Kessel Okinga-Koumu paced around a crowded hallway. It was her first time presenting at the Deep Learning Indaba, she told the crowd gathered to hear her, filled with researchers from Africas machine-learning community. The annual weeklong conference (Indaba is a Zulu word for gathering), was held most recently in September at Amadou Mahtar Mbow University in Dakar, Senegal. It attracted over 700 attendees to hear aboutand debatethe potential of Africa-centric AI and how its being deployed in agriculture, education, health care, and other critical sectors of the continents economy. A 28-year-old computer science student at the University of the Western Cape in Cape Town, South Africa, Okinga-Koumu spoke about how shes tackling a common problem: the lack of lab equipment at her university. Lecturers have long been forced to use chalkboards or printed 2D representations of equipment to simulate practical lessons that need microscopes, centrifuges, or other expensive tools. In some cases, they even ask students to draw the equipment during practical lessons, she lamented. Okinga-Koumu pulled a phone from the pocket of her blue jeans and opened a prototype web app shes built. Using VR and AI features, the app allows students to simulate using the necessary lab equipmentexploring 3D models of the tools in a real-world setting, like a classroom or lab. Students could have detailed VR of lab equipment, making their hands-on experience more effective, she said. Established in 2017, the Deep Learning Indaba now has chapters in 47 of the 55 African nations and aims to boost AI development across the continent by providing training and resources to African AI researchers like Okinga-Koumu. Africa is still early in the process of adopting AI technologies, but organizers say the continent is uniquely hospitable to it for several reasons, including a relatively young and increasingly well-educated population, a rapidly growing ecosystem of AI startups, and lots of potential consumers. The building and ownership of AI solutions tailored to local contexts is crucial for equitable development, says Shakir Mohamed, a senior research scientist at Google DeepMind and cofounder of the organization sponsoring the conference. Africa, more than other continents in the world, can address specific challenges with AI and will benefit immensely from its young talent, he says: There is amazing expertise everywhere across the continent. However, researchers ambitious efforts to develop AI tools that answer the needs of Africans face numerous hurdles. The biggest are inadequate funding and poor infrastructure. Not only is it very expensive to build AI systems, but research to provide AI training data in original African languages has been hamstrung by poor financing of linguistics departments at many African universities and the fact that citizens increasingly don't speak or write local languages themselves. Limited internet access and a scarcity of domestic data centers also mean that developers might not be able to deploy cutting-edge AI capabilities. DEEP LEARNING INDABA 2024 Complicating this further is a lack of overarching policies or strategies for harnessing AIs immense benefitsand regulating its downsides. While there are various draft policy documents, researchers are in conflict over a continent-wide strategy. And they disagree about which policies would most benefit Africa, not the wealthy Western governments and corporations that have often funded technological innovation. Taken together, researchers worry, these issues will hold Africas AI sector back and hamper its efforts to pave its own pathway in the global AI race. On the cusp of change Africas researchers are already making the most of generative AIs impressive capabilities. In South Africa, for instance, to help address the HIV epidemic, scientists have designed an app called Your Choice, powered by an LLM-based chatbot that interacts with people to obtain their sexual history without stigma or discrimination. In Kenya, farmers are using AI apps to diagnose diseases in crops and increase productivity. And in Nigeria, Awarri, a newly minted AI startup, is trying to build the countrys first large language model, with the endorsement of the government, so that Nigerian languages can be integrated into AI tools. The Deep Learning Indaba is another sign of how Africas AI research scene is starting to flourish. At the Dakar meeting, researchers presented 150 posters and 62 papers. Of those, 30 will be published in top-tier journals, according to Mohamed. Meanwhile, an analysis of 1,646 publications in AI between 2013 and 2022 found a significant increase in publications from Africa. And Masakhane, a cousin organization to Deep Learning Indaba that pushes for natural-language-processing research in African languages, has released over 400 open-source models and 20 African-language data sets since it was founded in 2018. These metrics speak a lot to the capacity building that's happening, says Kathleen Siminyu, a computer scientist from Kenya, who researches NLP tools for her native Kiswahili. Were starting to see a critical mass of people having basic foundational skills. They then go on to specialize. She adds: Its like a wave that cannot be stopped. Khadija Ba, a Senegalese entrepreneur and investor at the pan-African VC fund P1 Ventures who was at this years conference, says that she sees African AI startups as particularly attractive because their local approaches have potential to be scaled for the global market. African startups often build solutions in the absence of robust infrastructure, yet these innovations work efficiently, making them adaptable to other regions facing similar challenges, she says. In recent years, funding in Africas tech ecosystem has picked up: VC investment totaled $4.5 billion last year, more than double what it was just five years ago, according to a report by the African Private Capital Association. And this October, Google announced a $5.8 million commitment to support AI training initiatives in Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa. But researchers say local funding remains sluggish. Take the Google-backed fund rolled out, also in October, in Nigeria, Africas most populous country. It will pay out $6,000 each to 10 AI startupsnot even enough to purchase the equipment needed to power their systems. Lilian Wanzare, a lecturer and NLP researcher at Maseno University in Kisumu, Kenya, bridles at African governments lackadaisical support for local AI initiatives and complains as well that the government charges exorbitant fees for access to publicly generated data, hindering data sharing and collaboration. [We] researchers are just blocked, she says. The government is saying theyre willing to support us, but the structures have not been put in place for us. Language barriers Researchers who want to make Africa-centric AI dont face just insufficient local investment and inaccessible data. There are major linguistic challenges, too. During one discussion at the Indaba, Ife Adebara, a Nigerian computational linguist, posed a question: How many people can write a bachelors thesis in their native African language? Zero hands went up. Then the audience disintegrated into laughter. Africans want AI to speak their local languages, but many Africans cannot speak and write in these languages themselves, Adebara said. Although Africa accounts for one-third of all languages in the world, many oral languages are slowly disappearing, their population of native speakers declining. And LLMs developed