Month: February 2020

Ambigram Viruses

Occasionally, sections of a genome will have overlapping sequences that code for different proteins. But in narnaviruses, the entire genome is an overlapping sequence: It can be read in its “reverse complementary” orientation. That is, the RNA is like an ambigram, a stylized script that still says something when flipped upside down.

Antimatter Containment

Antihydrogen does not naturally occur on Earth; physicists first synthesized it in 1995 at CERN. But these particles moved at nearly the speed of light and disappeared in 40 billionths of a second. It would take another 7 years before physicists could produce near-motionless antihydrogen that would not immediately knock into regular matter and annihilate. And it wasn’t until 2010 that they could successfully trap and store antihydrogen. Hangst’s team can now perform experiments for up to 24 hours at a time on the antihydrogen, 12 orders of magnitude in 25 years

Selfdriving Investment

self-driving is an 8T / year opportunity, and some pioneers now feel that the ground was a mistake, and personal transport is going to move to the air. Sebastian Thrun, the most respected pioneer in the self-driving car space, has largely abandoned it and now preaches that the air is where the action will be, thanks to computerized electric vertical take-off aircraft. Air travel offers almost unlimited “lanes” of traffic in 3 dimensions, with trivial costs in infrastructure compared to the ground and is considerably faster. This is just one of the things which might happen when you start trying to predict decades out. There are others which people are yet to think of which may change all these numbers in even more dramatic ways.

Ancient Games

Long before Settlers of Catan, Scrabble and Risk won legions of fans, actual Roman legions passed the time by playing Ludus Latrunculorum, a strategic showdown whose Latin name translates loosely to “Game of Mercenaries.” In northwest Europe, meanwhile, the Viking game Hnefatafl popped up in such far-flung locales as Scotland, Norway and Iceland. Farther south, the ancient Egyptian games of Senet and Mehen dominated. To the east in India, Chaturanga emerged as a precursor to modern chess. And 5 ka ago, in what is now southeast Turkey, a group of Bronze Age humans created an elaborate set of sculpted stones hailed as the world’s oldest gaming pieces upon their discovery in 2013.

East river swimming?

East river swimming could become a reality. The city’s rivers, harbors, and bays are cleaner than they’ve been since the Civil War.

“Why couldn’t we envision this kind of waterfront, not as an amenity in exchange for building, but for its own sake?” she asks. “This is the kind of waterfront we should have a lot more of, whether or not it’s residential.” 2 Trees representatives say the River Street plan addresses both of those concerns: It would help bring more life back to the waterfront by creating marshes, oyster beds, and feeding and nesting places for species such as Atlantic blue crab, blue fish, and mussels. And from a resiliency standpoint, the design of the public park would help stem flooding in the towers because its expanded soft shoreline and pier will break wave action and absorb flood waters, while the towers will keep sensitive electrical and mechanical equipment above the floodplain. The plan also could also help unlock new uses for the city’s waterfront, which advocates and city officials have called the “6th borough” because of its untapped potential. Even politicians gotten in on it: In 2011, then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg launched a plan for new waterfront parks and a ferry service, saying, “Our waterfront and waterways—what we are calling New York City’s ‘Sixth Borough’—are invaluable assets. And when our work is complete, New York City will again be known as one of the world’s premier waterfront cities.”