Grant Gochnauer: Awesome Humans — Issue #199
This is definitely a “Future Human” biased week with lots of articles on science and the continued march toward the future. Enjoy!
Awesome Human
How to raise kids who will grow into secure, trustworthy adults — ideas.ted.com
“How do we raise children who can grow into secure, trustworthy adults? Esther Wojcicki, an educator, explains.”
Healthy Human
Why It Was Easier to Be Skinny in the 1980s — getpocket.com
Fascinating and not surprising:
“They found a very surprising correlation: A given person, in 2006, eating the same amount of calories, taking in the same quantities of macronutrients like protein and fat, and exercising the same amount as a person of the same age did in 1988 would have a BMI that was about 2.3 points higher. In other words, people today are about 10 percent heavier than people were in the 1980s, even if they follow the exact same diet and exercise plans.”
Soft drinks, including sugar-free, linked to increased risk of early death
“Drink more water, say experts as they argue study proves need for curbs on consumption”
Human Builders
Founders of Successful Tech Companies Are Mostly Middle-Aged — www.nytimes.com
“Some of tech’s biggest names had founders in their teens. But new research shows that for fast-growing start-ups in the U.S., the average age was 45.”
40 Favorite Interview Questions from Some of the Sharpest Folks We Know — firstround.com
“We’re not always taught how to interview someone — that’s why our interviewing chops are always in need of sharpening. We’ve spent the past few months reaching out to some of the most thoughtful founders, executives, and managers we know to pose a simple question: What’s your favorite interview question to ask and why? With this collection of 40 questions to ask in an interview, you can step up your hiring game.”
Future Humans
A Breakthrough for A.I. Technology: Passing an 8th-Grade Science Test — www.nytimes.com
“Four years ago, more than 700 computer scientists competed in a contest to build artificial intelligence that could pass an eighth-grade science test. There was $80,000 in prize money on the line. They all flunked. Even the most sophisticated system couldn’t do better than 60 percent on the test. A.I. couldn’t match the language and logic skills that students are expected to have when they enter high school. But on Wednesday, the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, a prominent lab in Seattle, unveiled a new system that passed the test with room to spare. It correctly answered more than 90 percent of the questions on an eighth-grade science test and more than 80 percent on a 12th-grade exam.”
Forget single genes: CRISPR now cuts and splices whole chromosomes — www.sciencemag.org
“New ability gives biologists tool to rework bacterial genomes in many ways”
Gel that makes teeth repair themselves could spell the end of fillings — www.newscientist.com
“Applying a gel to damaged teeth stimulates the enamel to re-grow — a finding that could stop people from developing cavities that must be drilled and filled”
Storm chasers are searching the clouds for the key to climate change — www.theverge.com
“There are signs that clouds hide even more dangerous tripwires. Earlier this year, Tapio Schneider at the California Institute of Technology simulated the sprawling banks of stratocumulus clouds that currently blanket the oceans. When he tripled the level of carbon dioxide, the clouds abruptly disintegrated. Global temperature shot up 14 degrees, reaching a point last seen 55 million years ago, when crocodiles swam in the Arctic. “It was shocking, my God,” Schneider says. “There are unknown unknowns, things that people didn’t think could happen because climate models don’t capture it, but in reality they might happen. We need to get these models better fast.”
One Number Shows Something Is Fundamentally Wrong with Our Conception of the Universe — www.space.com
“There’s a puzzling mystery going on in the universe. Measurements of the rate of cosmic expansion using different methods keep turning up disagreeing results. The situation has been called a “crisis.” The problem centers on what’s known as the Hubble constant. Named for American astronomer Edwin Hubble, this unit describes how fast the universe is expanding at different distances from Earth. Using data from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Planck satellite, scientists estimate the rate to be 46,200 mph per million light-years (or, using cosmologists’ units, 67.4 kilometers/second per megaparsec). But calculations using pulsating stars called Cepheids suggest it is 50,400 mph per million light-years (73.4 km/s/Mpc). If the first number is right, it means scientists have been measuring distances to faraway objects in the universe wrong for many decades. But if the second is correct, then researchers might have to accept the existence of exotic, new physics. Astronomers, understandably, are pretty worked up about this discrepancy.”
Crystalline nets harvest water from desert air, turn carbon dioxide into liquid fuel — www.sciencemag.org
“Omar Yaghi, a chemist at the University of California, Berkeley, reported that he and his colleagues have created a solar-powered device that uses porous crystalline material, known as a metal-organic framework (MOF), to suck water vapor and carbon dioxide (CO2) out of the air and then release it as liquid water.”
Can Humans Live On the Moon? Silicon Valley Group Wants to Try — www.bloomberg.com
“Now, there’s a new entrant in this new space race, a nonprofit organization called the Open Lunar Foundation. Based in San Francisco, it’s a group made up of tech executives and engineers — many of them with former ties to NASA — who have serious ambitions to create a lunar settlement.”
One More Thing
How Americans Make and Spend Their Money, by Age Group — www.visualcapitalist.com
These interesting diagrams break down how Americans of different age groups earn and spend their money, and what the money goes towards.