by Western-based tech companies fail to serve African languages; they dont understand locally relevant context and culture. For Adebara and others researching NLP tools, the lack of people who have the ability to read and write in African languages poses a major hurdle to development of bespoke AI-enabled technologies. Without literacy in our local languages, the future of AI in Africa is not as bright as we think, she says. On top of all that, theres little machine-readable data for African languages. One reason is that linguistic departments in public universities are poorly funded, Adebara says, limiting linguists participation in work that could create such data and benefit AI development. This year, she and her colleagues established EqualyzAI, a for-profit company seeking to preserve African languages through digital technology. They have built voice tools and AI models, covering about 517 African languages. Lelapa AI, a software company thats building data sets and NLP tools for African languages, is also trying to address these language-specific challenges. Its cofounders met in 2017 at the first Deep Learning Indaba and launched the company in 2022. In 2023, it released its first AI tool, Vulavula, a speech-to-text program that recognizes several languages spoken in South Africa. This year, Lelapa AI released InkubaLM, a first-of-its-kind small language model that currently supports a range of African languages: IsiXhosa, Yoruba, Swahili, IsiZulu, and Hausa. InkubaLM can answer questions and perform tasks like English translation and sentiment analysis. In tests, it performed as well as some larger models. But its still in early stages. The hope is that InkubaLM will someday power Vulavula, says Jade Abbott, cofounder and chief operating officer of Lelapa AI. Its the first iteration of us really expressing our long-term vision of what we want, and where we see African AI in the future, Abbott says. What were really building is a small language model that punches above its weight. InkubaLM is trained on two open-source data sets with 1.9 billion tokens, built and curated by Masakhane and other African developers who worked with real people in local communities. They paid native speakers of languages to attend writing workshops to create data for their model. Fundamentally, this approach will always be better, says Wanzare, because its informed by people who represent the language and culture. A clash over strategy Another issue that came up again and again at the Indaba was that Africas AI scene lacks the sort of regulation and support from governments that you find elsewhere in the worldin Europe, the US, China, and, increasingly, the Middle East. Of the 55 African nations, only sevenSenegal, Egypt, Mauritius, Rwanda, Algeria, Nigeria, and Beninhave developed their own formal AI strategies. And many of those are still in the early stages. A major point of tension at the Indaba, though, was the regulatory framework that will govern the approach to AI across the entire continent. In March, the African Union Development Agency published a white paper, developed over a three-year period, that lays out this strategy. The 200-page document includes recommendations for industry codes and practices, standards to assess and benchmark AI systems, and a blueprint of AI regulations for African nations to adopt. The hope is that it will be endorsed by the heads of African governments in February 2025 and eventually passed by the African Union. But in July, the African Union Commission in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, another African governing body that wields more power than the development agency, released a rival continental AI strategya 66-page document that diverges from the initial white paper. Its unclear whats behind the second strategy, but Seydina Ndiaye, a program director at the Cheikh Hamidou Kane Digital University in Dakar who helped draft the development agencys white paper, claims it was drafted by a tech lobbyist from Switzerland. The commissions strategy calls for African Union member states to declare AI a national priority, promote AI startups, and develop regulatory frameworks to address safety and security challenges. But Ndiaye expressed concerns that the document does not reflect the perspectives, aspirations, knowledge, and work of grassroots African AI communities. Its a copy-paste of whats going on outside the continent, he says. Vukosi Marivate, a computer scientist at the University of Pretoria in South Africa who helped found the Deep Learning Indaba and is known as an advocate for the African machine-learning movement, expressed fury over this turn of events at the conference. These are things we shouldnt accept, he declared. The room full of data wonks, linguists, and international funders brimmed with frustration. But Marivate encouraged the group to forge ahead with building AI that benefits Africans: We dont have to wait for the rules to act right, he said. Barbara Glover, a program manager for the African Union Development Agency, acknowledges that AI researchers are angry and frustrated. Theres been a push to harmonize the two continental AI strategies, but she says the process has been fractious: That engagement didnt go as envisioned. Her agency plans to keep its own version of the continental AI strategy, Glover says, adding that it was developed by African experts rather than outsiders. We are capable, as Africans, of driving our own AI agenda, she says. DEEP LEARNING INDABA 2024 This all speaks to a broader tension over foreign influence in the African AI scene, one that goes beyond any single strategic document. Mirroring the skepticism toward the African Union Commission strategy, critics say the Deep Learning Indaba is tainted by its reliance on funding from big foreign tech companies; roughly 50% of its $500,000 annual budget comes from international donors and the rest from corporations like Google DeepMind, Apple, Open AI, and Meta. They argue that this cash could pollute the Indabas activities and influence the topics and speakers chosen for discussion. But Mohamed, the Indaba cofounder who is a researcher at Google DeepMind, says that almost all that goes back to our beneficiaries across the continent, and the organization helps connect them to training opportunities in tech companies. He says it benefits from some of its cofounders ties with these companies but that they do not set the agenda. Ndiaye says that the funding is necessary to keep the conference going. But we need to have more African governments involved, he says. To Timnit Gebru, founder and executive director at the nonprofit Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR), which supports equitable AI research in Africa, the angst about foreign funding for AI development comes down to skepticism of exploitative, profit-driven international tech companies. Africans [need] to do something different and not replicate the same issues were fighting against, Gebru says. She warns about the pressure to adopt AI for everything in Africa, adding that theres a lot of push from international development organizations to use AI as an antidote for all Africas challenges. Siminyu, who is also a researcher at DAIR, agrees with that view. She hopes that African governments will fund and work with people in Africa to build AI tools that reach underrepresented communitiestools that can be used in positive ways and in a context that works for Africans. We should be afforded the dignity of having AI tools in a way that others do, she says.

