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The world top academic journal Science on Friday published a major breakthrough in the artificial starch synthesis made by a research institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). The research is the first time in the world to achieve synthesis of starch from carbon dioxide. Scientists believe it will have a revolutionary impact on future agricultural production and bio-manufacturing.

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As I wrote earlier it’s puzzling that there isn’t more attention given to air filtration and UV light disinfection in hospitals, since these techniques have been shown to kill superbugs.

A recent paper also shows that air filtration and UV disinfection can greatly reduces SARS-COV-II in hospital wards. The authors installed portable air filters with UV disinfection on two COVID hospital wards in the UK. The air was tested for viruses, bacteria and fungi before the filters were turned on, during the time the filters were on and then again after the filters were turned off.

I find this appalling.

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I’ve always thought so.

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A new housing development with a working farm at its center has broken ground in Santa Clara, California — the latest example of the “agrihood” trend taking root across the U.S.

Very locally grown: As the name implies, an agrihood is a neighborhood built around some sort of agriculture, such as a garden, farm, or orchard. Residents might live in single-family homes or apartments, and the agrihood itself can be in an urban, suburban, or rural area.

Most agrihoods have farm managers, but residents can volunteer to participate in the growing of crops, and in some cases, they get dedicated plots for personal gardens.

The harvested produce from the main farm is sometimes given to residents, but more often they buy it at on-site markets or through monthly subscription packages. Some of the crops may be sold to local restaurants or donated to the larger community.

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Bennett and his colleagues were able to accurately date 61 footprints by radiocarbon dating layers of aquatic plant seeds that had been preserved above and below them. The prints, which were discovered in the Tularosa Basin in White Sands National Park, were made 21,000 to 23,000 years ago, the researchers found.

This is CNN, so I’d look for a second source.

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Methinks the writer doth protest too much.

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James Bond star Daniel Craig was made an honorary officer of the United Kingdom’s Royal Navy on Thursday — matching his onscreen 007 persona, who holds the rank of commander.

“I am delighted to welcome honorary Commander Daniel Craig to the Royal Navy,” First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, the head of the Royal Navy, said in a news statement.

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DroidDrive is a German company currently working on such a trailer. It’s called Trailerduck and, for the time being, it still needs a tow vehicle, even though it’s not technically towed by it. Trailerduck is self-propelled, but it still takes cues from the vehicle in front, which can be anything from an e-bike to an actual car.

I am not making this up.

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Republicans appear ready to claim more registered voters than Democrats in Florida for the first time in modern political history, Politico reported.

Democrats had 23,055 more registered voters than Republicans in the Sunshine State at the end of August — that was down from the 700,000 voters advantage President Barack Obama won the state with in 2008.

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Since its inception screen printing has been transforming the world by producing art, posters, and colorful patterns on textiles. New developments in the realm of material sciences will propel this technology to the center of next-generation electronics.

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Mr. Baker calls his plan, “RiverArch,” and describes it as, “a way to transform the skyline and the City with a structure like no other in the world, while also housing thousands of people and generating hundreds of millions of dollars per year in new tax revenue.”

And, of course, the tax revenue is the important part (at least in New York).

Actually, it strikes me as an attractive idea.

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Polls rarely ask these people what a “fair share” looks like. Is a quarter of someone’s earnings enough? A third? Because the rich have been shouldering an increasingly larger share of the cost of government. The United States already has one of the most progressive tax systems in the free world. Those who make over $207,350 now pay 35% in income tax. Those who make $518,400 or more pay a 37% income-tax rate. At some point, taxation should be considered theft.

Despite perceptions, the highest-income strata of taxpayers are the only ones who pay a larger share of taxes than their share of income. In 2018, the top 1% of income earners made nearly 21% of all income but paid 40% of all federal income taxes. The top 10% earned 48% of the income and paid 71% of all federal income taxes.

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The United Kingdom is launching a world’s first trial to test whether adding graphene to recycled asphalt can increase the lifespan of a major highway — and decrease costly, annoying road maintenance.

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I guess they got tired of having their property trashed, their buildings vandalized, and their employees and families threatened.

Washington Free Beacon.

After more than two and a half years of watching and listening to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) cosplay as a professional celeb and fashion icon moonlighting as a serious politician, we have decided we won’t report on her antics as part of the Washington Free Beacon‘s political coverage.

Instead, we will continue to cover AOC’s parking habits and other aspects of her social life as part of our Entertainment, Fashion, Fantasy, and Young Adult sections. Our reason is simple: AOC’s seat in Congress is a sideshow. We won’t take the bait by pretending otherwise in an effort to appear “objective.”

