Month: September 2015

Peak Environmental Impact

if true (requires a lot more study) this would be major good news

It is now conceivable that the human race will reach “peak impact” before the end of this century.

The decoupling is a breaking of the link between economic and population growth on the one hand and resource use on the other. Some decoupling indicators from the report: The per-capita farmland requirement has declined by half in the last half-century. In absolute terms, cropland has expanded 13% and pasture 9% in that time period, but the sum of the 2 has remained stable since the mid-1990s. Total water consumption increased by 170% between 1950 and 1995, but per-capita water consumption peaked around 1980 and declined thereafter. The least decoupled environmental impact is greenhouse gas emissions from energy: global per-capita emissions increased by nearly 40% between 1965 and 2013.

Nitpicking Aurora

First, where I absolutely agree with Kim Stanley Robinson is over the biggest of all Big Lies in hard-SF tales about humans conquering the galaxy… the notion that it will be easy for ortho-humanity to colonize other earthlike worlds. A mere cloning of the European experience settling the Americas, stepping off the boat, inhaling the fresh air, chopping some trees and pushing back natives, building prosperous farms, then cities… this re-figuring of the American West in space is a standard motif, from Poul Anderson to Lois Bujold and a 1000 other authors, and although it is so alluring a dream, it ain’t necessarily so.

I don’t think his composite pressurized structures are very realistic. Flat floored “tents” are very hard to do. I think it would be far lighter, stronger, and safer to have a cylindrical pressure shell, with a lightweight raised flat floor inside, and space under the floor panels for storage. . I also think that 60 seconds from resin mix to strong cure may be reasonable for a patch material, but it makes a lot of what he did nearly impossible. But if he let it get cooler than intended, he could stretch the cure time.

Photonic states

“We’re learning how to build complex states of light that, in turn, can be built into more complex objects. This is the first time anyone has shown how to bind 2 photons a finite distance apart. Lots of modern technologies are based on light, from communication technology to high-definition imaging. Many of them would be greatly improved if we could engineer interactions between photons.”

What makes us Human?

Over the past 3 years, filmmaker and artist Yann Arthus-Bertrand travelled to 60 countries, interviewing more than 2K people in 10s of languages, in an attempt to answer the question: What is it that makes us human? The result is HUMAN, a documentary film that weaves together a rich collection of stories from freedom fighters in Ukraine, farmers in Mali, death row inmates in the United States, and more—on topics that unite us all: love, justice, family, and the future of our planet.

Now we’re partnering with Arthus-Bertrand, the Goodplanet Foundation and Bettencourt Schueller Foundation, to bring HUMAN to you on Google Play, YouTube and the Google Cultural Institute so we can share this project with the widest audience throughout the world.

Egg board corruption

The American Egg Board’s members are appointed by the FDA, and it was they who funded a secret, deceptive smear campaign against startup Hampton Creek’s vegan egg replacement.

From paying food bloggers to post egg-heavy recipes to buying Google ads that returned results for eggs to people searching for Hampton Creek, to lobbying food experts, animal-rights activists and others to speak out in favor of the poultry industry, the AEB pulled out all the stops to undermine their competition.

Einstein Sanity

Einstein believed that there must exist hidden aspects of reality, not yet recognized within the conventional formulation of quantum theory, which would restore Einstein Sanity. In this view it is not so much that God does not play dice, but that the game he’s playing does not differ fundamentally from classical dice. It appears random, but that’s only because of our ignorance of certain “hidden variables.” Roughly: “God plays dice, but he’s rigged the game.” But as the predictions of conventional quantum theory, free of hidden variables, have gone from triumph to triumph, the wiggle room where one might accommodate such variables has become small and uncomfortable.

Human Virome

a new method that uses this phage mixture to test blood samples for over 200 species and 1000 strains of virus at a time. The team speculates that their technique, named VirScan (VEERscan), could one day become a near-universal test for viral infections using just one drop of a patient’s blood, replacing one-off tests for specific types of virus. Very common infections, like rhinoviruses and herpesviruses, come up regularly in VirScan, while more exotic viruses are found rarely if at all. “Sure enough, for many common viral infections we’re detecting them at pretty high levels. And for some viruses like CMV [one of the herpesviruses], which is known to infect 50% of the population, that is in fact what we saw.” VirScan could be brought into a number of research areas where virome-wide sequencing, or targeted viral tests, have not given us the full picture. Wylie, for instance, is curious what antibodies would be found in a large study of children, a major focus of her own research on the virome. “You’re actually developing your immune repertoire at that time. It would be interesting to see that history of what children had been exposed to, and what might be missing from the common pathogens in a child… We have to realize we’re a bit changed after these exposures, and this is one method of looking broadly at that.” Kula hopes that VirScan can shine a light on mysterious diseases like chronic fatigue syndrome and Kawasaki disease. Some experts suspect these illnesses are caused or exacerbated by viruses, but those suspicions are hard to confirm when no one knows which virus to look for. With VirScan, this is no obstacle.

Against showers

Dave Witlock is a practical man. “I have not taken a shower in over 12 years. No one did clinical trials on people taking showers every day. So what’s the basis for assuming that that is a healthy practice?”

Twice a day, Mr. Witlock applies a live bacteria solution of his own design to his skin. To spread the bacteria to everyone else, he has founded a company called AOBiome and is selling a spray that contains live ammonia oxidizing bacteria (AOB), called Mother Dirt.

Homo naledi

Homo naledi is a previously-unknown species of extinct hominin discovered within the Dinaledi Chamber of the Rising Star cave system, Cradle of Humankind, South Africa. This species is characterized by body mass and stature similar to small-bodied human populations but a small endocranial volume similar to australopiths. Cranial morphology of H. naledi is unique, but most similar to early Homo species including Homo erectus, Homo habilis or Homo rudolfensis. While primitive, the dentition is generally small and simple in occlusal morphology. H. naledi has humanlike manipulatory adaptations of the hand and wrist. It also exhibits a humanlike foot and lower limb. These humanlike aspects are contrasted in the postcrania with a more primitive or australopith-like trunk, shoulder, pelvis and proximal femur. Representing at least 15 individuals with most skeletal elements repeated multiple times, this is the largest assemblage of a single species of hominins yet discovered in Africa.