Marvellous.
... the Swedish Patent and Market Court (which never met a copyright overreach it didn't love) upheld the order ... Bahnhof now blocks attempts to visit Sci-Hub domains, and Elsevier.com [who had brought the suit], redirecting attempts to visit Elsevier to a page explaining how Elsevier's sleaze and bullying have allowed it to monopolize scientific publishing, paywalling publicly funded science that is selected, reviewed and edited by volunteers who mostly work for publicly funded institutions.
https://boingboing.net/2018/11/03/balkanizing-the-balkanizers.html
Sunday, 4 November 2018
If you remain silent, people assume you agree with them
No surprises here, just look at responses to the Brexit referendum that we must assume that those who voted for it are fine with the result.
My own silence on social media should be taken to mean precisely nothing. I might hate what you say but not be bothered enough to respond. Or I might think you're great but worry that I might start an argument. I might think you've said something fantastic but get distracted and forget, or feel awkward about responding days later. You might have won the argument and made me feel foolish, or I might think you've said something stupid but I just don't care. The point is that a lack of information cannot be said to provide evidence in any direction.
https://www.inquisitr.com/5146100/silent-opinion-study/
My own silence on social media should be taken to mean precisely nothing. I might hate what you say but not be bothered enough to respond. Or I might think you're great but worry that I might start an argument. I might think you've said something fantastic but get distracted and forget, or feel awkward about responding days later. You might have won the argument and made me feel foolish, or I might think you've said something stupid but I just don't care. The point is that a lack of information cannot be said to provide evidence in any direction.
https://www.inquisitr.com/5146100/silent-opinion-study/
Saturday, 3 November 2018
Do schools help or hinder social mobility ?
TLDR : both, depending on the details. See also https://plus.google.com/u/0/+RhysTaylorRhysy/posts/HdZD1FMBn4K
Even if they can't make up for all inequalities, at least we might expect them to make the playing field more level. But a major international study on social mobility from the OECD economics think tank shows a more sobering picture. Each year that a child spends in education, the gap between rich and poor grows wider.
On average, across more than 60 countries, that difference between the richest and poorest is the equivalent to three years of schooling by the age of 15. Only about one in 10 children from poor backgrounds will achieve the same results at those from wealthy background.
According to the study, on average by the age of 15 about 13% of the variation in students' performance will be determined by their social background. This varies between countries. In the UK, it's below average at 11%, with Norway and Estonia lower at 8%. In France it's 20% and in Germany and Switzerland it's 16%.
But it's not all pessimism. The OECD's head of education Andreas Schleicher, argues there is also plenty of evidence to say that "poverty need not be destiny". There are school systems where many more disadvantaged children do well.
In countries such as Singapore, Japan and Finland, the test results of the poorest 20% are higher than the richest 20% in the Slovak Republic, Uruguay, Brazil and Bulgaria.
Hang on. Off the top of my head, those first three countries are all very rich, whereas the second set are all rather poor. So the poorest students in very rich countries do better than the richest students in poor countries. Rather than indicating good teaching methods raise people up, that seems to me to simply suggest that economics dominates at all levels. Of course they might have corrected for that, but if so, the article doesn't mention it.
The UK does quite well on this measure, with the median point for UK students being above the wealthiest 20% in Italy and not far behind those similarly advantaged students in Spain. "It shows that students from very similar backgrounds can have very different outcomes," says Mr Schleicher. He says it's a cause for optimism that some countries have made sure that "excellent teaching" is available for rich and poor pupils.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-46013665
Even if they can't make up for all inequalities, at least we might expect them to make the playing field more level. But a major international study on social mobility from the OECD economics think tank shows a more sobering picture. Each year that a child spends in education, the gap between rich and poor grows wider.
On average, across more than 60 countries, that difference between the richest and poorest is the equivalent to three years of schooling by the age of 15. Only about one in 10 children from poor backgrounds will achieve the same results at those from wealthy background.
