 |
|
|
|||||
Corals live in oceans around the worldin shallow, warm waters and deep, cool waters, clinging to seamounts or sitting on continental shelves. They also grow in the home aquariums of countless hobbyistsand if youre someone who cultivates corals in your spare time, you can contribute to research to help save the oceans coral reefs. Rising ocean temperatures and increasing acidification are threatening coral reefs. Between 2009 and 2018, the worlds reefs lost 14% of their corals. By 2025, 84% of the oceans reefs have been affected by bleaching, meaning theyve been so stressed by the changes to their environments that theyve expelled all the algae living inside them, turning them white. As climate change worsens, coral loss is expected to speed up. Corals are also threatened by activities like fishing and tourism. Corals are crucial to ocean ecosystems; theyre home to all sorts of marine life, provide coastal protection from storms, and are even the basis of millions of peoples livelihoods. Scientists have long been working to save coral reefs, trying to figure out how to help them survive higher temperatures and to bring back their healthy microbiome. (All the bacteria that live in corals can affect how the organisms respond to heat or other environmental changes.) Home aquarists can now be a part of this effort too, through a community science effort called Project ReefLink. A partnership between Seed Health, a microbial sciences company, and the Two Frontiers Project (2FP), a nonprofit that focuses on microbial research, Project ReefLink aims to identify what sorts of organisms protect corals, and what pathogens may harm them. From home aquarium to the oceans’ coral reefs Corals growing in a home aquarium, or even big aquariums like Monterey Bay, are in a closed ecosystem. That essentially makes them part of a giant, human-driven experiment thats already been going on for years, says Braden Tierney, a microbial scientist and executive director of 2FP All these aquarists are trying slightly different conditions. They’re putting different things in the water. They are experiencing different disease outbreaks. Some corals are dying. Some corals are living, he says. They have all these different species all over the place, and so we’re really asking to plug into that network. To get involved, an aquarist can visit the Project Reeflink website, where they can sign up to get a sampling kit. Then, they need to take pictures of their set up, documenting what species of corals they have, and send samples of some of their corals over to 2FP researchers. From there, researchers will process the samples for DNA sequencing, and then look at the corals genome, as well as all the bacteria and viruses that live inside it. And dont worry if your corals arent the healthiestthe scientists want a sample of any diseased corals too. Theres still so much to be learned about what actually causes coral disease, and this is an opportunity to get these samples back and say, here’s what’s causing the disease based on DNA sequencing, and ‘here’s what the healthy version of this species looks like, Tierney says. Samples sent to 2FP will go into the nonprofits microbial culture bank, an open-source database that could eventually be used to find ways to help corals withstand bleaching or other climate threats. We’re going to be able to explore how the microbiome plays a role in sustaining your coral’s health and also how it can be used to treat coral disease, Tierney said. And as we get more data, we can also say, oh, look, these species seem to really like these conditions that these aquarists are using in their tanks, whereas these other species don’t. And that can translate directly to understanding what causes disease in corals in the oceans,” he said. [Image: Coral Morphologic] The importance of microbiomes Seed Health sells pro- and prebiotics for human microbiomes, and has conducted community science efforts for that focus before. Its #GiveAShitForScience project involved people sending pictures of their poop to help understand gut health. But the company also has an environmental research division called SeedLabs that looks at microbes in all sorts of ecosystems, with the aim to address the challenges of climate change. The more you understand about microbiomes and systems biology, the more you start to understand the interconnectivity of all life on Earth, says Ara Katz, CEO and cofounder of Seed Health. Microbiomesthe trillions of microorganisms that live in our bodies or on plants or even in environments themselvesare crucial to the health of their hosts. Seed Health has studied if probiotics could help honey bees, how bacteria could turn plastic into new material, and the ways microbes can enhance carbon sequestration. Seed Health previously partnered with 2FP on its CO2 research, for which they studied microbes in extreme conditions. That work also identified some microbes that could help corals become resilient to ocean acidification, particularly in especially hot or acidic waters where some corals do thrive. Project ReefLink takes this work further by tapping into community scientists. That doesnt only provide 2FP with diverse samples, it also helps connect people to science in general. Science has really been mischaracterized in recent years, and I think that there is probably the least engagement there’s almost ever been, Katz says. A community science project, though, spurs public engagement. For an issue like coral bleaching or climate change in general, the issue can feel so overwhelming, or too complex to tackle. This project changes that, Tierney says. If you have an aquarium . . . you can actually do something. You can take a few minutes to help, he says. It gives people a chance to fight.
