Alfalfa is real water guzzler in California. Alfalfa, hay and pasturage account for about half of all Californian water consumption. The real water savings are to be found in reducing consumer demand for animal products - nothing else will impact this water efficiency bottleneck.

Absolutely - although agricultural consumption is the efficiency bottleneck in CA. Drip irrigation is not required and most farms use insanely inefficient sprinkler systems. However, some crops really can be cut back significantly - if the will is there - in order to generate water savings.

I'm talking about alfalfa, hay and pasturage, together accounting for about half of all Californian water consumption. Animal agriculture dwarfs every other user of water - even almonds are irrelevant in comparison - and unlike almond orchards, these crops can be reduced rapidly to reflect decreased consumer demand for animal products.

I'll say it again: reduced consumer demand for animal products is the only thing that is likely to ease water stress in California and elsewhere over the long term.

You mean like the half dozen existing plants and 15+ proposed for construction across the state?

You are also apparently unaware that There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. Desalination from seawater costs about 8.5 kWH / m^2. That is a lot of power. Even ignoring the environmental impact, desalination is extremely energetically expensive.

Sorry, but if you look at actual quantitative data on water use, it is animal agriculture which is by far the largest source of water consumption and water waste in California. Almonds, Hollywood pools and wine are all as nothing compared to the water used for alfalfa. Alfalfa, hay and pasturage account for about half of the states entire consumption.

Unfortunately, you can't just put the blame on 1%ers. You too will have to drastically reduce your water footprint - by cutting back on meat.

About half of California's water is used for alfalfa, hay and pasturage. Next to that, every other Californian water use is almost irrelevant - even almonds.

When you look at the numbers, it's clear water stress can only be managed by reducing consumption of animal products and restricting animal agriculture.

That's how it seems to me, too...but then why should a pirate upgrade? Pirate Windows works great (or so I'm told, I swear).

Head tracking may work well, depending on ability to control head/neck. There are several methods (mostly originating in the flight sim community).

1. Face tracking (very easy to try, FaceTrackNoIR or Opentrack)
2. Head tracking with IR clip (bit more reliable than face, many DIY guides out there)
3. Head tracking with Aruco marker (available in Opentrack)

Good question! The answer is yes, although they are not even mentioned in this unreviewed manuscript (which seems like hokum to me). Electron transfer in proteins is particularly well understood in the context of Marcus theory. The wiki article isn't great, but it has some good information and further references. A key insight is the "inverted driving force effect," an experimentally validated prediction of Marcus theory that electron transfer rates actually start to decrease if the transfer reaction is too exergonic (energetically favored).

Without going into a ton of detail, quantum effects are actually quite important for electron transfer, and some enzymes even encourage tunneling, mostly of electrons, as part of catalysis. Considering that the de Broglie wavelength of a 10 kJ electron is about 18 angstroms (biologically relevant scales), it's not really that surprising. Frequently, there are favored tunneling pathways through enzymes which electrons tend to follow.

Enzymes also sometimes utilize nuclear tunneling (i.e. tunneling proton/hydrogen/hydride), which is really, really cool. I am a fan of this paper which shows how tunneling is is encouraged through dynamic gating motions in a enzyme on the chlorophyll production pathway.

Tunneling (mostly of electrons) is actually widespread in proteins, and its not hard to see why that is when you consider that the de Broglie wavelength of a 10 kJ electron is around 18 angstroms (these are relevant energy/distance scales in enzymes). Search "Marcus theory" for more information...

What's really cool is that some enzymes actually boost tunneling probabilities (e.g. through particular short-timescale motions) as an essential component of catalysis. In some cases, tunneling even occurs for larger particles like protons/hydrogens/hydrides. I really like this paper, for example, which shows how proton tunneling is essential in a light-activated enzyme involved in an early stage of chlorophyll synthesis in some plants.

Unfortunately, the unreviewed manuscript from TFA seems like nonsense to this biochemist. It doesn't seem to line up with, or even reference, any of the five decades of existing science in the area.

How about skepticism of claims made in unreviewed manuscripts which flout five decades of theoretical and empirical investigations of charge transfer and quantum effects in biochemical systems?

There really are some very cool quantum effects in biomolecules, for example enzymes which take catalyze electron tunneling and even proton tunneling. Electron transfer in proteins in particular is actually pretty well understood via Marcus theory. There is extensive theoretical and experimental work going back five decades in this area - all of which is totally ignored by the unreviewed manuscript under discussion.

Unfortunately, your post and TFA alike do not appropriately distinguish between wildly different classes of "biomolecules."

There are some pretty cool examples of quantum effects in biomolecules (e.g. this paper about enzyme catalyzed proton tunneling, and Marcus theory for electron transfer), but this paper doesn't seem either to reference any of that past work at all, or make sense given that context.