Category: Science, Nature, & Technology

Wood has many attractions as a construction material, apart from its aesthetic qualities. A wooden building is about a quarter of the weight of an equivalent reinforced-concrete structure, which means foundations can be smaller. Timber is a sustainable material and a natural “sink” for CO₂, as trees lock in carbon from the atmosphere. Tall steel-and-concrete buildings tend to have a large carbon footprint, in part because of the amount of material required to support them. Using wood could reduce their carbon footprint by 60-75%, according to some studies.

In recent years there have been big advances in “engineered” wood, such as cross-laminated timber (CLT) made from layers of timber sections glued together with their grains at right angles to one another. In much the same way that aligning carbon-fibre composites creates stronger racing cars, aircraft and golf clubs, CLT imparts greater rigidity and strength to wooden structures.

Source: Top of the tree | The Economist

irreproducibility in itself was not the problem—rather, it was its extent

Sociologists of science have consistently identified “public recognition” as scientists’ primary motivating factor. … The nature of scientific motivation is also evident in scientific reward systems.

In the culture of modern science, it is better to be wrong than to be second.

To make the desire for recognition compatible aligned with prioritizing good science, we need quality metrics that are independent of sociological norms. Above all, objective quality should be based on the concept of independent replication: A finding would not be accepted as true unless it is independently verified.

Source: We Should Not Accept Scientific Results That Have Not Been Repeated – Facts So Romantic – Nautilus

Physicists can’t agree on whether the flow of future to past is real or a mental construct.

Source: The Debate Over Time’s Place in the Universe – The Atlantic

Sometimes the most important step one can take in science is back.

Thus, the goal of The Singular Universe and The Reality of Time is to take a giant philosophical step back and see if a new and more promising direction can be found. For the two thinkers, such a new direction can be spelled out in three bold claims about the world.

Source: Has Physics Gotten Something Really Important Really Wrong? : 13.7: Cosmos And Culture : NPR

RE: The Singular Universe and The Reality of Time, by physicist Lee Smolin and philosopher Roberto Unger

 

Science is corrupted when it abandons the discipline of empirical validation or dis-confirmation. It is also weakened when it mistakes its assumptions for facts and its ready-made philosophy for the way things are.

— physicist Lee Smolin and philosopher Roberto Unger

The result is a tiny organism named syn3.0 that contains just 473 genes.
…
But it is unclear what the remaining 149 genes do.

Venter is careful to avoid calling syn3.0 a universal minimal cell. If he had done the same set of experiments with a different microbe, he points out, he would have ended up with a different set of genes.
…
In 2010, David Ussery, a biologist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, and his collaborators compared 1,000 genomes. They found that not a single gene is shared across all of life. “There are different ways to have a core set of instructions,” Szostak said.

Source: In Newly Created Life-Form, A Major Mystery | Quanta Magazine