Taking the Red-Eye over Noe

2 responses to “Taking the Red-Eye over Noe”

1. 

   jurvetson

   Nov 11, 2018 at 8:38 pm

   and this is a great time for the Tesla mobile air scrubber (it passes the external air through a HEPA filter, leaving a bit of a clean trail as it goes). It also raises the cabin pressure to >1 atmosphere, so no particulates can get in given the positive pressure at all of the seals and seams. Heh, I just noticed that it is my Model X in this opening press photo

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2. 

   jurvetson

   Nov 23, 2018 at 8:54 pm

   Joon wrote a fascinating new consideration for the trees, using this photo as his illustration:

   "Ethylene gas… is not only a product of fire, but is also itself flammable and catalyzes feed-forward combustion in the presence of fuel. Ethylene is both synthesized and sensed as a stress hormone by virtually the entire plant kingdom. Its contagious nature is what makes one bad apple spoil the whole bushel. Ethylene-mediated functions include life cycle acceleration of maturation, flowering, reproduction, fruition, ripening, abscission, and senescence. Put more simply, ethylene is to plants what cortisol is to animals.

   ethylene emanating from a burning tree serves as a distress signal — like a canary in a coal mine — that activates the alarm stress response among the larger botanical community, especially by those in the downwind direction of the fire.

   The forewarned plants accelerate their ethylene-mediated biologic programs and promote serotiny: on-demand flowering, reproduction, seed production, release from seed dormancy, fruition, ripening, senescence, fruit abscission, and seed release. Some ethylene-mediated responses promote plant and germ-line protection from fire, while other responses position the lineage more aggressively for the less-competitive, post-fire environment. Another adaptive trait of ethylene for the plant kingdom is its sweetening effect on fruit, which entices consumption by animals who help transport the seeds to distant locations.

   If stress signaling through ethylene in smoke is adaptive, what are we to make of the fact that ethylene is the most human-synthesized organic compound in the world (over 150 million tons in 2016) for industrial use? Ethylene is also a major byproduct of fuel combustion such as automobile exhaust. To what degree does the large-scale industrial production of ethylene present an illegitimate signal of stress to the plant kingdom? Given the flammable nature of ethylene, are we contributing to inflammation of the ecosystem? Is our large-scale production of ethylene a contributor to wildfires and climate change?"

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