This Is War, This is Man

Humans have a long tradition of war. Is it possible that war is so deeply bred into us that we can never outgrow it? This Discover article (via Dennis Mangan) asks a number of anthropologists, archaeologists, and biologists to answer the question.

The anthropologist Richard Wrangham is one of several scientists at Harvard who pre­sent a much darker view of human nature than Fry does. In his 1996 book, Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence (co­authored with Dale Peterson), Wrangham argues that “chimpanzee-like violence preceded and paved the way for human war, making modern humans the dazed survivors of a continuous, 5-million-year habit of lethal aggression.” Natural selection has favored combative, power-hungry males, he contends, “because with extraordinary power males can achieve extraordinary reproduction.”

...[archaeologist Steven] LeBlanc contends that researchers have unearthed evidence of warfare as far back as they have looked in human prehistory, and ethnographers have observed significant levels of violence among hunter-gatherers such as the !Kung. In his book Constant Battles: Why We Fight (with Katherine E. Register), he espouses a bleak, Malthusian view of human prehistory, in which war keeps breaking out as surging populations outstrip food supplies. Warfare, he writes, “has been the inevitable consequence of our ecological-demographic propensities.”___Discover__via__DennisMangan

One theory of war--the youth bulge theory--looks at societies that possess an excess of young males. Young males possess a surfeit of testosterone, which lends to aggressive behaviour. This aggression can be channeled toward domestic targets, or it can be channeled outwardly toward state-defined "enemies."

Gangland slayings in the Palestinian territories this week have pitted the Islamist gunmen of Hamas against the secular forces of Fatah. The killings defy civilised norms: in December even children were targeted for murder. But the killings also defy political common sense. Ariel Sharon's wall cuts terrorists off from Israeli targets and what happens? The violence – previously justified with the cause of a Palestinian homeland – continues as if nothing had changed, merely finding its outlet in a new set of targets. This makes it appear that Palestinian violence has never really been about a "cause" at all. The violence is, in a strange way, about itself.

Gunnar Heinsohn, a social scientist and genocide researcher at the University of Bremen, has an explanation for why this might be so. Since its publication in 2003, his eccentric and eye-opening Sons and World Power* (not available in English) has become something of a cult book. In Mr Heinsohn's view, when 15 to 29-year-olds make up more than 30 per cent of the population, violence tends to happen; when large percentages are under 15, violence is often imminent. The "causes" in the name of which that violence is committed can be immaterial. There are 67 countries in the world with such "youth bulges" now and 60 of them are undergoing some kind of civil war or mass killing. ___FinancialTimes

While peace-loving bonobos and boskops are close primate relatives of homo sapiens, the closest surviving primate relative of man is the common chimpanzee. And common chimps are familiar with war. And so are we.

Ancient Chinese general Sun Tzu, and 19th century Prussian soldier and military strategist Karl von Clausewitz, are two men who made a study of war in an attempt to advise leaders on more rational war-making. Neither man could be consider a war-monger. Both men assume that there exist barbarism and violence in the world, that would surely force itself upon more civilised peoples if the civilised peoples made no provision for deterrence or counter-violence.

Just the preparation for war can sometimes bankrupt a society and lead to the overthrow of a government. The actual execution of a war is even more likely to lead to financial hardship in the society waging war. War is dangerous to all concerned. More than one ruler has been killed by his own guards--even relatives--for pursuing a war beyond all reason.

Yet not knowing when to prepare for war can be even more lethal--for entire societies. From time to time, societies have arisen that considered themselves evolved above the level of war. Their leading citizens could not justify the expense of the provisioning and training of a full-time or part-time military force. Consequently, we know very little about these societies other than that they were overrun by other groups--presumably more barbaric than themselves. Archaeologists sometimes dig up traces of their vanished way of life.

Modern Europe and Japan may be falling into that particular mindset--the "post-war civilisation" mindset. Europe is being overrun by illiterate and untrained immigrants rushing to fill the vacuum left by the failure of Europeans to procreate. A large portion of these illiterate and unassimilable immigrants are drawn to religious extremism and violence. Europe is not prepared, and has insufficient young males to form a credible defense of any type.