Planning officers had recommended refusal for Milton Studio-designed scheme due to urbanising impactHow the scheme would look if builtA council in Kent has promised to robustly defend its opposition to a major new housing development after the scheme was called in by housing secretary Angela Rayner.Swale Borough Council had been set to give its verdict on the 8,400-home Highsted Park on Friday (7 November), with officers recommending the scheme be refused. However the decision was taken out of its hands just hours before its scheduled committee meeting.Planning officers recommended refusal on the basis of the urbanising impact which they said was harmful to the intrinsic amenity value of the countryside. However the housing secretarys intervention means there will now be a public inquiryheld into the proposals, following which a report will be submitted to ministers to determine the case.The scheme has been brought forward by master developer Quinn Estates, with Milton Studio as masterplan architect. The project team also includes Corstorphine & Wright as masterplanner for a business park, Murdoch Wickham as landscape masterplanner and Montagu Evans as planning and heritage consultant.The mixed-use development is split across two sites, each with its own outline planning application.> Also read:We wouldnt be doing it if it wasnt wanted: Duchy of Cornwall project team defends 2,500-home Faversham schemeThe northern site application seeks permission for the phased development of up to 96ha to the west of Teynham, and includes up to 2,200sq m of commercial food space.The southern site application seeks permission for phased dedvelopment of up to 579ha of land to the south and east of Sittingbourne, and includes 170,000sq m of commercial space.Both parts of the scheme include schools, open spaces, community buildings and relief roads.Planning officers recommended refusal on the basis of the urbanising impact which they said was harmful to the intrinsic amenity value of the countryside.Elliott Jayes, vice chair of Swale Borough Councils planning committee, said: We will work closely with the Secretary of State as they make their determination, but we will robustly explain the councils reasons for recommending refusal.We understand the importance of these two applications but would appreciate being informed of the Secretary of States decision before less than three hours until the planning committee meeting so we can adequately prepare our response.A Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government spokesperson said: As the case will now come before ministers, it would not be appropriate to comment further.

Report for the Centre for Social Justice found 52% of frequently lonely adults did not believe buildings are designed to encourage communityA think tank has called on the government to combat loneliness through planning reforms after finding more than half of people who are often lonely partially blame architects and planners.A poll of more than 2,000 adults in April this year for the centre-right leaning Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) found 52% of people who often felt lonely disagreed that buildings are designed in a way that encourages a sense of community.Out of all adults surveyed, the number was 43%, which would equate to 23.7 million people if the survey sample was expanded to the size of the UK population.The CSJ report found a strong correlation between loneliness and negative feelings about the built environmentThe poll found 53% of frequently lonely people believed architects and planners are out of touch with what local people want their community to look like, while 49% of all adults surveyed believed this to be the case.The study, published this month, found that people who are lonely are also more likely to feel negative about the built environment and those responsible for creating it.More than half, 51%, of frequently lonely people disagreed that buildings are generally beautiful, compared to 38% of all adults surveyed.But loneliness is prevalent across the population, with nearly six in ten adults feeling lonely at least some of the time, and over one in five reporting feelings of existential loneliness and a fundamental separateness from other people and the wider world.The CSJ, an independent think tank co-founded in 2004 by former Conservative party leader Iain Duncan Smith, has urged the government to launch a new loneliness strategy that includes commitments to tackle loneliness through the built environment.The think tank has also called for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to require every local authority to produce a community ownership strategy which would allow communities to lead housing redevelopment projects.

