Category: Science

Tolerance Proteins

photog Current Events, Science, Science Fiction / Fantasy

In 2024 I’ve resolved to do my best not to belabor things that have already been said.  Therefore, going forward, I will attempt to confine myself to original content.  So, what can I talk about?  Breaking news?  Well, there was a major earthquake in Japan.

But there’s always a major earthquake in Japan.  Hauling out terms like temblor and Richter scale and seismic this, that and the other or going on and on about aftershocks and tsunamis is hardly original.  Pass!

Obviously, the wars in Gaza and Ukraine are just grinding along in a predictably gruesome fashion.  Nope.

Well, I could conceive of nothing less original than the ball-dropping ceremony in Times Square and its attendant gathering of aging and uninteresting entertainment celebrities.  Chah!

So, no breaking news worth discussing.

How about tardigrades?

You know, water bears.  Those barely visible invertebrates that can be exposed to the hard vacuum and near absolute zero of outer space, to hard radiation, or desiccated in a desert for years and even frozen in ice and boiled in geysers and still wake up decades later and resume feeding on moss or dandruff or whatever is available and seem completely unphased.

Finally, something interesting to talk about.

Ever since I first heard about these bizarre and strangely endearing little creatures, I’ve wondered whether there was something unique about their survival abilities.  And it turns out there is.

“Stress-dependent cell stiffening by tardigrade tolerance proteins that reversibly form a filamentous network and gel”

As you know I’m no longer a big fan of tolerance.  It’s bitten me in the butt too many times over the years.  But apparently tolerance proteins are a very useful thing to have when you find yourself submerged in freezing liquid or exposed to outer space.

“Tardigrades are able to tolerate almost complete dehydration by entering a reversible ametabolic state called anhydrobiosis and resume their animation upon rehydration. Dehydrated tardigrades are exceptionally stable and withstand various physical extremes.”

…

“In the present study, we first postulated the presence of tolerance proteins that form protective condensates via phase separation in a stress-dependent manner and searched for tardigrade proteins that reversibly form condensates upon dehydration-like stress.”

…

CAHS proteins increased cell stiffness in a hyperosmotic stress-dependent manner and counteract the cell shrinkage caused by osmotic pressure, and even improved the survival against hyperosmotic stress.

…

On the basis of these results, we propose that CAHS proteins are novel cytoskeleton-like proteins that form filamentous networks and undergo gel-transition in a stress-dependent manner to provide on-demand physical stabilization of cell integrity against deformative forces during dehydration and could contribute to the exceptional physical stability in a dehydrated state.

I heard about a Chinese study that inserted genes from a tardigrade into a human cell line that gave it protection from radiation associated DNA damage.  It was posited that this would be a valuable addition to the creation of human super soldiers.  Well duh!  Anyone who has watched Captain America knows that tardigrade-style ability to tolerate the radiation from a tesseract plus the ability to be frozen for a century or so in the Arctic Ocean is very handy for a super soldier.

My takeaway from all this is that adding tardigrade tolerance proteins will allow humans to be placed in a long term reversible ametabolic state called anhydrobiosis from which they will be able to emerge after millennia in order to serve as my laborers once I emerge from long sleep in some far away galaxy.  As their emperor I will be able to call on their immunity to radiation to have them wage nuclear war against my enemies the beetle men of Krrrrlll 3,

while I attend to more important concerns like my ongoing work on thorium doped decorative ceramics (a definitive study).

The History of Human Skin Color

photog Current Events, Science ,

This is a fairly interesting and mostly apolitical explanation for the origin of skin color in human populations.  Although at both extremes of the political spectrum I’m sure there would be those unhappy with the editorial exposition at the end.

But the branching and additional mutations that it took to create the different skin colors we see today is interesting.  But none of this explained one of the most important skin colors.

Room Temperature Super Conductivity?

photog Current Events, Fake Science, Science ,

Maybe.  We’ll have to see.  But if it’s true that’s a lot of power not being turned into useless heat.  So what do you folks think, reality or hoax?

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1684044616528453633.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LK-99

 

Fifteen Years to Proxima Centauri

photog Current Events, Science, Science Fiction / Fantasy , ,

How’s that for a cool title!

H/T to Hans G. Schantz for the retweet on this that brought it to my attention.

This guy is researching a propulsion system based on “quatised inertia” that he says would allow a probe to reach the Oort Cloud in a year and Proxima Centauri in 15 years.

That’s a pretty bold statement.  Watch his video if you’re interested.  He says he was given a million dollar grant from DARPA  to study it.

I wonder if they’ll give me ten million to do my research on cold fusion.  My data looks pretty good.

Seriously, he says there’s company putting an experiment into space to test this thing out.  I guess we’ll know if it works.

 

Do You Just Put Quantum in Front of Everything?

photog Current Events, Science , ,

H/T to Hans G. Schantz.

Is the Universe really all just one thing?  Huh?

“If we do find evidence to support this idea, it would dramatically alter the way we conceive of the cosmos. It would mean we could not only see a world in a grain of sand, as the poet William Blake once said, but we could also quite literally see the entire universe in its tiniest pieces and particles. While this might sound like just a different way of going about physics, it is much more than that. I believe that we are on the way to a completely new understanding of how the universe is put together.”

What will this do to Ant Man?