Japan faces a rapidly arming China across the water. A China that is growing rabid for resources and maneuvering room. Hemmed in by the Philippines, Taiwan, and the Japanese islands, China's rapidly growing blue water navy is looking for forward bases of operation. Japan no longer has the population of young males to draw from, in formulating a large defense force.

One theory of warfare promoted by Dennis Mangan, is that prosperity is an obstacle to war-like thinking. If a people grow prosperous, they want to enjoy leisure pursuits and pleasures. They adopt more of a "live and let live" attitude. This is very much what has happened to Europe and Japan, in fact. Certainly Canadian residents largely have adopted that attitude, and a large proportion of US residents likewise. War is expensive, and costs precious lives. Prosperous societies are less likely to produce large numbers of skilled military-capable men who are also considered expendable.

So countries such as the US have begun to invest in robotic instruments of war. Unmanned flying vehicles for reconnaissance and attack, unmanned ground and sea vehicles for attack, defense, reconnaissance, and explosives dismantling/demolition. Such an approach may eventually reduce the direct involvement of human members of advanced societies in actual warfare and peacekeeping.

But until these societies learn to segregate themselves from the violent-natured, often unintelligent perpetrators of religious, ethnic, and ideological warfare and terror, no amount of robotics equipment will make them safe from the other-than-advanced world which is always there, even if sometimes out of sight and mind.

Centuries will pass, and more, before civilised humans no longer need to study war and violence. Civilisation is equally endangered by leaders who ignore nascent threats in their midst as by leaders who go to war much too easily. Given the many problems faced by the western world that refuse to simply go away, facing the threats while reacting in measured and effective ways, will be a continuing challenge to people who would rather not have to deal with it.

A Lot More Oil Where That Came From

Huge quantities of oil lie in sediments that have been covered by volcanic activity over hundreds of millions of years of geologic upheaval. New methods of "seeing through" lava flows on the ocean floor--to the rich sediments below--are bringing previously hidden regions of the planet's undersea surface into the oil exploration game.

The scientists, led by Professor Robert White, FRS at the University of Cambridge (UK), also developed a new method of seeing through the thick lava flows beneath the seafloor to the sediments and structures beneath. The technique is now being employed to further oil exploration of the area which was previously restricted by the inability to image through the lava flows.

The research was funded by a university-industry research group, which included Cambridge and Liverpool Universities, Schlumberger Cambridge Research Ltd and Badley Geoscience Ltd, with major funding input from WesternGeco, the Natural Environment Research Council, the Department of Trade and Industry, and eight oil companies.

...The researchers’ findings [...] have implications for oil exploration in the region. Large volumes of oil have already been discovered (and are being extracted) in the sediments under the seabed between the Shetland Islands and the Faroe Islands. If these same sediments extend westward towards the Faroe Islands, as geological models suggest they do, there may be more oil to be found.

Conventional exploration techniques have not been able to penetrate the thick layers of lava flows that poured over them at the time the North Atlantic broke open. Techniques developed in conjunction with the mapping research enable the penetration of the molten rock layer to the sediments and structures that lie beneath them.___GCC

Peak Oil theory is based upon ignorance: Ignorance of the true extent of oil formations under most of the surface of the Earth. Only North America has been fairly well explored for oil, and even there, large new fields are still being found. The age of oil is far from over.

Which is a good thing, since neither renewable energy nor nuclear energy are ready to provide the fuels and power currently being provided by oil and gas. Oil will be absolutely necessary during the next few decades, to bridge into the new era of renewables, safe fission, and hopefully controlled fusion.

Springtime in Switzerland: Booming Economy, Hardworking People, Troubling Future Trends

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A century ago, Switzerland was poorer than Argentina. But now, the country is booming, and ranked behind only the US in terms of productivity and competitiveness internationally.

