September 2017 Media Thread

https://www.gwern.net/newsletter/2017/08

Autonomous Robots Plant, Tend, and Harvest Entire Crop of Barley

During the Hands Free Hectare project, no human set foot on the field between planting and harvest—everything was done by robots. This includes:

Drilling channels in the dirt for barley seeds to be planted at specific depths and intervals with an autonomous    tractor;
Spraying a series of fungicides, herbicides, and fertilizers when and where necessary;
Harvesting the barley with an autonomous combine.

http://www.handsfreehectare.com/

https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/industrial-robots/autonomous-robots-plant-tend-and-harvest-entire-crop-of-barley

Machs Effect interstellar propellentless propulsion mission proposal at NASA NIAC

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/09/machs-effect-interstellar-propellentless-propulsion-mission-proposal-at-nasa-niac.html#more-137162

Next Steps • Publish – – One or more papers on results of our current laboratory scale test program – Additional peer-reviewed papers on theory are in preparation – Paper on IMES-1 design and Concept of Operations (CONOPS) • Upgrade test facilities and increase thrust – –Increase data rate and number of channels –Improve torsion balance – Increase thrust ~10x • Design an on-orbit test of the MEGA drive – – Our planned on-orbit test using a microsatellite (or CubeSat) is presently at TRL ~ 2 – We favor a rotational test, spinning a microsatellite up (and down) by opposing drives. This removes atmospheric drag as a major error source.

What I Hate About Dating Women vs What I Hate About Dating Men

https://medium.com/@emmalindsay/what-i-hate-about-dating-women-vs-what-i-hate-about-dating-men-bb2699ba182b

"There is also something a little bit socially darwinian about the whole thing. The overriding assumption with guys I date seems to be that the most valuable thing I have to contribute to my children is my DNA. My life experience and wisdom? Worthless. I mean, maybe that’s too harsh — many men do care about personality — but only after I’ve made the DNA cut. And, it’s worth mentioning, I think many men care about intelligence more than looks, so they’re not “superficial” exactly, but they view intelligence as an inheritable trait and they like me because they think my kids will get that trait from me. My primary bartering chip with men is what I was born with."

Humans no longer have ancient defence mechanism against viruses

The AGO2 family takes care of the defence against viruses. However, we didn't find these AGO2 proteins in vertebrates."

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-09/kl-hnl091517.php

Uranus moons on collision courses. Found the paths while studying the rings.

https://phys.org/news/2017-09-uranus-moons-collision.html

https://arxiv.org/abs/1708.07566

some implications on disc accretion, rings, and planetary capture mechanics

Application of Systematic Review Methods in an Overall Strategy for Evaluating Low-Dose Toxicity from Endocrine Active Chemicals

https://www.nap.edu/catalog/24758/application-of-systematic-review-methods-in-an-overall-strategy-for-evaluating-low-dose-toxicity-from-endocrine-active-chemicals

Meta study that tries to deal with cross-study imbalances, and animal dose vs. internal take up. Seems balanced. Phatalates and flame proofing are models studied.

The Second Machine Age -- > https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-second-machine-age-erik-brynjolfsson/1115780364

Ambient Findability by Peter Morville, 2005

The Spoils of War by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith, 2016

Future Sex by Emily Witt, 2016

listen to the audio above of Tolkien himself reading from Chapter IV of The Two Towers.

http://www.openculture.com/2013/07/j-r-r-tolkien-reads-from-the-two-towers-the-second-book-of-the-lord-of-the-rings-trilogy.html

What are the best horror games for VR?

https://www.vrheads.com/best-horror-games-vr

California design firm IDEO has launched two free courses--a 7-week Introduction to Human-Centered Design and a 4-week course on Prototyping.

http://www.openculture.com/2017/09/free-courses-on-design-from-the-famous-california-design-firm-ideo-start-this-week.html

http://www.openculture.com/2016/12/download-20-free-ebooks-on-design-from-oreilly-media.html