INI podcast

Quinn Emmett

July 28, 2018

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‍July 27th, 2018

103 days to go

Good afternoon!

Toasty enough for you?

Great/not great news: you are not alone.

This is the face of climate change, but the battle has just begun (finally). This is the best news yet -- these are the young faces fighting against it.

Want to help them? Share this newsletter with everyone you know. Not only will you help save the world, we'll send you some very cool free shit.

PODCAST UPDATE

This week's question was: What Happens When the Atlantic Ocean Invades the Arctic Ocean?

If that sounds insane to you, you're in good company.

Short answer: not good things.

Long answer: that's why we made the podcast. Tune in!

Our guest was Julia Roberson of the Ocean Conservancy, who overcame truly tremendous technical difficulties (j/k) to get on the line.

Subscribe now to get next Tuesday's episode where we ask: Why the Hell Is Space Exploration Important When the Planet is Literally On Fire?

Our guest: The Space Gal, Emily Calandrelli. More to come!

On to the news!

Clean Energy 💨☀️⚡️

Next-Gen Nuclear Is Coming — If Society Wants It

"At a conference in 2011, Simon Irish met an engineer with an innovative design for a nuclear reactor cooled by molten salt. If it worked, Irish figured, it could not only solve the problems with aging nuclear power, but also provide a realistic path to dropping fossil fuels.

“The question was, ‘Can we do better than the conventional reactors that were commercialized 60 years ago?” Irish recalled. “And the answer was, ‘Absolutely.’”

+ More clean energy:

- California Wants to Reinvent the Power Grid. So What Could Go Wrong?

Climate Change 🔥🌊💨

Pakistan is ground zero for global warming consequences

"Pakistan contributes less than 1 percent of the world's greenhouse gases blamed for causing global warming, yet its 200 million people are among the world's most vulnerable victims of the growing consequences of climate change.

The nation is facing ever-rising temperatures, drought and flooding that threaten health, agriculture, water supplies and hopes for development of a society that ranks in the bottom quarter of nations, based on income per person.

Pakistan is among 10 countries affected most by climate change, according to the 2018 Global Climate Risk Index released by the public policy group Germanwatch."

+ More Climate:

- Trump to Seek Repeal of California’s Smog-Fighting Power, remains huge piece of shit

- America’s Pledge: Bottom-up climate solutions to America’s low-carbon future for every city and state

- The lawsuits against fossil fuel companies are failing. Here's what's next

- Climate Change May Cause 26,000 More U.S. Suicides by 2050

Biology 401 💉👾💊

Scientists explore a new kind of immunotherapy to treat autoimmune diseases

"In CAR-T therapies, T cells are extracted from a patient’s blood, reprogrammed to attack cancer cells, and then re-infused into the bloodstream to carry out their new assignment.

Scientists – including those at Caladrius Biosciences and TxCell – are now engineering a subgroup of these immune cells, called T regulatory cells, or Tregs, in hopes of tamping down the wayward parts of the immune system responsible for autoimmune diseases and organ rejection."

+ More Bio:

- Two sides of a coin: For Scientists Racing to Cure Alzheimer’s, the Math Is Getting Ugly and New Alzheimer’s Drug Slows Memory Loss in Early Trial Results

- Filed under WTF: Some viruses weaken their hosts’ immune systems by sacrificing themselves in kamikaze fashion, paving the way for successful infections later, defeating CRISPR

The Final Frontier/Escape Hatch 🚀

A Large Body of Water on Mars Is Detected, Raising the Potential for Alien Life

"Italian scientists working on the European Space Agency’s Mars Express mission announced on Wednesday that a 12-mile-wide underground liquid pool — not just the momentary damp spots seen in the past — had been detected by radar measurements near the Martian south pole.

“Water is there,” Enrico Flamini, the former chief scientist of the Italian Space Agency who oversaw the research, said during a news conference.

“It is liquid, and it’s salty, and it’s in contact with rocks,” he added. “There are all the ingredients for thinking that life can be there, or can be maintained there if life once existed on Mars.”"

+ More space:

- SpaceX Preps for Three Block 5 Launches in Just Two Weeks

- NASA, SETI seek to harness AI tools

- Life on Europa Could Be Just Beyond Our Reach

Food 🍌🥑🥕🔬💊👩‍🌾

“If you look at food waste globally, it would be the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases after the United States and China”

"Each year, the average family of four in America throws $1,800 in the garbage.

Not in cash. In moldy vegetables. In uneaten hamburgers. In leftovers from the local pub.

A scourge besets the United States: the rampant waste of food.

In this country, we throw out more than 1,250 calories a day per person — or more than 400 pounds of food for each person every year, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council."

+ More food:

- The public doesn’t trust GMOs. Will it trust CRISPR?

Robots & AI 🤖🧠⚡️

AI beats human doctors in neuroimaging recognition contest

"An artificial intelligence (AI) system scored 2:0 against elite human physicians Saturday in two rounds of competitions in diagnosing brain tumors and predicting hematoma expansion in Beijing.

The BioMind AI system, developed by the Artificial Intelligence Research Centre for Neurological Disorders at the Beijing Tiantan Hospital and a research team from the Capital Medical University, made correct diagnoses in 87 percent of 225 cases in about 15 minutes, while a team of 15 senior doctors only achieved 66-percent accuracy."