According to the study, on average by the age of 15 about 13% of the variation in students' performance will be determined by their social background. This varies between countries. In the UK, it's below average at 11%, with Norway and Estonia lower at 8%. In France it's 20% and in Germany and Switzerland it's 16%.
But it's not all pessimism. The OECD's head of education Andreas Schleicher, argues there is also plenty of evidence to say that "poverty need not be destiny". There are school systems where many more disadvantaged children do well.
In countries such as Singapore, Japan and Finland, the test results of the poorest 20% are higher than the richest 20% in the Slovak Republic, Uruguay, Brazil and Bulgaria.
Hang on. Off the top of my head, those first three countries are all very rich, whereas the second set are all rather poor. So the poorest students in very rich countries do better than the richest students in poor countries. Rather than indicating good teaching methods raise people up, that seems to me to simply suggest that economics dominates at all levels. Of course they might have corrected for that, but if so, the article doesn't mention it.
The UK does quite well on this measure, with the median point for UK students being above the wealthiest 20% in Italy and not far behind those similarly advantaged students in Spain. "It shows that students from very similar backgrounds can have very different outcomes," says Mr Schleicher. He says it's a cause for optimism that some countries have made sure that "excellent teaching" is available for rich and poor pupils.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-46013665
Democracy's mid-life crisis
Let's hope he's right. I wouldn't be so complacent, Trump seems to be moving more and more from being a personally obnoxious dick to an unashamedly institutional fascist.
Democracy isn't dying, but it is having a very unpredictable mid-life crisis. That's the view of David Runciman, head of Cambridge University's politics department, who has been trying to explain the current state of Western democracy, in an era of Drumpf, social media and widening economic division.
Prof Runciman, taking ideas from his recent book How Democracy Ends, has been speaking about one of the biggest questions: Is our system of democracy beginning to fall apart?
He sees democracy as being in middle age, where voters feel in a rut and like the idea of a major change, but don't really want anything fundamentally different. He likens Drumpf to a flashy motorbike bought during a mid-life crisis.
"We want a change without changing." There could be "odder and odder" people winning elections, he predicts. But it's because we think that the political institutions are so robust, that it won't really do any damage. "We vote for Drumpf because we think democracy is durable and can withstand everything we throw at it."
"There seems to be quite a lot of historical evidence that without economic growth democracies struggle. If people are not feeling better off, they look for politicians who are further and further on the outside." In poorer countries, this can lead to political breakdown. But in relatively stable Western countries, it's more likely to create disillusionment rather than revolution.
"Affluent, stagnant societies can keep going with dysfunctional democracies for a long time," he says. "And we might be at the beginning of that." He argues that the durability of democracy is making people complacent about the need to protect and nurture it.
"It can survive, but it's being hollowed out. It's a system that is tired and struggling to deal with some big challenges, but it's not going to snap in half. We could be thinking about how politics could work better," he says, at a local, national and international level. But instead Western democracies are in the phase of switching leaders rather than changing systems. "Try another clown," he says.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-45939984
Democracy isn't dying, but it is having a very unpredictable mid-life crisis. That's the view of David Runciman, head of Cambridge University's politics department, who has been trying to explain the current state of Western democracy, in an era of Drumpf, social media and widening economic division.
Prof Runciman, taking ideas from his recent book How Democracy Ends, has been speaking about one of the biggest questions: Is our system of democracy beginning to fall apart?
He sees democracy as being in middle age, where voters feel in a rut and like the idea of a major change, but don't really want anything fundamentally different. He likens Drumpf to a flashy motorbike bought during a mid-life crisis.
"We want a change without changing." There could be "odder and odder" people winning elections, he predicts. But it's because we think that the political institutions are so robust, that it won't really do any damage. "We vote for Drumpf because we think democracy is durable and can withstand everything we throw at it."