Category:
E-Commerce
Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. In recent weeks, Ive been recommending and forwarding to friends and associates three smart stories that crossed my desk. Each ostensibly offers insightful or timely snapshots of modern American business. But upon deeper reflection, these very different pieces also shine a light on the state of middle-class U.S. workers and consumers, whose struggles may only intensify. Together, these storiesalong with a number of economic indicators like stubborn inflation and slipping consumer sentimentoffer CEOs and business leaders a warning about the risks of capitalism that works for the few and not the many. Mind the gap Daniel Currells guest essay in The New York Times shows how Walt Disney World Resort has evolved from an accessible all-American vacation to a luxury experience targeting high-net-worth households. Wealthy visitors can pay for premium passes that let them bypass lines; one tech executive quoted in the article experienced 16 attractions in seven hours. Meanwhile, Scarlett Cressel, a bus driver who could not afford to pay for special ride reservations and other perks, managed nine attractions over 14 hours. Adding to her frustration, a mobility scooter she rented to help her navigate the park broke down. Its a powerful metaphor for the middle class quite literally being left behind. Disney is hardly alone in pursuing rich customers. Currell, a management consultant, says hes worked with dozens of companies that are abandoning the mass market. Many of our biggest private institutions are now focused on selling the privileged a markedly better experience, leaving everyone else to either give upor fight to keep up, he writes. Roger Lowensteins Wall Street Journal essay, Howand WhyU.S. Capitalism Is Unlike Any Other, helps us understand how we got here. The work is a sweeping review of the forces that shaped an economic system (bolstered by legislation that protects the sanctity of contracts and created public schools to educate workers) that focused on opportunity, individualism, and risk-taking. Those values led to the innovation and entrepreneurship that have long made America the envy of the world. And yet: Inequality 2.0 is alive and well, he writes. American capitalism remains fiercely competitive, remarkably productive, resilient in the face of a thousand doomsayersand the author of a persistent wealth gap. Also in the Journal, Theo Francis offers an unsettling assessment of the disconnect between markets and the health of the middle class. He explains how the recent strong earnings seasonbuoyed by job cuts and higher pricesmay actually be hurting consumers, on whom the U.S. economy relies to keep spending. The gains enjoyed by companies and their investors arent softening the unease consumers and employees feeland might be obscuring signals that ordinary Americans are putting their anxiety into action, Francis writes. And anxiety is likely to only increase with the deployment of generative artificial intelligence (gen AI) solutions that are already replacing entry-level work. Corporate support for the middle class However, companies have an opportunity to strengthen rather than hollow out the middle class. They can invest in workforce development to train employees for jobs of the future and, like a previous generation of capitalists, champion policies that support this cohort and help them increase their spending power. Lowensteins article reminds us that the abolition of debtors’ prisons and the creation of forgiving bankruptcy laws essentially helped codify opportunity for Americans. If companies dont move to address inequality by supporting compassionate and commonsense policies that can uplift Americans, they may find themselves dealing with more extreme correctives. Lowenstein writes that the response to the robber barons of the Gilded Age was antitrust prosecutions, reformist legislation, the Great War, and the Great Depression. He quips: Cures for inequality are sometimes worse than the affliction. Is your company addressing income disparities? Readers, do you feel companies have a role to play in addressing income disparities, and if so, what can business leaders do? Send your examples to me at stephaniemehta@mansueto.com. I’ll feature some of the most compelling in a future newsletter. Read more: Capitalism 2.0 Capitalism needs a rebrand to win over Gen Z Darren Walker on how to save capitalism from itself Is the middle class okay?
