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Imagine everyone around you sounds like theyre shouting underwater. Thats my world without hearing aidsa reality Ive hidden since I was a kid.Words reach me as a cacophony of blended vowels, forcing me to piece together meaning from your lips, your expressions, your gestures. And a year ago, if youd told me artificial intelligence would help me finally embrace this part of myself, I wouldve laughed in your face.Let me explain. In the days before social media could connect you to “others like you” with a single swipe, I was the only kid I knew who needed hearing aids. So at a young age, I made a decision to hide this at all costs. And I became an expert at it.Yet, ironically, I have built my entire career around helping others share their truth. As a Today Show producer and then a business storytelling coach, I spent years in control rooms and conference rooms, creating safe spaces for people to be vulnerable. Yet there I was perfecting my own daily disguisestrategic hair placement (never up), carefully tilted headphones to avoid control room feedback, and endless excuses for why I needed to sit in certain spots during meetings. I was the master of making others feel seen in order to share their stories while doing everything possible to hide a major part of my own.Fast-forward to 2023. Running my video storytelling company, I watched in frustration as students submitted soulless AI-generated scripts. Months of helping them connect the dots on their founder stories, only to have them feed everything into ChatGPT for perfectly polishedbut utterly lifelessfinal scripts. I hated this new technology.But the journalist in me couldnt ignore one nagging question: Could we use AI to help us tell more vulnerable, more human stories? Late one night, I decided to test this idea on myself. I opened ChatGPT and typed: “I want to explore something Ive been hiding my whole life. I wear hearing aids, and Im exhausted from concealing them. Can you help me understand why Im struggling to be open about this?” The AIs response stopped me cold. Instead of the usual generic advice, it reflected back patterns in my own writinghow often I used words like “hide,” “mask,” and “cover.” AI showed me that my greatest strength as a storytelling coach was helping others embrace exactly what made them different, and that I needed to do the same for myself. Tears streamed down my face as I saw my own story in a completely new light.This unexpected moment started me on a journey to help others use AI to tell their authentic stories.But first, I used myself as the guinea pig. I began using AI as a journalwriting down my observations about my clients and students biggest fears, their late-night worries, their secret dreams of what their businesses could become, what triggered them on social media or in the workplace. (Anonymized, of course, to protect their privacy.) And then I ventured onto more sinister thoughts from my own entrepreneurial journey: Am I really qualified to do this? What if everyone realizes Im making this up as I go? Then Id ask AI to help me find moments from my own life that could build bridges to the struggles of my audience.The process was iterative, collaborative, difficult, and therapeutic.Where I once saw random life experiences that had no bearing on my current life or business hat, AI helped me spot golden threads of connection. That time I bombed a live TV segment and almost got fired? Suddenly I saw how it connected to my audiences fear of visibility. My rocky transition from network TV to entrepreneurship? A perfect mirror for their own career pivot anxieties. That moment I was lying on my Brooklyn apartment floor with a newborn and toddler, terrified about getting let go from my brand new fancy startup job? It spoke directly to my audiences fears about taking risks and making big changes.It was like having a mirror that could see past my blind spotsshowing me connections I was too close to notice, patterns I was too wrapped up in to recognize, and meaning in moments Id dismissed as just stuff that happened.I began weaving these AI-sparked revelations into my business storytelling, testing how this new vulnerability landed with my audience. The response was immediate.Stories Id dismissed as “not that interesting” suddenly revealed their power through AI as she identified golden threads of connection I was too close to see.My storytelling library cracked wide open. I became excited to dig into some of the uncomfortable life moments with AI as my thought-provoking guide. The real breakthrough came when I started teaching this reflective approach to other business leaders. Together with AI, we excavated the deeper meanings behind their business decisions, revealing stories they never thought to tell.Together we used prompts like this:“What themes emerge in how I talk about my business journey?”“Where might I be holding back out of fear?”