I will keep away from political hollering, this weekend. Particularly as we’re all staring with bemusement, terror — and ideally popcorn — on the weird shows of toddler-hysteria foaming from D.C. The truth is, some clever heads suggest that we reply by rebuilding our establishments – and confidence – from the bottom up. And therefore:
#1 I gave a collection of lectures about Nationwide Resilience for the Naval Postgraduate Faculty, that resulted in this interview about uncared for and wanted boosts to RESILIENCE.
#2 And in a associated improvement: philanthropist Craig Newmark helps a program in search of to get fashionable residents extra concerned in ‘resilience.’ An amazing endeavor, wanted now greater than ever.
#3 Additionally resilience associated! As a member of CERT – the nationwide Neighborhood Emergency Response Group I urge of us to think about taking the coaching. As a bottom-level ‘responder’ no less than you may know some issues to do, if wanted. *
*The FEMA web site has been experiencing… ‘issues’… however I hope this hyperlink works. Luckily the coaching is usually finished by native hearth departments, however your badge and equipment could come slower than regular.
#4 Giving blood commonly could not simply be saving the lives of different folks, it is also enhancing your personal blood’s well being at a genetic stage, in line with a brand new examine. A global staff of researchers in contrast samples from 217 males who had given blood greater than 100 occasions of their lives, to samples from 212 males who had donated lower than 10 occasions, to search for any variance in blood well being. “Actions that put low ranges of stress on blood cell manufacturing enable our blood stem cells to resume and we predict this favors mutations that additional promote stem cell development quite than illness.” (Effectively, I simply gave my 104th pint, so…)
#5 Nothing prepares you for the longer term higher than Science Fiction! I began an internet org TASAT as a manner for geeky SF readers to possibly sometime save the world!
…And now let’s get to science! After a few bulletins…
== Yeah, you’ll have heard this already, however… ==
Okay it is simply a puff piece…that I am unable to resist sharing with of us, about an honor from my alma mater, Caltech. It is seldom that I get Imposter’s Syndrome. However on this case, nicely, innumerable classmates there have been manner smarter than me!
Additionally a few job bulletins: First, Prof. Ted Parson and different buddies at UCLA Regulation Faculty are in search of a challenge director at UCLA’s new Emmett Institute on Local weather Change and the Atmosphere, with a deal with authorized and social facets of ‘geo-engineering’… the big selection of proposals (from absurd to plausibly useful) to maybe partially ease or palliate the consequences of human-generated greenhouse air pollution on the planet’s important and life-giving stability.
To see some such proposals illustrated in fiction, have a look at Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry For the Future (spreading cooling atmospheric aerosols) or in my very own novel Earth (ocean fertilization.)
And now… science forges forward!
== Life… as we now understand it… ==
Complexity can get… difficult and nowhere extra so than in braaaains! For some years, probably the most intricate nervous techniques ever modeled by science had been forms of worms or nematodes (e.g. C.elegans). However advances speed up, and now a whole mind mannequin – not simply of neurons however their detectable connections (synapses) has been accomplished for the vastly bigger mind of the Drosophila fruit fly! (Together with discovery of a number of new varieties of neurons.)
And positive, I keep that neurons and synapses aren’t sufficient. We’re gonna want to know the murky, non-linear contributions of intra-cellular ‘computational’ components. Nonetheless… superb stuff. And the method will get lots quicker.
In the meantime… Allorecognition in nature is a person creature’s distinction between self and different. Most usually in immune response to invasion of the self-boundary by that which is non-self. Nearly all Earthly life varieties exhibit this trait, with stong tenacity. An exception, described within the early 20202, is Mnemiopsis or the “sea walnut,” a form of comb jelly (‘jellyfish’) that may be divided arbitrarily and mix with different partial mnemiopses, merging into a brand new complete.
(And elsewhere I dive into how this allorecognition – or distinguishment of self – is totally important to incorportate into synthetic intelligence! As a result of solely in that manner can we apply incentives for AI to include notions of reciprocity that underlay each Nature and Civilization!)
How do tardigrades survive warmth, chilly, desiccation and even vacuum?