"There seems to be quite a lot of historical evidence that without economic growth democracies struggle. If people are not feeling better off, they look for politicians who are further and further on the outside." In poorer countries, this can lead to political breakdown. But in relatively stable Western countries, it's more likely to create disillusionment rather than revolution.
"Affluent, stagnant societies can keep going with dysfunctional democracies for a long time," he says. "And we might be at the beginning of that." He argues that the durability of democracy is making people complacent about the need to protect and nurture it.
"It can survive, but it's being hollowed out. It's a system that is tired and struggling to deal with some big challenges, but it's not going to snap in half. We could be thinking about how politics could work better," he says, at a local, national and international level. But instead Western democracies are in the phase of switching leaders rather than changing systems. "Try another clown," he says.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-45939984
Llamas can help cure the flu
The healing power of llamas is the next big thing. I shall quote the entire article in order to remove the dreaded one-sentence pseuoparagraphs.
Scientists in the US have recruited an unlikely ally in their efforts to develop a new flu treatment. Llamas have been used to produce a new antibody therapy that has the potential to work against all types of flu, including new pandemics.
Influenza is the ultimate shape-shifter, constantly mutating its appearance to evade our immune system. That is why a new flu jab is needed each winter and why the vaccine sometimes misses the mark. Science is on the hunt for a way to kill all types of flu, no matter the strain or how much it mutates.
That's where the llama, better known for its wool, comes in. The animals produce incredibly tiny antibodies in comparison to our own. Antibodies are weapons of the immune system and they bind to the proteins that stick out from the surface of a virus.
Human antibodies tend to attack the tips of those proteins, but that's the part influenza mutates most readily. Llama antibodies use their size advantage to wriggle a little bit deeper and attack the parts that flu cannot change.
The team at the Scripps Institute in California infected llamas with multiple types of flu to provoke an immune response. They then scoured llama blood for the most potent antibodies that could attack a wide range of flu strains. They picked four, and then set about building their own synthetic antibody that used elements from each. It was tested on mice, which were given deadly doses of influenza.
Prof Ian Wilson, one of the researchers, told the BBC's Science in Action: "It's very effective, there were 60 different viruses that were used in the challenge and only one wasn't neutralised and that's a virus that doesn't infect humans. The goal here is to provide something that would work from season to season, and also protect you from possible pandemics should they emerge."
The work, published in the journal Science, is very early stage research and the team want to do more tests before starting human trials.
The researchers tried two approaches in give the animals the antibody. The first was to inject them with the antibodies, and the second was a type of gene therapy. The genetic instructions for making the antibody were packaged up inside a harmless virus, which was then used to infect the noses of mice. The cells in the linings of the nose then started making the flu-killing antibody.
An additional advantage of this approach is that it could work in the elderly. The older you are the worse your immune system gets, and the less effective the seasonal flu vaccine becomes. But the llama-inspired approach does not need to train the immune system.
Prof Jonathan Ball, from the University of Nottingham, told the BBC: "Having a treatment that can work across a range of of different strains of virus is highly sought after. It's the Holy Grail of influenza. There will be an appetite, but it depends how well these things work, how easy it is to produce and also how costly it will be."
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-46078989
Scientists in the US have recruited an unlikely ally in their efforts to develop a new flu treatment. Llamas have been used to produce a new antibody therapy that has the potential to work against all types of flu, including new pandemics.
Influenza is the ultimate shape-shifter, constantly mutating its appearance to evade our immune system. That is why a new flu jab is needed each winter and why the vaccine sometimes misses the mark. Science is on the hunt for a way to kill all types of flu, no matter the strain or how much it mutates.
That's where the llama, better known for its wool, comes in. The animals produce incredibly tiny antibodies in comparison to our own. Antibodies are weapons of the immune system and they bind to the proteins that stick out from the surface of a virus.
Human antibodies tend to attack the tips of those proteins, but that's the part influenza mutates most readily. Llama antibodies use their size advantage to wriggle a little bit deeper and attack the parts that flu cannot change.