“How could my struggles actually help my audience?”I watched founders whod hidden behind their logos for years finally step into the spotlight with confidence. A soap company founder revealed her real reason for leaving finance for ocean conservation. All of a sudden, her sharing about herself wasnt bragging but necessary to connect to her customers.Another founder realized her obsession with building nurturing corporate cultures stemmed from losing her dad as a child.These werent just better marketing storiesthey were moments of profound clarity. I watched as “professional facades” crumbled as they realized their personal experiences werent distractions from their business storiesthey just needed to see those moments in another light.These transformations were so powerful that I knew I needed to make this process accessible to more people. The problem was, most AI tools werent built for this kind of deep, reflective storytelling work. They were designed to generate content, not unlock authentic human stories.So I built StoryPro, an AI storytelling tool specifically designed for this intersection of humanity and technology. Not to write stories for people (although it will once it feels youve gone deep enough), but to help them discover the stories within themselves that need to be told.It combines the pattern-recognition power of AI with prompts and frameworks Ive developed over decades of helping people share their authentic experiences.Its like having a storytelling coach in your pocketone that helps you see the significance in experiences you might have overlooked and shows you how these moments could resonate with your audience.Then came my moment of truth . . . I decided it was time to tell my hearing aid story publicly for the first time ever.Using a combination of Google Notebook LLM and StoryPro, the storytelling tool I created, I began exploring my own narrative in a deeper way.I wrote a video script story about my hearing aids freely and with a clarity I had never felt before.When I finally shared the video on LinkedIn, the post went viral, generating millions of impressions. Speaking invitations and podcast appearances followed.But the real transformation wasnt in the metrics. It was in how I finally saw myself: I internalized for the first time how my hearing loss wasnt a weakness to hide.The past 18 months have transformed everyhing I thought I knew about AI and authenticity. AI isnt here to replace our creativityits a mirror, reflecting back the stories weve kept locked inside ourselves. Its a tool that can help us see ourselves more clearly and find courage in our vulnerability. It can even be a partner in healing our wounded self-image.Those hearing aids I spent decades hiding?Theyre now proudly visible in every video call and speaking engagement. Not because AI wrote me a perfect story, but because it helped me see the story that was there all alongand own it proudly.Want to start your own journey of discovery? Heres a prompt that changed everything for me:“The Mirror Prompt”1. Open your favorite AI tool and paste this:“I need your help exploring something Ive been hesitant to share. Ill start by sharing some of my past writing so you can understand my voice. Then Ill tell you about something I feel called to share with my audience who are {insert a bit of info on your audience and how you serve them} but havent found the right way to express it. Can you help me spot patterns and connections I might be missing? Feel free to ask follow-up questions.”2. After the AI responds, go deeper with:“Help me see this through fresh eyeswhat hidden strengths might lie in what Ive seen as weaknesses? How could this help me connect more authentically with my audience?”3. Finally, ask for:“Show me three small ways to begin sharing this story, starting with the gentlest first step I could take today.”You might be surprisedlike I wasto find yourself feeling truly seen and understood . . . yes, by AI. Sometimes the most powerful insights come from unexpected places.
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E-Commerce
Throughout history, when pioneers set out across uncharted territory to settle in distant lands, they carried with them only the essentials: tools, seeds and clothing. Anything else would have to come from their new environment. So they built shelter from local timber, rocks and sod; foraged for food and cultivated the soil beneath their feet; and fabricated tools from whatever they could scrounge up. It was difficult, but ultimately the successful ones made everything they needed to survive. Something similar will take place when humanity leaves Earth for destinations such as the Moon and Mars although astronauts will face even greater challenges than, for example, the Vikings did when they reached Greenland and Newfoundland. Not only will the astronauts have limited supplies and the need to live off the land; they wont even be able to breathe the air. Instead of axes and plows, however, todays space pioneers will bring 3D printers. As an engineer and professor who is developing technologies to extend the human presence beyond Earth, I focus my work and research on these remarkable machines. 3D printers will make the tools, structures and habitats space pioneers need to survive in a hostile alien environment. They will enable long-term human presence on the Moon and Mars. NASA astronaut Barry Wilmore holds a 3D-printed wrench made aboard the International Space Station. [Photo: NASA] From hammers to habitats On Earth, 3D printing can fabricate, layer by layer, thousands of things, from replacement hips to hammers to homes. These devices take raw materials, such as plastic, concrete or metal, and deposit it on a computerized programmed path to build a part. Its often called additive manufacturing, because you keep adding material to make the part, rather than removing material, as is done in conventional machining. Already, 3D printing in space is underway. On the International Space Station, astronauts use 3D printers to make tools and spare parts, such as ratchet wrenches, clamps and brackets. Depending on the part, printing time