Gadgets
Watching Trees to Understand Climate Change
The study of the seasonality of trees can tell a lot about the environment – even provide evidence for climate change. In temperate regions of the world, plants shed all their leaves in the extremely cold winters and can start growing again only after the warmer spring season arrives. The arrival of the growing season is outwardly visible in the form of new leaves. Global-warming induced climate change is now affecting the seasons – it is getting warmer earlier and cooler later in the year. Over the past few decades, trees have been responding by putting out new leaves earlier and dropping leaves later than usual in the year. In the tropical latitudes where we live, information on tree seasonality is difficult to come by, and therefore the effects of climate change on these patterns is as yet unknown.
How can one detect such patterns, though? Through lots of research and data collected about a factor of interest. Here’s an illustration – think about your height; it is most likely determined by genetics, but nutrition may also be a factor. The heights of all the other humans you know are also affected by their own peculiar individual conditions. As a population of humans, we can therefore ascertain an average height with an estimate of the variability around it. If one detects an increase in this average human height over time (say 150 years), one can speculate about the overall reasons (say, better childhood nutrition) for these changes occuring at the level of human populations.
It is exactly the same for quantifying seasonality in trees! Understanding seasonal patterns in trees requires information on the onset date of change, frequency of the change, and quantum of change over many years. Once this information is acquired, long-term averages and the variability in these patterns can be ascertained, and the causes for shifts from known patterns can then be explored. To detect the effect of factors like climate change, one must first find evidence of environmental change (such as an increase in temperature), and then spot a corresponding departure from the expected long-term tree seasonality. Researchers are often logistically constrained in collecting information of this kind, at large enough scales (of space or time), to be able to reliably estimate the seasonality in living organisms. This is where non-professional scientists, trained in collecting the desired information, can contribute through citizen science projects to fill in gaps.
SeasonWatch is a citizen science project aimed at understanding the seasonality of trees, and the effects of climate change on this
Photo Credit: Geetha Ramaswami
One such citizen science project documenting country-wide seasonality of common Indian trees is SeasonWatch. Since 2010, the project has collected > 4,00,000 observations on > 90,000 trees belonging to 134 common species of India. This long-term data has helped deduce the patterns of emergence of leaves, flowers and fruits of the most-observed species like Mango, Jackfruit, and Indian Laburnum. This information will now serve as a baseline to compare any future changes in these species. In the Indian Laburnum, SeasonWatch data showed a mild advancement in peak flowering dates compared to culturally known peak flowering dates. Whether this is a result of climate change is a conclusion that can be arrived at only by observing more trees for more time. For now, I will make a note of the arrival of flower buds on my neem tree, contributing to an ever-increasing repository of information, one tree at a time.
SeasonWatch is a citizen science project aimed at understanding the seasonality of trees, and the effects of climate change on this seasonality, across India. Students from more than 1200 schools and more than 1100 interested individuals contribute weekly information on tree species that are commonly found across the country. Anyone can become a citizen scientist with SeasonWatch by registering on the site as a contributor and registering as many trees as one wants for observation. There is also a SeasonWatch Android app on Google Play, to help with making observations on-the-go.
Geetha Ramaswami is a Programme Manager at SeasonWatch, based at Nature Conservation Foundation. She is interested in all things plants, and finds their quiet lives intriguing and inspiring at the same time. She especially enjoys studying plants that have gone rogue – invasive plants – and how they interact with animals.
This series is an initiative by the Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF), under their programme ‘Nature Communications’ to encourage nature content in all Indian languages. To know more about birds and nature, join The Flock.
“At Xbox, we believe that with better tools, creators can make even more extraordinary games,” Haiyan Zhang, GM, Xbox Gaming AI, said in a blog post. “This partnership will bring together: Inworld’s expertise in working with generative AI models for character development, Microsoft’s cutting-edge cloud-based AI solutions including Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft Research’s technical insights into the future of play, and Team Xbox’s strengths in revolutionizing accessible and responsible creator tools for all developers.”
