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About 30-40% of the produce we grow ends up wasted. This is a massive inefficiency in the food system. It occurs at every level, from the farm to the end user, and for a variety of reasons. This translates to enough food worldwide to feed 1.6 billion people. We also have to consider the energy […] The post Preserving Food first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.
Let’s talk about climate change and life on Earth. Not anthropogenic climate change – but long term natural changes in the Earth’s environment due to stellar evolution. Eventually, as our sun burns through its fuel, it will go through changes. It will begin to grow, becoming a red giant that will engulf and incinerate the […] The post End of Life on Earth first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.
What the true impact of artificial intelligence (AI) is and soon will be remains a point of contention. Even among scientifically literate skeptics people tend to fall into decidedly different narratives. Also, when being interviewed I can almost guarantee now that I will be asked what I think about the impact of AI – will […] The post The AI Conundrum first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.
My last post was about floating nuclear power plants. By coincidence I then ran across a news item about floating solar installations. This is also a potentially useful idea, and is already being implemented and increasing. It is estimated that in 2022 total installed floating solar was at 13 gigawatts capacity (growing from only 3 […] The post Floating Solar Farms first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.
This is an intriguing idea, and one that I can see becoming critical over the next few decades, or never manifesting – developing a fleet of floating nuclear power plants. One company, Core Power, is working on this technology and plans to have commercially deployable plants by 2035. Company press releases touting their own technology […] The post Floating Nuclear Power Plants first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.
More in science
Recent events are very dire for research at US universities, and I will write further about those, but first a quick unrelated survey for those at such institutions. Back in the day, it was common for physics and some other (mechanical engineering?) departments to have machine shops with professional staff. In the last 15-20 years, there has been a huge growth in maker-spaces on campuses to modernize and augment those capabilities, though often maker-spaces are aimed at undergraduate design courses rather than doing work to support sponsored research projects (and grad students, postdocs, etc.). At the same time, it is now easier than ever (modulo tariffs) to upload CAD drawings to a website and get a shop in another country to ship finished parts to you. Quick questions: Does your university have a traditional or maker-space-augmented machine shop available to support sponsored research? If so, who administers this - a department, a college/school, the office of research? Does the shop charge competitive rates relative to outside vendors? Are grad students trained to do work themselves, and are there professional machinists - how does that mix work? Thanks for your responses. Feel free to email me if you'd prefer to discuss offline.
The profusion of hummingbird feeders in California homes has not only allowed some hummingbirds to expand their range, but has also altered the shape of their beaks. Read more on E360 →
Reversible programs run backward as easily as they run forward, saving energy in theory. After decades of research, they may soon power AI. The post How Can AI Researchers Save Energy? By Going Backward. first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Promise and controversy continues to surround string theory as a potential unified theory of everything. In the latest episode of The Joy of Why, Cumrun Vafa discusses his progress in trying to find good, testable models hidden among the ‘swampland’ of impossible universes. The post Will We Ever Prove String Theory? first appeared on Quanta Magazine
