Tag: science

DNA memory

When stored on most conventional storage devices—USB pens, DVDs, or magnetic tapes—data starts to degrade after 50 years or so. DNA could hold data error-free for millennia, thanks to the inherent stability of its double helix and Reed-Solomon codes. If kept in the clement European air outside their laboratory in Zurich, they estimate a ballpark figure of around 2000 years. But place these glass beads in the dark at -18C, the conditions of the Svalbard Global Seed Bank on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, and you could save your photos, music, and eBooks for 2M.

and using CRISPR to store movies:

We use the CRISPR–Cas system to encode the pixel values of black and white images and a short movie into the genomes of a population of living bacteria. In doing so, we push the technical limits of this information storage system and optimize strategies to minimize those limitations. They also uncover underlying principles of the CRISPR–Cas adaptation system, including sequence determinants of spacer acquisition that are relevant for understanding both the basic biology of bacterial adaptation and its technological applications. This work demonstrates that this system can capture and stably store practical amounts of real data within the genomes of populations of living cells.

another approach:

Roswell is bringing the $100 genome that can scale rapidly and also deliver Exabyte data storage.

Malaria vaccine

Delays for malaria vaccine. First european approval, then WHO approval, then per-country approval in Africa. No wonder we can’t have nice things with that much redundancy.
2021-04-24: Malaria Vaccine 77% effective

A year-long trial of R21 in Burkina Faso has shown 77% efficacy, which is by far the record, and which opens the way to potentially relieving a nearly incalculable burden of disease and human suffering. This is definitely the best malaria vaccine candidate the world has yet seen, and that is unequivocal good news. Congratulations and thanks to the widespread group of researchers who have made this possible – and especially, thanks to 450 infants and toddlers in central Burkina Faso and to their parents. You have done the world a great service.

2023-07-03: Many vaccines are in development, with different approaches.

Most vaccines aim to reduce malaria deaths and illness. But to eradicate malaria altogether, scientists will also have to find a way to stop transmission. Sporozoite- and merozoite-targeting vaccines could help to reduce transmission by preventing infections or reducing the number of parasites in the blood. Duffy, however, is working on an altogether different vaccine that makes transmission its main aim — one that can destroy the malaria parasite inside the mosquito.
Inside people, a small subset of merozoites differentiate into male and female gametocytes, which the parasite needs to complete the sexual stage of its life cycle. When a mosquito feeds on an infected person, it ingests red blood cells that contain the parasites’ gametocytes. These gametocytes emerge as gametes in the mosquito’s gut, mate, and eventually give rise to fresh sporozoites ready to infect the next person.
The idea behind Duffy’s vaccine is to take out the gametes by stimulating the human immune system to generate antibodies against a protein called Pfs230 that gametes display on their surface. A feeding mosquito will then take up not just the gametocytes, but also those antibodies. When gametes emerge from red blood cells in the mosquito’s gut, the theory goes, the antibodies will be there to destroy them before they can complete their development

Kazakhstan Sleeping Villages

tl;dr: no known cause

Radiation. Government conspiracy. Mass hysteria. There are plenty of theories as to why the residents of a tiny Kazakh mining region keep falling asleep for days at a time, but no answers. Deputy Prime Minister Berdibek Saparbaev announced that the mystery of the sleeping sickness had been solved: It was the specific combination of reduced levels of oxygen and heightened levels of carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons. But as usual, rumors overshadowed reality. “The real moment is that we came to the conclusion that there are natural processes that lead to the combination of these kinds of factors and that specifically this combination of factors could give this effect. I can’t say for certain now. Our assumption is that all 3 components must coincide. When all 3 exist, that’s when people will start falling and sleeping again.” He had searched for similar cases in scientific literature, but so far had found nothing. He suggested the illness would return in September when people started to heat their homes.

Computer-Aided Explanation

the point where AI is helping understanding directly isn’t that far off.

For instance, might it be possible to get the statistical models of language to deduce the existence of verbs and nouns and other parts of speech? That is, perhaps we could actually see verbs as emergent properties of the underlying statistical model. Even better, might such a deduction actually deepen our understanding of existing linguistic categories? For instance, imagine that we discover previously unknown units of language

Cooling clothing

Air-conditioning uses 5% of all the electricity produced in the US Not only are most clothes opaque to visible light, they are also opaque to infrared. This traps infrared radiation, causing the body to heat up. new materials would provide the equivalent of at least 23W of cooling. Crucially these materials should still be opaque at visible wavelengths.

Plankton evolves eye

A single-celled marine plankton has evolved a miniature version of an eye to help see its prey better. It’s an amazingly complex structure for a single-celled organism to have evolved. It contains a collection of sub-cellular organelles that look very much like the lens, cornea, iris and retina of multicellular eyes found in humans and other larger animals.

First Peoples

The earliest skeletons, especially in Brazil, look like Australo-Melanesians. Long skulls. If population Y were almost entirely standard Amerindian, with only a smidgen of Australo-Melanesian ancestry, they would have looked like Amerindians. On the other hand, if the original settlers of the Americas were mostly or entirely Australo-Melanesian (or more exactly something vaguely related to those existing populations) they would have those long, narrow skulls. This is the Paleoamerican model – and if true, it means that an Onge-like population arrived first, and that the incoming Amerinds almost completely wiped out them out later, with here and there a bit of admixture.