The Line first phase 'core' design (November 2024) Source:&nbsp DMAA/Gensler/Mott Macdonald for The LineGenslers London office has been named as one of three firms leading on detailed designs for the first phase of Saudi Arabias controversial 170km-long linear city, The Line The practices European headquarters in London is working with Austrian practice Delugan Meissl Associated Architects (DMAA) and UK engineering and consultancy giant Mott MacDonald on the scheme, which is at the heart of Saudi Arabias wider NEOM megaproject.NEOM announced today (11 November) that Gensler, DMAA and Mott MacDonald would together shape the core design, city planning and engineering for the Hidden Marina, The Lines under-construction 2.4km-long first phase. The AJ understands that architects on common design elements on The Line also known as vertical neighbourhoods are due to be announced in early 2025.AdvertisementUK firms Assael Architecture, AHMM, PLP Architecture and SimpsonHaugh are among 24 international practices understood to have competed for work on The Lines vertical neighbourhoods but it is not yet known whether they have won jobs on the scheme.The announcement comes on the heels ofreports that an estimated 21,000 workers, mainly from Nepal, India and Bangladesh, have lost their lives since 2016 working across Saudi Arabias so-called giga projects, according to an ITV documentary last month, Kingdom Uncovered: Inside Saudi Arabia.Saudi Arabian authorities have denied the claims made in the report, which also documented 16-hour work days and poor working conditions on The Line the flagship project at the heart of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's Saudi 2030 Vision development drive.In a statement to the AJ, human-rights charityAmnesty International said it was vital that architecture firms considering operating in Saudi Arabia are doing proper due diligence to ensure theyre not contributing to labour exploitation and other human rights abuses, which it said were inevitable given the size of Saudi Arabias development push.The documentary, which did not make direct links between specific schemes and worker deaths, said The Line alone had a 140,000-strong workforce.AdvertisementITV also cited a doubling of executions in the country since 2015, under the rule of bin Salman, the figurehead of Saudis pivot to development. In addition, it is understood that five people have so far been given death sentences for refusing to leave their homes to make way for The Line and that 50 people have been arrested for similar reasons.The design update on The Line comes after the AJ revealed in June that DMAA had taken a leading role on the linear city following the departure of US firm Morphosis. A dozen names were featured in The Line exhibition in Riyadh in late 2022, as the AJ exclusively revealed last January. Since then, several firms have since withdrawn or ended their involvement in the scheme. These include Adjaye Associates, Coop Himmelb(l)au, and HOK.Genslers managing principal, Europe, London-based Duncan Swinhoe, said: The Line presents an extraordinary opportunity in the history of urban development to redesign and reimagine a new future for our cities.[We] are working around the globe to design places for people and to shape the cities of tomorrow. We look forward to bringing our design values and expertise and collaborating with the greatest minds from across the world to develop one of the most transformative, resilient, and innovative architectural projects of our time.Mott MacDonald group managing director Cathy Travers said: The Line is a hugely complex project with an ambition to change the way we think about urban living. It requires deep technical expertise across multiple engineering disciplines, planning and design, and, alongside our partners, we are well placed to realise this vision.DMAA partner Martin Josst described The Line as a groundbreaking project in relation to traditional ways of making the city.He said: It introduces the variables of a city, such as its infrastructures, mobility, public or private spaces, the organisation of activities, and the extensive list of hierarchies and topics typical of a complex organisation, all within a new logic derived from the ultra-compassionate nature of its unique proposal. Zero-gravity urbanism envisions scenarios for a new livability, where the relationship between physical spaces and human experience is redefined through a three-dimensional approach to urban design.'The Line is planned to complete in 2045, holding nine million people across 140 modules measuring 200m wide and 800m long. The first phase will house three separate modules. Earlier this year, however, there were rumours that the plans were being scaled back.In April, Bloomberg reported the number of residents forecast to be living in the scheme by 2030 had been revised down from 1.5 million to 300,000. Bin Salman who is NEOMs chairman has long said only a first phase of The Line would be completed within the next six years.A NEOM spokesperson told the AJ last year the first section would still welcome its first residents and visitors by 2030.Other UK names previously or currently involved in The Line include Weston Williamson + Partners, AtkinsRalis and Aecom.Saudi Arabian press have also reported that the countrys National Council for Occupational Safety had strongly refuted claims suggesting a rise in worker fatalities due to poor working conditions in the country and according to astatement issued last week, and reported by the Saudi Gazette, the council confirmed that Saudi Arabias work-related fatality rate stood at 1.12 per 100,000 workers, claiming it was one of the lowest rates globally.2024-11-11Gino Spocchiacomment and share

The 29-year-old building, which has sat empty for nearly a decade, is due to be flattened as part of the major redevelopment of the Adelphi Village area backed by the university, Salford City Council and the English City Fund, the AJ can exclusively reveal.Its only possible chance of survival is a listing bid, which has been made by the Twentieth Century Society.The Hodder block was completed in 1995 and was described as a dynamic, modern and sophisticated exercise in steel, glass and concrete when it won the first RIBA Stirling Prize the following year. It was originally designed to be the School of Electrical Engineering before a change of use, during construction, to the Faculty of Art and Design Technology.AdvertisementIn 2018, plans were unveiled to convert the building into a primary school under wider proposals by 5plus Architects for the universitys existing campus and surrounding area, which included the delivery of a significant amount of new housing.But the school scheme has now been ditched and the development team, having explored multiple options for the long-vacant four-storey block, said it intended to press ahead with demolition.A spokesperson for the project backers said: While the Centenary Building has been part of our university estate for a number of decades, unfortunately, its ageing infrastructure means it no longer meets modern standards and requirements. It has now been vacant for a third of its built life.Careful consideration has been given to the history of the building, and the