An intensely rich biomass created over millennia from floating islands in a landlocked (endorheic) lake.
Monday, February 17, 2025
Saturday, February 15, 2025
Recycling wind turbine blades
Crushing up old wind turbine blades into material to make concrete stronger and more durable road surfaces.
Friday, February 14, 2025
Why US can't use the oil it produces
Interesting. When people say "We need energy independence," it actually can't happen...because we didn't have the kind of refineries to process the type of oil we produce, and there's way too much red tape and expense to change the types of refineries we already have.
Thursday, February 13, 2025
Smoking a beehive in a playground
Watch at 7:35 once the queen has been transferred, there a massive migration into the new hive.
Why does smoke calm bees?
Though scientists are not 100% certain, the smoke is believed to work in two main ways:
1) By blocking the bees' pheromone sensitivity. This means that the intruder alert/attack message isn't spread around the hive, reducing the risk of stings.
2) By stimulating the bees' instinctual response to wildfires. When bees believe a fire is coming, they fly into the hive and start gorging themselves on honey, in preparation for leaving the hive to search for a new home. So, the bees are contained and distracted while the beekeeper works.
Ahhh - coffee...in unique ways
I really like the idea of the Mexican coffee .
0:57 "Cafe de olla" (pot coffee) with sugar, cinnamon and orange peel.
Also, 2:01 coffee with cheese in Sweden.
And, 3:38 "egg coffee" in Viet Nam, developed when milk was rationed in the 1970's, with the whipped egg yolks providing a "fatty, sweet & savory" accompaniment to the coffee.
Inside Africa's food forest mega-project.
I find this kind of "desert greening" project fascinating - seems like a great humanitarian investment that really involves local people in their future.
2:28 "in the Sahel we find an age-old water harvesting structure called the "half moon." This simple structure has capacity to store this water [as it] soaks down into the ground."
8:12 "this diverse perennial poly-culture here provides types of foods that can be harvested in the dry season...
8:44 the "Great Green Wall" is actually rebuilding the ecological matrix of a region"
11:21 "when you do this type of land treatment, your actually helping areas [further] downstream because [not only is] this water soaking in them you also get this [arid] wind protection, so for every hectare that you restore, you actually affect three times that amount of land."
Eddie Murphy discovers what it's like to be a white man
Eddie Murphy finds that white people get bank loans for free and enjoy parties on the public bus.
Tuesday, February 11, 2025
Why do some bad traits evolve, and good ones don't?
I find this whole question intensely interesting. There are many interesting answers in the thread, but this one is pretty succinct.
During the process of selection, individuals having disadvantageous traits are weeded out. If the selection pressure isn't strong enough then mildly disadvantageous traits will continue to persist in the population.
So the reasons for why a trait is not evolved even though it may be advantageous to the organism, are:
There is no strong pressure against the individuals not having that trait. In other words lack of the trait is not strongly disadvantageous.
The trait might have a tradeoff which essentially makes no change to the overall fitness.
Not enough time has elapsed for an advantageous mutation to get fixed. This doesn't mean that the mutation had not happened yet. It means that the situation that rendered the mutation advantageous had arisen quite recently. Consider the example of a mutation that confers resistance against a disease. The mutation wouldn't be advantageous if there was no disease. When a population encounters the disease for the first time, then the mutation would gain advantage but it will take some time to establish itself in the population.
The rate for that specific mutation is low and therefore it has not yet happened. Mutation rates are not uniform across the genome and certain regions acquire mutations faster than the others. Irrespective of that, if the overall mutation rate is low then it would take a lot of time for a mutation to arise and until then its effects cannot be seen.
The specific trait is too genetically distant: it cannot be the result of a mutation in a single generation. It might, conceivably, develop after successive generations, each mutating farther, but if the intervening mutations are at too much of a disadvantage, they will not survive to reproduce and allow a new generation to mutate further away from the original population.
The disadvantage from not having the trait normally arises only after the reproductive stage of the individual's lifecycle is mostly over. This is a special case of "no strong pressure", because evolution selects genes, not the organism. In other words the beneficial mutation does not alter the reproductive fitness.