The team at the Scripps Institute in California infected llamas with multiple types of flu to provoke an immune response. They then scoured llama blood for the most potent antibodies that could attack a wide range of flu strains. They picked four, and then set about building their own synthetic antibody that used elements from each. It was tested on mice, which were given deadly doses of influenza.
Prof Ian Wilson, one of the researchers, told the BBC's Science in Action: "It's very effective, there were 60 different viruses that were used in the challenge and only one wasn't neutralised and that's a virus that doesn't infect humans. The goal here is to provide something that would work from season to season, and also protect you from possible pandemics should they emerge."
The work, published in the journal Science, is very early stage research and the team want to do more tests before starting human trials.
The researchers tried two approaches in give the animals the antibody. The first was to inject them with the antibodies, and the second was a type of gene therapy. The genetic instructions for making the antibody were packaged up inside a harmless virus, which was then used to infect the noses of mice. The cells in the linings of the nose then started making the flu-killing antibody.
An additional advantage of this approach is that it could work in the elderly. The older you are the worse your immune system gets, and the less effective the seasonal flu vaccine becomes. But the llama-inspired approach does not need to train the immune system.
Prof Jonathan Ball, from the University of Nottingham, told the BBC: "Having a treatment that can work across a range of of different strains of virus is highly sought after. It's the Holy Grail of influenza. There will be an appetite, but it depends how well these things work, how easy it is to produce and also how costly it will be."
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-46078989
Modular products to reduce technological waste
A generally good idea. My concern is that previous modular products I've bought in the past have tended to be useless because the company selling them quickly goes out of business. The subscription model mentioned here might help that, but I don't really want to feel that I'm renting something either (it's not quite the same, but similar). To make this sustainable, there would need to be industry-wide standards maintained indefinitely. Not easy. And I'd worry that something a la risk compensation would come into play : if something is easy to fix, components might be designed to fail in order to make future sales. Something that's easy to take apart so that it can be repaired rather than replace, now that might make a difference.
While the approach - known broadly as "design for disassembly" - has been around for years, it isn't much in evidence when you browse the shop shelves for toasters and blenders. But it could now finally be ready to go mainstream, at least according to circular economy expert Sophie Thomas.
A handful of small companies are putting the concept into practice. Mr Galama and Mr Leenders set up a firm that sells fully modular headphone kits. You pay a monthly fee and if any component breaks, you order a replacement part. At first consumers were wary of getting locked into a subscription model, but they are now "getting used to the idea", he says.
Gerrard Street is in its early days, but they have fellow Dutch pioneers Fairphone to look up to. The first mobile phone Amsterdam-based Fairphone produced focused on using ethically-sourced materials. But the second iteration was also modular - to ensure customers could change parts that failed or ones they just wanted to upgrade.
Furniture-maker Orangebox, based in Wales, designed its modular "Do" office chair to be easy to put together, with snap-on and -off parts including the seat cushion, arms and fabric back. Orangebox maintains the chairs, changing damaged parts, and they're also much easier to transport.
Dualit jug kettle is sadly destined for the crusher, when I call to check what to do with it, I find the firm does take seriously the idea of designing for disassembly. Dualit has been making repairable toasters since 1952. Customers can take them apart and slot in a new element when required. One customer reported they'd kept theirs working for 40 years - which is just as well, as it costs four times as much as an ordinary toaster. More recently Dualit has started selling what it says is the only patented repairable kettle on the market. (The repair does need to be done by qualified technicians, however - it's not a DIY job).
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-45969676
While the approach - known broadly as "design for disassembly" - has been around for years, it isn't much in evidence when you browse the shop shelves for toasters and blenders. But it could now finally be ready to go mainstream, at least according to circular economy expert Sophie Thomas.