For much of its history, Switzerland was a backward society of farmers and tradespeople. It had scant natural resources and was so poor that many of its young people emigrated to America in order to make a living (Albert Gallatin, Thomas Jefferson’s treasury secretary, and John Sutter, who set off California’s Gold Rush, were two notable examples). Just a century ago, Switzerland was much poorer than Argentina.

Today, Switzerland looms much larger in the world economy than its small size and population of only 7.5 million people would lead one to guess. Its passion for quality has raised global standards worldwide in fields from pharmaceuticals to biotechnology to medical devices. It ranks among the top 20 global exporters. When only services are considered, Switzerland ranks among the top 12 exporters.

...Europe is by far the most important Swiss trading partner, with four-fifths of all imported goods and almost two-thirds of all exported goods being traded with the EU. But the ties between the United States and Switzerland, which share a similar federal democratic structure, are extensive. The United States is the biggest foreign investor in Switzerland, and Switzerland represents the sixth-largest foreign investor in the United States. Indeed, America imports more Swiss goods than any other country except Germany. As a direct investor in the States, Switzerland’s share is greater than all of Latin America, Africa, and Asia (excluding Japan) combined.

...Overall, Swiss financial institutions have an enviable reputation. Zurich is an international center for bond trading; Geneva is both the world’s third-biggest oil-trading center after London and New York and also a renowned center for private banking. “The Swiss are famous for being discrete and service-oriented,” says Kevin Milne, the managing director of the International Capital Market Association Ltd. “Private banking has a long legacy in Switzerland. There is a compelling logic that if you are wealthy, want to minimize your tax, and not display your wealth, you choose Switzerland for your banking.”

But there are warning signs that all is not serene in the Swiss economy. For one thing, immigration has become a hot-button political issue as asylum seekers and guest workers brought in for short-term job assignments increasingly find ways to stay. Evidence of popular discontent can be found in the spectacular rise in support for the People’s Party. Led by Christoph Blocher, the party became the largest in the country during the last few years. It won 29 percent of the vote in the October 2007 parliamentary elections, running in part on a platform of tightening asylum laws and making it easier to deport criminal aliens and their children. Blocher’s electoral success so upset the status quo of Swiss politics that the other parties combined to engineer his departure from the seven-member executive council that runs the country. ___American.com

Apparently, ordinary Swiss people do not want their country taken over by guest workers who refuse to leave. But if Swiss rulers refuse to deport criminal aliens and their children, how long can Switzerland remain for the Swiss?

Obviously, Italy, Spain, Belgium and many other European countries are further down the demographic decline than is Switzerland. But you would think that given the fierce independence of the Swiss people that if any nation was willing to take a stand against the dark forces of intolerance descending over Europe like an locust plague, it would be the Swiss.

Geert Wilders has released his video "Fitna" onto the web, despite numerous death threats against him by religious terrorists, and political threats against him by political terrorists. I have posted the video on Abu Al-Fin. Also be sure to check out this remarkable compilation of sources for Fitna downloads, and other videos and resources on the current worldwide jihad.

Europeans from all parts of Europe need to contemplate the futures of their countries, should they delay in dealing with this problem. Even the Swiss living in their mountain redoubt are under threat.

Hong Kong Super-star Tutor Millionaires

In Hong Kong, the best tutors get their photos on the trams, and can earn millions. Blogger Freeman Hunt looks at this very "un-American" trend, and can only say "wow!". She links this table in the Wall Street Journal that suggests that Hong Kong may have started a trend that is likely to spread.

