Detectives have sniffed out a big source of an outlawed, invisible, and odorless gas, currently wafting through Earth’s atmosphere. This chemical, CFC-11, is illegal everywhere in every country, because it depletes Earth’s ozone layer — which protects life from solar radiation. 

The detectives are a team of global scientists who exposed specific provinces in eastern China that are responsible for emitting loads of this ozone-killing gas into the atmosphere since 2013. The researchers published a study on Wednesday in the journal Nature, describing how they used detection instruments to sleuth out major sources of this banned chemical, without stepping foot in China.

“The results point to an emissions increase primarily in two provinces of China,” said Steve Montzka, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientist who has been following the CFC-11 trail. “A big part of the [CFC-11] global emissions can be accounted for.”

But, although about half of global emissions of CFC-11 — used to make foam insulation — have almost certainly been produced in the eastern Chinese provinces of Shandong and Hebei, the rest of globe’s perpetrators remain unknown, for now. They could be operating in another part of China, Asia, or the opposite side of the globe. “We don’t know where the rest of it is coming from,” explained Montzka, a study coauthor. “It could be coming from other regions around the world.”

The evidence against the rogue CFC emitters has been mounting. Last year, Montzka published research that found an “unexpected and persistent increase” in CFC-11, likely from somewhere in Eastern Asia. Separately, the Washington D.C.-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), which investigates environmental crimes and abuse, engaged in an undercover probe to film and record Chinese factories who were using CFC-11, a relatively cheap chemical, to make their goods. To top it off, The New York Times conducted its own investigation, which pointed to culprits at a “scrappy industrial boomtown in rural China.”

This latest research essentially seals the deal — for a good chunk of the outlawed emissions, anyhow.

“The paper corroborates what we found on the ground,” said Avipsa Mahapatra, a climate analyst at the EIA. “These illegal actors were practiced, fly-by-night operators who were circumnavigating their own laws of government.”

“It’s not like elephant ivory that you can easily see,” added Mahapatra, who had no role in the new study. “They’re odorless, colorless gases.”

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And they promise to slow down the planet’s ozone-recovery. Since global nations agreed to ban CFC chemicals in the late 1980s — a landmark climate and environmental treaty called the Montreal Protocol — the ozone layer began to repair itself, after a substantial and worrisome thinning. But with the new rise in CFC-11, by some 7,000 tons (7 Gigagrams) per year since 2013, the recovery will be slowed. 

“It means we should immediately find the [exact] source of the emissions,” said Sunyoung Park, a study coauthor and researcher at Kyungpook National University’s Department of Oceanography in South Korea.

“It certainly won’t help the recovery of the ozone layer. The question is how much [will it delay the recovery],” added Ray Weiss, an atmospheric scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and also a study coauthor. 

NOAA’s Montzka has estimated the unexpected uptick in CFC-11 will delay the ozone layer’s recovery by yet another decade, which already will take at least a half-century to fully restore.

To better pinpoint the source of CFC-11 emissions, the researchers used two atmosphere detecting stations, one on a Korean island, and another on a Japanese island, which sampled the air every two hours for some 10 years. The scientists then employed sophisticated weather models of how winds have swirled over East Asia in recent years to identify where the CFC-11 must have originated. “You can back-calculate where that air is coming from,” said Weiss. 

“These illegal actors were practiced, fly-by-night operators who were circumnavigating their own laws of government.”

The clues pointed to two provinces in Eastern China, though the two monitoring stations could not pick up what was happening in rest of the burgeoning industrial nation, nor places beyond South Korea, Taiwan, and southern Japan.

“This pinpoints a specific region,” said the EIA’s Mahapatra. “That’s key to the international effort to understand where the emissions are coming from.”

And it’s key for assisting the Chinese government in catching the polluters. There is no league of international, law-enforcing guardians of the ozone. Under the Montreal agreement, it’s up to each nation to stop their CFC emissions. Fortunately, the Chinese have taken action, likely spurred on by last year’s surprise detections and resulting media coverage.

