changeset 137:8bf12217d0fa

immunoincompatibility.
author Robert McIntyre <rlm@mit.edu>
date Fri, 24 Oct 2014 09:03:48 -0700
parents 46bc0f596b91
children 98ba603e251a
files org/ideas.org
diffstat 1 files changed, 63 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-) [+]
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     1.1 --- a/org/ideas.org	Sun Sep 07 21:35:52 2014 -0700
     1.2 +++ b/org/ideas.org	Fri Oct 24 09:03:48 2014 -0700
     1.3 @@ -31,6 +31,69 @@
     1.4  getting credit.
     1.5  #+end_quote
     1.6  
     1.7 +- immunoincompatibility :: take the human genome, and refactor it so
     1.8 +     that it doesn't use a particular codon at all. Then remove the
     1.9 +     support from our ribosomes for that codon. What does this do for
    1.10 +     us? It makes us immune to almost all viruses!
    1.11 +
    1.12 +- life cycle :: it's called a cycle, right? So, the thing that repeats
    1.13 +                itself over and over, right? Not much of a cycle if
    1.14 +                you don't come back after you die, if you ask me!
    1.15 +
    1.16 +- car with no blind spots :: use some cameras in the back of the car
    1.17 +     to augment the rear-view mirror so that you never have to turn
    1.18 +     around in order to lane change.
    1.19 +
    1.20 +- partial cell death :: you freeze a set of cells using some cryo
    1.21 +     protocol and 60% survive. How can this be explained? It seems to
    1.22 +     me that if the cells are the same, and the conditions
    1.23 +     homogoneous, then all the cells should either die or
    1.24 +     live. However, suppose that there is a metabolic cycle that needs
    1.25 +     to be in a certain phase for the cell to survive. If the cells
    1.26 +     are asynchronous, then you might end up with some cells dying
    1.27 +     because there were in the wrong part of their cycle. This implies
    1.28 +     that you might be able to cryoprotect cells by causing them to
    1.29 +     enter a certain metabolic mode before freezing.
    1.30 +
    1.31 +- cryonics color appeal :: perfusate used by cryonics companies should
    1.32 +     have red food coloring in it. It's just a nice touch so that the
    1.33 +     cryonics patient looks more life-like than with clear CPAs, and
    1.34 +     hopefully might get treated with more respect.
    1.35 +
    1.36 +- paramagnetic CPA :: you take a CPA that can be influenced by
    1.37 +     magnetic fields so that its degrees of freedom are limited. Then,
    1.38 +     you release the field, instantaly increasing the size of the
    1.39 +     state space of the system and dramatically decreasing the
    1.40 +     temperature enough to plunge the system past homogenous
    1.41 +     nucleation temperature and directly to the glass transition
    1.42 +     temperature, creating a doubly unstable glass at much lower CPA
    1.43 +     concentrations than possible at conventional CPA concentrations. 
    1.44 +
    1.45 +- room temp noodles :: how does the physics of cooking noodles work?
    1.46 +     Could you use a vacuum instead of heat to force water into the
    1.47 +     noodle?
    1.48 +
    1.49 +- personal carbon offset :: feel bad about contribuiting to global
    1.50 +     warming by using electricity / driving a car? Forget trying to
    1.51 +     "conserve" or "minimize your carbon footprint". Follow the
    1.52 +     Platinum rule -- make the world BETTER off than you found it!
    1.53 +     This would be a small, self contained system that sucks C02 out
    1.54 +     of the air. It uses electricity, but it's so efficient at
    1.55 +     removing CO2 that it more than offsets the CO2 produced by even a
    1.56 +     coal plant to produce that electricity. This way, you can still
    1.57 +     drive even a gas guzzler, but have a net negative carbon
    1.58 +     footprint! Maybe something cool could be done with the carbon as
    1.59 +     well. Use as much electricity as you want, but negate the damage
    1.60 +     to the enviroment with more technology. 
    1.61 +
    1.62 +- undoing spermogenesis :: with enough sperm, you can derive the
    1.63 +     donor's entire genome. You gain more confidence in the alleles
    1.64 +     for a particular gene the more sperm you have. Each additional
    1.65 +     sperm gives you the same sort of information you'd get flipping a
    1.66 +     coin and trying to decide whether the coin is H/T of H/H. Is
    1.67 +     there enough sperm in the the average load for you to be as
    1.68 +     confident as mitosis?
    1.69 +
    1.70  - mars life :: we could engineer life that could survive on mars
    1.71                 (probably some non-vascular photosynthetic
    1.72                 poikilohydric creature like a lichen) by taking an