By Fattima Mahdi Truth Theory

It’s 2017, and shocking footage has emerged of Libyans being sold at auction at open-air slave markets. Tens of thousands of vulnerable African migrants and refugees risk everything to get to Libya’s coast and then across the Mediterranean into Europe – which is described as the deadliest route on Earth. According to reports, the migrants that end up in business detention centres are sold off like goods.

“As shocking as it seems, it’s indeed true,” Leonard Doyle from the International Organization for Migration tells Counting the Cost. “The reason it [slave trade] can happen is because there is really no rule of law across much of Libya. Libya is a country as big as France, with a lot of space there. Migrants are coming there … they see the promise of a new life when they go to their Facebook feed and they think something wonderful is waiting for them in Europe, because a smuggler has abused the system and has sold them that lie.”

By Fattima Mahdi Truth Theory

Imagine having row upon row of carrots, lettuce and tomatoes in your front yard. This organisation decided to turn homeowners lawns in Florida into rows of fresh local produce.

Fleet Farming are a volunteer-led program that transform under-used lawns into lush edible farms. All of their volunteers ride bikes and go from lawn to lawn to seed and harvest the produce. Homeowners have the opportunity to donate their garden to the organisation. Once approved, they have to sign a two-year agreement and donate approximately $500 to cover start-up costs. In turn, the homeowners get a share of the produce. The rest is sold at local farmers markets. What’s even more amazing is that 100 percent of the sales go back into the organisation and cover the costs of irrigation, composts and seeds.

By Fattima Mahdi Truth Theory

In the late 1990s, an experimental conservation project in Costa Rica saw a juice company dump 1,000 truckloads of discarded orange peel on degraded land. Unfortunately, the project was forced to end in its second year and was forgotten about – until now. Nearly two decades after the project was abandoned, the orange peel has grown into a thriving lush green forest.

In 1997, two ecologists from the University of Pennsylvania approached Del Oro, a Costa Rican orange juice manufacturer. They said that if Del Oro agreed to donate parts of its land bordering the Guanacaste Conservation Area, a national park, the company would be free to dump its waste orange peel at no cost in designated zones where the soil quality was poor. Del Oro decided to seize this unique opportunity and some 12,000 tonnes of orange peel was dumped on the deserted pasture.

By Fattima Mahdi Truth Theory

In 1982, forest bathing became part of the national public health program in Japan. Forest bathing is a “Shinrin-yoku’’ therapy that encourages you to take in the forest atmosphere. This therapy has become a cornerstone of preventive health care and healing in Japanese medicine.

Forest bathing doesn’t require you to do any exercise. No working out, no jogging or hiking, just quiet contemplation surrounded by trees. Forest bathing is about relaxing.

Japan have spent many years studying the physical and psychological effects of forest bathing. From 2004 to 2012, they spent $4 million dollars conducting scientific research into the benefits of forest bathing. According to the findings, this Japanese practice has been proven to lower heart rate, boost immune system, reduce stress hormone production and improve your overall wellbeing.

By Fattima Mahdi Truth Theory

With Artificial Intelligence (AI) on the rise, many industries are now looking to this advanced technology to help businesses grow more efficient. One such industry is modern agriculture. AI-based digital farming solutions can significantly accelerate learning. Farmers are now making informed decisions about how they use resources like soil, water and energy by using AI technology.

The cassava plant is the most widely grown root crop on Earth. Researchers just developed a program that detect diseases in the plant with almost 100 percent accuracy. The technology does not require cloud computing or hulking processors for that matter. Instead, the network that powers it runs entirely on a smartphone-based program.

“Some neural networks require hundreds of millions of parameters and just the file size you would need to store those is beyond what you could include in an app,” says Google’s Pete Warden. “Happily, it turns out that networks trained to recognise certain kinds of objects can actually be taught to recognise other things with a lot less data, and that’s really the idea behind transfer learning,” says Warden.