Weekly Progress Roundup
Colossal moves to resurrect the Tasmanian tiger
Scientists working for Colossal Biosciences, a biotech company focused on bringing back extinct species, are making progress toward resurrecting the Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine. Using samples from a 110-year-old head, the team has reconstructed a mostly complete thylacine genome. Importantly, they also recovered RNA molecules, which are essential for understanding gene expression and regulation. The company is now exploring using marsupial surrogates and artificial wombs to bring the sequenced creature to life.
How will climate change affect crop yields?
The data scientist Hannah Ritchie recently outlined how we can expect climate change to affect future crop yields. The entire article is well worth reading, but here are the essential insights:
Carbon dioxide is plant food, and, in isolation, higher concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide lead to higher crop yields.
The effect of carbon fertilization varies by crop. For certain crops, like wheat and rice, the effect is large, and average yields will likely grow thanks to climate change. For others, like maize, sorghum, and millet, the effect is small and may be overshadowed by changes in temperature, leading to lower average yields.
The impact of climate change is dwarfed by the impact of technology. Ritchie offers the example of Kenya, where farmers currently harvest around 1.4 metric tons of maize per hectare. In an extreme climate change scenario, that could fall to 1.1 metric tons. However, if Kenyan farmers adopted modern techniques, they could achieve an average yield of 4.2 metric tons per hectare.
Big tech is betting on nuclear
Tech giants have made a flurry of investments in nuclear energy.
On Monday, Google announced an agreement to purchase 500 megawatts from Kairos Power, a startup building small modular nuclear reactors. On Wednesday, Amazon followed suit with a $500 million investment in small modular reactor development. All this follows Microsoft’s plan, announced last month, to restart a reactor at Three Mile Island.
The driving force is the growing importance of AI data centers, which require large amounts of reliable electricity—a perfect task for nuclear reactors.
Energy & Environment:
Algeria Has $5.4 Billion Plan to Make Drinking Water from Sea
A Wasp Helps Save One of World’s Rarest Birds from Extinction
Health & Demographics:
Drug Inspired by Spider Venom to Reverse Heart Attack Damage
New Cervical Cancer Treatment Cuts Risk of Dying from Disease by 40 Percent
Elimination of Lymphatic Filariasis as a Public Health Problem in Timor-Leste
Good stuff Thank you.