Walk the walk One of the great mistakes of the last century was to design vast sprawls of suburbs around the car. It almost invited an epidemic of obesity and pollution. This article from the Conversation offers fresh thinking.
Advantage Mrs King Touching to see the great Billie Jean King declare that she was the first in her family to graduate from university when she finally received her degree last week. Apparently, she started around the normal age but then her studies were interrupted. Did she make the right decision?
Alpha folds to rival We have been singing the praises of Alpha Fold here for some years now, as proof positive that AI isn’t all bad. Now suddenly it has a serious rival as Nature Briefing explains in Protein atlas eclipses Alphafold’s effort
A newly released artificial-intelligence tool called ESMFold2 has generated an atlas of 1.1 billion predicted protein structures and billions more protein sequences. The database, known as the ESM Atlas, vastly increases the known protein universe, eclipsing the AlphaFold Database of predicted protein structures by more than 800 million entries. The freely accessible atlas should be “an extraordinary resource for biology,” says computational biologist Gemma Atkinson. And the open-source nature of ESMFold2 means that it could find wide-ranging uses, says computational biologist Sergey Ovchinnikov.
Nature | 5 min read
Reference: biohub preprint (not peer reviewed)
Not more, but stronger Climate change does not seem to be increasing the actual numbers of hurricanes typhoons and other unpleasant weather systems. But it seems to be making the existing ones much stronger and deadlier as the BBC explains
How climate change affects hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones – BBC News.
More like Grouse Fibres, please. Next comes one of our frequent eulogies for a brave start up company. A small British one called Grouse Fibres has in found a way to “create advanced fibres and filaments from proteins, including casein fibre, utilizing biodegradable materials”. (their words) Long may they, and many like them prosper. (LSS disclaimer we have no connection to this company whatsoever)
About Grouse Fibre: Sustainable Protein Fibre Solutions
Quote of the week
“Fools learn by suffering.” (Works and Days, c. 700 BC)
#sustainability #climate change #transport #AI #proteins
Learning, Science and Society 