PRACTICE: WRITE CRITICAL THINKING ESSAYS ON THE FOLLOWING ARTICLES

1. Singapore is the world leader in selling cultivated meat

The island-state’s long history as a maritime trading hub, bringing together Chinese, European,
Indian and Malay migrants, has given Singapore a rich culinary culture. It got even more diverse
in December 2020 when the country became the first to grant regulatory approval for the
commercial sale of meat produced in a lab from cultivated animal cells.
Concerns about food security underlie Singapore’s push into alternative proteins. A country half
the size of London, which makes only 1% of its land available for food production, Singapore
imports over 90% of its food. To protect itself from a volatile food supply chain, disruption by
unpredictable neighbours, inflation, pandemics and war, the government aims to produce 30% of
the country’s food by 2030.
It is encouraging experimentation with cultivated animal cells, meat, dairy and eggs made from
plants, and food made from microbial or gas fermentation. Annual private funding for Singapore-
based alternative-protein companies doubled to $170m in 2022, according to the Good Food
Institute apac, an ngo that promotes alternatives to animal products.
A common challenge for alternative-protein startups is that they need to spend a lot of their
initial investment on new equipment. This means they can struggle to become profitable without
heavy capital outlays. The government has therefore invested in relevant infrastructure such as
innovation centres that help startups develop their products and raise capital. Nurasa, an
alternative protein service provider backed by Temasek, a Singaporean sovereign wealth fund,
helps startups minimise the risk of buying expensive equipment by renting out labs and kitchens
that replicate a restaurant environment. This allows firms to test their product and business model
before purchasing their own equipment, says Jolene Lum, its head of business development.
Singapore has also become the global launch-pad for foods made through precision fermentation,
notes Mirte Gosker of the Good Food Institute apac. Solar Foods is a Finnish startup that uses
gas fermentation to feed microbes with hydrogen and carbon dioxide. It turns the resultant liquid
into a powder, known as Solein, which is nutritionally similar to dried meat. In June the firm
launched the world’s first Solein chocolate gelato in Singapore.
Very Dairy, an animal-free milk brand of a firm based in California, first launched in Singapore
in 2022. The milk is biologically identical to conventional milk proteins but made from microbes
instead of cows. That may be good for the climate, since farmed cattle produce a lot of methane,
a powerful greenhouse gas. Greenhouse-gas emissions from animal-based foods are estimated to
account for around a fifth of man-made climate change.
Singapore has encouraged the industry by offering a clear regulatory framework and an efficient
approval process. Solar Foods has been waiting for two years for regulatory approval in the
European Union, says the company’s ceo, Pasi Vainikka. The eu has yet to approve any
cultivated meat products for sale. By contrast, Solein was granted approval in Singapore within a
year. This fast and transparent process means that many products appear in Singapore first,
which is “a huge gift for the whole world because Singapore shows what is possible”, says Mr
Vainikka.
Whether those products can be taken to scale remains unclear. Even in Singapore the alternative-
proteins industry faces high production costs and other burdens. The only cultivated-meat
company to have received approval in Singapore is Good Meat, an American firm. It sells less
than 2,300kg a year of its cultivated chicken. For context, global meat production is forecast to
grow to over 360m tonnes this year.
Last month America became the second country to approve the production and sale of cultivated
meat. Two companies, Good Meat and Upside Food, have already got the go-ahead to sell cell-
cultivated chicken there. America’s vast consumer market and cutting-edge technology could be
about to threaten Singapore’s early lead.
(Source: https://www.economist.com/asia/2023/07/20/singapore-is-the-world-leader-in-selling-
cultivated-meat)
2 What did the UK’s AI Safety Summit actually achieve?
2 November 2023
By Matthew Sparkes
In the weeks leading up to the UK’s AI Safety Summit, held on 1 and 2 November, prime
minister Rishi Sunak repeatedly stressed the potential risks that artificial intelligence could pose
to society. Then, on the second morning of the event, he told reporters that people must avoid
“alarmist” claims – just before warning that AI could be as dangerous as nuclear war. It is safe to
say there were mixed messages.
