Month: January 2020

Destroy agriculture

After 12 ka of feeding humankind, all farming except fruit and veg production is likely to be replaced by ferming, brewing microbes through precision fermentation. Dairy farming in the United States will be “all but bankrupt by 2030”. The American beef industry’s revenues will fall by 90% by 2035.

2022-06-02:

Formo is trying to do the same for cheese. They use genetically modified microorganisms to produce milk protein rather than alcohol. They then “brew” them in a bath of nutrients and plant-based feed, and after it has finished, they strain out the milk proteins.

By combining these proteins with water, plant-based fats and carbs, and a pinch of salt, they have created a completely lab-grown milk. This can be processed just like cow’s milk to make all sorts of cheeses. Formo says its process also uses orders of magnitude less land and produces far fewer CO2 emissions than dairy farming. What’s more, their cheese tastes like normal cheese and has near identical nutritional value.

Formlabs

It’s been my privilege to do teardowns on both the Formlabs Form 1 and Form 2. With the recent release of the Form 3, I was asked by Formlabs if I wanted to do another teardown, and of course I jumped on the opportunity. I always learn an immense amount while taking apart their machines, and it’s also been very satisfying to watch their engineering team grow and mature over the years.

this is pretty interesting from a reverse engineering perspective, and i applaud formlabs for their nice printers… but: this is still creating gimmicky plastic prints, rather than much more interesting materials.

GPT-2 Chess

What does this imply? I’m not sure (and maybe it will imply more if someone manages to make it actually good). It was already weird to see something with no auditory qualia learn passable poetic meter. It’s even weirder to see something with no concept of space learn to play chess. Is any of this meaningful? I still don’t know.

Underworld Continents

Giant blobs nestled deep in the Earth may influence everything from the structure of island chains to mass-extinction events. If buoyed to the surface, they would be hot enough to cause gigantic, sustained eruptions. In turn, that volcanism could have changed the climate and even led to mass extinctions. Such a sequence, if verified, would be the ultimate antediluvian time bomb — apocalyptic extinctions triggered by subterranean structures buried since the birth of the world.

Physics & Biology

13 tips for engaging with physicists, as told by a biologist this is a great, and unfortunately rare, example of interdisciplinary work:

Understand what ‘I do not understand’ means When physicists do not understand something that you have said about biology, it’s possible that you do not understand that topic either. 2. Seek common ground When a physicist does not understand an aspect of biology, they are not requesting a ‘biology 101’ explanation. In my experience, when physicists ask a biology question, they want to apply the thinking of physics to biology; specifically, they are searching for universal, mathematical explanations. 4. Keep in mind the maths shortfall in biology For most biological phenomena, we don’t have precise equations — unlike in physics. This is not to say that we don’t have maths, but our field needs a lot more detailed quantification. This lack is the Achilles heel of biology, and affects even the concepts we use every day.

there’s also a view from the other side: 12 tips for engaging with biologists, as told by a physicist

Get comfortable being uncomfortable I went from being one of the most knowledgeable people in my research field at the end of my PhD to knowing less than most of the first-year PhD students in my new lab. For me, that meant I was doing something right, but you do have to be OK with taking that hit and spending time building a new skill set Do not blindly accept dogma Challenging prevailing ideas in biology using your perspective can bring about revolutions. I greatly admire colleagues who have upturned decades of accepted dogma using quantitative methods that were not even considered by the biological community.