When artificial intelligence (AI) researcher Professor Milind Tambe learned at a World Bank summit in 2010 that poaching was going to wipe out rhinos, elephants and tigers, he realised his research could help rangers predict where poachers were going to set traps. “Too often the public sees AI as a great unknown and something to be feared, but actually it has extraordinary potential for societal and environmental wellbeing,” says Tambe.
Money talks. That’s perhaps the most important thing Blair Palese has learned during 30 years as an environmental campaigner and writer.
In her last role, founding and heading the Australian operation of 350.org, and her current endeavour as climate editor at Climate & Capital Media, Palese and her colleagues have spearheaded one of the most effective strategies yet against climate change – convincing investors that putting their money behind fossil fuel companies is a bad idea.
Using first-hand accounts from the journals of European colonists and explorers, Bruce Pascoe wrote a book that will forever change how Australians view their history. In just 221 pages, Dark Emu exploded the myth that Aboriginal Australians were nomadic hunter gatherers and that farming and agricultural techniques were only introduced to the country with the arrival of white colonists. “I wrote the book because I found it hard to convince Australians that Aboriginal people were farming,” Pascoe says.
“When science denialism comes from the federal government itself, it’s very hard to fight,” Natalia Pasternak says.
It’s rare for a science communicator to find themselves in direct conflict with the people who wield power in a country. But that’s exactly the position Pasternak, founder and president of the Brazilian Instituto Questão de Ciência (Question of Science Institute), is in.
When it comes to doing battle with disinformation around climate issues, Michael Mann is a seasoned campaigner. “I had to defend myself and my research from these attacks. That was my entry ramp into the larger public discourse, and I realised that the best defence is a good offence.”
When Devin Swiner wanted to showcase Black chemists on social media, she thought it couldn’t hurt to enlist a few celebrities to the cause. What happened next took her by surprise.
Every month, tens of millions of people around the world turn for guidance to a single public hospital in Minnesota. They go to MayoClinic.org, the encyclopaedic, cutting-edge information hotline set up by the Mayo Clinic.
Sue Black is Professor of Computer Science and Technology Evangelist at Durham University in the UK is on a mission to change perceptions of women in computing and empower them.
As the world comes to grips with the devastating spread of COVID-19, research institutes and drug companies are mobilising to find and test treatments for the disease – in a big way. But how can we be certain that the results of trials will be made public, and what are the costs of non-transparency?