TT01 – So now we’ve generated a bacterial genome with a computer, and synthesized the molecule in the lab. There is, as of yet, no organism with this genome. I can’t decide if we should place a moratorium of creating that organism until we have Super Heroes in place, or if said organism should just be used to create Super Heroes.
TT02 – Or if we should just stand ready with the Blue Light Special.
TT03 – Toyota wants you to design and build an electric vehicle, and they are going to let you mine their Intellectual Property to do it.
TT04 – Old age isn’t exactly a disease, but anti-bodies could be useful in keeping the brain humming along as we age.
TT05 – Or maybe it is just bad teeth?
TT06 – The thing about Missing Links is that there is always the possibility that we will find them, which then makes the person who tries to use them to discredit evolution look like an even bigger idiot.
TT07 – Giant iceberg the size of NYC is about to break away from Antarctica! Global Warming is gonn… Oh, wait, not this time, this one is just part of the normal life cycle of Antarctic ice. I’m kinda hoping someone parks a bunch of drones over the fault and gets a ton of time lapse video of the event.
TT08 – Speaking of Climate Change, we will need to figure out ways to adapt to rising oceans, like how to live on them. No, this is not exactly Sea Steading, which is largely a political movement. This is figuring out the technological infrastructure needed before anyone could even hope to try a Sea Stead.
TT09 – LEGO just keeps on being relevant. The bricks and elements are so utterly ubiquitous that this works. The cost of the system can simple be the hub and motors, because everyone has a ton of LEGOs sitting around the house.
TT10 – Transparent wood can be modified to store heat. Kinda cool, not entirely certain how valuable this will be…
TT11 – Potentially a new, safer rocket fuel is on the horizon. Now, to be clear, these aren’t the ‘get to orbit’ rocket fuels, they are the ‘tool around in orbit’ rocket fuels. Still, hydrazine is just awful stuff (like cause all kinds of nasty medical problems unrelated to the whole ‘being lit on fire’ issue), so anything we can replace it with that is safer for everyone to work with is a win.
TT12 – The first private mission to the moon is in orbit around the moon and set to make landing in a few days. It’s just a probe, but it’s a first for Israel and private enterprise.
TT13 – When I think of public transit, the bus is still what I consider the backbone of any system. Trains can carry more, and are great for the high volume runs, but buses can handle most of the last mile problem, at least when it comes to your normal daily commute. China is going for the best of both.
TT14 – I’ve mentioned Wayve before, but this time we get a look under the learning hood, so to speak. The car is learning how to drive not by being told what to do, but by being told (for certain values of ‘told’) what not to do.
TT15 – The wing does change shape, but it’s more on the small scale, rather than large scale changes. The overall planform of the wing is relatively constant, but you could make small changes to the airfoil shape of the wing anywhere along the span, which would allow you to maximize the efficiency of the wing across the entire operating envelope. It would also eliminate the need for control surfaces, and possible even the flaps. And it looks kinda cool.
TT00 – I can honestly say, “I knew her when…”. She used to work for me back when I was a manager at the University. One of my favorites as well, because she was a good employee and a generally good person.
[TT08] Pictures look cool. I have one prediction and one question:
Prediction: This will be developed into a super-luxury hotel without any of the ecological concerns… it will be costly, inefficient, a power and resource hog and it will be magnificent.
Question: How does it survive extreme oceanic waves/storms? Especially tethered in proximity? I barely grasp how giant oil platforms can ride out storms… how would you manage a city of hundreds of platforms that need to be in roughly the same place after the storm as before? Maybe this is the trivially easy part of the engineering challenge, but show me the pictures of riding out the 30 foot swell.Report
To your question: Location, location, location!
Oil rigs ride out storms by being anchored to the bottom and then elevated high enough that your normal storm swell won’t touch the main platform.
A community like this would require sea walls set further out to break the incoming waves up. The trick isn’t really stopping the waves (since you won’t), but altering them by trading amplitude for wavelength. The city won’t survive 30′ tall waves that are here and gone in a minute, but it could survive waves that are only 5′ tall and slowly roll through.Report
It turns out that North Sea oil platforms have to face waves up to 100 feet high. Until recently such waves were thought to be physically impossible, just crazy sea stories, but it turns out they’re rather common under certain conditions.
Youtube has a couple good documentaries on “rogue waves” that are worth watching.Report
TT05: Bad gums, not bad teeth. Two different types of bacteria are responsible for tooth decay and for gingivitis. There’s a statistical link between gum disease and heart disease/strokes as well. The gingivitis bacteria have been found in coronary artery plaques, although no one has tied down whether there’s a causal link there.Report
Ach! You are right, it’s gums. I was looking at the picture in the article and my brain thought bad teeth.Report
Should be a warning about that picture. I’m seeing dead things, and hearing a distant lament for Shane MacGowan’s biters.Report
I’m glad you clarified that so far it’s just a statistical link. A paper from last year that looked at health outcomes from a million Koreans (http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2047487318759112) demonstrated that after adjusting for confounders like smoking/drinking, the gum/heart disease link went away (or rather, it failed to reject the null hypothesis that there was no link).Report
But the correlation is curious. Perhaps it’s nothing, but it is curious nonetheless.Report
TT12: I believe it was Joseph Campbell who, in a fit of anti-Semitism, said that “the moon would be a good place for the Jews”.Report
Gosh it would be nice if we could get through a week around here without someone wanting to repeat some piece of anti-Semitism.
(Pinky, I don’t at all assume you are prejudiced against Jewish people, in fact I assume you aren’t, and I get the joke you were making. In fact it’s kind of an “in yer eye, Joseph Campbell!” joke, ennit? But y’all don’t know how often people who aren’t Jewish just happen to want to talk about this stuff on here – most of which “discussing” is quite transparently awful and gets deleted or banned or doesn’t get through the filters – and I’m so tired of it.
And if I’m this tired of it, I can only imagine how tired of it our Jewish cmmenters and writers are.)Report
TT15: You can certainly build a lightweight wing out of lightweight triangular struts, but aeroelasticity is a harsh teacher.
One somewhat related idea is to take a basic thin rib as a structural component, and then line the top and bottom with servos and tiny jack screws that run to the true upper and lower aluminum or composite surface, controlling the airfoil shape as a spline. It might not be workable for a flight vehicle, but should certainly be an easy way to run a whole lot of airfoil tests in a wind tunnel.Report
This is interesting.
Science Daily article on a two-year autism treatment study
New wonder drug? Nope. Poo transfer, on the theory that gut microbes are the root of the problem.Report