“The Chinese have undertaken massive enforcement efforts,” said Mahapatra. They investigated over 1,000 enterprises, she added, and have already shut down CFC-11 producers.    

This is no easy task in a booming industrial society with a population of over 1.3 billion. There’s industry everywhere. Banned chemicals will inevitably be used, whether in bad faith or not. 

“It’s the product of the enormous growth of China,” said Weiss.

Yet the ability of rogue-operators to use CFC is coming to its end. You can’t hide CFC-11 from atmospheric scientists. 

This scientific sleuthing is critical to enforcing the Montreal Protocol. And this type of scientific verification, Weiss emphasized, is also a model for how researchers can monitor emissions of another odorless, invisible gas that’s now saturating the skies at unprecedented rates: the heat-trapping greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, which has driven 18 of the last 19 years to be the warmest on record. 

If global nations agree in 2020 to hold themselves accountable for human-generated carbon emissions that are stoking weather extremes around the globe, scientists will need to watch closely — to see who’s following the rules, and who isn’t.

“We ought to have some numbers. We can’t manage things without having numbers,” said Weiss. 

The U.N. is not here for Siri’s sexist jokes.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has published an in-depth report about how women, girls, and the world as a whole, lose when technical education and the tech sector exclude women. 

Within the report is a razor-sharp section about the phenomenon of gendered A.I. voice assistants, like Siri or Alexa. The whole report is titled “I’d blush if I could,” a reference to the almost flirtatious response Siri would give a user if they said, “Hey Siri, you’re a bitch.” (Apple changed the voice response in April 2019).

“Siri’s ‘female’ obsequiousness – and the servility expressed by so many other digital assistants projected as young women – provides a powerful illustration of gender biases coded into technology products, pervasive in the technology sector and apparent in digital skills education,” the report reads.

The report is thorough and wide-ranging in its purpose of arguing for promoting women’s educational and professional development in tech. That makes the fact that it seizes on voice assistants as an illustration of this gargantuan problem all the more impactful.

The report analyzes inherent gender bias in voice assistants for two purposes: to demonstrate how unequal workplaces can produce sexist products, and how sexist products can perpetuate dangerous, misogynistic behaviors. 

“The limited participation of women and girls in the technology sector can ripple outward with surprising speed, replicating existing gender biases and creating new ones,” the report reads. 

Many news outlets, including Mashable, have reported on how AI can take on the prejudices of its makers. Others have decried the sexism inherent in default-female voice assistants, compounded when these A.I.s demure when a user sends abusive language “her” way. 

Now, even the U.N. is coming for sexism in artificial intelligence— showing that there’s nothing cute about Siri or Cortana’s appeasing remarks.

It’s startling to comprehend the sexism coded into these A.I. responses to goads from users. It’s almost as if the A.I. takes on the stance of a woman who walks the tightrope of neither rebuking, nor accepting, the unwanted advances or hostile language of someone who has power over “her.”

Coy A.I. responses to abusive language are illustrative of the problem of sexism in A.I., but the report takes issue with the larger default of voice assistants as female, as well. The report details how these decisions to make voice assistants female were wholly intentional, and determined by mostly male engineering teams. These product decisions, however, have troublesome consequences when it comes to perpetuating misogynistic gender norms. 

“Because the speech of most voice assistants is female, it sends a signal that women are obliging, docile and eager-to-please helpers, available at the touch of a button or with a blunt voice command,” the report reads. “The assistant holds no power of agency beyond what the commander asks of it. It honours commands and responds to queries regardless of their tone or hostility. In many communities, this reinforces commonly held gender biases that women are subservient and tolerant of poor treatment.”

For these reasons, the report argues that it is crucial to include women in the development process of A.I. It’s not enough, the report says, for male engineering team to address their biases — for many biases are unconscious. 

If we want our world — that will increasingly be run by A.I. — to be an equal one, women have to have an equal hand in building it.

