...uh oh. Who thinks self-replicating biological robots are a good idea? The name "Von Neumann" comes to mind.
Thankfully, the xenobots need to be fed frog stem cells that they then use as building blocks. It's actually very hard to get them to breed across multiple generations.
The likely use of such machines? Building organs or medicines in he lab or potentially in your body. The researchers are also trying to design xenobots that will collect microplastics from the environment.
I have a love/hate relationship with machine learning. Partly because people use it for things that need to be done by people. (People who know me have heard my quip about things which should not be left unsupervised.
One thing it does very well, though, is comb through vast quantities of data for patterns. ExoMiner has found over 300 new exoplanets in the old Kepler data (I have a dim memory of when they were asking citizen scientists to help train it).
Until AIs are people, though...can we stop using them for stuff like, oh, I don't know, trying to provide customer service beyond the very basics? Or banning people from Facebook...
I can't promise it won't change again, but this is my WorldCon schedule.
Wed 4:00 PM 50 Min Capitol Room 1059 Reading - Hildy Silverman and Jennifer R. Povey
Thu 1:00 PM 50 Min Autographs 2 1032 Signing - Jennifer R. Povey
Thu 5:30 PM 1 Hr Calvert Room 598 The CW's Contribution to Genre TV
Thu 7:00 PM 1 Hr Calvert Room 599 Archaeological Fact in Historical Fiction
Fri 7:00 PM 1 Hr Forum Room 572 Welcome to Clone Club
Sat 10:00 AM 1 Hr Diplomat Ballroom 568 They Flubbed the Landing: Disappointing Finales
Sat 11:30 AM 1 Hr Harris 582 The Tiffany Problem in Historical Fantasy
Sat 5:30 PM 1 Hr Forum Room 627 Why Won't You Stay Dead?!
Start Time Duration Room Name Session ID Title
Wed 4:00 PM 50 Min Capitol Room 1059 Reading - Hildy Silverman and Jennifer R. Povey
Thu 1:00 PM 50 Min Autographs 2 1032 Signing - Jennifer R. Povey
Thu 5:30 PM 1 Hr Calvert Room 598 The CW's Contribution to Genre TV
Thu 7:00 PM 1 Hr Calvert Room 599 Archaeological Fact in Historical Fiction
Fri 7:00 PM 1 Hr Forum Room 572 Welcome to Clone Club
Sat 10:00 AM 1 Hr Diplomat Ballroom 568 They Flubbed the Landing: Disappointing Finales
Sat 11:30 AM 1 Hr Harris 582 The Tiffany Problem in Historical Fantasy
Sat 5:30 PM 1 Hr Forum Room 627 Why Won't You Stay Dead?!
Start Time Duration Room Name Session ID Title
Wed 4:00 PM 50 Min Capitol Room 1059 Reading - Hildy Silverman and Jennifer R. Povey
Thu 1:00 PM 50 Min Autographs 2 1032 Signing - Jennifer R. Povey
Thu 5:30 PM 1 Hr Calvert Room 598 The CW's Contribution to Genre TV
Thu 7:00 PM 1 Hr Calvert Room 599 Archaeological Fact in Historical Fiction
Fri 7:00 PM 1 Hr Forum Room 572 Welcome to Clone Club
Sat 10:00 AM 1 Hr Diplomat Ballroom 568 They Flubbed the Landing: Disappointing Finales
Sat 11:30 AM 1 Hr Harris 582 The Tiffany Problem in Historical Fantasy
Sat 5:30 PM 1 Hr Forum Room 627 Why Won't You Stay Dead?!
,,,for those in the U.S.
Enjoy your turkey, but try to do so with some awareness of the past...and how we can make the future better.
Last night, what might prove to be a very important rocket was launched. The DART mission went up from the Vanderbilt Space Force Base in California on a SpaceX mission.
