The purpose of the Leonardo da Vinci DNA Project is to create insights into the life and work of Leonardo da Vinci through application of rapidly advancing tools in biology and anthropology in close association with expertise from history and the arts. The new detective technologies span genetics and genealogy, microbiology, physical anthropology, chemistry, hydraulics, and visualization. A principal means for insight would be a genomic profile of Leonardo. The Project was conceived in 2014 by Brunetto Chiarelli, Cesare Marchetti, and Jesse Ausubel with crucial help from Henry de Lumley…and finally opens a public website.
Area of Research: Technology & Human Environment
Climate change viewed from the 1890s
In 1993 Jesse Ausubel imagined an IPCC-like report written in the 1890s. Here is the 2-page summary, which concludes a longer essay. It’s fun to read in the 2020s.
Jesse on Decouple podcast
Canadian Chris Keefer, an emergency medical physician and president of Canadians for Nuclear Energy, hosts Jesse Ausubel for an hour on his Decouple podcast. Jesse discusses his intellectual roots, the environmental trifecta of land-sparing, decarbonization, and dematerialization, and contrasting Catholic and Protestant views of strategy and fate in relation to energy systems.
Iddo pens summary of American dematerialization
In his Honest Broker blog, Roger Pielke, Jr., kindly gives space for Iddo Wernick’s essay “Counting Materials: How the use of 100 materials has changed in the United States since 1970.“
Iddo posts on the problems with Batteries and Data Tyranny
See The Many Problems with Batteries posted at Real Clear Energy and The Bondage of Data Tyranny posted at Issues in Science and Technology
The Indo-Pacific in 2050: Alternative Energy Scenarios and Security
Wernick essay on energy & materials scenarios for Asia in 2050 published in RealClear Energy
RealClear Energy posted an article by Iddo Wernick on consequences of nations choosing different energy trajectories in the Indo-Pacific region in the year 2050. See The Indo-Pacific in 2050: Alternative Energy Scenarios and Security
Peak Human? Thoughts on the Evolution of the Enhancement of Human Performance
“Peak Human?” booklet by Ausubel-Curry posted
Based on Jesse’s Nierenberg Prize lecture, Jesse and Alan Curry, who led research on human performance enhancement for the Program for the Human Environment for several years, have created a compact version with about half the visual exhibits in the lecture. We retain the title “Peak Human? Thoughts on the Evolution of the Enhancement of Human Performance.” Thanks to Dale Langford for editorial assistance and the beautiful layout.
Ramona Ausubel clones a novel woolly mammoth
Jesse’s niece, Ramona Ausubel, has published a novel, The Last Animal, about a woolly mammoth starting a modern life. A companion essay, Science and Fiction Are Experiments That Ask the Same Question, interleaves some exchanges involving Ramona and Jesse.