A handful of small companies are putting the concept into practice. Mr Galama and Mr Leenders set up a firm that sells fully modular headphone kits. You pay a monthly fee and if any component breaks, you order a replacement part. At first consumers were wary of getting locked into a subscription model, but they are now "getting used to the idea", he says.
Gerrard Street is in its early days, but they have fellow Dutch pioneers Fairphone to look up to. The first mobile phone Amsterdam-based Fairphone produced focused on using ethically-sourced materials. But the second iteration was also modular - to ensure customers could change parts that failed or ones they just wanted to upgrade.
Furniture-maker Orangebox, based in Wales, designed its modular "Do" office chair to be easy to put together, with snap-on and -off parts including the seat cushion, arms and fabric back. Orangebox maintains the chairs, changing damaged parts, and they're also much easier to transport.
Dualit jug kettle is sadly destined for the crusher, when I call to check what to do with it, I find the firm does take seriously the idea of designing for disassembly. Dualit has been making repairable toasters since 1952. Customers can take them apart and slot in a new element when required. One customer reported they'd kept theirs working for 40 years - which is just as well, as it costs four times as much as an ordinary toaster. More recently Dualit has started selling what it says is the only patented repairable kettle on the market. (The repair does need to be done by qualified technicians, however - it's not a DIY job).
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-45969676
Massive Martian mushrooms
More on growing space habitats out of fungus. Seems a bit too good to be true, but very interesting.
Imagine a self-pitching habitat made of a light, fibrous material, with excellent mechanical properties. The material could be used dry, wet, frozen with water or as part of a self-produced composite which could allow such enhancements as radiation protection and a vapour seal. It is self-replicating so the habitat could be extended at a future date, and self-repairing. Some form of this material could be used for a habitat at destination, additional buildings, the shell of multiple rovers and furniture.
The fibrous material is fungal mycelium, the vegetative structure of fungi consisting of branching, thread-like hyphae. Mycelial materials, already commercially produced, are known insulators, fire retardant, and do not produce toxic gasses. Metrics for these materials show compression strengths superior to dimensional lumber, flexural strength superior to reinforced concrete, and competitive insulation values.
https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/2018_Phase_I_Phase_II/Myco-architecture_off_planet
Imagine a self-pitching habitat made of a light, fibrous material, with excellent mechanical properties. The material could be used dry, wet, frozen with water or as part of a self-produced composite which could allow such enhancements as radiation protection and a vapour seal. It is self-replicating so the habitat could be extended at a future date, and self-repairing. Some form of this material could be used for a habitat at destination, additional buildings, the shell of multiple rovers and furniture.
The fibrous material is fungal mycelium, the vegetative structure of fungi consisting of branching, thread-like hyphae. Mycelial materials, already commercially produced, are known insulators, fire retardant, and do not produce toxic gasses. Metrics for these materials show compression strengths superior to dimensional lumber, flexural strength superior to reinforced concrete, and competitive insulation values.
https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/2018_Phase_I_Phase_II/Myco-architecture_off_planet
Wikipedia topics ranked by readability
Fascinating. Compare this with cognitive ease : https://plus.google.com/u/0/+RhysTaylorRhysy/posts/JH9Bptq5fs1
Note that the chart refers to the readability of Wikipedia articles about the specified topics. I would imagine most output from politicians themselves is much higher up the list as Event Horizon describes.
Originally shared by Event Horizon
The attached image is a scale indicating the readability of text based on a standard calculation of the "Flesch–Kincaid readability test". Higher scores indicate greater ease of reader comprehension. Even a casual cultural commentator or critic of human behaviour can see a pattern emerging here.
The information most easily consumed is also that which is most prevalent in our cultural and communications systems. While issues such as education level are likely to be a factor in this, the extent to which information and communications messaging is successful appears to be a consequence of topic popularity. Topic popularity is also undoubtedly influenced by ease of comprehension through text or concept simplicity.