Country Science Score Reading Score Math Score Argentina 391 374 381 Australia 527 513 520 Austria 511 490 505 Azerbaijan 382 353 476 Belgium 510 501 520 Brazil 390 393 370 Bulgaria 434 402 413 Canada 534 527 527 Chile 438 442 411 Taiwan 532 496 549 Colombia 388 385 370 Croatia 493 477 467 Czech Republic 513 483 510 Denmark 496 494 513 Estonia 531 501 515 Finland 563 547 548 France 495 488 496 Germany 516 495 504 Greece 473 460 459 Hong Kong 542 536 547 Hungary 504 482 491 Iceland 491 484 506 Indonesia 393 393 391 Ireland 508 517 501 Israel 454 439 442 Italy 475 469 462 Japan 531 498 523 Jordan 422 401 384 S. Korea 522 556 547 Kyrgyzstan 322 285 311 Latvia 490 479 486 Liechtenstein 522 510 525 Lithuania 488 470 486 Luxembourg 486 479 490 Macao-China 511 492 525 Mexico 410 410 406 Montenegro 412 392 399 Netherlands 525 507 531 New Zealand 530 521 522 Norway 487 484 490 Poland 498 508 495 Portugal 474 472 466 Qatar 349 312 318 Romania 418 396 415 Russian Federation 479 440 476 Serbia 436 401 435 Slovak Republic 488 466 492 Slovenia 519 494 504 Spain 488 461 480 Sweden 503 507 502 Switzerland 512 499 530 Thailand 421 417 417 Tunisia 386 380 365 Turkey 424 447 424 United Kingdom 515 495 495 United States 489 - 474 Uruguay 428 413 427

Source__via__WSJ
Imagine a society where the superstar millionaires are the ones who help students achieve their goals--instead of gangsta rappers and too-often-thuggish sports stars? What kind of society would reward the intelligent and productive people who have a positive impact on people's lives, instead of the psychological neotenates who are current pop stars and idols?

You may notice that Finland occupies the top spot in the WSJ table of achievement. Studying the top-level "national" performers should give us an idea where we have gone wrong. Notice also that Canada places third internationally, suggesting that US educational researchers can begin by studying their northern neighbor.

Educational unions in the US are a significant impediment to useful educational reform. The multicultural nature of the US population also makes it difficult to compare stats to smaller and more homogeneous populations. Finally, reforming the psychologically neotenous nature of US popular culture is virtually impossible. The best result to hope for is that a significant fraction of the US population will begin to see the importance of focusing more on things that matter.

Update 29March08: More here.

Carnival of Space #47 Plus Exciting Bonus Topics

The Martian Chronicles hosts the 47th Carnival of Space (via NextBigFuture). This look at why the inflatable Bigelow space station may be a big improvement over the ISS boondoggle is worth a look.

Bigelow's modules on the other hand, may not only be cheaper to launch into space, but may be safer as well, as its thick outer skin may be able to take "a greater punch" than its metallic rivals.

These inflatable modules may also more expendable than their more rigid cousins, as it would be much easier to replace a module or two (like a Pontoon bridge), than an entire section of a more traditional space station.____Much more at_ColonyWorlds

Brian Wang at NextBigFuture reports on fascinatingnew ways to increase the efficiency of heat and radioactives to electricity.

Materials that directly convert radiation into electricity could produce a new era of spacecraft and even Earth-based vehicles powered by high-powered nuclear batteries, say US researchers.

Electricity is usually made using nuclear power by heating steam to rotate turbines that generate electricity....US researchers say they have developed highly efficient materials that can convert the radiation, not heat, from nuclear materials and reactions into electricity.

Liviu Popa-Simil, former Los Alamos National Laboratory nuclear engineer and founder of private research and development company LAVM and Claudiu Muntele, of Alabama A&M University, US, say transforming the energy of radioactive particles into electricity is more effective.

The materials they are testing would extract up to 20 times more power from radioactive decay than thermoelectric materials, they calculate.___NewScientist__via__NextBigFuture

Getting 20 times the electricity from nuclear batteries also sounds good, using the direct radioactivity-to-electricity nanotube approach. One more advantage to nanotech.

Brian Westenhaus at NewEnergyandFuel presents a new way to produce bio-gasoline. This method would not depend upon the use of food to make fuel. As more food-free ways are developed to produce bio-energy, the cries of those who claim that bio-fuels take milk out of the mouths of babies are sounding shrillier (shrill + sillier) all the time.

Right. We all should have known the ISS would turn out to be a boondoggle after Al Gore personally involved himself in outsourcing large parts of it to Russia (the parts that don't work). Bigelow's approach is better thought out, and until automated construction methods using space materials are developed to build space stations and habitats, Bigelow's habitats are simply better.