 

 

 

Guest Contributor – ArthurinCali – 15JUN2023 – Energy Haves and Have-NotsXYZ

photog ArthurinCali, Fake Science, Guest Contributors, Science , , ,

A side story on California’s stupidity on renewable energy:

Last fall the state energy commissioner, or whatever the “very important state official” who is in position to announce proclamations from on high to us peasants had dire news. The problem? Energy consumption between the hours of 4pm-10pm needed to be drastically reduced due to the whole sun going down effect. No sunlight, no solar charging-easy concept. The call was put out with advice on appropriate temperature settings for A/C, and the avoidance of activities that might strain the electric grid across the state.

Imagine the surprise that night to see So-Fi Stadium in Los Angeles fully lit up in anticipation for the NFL game being played. The irony was not missed on what the state considered their priorities to be during this alleged crisis. And yes, it was put out with an attitude that this could result in blackouts (brownouts?) across the state.

Those unfamiliar with Los Angeles weather should know that it is quite mild for most of the year. If this was such a desperate situation surely a football game should not have been that important to warrant the amount of wasted energy to light up a small village. The game could have been rescheduled to be during the daylight hours. But no. Priorities you see.

If This Goes On … Then What? – Part 3

photog Current Events, Fake Science, Science , ,

So, after the rainbow crusade the next most important article of the woke faith is the climate change crusade.  And the real-world consequence that this delusion engenders is the energy crisis that we are currently suffering under.

Starting in Europe but now picking up steam here in America, the Left is attempting to criminalize the use of hydrocarbon fuels.  And especially they’re trying to take them away from private citizens.  So even though the bulk of electrical generation is powered by natural gas in this country, the federal government and states like California are legislating against the use of gasoline powered cars and other equipment like lawn mowers and at the same time, against the use of natural gas for cooking and eventually home heating.

And indicating to the oil companies that they are going to be phased out has had the predictable effect of curtailing their efforts to keep the price of gas and oil stable.  Instead, this plan has unleashed the OPEC cartel’s efforts to maximize their profits in the short term and ignore Washington’s pleas to help it along with making the transition quiet so that it becomes a fait accompli.  And even though the adoption of electric vehicles is already becoming a nightmare for the power grid in California, the feds have doubled down on making this all happen by 2030.

First a word on the technical aspects of this plan.  As a chemical engineer I can say categorically this is a stupid and wrong-headed plan.  Charging electric cars from a grid that is basically powered using fossil fuels is incredibly wasteful.  Over a third of the energy that even reaches the grid is wasted as heat during transmission.  That’s not even taking into consideration the difference in efficiency between the internal combustion engine versus the combination of the turbine electric generators and the battery charging and discharging efficiency.  It’s absurd.  And they call it “green.”

So how does this end up?  Well, you know the drill.  Let me throw out some scenarios and I’ll make my guess and then you follow up on the poll.  Here goes.

The worst-case scenario is that this whole thing is accomplished.  The people of the United States act like good little sheep and just acquiesce in this whole stupid plan.  And in order to compensate for all the inefficiencies and fallacies in the plan we all end up losing a whole lot of freedom and affluence.  With much more expensive electricity and with the supply insufficient to allow everyone to recharge their cars every day, trains and busses will become the mandated form of transportation for ordinary people.  So, forget about auto trips and vacations.  Probably car ownership will become too expensive for anybody not in the upper middle class.  Even home heating will become a real problem.  Expect that people will walk around their homes in coats and hats in the winter and insulation will become a matter of life and death.  And enjoy living in the desert southwest without air-conditioning.  And the cost of food will also increase drastically and the variety of foods will go away.  No more fresh fruits in the winter except for the very well off.  The peasants will make do with whatever can last from the fall.  No more meat.  Unless you consider crickets meat.

The middle scenario is a much slower rollout and the realization that nuclear power plants can be sold to the climate zealots as “green energy.”  Having a reliable and economical high density power source could ameliorate some of the sins that battery cars create and leaves open the scenario where hydrogen fuel for cars is affordable.  And likewise, affordable energy could prevent the other problems like expensive food and home heating

The best-case scenario would be the American people revolting against the stupidity of the green agenda and voting for a combination of fossil fuels in the here and now and research into long term energy solutions like nuclear and other more exotic sources like geothermal.

For once I’m not guessing that the middle scenario will occur.  I think the American people are sheep that will be led to the slaughter.  I’m guessing we’ll get the whole green agenda and we’ll be eating bugs and taking the train in the future.  The ultimate humiliation for a once free people.

Leave your guess below.

We’ve Found ET?

photog Current Events, Fake Science, Science, Science Fiction / Fantasy , ,

So, some former military guy says the government has UFO’s and dead aliens.  Sure, why not?  It’s no stranger than all the other lies the feds tell us.  So, is this the distraction that’s supposed to get us through the Silly Season this summer while we learn how much gasoline will cost and how much cricket dust will be added to the hamburger we’ll be eating?

Personally I don’t believe it at all.  Let me know what you think of all this, below.

Sorry, there are no polls available at the moment.

 

Intelligence Officials Say U.S. Has Retrieved Craft of Non-Human Origin

 

The Borg is Becoming Reality as We Speak

photog Current Events, Science ,

Neuralink describes their mission thus:

“Creating a general-purpose, high-bandwidth interface to the brain.”

This is the beginning of the cyborg as something other than science fiction.  This is what Zuckerberg pretends he’s doing with that joke Metaverse.  I guess there’s no way to stop this.  But I don’t see it as a harmless thing.  Some good things will come out of it like restoring motion and sight to people who have been injured.  But we’ll see plenty of harmful consequences too.