Anything biodegradable (in the composting sense) almost always does not last long absent significant chemical treatment. If you think current faux-leather technology is a step down from the real thing, then mycelium based products will be even worse. There is an inherent trade-off between biodegradable and long lasting products. What we can do is make products that are recyclable. In other words, engineer materials to only break down with a specific brand of artificially engineered enzymes that are not found in the wild. Unfortunately we are still a couple years away in terms of proteomics advancement to be able to do de novo synthesis with such precision.
While true, you also said mushroom leather should be even worse than the real thing; I wouldn’t know for this specific product, but once you allow for chemical processing all bets on relative ranking are off.
At about the same time as when growing organs in test tubes becomes viable and restaurant grade synthetic wagyu steaks grown from stem cells become reality.
For xenobots to be useful, the underlying cell behaviour needs to be better understood and controlled. Their research appears interesting if you are a computer scientist or physicist. But for practical applications and applied biotechnology what they are doing is an curious gimmick at best. If they can perfect their understanding, then they would have basically solved half the puzzle of organ engineering. But right now it is no different from black box engineering.
This is very similar to Turing's reaction-diffusion models on leopard spots — great for computer modeling and popular science magazines, not so immediately useful if your grandmother gets cancer.
I will admit it looks perfect to sell as a biotech startup to dumb SV VCs who don't do their due diligence when it comes to investing in applied science fields.
Body weight is determined by calories in vs calories out. Eat less calories than you burn, body weight goes down, eat more, body weight goes up.
Body composition is determined by exercise and diet. Lift weights and get enough protein, muscle mass increases. Run marathons and don't get enough protein, muscle mass decreases.
In general, compound movements like squats, deadlifts, pullups, presses etc should be preferred over isolation movements like crunches. Crunches are kind of a pointless exercise, even for working out your abs.
Hate to be the bearer of bad news but what you are saying here is for the most part only correct for a very small subset of the population.
Your current weight is a functional aggregate of the surplus calories which consists of many factors that can't immediately be measured (yet). The "Calories in, Calories out" belief which is based on very sketchy evidence (i.e. try tracking down where that came from some time) breaks down for anyone suffering from chronic obesity.
Body Composition - (i.e. Body Fat percentage), is determined by exercise, diet, and overall health which may include factors like inflammation (allergies), liver function, vitamin levels, thyroid levels, whether they have been poisoned (lead, mercury) etc).
Most people have one or more of these issues and metabolism is dynamic. It can speed up or slow down based on gene expression which is often influenced in part by exercise but mostly food (diet).
The assumptions you make about exercising aren't necessarily true when you have a health factor and that may not be immediately determinable, or even diagnose-able in some cases. I've known quite a few people that were picture perfect health medically (according to tests) except for uncontrollable weight gain, and had to go through multiple strict elimination diets to identify the culprits.
Some people will simply gain weight regardless of the calorie count if they are sensitive to a type food (or additive like canola/soy oil). There are tons of additives in commercial food these day that aren't even necessarily listed.
As an example, commercial pork doesn't brown correctly when cooked compared to meat you spice and grind yourself and its not MSG. Pork you grind and cook yourself looks almost like the light brown of a breaded chicken steak, compare that with the dark browning you get from commercial pork breakfast sausage.
Body conditioning is important, but exercise plays a very small role compared to overall diet. I know people that have gone on 800-1000 calorie/day diets (medically supervised) for half a year and consistently maintained or even gained weight so the whole idea of calories in calories out is just ludicrous.
Why in the world would you need CRISPR or lab grown meat? Just sequence the DNA and send it off to a DNA assembly service. The price is a couple hundred bucks a pop. You don't have to replicate the entire DNA, just the segments used for forensic PCR.
(On a side note, the state of biotechnology and life science knowledge on HN is utterly deplorable, repeating buzz words does not reality make.)
And what is involved in the DNA sequencing? And the DNA assembly service will probably take record of the operation itself (it is not a common service).
Interesting (I had not thought of that side), but it remains revealing. When there is reason to suspect that the case was manipulated it may suggest that that level of capability is involved. Or that somebody "rubbed a drinking glass" on the scene...
Elemental hydrogen has this problem: it is hard to store. You need low temperatures, high pressure, and corrosion resistant containers. But there is one weird trick: if you bind hydrogen to carbon atoms, then you get best of both worlds. The fuel remains energetic and yet is relatively unreactive outside of combustion and is easy to store. Perfect for aviation.
Not wonderful, since atmospheric CO2 is so dilute. You need either a hefty carbon tax or a ban on oil extraction to make the economics work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_fuel
Our current spike in natural gas and oil prices is something of a dry run for what carbon taxes would look like. So far it doesn't seem like the approval ratings of the governing party can survive it.
H2 is not hard to store in liquified form, LH2. You just need good insulation. Earth is excellent insulation.
For aviation, sticking on a carbon that outweighs your hydrogens by almost 8x gives up a huge efficiency advantage. The efficiency advantage overcomes inconvenience of handling cryogenic LH2. My bet is the tanks will be nacelles slung under the wings alongside the engines.
My Zoe keeps my toes warm all winter long, and it does it 30 seconds after I turn it on in -20 c weather. My diesel needs 10 minutes to warm up the cabin.
Heat Pumps work best above 40F (4C), and after that they are not very efficient. I don't believe that would be a good fit for an energy starved system such as an electric plane.
For year-round heating and cooling comfort, heat pumps work great in areas of the country with moderate temperatures. This is especially critical during the heating season. Once the outdoor temperature goes below 25⁰ - 30⁰ F, a heat pump can continue to provide heat. However, it will use more electricity to do so, which means higher utility bills. This is because there simply isn’t as much heating energy available as the outdoor temperature drops and the system will work longer to achieve the same indoor temperature. That’s why many air-source heat pump systems are installed with a supplemental heat source.
Source https://www.carrier.com/residential/en/us/products/heat-pump...
Most commenters here are misunderstanding the paper. This is research on a wireless RF power transfer and low strength magnetic field sensing system for BCI sensors. It is not about BCI sensors itself. This is about wireless power transfer and modulating the reflected signal to broadcast the sensor information. In other words your brain computer interface no longer needs a subdermal battery.
GP is saying that it's surprising for Elizabeth Holmes to be more famous than Anne Wojcicki. The fact that Anne Wojcicki is the younger sister of YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki makes Anne's lack of fame even more surprising.
The fact that Anne Wojcicki is the younger sister of YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki makes Anne's lack of fame even more surprising.
Close family member of Rich And Successful CEO founds successful company is not an interesting story. In fact it is how most people assume it works, if you come from a rich family of course your company is a success. 'Poor' kid pulls themselves up by their own bootstraps and builds company with nothing but grit and brilliance, now that is a story you can sell. Especially if it's a company doing something the 'experts' said couldn't be done.
Plenty of poor people people who pull themselves up don’t make the news like Holmes.
Undoubtedly Holmes was also good at marketing. That alone is a skill, one that alone admittedly doesn’t make a viable product, but that’s the real explanation for her success.
Protein catalysts almost always contain an inorganic atom. We will be able to make more efficient catalysts with better understanding of protein structure but the need for metals won't necessarily go away.
The protein catalysts can utilize more common metal ions instead of the rarer metals. Placing an iron atom in the right protein structure will affect the reaction probabilities.
