This is a download from BFM 89.9, the Business Station. It's on Friday, my name is Jazandu, just like Christmas, CEC isn't comes but once a year. We had a stack of rents in his overcoat pocket, the traditional lack of tech and science stories during the summer months, hasn't worried Paltterpopp's Matt Ammitage until now. Matt, are we in the Matt's plain equivalent of a desert?
Hey, Geoff, yes, well, that is normally the case most years. We get to a point sometime during July and August, where there really isn't anything much to talk about, but this has been such a tumultuous and topsy-tervour year that the stories have kind of kept on coming. And as you said, this year I've had more to rant about than I've had time to rant, so the silly season has been a chance for us to catch up. And as we've been doing on and off for the last few weeks, I thought we'd catch up on some of the smaller stories and developments that have come out recently.
So we have eight topics, I suppose? That means it's time to me? Yeah, well, let's start with some environmental stories. We don't really cover as many environmental things on the show as we probably should, but one that caught my eye this week was from the wildfires that are raging across California, which some people are calling the Holy Fire.
Now, those are the same fires that President Trump says are happening because there's not enough water to fight them, and the California Fire Service is saying nonsense, of course there is. But one of the things that we talk about on the show a lot is technology that doesn't always get used for the purpose for which it was originally designed. I guess there's a story about Daniel Perez, who live-streamed the wildfire raging outside his home. Yeah, Perez lives in a small town outside LA, about 45 miles, that's about 60-70 kilometres outside LA.
When the police issued a mandatory evacuation order for the town, the last thing that Perez did was to turn on his home security cameras and connect them to the internet before he drove over to a relative's house in a safe zone. So as the flames reached the backyard of his house in the middle of the afternoon, the thick smoke activated the night mode on his camera, and Perez was able to watch as the blaze was actually brought under control by the fire service. And what was really nice about the story was that once the fire was under control, Perez noticed that his doorbell camera was capturing a fireman walking up onto the porch of his house, and he was able to use the intercom to talk to the fireman, and the fireman reassured him that the house was intact, that the flames had only damaged the garden, but not the house itself, and Perez was able to thank the man and his colleagues for all the hard work. We often talk about our tech infrastructure being very delicate, and this story shows another side, that it's robust enough to work during a disaster.
Well, that's kind of the weird thing, isn't it? You know, wildfire is this very, very strange creature. I mean, I'm not going to bore you with all the details of a story I read about what type of roof you have to turn into whether your house will survive. You actually read that.
Wow. Great. It's actually a really interesting story. It's all about the numbers that collect in the group.
So if you have a certain type of roof, it collects. It's not getting into it. I can only guess here, but I'm assuming that either the web coverage was coming along overhead cables that were along streets that were protected by the fireman, or they were underground and similarly protected. And not just the internet, obviously the power was still running, even though the town was surrounded by flames and part of the town was burning.
And it's not the first time that this happened back in 2016, another guy in the US watched his house actually burn to the ground over his webcam, which is not such a feel good story. But in this instance, though, I thought it was nice that this guy Daniel Parris, he was able to use the technology to thank the fireman in person for what they did for saving his house. From California, we're moving to Paris, but we're sticking with the environment. Yeah, now I didn't realize, but Paris is the most densely populated city in Europe.
It's actually the most densely populated part of Europe. Wow. It's also one of the least green. Again, that came as a surprise to me.
It may come as a surprise to a lot of other people who have this mental image of wide boulevards and trees, but actually less than 10% of the cities area is given over to green spaces like parks and other kind of just greened areas. So this unlikely concrete jungle has seen temperatures saw over this summer's European heatwave. Not to mention that Paris is in a basin, so it's a heat trap, even in a good year. Well, yeah.
So there's a project being trialed at school in Paris called the Echol Reblet. Back in June, temperatures inside one of the pupil recreation areas, which was on open courtyards, surrounded by concrete walls, reached 55 degrees centigrade. Wow. Now, the human body starts to cook, temperatures of 50 degrees centigrade.
So actually, your cells start to physically cook above 50. So obviously pupils had to stay inside the school. They weren't allowed to go out into these kind of play areas. And we covered a story a few months ago, I think this was with Richard when you were away, where we talked about urban planners in China taking radical steps to redesign urban spaces that are more adaptable to climate change.
And one of the simplest ways is to prevent water runoff and to increase the green and vegetation cover. Yeah, which sounds a lot simpler than it is. Absolutely. In a lot of ways, it's actually easier when you're building cities from scratch, which is what's happening a lot of the time in China.