Category:
E-Commerce
Were entering an era of computing that feels less and less human-centered. Paradoxically, tech companies remain fixated on mining every detail of our personal data. The familiar, task-specific interfaces we once used are being pushed aside, replaced by generative AI and LLM-driven chatbots that upend how we interact with software. Instead of opening a dedicated app for writing, research, coding, or even emotional support, were funneled into a single chatbot window. OpenAI promises to, Let AI do the work for youdesigned to handle any task, while Anthropic touts Claude as a fantasy-fulfillment engine with the tagline “If you can dream it, Claude can help you do it.” The pitch is clear: These tools are promoted as a one-stop shop for everything. The shrinking interface Search engines have trained us to expect answers from a single field. Now chatbots take this a step further: the text box has swallowed other applications, even as its output often requires endless refinement and fact-checking through a text box. And text isnt the endgame. Voice assistants like Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant primed us to learn hands-free interaction, which is eventually coming to replace that text box. Tech companies are chasing a future where speech replaces typing, and the interface nearly disappears. The real prize isnt usability for us, but the value gained from capturing what we say and how we say it, by, and for, them. This change marks a sharp departure from the last 45 years of interface design. Apple, inspired by Xerox PARC, championed user-centered design: graphical icons, so-called “what-you-see-is-what-you-get” (WYSIWYG) editors, intuitive metaphors that empowered people to create and communicate. For decades, this approach made computing accessible. But with the rise of big data, priorities shifted, as people generated ever-larger archives of digital traces (emails, documents, photos, browsing histories), and were persuaded to store these in clouds for easy retrieval. Tech companies soon realized that, taken together, this data formed a vast global knowledge corpus that could be mined and monetized. The rise of surveillance-driven business models pushed firms toward increasingly quantitative forms of user profiling. The focus shifted from designing tools to help us get work done to extracting patterns that served corporate goals. We ceased to be seen as people with needs and instead became raw material for metrics, models, and market dominance. As big data informed the models for AI and LLMs, this shift accelerated. These systems now operate on top of what we do, but without the capacity to understand why we do it. Stripped of the context discovered through qualitative research, quantitative analysis can easily misinterpret intent. Chatbots produce inconsistent answers depending on the prompt, and we must constantly refine queries just to get something useful. For those who mistake these tools as truth machines, the risks are profound: even fatal, as in documented cases where chatbots coached people to commit self-harm. This lack of contextual, qualitative research isnt new. Appleoften held up as the gold standard for user-centered designinitially resisted user research. Early on, Steve Jobs insisted that people dont know what they want until you give it to them. Pieces of this bias eventually became imbued in Apples culture, where it has persisted in various ways over the years, spreading from Apple through the rest of Silicon Valley and beyond as former employees changed jobs and/or founded new companies. Media and business school case studies perpetuated this myth and as a result, there is a growing tech industry, a culture of quantitative-data-first product design, reinforced by a bias that big data mining is the only measurement for understanding people. Its not. This quantitative big data collection movement comes with another syphoning of our free labor and time: the survey. Were also being used to nudge companies algorithms via the endless surveys sent to us after every engagement, with nagging businesses demanding our feedback on the agents, algorithms, services, and products that theyve already tracked us engaging withall to collect even more data about us. Its exhausting. Scaling at our expense Companies justify this approach as a way to scale an interface (for them). But scaling often means flattening differences among users and does not work well for cultural differences in a global context. The all-in-one chatbot promises universality yet introduces new frictions: translation errors when models are trained on mismatched languages, hallucinations from incomplete training sets, and endless cycles of prompt refinement. Instead of simplifying, these systems demand more labor from users in the form of prompt refinement. The effect is recursive. We feed chatbots queries, they pass these queries to LLMs that pattern match words to generate answersright or wrongthat then circulate back into search engines, which are themselves increasingly infused with LLM output (making verification a nightmare). Meanwhile, our conversations with chatbots are now being mined to train future models. The user interfaces on our devices have become less like tools and more like receptacles for collection. Where we once used a tool to get our work done, we now train tools to do the work so that we can, in turn, finish ours. This dynamic exploits our energy and labor, propping up systems that may one day replace us (if they haven’t already). Todays design trajectory aims to erase the interface altogether, replacing it with conversation under surveillancemechanized eavesdropping dressed up as dialogue. Behind the scenes, algorithms sift and stitch together fragments of training data (not always accurate, not always complete) to generate songs, code, images, or advice pirated from humanity’s corpus built over lifetimes. Sometimes that LLM advice filtered through a chatbot extends into domains as risky as psychological counseling or nuclear operations, putting us in harms way and potentially at great risk. At scale, this is terrifying. It isnt fair to say that user centered design is goneyet. Its still here, but the target users have changed. We used to be the users centered by companies; now the LLMs are their focus. And like it or not, our role now is to enable that success.
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||