But the summit at Bletchley Park was, of course, intended to disperse this fog of confusion: to
examine the risks of AI, provide space for representatives of nations around the world to talk
with business leaders and technology experts, and ultimately plan for a future that avoids
disastrous pitfalls. Was that achieved?
The main takeaway was the new Bletchley Declaration, signed by 28 nations, including China
and the US, and the European Union. Getting any sort of international consensus in these tense
political times is a success, but the document does little more than acknowledge that there are
risks and pledge to explore them. The only concrete action promised in the wording is to hold
more summits in the future. Perhaps this meeting could have been a ChatGPT-generated email,
and saved the carbon expenditure of jetting everyone in.
Carissa Véliz at the University of Oxford, a leading AI ethicist who wasn’t invited to the
meeting, is unimpressed by a summit that promises more summits. “We’ve already been slow to
regulate AI and reach international agreements on it. Having another meeting in future doesn’t
seem ambitious enough, given the high stakes and the rapid development and implementation of
AI,” she told New Scientist.
It is worth remembering that it is only a year since OpenAI launched ChatGPT and just eight
months since it saw an upgrade to the more powerful GPT-4 model. Who knows what version
number we will be on by the time leaders meet again?
Gary Marcus at the Center for the Advancement of Trustworthy AI says the Bletchley
Declaration is welcome, but doesn’t go far enough and doesn’t represent a broad enough cross-
section of society. “We urgently need to move past position statements – there have been a lot of
those in recent months – and into concrete proposals about what to do next.”
Marcus believes that the executive order on AI by US president Joe Biden, released the same
week as the Bletchley summit, comes far closer to laying out real policy. It orders a wide array of
US government agencies to develop guidelines for testing and using AI systems. The EU, too, is
working on AI legislation. There seems to be no lack of will to regulate AI, but as yet an almost
total absence of detail.
Clark Barrett at Stanford University in California says that much of the Bletchley Declaration is
“predictably vague and thus runs the risk of being words with no actions attached”. But its talk of
“building a shared scientific and evidence-based understanding of these risks” is a sensible way
forward, if followed through.
The reality is that technology – just as it has always done – is outpacing legislation. And if the
world’s law-makers at least got up to speed on the latest developments in AI at Bletchley Park
this week, it is hard to imagine they won’t need a refresher course by the time they meet again,
with the face of AI having transformed once more. While summits might offer photo
opportunities and the chance for politicians to rub shoulders with the likes of Elon Musk, no
amount of gatherings can solve the problem of innovation outpacing legislation.
(Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2400834-what-did-the-uks-ai-safety-summit-
actually-achieve/)
3. Tall children may be at greater risk of some forms of heart disease
1 November 2023
By David Cox
Children who are taller than average may face a greater risk of some forms of heart disease as
adults, but their stature also seems to protect them against other types of the condition.
Among adults, being tall has been linked to a lower risk of coronary artery disease, high blood
pressure and high cholesterol, however, studies have also found that taller people are at a higher
risk of an irregular heart rate, which could lead to heart failure.
To better understand how height may affect heart health, Tom Richardson at the University of
Bristol, UK, and his colleagues used the UK Biobank database to analyse more than 454,000
adults. The team gathered information on their genetics, any cardiovascular diagnoses and their
height, which was roughly categorised into “short”, “average” and “tall”.
The participants were also asked whether they would consider themselves to have been shorter
than average, taller than average or about average height at 10 years old.
Next, the researchers applied a technique called Mendelian randomisation, which uses the
genetic variation that occurs among people as a stand-in for the randomisation of some trials.
From this, they identified 840 genetic variants that are linked to height among children and 1201
variants associated with adult height.
When comparing this information to the participants’ cardiovascular diagnoses, the researchers
found that those who reported being taller than average at age 10 were more likely to develop
atrial fibrillation, an irregular and often abnormally fast heart rate, or an aortic aneurysm, a
swelling in the aorta artery that could burst, as an adult. This is compared with those who didn’t
report being notably tall at 10, but grew to become tall adults.
This increased risk could be due to tall children having higher levels of a hormone called
thyrotropin, which both stimulates early growth and induces certain vulnerabilities within the
heart, the researchers write in their paper.
“One idea for a future study is to use cardiac imaging to see whether we already see alterations
across different components of heart structure across the life course amongst individuals who
were taller as children,” says Richardson.