And China's planets are actually looking back at the country's history. So they're looking at the design of stepped paddy fields, for example, using that model to retain water, so having water retention ponds, and to feed rings of vegetation that help to cool the vegetation down. In existing cities, of course, that's much harder because your infrastructure is already there. You're trying to adapt the architecture rather than building it to specification.
But it's remarkable how simple the plans in Paris are, and how remarkably effective those small changes could actually be. We're not talking about extensive rebuilding here. No, we're talking about planting trees for shade, putting in flower and vegetable boxes. We're talking about replacing the standard concrete on ground with a water permeable material that slowly drains water off into the ground underneath, and helps to prevent so much heat being reflected.
So like with the Chinese model, this is looking at the planning from a historical perspective, and asking why our cities have become so poor at dealing with fluctuations in weather. So this project is just aimed at school children? Well, they're actually trying to make an impact citywide. If the results of this project are successful, then it will be rolled out to all of Paris's 800 schools.
And apparently, because Paris is so densely populated, no one in Paris lives more than 200 metres from a school. Yeah, I mean, that is quite amazing. So it is actually intended for Paris's wider population as well. And when you're talking about issues like this, you have to make those changes to social policy, as well as altering the physical infrastructure.
It's important to make sure that everyone has access to those spaces. Because over the past few decades, we've seen schools shift from being kind of these semi-public spaces to being very closed ones, and that's partly down to the years of terrorism and sexual predators and other exploitation of school children. So those are challenges that have to be overcome, not just in altering the schools, but in extending this kind of scheme to more public buildings and spaces and allowing people to have access to them. The shape of things to come, which actually kind of brings us nicely to a new shape?
Yeah. Researchers at the University of Seville have discovered a new shape. And no, they weren't messing around with adult colouring books. They were doing important research in biomedicine.
It kind of ties in back to last week's show. Don't be afraid of biotech. Exactly. And the Seville team was researching into epithelials, which are the cells that line the inside and the outside of our body, and without which TV shows like CSI can exist.
They found that the epithelial cells adopted a very specific form as they were packed together. So originally they expected them to be shaped like prisms or some kind of pyramid. The shape which they have named a scutoid actually resembles a twisted prism. It would be like those crushable, disposable water bottles.
I mean, not so much in terms of the shape, but yes, very much so in terms of the theory. The reason is exactly for that same reason, so that the cells can cram together and pack down. So they're like an architectural building block. It's what allows organs to have that rigidity and integrity and structure in our bodies.
Is there any real world application for the shape? Yes, very much so. There's a nice quote from the team on the Design Boom website where they describe scutoids as being like the Lego from which animals are made, which I think is really cool. And of course, as we increase our research into areas like 3D printing to make replacement or artificial organs, knowing how these scutoids work and learning how to replicate them could mean the difference between printing a fully functional liver or basically a bowl of back-a-day.
Yep, it's the season. We'll be right back with more culture pops now. I'm thinking about 89. Bringing fresh meaning, BFM 89.9.
And we're back. It's fun Friday together with me, Jasandu, and Culture Box Met Amadech. It's episode 43, series season. It's just before we ended the show earlier on, never saw the bug day.
So that itself should give you a hint of what are the things to come. But Matt, before the break, you were talking about scutoids. Any more discoveries for us this week? Well, yes, we're going from human organ suit to something actually more disgusting.
Yeah, last year, the White Chappell Fatberg was liberated from London sewers. And now, if people don't remember what that was, it's a mixture of fats and household waste. And it was one of the largest ever found. It was 250 metres long.
And it weighed 130 tonnes. No. And a small chunk of it has been put on display at the Museum of London. It was put on display in February.
And it proved to be a massive hit in the public. Is that safe, like, hygienic-wise? Well, of course, it's a major biohazard. You wouldn't want to actually touch it.
The museum spent several months drying it out. And it's now housed inside a box inside a box inside a box. It's odor is apparently mellowed somewhat. So it currently smells like a damp basement rather than a sewer pipe.
And what was intended to be a temporary exhibit has now been added to the permanent collection because demand to see it has been so great that they've now started live streaming it to the world. Why? Because it's still in the process of decaying. So you can log on periodically to see how it changes at the time.