partnership, which includes Salford City Council, ECF and the University of Salford, intends to demolish the building as part of the comprehensive development of Adelphi Village.Reacting to the news, Hodder Associates founder Stephen Hodder said he had received the news of the demolition with great dismay.AdvertisementHe told the AJ: This is not borne out of nostalgia, it being the inaugural RIBA Stirling Prize winner, or indeed the importance of the building to the development of our practice, but as an original signatory to Architects Declare and past chair of the Construction Industry Councils Climate Change Committee, I simply cannot support the demolition of a building that is only 30 years old.The former RIBA president said he had previously been encouraged by the earlier 2012 Crescent Development Framework, which proposed retrofitting the building as either a community or social facility.Hodder said that the universitys previous director of estates had invited his practice to submit a fee proposal for its reuse, but it had never received a reply.He added: [Were] not aware that there has been an exhaustive effort to repurpose the building.For a university that promotes its sustainability credentials, the intention to demolish surely undermines the credibility of its policy. We urge it to reconsider, and hope the architectural community and wider industry collectively exclaim its concerns.Meanwhile, Historic England has confirmed it received an application for listing the building last month and was considering the application.The Twentieth Century Society, which made the bid before the universitys official confirmation of its plans to flatten the academic building, said: The disciplined romanticism of the Centenary Building at the University of Salford saw it recognised with numerous awards at the time of its completion, most notably the inaugural RIBA Stirling Prize in 1996.'Its hugely disappointing that the commendable previous proposals for conversion to a school or for community use have floundered, and to now see the vacant building proposed for demolition. That would be wholly irresponsible and unnecessary outcome, and we urge the University to reconsider.'It added: This is a sophisticated piece of modern architecture, with clear opportunities for adaptive reuse. It acted as a catalyst for regeneration before and could do so again.The [listing] application provides an intriguing test-case for the heritage status of previous Stirling Prize winners, as the award approaches the 30-year anniversary of its founding.'If the buildings which have made the greatest contribution to the evolution of architecture [as per RIBA's Stirling Prize definition] only have a shelf-life of 30 years, what does that say about the current state of British architecture?'The RIBA has been contacted for comment.See the Centenary Building in the AJ Buildings Library

Acmes scaled back proposals to cost a third less than previous plans and will be submitted within next two monthsAcmes new vision for the station will cost around a third less to buildNetwork Rail will appoint a new development partner for its overhaul of Liverpool Street station after receiving planning permission, the boss of its property arm has said.Robin Dobson said Network Rail Property is currently in discussions with all development partners that are in and around the private sector market on its radically different Acme-designed proposals for the station announced last week.Firms the transport operator is talking still include Sellar and MTR, Network Rails partners on a former version of the scheme designed by Herzog & de Meuron which was aborted following a backlash from heritage groups.Robin Dobson said Network Rails new team was working at unprecedented speed to get the planning application ready for submissionBut Dobson told Building that Network Rail was now running the application ourselves and a new development partner will not be appointed on the scheme until post consent.To get the right solution, we have taken, I think, the bold decision and the right decision to lead the application ourselves and to employ a new team, Dobson said.We have taken stock over many months to work out how we best move forward with the project. We as Network Rail Property are leading the new application, and we are speaking with the developer market and the investment market as we would do with any application.He added: Thats Network Rail Propertys focus, the new application.Dobson, who joined the business as group property director in 2022, said the new team was working at an unprecedented speed on its redesign of the station.Plans are expected to be submitted within the next two months in what Dobson claimed would be one of the fastest planning applications of a project of this scale and this complexity in the City of London.This could allow the new proposals to be assigned a planning committee date as soon as next summer, with Network Rail aiming to start construction within two years of the plans being approved.Robin Dobson said Network Rails new team was working at unprecedented speed to get the planning application ready for submissionDobson also revealed new details of how the scheme differs from Sellars existing plans, submitted to the City last year, which proposed a 20-storey office tower controversially built above the grade II*-listed former Great Eastern Hotel.Acmes proposals would be significantly cheaper to build, coming in at a cost of around 1bn, a third less than the 1.5bn price tag attached to the Sellar scheme.Cost savings would be achieved primarily through a more efficient construction programme which would not touch the listed hotel and retain more of the stations 1980s extension.The overstation office tower would also be reduced in size by three floors and contain around 650,000sq ft of floorspace, compared to the 800,000 sq ft building proposed by Sellar, and would no longer be cantilevered over the listed hotel.Network Rail has been developing the new proposals, described by Dobson as quite a move on from the previous application, since the summer at the same time as Sellar and Herzog & de Meuron has been amending its own plans.The latters original proposals were widely criticised by heritage groups including Historic England, which argued the scheme would profoundly damage the character of the station as a whole if built.Concerns focused mainly on the impact of the scheme on the grade II-listed station, the adjacent listed hotel and on views of St Pauls Cathedral.The application amassed more than 2,200 objections from members of the public and was also recommended for refusal by two neighbouring councils, Westminster and Hackney.Building Design first revealed Sellar and Herzog & de Meuron were making changes to their submitted scheme in May this yearbefore further details of the now shelved redesign were outlined last month.Network Rails new project team includes Aecom on engineering and transport, Certo as project manager, Gerald Eve on planning, Gleeds as cost manager, Donald Insall Associates on heritage and townscape, GIA on daylight and sunlight and SLA as landscape architect.Scott Brownrigg, which had been working with Sellar as transport architect, is no longer working with Network Rail on the scheme.

