Links #2
A disordered link-dump.
Live Near Friends is trying to help people buy houses near where their friends live. I think this is a really cool idea since proximity is the key to seeing friends regularly and a big determinant of happiness.
Electoral Engineering: One Man, One Vote Bid
The Efficient Allocation of Individuals to Positions
When Choices Are Mistakes. This is an important paper because it suggests that people are meta-rational. They want to act in a reasonable or rational manner. More and more, people use tools and commitment systems to make their behavior more rational, and I think this justifies the study of systems of rational agents that are the focus of economic theory.
Are People Generous When the Financial Stakes Are High? When given a no-strings-attached $10K, people from various countries spend a lot of the money on other people. They even spend a significant amount (5-10%) on charities.
I’m not qualified to assess this, but Lasso and Jolt are apparently big improvements in using SNARK’s. This field is quietly improving, I’m excited to see what happens next.
Ideas are Dimes a Dozen: Large Language Models for Idea Generation in Innovation
See also: The Crowdless Future? How Generative AI Is Shaping the Future of Human Crowdsourcing
See also: The Past and Present of Computer-Augmented Hypothesis Generation
Synhelion is another company turning solar energy into fuels. It’s nice to see several different approaches being attempted here.
Lifespan extension: separating fact from fiction
Continuous synthesis of E. coli genome sections and Mb-scale human DNA assembly. This is interesting not only as a step towards artificial chromosomes, but also for other DNA nanotechnologies.
Engineering RNA export for measurement and manipulation of living cells. This is an exciting new capability, and may even find application for mapping the human connectome similar to the DNA barcoding techniques that have been proposed by Anthony Zador and others.
Optical Microscopy Provides a Path to a $10M Mouse Brain Connectome
EvE Bio is attempting to map a large number of drug-molecule interactions. This data will be extremely useful for drug design. I hope they also study molecular fragments that can be combined into larger molecules.
New blog Druglike on Artificial Wombs and Safer Narcotics
Therapeutic Opportunities in the Vaginal Microbiome. The vaginal microbiome is implicated in cervical cancers, fertility, sexual dysfunction, vaginal disease, and sexually transmitted infections. Much of microbiome research seems nebulous to me, but this line of work could have a big impact for millions of women.
This post sent me down a rabbit hole searching for ways vaccines could treat common problems. Conditions like ulcers, halitosis, dental carries, acne, body odor, and vaginal disease are often caused by microbes and could potentially be targeted with a vaccine or other antimicrobial technique.
Reproductive health needs more hard science, not just more apps. This piece highlights In-Vitro Maturation as a way to improve IVF by turning immature oocytes into eggs outside of the ovaries. Gameto and Vitra Labs are working on this.