Global urbanization has lead to new challenges for urban planners aiming to reduce poverty and ensure sustainability. To overcome these challenges, we need sufficient data on a global scale.

Global urbanization has lead to new challenges for urban planners aiming to reduce poverty and ensure sustainability. To overcome these challenges, we need sufficient data on a global scale. Xiaoxiang Zhu combines satellite and social media data with machine learning to generate a global model of all urban areas. Her models depict 3D shapes and illustrate the functions of buildings, as well as temporal changes, in cities. By providing open access to this data, Xiaoxiang's research group will enable broad impacts globally, from helping authorities improve slum conditions, providing evidence for a more accurate census, and numerous other end goals. Xiaoxiang Zhu is the professor for Signal Processing in Earth Observation at TUM. Xiaoxiang has always been fascinated by space and enjoyed solving mathematically demanding tasks as a child, which are perfectly entwined in the field of satellite Earth observation. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

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Join us for a lively conversation between Mary Power, a leading ecological researcher, and Tom Fleischner, the Institute’s founder, on the role of natural history in inspiring and grounding

Join us for a lively conversation between Mary Power, a leading ecological researcher, and Tom Fleischner, the Institute’s founder, on the role of natural history in inspiring and grounding ecological field study and theoretical advances in the science of ecology. Over several decades, Dr. Power has combined field experiments and long-term, place-based research to study food webs in tropical and temperate rivers, and their linkages to upland and estuarine ecosystems—work that has always been informed by, and infused with, a love of natural history. Mary Power is a Professor in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley and Faculty Director of the Angelo Coast Range Reserve. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Fellow in the California Academy of Sciences, and she has served as president of both the Ecological Society of America and the American Society of Naturalists. Her work was profiled in The Serengeti Rules, a feature film.

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The clean energy sector has seen tremendous growth and development over the last few years. However, switching to 100% renewables still appears like a daunting challenge. In this talk Rolf

The clean energy sector has seen tremendous growth and development over the last few years. However, switching to 100% renewables still appears like a daunting challenge. In this talk Rolf Wuestenhagen explains what is holding us back from achieving a clean energy future and why he is convinced that now is the time and we have it in our hands to move to 100% clean power. Rolf Wüstenhagen, Professor for Management of Renewable Energies at the University of St. Gallen, left one of the leading European energy venture capital funds in 2003 to embark on his academic career. He's been holding visiting faculty positions at UBC Vancouver, CBS Copenhagen, NUS Singapore and Tel Aviv University. From 2008-2011 he acted as lead author of the IPCC special report on renewable energy and climate change and from 2011-2015 was a member of the Federal government’s advisory board for Swiss Energy Strategy 2050. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

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The evidence is all around us. Our industrialized civilization is taking us into an unlivable future. Every continent is affected by the fever we have inflicted on our planet. The gravity of the

The evidence is all around us. Our industrialized civilization is taking us into an unlivable future. Every continent is affected by the fever we have inflicted on our planet. The gravity of the climate emergency is clear. Even as the crisis hits the United States and Europe - #MauiFires, Midwest hailstorms, hot tub ocean temperatures in Florida, Italian cities on red alert, Spain in drought, extended #HeatWaves- mirroring what's been happening in the global south, political action is still not happening. What will it take for world leaders to stop subsidizing extinction? And what do the next decades portend? In this program, Peter Carter, the director of the #ClimateEmergency Institute, and co-author of Unprecedented Crime: Climate Science Denial and Game Changers for Survival and Paul Beckwith, Climate System Scientist and Professor of Climatology, Meteorology, and Oceanography at the University of Ottawa and Carleton University look at this question and explain why getting off fossil fuels is essential to our survival. Hosted by Dale Walkonen Edited by Mike Coe For more information on the state of our planet, visit the FacingFuture Library at https://facingfuture.earth/library.

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MarkMolaro —

MarkMolaro — November 25, 2007 — Informative conversation with K. David Harrison, assistant professor of linguistics at Swarthmore College near Philadelphia and the author of the new book "When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World's Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge". He is the Director of Research at the Living Tongues Institute and was recently featured in the documentary called "The Linguists" which followed hands-on linguistic field work in countries around the world. In this fascinating interview, Harrison discusses the critical importance of the world's many threatened languages and the vital knowledge that each language uniquely packages and holds for all of us. Harrison also discusses the need for more trained linguistic personnel to go out into some of the remotest parts of the world to document these nearly extinct languages before they are lost to humanity forever.

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