Like many of her Democratic colleagues elected during the Trump era, AOC is less interested in representing her constituents as a legislator than she is in relishing the trappings of power and celebrity. She just wants to be photographed wearing a “Tax the Rich” dress at the Met Gala, whereas Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) just wants to sleep with consultants and break up other people’s marriages, and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D., Wash.) just wants to abuse her subordinates.

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As a professor of Classics at the University of Oxford, I had quite forgotten the thrill of understanding spoken Latin when, in 2016, a group of students from the Accademia Vivarium, an institution based in the beautiful Villa Falconieri just outside Rome, paid a visit to the UK with their professor Luigi Miraglia. Among them were students of Dutch, Hungarian, Finnish and South American origin; but one could hardly tell their nationalities apart because, in addition to using Latin names (Julianus, Edmundus), they spoke in fluent and elegant Latin and in one case, Attic Greek.

When I signed up for Greek my sophomore year at Yale, the professor went around the room (all eight of us) and asked us why we were in the class. Smart-ass that I was, I said ‘To be civilized.’ He looked at me for a second and responded, ‘No, you learn Latin to be civilized. You learn Greek to be educated.’

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NOT the Babylon Bee.

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Gee, I wonder why?

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Good luck getting your insurance to pay for it.

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New work shows that histones, long treated as boring spools for DNA, sit at the center of the origin story of eukaryotes and continue to play important roles in evolution and disease.

I have always been fascinated by the mechanics of biochemistry.

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Whenever a virus infects you, there’s a chance it will leave behind a piece of itself within your DNA, and if this happens in an egg or sperm cell, it will then be passed on through the generations. These are known as endogenous viral elements (EVEs).

In humans, fragments of viral DNA make up around 8 percent of our genome. They can provide a record of viral infections through our evolutionary history, like genetic memory.

“These viral fragments have been retained for a reason,” said paleovirologist Emma Harding. “Over millions of years of evolution, we would expect all DNA to change, however, these fossils are preserved and kept intact.”

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Genetic “dark matter” may drive the emergence of new species, new research finds.

These long, repeating stretches of the genome, called satellite DNA, may ultimately prevent incompatible animals from mating by scrambling the chromosomes in their hybrid babies, according to the study. And if animals from different populations can’t mate, they will diverge over time, leading to speciation.

‘Dark Regions of the Genome’ would be a great title for a move.

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the patent-pending ‘SE200? concept features a lightweight tri-wing layout to enhance lift over drag, a ’tilting’ seat, and a new ‘once-through’ air feed ventilation system. the innovative aircraft is imagined as a monocoque, made up from a single solid-molded component that can float on water. fuel is stored on top of the fuselage in self-sealing bladders, and not in the wings. ‘the construction is all-composite, molded in one tough, safer piece. we also incorporated super-thin, long wings and complete streamlining from the nose to the tail. we did it all.’ SE aeronautics chief engineer lloyd weaver mentions.

I’ll believe it when I see it walking down the aisle.

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There is no single reason Austin tech talent is packing their bags, but a handful of factors have collided to create a tenuous situation.

I guess California-on-the-Colorado is losing its shine.

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Can’t say that I blame them.

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A group of Silicon Valley billionaires, including shipping magnate Jeff Bezos and Russian entrepreneur Yuri Milner, are funding research that aims to reverse aging.

Funding for the research is set to be used by the biotechnology company Altos Labs. Researchers at Altos aim to rejuvenate cells that could “revitalize entire animal bodies,” according to Technology Review.

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An estimated 1.5 billion toothpaste tubes are discarded into landfills every year worldwide, and a lot of that plastic ends up in the ocean. But rather than reinvent the tubes themselves, a unique solution to the plastic pandemic is rising in popularity — zero-waste toothpaste tablets.

Often packaged in reusable aluminum or glass jars, toothpaste tablets are essentially toothpaste in a powdered form that’s pressed into a pill-sized tablet. Using them requires chewing a single tablet and letting it dissolve into a paste with a little help from saliva, or a swig of water before brushing.

Do they come with fluoride?

They sound a bit too Woke for me. Plus I think that websites using white text on black ought to be nuked from orbit.

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Well, that trick didn’t work.

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Guess his ethnicity.

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Researchers at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis have developed a synthetic chemistry approach to polymerize proteins inside of engineered microbes. This enabled the microbes to produce the high molecular weight muscle protein, titin, which was then spun into fibers. In the future, such material could be used for clothing, or even for protective gear.