can take from around 30 minutes to several hours. For now, the print materials are mostly hauled up from Earth. But NASA has also begun recycling some of those materials, such as waste plastic, to make new parts with the Refabricator, an advanced 3D printer installed in 2019. Manufacturing in space You may be wondering why space explorers cant simply bring everything they need with them. After all, thats how the International Space Station was built decades ago by hauling tons of prefabricated components from Earth. But thats impractical for building habitats on other worlds. Launching materials into space is incredibly expensive. Right now, every pound launched aboard a rocket just to get to low Earth orbit costs thousands of dollars. To get materials to the Moon, NASA estimates the initial cost at around US$500,000 per pound. Still, manufacturing things in space is a challenge. In the microgravity of space, or the reduced gravity of the Moon or Mars, materials behave differently than they do on Earth. Decrease or remove gravity, and materials cool and recrystallize differently. The Moon has one-sixth the gravity of Earth; Mars, about two-fifths. Engineers and scientists are working now to adapt 3D printers to function in these conditions. Using otherworldly soil On alien worlds, rather than plastic or metal, 3D printers will use the natural resources found in these environments. But finding the right raw materials is not easy. Habitats on the Moon and Mars must protect astronauts from the lack of air, extreme temperatures, micrometeorite impacts and radiation. Regolith, the fine, dusty, sandlike particles that cover both the lunar and Martian surfaces, could be a primary ingredient to make these dwellings. Think of the regolith on both worlds as alien dirt unlike Earth soil, it contains few nutrients, and as far as we know, no living organisms. But it might be a good raw material for 3D printing. My colleagues began researching this possibility by first examining how regular cement behaves in space. I am now joining them to develop techniques for turning regolith into a printable material and to eventually test these on the Moon. But obtaining otherworldly regolith is a problem. The regolith samples returned from the Moon during the Apollo missions in the 1960s and 70s are precious, difficult if not impossible to access for research purposes. So scientists are using regolith simulants to test ideas. Actual regolith may react quite differently than our simulants. We just dont know. Whats more, the regolith on the Moon is very different from whats found on Mars. Martian regolith contains iron oxide thats what gives it a reddish color but Moon regolith is mostly silicates; its much finer and more angular. Researchers will need to learn how to use both types in a 3D printer. Applications on Earth NASAs Moon-to-Mars Planetary Autonomous Construction Technology program, also known as MMPACT, is advancing the technology needed to print these habitats on alien worlds. Among the approaches scientists are now exploring: a regolith-based concrete made in part from surface ice; melting the regolith at high temperatures, and then using molds to form it while its a liquid; and sintering, which means heating the regolith with concentrated sunlight, lasers or microwaves to fuse particles together without the need for binders. Along those lines, my colleagues and I developed a Martian concrete we call MarsCrete, a material we used to 3D-print a small test structure for NASA in 2017. Then, in May 2019, using another type of special concrete, we 3D-printed a one-third scale prototype Mars habitat that could support everything astronauts would need for long-term survival, including living, sleeping, research and food-production modules. That prototype showcased the potential, and the challenges, of building housing on the red planet. But many of these technologies will benefit people on Earth too. In the same way astronauts will make sustainable products from natural resources, homebuilders could make concretes from binders and aggregates found locally, and maybe even from recycled construction debris. Engineers are already adapting the techniques that could print Martian habitats to address housing shortages here at home. Indeed, 3D-printed homes are already on the market. Meanwhile, the move continues toward establishing a human presence outside the Earth. Artemis III, now scheduled for liftoff in 2027, will be the first human Moon landing since 1972. A NASA trip to Mars could happen as early as 2035. But wherever people go, and whenever they get there, Im certain that 3D printers will be one of the primary tools to let human beings live off alien land. Sven Bilén, Professor of Engineering Design, Electrical Engineering and Aerospace Engineering, Penn State This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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E-Commerce
