linkstream2 microblog

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/362/6414/543

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An example is the combination of rigidity and flexibility in protein-based teeth of the squid sucker ring. Other examples are time-delayed actuation in plant seed pods triggered by environmental signals, such as fire and water, and surface nanostructures that combine light manipulation with mechanical protection or water repellency. Bioinspired engineering transfers some of these structural principles into technically more relevant base materials to obtain new, often unexpected combinations of material properties. Less appreciated is the huge potential of using bioinspired structural complexity to avoid unnecessary chemical diversity, enabling easier recycling and, thus, a more sustainable materials economy.
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https://jcs.biologists.org/content/121/11/1771

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“The savings made by hyperscale centres can be seen in their power usage efficiency (PUE), defined as the total energy needed for everything, including lights and cooling, divided by the energy used for computing (a PUE of 1.0 would be a perfect score). Conventional data centres typically have a PUE of about 2.0; for hyperscale facilities, that’s been whittled down to about 1.2. Google, for one, boasts a PUE of 1.12 on average for all its centres.

Older or less technologically adept data centres can contain a mix of equipment that is hard to optimize — and some that is even useless. In 2017, Jonathan Koomey, a California-based consultant and leading international expert on IT, surveyed with a colleague more than 16,000 servers tucked into corporate closets and basements and found that about one-quarter of them were “zombies”, sucking up power without doing any useful work — perhaps because someone simply forgot to turn them off. “These are servers sitting around doing nothing except using electricity, and that’s outrageous,” says Koomey.”
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http://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06610-y

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/22/business/media/mit-media-lab-food-computer.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/04/technology/artificial-intelligence-aristo-passed-test.html

Artificial intelligence alone won’t solve the complexity of Earth sciences http://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00556-5

Reunion coverage + Useful suggestion for ORCID that can be done with a secondary email

https://www.natureindex.com/news-blog/one-in-five-email-addresses-researcher-journal-articles-invalid-problem

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Mark Gerstein, the Albert Williams Professor of Biomedical Informatics at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, lists over 200 members on his lab’s alumni page, about half of whom were PhD students and postdocs. Recently, he invited many of them to a lab reunion. But first, he had to find them.
“It’s a nontrivial thing keeping track of peoples’ emails,” he says. The lab maintains a database of past members, but he’s now established a LinkedIn group, which has been particularly useful, he says. Former lab members who are on the social network can associate themselves with the lab, thus providing a mechanism for staying in touch. If nothing else, Gerstein notes, he likes to be able to contact lab expats in case there’s ever a question about an old project – for instance, to clarify a protocol or locate a file.
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A third solution would be for a third-party ‘scientific directory’ service such as ORCID to add a mechanism for contacting authors, such as a button or form to send a message.
Laure Haak, Executive Director of ORCID, says, “At the current time, ORCID does not have these features on our roadmap.”
In the meantime, it is possible to make the email addresses in an ORCID profile public; go to Account Settings > Email and Notification Preferences, and change “who can see this” from “only me” to “everyone”.
Of course, even were the organization to add a messaging feature, overtaxed researchers may not read them.
“People get so much email,” Gerstein says. “I suspect people would ignore the messages.”
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Stop Letting Modern Distractions Steal Your Attention

Making yourself inaccessible from time to time is essential to boosting your focus.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/26/smarter-living/stop-letting-modern-distractions-steal-your-attention.html

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This kind of task switching comes with a cost. It’s called attention residue, a term established by Sophie Leroy, a professor at the Bothell School of Business at the University of Washington. In a 2009 study, Dr. Leroy found that if people transition their attention away from an unfinished task, their subsequent task performance will suffer. For example, if you interrupt writing an email to reply to a text message, it will take time to refocus when you turn your attention back to finishing your email. That little bit of time of adjusting your focus — the residue — compounds throughout the day. As we fragment our attention, fatigue and stress increases, which negatively affects performance.
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At the very least, she said, start leaving your phone behind during certain periods of the day, and perhaps establishing no-phone zones in your house or workplace. Treat it as an experiment: Try things and see what makes you feel good, she said.
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https://autoreject.org/

Could be useful

https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/12/health/stanford-geneticist-chronic-fatigue-syndrome-trnd/index.html