Category: Uncategorized

PLANTS ACCELERATED ANIMAL EVOLUTION. "The recognition that plant evolution responds to and influences CO2 over millions of years reveals the existence of an intricate web of vegetation feedbacks regulating the long-term carbon cycle. Several of these feedbacks destabilized CO2 and climate during the late Palaeozoic but appear to have quickened the pace of terrestrial plant and animal evolution at that time." http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/content/96/3/345.full.pdf View in LinkedIn

SINKING CARBON. "Surprisingly, plants effectively policed their own evolution since the decrease in CO2 was brought about as terrestrial floras evolved accelerating the rate of silicate rock weathering and enhancing sedimentary organic carbon burial, both of which are long-term sinks for CO2." http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/content/96/3/345.full.pdf View in LinkedIn

EXISTING MACHINERY. "Molecular genetics indicates that the developmental mechanisms required for leaf production in vascular plants were recruited long before the advent of large megaphylls. According to theory, this morphogenetic potential was only realized as the concentration of atmospheric CO2 declined during the late Palaeozoic." http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/content/96/3/345.full.pdf View in LinkedIn

UNDERUTILIZED CAPACITY. “The human brain has a capacity that is ten times greater than first thought. They discovered that, on average, one synapse can hold about 4.7 bits of information. This means that the human brain has a capacity of one petabyte, or 1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes. One petabyte is about the same as about 20 million four-drawer filing cabinets filled with text or about the same as 13.3 years of HD-TV recordings.” https://lnkd.in/dNpHDtY View in LinkedIn

“IN A WORLD OF TOMORROW.” Sundance short film prize 2015. https://lnkd.in/due4kvm View in LinkedIn

INCEPTION. “We want to tell you about a recent project that we've been working on in lab that we've called Project Inception. They should make a movie about this. Where they plant ideas into people’s minds, so they can control them for their own personal gain. We'll call it: Inception.” https://lnkd.in/d9qh8PB View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this two weekend contemplation of the humble leaf. Taken in an evolutionary context, it has survived massive changes on the planet, adapted and successfully exploited those changes, and in the process nurtured whole ecosystems and global cycles of carbon and nitrogen. Undoubtedly, the leaf is continuing to adapt to changes on planet Earth. It richly deserves the role as a classic image of life on Earth. View in LinkedIn

DARK USE. “The U.S. military wants soldiers that have superhuman eyesight, controllable augmented muscles that turn untrained novices into expert killers, and more. The report, titled Cyborg Soldiers 205: Human/ Machine Fusion and the Implications for the Future of the DOD, reads like the framework for a dystopian novel set in a near future where injured soldiers are cybernetically enhanced, but come home to an America terrified of cyborgs.” https://lnkd.in/deGnthG View in LinkedIn