"We've seen around a 50% reduction in patients not attending for appointments," and the number of women accepting an invitation to have a routine breast screening appointment has risen "from 43% to just under 80% over the three years," she says. The centre, which offers a range of health checks and scans, was opened in 2022 under the last Conservative government. The current Labour government says many more services will now move out of hospital into the community. In Barnsley, that is already happening. Part of another shopping centre is being converted into a second, large health hub.

Ultra-realistic images created by AI show what your dinner could look like in 30 years' time as we're forced to eat'sustainability'. Experts have used AI tool Midjourney to bring to life the menu of 2054, which features bizarre dishes such as cricket salad and lab-grown steaks. There's even green spaghetti and'meat' balls made out of an aquatic plant, which look straight from the kitchen of another galaxy. These unusual creations could replace family favourite dishes such as the traditional Sunday roast or fish and chips, the scientists believe. They have lower carbon footprints than such classics, which means they could help in the battle against climate change – but would you eat them?

There are thousands of species on Earth that we still don't know much about -- but we now know that they are already teetering on the edge of extinction. A new study used machine learning to figure out just how threatened these lesser-known species are, and the results were grim. Some species of animals and plants are labeled "data deficient" because conservationists haven't been able to gather enough information about them to understand how they live or how many of them are left. It turns out that those "data deficient" species are unfortunately even more threatened than other species that are more well known (to scientists, at least). The data from this study came from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which maintains a global "Red List" that ranks species based on how threatened they are.

Different parts of the globe are experiencing distinct climate challenges -- severe drought, dangerous flooding, reduced biodiversity or dense air pollution. The challenges are so great that no country can solve them on their own. But innovative startups worldwide are lighting the way, demonstrating how these daunting challenges can be better understood and addressed with AI. Here's how five -- all among the 10,000 members of NVIDIA Inception, a program designed to nurture cutting-edge startups -- are looking out for the environment using NVIDIA-accelerated applications: India-based Blue Sky Analytics is building a geospatial intelligence platform that harnesses satellite data for environmental monitoring and climate risk assessment. The company provides developers with climate datasets to analyze air quality and estimate greenhouse gas emissions from fires -- with additional datasets in the works to forecast future biomass fires and monitor water capacity in lakes, rivers and glacial melts.

All the pieces are coming together: big data, advances in hardware, emerging powerful AI algorithms, and an open source community for tools that reduces barriers to entry for industry and start-ups alike. The result: AI is being propelled out of research labs and into our everyday lives, from navigating cities, ride shares, our energy networks, to the online world. In 2018 everyone is starting to see the business value of AI. It is being added to more and more things every year, and it is getting smarter and smarter – accelerating human innovation. But as AI becomes more powerful, more autonomous and broader in its use and impact, the unsolved issue of AI safety is paramount. Risks include: bias, poor decision making, low transparency, job losses and malevolent use of AI, such as autonomous weaponry.

As air quality plummets across the U.S. this summer, researchers have a glimmer of good news. Artificial intelligence may soon provide advanced warning of future pollution events, which could help hospitals prepare for the uptick in pollution-related illnesses, or even reduce people's exposure entirely. A spike in air pollution often leads to a spike in hospital admissions, as it can exacerbate asthma and other pre-existing respiratory conditions, cause upper respiratory tract infections, or increase the likelihood of stroke. But it's currently impossible to prepare for these spikes due to the constraints of existing air quality forecasts, which are only accurate up to three days in advance, Yunsoo Choi, associate professor of atmospheric chemistry from the University of Houston, told EHN. In that short amount of time, one of the only things we can do to protect ourselves is to limit time spent outdoors. But now, through the use of artificial intelligence (AI) technology, Choi and the University of Houston's Air Quality Forecasting and Modeling Lab created a new model that can predict ozone pollution up to 14 days ahead of time.

Here on Earth, we have more detailed maps of Mars than of our own ocean, and that's a problem. A massive force for surviving climate change, the ocean absorbs 90% of the heat caused by emissions and generates 50% of the oxygen we breathe. "We have the ocean to thank for so many aspects of our safety and well-being," says Dawn Wright, oceanographer and chief scientist at geographic information system (GIS) provider Esri, who notes the ocean also provides renewable energy, a major food source, and a transportation corridor for not only ships but submarine internet cables. Now, the same type of smart maps and geospatial technology guiding outer space exploration support the quest to better understand and protect our ocean. "For the first time, our knowledge of the ocean can approach our knowledge of the land," Wright says.

The Living Planet Index produced by WWF estimates that wildlife population sizes have dropped by 68 per cent since 1970. The charity advocates the use of artificial intelligence (AI) as a tool of conservation technology to monitor and curb this alarming rate of decline. One of the most useful applications is in acoustic monitoring, recording the sounds of wildlife ecosystems on weatherproof sensors. Many animals, from birds and bats to mammals and even invertebrates, use sound for communication, navigation and territorial defence, providing reams of rich data on how a species population is doing. AI provides a fast and cost-effective way to analyse hours of recordings for patterns of behaviour.

The Living Planet Index produced by WWF estimates that wildlife population sizes have dropped by 68 per cent since 1970. The charity advocates the use of artificial intelligence (AI) as a tool of conservation technology to monitor and curb this alarming rate of decline. One of the most useful applications is in acoustic monitoring, recording the sounds of wildlife ecosystems on weatherproof sensors. Many animals, from birds and bats to mammals and even invertebrates, use sound for communication, navigation and territorial defence, providing reams of rich data on how a species population is doing. AI provides a fast and cost-effective way to analyse hours of recordings for patterns of behaviour.

Underlying the current ciris, climate change remains a pressing concern. The current coronavirus pandemic has quickly demanded global attention as policymakers race to find a safe exit strategy. But as we pour our collective efforts into tackling this new threat, we must not forget about other invisible enemies that require our urgent attention. The climate emergency, for one, is a hugely complex global challenge with long-term implications. And we are pressed on time to come up with ways of reversing the damage done by humanity to the planet.