Don’t Be So Close!!!? 😱
Category: futurism – Page 959
Saving History of Threatened and Recently Extinct Vertebrates of the World
Ira Pastor, ideaXme life sciences ambassador and founder of Bioquark interviews Matthew Richardson, Canadian author of “Threatened and Recently extinct Vertebrates of the World”, primatologist and conservationist.
“My forthcoming book, Threatened and Recently-extinct Vertebrates of the World, required me to assess and place some 15,000 species and subspecies within an updated biogeographic framework. I also had to coin common names for more than 5,000 of them; figure out an entirely new system of ecoregions based on elevation to nest within my “realms and regions.” find a way to standardize language across the globe in a way that would be mostly acceptable to everyone; and somehow make it interesting for the reader. It is twice the length of “War and Peace.” I’ve gone through three publishers, it took me ten years to write, and I’ve received zero funding in the process” Matthew Richardson.
Ira Pastor comments:
Matthew began his professional career as a writer of historical non-fiction, although for the past several years he has mainly worked on academic projects related to wildlife conservation.
In 2001 he published “The Royal Book of Lists: An Irreverent Romp Through Royal History from Alfred the Great to Prince William.”
For much of the next decade he worked as a primatologist and taxonomist for the U.S.-based NGO Conservation International, co-authoring various books and academic papers. Notable among these were Lemurs of Madagascar (book) and the massive primate volume to the Handbook of the Mammals of the World series (for which he also produced all the maps).
Astrobotic awarded more than $1 million to Advance CubeRover Payloads
Astrobotic has been awarded two contracts by NASA to support the development of payloads for future delivery on its 4U and 6U CubeRovers— presented as the world’s first line of commercial lunar rovers. CubeRovers are standardized and scalable, providing planetary surface mobility services that support a variety of scientific and commercial missions.
The first $741,000 contract will fuel work on a novel ultra-wide, non-contact Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) antenna co-developed by Astrobotic and The Ohio State University. The antenna will integrate with a prototype of Astrobotic’s 6U CubeRover, the largest of the CubeRover family, and then test its use on the ground.
Useful for both Earth and planetary science applications, the single antenna can be integrated with diverse mobile platforms to better support lightweight, affordable, subsurface science investigations. GPR tech at this small, lightweight scale is nonexistent in the space market and could enable simple and reliable characterization of lunar lava tubes, subsurface water-ice, and the location of planetary ore deposits.
EU revives plans for mandatory quotas of women on company boards
The European Union executive is reviving plans for mandatory quotas of women on company boards, amid slowing progress towards gender equality among top management.
The EU commissioner for equality, Helena Dalli, told journalists that quotas “can be a very ugly word” but were also “a necessary evil, in the sense we have to use quotas because otherwise we will wait another 100 years for things to change by themselves”.
European-listed firms could face fines if fewer than 40% of their non-executive board seats are taken by women.
The Answer Wall
Circa 2018
Is water wet? – The Answer Wall.
I provided this answer last week: Wetness is a perception, not an objective fact, and perceptual clues for wetness are actually not so straightforward, as you can see in this physiology article: bit.ly/wetness-perception. So, is water wet? Sorta maybe.