The aforementioned AI design copilot is a toolset that will help game designers turn prompts into scripts and dialogue trees. In contrast, the character runtime will enable dynamically generated plot beats and quests. We’ve already seen heavy AI integration in games by way of procedural generation — a more recent example being the 1000+ planets in Starfield. Not to mention, enemy AI has been around for way longer.
Inworld made headlines in August when it launched a modded story mode for Grand Theft Auto V, Sentient Streets, in which players had to investigate the rise of a bizarre AI-worshipping cult — a segment loaded with characters that spoke in AI-generated dialogue, on the fly. The mod was later taken down by publisher Take-Two, leaving a permanent strike on the creator Bloc’s YouTube channel. As per The Verge, Inworld’s AI technology can also be used for narration in top-down RPGs to warn players about any events awaiting off-screen and respond to questions like we’ve seen in the past year with AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Bing Chat. Microsoft has also been heavily banking on artificial intelligence, having made a $10 billion (about Rs. 83,254 crore) investment in OpenAI. The company has also integrated AI tools into its popular suite of services and also added an AI copilot to Windows.
Despite being a Microsoft-affiliated AI toolset, it would be interesting to see whether titles using them will be allowed to thrive on other platforms. In July, Valve claimed that it would be cracking down on games that included AI-generated assets if the developer didn’t own the copyright to the piece of art. For the uninitiated, when you insert a prompt to create something in AI, the software simply repurposes existing assets found online and mushes them together — basically stealing from other artists and writers without appropriate commercial licenses. Infringing them would lead to the game not being distributed on Steam, forcing the developers to seek proper licenses for the asset by reaching out to the AI companies involved. It’s unclear how Microsoft’s partnership will play out — as long as AI content is being used as a catalyst to innovate and create something new, it should be fine.
In a post on X shared by BSNL’s Andhra Pradesh (@bsnl_ap_circle) unit, the company confirmed that BSNL users can upgrade their older 2G or 3G SIMs to a 4G SIM for free. Not only will the upgrade be free, but a promotional image shared with the post suggests that users who opt for the upgrade will also receive 4GB of free data that will be valid for three months. It is speculated that BSNL is aiming to boost its upcoming 4G services with this offer. The announcement was first spotted by Telecom Talk.
To access the free data offer and the free upgrade, BSNL users are requested to get in touch with executives at BSNL’s Customer Service Centre, franchisee or retailer stores, or contact one of their Direct Selling Agents (DSA). The promo image also adds in a finer print that the offer is available with certain terms and conditions, but hasn’t detailed any, so far.
Reliance’s Jio recently launched the 4G-supported Bharat B1 feature phone in India. The handset is priced at Rs. 1,299 in India. Alongside 4G connectivity, the phone comes with JioCinema and JioSaavn applications pre-installed.
The Jio Bharat B1 is equipped with the JioPay application, which is said to allow users to make UPI payments. Aiming to increase accessibility, the phone supports 23 languages overall, including multiple regional languages.
Realme, via Weibo, announced the arrival of the Realme GT 5 Pro in China. The display of the handset is confirmed to offer 3000 nits peak brightness. It has also been teased to offer heat dissipation with a surface area of around 10,000mm2. It is confirmed to ship with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. The post doesn’t specify the exact launch date of the smartphone, however, given the release of the teasers, the launch could be just around the corner.
The Realme GT 5 Pro has been in the news a lot lately. It is expected to feature a 6.78-inch (1,264×2,780 pixels) AMOLED display and is tipped to come in 8GB, 12GB, and 16GB RAM options along with 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB inbuilt storage options.
For optics, the Realme GT 5 Pro is said to have a triple rear camera unit comprising two 50-megapixel sensors and an 8-megapixel shooter at the rear. The camera setup might include a Sony LYTIA LYT808 sensor, an OmniVision OV08D10 secondary sensor, and a Sony IMX890 telephoto sensor. For selfies, there could be a 32-megapixel sensor at the front. It is said to carry a 5,400mAh battery with support for 100W wired charging and 50W wireless charging.
The Realme GT 5 Pro is expected to come with upgrades over Realme GT 5. The latter was launched in China in August with a price tag of CNY 2,999 for the base model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
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