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When to watch the Miami Dolphins vs. LA Rams?Monday, Nov. 11, at 8:15 p.m. ET (5:15 p.m. PT).Where to watch:The Dolphins-Rams game will shown on ESPN. See at YouTube TV Carries ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC for $73 per month YouTube TV See at YouTube TV See more details See at Sling TV Carries ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC for $40 or $45 per month Sling TV See at Sling TV See more details See at Hulu Carries ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC for $83 per month Hulu Plus Live TV See at Hulu See more details See at DirecTV Stream Carries ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC for $87 per month DirecTV Stream See at DirecTV Stream See more details See at Fubo Carries ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC for $92 or $95 per month Fubo See at Fubo See more details The Rams have won three straight to even their record at 4-4 and get back in the NFC playoff picture. They'll look to make it four in a row tonight on Monday Night Football against the Dolphins. It's looking like a lost season for the Dolphins, who have dropped their last three games but welcomed back quarterback Tua Tagovailoa last week, who had been sidelined with yet another concussion since the second week of the season.The Dolphins and Rams kick offtonight at8:15 p.m. ET (5:15 p.m. PT) on ABC. The Manning brothers have the night off tonight; the ManningCast will return next week.If you don't have a cable or satellite TV subscription, you can watch Monday Night Football with a live TV streaming service. The good news for football fans is that ESPN are available on all five major streaming services. Matthew Stafford and the LA Rams host the Miami Dolphins on Monday Night Football tonight. Steph Chambers/Getty ImagesHow to watch MNF without cableThe key channel for Monday Night Football is ESPN. Nearly every Monday night game will be shown on ESPN, with seven weeks also appearing on ABC and ESPN Plus. The only time you won't be able to watch a MNF game on ESPN is the last MNF doubleheader of the season for Week 15 when one game will be on ESPN and the other will be on ABC and ESPN Plus.You can also watch Monday Night Football on ABC for most weeks left in the season; this week and week 13 will be shown on ESPN only.The ManningCast on ESPN2 is scheduled for most Monday nights during the season and one Wild Card game, with six of those regular-season Monday nights and the Wild Card game also streaming on ESPN Plus. Sarah Tew/CNET YouTube TV costs $73 a month and includes ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC, which are all the channels you need for MNF and the ManningCast. Right now, the first two months are discounted to $50 a month. And there is a 21-day free trial. Plug in your ZIP code on YouTube TV's welcome page to see which local networks are available in your area. Read our YouTube TV review. See at YouTube TV Sling TV/CNET Sling TV's Sling Orange plan includes ESPN and ESPN2 but not ABC, and the Blue plan includes ABC (in only in a handful of markets) but neither ESPN channel. Each plan costs $45 a month in the areas with ABC and $40 elsewhere. The combined Orange-and-Blue plan costs $55 or $60 a month. Read our Sling TV review. See at Sling TV Hulu Plus Live TV costs $83 after a recent price hike and includes ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC. On its live news page, you can enter your ZIP code under the "Can I watch local news in my area?" question at the bottom of the page to see which local channels you get. Read our Hulu with Live TV review. See at Hulu Directv stream DirecTV Stream's basic $87-a-month plan includes ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC. You can use its channel lookup tool to confirm that ABC is available where you live. Read our DirecTV Stream review. See at DirecTV Stream Fubo Fubo's basic plan costs $80 a month and includes ABC, ESPN and ESPN2, but Fubo charges an RSN fee (either $12 a month if you get one RSN or $15 a month if you have two or more in your area) that raises the monthly charge to $92 or $95. Fubo is currently offering $30 off for the first month of some of its plans, which means you can get its base Pro plan for $62 or $65 to start. Click here to see which local channels you get. Read our Fubo review. See at Fubo All of the live TV streaming services above allow you to cancel anytime and require a solid internet connection. Looking for more information? Check out ourlive TV streaming services guide.

November 11, 2024Mud Bath Really Does Make Baseballs Easier to GripDroughts in 48 of 50 U.S. states, evidence of microplastics mucking up wastewater recycling and the science of a baseball mud bath in this weeks news roundup. Anaissa Ruiz Tejada/Scientific AmericanSUBSCRIBE TO Science QuicklyApple | Spotify | RSSRachel Feltman: Happy Monday, listeners! For Scientific Americans Science Quickly, this is Rachel Feltman.First, I just want to say that I believe radical optimism is going to be an important part of our tool kit in the months to come. So Im going to do my best to bring you stories that show how innovation can help change the world for the better. Were going to keep introducing you to brilliant people who are working to solve problems that seem insurmountable. Were going to keep taking you to places youve never been to learn things that broaden your horizons and offer you new ways of seeing the world. Were also going to try to provide you with joy and levity and that indescribable wow, gee whiz feeling as often as we can because we know thats so important.Okay. So. Lets kick off the week by catching up on some of the latest science news.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.The worlds first wooden satellite arrived at the International Space Station last Tuesday. The Japanese spacecraft is just four inches square. As Ive mentioned before on Science Quickly, the rapidly growing number of metal satellites in orbit pose a real threat to our planets ozone layer. Thats because spacecraft made mostly of aluminum produce hazardous aluminum oxide when they burn up in the atmosphere, which is an inevitable part of their life cycle. Ill spare you the inorganic chemistry, but those aluminum oxide particles can kick off reactions between ozone and chlorine in the Earths atmosphere. LignoSat contains electronic sensors, but its body is made of magnolia wood. Researchers hope to deploy the cubesat from the ISS and collect data as it orbits the planet for several months.Speaking of space: last Wednesday, NASAs Parker Solar Probe took a crucial step toward making a record-breaking pass of the sun. On December 24, the probe is expected to pass within 3.86 million miles of the solar surfacebreaking its own 2023 record of 4.51 million miles.Parker has been breaking records since its launch in 2018. That year the probe passed within 26.55 million miles of the sun's surface, surpassing a record set in the 1970s.Last Wednesday the probe flew by Venus to use the planets gravity to propel it into its new orbit. NASA says the December solar pass will bring the spacecraft close enough to pass