I can think of two small project that could make a big impact because the number of
people now working on both things combined in the entire world is smaller than the
staff of your average McDonalds fast food restaurant:
1) A comprehensive survey of asteroids and more important, comets that could
intersect the Earth. The probability of you being killed by one of these things
next year is about the same as you being killed in a airline crash. There may
be only one chance in 50 million that a 20 mile diameter object will hit the Earth
but if it does it could kill 5 billion people.
2) A study to see if the protein antifreeze found in the budworm insect that renders
it amazingly resistant to cold and freezer burn could also be used in mammals.
Suspended animation perhaps?
A far more ambitions project, now that we know the human genome let's find
out the 3D shape of every one of the 100,000 proteins that the genome makes.
John K Clark jonkc@att.ney
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