Very early days, but there’s some interesting stuff being worked on – including roads that detect traffic accidents or power streetlamps from the vibration of traffic.
Originally shared by Singularity Hub
The Smart Road Tech That’s Making Driving Faster, Safer, And Just Better https://suhub.co/2Mugb58
Science is a thing we need more of, especially in public policy.
Originally shared by Kam-Yung Soh
“Housing, IVF treatment, species monitoring, special needs education and road safety policies are just a few of the life-defining issues where affected communities struggle repeatedly to get decision-makers to pay attention to the evidence. These groups often run ahead of government in engaging expertise, self-educating and gathering data so decisions can be reasoned on the facts. For example, by demonstrating the effects of “mini-Holland” street schemes, the London Cycling Campaign has rebuffed claims they cause gridlock. The beekeepers of Somerset have engaged Exeter University to monitor hornet invasions and build a databank.
We are not living in a “post-truth” society. We only need to look around at the many people and groups from all walks of life who are investigating claims and marshalling evidence to work out the nature of problems and how to tackle them. They expect parliament to be doing the same.
That is why the first “evidence week” in the UK parliament, opening on Monday, is not some esoteric conversation between analysts and MPs but a national victory. Community groups from all over the UK will share personal stories of why evidence matters to them and others like them. A gym instructor is raising the absence of standards in claims about supplements; Aberdeen Multicultural Centre thinks evidence on climate change has cut through its community’s differences; Men’s Shed in Sheffield is asking for better knowledge about loneliness in older men.
They are calling for parliament to make good use of evidence and expertise to shape regulations and to test them in the light of new information.”
Because this is Peter Diamandis, whose glasses are so rose-coloured it’s a wonder he doesn’t walk into walls, I automatically assume that the wonderful picture he paints here is massively overhyped.
With that caveat, this is an interesting idea: use massive computational resources and machine learning to identify and even generate drug configurations which match particular diseases.
Originally shared by Singularity Hub
How Artificial Intelligence Could Help Us Live Longer https://suhub.co/2KaksgK
:: Colorado State University polymer chemists have taken another step toward a future of high-performance, biorenewable, biodegradable plastics. Publishing in Nature Communications, the team led by Professor of Chemistry Eugene Chen describes chemical synthesis of a polymer called bacterial poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) – or P3HB. The compound shows early promise as a substitute for petroleum plastics in major industrial uses. P3HB is a biomaterial, typically produced by bacteria, algae and other microorganisms, and is used in some biomedical applications. Its high production costs and limited volumes render the material impractical in more widespread commodity applications, however. ::
#chemistry #polymer
Some people dislike the idea of “worldbuilding”. While the distinction made in this piece is more of a spectrum than a binary, it does have a point.
Reviewers seldom mention the worldbuilding in my Gryphon Clerks series, which was mostly worked out in advance, in detail. Several reviewers have mentioned enjoying the depiction of the world of the Hand of the Trickster books, which I made up as I went along. I think there’s something to be said for both approaches.
Originally shared by Adafruit Industries
Worldbuilding or Worldconjuring? The Science Fiction and Fantasy Debate
via Electric Literature
In contrast to “worldbuilding,” I’ll offer the term “worldconjuring.” Worldconjuring does not attempt to construct a scale model in the reader’s bedroom. Worldconjuring uses hints and literary magic to create the illusion of a world, with the reader working to fill in the gaps. Worldbuilding imposes, worldconjuring collaborates.
Let me make a necessarily incomplete analogy to another platform. In painting, worldbuilding is like Renaissance art that attempts to create realistic figures even when they are cherubs, demons, or god. Worldconjuring is a spectrum of other techniques: Matisse implying dancing figures with a few swoops of the brush, Picasso creating a chaos of objects to summon the horrors of Guernica, Magritte shattering our vision with impossible scenes. We should enjoy realistic paintings, but we shouldn’t impose their standards on every school of art.
Worldbuilding is The Silmarillion, worldconjuring is ancient myths and fairy tales. (In fairy tales, we don’t learn the construction techniques of the witch’s gingerbread house or the import/export routes of evil dwarves.) Worldbuilding is a thirty page explanation of the dining customs of beetle-shaped aliens, worldconjuring is Gregor Samsa turning into a beetle in the first sentence without any other fuss.
Read more
No wires, no pipelines.
Originally shared by Singularity Hub
Pulling Water, Fuel, and Power From Thin Air Is Getting Practical https://suhub.co/2JN9pur
A sobering reminder that any form of power can be used for oppression and justified as “protection”.
Via Kymberlyn Reed.
Originally shared by EDD The Midnight Son
Good read!
By my count I’ve read 58 of Amazon’s 100 Science Fiction and Fantasy Books to Read in a Lifetime. Many of them I enjoyed; some I did not.
I’ve started some others and not wanted to continue. I own a couple more and have never got to them because they’re not really my thing. There are others that I know I won’t like, so I’ve never even tried.
I don’t think I noticed any of them that I’d never considered reading.
I think what I’m saying is: it’s OK to have your taste and not like everything that other people consider amazing. And this is pretty much a list of the usual suspects.
That headline, tho.
Originally shared by Arduino
This teenage Bitcoin millionaire designed a fully functional Dr. Octopus exoskeleton for a 10-year-old Marvel fan who suffers from hypermobility.
(via All3DP)
:: Male mice grow ovaries instead of testes if they are missing a small region of DNA that doesn’t contain any genes, finds a new paper published in Science. The study, led by researchers at the Francis Crick Institute, could help explain disorders of sex development in humans, at least half of which have an unknown genetic cause. ::