The test impactor will be flown into a small asteroid named Didymos, which presents no threat and will prove a good proof of concept for the idea of simply hitting an asteroid with a heavy object to adjust its orbit.
The Chelyabinsk air burst in 2013 showed how critical this is. I mean, the crows don't seem to mind being crows, but they might rather be dinosaurs...
It's all our fault. We put a launch party to watch the Webb launch on the schedule so, of course, it's delayed again.
The issue appears to be a minor vibration, but of course we can't take any chances with something so valuable and fragile. Fingers crossed for a holiday present all the same.
Philcon went pretty well. Attendance was about 50% of pre-pandemic levels, which has been consistent for the cons I've gone to so far.
I suspect it will ramp back up through 2022. Also, by then the hotel will have new elevators. Believe me, that hotel needs new elevators.
The highlight of the con was probably the "Beware the Second Banana" panel, which spawned some very interesting discussion and at least one panel for next year (those are always the best). I finally remembered Avon as pretty much the ultimate sidekick who takes over the show! (Watch Blake's 7. The special effects are terrible, but if you liked Firefly...)
Oh, and thanks to the con suite volunteer who brought soda to the vendor room.
A day early because I leave for Philcon tomorrow morning!
Find me (or at least my books) at the Rantings of a Wandering Mind booth.
Another update:
Signed a contract with Other Worlds Ink to include "Old McDonald Saved the World" in their Save the World anthology.
This is a sequel anthology to Fix the World, so I'm very proud to be in both.
Additionally, "The Woman Who Had Been" has been accepted into the feminist horror magazine The Last Girls Club. I love the title.
We generally think of vaccines as preventing contagious diseases...especially right now. However, cancer "vaccines" are used to train the immune system to attack tumors.
And now a Phase I clinical trial has started at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston of a nasal vaccine to prevent...Alzheimer's.
The trial will be in 16 participants who are showing signs of Alzheimer's, but otherwise healthy.
It works in the way you might expect...by activating the immune system to clear the beta amyloid plaques in the brain that cause Alzheimer's. They're putting it up the nose so it doesn't have as far to travel.
This trial is to establish safety.
There's no good treatment for Alzheimer's, so I think a lot of people will be watching this one.
..except we can't, because they don't stay stable for long enough (we don't have any Prophets to keep it open for us).
Or can we?
It appears the math does in fact support the theoretical possibility that a traversable wormhole might exist.
Traversable by particles, that is. Unfortunately, diving into a black hole and hoping to come out through a white hole...still isn't likely a survivable proposition.
Sad.
...hot black ice, anyone? Apparently it's possible to turn ordinary water into "superionic" ice at, well, temperatures and pressures similar to the center of the Earth.
It's a solid and a liquid at the same time. Because, yeah, water is weird that way. Basically, the oxygen becomes solid and the hydrogen wanders around, which is what makes it black.
We don't know where it might form elsewhere, yet, and in the lab it can only be created for a microsecond.
But is it possible for there to be a true water world out there...water all the way through? Maybe!
Here is my (hopefully final, but one never knows with cons) schedule for Philcon:
Friday 6:00pm - Perils and Pitfalls of Near Future Scenarios
Friday 7:30pm - Reading (As I don't have a new book this year, I will most likely be reading from The Lay of Lady Percival as I've neglected that one lately, but I reserve the right to change my mind).
Saturday 10:00am - Lois McMaster Bujold: An Appreciation
Saturday 3:00pm - Communicating with Aliens (At which I will probably talk about the unpublished series I'm working on).
Saturday 4:00pm - Reimagining Babylon 6
Sunday 11:00am - Writing Magical Beasts (MOD)
Sunday 1:00pm - Beware the Second Banana (This is a panel about sidekicks and secondary characters who just steal the entire show).
We don't really use silk the way we did. Cotton is easier to produce, synthetics are cheaper.
But that might change. Researchers have found a way to treat silk that reflects 95% of sunlight. This could be used for cooling clothing (more important with climate change) and to make sun shirts and the like out of.