Progress in Plasma Confinement at MIT Fusion LDX

Using a unique levitating magnet approach, MIT researchers have made progress within the past week at confining plasma with the goal of producing controlled fusion reactions.

Begun in 1998, the Levitated Dipole Experiment, or LDX, uses a unique configuration where its main magnet is suspended, or levitated, by another magnet above. The system began testing in 2004 in a "supported mode" of operation, where the magnet was held in place by a support structure, which causes significant losses to the plasma--a hot, electrically charged gas where the fusion takes place.

LDX achieved fully levitated operation for the first time last November. A second test run was performed on March 21-22 of this year, in which it had an improved measurement capability and included experiments that clarified and illuminated the earlier results. These experiments demonstrate a substantial improvement in plasma confinement--significant progress toward the goal of producing a fusion reaction-- and a journal article on the results is planned. ___MIT__via__NextEnergy

MIT's LDX fusion approach confines plasmas by a more natural and controllable "pulling flux" as opposed to the "pushing flux" being attempted by Tokamak approaches such as ITER.

Novel approaches to fusion such as LDX and other new approaches to fusion described by Brian Westenhaus and Brian Wang, may very well break the tape ahead of much more expensive approaches such as ITER.

Technological breakthroughs in superconducters, nanotech materials, and optical-electronic process controls should allow the materials and infrastructural costs for alternative fusion approaches to drop considerably, over time.

Previously published at Al Fin Energy

Soot from China, Asia, Escapes into Global Air

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It is finally being recognized that soot plays a larger role in climate and the melting of polar ice than does CO2 and other conventional greenhouse gases. Besides this indirect role of causing melting snow and ice, soot may also play a more direct role in "climate change":

The report concludes that the atmospheric warming effect of black carbon pollution is as much as three to four times the consensus estimate released last year in a report by the U.N.-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The findings are of concern to areas such as the Indian subcontinent, where retreating glaciers in the Himalayas have the potential to flood densely populated areas and affect the drinking water of billions of people.__LAT

China is likely the world's largest emitter of soot, by far, given its huge dependence upon dirty coal power plants. China has become so polluted, in fact, that Olympic athletes have traveled outside of mainland China to train for the summer games.

As can be seen from numerous satellite images, the soot emissions of China and Asia do not all stay close to the sources of blight. In fact, Canada and the US suffer from wind-blown soot from Asia. Certainly the northern sea ice has suffered from contact with Asian soot.

The IPCC GCM's are in urgent need of modification to address new findings in the area of soot contributions, ocean oscillations, cloud feedbacks, solar cycles, and other important contributions to climate change which have hitherto been ignored by the climate orthodoxy.

High Rise Tenements Over London to House Incoming Wave of Immigrants

While France is content to settle its immigrants in the "ring cities" around Paris, the UK plans to build arcology-scale high rise tenements within the city of London for its new wave of immigration.

It is estimated that London will need to provide housing for almost 100 000 new people every year upto 2016¹. This is the result not only of migration...but also the need to replace existing housing stock that is reaching the end of its lifecycle.

At 1500 metres high (the average level of cloud cover), the tower would create a new and completely different scale to the existing city forming a separate layer superimposed above London's ancient and idiosyncratic street plan....The tower allows a massive intensification of the city without the need for dramatic alteration of London's existing fabric. Thus the gardens, parks and open spaces of London are preserved but its insatiable appetite for development is satisfied.___PopularArchitecture

UK company Popularchitecture is proposing to house all of the folks who will be moving to London town in the next eight years - all one million of them - in a single building.___Technovelgy

This will be a new approach to dealing with the huge influxes of immigrants expected to flee increasing turmoil in the third world in the coming decades. These new arcology style high rises will be, in effect, cities within cities. It is not unlikely that they will form their own governments, police forces, and defense forces. One can easily imagine wars breaking out between different high-rises occupied by immigrants of third world warring factions--carrying on wars also being fought back in their old countries.

