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Electric car batteries with five-minute charging times produced

Damian Carrington

January 19, 2021 |

The Guardian |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: Israel

Batteries that can be fully charged in five minutes have been created for the first time, allowing electric cars to recharge faster. The Israeli company StoreDot produced 1,000 of these new lithium-ion batteries, which can be recharged for 1,000 cycles while retaining 80 percent of the original capacity. It could be a few years before they are mass produced, but the CEO of the company says that this feat “demonstrates it is feasible and it’s commercially ready.”

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Plotting the future: the ‘seed guardians' bringing variety to UK gardens

Alexander Turner

January 19, 2021 |

The Guardian |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: United Kingdom

Hundreds of seed-saving initiatives across the UK support the cultivation of “open pollinated seeds” in small plots and gardens to preserve future seed diversity. In contrast to static seeds in a bank, these seed-saving efforts focus on actually growing and sustaining seeds to provide security and more resilient crops. Open pollinated seeds reliably produce viable, true-to-type plants year after year so new seeds do not have to be purchased every season. Many “seed-savers” participate in seed circles where they exchange surplus seeds among small groups, enhancing the security and diversity of seeds.

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One, two, tree: how AI helped find millions of trees in the Sahara

Amy Fleming

January 15, 2021 |

The Guardian |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: Algeria

Tree mapping helps researchers understand deforestation and climate change, however the technologies used often miss trees that aren’t clustered. Researchers, in collaboration with NASA, used high-resolution satellite images, previously only available to commercial entities, to find a surprisingly large number of trees in the Sahara Desert. Using AI deep learning and one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers at the University of Illinois, they identified more than 1.8 billion trees, manually marking nearly 90,000 so the computer could “learn” which shapes and shadows indicated the presence of trees.

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How US cities fixed violations to Asian Americans' voting rights in 2020

Amy Yee

December 22, 2020 |

The Guardian |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States, Malden, Massachusetts

Violations of the Voting Rights Act during primary and local elections led the city of Malden, where 23% of its 60,000 residents are of Asian descent, to provide voting materials and information - including mail-in ballots, voting instructions, official election websites, and precinct signs - in English and Chinese. The city also hired a trilingual city employee fluent in English, Cantonese, and Mandarin and collaborated with community advocacy groups on voter outreach and recruiting more bilingual poll workers. Advocates see Malden as a role model for other jurisdictions to remedy voter access issues.

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'It gave me hope in democracy': how French citizens are embracing people power

Peter Yeung

November 20, 2020 |

The Guardian |

Text |

1500-3000 Words

Response Location: France, Paris

Cities across France are using citizens’ assemblies, where a diverse group of citizens study important issues and make policy recommendations. In Paris, 150 citizens spent nine months working on the climate convention, which resulted in 149 recommendations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2030. President Macron pledged more funding and accepted all but three of the proposals. The convention also showed how citizens’ assemblies improve community cohesion and reduce polarization. Ireland, the UK, and Belgium have also successfully used citizens' assemblies to address important social issues.

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Gold star for you: New Zealand council puts stickers on bins of best recyclers

Eleanor Ainge Roy

November 16, 2020 |

The Guardian |

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Under 800 Words

Response Location: New Zealand, Christchurch

Officials in Christchurch use a public reward and shaming system to motivate proper recycling sorting after only 48% of recycling was able to be accepted. Residents who correctly sort contents receive a large gold star on their bin while those who do not are given a warning. After three warnings, bins are confiscated and residents must sign an agreement to recycle properly to get their bin back. 155,000 bins have been spot checked, with 26% receiving gold stars, 61% receiving warnings, and 246 bins have been removed. The percentage of recycling content that can be accepted has increased to almost 80%.

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We can't vote in San Quentin prison. So we held a mock election

Juan Moreno Haines Kevin Deroi Sawyer

October 28, 2020 |

The Guardian |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States, San Quentin, California

Two men incarcerated at San Quentin prison tell how the men incarcerated there held a mock presidential election, despite a pandemic-related lockdown and prison officials' failure to distribute ballots that had been sent to the prison. Using handwritten ballots, the "voters," denied their actual voting rights by the state, managed to cast 176 mock votes (heavily favoring Joe Biden) by distributing the ballots during limited time outside their cells. Voting gave the men the opportunity to express their views, not just by checking a box but by adding comments on their ballots.

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Latinos the targets of election disinformation – but activists are fighting back

Amy Yee

October 22, 2020 |

The Guardian |

Text |

Under 800 Words

Response Location: United States

Civic and advocacy groups fight disinformation targeted at Latinx voters and conduct voter registration and education outreach. Voto Latino encourages young people to help older relatives spot disinformation and trained its staff to spot and report it to the watchdog group, Disinfo Defense League. Social media posts then flag the information as false. Personal relationships are an effective way to counter disinformation and also help encourage people to vote. Voto Latino alone has registered over 500,000 voters since mid-2019, more than the total amount since the organization began in 2004.

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Fruits of shared labour: the Indian women joining forces for food security

Anne Pinto-Rodrigues

October 13, 2020 |

The Guardian |

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Under 800 Words

Response Location: India, Tamil Nadu

A grassroots organization in Tamil Nadu, India has helped women farmers throughout the region to create "small informal farming groups" so that they can collectively lease land for their agriculture businesses. This collective farming venture, which has culminated in 89 collective farms with nearly 700 members, ensures "nutrition and food security for landless women at the household level."

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Decoy turtle eggs put in nests to track illegal trade in Costa Rica

Patrick Barkham

October 05, 2020 |

The Guardian |

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Under 800 Words

Response Location: Costa Rica

The conservation organization Paso Pacifico "InvestEggator" program uses a set of fake sea turtle eggs to track the illegal trade of the eggs after they are snatched from nests on Costa Rica beaches. Satellite tags in the decoy eggs were tracked to mostly local sites where the eggs were then sold. This intelligence will help conservationists target trafficking enforcement and deterrence campaigns geographically. The illegal trade in green and olive ridley turtle eggs is a threat to the turtle populations, but previous enforcement aimed at those who poached the nests did little to solve the problem.

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