Cosmos Magazine: Autumn 2018: Issue 78

Description

Athletes get creative to increase their limits by Rick Lovett "People at the top of their game redefine their craft", says Andy Walshe, the Australian who heads the Red Bull High Performance Program, and advises the Australian Swim team. With the Commonwealth Games upon us, we drill into Walshe's ideas for hacking human performance. Synthetic life forms offer green solutions by James Mitchell Crow In 2010 Craig Venter's lab in the US were the first to make an artificial bacterium; now a global consortium is on the way to making a synthetic yeast. It's the stuff of science fiction but it might solve some of the world's most pressing problems by producing biofuels and non-polluting plastics. Cosmos looks at how Australia's is capturing the opportunity. The quantum internet is coming. But what is it? by Michael Lucy By 2030 a China-le quantum internet will be a reality, according to head honcho Pan Jianwei. Exploiting the enigmatic entanglement of single particles of light, the technology promises unhackable communications and cloud-based quantum computing. Cosmos digs in with Australian scientists at the cutting edge. Science to save the reef by Elizabeth Finkel Bleaching events in 2016 and 2017 devastated reefs around the world affecting some two thirds of the Great Barrier Reef. Losing reefs doesn't just devastate local tourism; corals are fish nurseries so distant fisheries also crash. Australia is exploring ways to rescue the reef ranging from fast breeding programs for genetically tougher corals, to installing local underwater fans at tourist sites. Cloning a Thylacine by John Pickrell Move over mammoths and passenger pigeons - the next extinct species to be cloned might be the Tasmanian Tiger. Last December an exceptionally well preserved pup allowed researchers to piece together its entire DNA code. And that has renewed long-standing hopes of cloning one. John Pickrell, author of oFlying Dinosaurso, describes the game plan researchers have mapped out for cloning the Thylacine.