“LUCA, a typical ancestor to all organisms and never the primary life kind, has been a controversial matter. Fossil proof goes again so far as 3.4 billion years, but this examine proposes that LUCA may be near being the identical age because the Earth. The genetic code and DNA replication, that are two of the important organic processes, may need developed virtually instantly after the planet was shaped.”
== Bizarre Earth life! ==
Sea Robins have the physique of a fish, the wings of a hen, and a number of legs like a crab, in what seems to be one other case of “carcinization” – life continuously re-inventing the crab physique plan. Just like the Qheuens in Brightness Reef. And yeah, it appears possible that the most typical type of higher advanced life we’ll discover on the market will appear to be crabs.
Marine biologists in Denmark found a solo male dolphin within the Baltic who seems to be speaking to himself. They analyzed hundreds of sounds made by the dolphin and what they realized.
In 1987, a gaggle of killer whales off the northwestern coast of North America briefly donned salmon “hats,” carrying lifeless fish on their heads for weeks. Lately, a male orca generally known as J27, or “Blackberry,” was photographed in Washington’s Puget Sound carrying a salmon on his head.
(I’m tempted to quote Vladimir Sorokin’s chilling/terrific brief scifi novel – in a league with Orwell – Day of The Oprichnik – during which the revived czarist Oprachina regime-enforcers go about city every day with a canine’s head on the roofs of their vehicles, and all visitors veers apart for them, as in olden occasions. (“That is your affiliation, this time, Brin?” Hey, it’s the occasions. And a very nice – and terrifying – novel.)
Past life and dying… Researchers discovered that pores and skin cells extracted from deceased frog embryos had been in a position to adapt to the brand new circumstances of a petri dish in a lab, spontaneously reorganizing into multicellular organisms known as xenobots. These organisms exhibited behaviors that reach far past their unique organic roles. Particularly, these xenobots use their cilia – small, hair-like buildings – to navigate and transfer via their environment, whereas in a dwelling frog embryo, cilia are sometimes used to maneuver mucus.
Two injured jellyfish can merge to make one wholesome one? Seems like a Sheckley story the place that is the precise level of intercourse, attempting to make a mighty beast with two backs.
== Even farther again! ==
3.2 billion years in the past, life was simply perking alongside on Earth and starved of vitamins… which had been apparently supplied in large generosity by an asteroidal impression vastly larger than the much-later dinosaur bane.
Evaluation of 700 genomes of micro organism, archaea, and fungi — excluding eukaryotes similar to vegetation and animals that developed later — have discovered 57 gene households… although I feel utilizing fashionable genetic drift charges to converge these households backward could also be a bit iffy. Nonetheless, if life began that early… and survived the Thea impression… then it implies that life begins very simply, and could also be vastly pervasive within the universe.
And probably even larger information. Genes themselves could compete with one another like particular person entities, in considerably predictable methods: “…interactions between genes make facets of evolution considerably predictable and moreover, we now have a software that enables us to make these predictions…”.
== And possibly beef must be a… condiment? ==
“Immediately, virtually half the world’s liveable land is used for agriculture. Of that, an astounding 80% is devoted to livestock grazing and animal feed. This implies 40% of the planet’s complete liveable land is devoted to animal merchandise, even supposing meat, dairy and farmed fish mixed present simply 17% of humanity’s energy. “Solely a fraction of agricultural land (16%) is used to develop the crops that we eat immediately, with an extra 4% for issues like biofuels, textiles and tobacco. Simply 38% of liveable land is forested, a slice of the pie that continues to shrink, primarily in numerous tropical areas the place the best variety of species reside.”
In the meantime…. This text talks about new methods to make meals “from skinny air.” Or, extra precisely, ‘precision fermentation’ from hydrogen and human and agricultural waste.
== And eventually…
An attention-grabbing interview with genetic paleontologist David Reich. 60,000 years in the past the explosion of recent homo sapiens from Africa appeared to occur virtually in a single day.
As Reich factors out, we had two new issues. 1. Canine and a couple of. a capability to reprogram ourselves culturally.
There adopted – at an accelerating tempo – a collection of revolutions in our software units, cultural patterns and flexibility. After all, I talked about this extensively in each Earth and Existence.
