For millennia, throughout Finland’s blistering winters, wind drove snow into meters-high snowbanks alongside Lake Saimaa’s shoreline, providing prime actual property from which seals carved cave-like dens to shelter from the weather and lift newborns.

However in latest many years, these snowdrifts have did not type in adequate numbers, as local weather change has introduced warming temperatures and rain rather than snow, decimating the seal inhabitants.

For the final 11 years, people have stepped in to assemble what nature can now not reliably present. Human-made snowdrifts, constructed utilizing handheld snowplows, now home 90% of seal pups. They’re the newest in a raft of measures which have introduced Saimaa’s seals again from the brink of extinction. Learn the total story.

—Matthew Ponsford

Matthew’s story is from the subsequent journal situation of MIT Know-how Assessment, set to go stay this Wednesday April 24, on the theme of Construct. In case you don’t already, subscribe now to get a duplicate when it lands.

Politics within the AI period

2024 is a banner yr for elections internationally, and it arrives simply as AI advances come thick and quick. This collision of occasions raises a vital query: how will the rise of AI change politics?

Be a part of MIT Know-how Assessment Editor in Chief Mat Honan and Government Editor Amy Nordrum for a LinkedIn Reside occasion the place they’ll discover the influence of political influencers and deepfakes, and unpack business insights and predictions. Register right here to tune in at 1pm ET tomorrow.