And, you know, because it's become such an enormous draw, the museum staff wanted to extend its reach. And if you're looking for something that sums up the way we live in densely populated urban centres, then a fatberg is actually a pretty good symbol. If you want to watch it, head over to what's lovingly called the fat cat on YouTube. As of today, it looks like a piece of granite.
Well, it'll look like next week, I'm really not sure. While we're on the subject of liquids and gases, I've heard you've been to Planet Kelt 9B this week. Well, not as in actually visiting as it's 620 light years away. So you'd have to be talking to FutureMat on the show again.
Don't do that. No, you don't want to do that. But I have been reading about it. Now, Kelt 9B is the hottest planet that we've discovered so far at around 4,000 degrees Celsius.
That's really hot. It's not as hot as our sun, which is around 6,000 degrees Celsius. But, you know, compared to the temperature of our planet, which is 55 degrees centigrade in Paris, there's a big difference between that and 4,000 degrees. Wasn't this discovered last year?
This is a little bit old, even for Met speed. Well, it's back in the news this week because we've finally been able to discover what the atmosphere consists of. Scientists at the Galileo National Telescope in the Canary Islands have been doing some really clever stuff by analyzing the tiny fraction of light from the star that Kelt 9B orbits as it travels through the atmosphere. So they think the planet is largely gaseous, consisting mainly of hydrogen, but they also detected iron and titanium as vapor.
So yes, this planet is so hot that its air is literally vaporized metal. Is that unusual? Well, it's the first time we've seen signs of metals outside our solar system. So yes, that is pretty unique.
And obviously you wouldn't want to breathe those in at those temperatures. And that's going to allow us to examine planets further, you know, as we get into this stage where we're looking at planets further and further away from our own, we can use these same techniques to allow us to spot oxygen or other molecules that are fundamental to the evolution of life. So this is kind of a training planet in a sense. We can spot the metals there and we can use that knowledge to see whether other planets further out are actually capable of supporting life.
From the sewers to the stars, that's an oddly inspirational message. Let's stay with space for the next item. Well, there has been renewed interest over the past few years in setting up permanent or semi-permanent bases on the moon. As we know, President Trump has just founded Space Force.
Space Force. Wow. We didn't plan that. You just have to do that.
You can't do it in a normal voice. And what good would a Space Force be if its base had to be on our planet? So China, India, and the US all seem set to revisit the moon in coming years. And of course, if you want to send more than a couple of people for any length of time, you start to run into a lot of logistics issues.
Not least of which is water. And you've hit the nail on the head as usual. Recently, analyzed data has shown that there is actually water ice in patches surrounding the moon's poles, with the bulk of it concentrated at the southern pole in areas that are sheltered away from the sun's glare. And it's hoped that that ice, which has been there for billions of years, could be used to provide drinking water for moon exploration teams.
What happens when that runs out? Well, that's the part we're not very good at, right? We tend to use things without thinking too much about what comes after, which is why Paris is still trying to cool itself down. Extraction of the water might be an issue as well.
So data would suggest that it's not present in sheets, like you find in a glacier here on Earth. Rather, the ice is thought to have formed around granules of moon dust, which have then been clustered together. So you wouldn't want to eat the ice like a lollipop, especially as that moon dust would probably shred your esophagus. Okay, we're back on track.
The inspirational imagery has disappeared completely, you know? What's happening in the world of AI? How best to describe this next chap without saying anything that he can sue me for? Tony K, the mercurial director of American History X, which is a great film that was eventually edited by its star Ed Norton and released against the directors, which is, is trying to do away with actors altogether.
It's been reported that his next film will feature an AI-powered machine that has been trained in various acting techniques. From what I've read online, a lot of people are taking this with a grain of salt. Well, the whole project does sound a little bit bizarre. It's a sequel to a small indie comedy about an Iranian-American couple.
Tony K have nothing to do with the original. There's nothing about it that suggests it would have a sci-fi premise. So you can only imagine that the machine would be trying to emulate a series of human actors for a story that's actually set in our present times. But automation, though, is coming to film.
I mean, that part is very true. We can do incredible things with CGI and increasingly those tasks are being handed off to artificial intelligence. But we still rely on human performance, even for movies like Lord of the Rings and Planet of the Apes, where the incredible Andy Serk is does a lot of the motion capture that is then turned into the CG animation. Because, you know, we still use a lot of mechanical animals as well in everything from the Jurassic Park franchise to, you know, all kinds of monster movies.
