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The ‘not a book club book club’ podcast on PKD, his books, and influence.

Remain calm, smoke your sogum, and pay no attention to all those old-born repopulating our world. Unfortunately for Sebastian Hermes and his crew of resuscitation technicians, it’s not that easy after discovering the slowly resurrecting corpse of a major religious leader. Join the DickHeads and writer/musician Jayaprakash Satyamurthy as they discuss PKD’s 21st published novel, Counter-Clock World. Plus: Food as a 4-letter word. The history of the scifi scene in Bangalore. And how to not kink shame sogum smokers.

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Continue reading “DickHeads Podcast #31 — Counter-Clock World — with Jayaprakash Satyamurthy” | >

CRISPR—Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats—is the microbial world’s answer to adaptive immunity. Bacteria don’t generate antibodies when they are invaded by a pathogen and then hold those antibodies in abeyance in case they encounter that same pathogen again, the way we do. Instead, they incorporate some of the pathogen’s DNA into their own genome and link it to an enzyme that can use it to recognize that pathogenic DNA sequence and cut it to pieces if the pathogen ever turns up again.

The enzyme that does the cutting is called Cas, for CRISPR associated. Although the CRISPR-Cas system evolved as a bacterial defense mechanism, it has been harnessed and adapted by researchers as a powerful tool for genetic manipulation in laboratory studies. It also has demonstrated agricultural uses, and the first CRISPR-based therapy was just approved in the UK to treat sickle-cell disease and transfusion-dependent beta-thalassemia.

Now, researchers have developed a new way to search genomes for CRISPR-Cas-like systems. And they’ve found that we may have a lot of additional tools to work with.

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The hypertension drug rilmenidine has been shown to slow down aging in worms, an effect that in humans could hypothetically help us live longer and keep us healthier in our latter years.

Previous research has shown rilmenidine mimics the effects of caloric restriction on a cellular level. Reducing available energy while maintaining nutrition within the body has been shown to extend lifespans in several animal models.

Whether this translates to human biology, or is a potential risk to our health, is a topic of ongoing debate. Finding ways to achieve the same benefits without the costs of extreme calorie cutting could lead to new ways to improve health in old age.

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Seas, oceans, rivers, and other bodies of water on Earth have become increasingly polluted over the past decades, and this is threatening the survival of many aquatic species. This pollution takes a wide range of forms, including the proliferation of so-called micro and nano plastics.

As suggested by their name, micro and nano plastics are harmful tiny particles derived from the disintegration of waste released into the water. These particles have been found to disrupt aquatic ecosystems, for instance, delaying the growth of organisms, reducing their food intake, and damaging fish habitats.

Devising effective technologies to effectively remove these tiny particles is of utmost importance, as it could help to protect endangered species and their natural environments. These technologies should be carefully designed to prevent further pollution and destruction; thus, they should be based on environmentally friendly materials.

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Heating and cooling needs account for 50 percent of energy demand and using the Sun’s heat directly is an effective to curb fossil fuel requirements.

Naked Energy, a UK-based solar energy startup, has a different way of tapping into the renewable source. Its approach can be classified as a solar thermal energy system which utilizes the heat from the Sun and uses it directly for heating applications instead of trying to store it in a battery.

The rapid rise of solar as a source of energy has been fueled by the declining pricing of photovoltaic (PV) cells. This approach is easy to scale and has helped set up massive solar energy farms in different parts of the world. However, the solution needs large investments in energy storage.

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Faster installations could reduce construction costs as well as bring farms online faster, both big wins for the wind industry.

Goldwind.

Wind turbines are critical tools in our drive to generate electricity using renewable energy sources. The advent of offshore installations has ushered in the possibility of building larger turbines that can harness greater energy in a single sweep.

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Nutritional deprivation triggers a switch from a saprotrophic to predatory lifestyle in soil-dwelling nematode-trapping fungi (NTF). In particular, the NTF Arthrobotrys oligospora secretes food and sex cues to lure nematodes to its mycelium and is triggered to develop specialized trapping devices. Captured nematodes are then invaded and digested by the fungus, thus serving as a food source. In this study, we examined the transcriptomic response of A. oligospora across the stages of sensing, trap development, and digestion upon exposure to the model nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. A. oligospora enacts a dynamic transcriptomic response, especially of protein secretion–related genes, in the presence of prey. Two-thirds of the predicted secretome of A. oligospora was up-regulated in the presence of C. elegans at all time points examined, and among these secreted proteins, 38.5% are predicte.

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