[Koinophilia is an evolutionary hypothesis proposing that during sexual selection, animals preferentially seek mates with a minimum of unusual or mutant features, including functionality, appearance and behavior.]
Koinophillia resulted in the trait being unattractive to females. Since most mutations are detrimental females don't want to mate with anyone with an obvious mutation, since there is a high chance it will be harmful to their child. Thus females instinctually find any obvious physical difference unattractive, even if it would have been beneficial. This tends to limit the rate or ability for physical differences to appear in a large & stable mating community.
Evolution is not a directed process and it does not actively try to look for an optimum. The fitness of an individual does not have any meaning in the absence of the selection pressure.
Monday, February 10, 2025
Protein folding by AI in intriguing sequential steps
Using AI to solve protein folding problems at an astoundingly faster rate than previously thought possible, suggests that other bedding human problems like climate change and cancer treatment and congenital disease might be similarly solved.
Friday, February 7, 2025
Saturday, February 1, 2025
Using AI to make management tasks specific
Interesting approach taking advantage of several AI engines in sequence to summarize specific journal articles that give evidence-based results rather than just spewing out generic platitudes.
Improving efficiency at container ports
6:30 since the pandemic, we are moving containers from ship to train 50% faster, and from ship to destination 75% faster.
Sunday, January 26, 2025
Robots manufacturing BMW cars
Incredibly well researched and presented. A really good overview of the limits and challenges of robotics in manufacturing. (And to think this guy is working on his Ph.D. at MIT at the same time! “I’m very dyslexic. I can’t read well, and my writing is atrocious,” he says.)
Friday, January 24, 2025
Nova Scotia sustainable salmon farm
A recirculating aquaculture farm outside Windsor, Nova Scotia, is improving upon open-pen ocean fish-pen farming by having tightly-controlled conditions, negating the need for antibiotics.
They are also using feed protein from 7:49 black soldier flies, which are raised on food waste, rather than feed made from other fish.
The problem with open-ocean fish pens is both the need for 20:42 ever-more-powerful antibiotics to prevent sea lice, and 29:53 dioxin effluent from paper mills that concentrates in the fish that feed the fish. It's farmed salmon, in particular, that has 23:04 far more pollutants than other farmed fish species. Farmed fish can also concentrate mercury from the fish pellets they eat.
The advantage of black soldier flies as a protein source is their unique ability to produce 4:15 large amounts of high-grade protein from waste food.
Black soldier flies can even be raised 6:22 without giving them water, ideal for desert farms, and the insect frass, or poop, can 11:17 fertilize plants making them stronger and more insect-resistant.
Wednesday, January 22, 2025
Donate highly-appreciated stocks to kids instead of selling them first
Donate stocks directly to kids - they interior the cash basis you had, and Katy tax at their taxation level when they sell the stocks (which is likely to be lower than your taxation level after all the capital gains.) https://www.schwab.com/learn/story/tax-smart-ways-to-gift-highly-appreciated-assets
Monday, January 20, 2025
Why do I do one of the world's most dangerous jobs?
Unexploded land-mine removal in central France.
8:17 "it will take several centuries of focused effort to completely remove the issue [of unexploded ordinances]. The sheer scale of the contamination combined with the dangerous and time-consuming nature of the work underscores the enduring nature of this conflict."
Sunday, January 19, 2025
How American airlines' maintenance crew preps for holiday travel
Saturday, January 18, 2025
Giant fish and shrimp farms adopting new technology
Using water treatment in closed containment flooding fish farms to increase yield and avoid diseases.
7:19 achieving 20-fold higher yields than neighboring farms.
L.A. shrimp farm optimizing growing conditions; 2:18 using carbon filtration to improve water quality. 5:18 filtration allows then to reuse 95% of the water in the tanks
This scientist automated on-site spectrophotometric-guided water treatment to optimize growing conditions for shrimp.
Monday, January 13, 2025
Monday, January 6, 2025
NYTimes: Why Coffee Prices Are Soaring (Again)
Coffee prices likely to go up and stay up for 2 years.
Climate change caused drought in Brazil.