inside a solar eruption, like a surfer diving under a crashing ocean wave.Back on Earth things are looking pretty dry. The U.S. Drought Monitor reports that nearly every state in the country is experiencing droughtAlaska and Kentucky are the only exceptions. From October 23 through 29 more than 150 million people around the U.S. were in a drought, which marked a roughly 34 percent increase over the week before.Climate change is contributing to drought in more ways than you might think. While some areas are seeing less rain in generalwhich of course creates arid conditionsothers are getting most or all of their rain all at once.Theres a limit to how much water soil can absorb, so an excessive dump doesnt necessarily leave behind extra moisture for us to rely on during not-so-rainy days. Instead that water becomes what we call runoff, which flows across the ground until it enters a stream or another body of water.Climate change seems to be making these big bursts of precipitation more common. So when it rains, it pours, and it floods, and were still liable to end up in a drought down the line. With such wide swaths of the country in drought right now, its not a bad idea to take water-conserving measures no matter how things look where you live. Consider taking shorter showers, and make sure you turn off the faucet while you brush your teeth and scrub dishes.Speaking of water, heres a news story to get you fired up about one of my favorite things to hate: plastics! If youre just joining us (on Science Quickly and also, like, on Earth), most plastics are literally made of fossil fuels, and theyve shown up pretty much everywhere, from Antarctica to the human brain.Last Wednesday a new study found that microplastics could even be mucking up our ability to clean wastewater for reuse. The researchers suspected that tiny plastic particles known as microplastics, which provide a happy home for microbes to create robust colonies called biofilms, might keep potential pathogens alive through the wastewater treatment process. Sure enough, the researchers identified a few nasty types of bacteria and viruses that persisted after the water was treated. This is just one more piece of evidence in a growing pile that shows we need to address our reliance on plastic.Lets end with a couple of fun stories.First: you know how sometimes, when someone is watching you work, it makes you kind of, like, knuckle down and really get the thing done, and sometimes having an audience can make you choke instead? Apparently those instincts are older than our species.In a study published last Friday, researchers reported that chimpanzees are subject to whats called the audience effect, too. The study reviewed years of data on chimps performing number-based tasks on touch screens. It turns out that the chimps performance was impacted by how many humans were watching and whether the animals knew the spectators. When it came to the toughest numerical tasks, the chimps seemed to perform better as an audience of experimenters grew. But they were more likely to fumble the easiest tasks in the presence of a crowd of experimenters and familiar audience members. The researchers are hoping to use these insights to better understand how humans developed similar behavior.Lastly, heres one for you sports fans. As you may already know, every single baseball used in every single major league game gets a special little spa treatment: its scrubbed down with mud that comes from a single secret spot somewhere along a tributary of the Delaware River. The idea is that this mud bath makes the balls easier to grip. No team is willing to mess around with substitutes, but the je ne sais quoi of this particular goop was only recently subjected to scientific study. In a paper published last Monday, researchers confirmed that the mud really does have a certain something going for it.The research team put some of the magic mud in a precision instrument called a rheometer, which applies different kinds of force to figure out the fluid flows, to quantify the spreadability of the substance. The researchers also used an atomic force microscope to measure how much force the mud resisted with as an instrument pulled away from itin other words, its stickiness. They even made a fake human finger out of rubberwhich they coated with whale oil to mimic the natural goop of human skinto approximate the friction of a ball against a pitchers hands.All that data proves what baseball players have been saying for years: the mud works. Its consistency makes it as easy to spread as face cream, which allows for uniform coverage on a ball. But the stickiness of the clay helps all the tiny particles of sand suspended within it adhere to the ball so the muck dries as grippy as sandpaper. Neat!Thats all for this weeks science news roundup. Well be back on Wednesday to learn how insects have helped shape human culture.Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Anaissa Ruiz Tejada. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news.For Scientific American, this is Rachel Feltman. Have a great week!

November 11, 20246 min readThe Lucy Fossils Extraordinary Journey to Becoming an Icon of Human EvolutionThe 3.2-million-year-old human ancestor known as Lucy rose to fame through an incredible combination of circumstancesBy Bernard WoodThe 3.2-million-year-old Australopithecus afarensis skeleton known as Lucy is the most famous fossil in the world. Dave Einsel/Getty ImagesFifty years ago researchers working in the Afar region of Ethiopia recovered a remarkable fossil of an ancient relative of ours. This specimen of a female hominin, or member of the human family, soon became the most famous fossil in the world. If youve ever had even a passing interest in human origins, you have probably heard of her. She goes by the name Lucy.One of the reasons Lucy is special is that she is a recognizable skeleton, albeit an incomplete one. Another is that the skeleton is enough like our own for researchers to think Lucys ilk could be a close relativeand possibly even an ancestorof modern humans. But Lucy is just one of many hominin fossils that have come to light since Charles Darwin surmised in 1871 that humans originated in Africa. Why does she play such an outsized role in the public imaginationand in the investigation of human origins? The answer lies as much in Lucys value as a symbol of humanitys deep evolutionary history in Africa as in her intrinsic worth as a source of evidence about human evolution.Lets page back to Lucys era. Nearly 3.2 million years ago a diminutive human ancestor with a mix of humanlike and apelike traits was living in the Horn of Africa on a grassy landscape dotted with trees and shrubs. She was part of a richer community of primates and a much more impressive variety of mammals than live in that region today. There is no reason to think that Lucy was special in any way during her relatively short life. What made her special was what happened to her after she died.