Short Takes – 9-4-24

Ukraine lessons in many domains: What US military intel officials are learning. BreakingDefense.com article. Pull quote: ““So listen, it’s easy to sit at the Pentagon thinking you have a great ideas for innovation,” Andrew Evans, the director of the Army’s ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance) Task Force said. “But you know who the best innovators are? The people who have to innovate or they’re going to die the next day.””

Could bird flu spread at state fairs? Here’s why health experts advise caution. NPR.org article.  Pull quote: ““One of the things that people bring up so much about COVID-19 are the animal markets in China, where you have multiple different animals and different species interacting with each other,” Adalja said. “Similar things happen at state fairs in the United States. That's not really any different.”” Latest State to add Bovine H5N1 infection reports: California.

Elevating precision farming with innovative plant e-skin coupled with digital-twin monitoring system. NewsWise.com article. Pull quote: “To resolve these limitations, the NUS research team designed the innovative plant e-skin to be biocompatible, transparent and stretchable using commercially available organic materials. The ultrathin plant e-skin has a thickness of 4.5 micrometres, which is about 10 times thinner than the diameter of a strand of human hair which is around 50 micrometres. The e-skin comprises an electrically conductive layer, sandwiched between two transparent substrate layers. The incorporation of these layers renders the plant e-skin remarkably transparent, allowing over 85 per cent of light to pass through within the wavelength range of 400 to 700 nanometres, perfectly aligning with the light absorbance wavelength needed for plants to produce energy.” Journal article.