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posted by chromas on Tuesday July 24 2018, @12:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the NOAA dept.

Phys.org:

[C]onservation biologists often use species' evolutionary history – their phylogeny – to identify groups of species to save."

This idea is based on the assumption that preserving phylogenetic diversity among species preserves more functional diversity than selecting species to preserve by chance. Functional diversity is important, Pearse says, because it drives ecosystem health and productivity.

"Yet measuring the effectiveness of functional diversity is difficult," he says. "So using phylogenetic diversity as a surrogate for functional diversity has made conservation biology much easier and more effective."

Building an ark to help the Earth weather ecosystem collapse has become a recurrent element of science fiction. How best would one go about it in practice?


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  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday July 24 2018, @01:46PM (3 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday July 24 2018, @01:46PM (#711712)

    The cryo-nerds have some theories about controlling the crystallization process so that a large crystal forms more or less all at once, with minimal "fault lines" (I hear that and I think: that's how you do a lobotomy, with a planar disruption, but... I'm not a potential customer anyway.)

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Immerman on Tuesday July 24 2018, @03:30PM (2 children)

    by Immerman (3985) on Tuesday July 24 2018, @03:30PM (#711753)

    My understanding is that *any* crystallization is a major problem - water crystals are considerably larger than the water that they form from, as well as being prone to growing sharp spikes - both of which do a good job of rupturing the cells you're trying to preserve. The trick for most cryogenics is to cool the water so quickly that it becomes a glass rather than crystallizing. The second trick is to thaw it out quickly enough that the super-cooled water doesn't have a chance to freeze as it warms up.

    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday July 24 2018, @05:30PM

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday July 24 2018, @05:30PM (#711787)

      O.K. - sorry, it was the glassification I was remembering. Just for fun I investigated cryonics once back in 2003 after I saw a job opening in West Palm Beach at a cryonics company... at the time it was a: do not walk, RUN away from this opportunity - as fast and as far as possible, but entertaining to read about nonetheless. I doubt that the field has advanced tremendously in the last 15 years.

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    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 24 2018, @11:41PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 24 2018, @11:41PM (#712034)

      link [bu.edu] (PDF)