Ep.075 N:OW.2024.JUL23 Dr. Jonathan Trent - on Extremophile Lifeforms and Other Future News

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Our Guest is Dr. Jonathan Trent - on Extremophile Lifeforms, his deep NASA research, and the magic of Bioreactors and Fuel Cells in solving Earth Issues. Other news includes Cheap Fakes & Politics, Bobby & Kamila, Beyond Opioids, MRI study of Psilocybin

Interestingly Dr. Trent had his start in oceanography and the study of small water-based lifeforms at UCSC back in the 1970’s as an undergraduate. Later at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and a post doc in Germany at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry he became one of the world’s experts in how biology was able to adapt to the most extreme conditions on Earth imaginable. He was brought back home to NASA Ames, where he, as an astrobiologist delved deeply into how such life might exist elsewhere in the solar system. NASA did an extensive interview of his career, posted here.

Now, semi-retired in the Santa Cruz area, he brings home his knowledge of extreme forms of life in creating solutions to some of our biggest issues of today, namely the escalating food, water, and energy crisis. His latest project is called “UpCycle Systems,” and its goal is to create a cohesive green life support system for our growing need of Data Centers, places that are needed for cloud computing, AI, Crypto, memory storage, etc.

In Dr. Trent’s vision, data centers will not simply use massive amounts of water and power, they will generate such resources by turning our organic waste into clean power and water, with excess energy to share. This works through the combination of several innovative technologies, including bioreactors and fuel cells. I think you’ll enjoy hearing Dr. Trent’s story, we sure did! Enjoy..

UpCycle Data Centers that will contribute clean water and energy to the community instead of taking it.

Now that US national politics is heating up, so are the cheap fakes being made of the candidates, making them heroic, silly, smart, stupid, you name it. Just for cheap fakes and poltitics and off you go. We discuss this a bit and look at what can be done. And since are politics up, Bobby reveals to us his encounters with Kamila Harris, when she was Attorney General in Californa.

Opiods have been a serious issue for some time and there is some relief in the form of alternative pain drugs soon to hit the market. And in a study of psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, researchers have disovered more detail and how they may work, with the help of MRI imaging of the subject’s brains as they are tripping. Enjoy!

Episode 75 Show Links July 23, 2024