Of course, the question is how expensive this is going to be...but a shirt that keeps your skin about 8 degrees Celsius cooler? Sign me up.
So, researchers at the Florida Institute of Technology's Aldrin Space Institute have been growing tomatoes in simulated Mars conditions.
Heinz used them to make ketchup. Sadly, you can't buy the Marz Edition ketchup, but I would be interested to hear a report on its flavor and whether they had to adjust the recipe to compensate.
The purpose? Ketchup is quite significant in a dehydrated space diet, so our first intrepid Mars explorers...who will likely be on the red planet for months...will want to make their own.
(And we all know from the Martian that they will...okay, they probably will take potato seeds. French fries and ketchup on Mars, anyone? Probably using an air fryer...)
Amongst bees, you make a queen through diet. I often wonder what selection criteria the colony applies.
But one species of ant has succession fights. When the queen dies, the workers fight over who gets to take her place. The winners start laying eggs.
So, basically, worker ants in this species fight for the right to undergo puberty. Their brains change. And a single protein "switch" appears to be behind it.
We don't quite know how...and now we need to look into other species. For example, does royal jelly contain a substance which activates a similar protein switch to turn a worker bee into a reigning queen?
I stress...this is a partial and preliminary schedule, but here are the panels I am currently scheduled for for Discon III.
Thursday, 5:30pm - Calvert Room - The CW's Contribution to Genre TV
Thursday, 7:00pm - Calvert Room - Archaeological Fact in Historical Fiction (MOD)
Friday, 7:00pm - Forum Room - Welcome To Clone Club (MOD) (This is the Orphan Black panel).
Saturday, 11:30pm - Harris - The Tiffany Problem in Historical Fantasy (MOD). Special note: This is a virtual panel. There will be a Vimeo link available to both on site and virtual attendees.
Saturday, 5:30pm - Palladian - They Flubbed the Landing: Disappointing Finales (MOD).
I am moderating most of my panels because I was brought onto programming primarily to address the perennial shortage of people who like moderating.
Again, this is preliminary and subject to change. I'm not doing a kaffeeklatsch because I don't feel I'm famous enough to ask for one just yet. I did request a reading, which I may or may not get. We have a lot less programming space than a typical Worldcon due to the closure of the Wardman Park, and can only make up some of it by doing virtual items.
Hoping to see at least some of you there!
If all goes well, the space telescope will launch in December.
But then it has to go through an incredibly complex deployment that will take a full two weeks.
All of which it will be doing on its own while everyone on Earth...let's just say I don't think they'll be needing their nail clippers.
They do have some options. For example, they have a command to make the observatory shimmy to potentially unstick something.
Which is just...going to be the worst for them. And then we still have to wait about 180 days to actually start doing science.
So, there is a field of glass in the Aracama Desert, and we now know for sure what caused it.
Investigating the glass fragments found mineral grains that don't occur naturally on Earth. Some of them were found in the comet sample return mission in 2004.
It appears that we had a comet air burst. Interesting, it coincides with about the time humans arrived in the area.
I would love to poke around in the stories of the indigenous people to see what they remember about it.
Apparently the ISS astronauts got to enjoy some Mexican food...or at least some soft tacos. I'm not sure about trying to eat tacos in microgravity.
It's all part of an experiment to answer a "burning" question: Are space peppers hotter or milder than their Earthbound kin.
(Well, actually, it's also about microbes and what shape they grow and...but we all know what the biggest question was).
It's possible we just discovered a new human ancestor.
Dubbed Homo bodoensis, they lived in Africa about 600,000 years ago and appear to be a direct ancestor. They survived until 200,000 years ago or so before disappearing, but their legacy survives.
Homo bodoensis appears to be the common ancestor of both modern humans and Neanderthals, with the latter leaving Africa well before the former.
We don't know much about how they lived, but we do know that they lived...and for a very long time.