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Not sure I believe this, but Kuo has been right more often than not before.

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The protein fuels tumours when oxygen levels are low, say scientists.

It enables them to adapt and survive – and become more aggressive.

The enzyme called CAIX (Carbonic Anhydrase IX) helps diseased cells spread to other organs.

UPDATE: New study examines ‘Achilles heel’ of cancer tumours

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WaterPod is a sustainable floating pod that turns seawater into drinking water through a natural desalination process.

I’m curious as to what exactly ‘sustainable’ means in this context. Won’t ever sink? Will hold you up if you’re drowning? Provides emergency cash when you need it?

UPDATE: Can Desalination Save Us from Water Scarcity?

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“The distinction between the past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion,” Albert Einstein wrote. Perhaps this is nowhere more evident than in protein evolution, where past and present versions of the same enzyme exist in different species today, with implications for future enzyme design. Now, researchers have used evolutionary “time travel” to learn how an enzyme evolved over time, from one of Earth’s most ancient organisms to modern-day humans.

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I’m talking about the “reader mode”. When available for a website, it is displayed as an icon at the end of the url bar in Firefox. The same is true for Chrome, but you first need to enable it at chrome://flags/#enable-reader-mode. Safari on iOS includes it in the menu at the left of the url bar.

I use it habitually. It often gets around paywalls, as well.

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A GoFundMe campaign has raised millions of dollars to help people leave Afghanistan in the wake of a Taliban takeover — but executing the campaign’s goal will be a huge logistical challenge.

I’m surprised the proglodytes haven’t shut it down already.

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Democrat state Reps. Garnet Coleman, Ana Hernandez and Armando Walle returned Thursday, hailing their efforts to block the quorum.

“We took the fight for voting rights to Washington, D.C., and brought national attention to the partisan push in our state to weaken ballot access,” the trio wrote in a joint statement, according to the Post. “Our efforts were successful and served as the primary catalyst to push Congress to take action on federal voter protection legislation. Now, we continue the fight on the House Floor.”

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They say that like it was a bad thing.

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I feel much the same way about the Biden Presidency.

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Apple Card will start to change by 2027. Mastercard announced it’s “swiping left” on magnetic stripes after decades of supporting this technology. “The shift away from the magnetic stripe points to both consumers changing habits for payments and the development of newer technologies,” says the company in a blog post.

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Betcha they require you to wear a mask.

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Hey, tenure doesn’t grow on trees.

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In the corner of an Ohio field, a laser-armed robot inches through a sea of onions, zapping weeds as it goes.

This field doesn’t belong to a dystopian future but to Shay Myers, a third-generation farmer whose TikTok posts about farming life often go viral.

He began using two robots last year to weed his 12-hectare (30-acre) crop. The robots – which are nearly three metres long, weigh 4,300kg (9,500lb), and resemble a small car – clamber slowly across a field, scanning beneath them for weeds which they then target with laser bursts.

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A team of materials scientists from Yanshan University in China has discovered the critical proportion of crystallized and amorphous carbon needed to create a glass with remarkable properties that won’t weaken under intense pressure.

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Founded in 2014 by Easton LaChapelle when he was just 18 years old, the company is poised to become a leader in the prosthetic arm industry. Their True Limb device costs less than $8,000 and it’s even cheaper for children, priced at about $4,000.

True Limb is both functional and realistic-looking, serving as a mirror image of the amputee’s opposing limb, even down to the fingertips. And while the prosthetic arm is 60-90% cheaper than traditional prosthetics, many users say it’s far superior to market alternatives.

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They created a solar-powered, fully automated device called ‘SmartFarm’ that is equipped with a moisture-attracting material to absorb air moisture at night when the relative humidity is higher, and releases water when exposed to sunlight in the day for irrigation.

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Two years ago, a fire devastated Paris’ iconic Catholic cathedral. An archaeologist outlines the unprecedented research scientists are now undertaking to make the most of the disaster.

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The British Newspaper Archive (BNA) has over 44 million newspaper pages, mostly British and Irish titles, ranging from 1699 to 2009, or just under 10 per cent of all newspapers held by the British Library. Currently, around half a million pages are being added to the BNA every month.

At the moment, access to the service requires a subscription, as that helps fund the cost of scanning and recording each newspaper added to the online archive. To open up more of the archive for researchers though, one million pages have been released for free, with a commitment to release a million more each year for the next four years.

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A growing number of places in the United States are offering as much as $20,000 to attract newly remote workers to move to their regions, USA Today reported on Monday.

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Now that’s a form of environmentalism I can get behind.