Cultural and popular communications centrality and influence is a measure of the relative measure of simplicity of the associated communication method. This suggests a statistical correlation between what is written and the ease and speed with which that information is understood. I realise that this is something of a "no-brainer" but consider the consequences of this.
If simple messages are more popular, then political messaging finds itself lashed to the mast of aspiring to serially simple and uncomplicated representations of complex realities. The most easily understood messages are those which feature simple, repetitive sentences akin to sport and entertainment reports. Seeking and keeping audience share in political messaging then becomes a matter of the public juggling of four or five easily remembered and understood concepts.
The effect is that complex political, strategic and social issues become reduced in the popular imagination to ontological Lego, to a colourful crayon set with which to sketch pictures on the perennially blank walls of severely malnourished attention spans. The reflexive flip-side to this is that policy creation rapidly becomes a race to the bottom, a lowest-common-denominator montage of simple sentences and ideas. Powerful political incentives are set in motion in which the simplicity of a message ("build a wall", "leave Europe", etc.) becomes its key measure of successful propagation.
The challenge at this point becomes one of intelligent messaging and communications brevity or efficiency. If the reality of the world is that it is complex, interdependent and interconnected in fundamental ways and that this actual structural sophistication almost entirely invalidates the simplistic conceptual building blocks of an isolationist or (radical) nationalist agenda, what are the plausible methods by which popular messaging of this reality can be conducted ?
A first step might be to disassemble and disentangle the dependence of political tenure upon the cultivation of gullibility in a target audience. Beyond that, the task becomes one of negotiating an ocean of information and proliferating simplicities by introducing new narratives, myths and easily understood abstractions for popular consumption. The world is complex but the methods by which the facts of this complexity are conveyed need not be difficult to understand. This is one of the greatest challenges we currently face but it also represents an opportunity.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch%E2%80%93Kincaid_readability_test
Note that the chart refers to the readability of Wikipedia articles about the specified topics. I would imagine most output from politicians themselves is much higher up the list as Event Horizon describes.
Originally shared by Event Horizon
The attached image is a scale indicating the readability of text based on a standard calculation of the "Flesch–Kincaid readability test". Higher scores indicate greater ease of reader comprehension. Even a casual cultural commentator or critic of human behaviour can see a pattern emerging here.
The information most easily consumed is also that which is most prevalent in our cultural and communications systems. While issues such as education level are likely to be a factor in this, the extent to which information and communications messaging is successful appears to be a consequence of topic popularity. Topic popularity is also undoubtedly influenced by ease of comprehension through text or concept simplicity.
Cultural and popular communications centrality and influence is a measure of the relative measure of simplicity of the associated communication method. This suggests a statistical correlation between what is written and the ease and speed with which that information is understood. I realise that this is something of a "no-brainer" but consider the consequences of this.
If simple messages are more popular, then political messaging finds itself lashed to the mast of aspiring to serially simple and uncomplicated representations of complex realities. The most easily understood messages are those which feature simple, repetitive sentences akin to sport and entertainment reports. Seeking and keeping audience share in political messaging then becomes a matter of the public juggling of four or five easily remembered and understood concepts.
The effect is that complex political, strategic and social issues become reduced in the popular imagination to ontological Lego, to a colourful crayon set with which to sketch pictures on the perennially blank walls of severely malnourished attention spans. The reflexive flip-side to this is that policy creation rapidly becomes a race to the bottom, a lowest-common-denominator montage of simple sentences and ideas. Powerful political incentives are set in motion in which the simplicity of a message ("build a wall", "leave Europe", etc.) becomes its key measure of successful propagation.
The challenge at this point becomes one of intelligent messaging and communications brevity or efficiency. If the reality of the world is that it is complex, interdependent and interconnected in fundamental ways and that this actual structural sophistication almost entirely invalidates the simplistic conceptual building blocks of an isolationist or (radical) nationalist agenda, what are the plausible methods by which popular messaging of this reality can be conducted ?
