I got the impression, both from this article and the original (here: https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/11/eabd9138) that the electricity wasn't generated by the fungus, but instead the increased compressibility of the wood after being rotted enhanced its pre-existing piezoelectric properties. The original article does mention "mitigation of climate change" as a possible application, by the way.
I heard that squeezing "possibly related to climate change" somewhere in academic work increases chances of getting grant money nowadays, could it be it's the only reason why this phrase is there in this case?
Oh dang, Yeah I think you’re right! Maybe I got to excited for the fungus part from my own bias, maybe I’ve been watching to much Star Trek haha :)
So it’s the resulting structure of the wood, not the mycelium itself. Thanks for setting me straight.
It’s a little unclear how, or what types of devices could be powered by this, but they would be very low power. The biggest is mitigation to climate change come from selecting wood as the primary building material, versus steel which produces a lot of greenhouse gas.
What do you think about all these people with long covid then? I've seen studies suggesting that it's pretty common, as well as anectodal observations, although I don't have any links handy off the top of my head.
I'm not a doctor but as I said in my earlier comment, I think the literature supports that most of this is just damage from the directly infected cells (lung, organ, nerve) that the body will eventually mostly repair given appropriate nutrition and time. But certainly for some people certainly there may be permanent damage.
A better way to state my point was to say that other diseases can cause exactly the same types of cell damage, and having, say, reduced lung function or some neuropathy going forward after a COVID infection are not themselves new and novel medical problems.
I have had COVID despite my best attempts to do everything possible not to contract it. For complete transparency here, I have a strongly vested interest in knowing the truth of this matter. I agree that there is not a strong consensus yet. Sorry I do not have great references at hand to share right now either.
Could you please clarify what you are referring to by "non-binding eugenics guideline" and whom you are quoting? Also, could you explain directly why gene editing is unethical without making a vague analogy to eugenics? If the analogy is sound then you should be able to.
Eugenics literally means "well-bred" so any attempts to re-encode ourselves has a direct involvement of Eugenics, so I am not performing analogy here but invoking the principle of a fortiori. Particularly I am not claiming ethics of gene-editing or Eugenics in general, but that the public has no appetite for this as seen with the strong ethical claims against Eugenics.
By a "non-binding eugenics guideline" I mean something akin to "ex-convicts should not produce" or something, I mean there is absolutely zero state or national guideline that I know of that invokes arguments of eugenics, if you know of one then I am mistaken.
Ok, I think you are just playing word games here, using one very broad interpretation of the word eugenics when you say that gene editing is eugenics, and then a narrower interpretation of the word when you say that there are strong ethical claims against it. Things like forced sterilization are obviously unethical but the reasons have absolutely nothing to do with gene editing. Maybe we could make this more concrete if you gave some specific examples of the ethical claims against eugenics that you are referring to, which you think also apply to gene editing. Also, if you are talking about public appetite, I think it's worth observing that this is the first time I've heard someone compare gene editing to eugenics (I'm sure it's been done before, but it certainly doesn't seem common), and your comment is at the very bottom of the page.
what if everyone uses it (or other genetic treatments) for augmentation or design? there is a critical mass when compulsory loses its meaning, I think. you don't have to eliminate cash by law for example if no business will take it.
I think there is an essential difference between "you have to do X because it is mandated" and "you practically have to do X in order to keep up". For one, the latter scenario is essentially more democratic than the former, it first requires some critical mass of people voluntarily (in the strongest sense of the word) deciding that they are better off with X, whereas the former may only require a decision from a relatively small number of authorities. This puts strong restrictions on what X could possibly be: for example, you would never have people sterilizing themselves because some critical mass of other people are sterilizing themselves. I will also point out that your argument applies to technological progress in general and is not specific to gene editing.
EDIT: I may have misunderstood you, I interpreted your comment to be about the hypothetical scenario where most people have genetically modified themselves into being "super heroes" and now the people who haven't can't keep up with the rest of society, so it becomes a practical necessity without being legally required. On second reading though I'm not sure if that's what you meant.
I'm rusty with this stuff but I'm pretty sure your guess is correct, a countable model is one with countably many objects.
For other readers who might not be familiar, I'll mention that Skolem's paradox is about how there are countable models of set theory, and yet it is a theorem of set theory that uncountable sets exist, so these countable models must contain sets that are uncountable according to the model.
I think it seems less paradoxical if you think of it like this: in order for a set to be countable, there needs to exist an injection from that set to the natural numbers. So a countable model can have a set that internally looks uncountable: there is in fact an injection from that set to the natural numbers, it's just that the injection isn't included in the model.
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