#live science

A study of China's planted and natural forests reveals age, species mix, and CO2 sensitivity all contribute to how fast trees sprout leaves.

An aerial view of China's Great Green Wall, a huge project designed to slow the spread of the Gobi and Taklamakan deserts.

(Image credit: PEDRO PARDO via Getty Images)

Trees in China that were planted as part of huge reforestation projects appear to grow faster than those in natural forests, a new study finds. This is possibly because the reforestation trees are responding more strongly to the rising atmospheric carbon dioxide, scientists say.

China is quickly turning green. The country has planted 66 billion trees since 1978, with plans for 34 billion more by the middle of this century, as part of its "Great Green Wall" to slow the spread of the Gobi and Taklamakan deserts.

I found this cool article about some noise cancellation headphones scientists have made using AI. According to the article:

Scientists have built noise-canceling headphones that filter out specific types of sound in real-time — such as birds chirping or car horns blaring — thanks to a deep learning artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm.

The system, which researchers at the University of Washington dub "semantic hearing," streams all sounds captured by headphones to a smartphone, which cancels everything before letting wearers pick the specific types of audio they'd like to hear. They described the protoype in a paper published Oct. 29 in the journa IACM Digital Library.

Once sounds are streamed to the app, the deep learning algorithm embedded in the software means they can use voice commands, or the app itself, to choose between 20 categories of sound to allow. These include sirens, baby cries, vacuum cleaners, and bird chips among others. They chose these 20 categories because they felt humans could distinguish between them with reasonable accuracy, according to the paper. The time delay for this entire process is under one-hundredth of a second. 

The full article will be below if anyone wants to read it:

The natural climate cycle, which supercharges temperatures and shifts weather patterns across the planet, officially took hold over the past month, according to a June 11 update by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center.

Snippets—tiny cats, hidden lakes, and a powerful reminder (from a brilliant paper in Nature about matrilocal Celtic culture in Britain) that history is just a story—and the story depends on the bias of the storyteller.

Today I’ll focus not on the ugly news topics of the week but on fascinating bits of life in the past, in the form of massive hidden aquifers, cats small enough to curl up on your hand, and—saving the best til last—the proof that in Late Iron Age Britain, women ruled. Lets start with that aquifer. To quote from Live Science, “An enormous water reservoir — likely the largest aquifer of its kind on…

Buckle discovered in Kazakhstan. Göktürk in origin. Image depicting a Khagan. Likely the 6th Century CE.

Credit: https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/1500-year-old-gold-buckles-depicting-ruler-majestically-sitting-on-a-throne-discovered-in-kazakhstan