rid the world of disease and extends our own lives beyond frail biological limitations.

It is the pessimists who are in the news lately. A group of leading thinkers and executives have recently signed a statement urging us to slow down and think through the safeguards necessary to protect us from a race of machines who will know more than us, think faster and farther and less fallibly than us, and who will no longer need us. Such artificial superiority will be able to control us the way we, as a species, have been able to dominate planet earth and her many species. npr

Long-Lost European Spacecraft Spotted On Mars By NASA Probe

More than a decade after it went missing, British scientists say they have found a small spacecraft on the surface of Mars.

The Beagle 2 Mars lander was launched aboard the Mars Express in June of 2003. It was an ambitious project that was supposed to look for life on the Red Planet. On Dec. 19, 2003, it separated from the Express and was to enter Mars' atmosphere on Christmas Day.

That was the last British scientists heard from the spacecraft, and they always thought it had been lost on the way in, that it had likely crashed onto the surface.

Today, the U.K. Space Agency said images sent back by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show that Beagle 2 landed safely but only partially deployed. npr

Japanese Artist Indicted For 'Vagina Kayak'

Provocative Japanese artist Megumi Igarashi, who has been arrested twice this year on charges related to her design for a kayak that incorporates a 3-D model of her genitals, has been indicted on charges that she distributed "obscene" data.

The case has attracted wide attention, both for its unique circumstances and for its depiction of how Japan's pornography laws interact with cutting-edge technology and images of the female body.

"Obscenity laws ban pictures of actual genitalia, which normally are obscured in pornography," Japan Times notes today. "If convicted, Igarashi could face up to two years behind bars and a fine of [$20,755]."

Her lawyers say Igarashi will plead not guilty to the charges. She was arrested in early December over what police called her distribution of "obscene" data — computer code that would let other people use a 3-D printer to make their own copy of a kayak that's based on her vagina.

Igarashi, 42, is also known by the name of Rokudenashiko, Japanese slang that is often translated as "reprobate child." She had reportedly offered to send the kayak data to the biggest donors to a crowdfunding campaign that supported her project to build the boat.

An arrest on similar charges in July resulted in Igarashi being released. At the time, she said, "I don't believe my vagina is anything obscene," according to theJapan Times. "I was determined I would never yield to police power."

Igarashi drew headlines last year when she rowed her kayak across a Tokyo river, a trip that was meant "to confront the county's taboos regarding the female form," as The Washington Post reported.

Other than the now-famous kayak, Igarashi makes cartoon-like figurines. As she says in her Twitter bio, her vagina is the "primary motif" of her work. She also tried highlights what her supporters call flaws in Japanese laws.

After her July arrest, Igarashi was released from jail after an online petition drew more than 21,000 signatures.

"Supporters felt that the Japanese laws, which came down too hard on women, while allowing men to celebrate an annual 'penis festival,' should be reconsidered," the website 3Dprint.com reported.

That festival is the Kahamara Matsuri, an event held at a shrine in Kawasaki; the event's name is often translated as the "Festival of the Steel Phallus," which includes a parade that features models and sculptures of male genitalia. npr

Want To Perk Up Your Love Life? Put Away That Smartphone

70 percent of women in a recent survey said smartphones were interfering in their romantic relationship....

The study, published Monday in the journal Psychology of Popular Media Culture, says technology and the screens that consume us are creating "technoference" in couples.

That ranges from picking up the phone while partners are casually hanging out to checking Facebook while in the middle of an argument.

You see it everywhere, says Sarah Coyne, psychologist at Brigham Young University and an author of the study. Like at a restaurant where couples have their phones, "both of them, on the table, right there. I think that is so easy for them to pick it up if it buzzes."

The study surveyed 143 married or cohabiting heterosexual women and asked them about their phone, TV, computer and tablet habits. It also asked about how their partner used technology, if there was any conflict about using technology, and about their satisfaction with their relationship and life overall.

They also reported that of five scenarios presented to them, the most common interference was seeing a partner pick up his phone during "couple leisure time," with 62 percent of women reporting this happened at least once a day.

Forty percent of women said their men would get distracted by the TV during a conversation at least once a day, while a third said he would take out his phone in the middle of a conversation or during a meal together. A quarter said their partner would actually send texts or emails to another person while they were having a face-to-face conversation.

But worse than the intrusions was the way they made the women feel; they found, as you might expect, that conflict over technology was associated with poorer relationships, which in turn were associated with lower life satisfaction.

npr

Solar Bike Path Opens This Week In The Netherlands

A Dutch project that integrates solar panels into a bike commuter path will officially open this week, on a special roadway outside Amsterdam. Power generated by the SolaRoad's panels will be funneled into the national energy grid.

The project in the town of Krommenie is being called the world's first public road that includes embedded solar cells. The crystalline silicon solar cells are encased in two layers of tempered safety glass, mounted in a concrete housing.

The equipment is part of pre-built concrete slabs that SolaRoad says have been refined in years of testing. The company says it's been a challenge to produce energy-producing slabs that are both durable and rideable by thousands of cyclists a day.

