Increasing Crop Yields, Octopus Robot Arm and some Updates

December 21

This week we investigate a new natural way of increasing crop yields. We examine an Octopus inspired robot arm and we update a range of breakthroughs that we have covered previously.

This is the last newsletter for 2023. I will return in early 2024. All the best for Christmas to those who celebrate and here’s to a fabulous new year. I have no doubt that I will have a lot on my mind in 2024 and beyond.

Increasing Crop Yields

There is a limited supply of agricultural land. If we want to grow more food we have to increase the yield per hectare. A Swiss research team have discovered that adding mycorrhizal fungi to the soil can improve yield and protect plants without the use of fertilizer or pesticides.

Mycorrhizal fungi assists plants to acquire nutrients. The team mixed the fungi into the soil before sowing crops on 800 trial plots at 54 maize farms in Switzerland. On one quarter of the plots they achieved 40% greater yield. One third of the plots had no change in yield. The team discovered that this difference was due to the initial presence of a lot of other fungal pathogens in the soil.

The Mycorrhizal fungi acted as a protective shield against the other pathogens in the soil that would normally weaken the plants. The increased yield was due to this protection. For plots with already strong plants (i.e. the one third with less pathogens) there was no additional benefit.

A few soil indicators are able to predict the success of inoculation with Mycorrhizal fungi in 90% of cases. This predicability allows farmers to target only those fields that require protection. After all it does add expense to growing crops, best to only use it where necessary.

Octopus inspired Robot Arm

Teams from Beihang and Tsinghua Universities in China have developed a haptic controlled octopus robot arm that can grasp, lift and carry objects on land and under water.

The robotic arm is shaped very much like the real thing. It is shaped like a tentacle and can furl, stretch and unfurl as desired. It can apply vacuum pressure inside the cups on the underside to grab objects. The arm first curls around the object before grasping it.

The tentacle curl is made up of 5 segments. Together the segments and their insides make up a network that mimics the nervous system of the octopus arm. Liquid metal wires are used for sending messages to allow for maximum flexibility. The tips have suction cups and temperature sensors.

Operation of the robot arm is controlled wirelessly via a finger glove. A flick of the finger will move the arm. This allow control of pitch, roll and acceleration. A sensory feedback system allows the operator to feel what the robot arm is touching with its’ sucker tips. The system is sensitive enough to allow an operator to find and grab toy sharks and balls with their eyes closed.

A Few Updates

It is the end of the year so here are a range of updates on issues that we have discussed previously. Change is happening so quickly and it will only speed up in 2024.

Deep Mind

Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT are notoriously bad at math. It is a real weakness with the models. However the team at Deep Mind have added an LLM capabilities to FunSearch an AI system designed to work on set problems in combinatorics (a field of math that studies how to count the possible arrangements of sets containing finitely many objects).

FunSearch creates requests for a specially trained LLM asking it to write short computer programs that can generate solutions to particular math problems. The system then checks to see if the solutions are better than known solutions. If not, feedback is provided to the LLM so it can improve the next round.

FunSearch was able to generate solutions that were not previously known to specific problems. We don’t know if they are the ultimate solution however they are better than we have created ourselves. This is one way that mathematicians can collaborate with machines and improve the outcomes. The machines don’t replace mathematicians however the increase the quality and amount of output.

Solar Flares

The sun goes through an 11 year cycle of solar activity. We are nearing a peak in activity which should happen in 2025. The next 12 months could prove disruptive to our communication systems. Early in December a massive hole opened up in the Sun’s atmosphere and copious amounts of solar wind emerged. It is likely one of the largest solar events ever recorded. Several radio networks were knocked out by the storm.

Solar storms could wreak havoc with our power grids, communication systems and satellites. We have no current way of knowing if or when these storms will happen but we do know that they will happen and increase in intensity until the current cycle peaks.

Neanderthal Genes make you a Morning Person

If you go to bed early and wake up early it is likely that you have inherited that trait from your Neanderthal ancestors. Modern Humans left Africa around 300,000 years ago however the Neanderthals and Denisovans had already lived in Eurasia for over 400,000 years giving their genomes time to adapt and evolve under different conditions.

When modern humans left Africa they interbred with Neanderthals and we inherited some of their genetic variations. A team studied the circadian genes which regulate our internal body clocks and respond to changes in light and temperature. They identified 246 circadian genes and found hundreds of genetic variants specific to different lineages. They pinpointed 28 genes with variants that suggested that the circadian clocks of Neanderthals and Modern Humans are different. The UK Biobank was used to test variations and it was found that many of the variants came from Neanderthals.

Now if anyone calls you a Neanderthal, the appropriate response is “I don’t get up early'“.

2 Nanometer Computer Chips

Samsung, Intel and TSMC are in a race to produce the first 2 nanometer computer chips. That is narrower than a strand of DNA.

The smaller the chip, the more that can fit into the same space allowing for more powerful computing. The Apple Iphone 15 was the first to use the TSMC 3 nanometer chips. Someone will win the race in the next 12 months with mass production in 2025.

Another Data Transmission Record

This record appears to be broken every year or so at the moment. This time the record was not just broken it was doubled. A team in the Netherlands has transmitted 22.9 petabytes per second over a single optic fibre. That is double the previous record of 10.66 petabytes. The new record is over 1000 times the data rate of current optical fibre transmissions. 22.9 petabytes is roughly 5.1 million DVDs of data.

AI can tell you when you will die

A Danish team working with a team from NorthEastern University in the US have developed an AI that can predict events in people’s lives. If you have enough data about people’s lives the transformer models (ChatGPT is an example of a transformer model) can organize the data and predict what will happen in a person’s life and estimate the date of death.

Once the model has been trained it can be used to predict outcomes such as personality and time of death with a high level of accuracy. Human lives are a long sequence of events, similar to how sentence structure is composed in LLMs. The model was developed to analyze life sequences or events that have happened in a human life and then make predictions.

Personally I don’t want to know when I will die, I want to know where I will die. I will never go there.

Paying it Forward

If you have a start-up or know of a start-up that has a product ready for market please let me know. I would be happy to have a look and feature the startup in this newsletter. Also if any startups need introductions please get in touch and I will help where I can.

If you have any questions or comments please comment below.

I would also appreciate it if you could forward this newsletter to anyone that you think might be interested.

Till next year.