There is a lot of low-hanging fruit in genetic engineering and robotics!
1,733 karma · joined October 24, 2010
I would start by planning your rocket architecture and your series of equipment builds, ground tests, and test flights, and leaving plenty of margin for when things inevitably go wrong (SpaceX's first 3 launches failed, so I wouldn't assume you yourself can do any better than 3 failed launches before your first success). Plan out the total cost of all of these builds and tests (including healthy (2X?) margin on the cost), and plan how much revenue you can generate once you start having paying customers. Expect to self-fund most of your initial builds and tests, since I'd guess investors won't believe in you until you've at least built a working engine. Also always apply to any possible government-backed competitions or incentive programs that can provide grant or debt-based financing.
[The naive] decompression added 909 nucleotides to the wild-type genome. We next addressed practical constraints arising from the length of DNA that can be physically packaged within a øX174 capsid without impacts to reproductive fitness. Previous work has shown that the length of a øX174 genome, when packaged in vitro, must be kept within a few percent of the 5386 nucleotide wild-type length in order to avoid any significant fitness decrease ( Aoyama and Hayashi, 1985). Similar results were shown in vivo ( Russell and Muller, 1984). To reduce the decompressed genome length we removed the first 916 nucleotides of gene F, encoding the coat protein ( Air et al., 1978). We chose gene F because a plasmid containing a restriction fragment encoding wild-type gene F was able to complement two conditional gene F mutations ( Avoort et al., 1983). Additionally, the gene F coding sequence is greater than the total of the combined increases needed to implement the øX174.1 genome design. The truncated gene F version of the decompressed genome was named øX174.1f. To complement øX174.1f when transformed into host cells we designed a medium copy vector expressing gene F under control of a rhamnose-inducible promoter ( Fig. S1).
In college I actually got to take part in refactoring that virus' genome into a decompressed version with no gene overlaps. And it worked! The decompressed version is still a functioning phage, and since there are no longer gene overlaps, future genetic engineers will have a much easier time modifying the phage as they see fit.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0042682212...
If a light source is diffuse/omnidirectional, then it will be blurrier the farther it is from the distance your eye is focusing on.
Only if the light is a ray (a collimated beam with very little spread and very small diameter), such as the ray produced by a laser, then it will be in focus regardless of the distance at which it is produced.
http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20080523/152287...
To make a metaphor with cofounders at a software startup: right now, the USA buying from China is like the USA is an "idea guy" / "business guy" who has an idea and access to capital, but no ability to implement the tech, and China is like an outsourced coder. But this duo is a little disfunctional, I wouldn't want to be either one of those characters. I'd much rather be the best of both worlds: a smart and creative technical founder who can have the ideas AND implement them. That guy's company will run circles around the other duo... As an example, SpaceX, by having both the ideas (reusable rocket) AND owning the factory, SpaceX can make rockets much more cheaply than competitors who design in the USA but outsource e.g. the engine production (ULA Atlas V rocket uses Russian-built engines)
> This role reversal is an indicator of how the technology, trade, and know-how for injection molding has shifted to Shenzhen. Even if US has the manufacturing capacity, key parts of the knowledge ecosystem currently exist only in Shenzhen.
This is what really saddens me about outsourcing manufacturing from America, is that we lose the knowledge about manufacturing technology. Although we may be at the forefront of software development, in many areas of manufacturing technology the cutting edge development happens in China now.
I'd really like if we could bring about a revival in manufacturing engineering in the US. Other than the ecosystem effect, the main way that China has an advantage is labor cost, so I propose that we could build up a "Shenzhen of America" in the San Diego / Tijuana free trade zone. The repetitive work that takes a lot of hours would be done on the Mexico side, where labor is now almost as cheap as China. The manufacturing engineering and tool-making would both happen on the American side, bringing these jobs back to the USA from China.
San Diego / Tijuana are shipping ports on the Pacific, facilitating importing electronic components from China, Japan, and Korea, and then we could do all of the PCB fab, PCB assembly, injection molding, and final device assembly (as well as all tooling for all of these processes) over here in the Americas.
I'm very supportive of China's development but competition is good and as American citizens we can't just throw in the towel, we have to build our manufacturing knowledgebase back up and be willing to actually compete.
http://www.vulcanmold.com/uploads/image/plastic-injection-mo...
No two ways about it, this IS a wire(less) tap.