"It has to be translucent for sunlight and repel dirt as much as possible," the company says. "At the same time, the top layer must be skid resistant and strong enough in order to realize a safe road surface."

The section of the path that's opening this week is some 230 feet long. Its creators call it a test of an idea that could someday lead to roads that generate the same power that electric cars use to travel on them. npr

Diamond crushed to Saturn's extremes

The carbon crystal was condensed to the core pressure of Saturn - 14 times that at the centre of the Earth.

The big squeeze was performed inside the US National Ignition Facility, which recently featured in Star Trek.

It gives clues to the conditions deep inside giant, carbon-rich planets,says a study in Nature journal.

"We don't know what lies within the core of Jupiter or Saturn but now for the first time we now have the ability to study how matter exists under these extreme conditions of pressure and temperature," said lead author Dr Ray Smith, of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, California.

"Our experiments provide a method for recreating conditions within the cores of giant gas planets - both within our solar system and beyond.

"It has been proposed, for example, that Neptune has a diamond in its core, due to decomposition of methane which gets compacted under extreme pressure.

"The Kepler space mission has found Neptune-sized planets to be very common in our galaxy."

The planets and stars we see in the night sky were formed by powerful gravitational forces that crushed their constituent atoms tightly together.

The extreme pressures in their cores are expected to cause dramatic changes to the properties of matter.

How, on Earth, we can replicate these alien environments is a terrific challenge for scientists. bbc

Diamonds are thought to be common on Neptune, where they may even fall as rain

Electronic Music's Godfather Isn't Done Innovating

Morton Subotnick could fairly be called electronic music's first hitmaker. His 1967 album Silver Apples of the Moon was an international sensation. Or, in his words, "It was like a bombshell."

Silver Apples was the first piece of electronic music commissioned by a record label and was created on the first synthesizer small enough to sit on a table. Subotnick's Greenwich Village workspace became a drop-in spot for musicians from The Mothers of Invention to The Grateful Dead to The Velvet Underground. One night, unfamiliar visitors arrived.

"Some [club owners] came in and said, 'We just bought the name Electric Circus. We don't know exactly what it is, but we were told if anyone knows, you would know.' So I gave them a demonstration of an electric circus. They made me the director," Subotnick says.

As that Manhattan nightclub's artistic director, Subotnick gave birth to electronic dance music. He says opening night at the Electric Circus was a big event.

"[Japanese conductor] Seiji Ozawa came down; members of the Kennedy family were there," Subotnick says. "I played about a half-hour's worth of material starting with a heartbeat. ... It wasn't a beat that you would usually use in rock 'n' roll, but it was a strong pulse, and that's all they needed. And they ended up dancing to it."

Subotnick's interest in new sounds goes back a long way. As a child prodigy in 1950s Los Angeles, playing clarinet with symphony orchestras, he sensed that something new was brewing. The miniaturization that led to things like the transistor radio meant you no longer needed a room full of equipment to make electronic sounds. Subotnick and Ramon Sender, his partner in the San Francisco Tape Center (a nonprofit dedicated to tape music), collaborated with electronics engineer Donald Buchla to develop the first compact analog electronic synthesizer. Their goal was to turn people's living rooms into concert halls.

"What I loved about it was I could be in my studio and be the composer, the interpreter, the performer and the listener," Subotnick says. "It would be like being a painter. I could make my music until I really loved it, just perfect — and then it would become a record and go into someone's home. For me, it wasn't recording something; it was creating something new for that medium."

Subotnick's interests in music and technology didn't end with the synthesizer: He's moved on into digital media and its interactive possibilities. In 1995, he released a CD-ROM titled Making Music for kids, ages 5 and up, to experiment with sounds on the computer. It sold in the hundreds of thousands.

Early last year, he released an iPad app called Pitch Painter, which allows even very small children to "compose" by selecting instruments from different cultures and drawing on the screen.

Subotnick says he believes the making of music can and should be easy and accessible. Even before Pitch Painter became an iPad app, a prototype was installed at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan, where it still delights student groups.

Now 80, Subotnick says his goal has always been the same.

"What we could do, what we could feel, what we could create, what we could imagine that was unimaginable before, or not easily imaginable before," he says. "Not just making music with technology, but trying to have it deliver new ideas and new feelings and new ways to think about things."

When we have access to technology more compact, fluid and flexible than what we've got now, he'll get to work on that, too.

boyan slat's ocean clean up plan

Previously the idea of cleaning up the world’s oceans with their vast accumulations of disposed plastic material was considered an impossibility. Now a 19-year-old inventor says he and his foundation has a way to clean up the world’s oceans, and not only does he say we can do it, but that we can do it in five years time and produce a profit from it.
Now a 19-year-old inventor by the name of Boyan Slat says we can remove nearly 20 billion tons of plastic waste with his concept he calls an ocean cleanup array.  It is made from a massive series of floating booms and processing platforms that gradually suck in the floating plastic like a giant funnel.

The angle with how the array is set up allows all of the plastic to go to where the platforms processing centers are floating. At the platform processing area it would separate the naturally occurring life such as plankton an only keep the plastic materials to be recycled.