Some human problems will not be easily solved by new technologies of construction.

Meet Xcor's Lynx: The Two-Seater Space Coupe

This sweet ride will get you higher than any other hot rod you have driven. Xcor's Lynx, a two-seater spacecraft smaller than a business jet, can provide romantic vistas that a drive to Jennings Lake just cannot match.

The Lynx will take off from a runway, just like an airplane, and will climb high enough to provide a view of the earth's curvature and two minutes of weightlessness. The entire flight is expected to take about 25 minutes. Xcor spokesman Doug Graham said the company hopes the first test flight will take place in 2010.

Xcor's slower, incremental approach has attracted investors such as Esther Dyson, a tech analyst who has backed such start-ups as Flickr and del.icio.us.

In an interview, Dyson said she decided to invest because Greason "has a record of building things that work." She continued, "This is very much an implementation business. You need a vision to get started, but you really need practical, straightforward knowledge."

Xcor has already developed a prototype rocket engine for use in the forthcoming Rocket Racing League, and through that work received both funding and flight tests for the liquid-fuel engines. Xcor also expects to receive funding for the Lynx from the Air Force Research Laboratory, through a pending small-business innovation research contract. ___Wired

Esther Dyson, a technology analyst, is the daughter of Freeman Dyson, a physicist who has worked on some ideas for outer space resource development.

As mentioned before here at Al Fin, a number of billionaires are involved in building a new private space industry--including Robert Bigelow, Richard Branson, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Paul Allen, and others. Google's billionaire founders have even put up funds for the Google Lunar X Prize, to stimulate the private development of technology for more frequent moon missions.

The ultimate payoff from space development will be measured in the trillions of dollars, rather than billions. It is not inconceivable that Earth's first trillionaire will be a space resource industrialist.

Brazilian Diesel Trees Thrive in Australia: New Bio Energy Industry w/ Transplant Trees

Australian farmers are busily at work cultivating the "diesel tree" (copaifera langsdorfii) from Brazil. These trees can be tapped for a natural oil (sesquiterpenes), which can be refined to a biodiesel. Such bio-energy "crops" promise to help with regional demands for oil, energy, and diesel.

Over 20,000 trees have been sold to farmers in the tropics by the man who introduced the diesel tree from Brazil.

The tree produces an oil that can be extracted, filtered and used to power vehicles and farm machinery....It is estimated a one-hectare crop could produce enough fuel for an average-sized family farm. ___abc__via__jennifermar0hasy

This tree is a perennial that can produce 12,000 liters of diesel per hectare (roughly 2.5 acres), or 14 gallons per tree. Farmers and family ranches could power their vehicular use via this wild growing tree.

The recommended method of growing them is to plant 1,000 trees on a hectare of land, preferably in a tropical area, then test them for their vigour, growth and yield about three years later, which ordinarily would lead to culling about half of them.

About four to six years later they would be measured again before culling them down to between 250 and 350 of the best trees, which would be inter-bred and harvested for seed.

Mr Jubow said a large mature tree would yield about 40 litres of diesel a year, which equated to about 12,000 litres per hectare of trees.

"It becomes astonishingly viable for a farmer to have a piece of his most productive land to get the tree up and running and then he can be independent from the fuel companies for the rest of his life," he said.

They are known to produce fuel for 70 years.__smh__via__jennifermarohasy

Copaifera langsdorfii (Purdue)
Copaifera langsdorfii (world agroforestry)

While waiting for synthetic biologists to produce the ideal bio-energy organism, it does not hurt to use what nature has already invented.

Sleeping Through the Singularity

What are the prospects for human hibernation? When will human medicine be able to put techniques of suspended animation to good use for lifesaving and organ transplantation? Better yet, when will we see hibernation pods such as in the movie "2001". Recent research in mice at Mass General Hospital in Boston, may provide a few vague clues.

Low doses of the toxic gas responsible for the unpleasant odor of rotten eggs can safely and reversibly depress both metabolism and aspects of cardiovascular function in mice, producing a suspended-animation-like state. In the April 2008 issue of the journal Anesthesiology, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) reseachers report that effects seen in earlier studies of hydrogen sulfide do not depend on a reduction in body temperature and include a substantial decrease in heart rate without a drop in blood pressure.