If you look at a map of lightning near the Port of Singapore, youll notice an odd streak of intense lightning activity right over the busiest shipping lane in the world. As it turns out, the lightning really is responding to the ships, or rather the tiny particles they emit. Using data from a global lightning detection network, my colleagues and I have been studying how exhaust plumes from ships are associated with an increase in the frequency of lightning. For decades, ship emissions steadily rose as increasing global trade drove higher ship traffic. Then, in 2020, new international regulations cut ships sulfur emissions by 77%. Our newly published research shows how lightning over shipping lanes dropped by half almost overnight after the regulations went into effect. Shipping lanes (top image) and lightning strikes (bottom) near the Port of Singapore. [Image: Chris Wright] That unplanned experiment demonstrates how thunderstorms, which can be 10 miles tall, are sensitive to the emission of particles that are smaller than a grain of sand. The responsiveness of lightning to human pollution helps us get closer to understanding a long-standing mystery: To what extent, if any, have human emissions influenced thunderstorms? Aerosol particles can affect clouds? Aerosol particles, also known as particulate matter, are everywhere. Some are kicked up by wind or produced from biological sources, such as tropical and boreal forests. Others are generated by human industrial activity, such as transportation, agricultural burning and manufacturing. Its hard to imagine, but in a single liter of air about the size of a water bottle there are tens of thousands of tiny suspended clusters of liquid or solid. In a polluted city, there can be millions of particles per liter, mostly invisible to the naked eye. These particles are a key ingredient in cloud formation. They serve as seeds, or nuclei, for water vapor to condense into cloud droplets. The more aerosol particles, the more cloud droplets. Water molecules condense around nuclei to form clouds. [Photo: David Babb/Penn State, CC BY-NC] In shallow clouds, such as the puffy-looking cumulus clouds you might see on a sunny day, having more seeds has the effect of making the cloud brighter, because the increase in droplet surface area scatters more light. In storm clouds, however, those additional droplets freeze into ice crystals, making the effects of aerosol particles on storms tricky to pin down. The freezing of cloud droplets releases latent heat and causes ice to splinter. That freezing, combined with the powerful thermodynamic instabilities that generate storms, produces a system that is very chaotic, making it difficult to isolate how any one factor is influencing them. A view from the International Space Station shows the anvils of tropical thunderstorms as warm ocean air collides with the mountains of Sumatra. [Photo: NASA Visible Earth] We cant generate a thunderstorm in the lab. However, we can study the accidental experiment taking place in the busiest shipping corridor in the world. Ship emissions and lightning With engines that are often three stories tall and burn viscous fuel oil, ships traveling into and out of ports emit copious quantities of soot and sulfur particles. The shipping lanes near the Port of Singapore are the most highly trafficked in the world roughly 20% of the worlds bunkering oil, used by ships, is purchased there. In order to limit toxicity to people near ports, the International Maritime Organization a United Nations agency that oversees shipping rules and security began regulating sulfur emissions in 2020. At the Port of Singapore, the sales of high-sulfur fuel plummeted, from nearly 100% of ship fuel before the regulation to 25% after, replaced by low-sulfur fuels. But what do shipping emissions have to do with lightning? Scientists have proposed a number of hypotheses to explain the correlation between lightning and pollution, all of which revolve around the crux of electrifying a clod: collisions between snowflake-like ice crystals and denser chunks of ice. When the charged, lightweight ice crystals are lofted as the denser ice falls, the cloud becomes a giant capacitor, building electrical energy as the ice crystals bump past each other. Eventually, that capacitor discharges, and out shoots a lightning bolt, five times hotter than the surface of the Sun. We think that, somehow, the aerosol particles from the ships smokestacks are generating more ice crystals or more frequent collisions in the clouds. In our latest study, my colleagues and I describe how lightning over the shipping lane fell by about 50% after 2020. There were no other factors, such as El Nio influences or changes in thunderstorm frequency, that could explain the sudden drop in lightning activity. We concluded that the lightning activity had fallen because of the regulation. The reduction of sulfur in ship fuels meant fewer seeds for water droplet condensation and, as a result, fewer charging collisions between ice crystals. Ultimately, there have been fewer storms that are sufficiently electrified to produce a lightning stroke. Whats next? Less lightning doesnt necessarily mean less rain or fewer storms. There is still much to learn about how humans have changed storms and how we might change them in the future, intentionally or not. Do aerosol particles actually invigorate storms in general, creating more extensive, violent vertical motion? Or are the effects of aerosols specific to the idiosyncrasies of lightning generation? Have humans altered lightning frequency globally? My colleagues and I are working to answer these questions. We hope that by understanding the effects of aerosol particles on lightning, thunderstorm precipitation and cloud development, we can better predict how the Earths climate will respond as human emissions continue to fluctuate. Chris Wright is a fellow in atmospheric science at the Program on Climate Change at the University of Washington. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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E-Commerce
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