So whether this sequel, which will be called Second Born Happens or not, this is an obvious path for directors who don't really get on with human beings. It may not be from Tony K, but I think we can expect to see human free movies in the not too distant future. This isn't the only arts in AI story we've heard this week, is it? No, well, I spotted this story in New Scientist.
It's about a text to image algorithm that draws whatever you type. It was developed by a guy called Taozu at Microsoft Research. It was trained on a subset of photographs and descriptions. So when you type a series of words, it matches them to particular colors, textures or shapes.
Can we try it? Is it good? Well, the New Scientist writer concluded that the results are a bit rubbish. And I actually have to disagree.
The results are extremely surreal because the algorithm isn't interpreting the words in the same way that we would. So if you ask it to draw a picture of a woman, it puts together something that roughly resembles a woman. And yes, you can try it. A guy called Christoball Valenzuela, an artist and researcher at New York University, has built a basic website around the algorithm.
So you can try it out. Go to cvalenzuelab.com and click on the work tab and look for the text to image link. I've had about two hours of fun, but it's so far. And no, I haven't asked it for anything rude.
No, you said this before that this next item is about free. Well, it's more about BFM getting more out of the enterprise team by replacing window with a mean robot. A team at the University of Claremont-Oven put people through a series of tests based on the Stroop tasks. Which is...
Well, if you use those brain training apps, you may be familiar with this task. It's actually really infuriating. The word green is spelled out on screen, but the color is red. Ah, yes.
Or you may get a series of different colors, blue, green and red, and none of them is the color they spell. Anyway, depending on the question, you either choose the color and not the word or the word and not the color. And you measure it on your reaction time. It's really infuriating.
It's way harder than it sounds and it makes you want to throw your phone at the wall. And the robot helps, how? Well, in the tests, the university team carried out. The test subjects were overseen by a small robot.
Some test subjects were overseen by a robot with a friendly demeanor, and others were overseen by one that said things like, I don't want to be your friend. So the moral of the story is that we're scared of robots. Yeah, because they mean. And this episode is starting to feel like a really bad dream here, man.
Which is ironic as our last item is about dreams. Bad or good. I'm just not quite sure. Well, that depends on how much time you want to spend exploring your psyche.
Have you ever had lucid dreams? Honestly, I can't really remember any of my dreams. I know I dream, but I wake up and go, Huh? So I remember what happened.
No, so there's probably no lucid dreams where you're actually conscious and you can take control of things that happen in other dreams. I don't think I have either, but this is kind of the holy grail of the wellness and meditation prep. Is there an app for that? Well, plenty of apps claim to help you get into that state.
But we're not talking about an app. This is actually a combination of an Alzheimer's treatment drug called gallantamine and a cognitive behavior treatment. Why? So people can indulge in their fantasies or flying?
Well, it might seem that way, but this is actually medical research rather than biohacking. This is a trial that's being done under medical supervision at the University of Wisconsin Medicine. And there are actual and good reasons for doing this. The hope is that lucid dreaming can help people to overcome fears and other nasty stuff lurking in the subconscious.
What did the test subjects do with their dreams? Well, there were 121 adults in the study. Their ages ranged from 19 to 75. Of the percentage who achieved that lucid state, one dream of falling donkeys and was able to consciously move out of their way.
I don't know what can you say? Another participant used it to indulge fantasies of rollerblading through a shopping mall. And one of the pioneers of the project, Benjamin Bed, has actually tried it himself. And he marveled at how he could feel the texture of objects in his dream.
He also brought a dead flower back to life. So none of these is what you might call overcoming trauma. And then you have an irrational fear of falling donkeys. No, of course not.
I mean, this is a test not a treatment. This is to see if the theory works. Only once we can reliably put people into that lucid state. And we begin to research the effect and the extent of the control rather than relying on these wellness apps.
And of course, it's better to put mentally healthy people into that lucid dreaming state first than to use it on people with real phobias or disorders. Because we're making a lot of breakthroughs in terms of our understanding of the brain and the consciousness and the subconsciousness. And that's absolutely essential as we're seeing this big increase or at least increase in people coming forward for the treatment of mental disorders. So falling donkeys and rollerblading in malls may sound like a typical silly season story, but there's still some serious intent lurking behind the phone.
But it is silly season after all. Matt's playing there with episode 43. Also, you can check out culturepops.com for transcripts of the show. And of course, you can find out how to bring a little bit of a silly season to your own company.
And I'm just talking about Matt's spinning to your company. We'll be right back with GeeksforksBfM89.9.