Author: Gregor J. Rothfuss

Human Glycome Project

The glycoletters in the data set could have formed nearly 1.2 trillion different glycowords. Yet, surprisingly, the researchers’ results indicated that only 19866 distinct glycowords were present across all the available sequences. The evidence suggested that all organisms follow very similar rules in assembling them and use essentially the same biomolecular language to define their structure.

Constructor Theory

Counterfactuals do appear in existing laws, but these laws are regarded as second class. They are not incorporated wholeheartedly. Constructor theory puts counterfactuals at the very foundation of physics, so that the most fundamental laws can be formulated in these terms. Concepts like work and heat can’t be captured fully with trajectories and laws of motion, because in the standard conception they are considered emergent and approximate. In constructor theory we can talk about them using exact statements about possible and impossible transformations.

2023-05-04: Assembly theory is an intellectual cousin

Assembly theory started when Cronin asked why, given the astronomical number of ways to combine different atoms, nature makes some molecules and not others. It’s one thing to say that an object is possible according to the laws of physics; it’s another to say there’s an actual pathway for making it from its component parts. “Assembly theory was developed to capture my intuition that complex molecules can’t just emerge into existence because the combinatorial space is too vast”.
Assembly theory makes the seemingly uncontroversial assumption that complex objects arise from combining many simpler objects. The theory says it’s possible to objectively measure an object’s complexity by considering how it got made. That’s done by calculating the minimum number of steps needed to make the object from its ingredients, which is quantified as the assembly index (AI).
Complex mixtures of molecules made by living systems — a culture of E. coli bacteria, natural products like taxol (a metabolite of the Pacific yew tree with anti-cancer properties), beer, and yeast cells — typically had significantly higher average AIs than minerals or simple organics.

The analysis is susceptible to false negatives — some products of living systems, such as Ardbeg single malt scotch, have AIs suggesting a nonliving origin. But perhaps more importantly, the experiment produced no false positives: Abiotic systems can’t muster sufficiently high AIs to mimic biology. If a sample with a high molecular AI is measured on another world, it is likely to have been made by an entity we could call living.
Cronin and Walker hope that assembly theory will ultimately address very broad questions in physics, such as the nature of time and the origin of the second law of thermodynamics. But those goals are still distant.

Solar Panel Windows

Classified as a Building Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV) system, ClearVue’s solar PV windows are integrated within a building’s envelope, as opposed to conventional PV systems where modules had to be mounted on the top of existing roofs. This has a dual benefit: clear solar glass serves as an energy-efficient window product for any building, but also generates electricity for on-site use or export to the grid. This can provide savings in materials and electricity costs, reduce pollution, and add to the architectural appeal of a building.

2022-11-12: ultrathin organic solar cells hit new efficiency records

Organic photovoltaics (OPVs) are 10x lighter than silicon panels and cost 50% as much to produce. Some are even transparent, which has architects envisioning solar panels not just on rooftops, but incorporated into building facades, windows, and even indoor spaces. “We want to change every building into an electricity-generating building”. OPVs reach 9% efficiency. Prototypes have reached efficiencies of 20%, approaching silicon and alternative inorganic thin-film solar cells, such as those made from a mix of copper, indium, gallium, and selenium (CIGS). Unlike silicon crystals and CIGS, where researchers are mostly limited to the few chemical options nature gives them, OPVs allow them to tweak bonds, rearrange atoms, and mix in elements from across the periodic table. Yet, stability and high efficiency still won’t be enough. To make it in the market, solar cells also need to prove reliable for decades. Under intense exposure to the ultraviolet (UV) in sunlight, the organics in solar cells can degrade, much as our skin burns during a day at the beach.

Humans are 0.01% of Biomass

Anyone who has walked through a jungle or wandered a grassland may already have guessed that humans are a pretty small part of Earth’s organic matter. The carbonaceous winners are plants, which make up 80% of all biomass on Earth. Bacteria comes in second at 13% and fungus is third at just 2%. Of the 550 gigatons of biomass carbon on Earth, animals make up ~2 gigatons, with insects comprising 50% of that and fish taking up 0.7 gigatons. Everything else, including mammals, birds, nematodes and mollusks are ~0.3 gigatons, with humans weighing in at 0.06 gigatons. “The fact that the biomass of fungi exceeds that of all animals’ sort of puts us in our place”

Absurdist France

perhaps the extreme bureaucracy nonsense of the french will finally catch up with them?

With the announcement of the third Paris lockdown last month to try to control the spread of Covid-19, an apotheosis of the absurd was reached.

A dense, 2-page version of the notorious “attestation,” a government form to be completed anytime one leaves home, was so convoluted that it tied the Interior Minister’s spokeswoman in verbal knots trying to explain it. The document had metastasized with each lockdown into an ever more ungainly monster.

Which of 15 boxes to check? That you planned to walk 1 kilometer with your dog, the maximum allowed, or up to 10 kilometers with your children? Would you be allowed 11 kilometers if you took the kids and the pet? What if Fido wanted to walk 10 kilometers and little Mathilde none?

Expert COVID-19 long-haulers

Most of the other treatments haven’t had the funds for extensive trials, and without proper research, some drugs run the risk of getting overhyped based on limited information. “The early bets financially were made on investing in vaccine trials and investing in monoclonal antibodies. What received relatively less funding and attention were drugs that were already FDA-approved that could be repurposed for COVID.” his goal with COVIDSalon is to provide a dedicated hub of treatment information so people don’t have to sift through a barrage of old articles. A large segment of COVIDSalon aims to help COVID long-haulers. At the moment, only a small number of trials are focusing on long-haulers. James also highlights drugs like fluvoxamine that have alleviated long-term symptoms in a test of COVID-19 patients, plus others such as the nutritional supplement GlyNAC, which is worth watching but is still in very early-stage trials. The way that long-haulers have organized throughout the pandemic—discussing their symptoms in Facebook and Slack groups, and pushing medical professionals to pay attention to their ailments—echoes the patient advocacy that James helped popularize during the AIDS epidemic. Through publications such as ATN, many people with AIDS knew as much about the latest niche medical findings as licensed doctors did. “I think that’s the same with the long-haulers. Everyone is learning about the long-term consequences of this in real time.”

Tetris revolution

The improvements have added up. To qualify for the 2020 C.T.W.C., players had to achieve a near max-out within 2 hours. This standard of play left behind veterans who had qualified in each of the previous 10 years. Jonas, with his 1 max-out in qualification, entered the tournament ranked 31th among 64. Joseph, having scored a world-record 12 max-outs, came in as the No. 1 seed. By the quarter-final, the entire old guard had vanished. The remaining players were all of the YouTube generation, with many explicitly crediting its algorithm for introducing them to classic Tetris.

We made oxygen on Mars

An experiment on board the Mars Perseverance rover designed to produce breathable oxygen from carbon dioxide has been switched on and is working! On April 20 it produced 5 grams of oxygen — not a huge amount, but it’s designed to make as much as 10 grams per hour, and this is the very first time oxygen has been converted from native air on another planet. MOXIE by itself can’t produce that much, but again it’s not designed to actually do that, it’s just to make sure the tech works. Still, just 4 MOXIEs could keep a human breathing on Mars. That first amount it made, 5 grams, is enough for ~10 minutes worth of breathing for a single person.