Monthly Archives: December 2017

Dec 19

Want a mechanism to get that neurological interface into your character’s brain in the first place?

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Want a mechanism to get that neurological interface into your character’s brain in the first place?

Here you go.

Originally shared by Neuroscience News

Nanotubes Go With the Flow to Penetrate Brain Tissue

Rice University researchers have invented a device that uses fast-moving fluids to insert flexible, conductive carbon nanotube fibers into the brain, where they can help record the actions of neurons.

The research is in Nano Letters. (full open access)

http://neurosciencenews.com/nanotubes-brain-implants-8205/

Dec 19

I have wondered why, if agriculture was so hard compared with hunting and gathering, so many people made the…

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I have wondered why, if agriculture was so hard compared with hunting and gathering, so many people made the transition.

Turns out it only works that way if you ignore the kind of work that, in industrial societies like those of the (male) theorists who proposed this, is done by unpaid women. (It was generally done by women in the hunter-gatherer societies, too, I suspect.)

The article mentions the “Man the Hunter” conference. I recently listened to an episode of the excellent food podcast Gastropod in which several female anthropologists pointed out that women also hunted in a number of societies, and that in general the conference ignored or diminished the role of women in making both hunter-gathering and agriculture work.

Originally shared by Winchell Chung

TL;DR: It was not a mistake if you take the amount of food preparation work in to account.

http://www.rachellaudan.com/2016/01/was-the-agricultural-revolution-a-terrible-mistake.html
Dec 18

Now that Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores and Compelling Science Fiction are SFWA-qualifying markets, I believe (if…

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Now that Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores and Compelling Science Fiction are SFWA-qualifying markets, I believe (if I’ve interpreted the rules correctly) that I’m within one story sale of being eligible to be an Active Member, and have qualified to be an Associate Member. I’ve sold four stories to qualifying markets (two to Cosmic Roots, one to Compelling, and one to Daily Science Fiction), and the minimum for full membership is three sales, but I haven’t quite reached the 10,000-word total that’s also required; I’m at 8200.

I’m not actually going to join, since most of the member benefits are more applicable to Americans, and it’s not worth $90 or $100 to me to get a vote in the Nebulas. But it’s a yardstick of professional progress.

Dec 18

“The Victorian age is renowned for the wealth of inventions that helped create the modern era such as the telephone,…

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Originally shared by Irina T.

“The Victorian age is renowned for the wealth of inventions that helped create the modern era such as the telephone, the typewriter, the bicycle, the electric light, the motor-car, moving pictures, the gramophone and the wireless. The inventor who most captured the public imagination was the American Thomas Edison, who became known as the ‘Wizard of Menlo Park’, after his factory in New Jersey.

[…]

This in turn inspired many writers. Magazines became filled with examples of lone, often eccentric inventors coming up with new, often useless, ideas. For instance amongst the inventions in Van Wagener’s Ways (1898) by W L Alden is a way to make cats fly so they can catch birds more easily, or the perfect balloon which however doesn’t descend. One of the more ingenious inventions was tantamount to the first cyborg in ‘The Ablest Man in the World’ (1879) by Edward Page Mitchell (1852-1927) where an inventor adapts the famous analytical engine invented by Charles Babbage to fit inside a man’s head and creates a genius. In 1890 the first convicted murderer was executed by the electric chair. In ‘The Los Amigos Fiasco’ (1892) Arthur Conan Doyle improved the electric chair rather too much so that the victim is supercharged with electricity and seems to have become immortal.”

Excerpted from the linked article

Inventing the future by Mike Ashley/Published 15 May 2014

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/inventing-the-future

Dec 18

Via Sarah Rios.

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Via Sarah Rios.

Originally shared by Ward Plunet

Local Roots: Farm-in-a-box coming to a distribution center near you

Eric and Matt could not be more earnest in their quest to feed the world. These two fresh-faced LA boys founded Local Roots four years ago. Their first purchases were broken-down, 40-foot shipping containers—this is apparently easy to do, since it is cheaper for shipping companies to just churn out new ones rather than fix broken ones. Local Roots then upcycles them into modular, shippable, customizable farms, each of which can grow as much produce as five acres of farmland. The idea is to supplement, not supplant, outdoor agriculture. And Ars got a look at one of these “farms” when it was set up in New York City recently. Every aspect of the TerraFarm, as the repurposed shipping containers have been dubbed, has been designed and optimized. The gently pulsing LED lights are purplish—apparently, that’s what lettuce likes—and the solution in which the plants are grown is clean and clear. The “farm” is bright and vibrant, and it smells great in there. This environment came about because Local Roots consulted a lot of experts. It employs horticulturalists, mechanical, electrical, and environmental engineers, software and AI developers, and data and nutrition scientists. The company does this to ensure that the growing conditions and produce are always optimal—both for the plants’ growth and their nutritional content.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/12/local-roots-farm-in-a-box-coming-to-a-distribution-center-near-you/

Dec 18

This is the kind of thing that tends to turn up in stories about forest elves.

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This is the kind of thing that tends to turn up in stories about forest elves. But you could take a biotech approach, too – programmable furniture trees in a world where people take their time.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/forest-furniture-england-midlands-tree-shaping-chairs-tables