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HOMELESS SUBJECT. “Technosignatures remains, however, somewhat homeless at NASA. For instance: not all searches for technosignatures are focused on planetary systems (some focus on other galaxies, or the Solar System, or on all-sky searches, for instance), and so many worthy projects will not be in-scope at XRP. And some of the inconsistencies noted by Tarter et al. (2018) persist: for instance, Exobiology still explicitly excludes radio and microwave technosignatures from its scope for no reason other than institutional inertia.” https://lnkd.in/djnMhU6 View in LinkedIn

TINY STEPS. “As a result of the feedback NASA received from that workshop, most of the SETI-exclusionary language was removed in the amended 2018 ROSES document, and “technosignatures” was explicitly solicited in the amended version of the ROSES 2018 XRP and Exobiology calls in early 2019.” https://lnkd.in/djnMhU6 View in LinkedIn

DANCING IN THE CORNER. “At the workshop NASA Deputy Associate Administrator for Research Michael New expressed his personal view that within NASA the term “SETI” is heavily associated with HRMS and radio programs, while the term “technosignatures” is “freighted with less history” and “doesn’t provoke as many antibodies” at NASA.” https://lnkd.in/djnMhU6 View in LinkedIn

TECHNOSIGNATURES. “The rebranding seems to have helped. In 2018 Congress considered requiring NASA to include searches for technosignatures (by that name) within its science portfolio as part of the House version of the NASA appropriations bill. In anticipation of this language (which did not ultimately become law) NASA hosted the “NASA Technosignatures Workshop” in September 2018 to learn about the searches for technosignatures and how it could support them, because it had little internal expertise on the topic.” https://lnkd.in/djnMhU6 View in LinkedIn

REBRANDING SETI. “The community has long perceived that part of the difficulty is persistent confusion within and beyond NASA about whether “SETI” refers to a specific radio signal search rationale and technique, the SETI Institute itself, or to the broader effort to identify technological life in the universe. This led Tarter (2007) to coin the term “technosignatures” by analogy with biosignatures to refer to any sign of technological life, including communicative transmissions and other technologies.” https://lnkd.in/djnMhU6 View in LinkedIn

POLITICAL RESISTANCE. “There is a strong perception within the technosignature search community that NASA has an institutional hostility, or at least staunch resistance, to including searches for technosignatures in its research portfolio. This perception comes from, among other things, private discussions with NASA officials, public comments by NASA officials, and explicit (and often contradictory) language in NASA funding calls excluding searches for technosignatures.” https://lnkd.in/djnMhU6 View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE continues from last weekend and ends this weekend on a history of the search for extraterrestrial life and recommendations going forward supported by 126 prominent experts. Of note, this covers only the search for technosignatures of intelligent life, not any efforts to see if biosignatures of other life forms might exist, such as bacteria or viruses, or life as we do not know it. Logically, they are inextricably connected, but our search for biosignatures is an even sadder story of institutional lack of support. View in LinkedIn

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ELECTROCHEMICAL CLOCK REGULATION. "There is growing awareness that circadian clocks are closely related to the intracellular redox state across a range of species. As the redox state is determined by the exchange of the redox species, electrochemically controlled extracellular electron transfer (EC-EET), a process in which intracellular electrons are exchanged with extracellular electrodes, is a promising approach for the external regulation of circadian clocks.” https://lnkd.in/d-EW9zi View in LinkedIn

CLOCK GENE REGULATION. “Recent evidence suggests that peripheral clock gene expression is subject to local metabolic (including aging) and mechanical stimuli, which also lead to epigenetic alterations underlying cellular dysfunction. In liver, pancreas, and adipose tissue, for example, the clocks can be influenced by the metabolic rate.” https://lnkd.in/dvGxeQP View in LinkedIn