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Jan 23, 2020

This 22-part plan is how we can feed the world by 2050

Posted by in category: food

We need to slash emissions from agriculture while at the same time feeding billions more people. It’s a difficult task, but there’s a path forward to make it work.

[Photo: Jevtic/iStock]

Jan 23, 2020

A Mini Farm That Produces Food From Plastic-Eating Mushrooms

Posted by in categories: materials, sustainability

Circa 2014


According to one recent study, there’s at least 5 trillion pieces of plastic in the ocean. That’s more than 250 tons. So what to do with mountains of plastic waste with nowhere to go? Katharina Unger thinks we should eat it.

The Austrian designer partnered with Julia Kaisinger and Utrecht University to develop a system that cultivates edible plastic-digesting fungi. That’s right, you can eat mushrooms that eat plastic. In 2012, researchers at Yale University discovered a variety of mushroom (Pestalotiopsis microspora) that is capable of breaking down polyurethane. It kicked off a craze of research exploring how various forms of fungi can degrade plastic without retaining the toxicity of the material. The findings got Unger thinking: What if we could turn an environmental problem (waste) into an environmental solution (food)?

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Jan 23, 2020

Exploring Euclideon’s Unlimited Detail Engine

Posted by in categories: entertainment, particle physics, robotics/AI

As others have pointed out, voxel-based games have been around for a long time; a recent example is the whimsical “3D Dot Game Hero” for PS3, in which they use the low-res nature of the voxel world as a fun design element.

Voxel-based approaches have huge advantages (“infinite” detail, background details that are deformable at the pixel level, simpler simulation of particle-based phenomena like flowing water, etc.) but they’ll only win once computing power reaches an important crossover point. That point is where rendering an organic world a voxel at a time looks better than rendering zillions of polygons to approximate an organic world. Furthermore, much of the effort that’s gone into visually simulating real-world phenomena (read the last 30 years of Siggraph conference proceedings) will mostly have to be reapplied to voxel rendering. Simply put: lighting, caustics, organic elements like human faces and hair, etc. will have to be “figured out all over again” for the new era of voxel engines. It will therefore likely take a while for voxel approaches to produce results that look as good, even once the crossover point of level of detail is reached.

I don’t mean to take anything away from the hard and impressive coding work this team has done, but if they had more academic background, they’d know that much of what they’ve “pioneered” has been studied in tremendous detail for two decades. Hanan Samet’s treatise on the subject tells you absolutely everything you need to know, and more: (http://www.amazon.com/Foundations-Multidimensional-Structure…sr=8-1) and even goes into detail about the application of these spatial data structures to other areas like machine learning. Ultimately, Samet’s book is all about the “curse of dimensionality” and how (and how much) data structures can help address it.

Jan 22, 2020

Microwaving sewage waste may make it safe to use as fertilizer on crops

Posted by in category: food

The solids from wastewater plants are usually dumped into landfills because they are contaminated with heavy metals. Now there is a way to remove the metals so the waste can be used as fertilizer.

Jan 22, 2020

Chris Roberts on using infinite computing power to create a universe of endless possibilities

Posted by in categories: computing, entertainment, space

Circa 2017


Chris Roberts built worlds for games such as Wing Commander at Electronic Arts’ Origin at the dawn of 3D games a couple of decades ago.

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Jan 22, 2020

Navy Files Patent for Compact Fusion Reactor

Posted by in categories: nuclear energy, particle physics, space travel

Essentially beyond this is a higgs boson reactor essentially a universe of power in a jar.


Scientists have longed to create the perfect energy source. Ideally, that source would eventually replace greenhouse gas-spewing fossil fuels, power cars, boats, and planes, and send spacecraft to remote parts of the universe. So far, nuclear fusion energy has seemed like the most likely option to help us reach those goals.

Jan 22, 2020

Amazon Imagines a Future of Infinite Computing Power

Posted by in categories: futurism, robotics/AI

Circa 2017 we could eventually have euclidean geometry to have inifinite size that is infinitely small like an entire infinity computer on one byte.


Amazon’s Alexa heads for a future that looks a lot like the Starship Enterprise.

Jan 22, 2020

China Quarantines Entire City Where Mystery Virus Outbreak Began

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

It’s a city of 11 million.

Jan 22, 2020

An AI designed 30,000 drugs in 21 days and came up with winners

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, robotics/AI

Drug companies are trying to find new ways to discover new blockbuster drug treatments faster, and AI is beginning to answer the call.

Jan 22, 2020

Pentagon Racks Up $35 Trillion in Accounting Changes in One Year

Posted by in categories: economics, military

The Pentagon made $35 trillion in accounting adjustments last year alone — a total that’s larger than the entire U.S. economy and underscores the Defense Department’s continuing difficulty in balancing its books.

The latest estimate is up from $30.7 trillion in 2018 and $29 trillion in 2017, the first year adjustments were tracked in a concerted way, according to Pentagon figures and a lawmaker who’s pursued the accounting morass.

The figure dwarfs the $738 billion of defense-related funding in the latest U.S. budget, a spending plan that includes the most expensive weapons systems in the world including the F-35 jet as well as new aircraft carriers, destroyers and submarines.