Wonders from biology and predictive songs!

Amid a worldwide  war being waged against every fact-profession, we must do more than fight back politically. We must keep up our morale as a vigorous and confident scientific civilization. And so, here's your weekend dose of amazing news.

== Bio wonders ==

Rats with paralyzing spinal cord injuries were able to walk again after receiving 3D printed implants loaded with stem cells. The cells grew and reconnected the severed portion of the rats' spinal column, giving them control of their rear legs. And yes, this appears to be happening. Your tax dollars, going to miracles.

It'll take a while to help humans. Meanwhile, though, some pretty cool synergy from Japan, where a startup that develops robotics for physically disabled individuals has hired 10 employees suffering from spinal cord injuries who, working from bed, can now operate 4-foot interactive OriHime-D robots with eye-tracking software, enabling them to engage directly with customers and earn a 1,000-yen hourly wage. Not mentioned – the AI software will learn from these interactions and grow better at duplicating what the human controllers do. Still “With approximately 2.7 million physically impaired patients in domestic care, as well as an aging population, Japan has now seen a host of technological solutions for its handicapped citizens." Globally, this impact could reach approximately 15 percent of the world population. (From the Abundance newsletter.)

More brains! “Teenager belts out song during brain surgery to preserve her ability to sing.” 

== We're players.... ==

More evidence that an ant colony operates a lot like a brain. The colony at large can make group decisions and have memories. Of course Kevin Kelly talked about this in Out of Control.

An amazing experiment inserted genes that allow plants to get rid of a toxin far easier and thus free up energy in "C4" photosynthesis for growth. Preliminary signs are amazing. Though always in such cases I wonder – “why was this low-hanging fruit? Why didn’t nature stumble into this herself, across 2 billion years?”  True, there are some paths that are hard to “stumble-into.” Some of those may lead to greater human longevity. But the low-hanging fruit questions always make me wary.

You’ve all heard of the Prisoner’s Dilemma, right? Games that explore the theory and pragmatic practice of “trust” have come a long way, thanks to computers.  This fascinating tutorial / interactive cartoon illustrates the problem. We need to understand this because it goes to the heart of why we built a society where some trust is possible. And why cheaters want to wreck it.

Researchers performing an amazingly broad analysis of gene activity within the brains of frogs, rodents, fish, and birds found certain sets of genes were more likely to be “turned up” or “turned down” in monogamous creatures than in the non-monogamous species.

Peter Limbergand Conor Barnes attempt to map the various memic wars taking place simultaneously in our riven society, in an interesting online article: “Memetic Tribes and Culture War 2.0.” They perceive us engaged simultaneously in six crises: 

·       The meaning crisis weakened our collective understanding of what ought to be.

·       The reality crisis fractured our collective understanding of what is.

·       The belonging crisis took away a genuine feeling of community.

·       The proximity crisis removed distance from conflicting views.

·       The sobriety crisis reduced our agency and turned us into addicts.

·       The warfare crisis transformed our minds into weapons for hidden wars in plain sight.

While I understand the memetic divides that they lay down, I perceive the landscape a bit differently. The biggest dichotomy, in my opinion, involves the positive sum game.  While humans grasp the concept of cooperation toward shared goals, the positive sum concept is a difficult one, since almost no human societies practiced it.  Nearly all were zero-sum, and despite generations of pro-positive propaganda (especially via Hollywood) the concept is difficult even for millions of Americans. Indeed, if you grasp positive sum, it almost compels your position along most of the Limberg-Barnes spectra.

== End times? ==

The last time the Earth’s magnetic poles flipped (reversed)  was 781,000 years ago, but it's believed to have occurred every 20,000-30,000 years over the last 20 million years, so are we a quarter of a million years “overdue”?  That was roughly when Homo sapiens was emerging as a distinct species. And it makes you think, on several levels, especially now as the mag-field is undergoing unusual fluctuations, with the till now dominant part of the North pole – the Candian part – weakening rapidly in favor of the portion that emerges in Siberia. 

Another semi-random thought about end times? You all know the song “It's theEnd of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine).” Way fun... but I mean I mean jeez, most of the pop and political figures run-off in the lyrics are completely obscure now! Either R.E.M. or their heirs should do a new version every decade or they should license it! Seriously, it's a public trust and... why the heck not?

(And Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" - again, should be updated at least every 20 years.) And yes, I’m “just sayin.”

While we’re at it, is “Feel it still” by Portugal the Man by or about a guy my age? One who can still kick it?  Just askin’…

== Powers of sight ==

Known to some as “Brin’s Corollary to Moore’s Law,” the cameras get smaller, faster, better, cheaper, more mobile and vastly more numerous each year… and it is up to us whether this results in Big Brother forever… or never.  Now the next stage in miniaturization of lenses. Researchers at MIT have developed a process to shrink objects down to nanoscale size. Materials are placed in a gel in the desired configuration, and the gel is then exposed to acid, shrinking down to (up to?) a tenth the initial size. 

"The MIT team is now exploring potential applications for this technology, and they anticipate that some of the earliest applications might be in optics -- for example, making specialized lenses that could be used to study the fundamental properties of light. This technique might also allow for the fabrication of smaller, better lenses for applications such as cell phone cameras, microscopes, or endoscopes, the researchers say. Farther in the future, the researchers say that this approach could be used to build nanoscale electronics or robots." reports Science Daily. (Thanks blogmunity member Andy.)

Of course the Asimov novel and the flick FantasticVoyage come to mind. With James Cameron talking about a vivid new-CGI remake. This is one that should be utterly remade, every 20 years! 

Of course, over a longer term, what we need is better local and distributed energy storage, so that sustainables like daytime solar or wind can provide what we need anywhere and around the clock. Alphabet’s moonshot factory X has spun out “Malta”; the  pumped thermal energy storage system uses vats of molten salt and a liquid that acts like antifreeze to make  renewable generation more productive while dramatically improving power grid stability and resilience.

== And finally... ==

It’s called sequential excitation of polymerization and I worked on this concept – for both 3D TV and 3D printing – in 1980… and got distracted by other things, so no credit and no brag! Except to say it’s about time! 

“Researchers at the University of Michigan have developed a new 3D printing method that can produce complex shapes at up to 100 times the speed of traditional 3D printers. In conventional stereolithography, 2D images are projected onto liquid resin that hardens when exposed to light, but the stacking of these solid layers is far too slow a process for commercial-scale print runs. By using two different wavelengths of light, however, this printing method can now selectively harden specific parts of the printed resin while keeping resin near the projection window liquid. This allows for continuous printing (no incremental layering involved!) and massive speed improvements.”

Rick Arthur, one of GE’s senior directors for R&D, has written extensively about technological change and resilience.  Here he talks about testimony in D.C. about “the future of work.” 

A compound derived from a strain of bacteria that lives inside a common parasitic worm is three times more potent than DEET in repelling mosquitoes. An interesting evolution story and a hopeful discovery.  

And to finish up... something transfixing. Another rotating ice disk. Seen 'em before, but literally and figuratively cool.

Got a science morale boost?  Great. Share these with a friend... and remind her/him that all of this will shut down if the feudalists regain power.