Good News From Web Summit Lisbon Day 1

- Adam Clare

Web Summit is a conference run in Lisbon about the future of the planet, technology,and business at large. I’m attending it remotely as best I can. The first day isn’t even done and there are two nifty good things already worth sharing:

Ridley Scott launches campaign with The Global Enabling Sustainability Initiative (GeSI)

The ‘Digital with Purpose’ Movement is open to all. Member organisations are required to make a public pledge to the four universal commitments of the movement: To contribute to the development of the framework, to take part in an open framework evaluation process and to collaborate with others to develop and realise their ambitions to maximise their positive impact on achieving the Paris Agreement and SDGs.

Evercity Announces Smart Sustainable bond

Powered by Parity Substrate blockchain engine, Smart Sustainable Bond Protocol is an open-source software which allows participants to issue and monitor innovative sustainability-linked bonds with adjustable floating impact-linked coupon rate. The main idea of the project is to increase accuracy of impact monitoring and reporting eliminating the risk of greenwashing, as well as to enable fair and transparent impact allocation between different stakeholders engaged in sustainability-related projects. The main operations performed are confirmed by blockchain digital signatures and can be traced publicly. The platform stablecoin EVERUSD can only be used in the operations with bonds, which eliminates the risks of money laundering.

This Person Hopes to Die at 75, Encourages us to Not Live Forever

- Adam Clare

hands

It might sounds odd, but a preplanned death at 75 may be a wise decision. Ezekiel J. Emanuel has made a conscious decision to have his life come to a close when he reaches 75 (or at least that’s what he hopes) for a multitude of reasons. He notices that the quality of life deteriorates faster after that age and that perhaps it’s best to leave this earth before a health crisis cause him to be unable to participate actively in life. Why is this good?

Reflecting on one’s existence is always a good thing, thinking about how our life decisions impact others is always a good thing, and looking at historical trends is good too. Emanuel has clearly put a lot of thought into this and wants all of us to consider the impact of living has on our own mental health, those around us, and the health of the planet.

What are those reasons? Let’s begin with demography. We are growing old, and our older years are not of high quality. Since the mid-19th century, Americans have been living longer. In 1900, the life expectancy of an average American at birth was approximately 47 years. By 1930, it was 59.7; by 1960, 69.7; by 1990, 75.4. Today, a newborn can expect to live about 79 years. (On average, women live longer than men. In the United States, the gap is about five years. According to the National Vital Statistics Report, life expectancy for American males born in 2011 is 76.3, and for females it is 81.1.)

In the early part of the 20th century, life expectancy increased as vaccines, antibiotics, and better medical care saved more children from premature death and effectively treated infections. Once cured, people who had been sick largely returned to their normal, healthy lives without residual disabilities. Since 1960, however, increases in longevity have been achieved mainly by extending the lives of people over 60. Rather than saving more young people, we are stretching out old age.

Read more.

How Iceland Conquered COVID-19

- Adam Clare

Covid-19 Transmission graphic

Iceland’s size helped it grabble the COVID-19 pandemic in a way that other nations couldn’t. The country was able to test half its population and keep a close eye on how the virus spread due to really good contact tracing. Like other countries which have successfully dealt with the pandemic, a robust response proved to be the solution. Iceland even went a step further and has collected their data not only for current protection and safety but also to make it easier for researchers to look back on 2020 to understand how the virus spread.

If the test is negative, the person receives an all-clear text. If the test is positive, it triggers two chains of action: one at the hospital and one at the lab.

At the hospital, the individual is registered in a centralized database and enrolled in a tele-health monitoring service at a COVID outpatient clinic for a 14-day isolation period. They will receive frequent phone calls from a nurse or physician who documents their medical and social history, and runs through a standardized checklist of 19 symptoms. All the data are logged in a national electronic medical record system. A team of clinician-scientists at the hospital created the collection system in mid-March with science in mind. “We decided to document clinical findings in a structured way that would be useful for research purposes,” says Palsson.

In the lab, each sample is tested for the amount of virus it contains, which has been used as an indicator for contagiousness and severity of illness. And the full RNA genome of the virus is sequenced to determine the strain of the virus and track its origin.

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In Italy, Art is Used to Block Illegal Fishing

- Adam Clare

Water

It’s well known that industrial fishing is bad for the environment and bad for the fishers involved in it. A local fisherman, Paolo Fanciulli, had enough of the industrial fishing in their area and decided to fight it using art. Fanciulli creates large marble art pieces on land then drops them into the water. The art then functions as an obstacle which inhibits the use of nets and over fashioning, the art itself can also be listed by sea creatures and human alike!

He asked a quarry in nearby Carrara if they could donate two marble blocks that he could use to make sculptures. “They donated 100 instead.”

Via word of mouth, contributions from tourists and online crowdfunding, Fanciulli persuaded artists including Giorgio Butini, Massimo Lippi, Beverly Pepper and Emily Young to carve sculptures from the marble. Then he took them out to sea and lowered them in.

The underwater sculptures create both a physical barrier for nets and a unique underwater museum. The sculptures are placed in a circle, 4m apart, with an obelix at the centre carved by the Italian artist Massimo Catalani. Emily Young provided four sculptures, each weighing 12 tons, she calls “guardians”; nearby lies a mermaid by the young artist Aurora Vantaggiato. Lippi has contributed 17 sculptures representing Siena’s contrade, or medieval districts.

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Scotland First in World to Provide Free Sanitary Products

- Adam Clare

Monthly periods can be expensive and stigmatizing for women and girls, particularly when they cannot afford to buy the proper sanitary supplies. The ongoing costs associated with periods can be too much for many who are young or in a vulnerable position; leading to what’s been called period poverty. Scotland has passed a bill this week to help end period poverty by providing free santiatatry products in public buildings. Hopefully other nations will follow Scotland’s lead.

In Scotland, there will be a legal right of free access to tampons in public buildings, and it will be mandatory for education institutions to provide them.

The provision of free products is expected to cost about £8.7million a year.

Schools, colleges and universities will be legally bound to provide adequate amounts of tampons and sanitary pads, as well as public buildings such as libraries, courts and hospitals.

Read more.

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