Week 30 – 22 July 2022
#01 🔭🌟🌌 | Citizen Science from JWST.
In July 2022, NASA released the first set of images of the James Webb Space Telescope. Such images are a result of processing large amounts of data through NASA-developed algorithms.
It being a tax-payer funded, $10Bn USD project, the data has also been made available online. Here is were the magic happens: Judy Schmidt, an amateur space processor, has created their own algorithms to parse through the JWST data with incredible results that aren’t only pure joy to see, but they are also pure science to study and interpret to improve our understanding of space.
Here is more eye candy:
#02 🥬🧑🌾✈️ | growing 900 tonnes of leafy greens.
The world’s largest indoor hydroponic farm in the world is owned by Emirates Flight Catering (the supplier of food to Emirates Airlines) and it has been built in Dubai. With a capacity to produce 900 tonnes of leafy greens, the plant is the first of its kind in the country of 10 million people where 90% of food is imported and where arable land is scarce and water is precious.
Like other indoor farms, the new facility automatically tracks and adjusts lighting, humidity, nutrients, and other factors to boost plant growth.
Loss of habitat and arable land are going to exacerbate food security globally. Growing food locally and indoors, irrespective of the weather outside, enables security fr nations and prevents riots, social upheaval and wars.
The global trend of countries shoring up data centers, computer chip production, energy generation, food production, mineral mining operations, and every facet that could curtail dependency on other nations, has been fast tracked as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The invasion has become a foreshadowing to other countries of how relying in diplomacy and neighbors for import and export routes isn’t a complete solution.
Global commerce is changing and its being put on overdrive thanks to the improvements in Artificial Intelligence, Sensors and Energy as applied to food security, transport and autonomous energy infrastructure.
#03 💩🏦🧑🔬 | we need a microbiome bank.
Harvard University scholars have proposed the creation of a poop bank. Yes. Funny emojis aside, the experts establish in their proposal that having access to fecal samples from different stages in life can aid the process of understanding the gut biome of individuals overtime.
“Autologous FMTs have the potential to treat autoimmune diseases like asthma, multiple sclerosis, inflammatory bowel disease, diabetes, obesity, and even heart disease and aging,” said co-author Scott T. Weiss, a professor of medicine at Harvard and associate director of the Channing Division of Network Medicine at BWH. “We hope this paper will prompt some long-term trials of autologous FMTs to prevent disease.”
There are several challenges for the scale of the project and maintaining a cold-supply chain. The benefits might outweigh any budgetary reasoning as it can create a precise picture of what the biome was before. In a sense, like going back in a time machine and implanting healthy bacteria and reinserting a healthy biome to heal from diseases.
We know more about outer space than we do of our guts and the microbiome. Research is in its infancy and procedures such as stool transplants (Fecal microbiota transplants, FMT) have benefitted many patients around the world. Super donors have also been identified and their microbiota is being researched as well (yes, insert your perfect joke about awesome excreta here).
#04 🚚🔋🛍 | walmart delivery EVs.
A month after announcing it would supply NASA with astronaut transport vehicles for the ARTEMIS Program (pictured below), Canoo has signed a contract for 4,500 ‘Lifestyle Delivery Vehicles’ (pictured above) for Walmart’s fleet. Deliveries are set to begin in 2023.
This week, EV manufacturer Rivian also announced it was deploying the vehicles it contracted with Amazon a couple of years ago. That contract is for 100,000 vehicles.
With the cost of battery-grade lithium carbonate & ev raw materials exploding, corporates are signing exclusive production deals with specific EV manufacturers to secure supply of such vehicle fleets.
As vehicle fleets begin migrating from petrol, the network effects from fleets of interconnected computers on wheels will reimagine the physical bandwidth that can be moved through highways and roads. The maintenance costs for the new EV fleets are also drastically reduced and this can free up budgets for new vehicles or new AI-enhanced supply chain and delivery chain efficiencies.
#05 🐄⛔️🥛 | whole milk without cows.
Montreal-based Opalia has launched to market its mammalian-cell based milk. In doing so, it displaces the need for cows, farms, antibiotics, land, fertilizers, veterinaries, processing facilities, carbon footprint, etc. Such disruption isn’t quaint.
The world’s fascination with fetal bovine serum (a.k.a. milk) production has led to the deforestation of micro climates of the planet and humans in fact grow more grains for cattle than for human consumption. More than half of all crop land on Earth is for cattle.
The disintermediation of cows from the dairy industry and its derivative products is a necessary component for food security, habitat restoration and the growing portfolio of products that can be manufactured in bioreactors.
It is important to also realize that this wave of AgTech bioreactor food can help humanity attain the Millenium Development Goals and it can be deployed across emergency response scenarios, climate change disruption, human displacement from war zones, Antarctic outposts and wherever humans go beyond Low Earth Orbit.
#06 🏃🤸🫀 | prescription apps.
In Germany, Doctors can now prescribe you apps instead of pills to treat erectile dysfunction. As it is a natural wellness solution, there are no medicinal side effects.
Kranus Edera application provides patients with a 12-week program that is comprised of physical training, light physical therapy, sexual therapy, body awareness exercises, and more. The application also offers assistive information such as recommended diets and common foods to avoid.
The proliferation of wellness apps for smartphones and wearables has provided benefits to individuals while at the same time they don’t have the same privacy safeguards as other types of prescriptions. The benefits, risks and unintended effects of such ‘prescription apps’ are at the frontier of mixed reality experiences.
#07 🧱🏘🧘 | modular walls & rooms in minutes.
Designer Stan Spencer has developed Blokaloks, a modular wall system that can be setup in minutes by a single person.
The system is simple to store and has endless possibilities:
In the ever-evolving practice of space design and experience design, new approaches are welcomed for the design of temporary spaces (for conferences, offices, shelter, etc). The pandemic has created a necessity to reimagine the open plan office and provide staff safe spaces and literal boundaries where they feel safe to come back to work.
When paradigms of construction are broken, we can reimagine how we build housing and shelter for humans. To embrace temporary spaces and modular architecture, can help us reimagine how we feel about where we live and adjust, as we set our intentions and manifest such changes in the environment around us.
#08 👮♂️🦟🩸 | jail by mosquito.
A burglar in China might have just proven to the world that mosquitoes are useful. His DNA was found at the scene of a crime based on a spatter of blood from a mosquito (RIP).
Police took the blood as forensic evidence for further investigation. After a DNA analysis, they found it matched that of a man surnamed Chai, who had been punished before for crimes.
Chai was arrested in another city in Fujian Province at the end of last month.
He was also linked to three other burglaries, and has confessed, police said.
#09 🏷🖋💼 | digital bag tags.
Frequent flyers of Alaska Airlines traveling from San Jose airport in California will be the first to experience the new electronic ink bag tags. The change will reduce waste of paper and cut check-in times almost in half from the present experience. The electronic tags can automatically update the information on more sturdy tags (IP65).
We are at the dawn of cognitive travel. Improvements in traceability of supply chain of goods for export through delivery chains can cascade into tourism. Improving the flow of passengers and reducing loss of time and luggage is an important aspect of the experience design.
#10 🥭🍕🤢 | durian & mango pizza.
Pineapple pizza haters can move aside. Pizza Hut Taiwan has launched a new pie featuring the polarizing and pungent fruit.
Hurry (or not?) to Pizza Hut in Taiwan, the pie is available for a limited time for $539 NT (around $18 USD or about $29 NZD).