Agentic Workflow vs. Autonomous Agent: What’s the Difference?
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In this article, you will learn how to distinguish agentic workflows from autonomous agents by focusing on who owns control flow — a human writing…
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China Briefing 25 June 2026: Five-year plans passed | Critical-mineral tensions | Industrial decarbonisation plan
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s China Briefing. China Briefing handpicks and explains the most important climate and energy stories from China over the past fortnight. Subscribe for free here. Key developments New five-year plans GENERATION TARGET: China today released its 15th five-year plan for building a “new-type energy system”, according to finance news outlet Cailianshe. It said […]
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Livestock heat deaths in transit doubled in UK record-hot summer of 2025
Twice as many animals died due to heat stress en route to slaughterhouses during the UK’s record-hot summer in 2025 compared to 2024, according to new Carbon Brief analysis. Government figures showed that nearly 6,600 animals – mostly chickens – died in transport as a result of the sweltering summer heat in England and Wales […]
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Analysis: UK sales of electric vehicles just overtook petrol cars for the first time
For the first time in the UK, more new electric vehicles (EVs) have been sold over a 12-month period than petrol cars, according to Carbon Brief analysis. The news comes amid a battle over the future of the UK’s “zero-emissions vehicle” (ZEV) mandate, which the car industry and some unions are pushing to water down. […]
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Guest post: How US renewable-energy growth persists despite federal policy uncertainty
Despite recent shifts in federal energy policies, our analysis shows that the US transition to renewable energy is continuing. The current administration has enacted a range of changes to prioritise fossil-fuel energy and environmental deregulation in the US, while withdrawing support for renewables. Yet solar, wind and battery storage accounted for over 90% of new […]
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Improving the speed and energy-efficiency of AI agents
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Agentic workflows are artificial intelligence-powered software systems that chain together multiple models and external tools to tackle complicated tasks, like analyzing a video and answering questions about it. But the way these highly fragmented systems are designed and deployed often causes inefficiencies that can lead to wasted computation, energy, and cost. To improve efficiency, researchers […]
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Building Browser-Using AI Agents in Python
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Most AI agent tutorials start with an API.
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Clustering Unstructured Text with LLM Embeddings and HDBSCAN
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The current era of Generative AI seems to primarily focus on chat interfaces and prompts, but the range of applications of large language models , or LLMs for short, is not limited to just that.
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Context Windows Are Not Memory: What AI Agent Developers Need to Understand
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In this article, you will learn why a large context window is not the same thing as agent memory, and how techniques like retrieval, compression,…
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Mombasa: Key outcomes from the Our Ocean Conference in Kenya
A major ocean conference has ended in Mombasa, Kenya, with just a handful of countries committing to high-level political declarations on banning deep-sea mining, protecting climate-resilient coral reefs and combatting illegal fishing. The Our Ocean Conference (OOC) brought together more than 5,000 delegates to discuss marine issues and make voluntary commitments to advance ocean sustainability. […]
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The end of ‘one-and-done’ sustainability: lessons from B corp standards and Meridiam’s infrastructure
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A structural realignment is quietly redefining global infrastructure, forcing a permanent shift from legacy, short-term profit models to a mandate of long-term accountability. Driven by rigid certification standards and escalating climate volatility, developers are no longer treating sustainability as a secondary risk-mitigation strategy, but as the core metric of operational and financial survival. (Words: Meridiam). […]
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CCC: Faster electrification of UK will ‘put money back into people’s pockets’
Faster electrification is the best way to secure lower energy bills and stronger energy security, according to the Climate Change Committee (CCC). The government’s official climate advisers have stressed the importance of electrification, noting that electric cars and heat pumps can “put money back into people’s pockets”. Moreover, the UK’s net-zero targets face “significant risks” […]
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Exploring the societal impacts of AI
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At the recent AI and Society Forum at MIT, experts from across the Institute discussed the potential benefits and dangers of technological innovation on labor, the nature of work, civil discourse, election administration, and other topics. The event featured individual research presentations and panel discussions, as well as a musical performance exploring the use of generative artificial […]
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Cited 23 June: Project Cosmos launch | Science ‘under attack’ at Bonn | Emissions inequality
Welcome to Cited, your essential guide to new climate research. In the news SCIENCE ‘UNDER ATTACK’: Climate Home News reported that “dozens” of countries called out “coordinated attacks” aimed at “undermining the role of climate science” at UN climate talks in Bonn, Germany, last week. According to the outlet, the countries said that UN decision-making […]
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Carbon Brief’s ranking of the most highly cited institutions
Analysis of Carbon Brief’s Cosmos database reveals the world’s leading “institutions” for climate research. There are more than 40,000 institutions in the Cosmos database, ranging from universities and research laboratories, through to policy institutes and governmental bodies. Carbon Brief has given each institution a “publication count”, by adding up the number of times that its […]
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Prof Detlef van Vuuren: The climate scientist most cited by the IPCC
Detlef van Vuuren is one of the world’s leading climate modellers and, as a result, a high-profile focus of his life’s work – the “RCP8.5” scenario – has recently been targeted as “wrong, wrong, wrong” by Donald Trump. Speaking to Carbon Brief at his office in the Hague, Van Vuuren cuts a serious, but relaxed figure – […]
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Prof Philippe Ciais: The world’s most highly cited climate scientist
Phillipe Ciais has spent almost four decades researching the planet’s carbon cycle – and the ways in which humans have been impacting its balance. Based at the Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement (LSCE) on the outskirts of Paris, Ciais (pronounced “see-es”) has been listed as an author on more than 1,300 peer-reviewed studies. In […]
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Plug-and-play hydropower system trials at Glasgow wastewater works
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The PicoStream sits directly in a flowing channel and extracts energy from the moving water itself. It can be floated or lowered into position and connected with minimal infrastructure, says developer FFH. A novel hydropower technology is being trialled by Scottish Water at its Shieldhall Wastewater Treatment Works in Glasgow, to assess the possibilities it […]