The Curve
Use attributes for filter ! | |
Initial release | January 23, 1998 |
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Directors | Dan Rosen |
Producers | Alain Siritzky |
Budget | 1 million USD |
Initial DVD release | April 20, 1999 |
Date of Reg. | |
Date of Upd. | |
ID | 2467727 |
About The Curve
When Chris and Tim discover that they automatically become eligible for higher grades should their unpopular third roommate commit suicide, they set their sights on his swift demise.
GUAP Gala: The event celebrating under-represented creatives
... I think having that taste-making ability allowed us to stay ahead of The Curve...
Robots are trained to help revive coral reefs
... " To stay ahead of The Curve and enable coral reefs to survive a warming future requires a substantial investment of time, money, and human capital, " says AIMS scientist Cathie Page...
King Charles: What sort of monarch has he been is his first year?
... " In that respect the King appears ahead of The Curve, ready to open a new freezer in a food bank as often as cutting the ribbon on a new building...
Do you need a degree to work in tech?
... " They re behind The Curve, " says Robin MacDonald, director at tech recruitment company Harvey Nash...
Croydon tram crash: Operators fined £14m after seven people killed
... " He added there was a failure to heed warnings about the risk of drivers becoming disorientated in the Sandilands tunnel network on the approach to The Curve, and a report of a " near miss" just days before the crash was " ignored"...
Why some celebrities are embracing Artificial Intelligence deepfakes
... But ultimately, she says, it is about staying ahead of The Curve...
Zayn opens up about One Direction split: 'We got sick of each other'
... " I knew something was happening, so I just got ahead of The Curve, " he said...
Croydon tram crash: Driver not guilty over fatal derailment
... The jury heard Mr Dorris was driving the tram at over 70 km/h, more than three times the limit as he approached The Curve near Sandilands...
Robots are trained to help revive coral reefs
By Adrienne MurrayBusiness reporter
" It's a really special part of The World , " says marine biologist Taryn Foster from the Abrolhos Islands, 40 miles from the coast of Western Australia .
" There are no Palm Trees or luscious vegetation. But once you Get In the water, you see all these tropical species of coral and fish. "
called polyps, found mostly in tropical waters. The soft-bodied polyp forms a hard outer shell by extracting calcium carbonate from The Sea . Over time those hard shells Build Up to form The Foundations of the reefs we see today.
Coral reefs may only cover 0. 2% of the seafloor, but they provide a habitat to More Than a quarter of marine species.
However, The Creatures are sensitive to heat and acidification so in recent years, as the oceans have warmed and, corals have become vulnerable to disease and death.
Damaged corals turn white, a process known as bleaching, something Ms Foster has witnessed first hand.
According to the, a 1. 5C increase in water temperature could see losses of between 70% and 90% of The World 's reefs.
Some scientists think, that by 2070, they'll be gone altogether.
" Climate Change is The Most significant threat to coral reefs around The World , " says Cathie Page from the Australian Institute of Marine Science's (AIMS).
" Severe bleaching events caused by Climate Change can have very negative effects, " Ms Page continues, " and we don't have good solutions yet".
Coral restoration efforts usually involve transplanting tiny corals, cultivated in nurseries, on to damaged reefs.
However The Work can be slow and costly, and only a fraction of the reefs At Risk are getting help.
In the shallow waters of the Abrolhos Islands, Ms Foster is testing a system she hopes will revive reefs more quickly.
It involves grafting coral fragments into small plugs, which are inserted into a moulded base. Those bases are then placed in batches on the seabed.
Ms Foster designed The Base , which is shaped like a flat disc with grooves and a handle, and is made from a limestone-type concrete.
" We wanted it to be something we could mass produce at a reasonable price, " explains Ms Foster. " And easy for a diver or a remotely-operated vehicle to deploy. "
So Far the results have been encouraging.
" We've deployed several different prototypes of our coral skeletons. And we've also tested this on four different species, " she explains. " They're all growing wonderfully. "
" We're bypassing several years of calcification growth that it takes to get to that base size, " she says.
Ms Foster has formed a start-up firm called Coralmaker and hopes that a partnership with San Francisco-based engineering software firm Autodesk will accelerate The Process further.
Their researchers have been training an Artificial Intelligence to control collaborative robots (cobots), which work closely alongside humans.
" Some of these processes in coral propagation are just repetitive pick and place tasks, and they're ideally suited to robotic automation, " says Ms Foster
A robotic arm can graft or glue coral fragments to the seed plugs. Another places them in The Base , using vision systems to make decisions about How To grab it.
" Every piece of coral is different, even within the same species, so the robots need to recognise coral fragments and How To handle them, " says Nic Carey, senior principal research scientist at Autodesk.
" So Far , they're very good at handling the variability in coral shapes. "
The Next step is to move the robots out of The Lab , which Ms Foster says should happen in The Next 12-18 months.
However The Real world presents many challenges: wet, living coral needs to be handled delicately, possibly on a moving boat, and saltwater is potentially damaging to electronics.
" We need to ensure we can shield the more vulnerable components, " says Mr Carey.
There's also The High cost of such technology. Coralmaker is betting on demand from the tourism industry, and plans to issue biodiversity credits, which work similarly to carbon credits.
" To stay ahead of The Curve and enable coral reefs to survive a warming future requires a substantial investment of time, money, and Human Capital , " says AIMS scientist Cathie Page.
Her organisation, and others are exploring methods such as coral seeding for larger-scale restoration work.
Coral spawn are collected and fertilised in a lab. The larvae are grown into baby corals in a nursery, before then sowing them onto degraded reefs.
" Mortality in a coral's first year of life is very high. Coral seeding aims to boost The Number of young corals on a reef, enhance their survival and growth, " says Ms Page.
Breeding of more resistant " super coral" as well as radical ideas like to reflect sunlight and protect coral from The Heat , being considered.
One promising innovation involves sound. Fish and other sea creatures living on reefs make a vast range of noises, like chattering, cracking and whooping.
Computer algorithms to analyse underwater audio recordings and can detect patterns that indicate how healthy a reef is. In Australia, AIMS is taking that a step further, through research project Reef Song, where underwater loudspeakers placed on damaged reefs play healthy sounds to help attract fish and boost reef replenishment.
" We Are trying to solve one of The Most complex ecological problems on The Planet , " says Ms Page, who's still hopeful about restoration efforts.
" It is important to remember there is no Silver Bullet solution. "
Related TopicsSource of news: bbc.com