mic drop

Pay very close attention to the last few minutes of this show.

geo/bio polymers finally getting love in mainstream science

Science | ‘Frankenstein’ material can self-heal, reproduce

Life is at the heart of much of our material world. We make two-by-four beams from wood, ethanol from corn, and textiles from cotton. But bricks? Researchers have now created a form of concrete that not only comes from living creatures but—given the right inputs—can turn one brick into two, two into four, and four into eight. Although the new material won’t build self-assembling houses anytime soon, it could soon lead to building components that can heal themselves when damaged. The living concrete could even offer Mars-bound astronauts a way to build structures from local materials plus a few adventurous microbes.

The new concrete is the latest addition to the burgeoning field of engineered living materials (ELMs), in which organisms—typically bacteria—are added to inanimate materials to enable them to sense, communicate, and even respond to their environments. In recent years, researchers have created ELMs that sense pressure, kill dangerous bacteria, and sense light. But those materials are usually thin films grown atop structural supports.


For this project, Wil Srubar, a materials scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and his colleagues wanted to engineer life into a bulk structural material. To do so, they turned to a hearty photosynthetic cyanobacterial species in the genus Synechococcus. They mixed the cyanobacterium with sand and a hydrogel that helped retain water and nutrients. The mix provided structural support to the bacteria, which—as they grew—lay down calcium carbonate, similar to the way some ocean creatures create shells. When dried, the resulting material was as strong as cement-based mortar. “It looks like a Frankenstein-type material,” Srubar says. “That’s exactly what we’re trying to create, something that stays alive.”

business card linux computer

thirtythreeforty.net | My Business Card Runs Linux

I'm an embedded systems engineer. I spend a lot of my free time looking for things I could use in future designs, or things that tickle one of my fancies.

One of those things is cheap Linux-capable computers, the cheaper the better. So I started diving into the very deep rabbit hole of obscure processors.

I thought to myself, “These processors are nearly cheap enough to give away.” After a while I hit upon the idea of making a barebones Linux board in a business card form factor.

As soon as I had the idea I thought it would be pretty cool to do. I have seen electronic business cards before, with various fun features including emulating USB flash drives, blinkenlights, or even wireless transceivers. I have never seen one running Linux, however.


So I built one.

japanese children refuse public school

bbc news | Why so many Japanese children refuse to go to school

In Japan, more and more children are refusing to go to school, a phenomenon called "futoko". As the numbers keep rising, people are asking if it's a reflection of the school system, rather than a problem with the pupils themselves.

ebola vaccine

ABC News | Ebola vaccine approved by FDA

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has for the first time approved a vaccine for the prevention of the deadly Ebola virus disease.

The agency announced the approval of Ervebo, a single-dose, injectable vaccine manufactured by American pharmaceutical company Merck. The announcement, made Thursday, comes a month after the European Union and the World Health Organization, the global health arm of the United Nations, both approved the Ebola vaccine.


Ebola cases are very rare in the United States. Those that have occurred have been the result of people getting infected in other countries and then travelling to the United States, or health workers falling ill after treating Ebola patients.

digital computers =/=> consciousness

MIT News | Nature can help solve optimization problems

A low-cost analog circuit based on synchronizing oscillators could scale up quickly and cheaply to beat out digital computers.

with that much lead time, i could take my zinc supplements

Nextgov | Military Algorithm Can Predict Illness 48 Hours Before Symptoms Show

The program lead says future troops might be deployed with wearables like watches or chest straps that will know when they are getting sick and how long it will take them to get better.

uh, yes and yes?