Supply chain bottlenecks
Inflation
In general, suitable areas to grow coffee shrink every year for multiple reasons - climate change and deforestation.
Saturday, January 4, 2025
Take off shoes indoors to limit exposure to micro-plastics
The recent Washington Post article on taking shoes off in the house emphasizes the hygiene concerns associated with wearing shoes indoors.
* It highlights the fact that shoe bottoms carry a significant amount of bacteria and viruses. This includes harmful pathogens like E. coli and fecal matter, which can be tracked into the home and potentially spread illness.
* The article also acknowledges that this is a deeply ingrained, emotional subject with varying cultural norms.
Essentially, the Post article supports the "shoes off" policy based on hygiene and health considerations.
Spritz of water on coffee beans before grinding
Adding just half a mL of water to coffee before grinding dissipates static electricity, makes a better grind without clumping, and extracts more flavor when brewing.
Thursday, January 2, 2025
How using LSD led to the most important invention of our time: PCR.
https://youtu.be/zaXKQ70q4KQ?si=9zsAFC7gkMeuvZ9N
Coffee-infused concrete
Australian researchers are using recycled coffee grounds to create stronger (and more sustainable) concrete. They heat the coffee grounds in the absence of oxygen to create biochar, a charcoal-like substance that can replace up to 15% of the sand used in concrete. This not only makes the concrete stronger but also reduces the amount of cement needed, which in turn reduces greenhouse gas emissions.
* 60 million tons of coffee grounds are produced worldwide each year.
* 60-70% of coffee grounds end up in landfills, where it produces methane.
* The coffee-infused concrete is up to 30% stronger than traditional concrete.
Although it can only replace 15% of the sand in concrete, that important because, believe it or not, we're running out of sand.
3:19 Most sand eroded by wind is very round and doesn't help bind the concrete together. The more useful angular sand is in short supply. And 0:19 Concrete is the second biggest raw material consumed by humans after water.
Concrete production produces huge amounts of greenhouse gases, "resulting in approximately 8% of the world's anthropogenic CO2 emissions, and about 25% of all industry carbon emissions."* https://news.asu.edu/20231017-curbing-concretes-carbon-emissions-innovations-cement-manufacturing
An enterprising teenager started a business of making sand from recycled glass.
As with coffee biochar, only up to 20% of sand can be replaced with glass before it becomes detrimental to the final concrete product.
"It was found that 20% of cement can be replaced with waste glass of 20 μm without detrimental effects on the mechanical properties. Replacements higher than 30% can cause negative impacts as insufficient amounts of CaCO3 remain to react with the silica from the glass, known as the dilution effect."
https://youtu.be/tKjIybiWYTU?si=Z-xjBqm2OzKxIhpd
A new concept places recycled plastic spheres into concrete slabs to achieve similar strength with less weight.
For a similarly sized slab, voids 6:57 decrease the shear stress capacity by 55% without having reinforcing steel around them, which can be mitigated if you 8:42 only place the voids away from areas of shear stress..
When done right, a "waffle" design of the voids can make 0:35 installation of utilities easier.
https://youtu.be/cmxXFM2kqBU?si=nVZAVSB2MjbbKJpb
Also, this company makes prefab insulated concrete panels to reduce waste and speed construction.
https://youtu.be/zv_jfTIKKv4?si=SjDAkU29koy1A6BV
The company is backed by actor Michael Keaton.
https://youtu.be/gXMG1Kz6se0?si=kKVhPq8VC-P-8C5t
Level 5 whitewater rafting
Here's a crazy sport in Washington State. What happens if a huge log starts coming down the river? As one of the comments says: "Human beings - coming up with ways to die since day 1."
Wednesday, January 1, 2025
Remove scammers' remote control software
Free software to remove remote control software
seraph secure mentioned at 16:27
https://youtu.be/qO5u_smv2AU?si=P5K2FUfxbI2O-PVz&t=987
Why don't rails buckle?
Rails are placed under tension, generally 25:55 at the upper end of tension strain for temperature, since it's easier to detect (by conductivity) a fracture from shrinking of the rail versus buckling from expansion which would keep conductivity intact.
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