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.When an animal dies on an open landscape, away from a lakeshore or stream channels, the soft tissuesmuscles and ligamentsare consumed by scavengers large and small. The bones of the skeleton soon separate and break up, and in a remarkably short time, only fragments of the skeleton are left. There is nothing recognizable to fossilize. If the animal dies close enough to a lake or stream, there is a very small chance that one or more of its bones and teeth will be covered by a layer of sediment. Not only will the bones be physically protected by the sediment from further damage, but also, under the right circumstances, they will be hardened by chemicals in the sediment. This process, called fossilization, gradually converts bones and teeth into bone- and tooth-shaped rocks.But even if all this occurs, we are still a long way from that individuals remains becoming a famous fossil. For that to happen, the sedimentary rock in which the bones were entombed needs to be exposed by erosion, a team of scientists and trained fossil hunters has to find those fossilized bones before they deteriorate beyond recognition, and the team must have the extensive resources needed to recover the many bits and pieces of the specimen that have been scattered across the landscape by the elements. The exceedingly slim odds of the bones and teeth of a single individual being preserved, fossilized, exposed, discovered and recovered make the Lucy skeleton an exceptional discovery. The number of such skeletons in the early stages of the human fossil record can be counted on the fingers of one hand.Another reason Lucy is exceptional is that among the various regions of her skeleton that are preserved are substantial parts of the bones that reveal the length of the limbs: the humerus and radius in the upper limb and the femur and tibia in the lower limb. One of the biggest differences between modern humans and our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees and bonobos, is the relative length of the limbs. Whereas modern humans have long legs and short arms, chimpanzees and bonobos have long arms and short legs. Chimpanzees and bonobos also have relatively long forearms.All four of Lucys main limb long bones are damaged or missing parts of the shaft, so their maximum length has to be estimated. Even so, enough of each bone is preserved to make it pretty clear that Lucys limb proportionsand thus the limb proportions of Australopithecus afarensis, the species to which she belongsare closer to those of chimpanzees and bonobos than they are to those of modern humans. This is not to say that Lucy moved around like a chimpanzee or a bonobo: other fossils belonging to A. afarensis provide compelling evidence that the species walked upright on two legs. But it was practicing a form of bipedal locomotion that differed in significant ways from the bipedalism used by modern humans and our immediate predecessors. Whereas we Homo sapiens take longish strides when we walk, A. afarensis had a more lumbering gait because its feet were farther apart.Some experts think Lucy belongs on the line leading to modern humans, adding to her cachet. But ancestry is difficult to demonstrate and almost impossible to prove with the patchy fossil record we have for early hominins. I know the difference between my ancestorsmy parents, grandparents and great-grandparentsand my nonancestral close relatives, such as my uncles and aunts, and if I was not sure about anyones status, I could check using their birth certificates. There are no birth certificates in the fossil record, so we have to use shared morphology instead. The principle is that the more physical traits one species shares with another, the more closely related the species are, assuming that the morphology they share only evolved once in a recent common ancestor of the two species. We call this commonality shared derived morphology. But to return to my own family history, although I look more like my parents than a total stranger, once you go several generations into the past, my resemblance to my ancestors is not so obvious.The fly in the ointment when using shared morphology to reconstruct relationships is a phenomenon known as homoplasy, in which different lineages evolve shared morphology independently rather than jointly inheriting it from a common ancestor. In this case, shared morphology is telling us more about shared environmental challenges than it is about shared evolutionary history. Still, even if A. afarensis is not our ancestor, it is very likely to be a close relative.Lucy was found in 1974, almost exactly half a century after anatomist and anthropologist Raymond Dart had recognized the significance of a skull of a juvenile hominin found in Taung, South Africa. For three decades after the discovery of the Taung juvenile, the quest for human origins focused on southern Africa. That focus changed in the 1960s when paleoanthropologists Louis and Mary Leakey began to discover hominin fossils at Olduvai (now Oldupai) Gorge, in Tanzania, some of which looked as if they could even belong to our own genus, Homo. By 1974 that trickle of fossil discoveries in eastern Africa had become a torrent, with most of the finds coming from sites on the eastern shore of what is now known as Lake Turkana.Not only had paleoanthropologists turned their attention from southern to eastern Africa, but the age profile of the most successful fossil hunters was shifting from senior researchers such as Louis and Mary Leakey, Phillip Tobias and Clark Howell to field workers such as Richard Leakey and Donald Johanson, who were even younger than Dart was when he recognized the significance of the Taung skull. Richard Leakey and Johanson were half the age of their predecessorsand telegenic to boot. Every high schooler or college student interested in human origins could imagine themselves in their place.It was brilliant of Lucys discoverer, Johanson, to name the partial skeleton after a character in the popular Beatles song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. Lucy ODonnell was a childhood friend of John Lennons son, Julian Lennon, who brought a drawing home from school one day and said it was Lucy in the sky with diamonds, inspiring the song. The name Lucy was a user-friendly way of referring to the A. afarensis skeleton that had the official catalog number A.L. 288-1. And the association with ODonnell injected vitality and relatability into a collection of bone-shaped rocks.But many things have changed since Lucy was named in the mid-1970s. For one, scientists are now more aware of the implications of the names given to fossils. Like John Lennon, Lucy ODonnell was from Liverpool, England. Much of the Beatles success was based on its members authenticity as Liverpudlians. By the time of the Beatles, Liverpool was in economic decline, but in its heyday in the 18th century, it was the preeminent port in the U.K. The economic foundation of Liverpools prosperity came from the major role its merchants played in the trade of enslaved African people.Lucy the fossil has another nickname. In Ethiopia she is known as Dinkinesh, which means you are marvelous in one of the countrys official languages, Amharic. As iconic as the name Lucy is, maybe it is time we all started to use Dinkinesh to refer to this extraordinary member of the human family.