Combine that with

• https://singularityhub.com/2009/11/25/manipulating-just-one-gene-makes-a-smarter-rat/
• https://www.greenleafpestcontrol.com/2014/01/super-rat-bigger-stronger-impossible-kill/
• https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/molecular-medicine-keeps-mice-mighty-in-microgravity/

and maybe it isn’t AI that we gotta worry about

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This was published 60 years ago. It was one the first Vonnegut books I read.

Busy, busy, busy.

Cool! I made Ice 9. Whoopsie. My bad.

So her heart is really cool and amorphous?

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Much like animals, I don't see why not.

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I'll volunteer for the sciatica trials.

It can also be found in, what you might laughingly refer to as, my ex’s “heart”.

To answer the question a very specific subset of readers here are wondering: no, not ice 9.

For those interested in the original paper, it's available here:

Multilayered optofluidics for sustainable buildings

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>Significance
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>Buildings consume 32.4 PWh (32%) of our global energy supply, a footprint that is expected to double by mid-century. Designing facades like the skins of biological organisms, with dynamic multilayered optical reconfigurability, would enable homeostasis-like environmental responsiveness and significantly improved energy efficiency. Here, we develop an adaptive building interface, leveraging confined multilayered fluids to achieve a versatile library of shading, scattering, and selectively absorbing solar responses. Configurable optimization of this “building-scale microfluidic” platform can reduce energy consumption in our models by 43%, representing a design paradigm toward net-zero buildings.
>
>
>
>Abstract
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>Indoor climate control is among the most energy-intensive activities conducted by humans. A building facade that can achieve versatile climate control directly, through independent and multifunctional optical reconfigurations, could significantly reduce this energy footprint, and its development represents a pertinent unmet challenge toward global sustainability. Drawing from optically adaptive multilayer skins within biological organisms, we report a multilayered millifluidic interface for achieving a comprehensive suite of independent optical responses in buildings. We digitally control the flow of aqueous solutions within confined milliscale channels, demonstrating independent command over total transmitted light intensity (95% modulation between 250 and 2,500 nm), near-infrared-selective absorption (70% modulation between 740 and 2,500 nm), and dispersion (scattering). This combinatorial optical tunability enables configurable optimization of the amount, wavelength, and position of transmitted solar radiation within buildings over time, resulting in annual modeled energy reductions of more than 43% over existing technologies. Our scalable “optofluidic” platform, leveraging a versatile range of aqueous chemistries, may represent a general solution for the climate control of buildings.

>Squid and several other cephalopods can rapidly shift the colors in their skin, thanks to that skin's unique structure. Engineers at the University of Toronto have drawn inspiration from the squid to create a prototype for "liquid windows" that can shift the wavelength, intensity, and distribution of light transmitted through those windows, thereby saving substantially on energy costs. They described their work in a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. > >“Buildings use a ton of energy to heat, cool, and illuminate the spaces inside them,” said co-author Raphael Kay. “If we can strategically control the amount, type, and direction of solar energy that enters our buildings, we can massively reduce the amount of work that we ask heaters, coolers, and lights to do.” Kay likes to think of buildings as living organisms that also have "skin," i.e., an outer layer of exterior facades and windows. But these features are largely static, limiting how much the building "system" can be optimized in changing ambient conditions. > >... > >Kay and his colleagues thought the structure of squid skin might hold the key to creating dynamic, tunable building facades. “Sunlight contains visible light, which impacts the illumination in the building, but it also contains other invisible wavelengths, such as infrared light, which we can think of essentially as heat,” said Kay. “In the middle of the day in winter, you’d probably want to let in both, but in the middle of the day in summer, you’d want to let in just the visible light and not the heat. Current systems typically can’t do this: they either block both or neither. They also have no ability to direct or scatter the light in beneficial ways.” > >So Kay et al. constructed a prototype microfluidics system featuring flat sheets of plastic containing an array of thin channels for pumping fluids. Adding customized pigments or particles to the fluid changes what wavelength of light gets through, as well as the direction in which that light is distributed. Those sheets can be combined into layered stacks, with each stack performing a different kind of optical function, such as filtering the wavelength, tuning how the transmitted light scatters indoors, and controlling the intensity—all managed with small digitally controlled pumps. > >According to Kay, this simple and low-cost approach could enable the design of "liquid-state, dynamic building facades" with tunable optical properties to save energy on heating, cooling, and lighting. While their prototype is a proof of concept, the team ran computer simulations of the system's likely performance as a dynamic building facade, responding to changing ambient conditions. Their models showed a single layer controlling the transmission of near-infrared light would result in a 25 percent savings. Adding a second layer controlling the transmission of visible light could achieve closer to 50 percent in energy cost savings.

This looks to be some interesting research with particular applications to building science and energy performance of buildings. Hopefully further testing and development can provide us with usable systems to help architects and engineers design and build more energy efficient and comfortable buildings in the near future.

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They really are the invisible foundation that all life rests on.

There is something like 10 Quintillion insects across the world that provide the baseline for most other higher creatures to survive in the food chain.

But without the unfathomable sea of microbes on and in almost every surface and organism life has no foundation.

It's both beautiful and creepy at the same time. Especially as we find out that signals from our gut microbiome influence our thoughts; how much are we really in control in the grand scheme of life and how much is the whims of natural process.

Humans and all life forms are simply microbe hotels.

Well clearly the answer is yes, and they're gonna make the man-rats whether you like it or not!

God Science wills it!

Hmmmmmm.... Enlarged prostate? It only happens to 90% of men eventually.

The older I’ve gotten + new scientific discoveries, the more I’ve realized microbes seem to actually control everything that takes place on earth.

Lower blood pressure would at minimum help spare you end organs that suffer from persistently elevated blood pressure (e.g. kidneys) no?

Plain language summary:

This study looks at the Critical Zone, which is the area of the Earth's land surface that is responsible for sustaining life. Researchers from the University of Arizona found a link between the activities of carbon-consuming microbes and the transformation of rock to soil in the critical zone. They also found that microbial life is an "active engineer" in determining how the Earth's critical zone evolves. The findings of this study provide insight into how mineral weathering, microorganisms, and organic acids interact to form soil and how this affects the carbon cycle and global climate.

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If I remember correctly, osteoporosis is barely linked to dietary calcium, and more linked to things like exercise, protein intake, and hormones.