135 articles from TUESDAY 16.5.2023

Inside the little-known group setting the corporate climate agenda

As thousands of companies trumpet their plans to cut carbon pollution, a small roundtable of sustainability consultants has emerged as the go-to arbiter of corporate climate action. The Science Based Targets initiative, or SBTi, helps businesses develop a timetable for action to shrink their climate footprint through some combination of cutting greenhouse-gas pollution and removing…

How do you solve a problem like out-of-control AI? 

Last week Google revealed it is going all in on generative AI. At its annual I/O conference, the company announced it plans to embed AI tools into virtually all of its products, from Google Docs to coding and online search. (Read my story here.)  Google’s announcement is a huge deal. Billions of people will now get access to powerful, cutting-edge AI models to help them do all sorts of...

Tank-mixing herbicides may not be enough to avoid herbicide resistance

Eight years ago, University of Illinois and USDA-ARS scientists turned weed control on its head. More and more herbicide resistant weeds were popping up, and the pest plants were getting harder to kill. It was clear farmers could no longer rely on the same chemicals year after year. Industry campaigns and herbicide applicators began touting the benefits of rotating herbicides annually to avoid...

Is it the beginning of the end for scientific publishing? – podcast

More than 40 leading scientists have resigned en masse from the editorial board of a top science journal in protest at what they describe as the ‘greed’ of the publisher. Ian Sample speaks to correspondent Hannah Devlin about the remarkably lucrative business of scientific publishing, hears from Prof Chris Chambers about what was behind the recent mass resignation, and finds out why...

Plans for UK ‘genomics transformation’ aim to act on lessons of Covid

Ten-year science strategy of UK Health Security Agency will use data to combat infectious diseases faster and more effectivelyHealth officials in the UK have drawn up plans for a “genomics transformation” that aims to detect and deal with outbreaks of infectious diseases faster and more effectively in the light of the Covid pandemic.Information gleaned from the genetics of Covid proved crucial...