Xi'an's Og

When flying to Montréal last week, I took with me this 16 September issue of Nature but forgot it in the plane. But had time to read a tribune warning on the dangers of governments being involved in running the Internet. And thus disrupting its decentralised structure… And a short highlight on the (minimal) impact of atom-sized, asteroid-mass black holes crossing the Solar System, awakening me to the very existence of such stellar objects! And remained skeptical at the proposal to downsize pint glasses to lower beer consumption in the UK. (Although I now find myself unable to drink a whole pint of beer, outside eating a fiery curry! Or an alcohol free version.) And read how NobAIl Prize winning Alphafold2 unfolded a structure common to a family of flavivirus that make them relative with a common ancestor. And a book review pondering whether or not AI can feel distress, pondering at their sentience. (The book is freely available on OUP webpage.) Unlikely to be re-reviewed for CHANCE! And a fairly interesting long comment on how some Asian nations are massively investing into alternative approaches to meat production. (In particular since mentioning Singapore, where the company employing one of my nephews is soon to introduce in-vitro foie gras.) But missed the research paper on the origin and evolution of the bread wheat D genome, which I would have most certainly devoured, despite my favouring rye and buckwheat breads! (No bread was hurt in the study, since the 60 wheat landraces analysed therein came from the CIMMYT and ICARDA gene banks.) The origin is thus most likely on the “southern shores of the Caspian Sea 8,000–11,000 years ago”. Which sounds quite recent, all things considered!

This entry was posted on November 29, 2024 at 12:24 am and is filed under Books, pictures, Travel, University life with tags AF beer, AI scare, AlphaFold, alternative meat, black holes, book review, bread, buckwheat, Caspian sea, CHANCE, chili pepper, cultivated meat, curry, English beer, flight mode, foie gras, fruit fly, group picture, Internet, internet security, Montréal, Nature, Nobel Prize, origin of bread, Parasite, rye bread, Singapore, solar system, wasps. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.