#12: Six Years on YouTube, Winnie The Pooh, Dinosaurs, Plastics, Nuclear energy, and more!

I wrote about the ongoing chip shortage in issue #8, but things might get even worse. A large part of the chip-making industry depends on lithography machines made by Dutch company ASML. Now a fire broke out in one of its factories, which could prolong the shortage. ASML’s lithography machines are the most complex ever designed. A single machine is made up of 100,000 components and shipped in 40 freight containers. The company can only build a handful of machines each year: 31 machines were delivered in 2020.

Like it or not, nuclear energy is our best option for generating cheap and relatively clean electricity. The only problem is the nuclear waste it produces, which can remain radioactive for tens of thousands of years. Researchers are now looking into ways to “transmute” this waste into lesser radioactive isotopes. Sometimes with a half-life of just a single year. This would be much more manageable! How are they doing this? With super powerful lasers!

About 8 million tons of plastic end up in the ocean each year with many non-profits trying to clean it up or prevent more from entering our waterways. (Even our babies are filled with plastics, see issue #9). The problem with plastic is that it’s hard to break down and recycle. Now, a university in Sweden has found 12,000 new enzymes that can break down plastics! We could adapt these for industrial use, maybe opening the door to easier recycling of plastics.

I’m subscribed to a few “productivity gurus” on YouTube and most of them are advocating to listen to podcasts and audiobooks at 3x speed. I’ve occasionally gone to 1.25x, but 3x is just unbearably fast for me. This blog post talks about how shoving more information into your brain doesn’t mean you’ll get more knowledgeable. It actually has to stick and you have to interconnect your knowledge to make it useful.

The Omicron variant of the coronavirus can pad itself on the back. It has become the most “succesful” and fastest-spreading virus ever studied. It evens beats the measles. One case of measles spreads to 15 people in 12 days. Omicron infects 216 people in the same period! From an evolutionary standpoint, it’s a success. From our perspective: 🤬

When COVID-19 was first discovered, we blamed bats for having a super tough immune system with tough viruses to go with it. A new study now suggests that the Omicron variant mutated in mice! It’s Spike protein has mutations that make it better at infecting mice. The researchers say it shows “an inter-species evolutionary trajectory for the Omicron”.