Editorial
War
I am, in general, an optimist. The job of infrastructure and society, in my mind, should be to collectively improve our standards of living so we can uplift everyone. Unfortunately, sometimes human nature comes out, and seems we are doomed to endlessly battle, trying to become momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.
The war in Ukraine is of course not the only one of recent memory - there has not been a single year of my life I can remember without a war raging somewhere - but rarely has it been such an obvious aggression into a sovereign state with no regard for civilians at all. And on a personal level, it has never been somewhere that I have been many times, where I enjoyed the company, hospitality, and friendship of its people, a place where I saw and experienced the hope of a country on the rise.
I'm not going to turn this newsletter into an analysis of the infrastructure of war, or the logistics of moving around soldiers or materiel - there are other places to go seek that if you wish. It's impossible to avoid talking about, though, so you may see stories about civilian infrastructure that touch on it, like some of the ones in this issue.
I stand with the people of Ukraine, and with those in Russia protesting against their government at great personal risk. May we all find a way out of this mess.
Land
The Great Eurasian Train Dream
Sticking cargo into ships and then sailing it the long way around the world does sometimes seem a bit of a ridiculous prospect between China and Europe - two areas directly connected by land.
And, indeed, a lot of progress has been made in recent years on the great dream of a Europe-to-China rail link, with giant cargo trains replacing the ships trying to squeeze down the Suez Canal.
Unfortunately, though, Russia is in the middle of that rail link, and with recent sanctions and hostilities, it's unsure exactly how secure the future of it is. It's still running for now, I just hope it continues to.
Hell Of A Time To Disconnect
Power grids are complex beasts, often ignoring state and country lines in favour of bringing enough generation plants and consumers together that they stay stable, avoiding frequency dips or brownouts.
Ukraine, in particular, was still connected deep into the Russian grid - in many ways a holdover from the USSR - but they have been planning for years to slowly migrate to interconnecting with the European grid instead. There was even a test disconnection from Russia planned on Thursday, 24th March.
Well, that date rolled around, and it turned out that Ukraine was suddenly being invaded. Despite that, though, the grid technicians managed to seamlessly pull off the planned disconnection and then kept it off, making Ukraine (and Moldova, who were along for this ride) a power "island".
For obvious reasons, they'd rather not reconnect back to Russia, and so there's now an emergency request to get the European interconnects stood up much quicker than anticipated. Given what they already managed to pull off during an active war, I have no doubt they are capable of it.
Sky
Goodbye, Мрія
The Antonov-225 was the only one of its kind, a supreme heavy-lift aircraft unlike any other. Need a ridiculously giant thing moved around the world in a few days? Then Mriya, or "Dream", was there for you, with its payload capacity of 250 metric tonnes.
Unfortunately, the dream is now in the past, as the only An-225 in existence was destroyed in the war in Ukraine. Pictures show its fuselage massively destroyed, far beyond any hope of a quick repair that is anything less than a full airframe rebuild.
Ukraine have pledged that they will rebuild it, and there is a second, 75% complete fuselage sitting around that was not damaged (though it's been sitting around since the Cold War), but even then it's going to take the equivalent of billions of US dollars to rebuild such a singular aircraft. I really hope they manage to pull it off - there's some projects that just can't be done with that lift capability gone.
Silicon
Hello, This Is Tonga Calling
The severed fibre-optic link to Tonga that got severed by the biggest volcanic explosion in living memory is, finally, repaired. The people of Tonga no longer need to rely on slightly-dodgy (and very expensive) satellite internet to talk to the rest of the world.
The cable-laying ship had to take a somewhat difficult route due to COVID-19 precautions and being under a refit at the time the eruption happened, but they made it over there and repaired the cable in what is honestly a very decent time. Finding the break, let alone repairing it, is not easy!
Nature
Clever Birds
The scientists were elated. Magpies are notoriously hard to track, as once you catch them to add a tracking device they'll never let you catch them again, but they'd finally invented a device that would self-detach near a magnetic feeder, no humans involved. What could go wrong?
Well, as it turns out, magpies are not only smart but socially responsible, and within hours, the communities of magpies were helping each other to remove the trackers - figuring out the correct process entirely on their own, and helping out every single magpie in the community until they were all tracker-less mere days later,
Honestly, I'm quite happy for the magpies here - birds are always smarter than we give them credit for, it seems (well, except the kākāpō, who really need all the help they can get). Feels like if we could just train them well enough and reward them, the magpies could attach and remove their own trackers.
That's Not The Sort Of Mushroom In A Box I Was Expecting
Fungi have always been appealing in their ability to grow almost anywhere, consume almost anything, and generally turn it into some useful proteins and fibers. Culinary mushrooms and progress in meeting the world's food demands is going relatively well, but it seems we can now introduce them to a new field - packaging.
Mushroom mycelia, you see, turn out to be really strong and fire-resistant, and fill the place of some other fibers or plastics you'd otherwise use in packaging and padding. Plus, they have this helpful tendency to basically grow anywhere, so you can use otherwise useless land or resources to harvest this new material.
It's not going to do too much by itself quite yet - it's more useful as an additive than as a singular material, it seems - but I do think we're on the precipice of understanding how to work with organisms like fungi to our advantage, rather than seeing them as merely a pest.
Medicine
Progress On Defeating Lyme
Lyme disease is one of the more nasty tick-borne diseases in the Americas, and for a long time it's been difficult to get a vaccine developed for it - there was one for a while, but it was withdrawn from the market after "insufficient demand" and reports of side-effects.
Well, we're now in what some are calling a golden age of immunology, with the mRNA techniques that helped bring us some of the COVID vaccines massively simplifying the work it takes to manufacture a vaccine - all you need to do is identify the protein or site you want to replicate, and have an RNA printer (yes, that is a thing) make up the sequence.
That means it's really helpful if you know what you're targeting - either the infection itself or the autoimmune response - and as it turns out, we've been going after the wrong Lyme molecule this entire time. The real one is a bit unusual in structure and nobody expected it, but now we actually know what we're after, I am hoping progress in stopping Lyme will really progress.
It's Just A Box
When indoor air quality suddenly starts mattering - for example, when there's a lot of wildfires, or a global respiratory pandemic on - it's important to have a good, cheap way to filter indoor air.
The Corsi-Rosenthal box is an ingenious design, using standard furnace filters and a box fan taped into a cube shape to filter the air. People were initially skeptical, but it turns out it really does work.
So much so that 3M themselves, makers of pretty much everything, took it into their own labs to confirm the results, and said... yup, it works, like everyone said it does. Nice opportunity for a press release like this one, I guess, but also a nice chance for me to remind everyone about this design with wildfire season coming up in the northern hemisphere.
And Finally
Ah, They're Screwed
Deathcare is sometimes a taboo topic, but it's important to look after people when they've passed away and respect their wishes. It takes a lot of land and resources to bury all those people in the ground in coffins, though. Cremation is obviously a good option for many, but what about those who don't wish to be cremated?
Well, look no further than the genius mind of Donald Scruggs, who decided that, of all the options, a screw-in coffin was the way to go. Pop the deceased inside, twist it around, and it'll dig and bury itself, no machinery needed.
Is it practical? No. Is it a bit too much like being a giant wood screw? Yes. But would people remember that funeral? Oh, you bet they would.