#148 - TB Vaccines, Solar Price Parity, and WMD Disarmament!
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In the News
The COSMOS project (using the JWST) unveiled new images of space in never-before achieved detail.
A new TB vaccine under development has already fulfilled its enrollment target ahead of schedule. TB is the world’s deadliest infectious disease and kills over a million people each year.
US oil production may have peaked. (It’s interesting how this particular article frames this as a bad thing for the US economy and energy independence, but to us, it sounds like good news!)
A new crispr-based treatment for GI cancers is showing promise and just achieved a safety/efficacy milestone in recent clinical trials.
The cost of importing of 17 TWh of electricity per year is now the same for natural gas and solar, and it hovers around $100M. The difference is that the solar panels are installed once and continue generating electricity, whereas the natural gas payment needs to be spent each year. This is a huge milestone for the affordability of solar.
In other solar news, solar farms in California are 25x more lucrative than farm farms. And some farmers are double-dipping, growing shade-loving plants beneath solar farms.
Opportunities
Apply for the AI for Human Reasoning fellowship by June 9th, brought to you by the Future of Life Foundation. “FLF’s incubator fellowship on AI for human reasoning will help talented researchers and builders start working on AI tools for coordination and epistemics. Participants will scope out and work on pilot projects in this area, with discussion and guidance from experts working in related fields. FLF will provide fellows with a $25k–$50k stipend, the opportunity to work in a shared office in the SF Bay Area, and other support.”
“Schoolhouse.world is a non-profit startup founded by Sal Khan that is scaling free, peer-to-peer tutoring to students across the world. Leveraging the power of teaching as a form of learning, we have already reached over 130K learners from 150+ countries, with plans to grow the platform to millions.” They’re looking for a tech lead for their learning experience team.
An ops role is opening up at the DIL - apply by June 12th. “The Development Innovation Lab at the University of Chicago uses the tools of economics to develop innovations with the potential to benefit millions of people in low- and middle-income countries.”
Apparently, there’s a public list of all the US senators looking for interns. Check it out here!
In what has to be one of the most misleading job titles ever, this is your chance to be an intern of weapons of mass destruction. “This internship is in the Office for Disarmament Affairs (ODA), Weapons of Mass Destruction Branch (WMDB). ODA provides substantive and organizational support to various United Nations bodies in the area of disarmament. The Office is mandated to provide objective, impartial and up-to-date information on disarmament issues and activities to Member States, States Parties to multilateral agreements, intergovernmental organizations and institutions, departments and agencies of the United Nations system, research and educational institutions, civil society, especially non-governmental organizations, the media and the general public.”
Volunteer with WeVote and help them with their get out the vote initiatives! They have lots of openings for engineers, designers, ops roles, finance, grant writing, and more.
What We’re Watching
Expansion microscopy can be used to map synaptic connections in the brain.
Fewer mosquitos in SoCal thanks to gene-edited bugs!
Apparently, China figured out a way to pull uranium from seawater, which is good news considering that they’re doubling down on nuclear energy.
Is the “am dash” a new punctuational reclamation of our humanity in an age where ChattyG has usurped the em dash?
Quotes We Love
"The world doesn’t change one person at a time. It changes as networks of relationships form among people who discover they share a common cause and a vision of what’s possible."
— Margaret Wheatley
That’s all for now! See you in your inbox in another two weeks! ❤️