Wired | Trying to Plant a Trillion Trees Won't Solve Anything

We’re not going to stop climate change with just seedlings and fancy agriculture. We also need to reduce emissions.

still not economical

Green Car Congress | New process produces high-octane synthetic fuel from low-octane Fischer-Tropsch gasoline

In recent years, interest in the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis has increased significantly and thus it makes possible to produce synthetic motor fuels by using alternative energy resources as raw materials such as natural gas, coal, and biomass. The resulting product, which is commonly called synthetic crude oil, is a mixture of light and medium distillates with a boiling point of up to 350–360 °C. To obtain commercial gasoline from synthetic crude oil requires costly and multi-stage refining in the processes of hydrogenation, isomerization and reforming, which greatly complicates the entire chain of production of commercial gasoline. In addition, the industrial technology of upgrading the Fischer-Tropsch gasoline fraction (reducing the amount of olefinic hydrocarbons, as well as increasing detonation resistance) is a multistage process that exceeds the processing of straight-run gasoline obtained from petroleum feedstock in the number of stages.

In this regard, a significant resource base is unclaimed for economic reasons. The development of a fundamentally new technology for upgrading gasoline Fischer-Tropsch will ensure energy security and diversification of raw materials for the production of motor gasoline.

sometimes we forget how vulnerable we are to the little things

MIT News | New process could make hydrogen peroxide available in remote places

Hydrogen peroxide, a useful all-purpose disinfectant, is found in most medicine cabinets in the developed world. But in remote villages in developing countries, where it could play an important role in health and sanitation, it can be hard to come by.

Now, a process developed at MIT could lead to a simple, inexpensive, portable device that could produce hydrogen peroxide continuously from just air, water, and electricity, providing a way to sterilize wounds, food-preparation surfaces, and even water supplies.

light in the dark

Joule | Generating Light from Darkness

A large fraction of the world’s population still lacks access to electricity, particularly at night when photovoltaic systems no longer operate. The ability to generate electricity at night could be a fundamentally enabling capability for a wide range of applications, including lighting and low-power sensors. Here, we demonstrate a low-cost strategy to harness the cold of space through radiative cooling to generate electricity with an off-the-shelf thermoelectric generator. Unlike traditional thermoelectric generators, our device couples the cold side of the thermoelectric module to a sky-facing surface that radiates heat to the cold of space and has its warm side heated by the surrounding air, enabling electricity generation at night. We experimentally demonstrate 25 mW/m 2 of power generation and validate a model that accurately captures the device’s performance. Further, we show that the device can directly power a light emitting diode, thereby generating light from the darkness of space itself.

g.o.d. smart materials

MIT News | Using CRISPR to program gels with new functions

The CRISPR genome-editing system is best-known for its potential to correct disease-causing mutations and add new genes into living cells. Now, a team from MIT and Harvard University has deployed CRISPR for a completely different purpose: creating novel materials, such as gels, that can change their properties when they encounter specific DNA sequences.


The researchers showed they could use CRISPR to control electronic circuits and microfluidic devices, and to release drugs, proteins, or living cells from gels. Such materials could be used to create diagnostic devices for diseases such as Ebola, or to deliver treatments for diseases such as irritable bowel disease.

this is curious... Bank Forgives Debt - armageddon is nigh!

CBC | 'It's crazy': Chase Bank forgiving all debt owed by its Canadian credit card customers

Finally, a good-news story about credit card debt.

U.S.-based Chase Bank is forgiving all outstanding debt owed by users of its two Canadian credit cards: the Amazon.ca Rewards Visa and the Marriott Rewards Premier Visa. The bank retired both cards last year and said it's wiping out cardholders' debt to complete its exit from the Canadian credit card market.

Affected customers can't believe their luck.

"I was sort of over the moon all last night, with a smile on my face," said Douglas Turner of Coe Hill, Ont., after learning he's off the hook for the $6,157 still owing on his now-defunct Amazon Visa. "I couldn't believe it."

After 13 years in the Canadian market, Chase decided to fold its two Visa cards in March 2018.


The bank — which is part of global financial services firm JPMorgan Chase & Co. — wouldn't say how many Canadians had signed up for the cards or how much debt was outstanding.

But it is likely that many cardholders were still paying down their debt, including Turner.