Sridharan Raghavan at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, who has
researched the links between height and various medical conditions, says these findings could
provide a basis for investigations into the underlying biology that predisposes certain people to
atrial fibrillation and aortic aneurysms.
“There are some potential overlapping gene variants which share an association between height
and these heart conditions, but beyond that, it is still to be discovered exactly what these
relationships are,” he says.
In more positive news, the researchers also found that both children and adults who are taller
than average are less at risk of developing coronary artery disease or having a stroke at some
point in their lives.
They speculate that certain genetic variants could affect both height and some aspects of
cardiovascular health. “Taller people typically have a more favourable profile of lipids or fats in
their blood and a lower average blood pressure,” says Richardson.
Raghavan says that people who are tall may come from more privileged socioeconomic
backgrounds, which may drive their lower risk of certain heart conditions to a greater extent than
their genetics.
However, Richardson argues that by using Mendelian randomisation, the results cannot easily be
biased by factors such as socioeconomic status.
(Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2400415-tall-children-may-be-at-greater-risk-of-
some-forms-of-heart-disease/)
4 How cities can respond to extreme heat
The best thing that has happened in Phoenix, Arizona, since the beginning of July is that the
electricity grid has kept functioning. This has meant that during a record-breaking run of daily
maximum temperatures above 43°C (110°F), still in progress as The Economist went to press,
the houses, indoor workplaces and publicly accessible “cooling stations” in the city have been
air-conditioned. There have been deaths from heat stroke and there will be more; there has been a
lot of suffering; and there will have been real economic losses. But if Arizona’s grid had gone
out, according to an academic quoted in “The Heat Will Kill You First”, a new book, America
would have seen “the Hurricane Katrina of extreme heat”.
It is not just the United States, where 100m people are under heat-advisory notices, that is
suffering. There is currently a spate of such heatwaves around the world. Much of the
Mediterranean is in similar straits, with temperatures exceeding 40°C (104°F) from Madrid to
Cairo (which is suffering power cuts). In Beijing July 18th saw a 23-year-old record broken by a
27th consecutive day with a maximum temperature above 35°C. By increasing the odds of a
wide range of extreme events, global warming also increases the chances that they will come in
waves.
Unbearable heat does damage in various ways, including killing crops and livestock, but the
immediate challenge it poses to human health is greatest in cities. Less vegetation, more
sunlight-absorbing tarmac and more waste heat produce what is called the urban-heat-island
effect, exacerbating temperatures. Cities also often have poor air quality, particularly in the
places where the poorest people live; extreme heat on top of dirty air can stretch already hard-
pressed lungs and hearts too far.
There are things to do as soon as the mercury rises. Get homeless people to cooling stations;
encourage people to look in on elderly neighbours and relatives (the old, especially women over
80, dominate the excess deaths associated with heatwaves); make it possible for those who must
work outside to do so very early in the morning; put hospitals on an emergency footing. The
appointment of chief heat officers empowered to co-ordinate such things in American cities, and
farther afield, is a welcome trend.
There are also things to be done in advance. It is crucial to work out where the people at greatest
risk live. One thing that can help is deciding where to plant trees, which both provide shade and,
as water evaporates through their leaves, cool the air. (It is probably best to work out how to keep
them green using wastewater, too, especially if, like the people of Phoenix, you live in a desert.)
There are smart choices to be made about the built environment, from the best sort of pavement
and courtyards designed for passive cooling to the prevalence of white roofs; there are building
codes to update so as to make those choices easier, as well as regulations to change so that
workers are not endangered by midday heat.
All these measures are easier to take when a city has resources to devote to them. In the
developing world, where a lack of air conditioning makes heat all the more deadly, such
resources are scarce. All the more need for leaders to take the issue seriously and for local
politicians to see cooling plans as a way to compete for votes. Unfortunately, such a strategy
works best in places where voters have already felt the consequences of failing to act. That
makes studies which reveal that many places are at increasing risk of vicious heatwaves but have
yet to experience one particularly troubling. Phoenix at least knows what to expect—and what it
will have to go on expecting for decades to come.
(Source: https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/07/20/how-cities-can-respond-to-extreme-
heat)