A first step might be to disassemble and disentangle the dependence of political tenure upon the cultivation of gullibility in a target audience. Beyond that, the task becomes one of negotiating an ocean of information and proliferating simplicities by introducing new narratives, myths and easily understood abstractions for popular consumption. The world is complex but the methods by which the facts of this complexity are conveyed need not be difficult to understand. This is one of the greatest challenges we currently face but it also represents an opportunity.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch%E2%80%93Kincaid_readability_test
Friday, 2 November 2018
Growing buildings on Mars using fungi
Her final design, a tall, female, rough-looking boot, can be manufactured on board a spaceship with almost only human sweat and a few fungus spores, ideal for a seven-month trip to Mars with limited check-in luggage.
This magic biomaterial is mycelium, the vegetative part of the fungus. If you imagine that mushrooms are the ‘fruits’ of the fungus, mycelium could be regarded as its roots or stems. It looks like a mass of white thread-like structures, each called hyphae, which crisscross soil and other material in which fungi grows. Collectively, these threads are called mycelium and are the largest part of the fungus.
Mycelium has amazing properties. It is a great recycler, as it feeds off a substrate (like sawdust or agricultural waste) to create more material, and has the potential of almost limitless growth in the right conditions. It can endure more pressure than conventional concrete without breaking, is a known insulator and fire-retardant and could even provide radiation protection on space missions.
The European Space Agency (Esa) is likewise pushing boundaries with mycelium. In a joint project with Montalti and the University of Utrecht, the agency is exploring whether fungi could be used to grow buildings, like labs and other facilities, in space.
On the other side of the Atlantic, Nasa is also examining whether their Mars missions could grow surface structures on the planet itself. The Americans are considering producing on Earth a flexible plastic shell seeded with mycelium and then activating the fungal growth once in Mars. That way a thin film can become thick roof or walls in a matter of days or weeks. The building could be malleable: fungus growth stops when their feedstock is consumed, their ideal temperature is withdrawn or the mycelia is killed via heat, yet the dormant fungi can be reactivated into growth, if repairs are needed.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20181031-how-fungus-and-sweat-could-transform-martian-exploration
This magic biomaterial is mycelium, the vegetative part of the fungus. If you imagine that mushrooms are the ‘fruits’ of the fungus, mycelium could be regarded as its roots or stems. It looks like a mass of white thread-like structures, each called hyphae, which crisscross soil and other material in which fungi grows. Collectively, these threads are called mycelium and are the largest part of the fungus.
Mycelium has amazing properties. It is a great recycler, as it feeds off a substrate (like sawdust or agricultural waste) to create more material, and has the potential of almost limitless growth in the right conditions. It can endure more pressure than conventional concrete without breaking, is a known insulator and fire-retardant and could even provide radiation protection on space missions.
The European Space Agency (Esa) is likewise pushing boundaries with mycelium. In a joint project with Montalti and the University of Utrecht, the agency is exploring whether fungi could be used to grow buildings, like labs and other facilities, in space.
On the other side of the Atlantic, Nasa is also examining whether their Mars missions could grow surface structures on the planet itself. The Americans are considering producing on Earth a flexible plastic shell seeded with mycelium and then activating the fungal growth once in Mars. That way a thin film can become thick roof or walls in a matter of days or weeks. The building could be malleable: fungus growth stops when their feedstock is consumed, their ideal temperature is withdrawn or the mycelia is killed via heat, yet the dormant fungi can be reactivated into growth, if repairs are needed.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20181031-how-fungus-and-sweat-could-transform-martian-exploration
Turtles on a roll
That's wonderful.
Why do I anticipate Event Horizon or Joe Carter making some elaborate metaphor out of this.... :D
Originally shared by Catherine Braiding
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwLMAU7smMo
Why do I anticipate Event Horizon or Joe Carter making some elaborate metaphor out of this.... :D
Originally shared by Catherine Braiding
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwLMAU7smMo
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