The Programmer's Stone (PDF)

accidental biological weapons release

Roll Call | House orders Pentagon to say if it weaponized ticks and released them

The House quietly voted last week to require the Pentagon inspector general to tell Congress whether the department experimented with weaponizing disease-carrying insects and whether they were released into the public realm — either accidentally or on purpose.

The unusual proposal took the form of an amendment that was adopted by voice vote July 11 during House debate on the fiscal 2020 defense authorization bill, which lawmakers passed the following day.

resistance is futile

c|net | Elon Musk's Neuralink will detail progress in computer-brain interface

Neuralink, Elon Musk's fourth and least visible company, will become a bit less secretive Tuesday with a livestreamed presentation about its technology to connect computers directly to human brains. Neuralink accepted applications from some folks to attend the San Francisco event to hear "a bit about what we've been working on the last two years," but the rest of us can tune in online at 8 p.m. PT Tuesday.

"Livestream details will be available on our website shortly before event start," Neuralink tweeted Sunday.


Neuralink, founded in 2016, is working on a way to let human brains communicate directly with computers. Goals include fast transfer rates and quick responses, but just establishing a connection and figuring out how to exchange useful information presents immense challenges.

daily wired posts 2019-06-20

what surprises lay hidden in the moon?

CBS News | Scientists discover previously unidentified mass beneath moon's surface

A previously unknown deposit of an unidentified physical substance larger than the size of Hawaii has been discovered beneath the surface of the moon. Scientists at Baylor University published a study detailing their findings of this "anomaly" beneath the moon's largest crater, at its South Pole. They believe the mass may contain metal carried over from an earlier asteroid crash.

According to the study — "Deep Structure of the Lunar South Pole-Aitken Basin" — which was published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters in April, the large mass of material was discovered beneath the South Pole-Aitken crater, an oval-shaped crater that is 2,000 kilometers (about 1,243 miles) wide and roughly 4 billion years old. According to Baylor University, the unidentified mass was discovered "hundreds of miles" beneath the basin and is "weighing the basin floor downward by more than half a mile."


"Imagine taking a pile of metal five times larger than the Big Island of Hawaii and burying it underground. That's roughly how much unexpected mass we detected," said lead author Peter B. James, Ph.D., assistant professor of planetary geophysics in Baylor's College of Arts & Sciences.

best get on it apple

Bloomberg | Apple’s U.S. iPhones Can All Be Made Outside of China If Needed

Apple Inc. has a backup plan if the U.S.-China trade war gets out of hand.


The Cupertino, Calif.-based company’s primary manufacturing partner has enough capacity to make all iPhones bound for the U.S. outside of China if necessary, according to a senior executive at Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. The Taiwanese contract manufacturer now makes most of the smartphones in the Chinese mainland.

transmutation

Science | Type A blood converted to universal donor blood with help from bacterial enzymes

On any given day, hospitals across the United States burn through some 16,500 liters (35,000 pints) of donated blood for emergency surgeries, scheduled operations, and routine transfusions. But recipients can’t take just any blood: For a transfusion to be successful, the patient and donor blood types must be compatible. Now, researchers analyzing bacteria in the human gut have discovered that microbes there produce two enzymes that can convert the common type A into a more universally accepted type. If the process pans out, blood specialists suggest it could revolutionize blood donation and transfusion.

“This is a first, and if these data can be replicated, it is certainly a major advance,” says Harvey Klein, a blood transfusion expert at the National Institutes of Health’s Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, who was not involved with the work.


People typically have one of four blood types—A, B, AB, or O—defined by unusual sugar molecules on the surfaces of their red blood cells. If a person with type A receives type B blood, or vice versa, these molecules, called blood antigens, can cause the immune system to mount a deadly attack on the red blood cells. But type O cells lack these antigens, making it possible to transfuse that blood type into anyone. That makes this “universal” blood especially important in emergency rooms, where nurses and doctors may not have time to determine an accident victim’s blood type.