New versions of Apple’s iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS platforms will be announced at WWDC 2019, which starts on June 3 and runs through June 7.

Right on cue, the tech giant sent out media invites for its 30th annual WWDC keynote. Like previous years, the developer conference keynote starts at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET) at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California.

SEE ALSO: Here’s when Apple will most likely reveal iOS 13 and macOS 10.15

The invite is enclosed below and … includes a unicorn?! What could that mean?

Apple is expected to announce updates to its many software platforms with iOS 13, macOS 10.15, and watchOS 6 headlining the keynote.

As always, it’s anyone’s guess what new features Apple will announce and whether or not there will be any hardware announcements. In past years, Apple used WWDC to introduce new MacBook Pros, the iMac Pro, and HomePod.  

Internet leaks, however, might provide some insight into Apple’s plans. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman shared a trove of information on what to expect from new versions of Apple’s software.

iOS 13

iOS 13, codenamed “Yukon,” will reportedly come with several interface tweaks such as a “new animation when launching multitasking and closing apps” and a redesigned widgets panel. A much-asked for dark mode will also be one of the big new feature. iOS 13 might also include a swipe-based keyboard similar to SwiftKey, revamped Apple apps (Reminders, Apple Books, Maps, Mail, Home, etc.), and more nuanced Screen Time settings.

For iPad, users might be able to use their tablets as a touchscreen display when it’s connected to a Mac. Additional updates to iOS’s interface on iPad for “multi-tasking, tweaks to the home screen, and the ability to cycle through different versions of the same app” are also expected, according to the report.

macOS 10.15

On the Mac, Apple will likely announce macOS 10.15. Bloomberg’s report says the main news will be iPad apps running on the Mac — a feature Apple announced at last year’s WWDC. This year, though, we should see the fruits of its labor and perhaps third-party iPad apps optimized to work on Macs.

A new Apple Music app could also be introduced during the keynote. The app is said to be a standalone app for the company’s streaming music service and lessens the need to use iTunes.

Other features on iOS, such as Screen Time, iMessage stickers and effects, and Siri Shortcuts (to name a few) will reportedly also make their way to the Mac.

If Apple announces any hardware, it could be the long-anticipated Mac Pro redesign first announced and teased in 2017.

watchOS 6

As for watchOS 6 for Apple Watch, Apple is said to be planning one of its biggest updates for the smartwatch yet.

Bloomberg says Apple will finally give the Apple Watch its own App Store instead of having users install Watch apps via connected iOS devices.

Along with several new watch faces, Apple will reportedly add more “complications” to make it easier to view glance-able app data from right on watch faces. 

The Apple Watch is also expected to get a new Apple Books app for listening to audio books, a calculator app, two new health apps (one for reminding users to take their medicine and another to track menstrual cycles), and Animoji and Memoji stickers.

Jennifer Garner, actress and graduate of Denison University’s Class of 1994, recently delivered the Ohio college’s 2019 commencement address, and boy was it a good one.

After explaining how she regretted agreeing to the speech, because writing it made her examine her life choices, “gain five pounds,” and “loathe her friend and Denison alum Steve Carell” who graduated before her and should have had to address the college first, Garner gave the grads some invaluable life advice. 

Her speech begins a few minutes after the one hour mark, and she quickly shares words of wisdom, such as never walk down the Grand Canyon to see what it looks like from the bottom, don’t smoke and don’t vape because it’s “not cute,” and always use sunscreen.

“When it comes to Halloween costumes, go funny over sexy. Why would you dress like a flirty nurse when you could be a mailbox? It’s an opportunity,” she went on.

Garner also touched on the concept of mixed signals, bedside table must-haves, and the importance of managing social media consumption. Then, she addressed the women in the audience.

“If you’re a woman… the stage has been set,  the world is yours to grab. Go out and get it, girl,” she said.

Garner also shared a compilation of her best advice on Instagram, with the lighthearted hashtag #sorryyoudidntgettheMorehouseguy. Iconic.