Tech Tuesday 3/5/19 – ‘I Have a Cold, And It Sucks’ Edition
Yes, I have a cold, it sucks, so be glad I knocked out this much. Excuse me while I use my neti pot and worship my new god, Sudafed.
TT01 – NCSU has a new fiber that is strong and stretchy. Not as strong as a steel cable, unfortunately. Gallium has a tensile strength of around 100 MPa, while steel is about 350 MPa, but still strong. The interesting bit is that the gallium core can carry an electrical current, until it breaks, which is a great way to spot damage, or potential damage to something else (e.g. if a wing flexed enough to break the cable running along it, it might be time to inspect the wing structure). The core can also be melted down and reformed while in the sheath (which has a higher melting point that the Gallium does), so you aren’t tossing it out just because the core broke.
TT02 – Speaking of Gallium, it can be used (along with Cerium) as a catalyst to cause CO2 to convert to a solid carbon form for easy sequestering. Or as a useful industrial material, or anything else except sending the gas up the flue.
TT03 – The first authorized CRISPR therapy is undergoing testing as a treatment for sickle cell.
TT04 – Tobacco may finally have a healthy use, as a factory for an immuno-suppressant protein that is otherwise notoriously difficult to produce.
TT05 – Kalashnikov rarely fails to deliver upon the promise of cheap, relatively effective weapons. Honestly though, does this surprise anyone? That someone was going to turn a cheap drone into a baby cruise missile, or that Kalashnikov would be one of the first to market one?
TT06 – From the “Learn Something New Every Day” department, I had no idea that a semi-identical twin was a possible thing.
TT07 – How do they deal with false positives? How does the system know the person actually intends to cross the road, and is not just walking by?
TT08 – Not only does this allow researchers to get around the DEA, it makes an awesome beer! (yes, I know it doesn’t have the THC, just the CBD).
TT09 – Printing a skin graft directly onto the patient.
TT10 – OK, yes, curing the mosquito of Malaria is probably better than trying to wipe the little bastards out, but I really want to just wipe the little bastards out.
TT11 – PET plastic is recyclable, but not very well. Which is unfortunate, because it’s a really popular plastic. However, while we may not be able to recycle a PET bottle into another PET bottle, we could recycle it into a PET composite fiber that we can use elsewhere.
TT12 – Volvo has decided it is tired of you driving it’s cars irresponsibly and has decided it’s not going to let you do that anymore.
TT13 – Spidersilk will shrink and twist when it gets wet. Just when you think we’ve run out of things to learn about the stuff…
TT14 – SpaceX has successfully docked an unmanned spacecraft to the ISS. Of course, the Crew Dragon, as the name suggests, need not be unmanned, but SpaceX does seem to have this whole ‘automation’ thing working for it.
TT15 – When you want a cat, but not a litterbox, MIT is working for you.
Photo by FlyingSinger 
Real, addictive, behind-the-counter Sudafed, or the peasant magic that they put on the shelves?
TT06 – Sociologists and behaviourists are going to be lined up around the block to put those kids into separate rooms and test them.
There’s also the phenomenon of mirror twins. If the fertilized egg splits immediately, you get identical twins. If it splits a few days later, you get mirror twins. If it splits later than that, you end up with conjoined twins.
And there’s a tribe in Nigeria with the highest rate of twins. People claim that it’s due to their diet (heavy in yams).Report
I don’t worship false gods.
Twinning is kind of a fascinating thing, so much going on.Report
Intermediate twins! I remember reading about this as a possibility in genetics class 20 years ago, very cool that they id’d them in the womb.Report
I don’t want to reduce the transmission rate from something appalling to something still appalling. I want to end Malaria. Eliminating the malaria mosquito ends vast amounts of human suffering and economic damage.
We’re going to wipe the little bastards out. Probably within 10 years. That’s 5 years to test our fancy new extermination technology and 5 more to spread it.
(The theory) https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/277651-new-gene-drive-can-wipe-out-disease-carrying-mosquitoes
(The reality) https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/02/20/693735499/scientists-release-controversial-genetically-modified-mosquitoes-in-high-securitReport
There are two critics quoted in this story. As near as I can tell, one has a degree in city planning, and the other is an architect and poet. I have nothing against laymen speaking out on issues, but couldn’t the author have found, say, a geneticist and a poet? or at least have pointed out the disparity in the qualifications of the two sides?Report
TT05: I admit that of late I’ve been thinking about a version of something like this, only jet powered and equipped with a vision system that can recognize jet engine intakes on airliners. And a dozen or two of them launched across the US at the same time some Monday morning…Report
Wouldn’t even need to be jet powered, just hidden along the approach and departure path. Have it rise up as the plane hits V2, and the intakes will do the rest for you.Report