“Hydrogen sulfide is the stinky gas that can kill workers who encounter it in sewers; but when adminstered to mice in small, controlled doses, within minutes it produces what appears to be totally reversible metabolic suppression,” says Warren Zapol, MD, chief of Anesthesia and Critical Care at MGH and senior author of the Anesthesiology study. “This is as close to instant suspended animation as you can get, and the preservation of cardiac contraction, blood pressure and organ perfusion is remarkable.” ___Eurekalert

Other research in sheep suggests that hydrogen sulfide may not work as well in larger mammals, such as humans. We can learn from the research in mice, but we will probably have to devise more sophisticated ways to trigger human hibernation than inhaled hydrogen sulfide.

Something interesting is going on in the bodies of hibernating animals such as arctic ground squirrels (PDF) that allows them to survive sub-freezing temperatures. Similar factors protect some species of fish and amphibians, which survive below freezing body temperatures. Insect eggs and larvae freeze solid for months, then revive in warm weather.

The best prospect for long-term human stasis (months, years, decades) probably will come from technology that allows the body to be frozen while preventing ice formation in tissues--vitrification. Still, being able to lower metabolic rates chemically--as with hydrogen sulfide--would provide many short-term benefits of hibernation for medical purposes such as trauma surgery and recovery, recovery from stroke, heart attack and hypoxia, and delicate heart and brain surgery.

The research on mice needs to be expanded to larger rodents, and small dogs and cats if possible. By studying the cell signaling processes at work, scientists should be able to devise multi-faceted treatments more suitable to large mammals.

More on cryonic preservation of tissues

Radical 7000 Degree Celsius Plasma Reactor Converts Hazardous Medical and Radioactive Waste to Energy and Useful Products

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Garbage and hazardous waste are becoming valuable energy feedstocks, thanks to researchers from Ukraine, Russia, and Israel. Even low level radioactive wastes, medical wastes, and toxic wastes can be converted to useful products and energy, using a new high temperature plasma reactor.

Using a system called plasma gasification melting technology (PGM) developed by scientists from Russia's Kurchatov Institute research center, the Radon Institute in Russia, and Israel's Technion Institute - EER combines high temperatures and low-radioactive energy to transform waste. "We go up to 7,000 degrees centigrade and end at 1,400 centigrade," says Moshe Stern, founder and president of the Ramat Gan-based company. Shrem has said that EER can take low-radioactive, medical and municipal solid waste and produce from it clean energy that "can be used for just about anything including building and paving roads.

Shrem added that EER's waste disposal rector does not harm the environment and leaves no surface water, groundwater, or soil pollution in its wake. The EER reactor combines three processes into one solution: it uses plasma torches to break down the waste; carbon leftovers are then gasified and finally inorganic components are converted to solid waste. The remaining vitrified material is inert and can be cast into molds to produce tiles, blocks or plates for the construction industry.

EER's Karmiel facility (and its other installation in the Ukraine) has a capacity to convert 500 to 1,000 kilograms of waste per hour. Other industry solutions, the company claims, can only treat as much as 50 kilograms per hour and are much more costly.

"We are not burning. This is the key word," Shrem said. "When you burn you produce dioxin. Instead, we vacuum out the oxygen to prevent combustion."

EER then purifies the gas and with it operates turbines to generate electricity. EER produces energy - 70% of which goes back to power the reactor with a 30% excess which can be sold.

"In effect, we are combining two of the most exciting markets in the US - the environment and clean energy," says Stern, "We also reduce the carbon footprint."

The cost for treating and burying low-radioactive nuclear waste currently stands at about $30,000 per ton. The EER process will cost $3,000 per ton and produce only a 1% per volume solid byproduct.__NextEnergyNews

This is but one of many exciting new "garbage to energy" processes coming on line currently, and within the next year or two.

Safe conversion of toxic waste, medical waste, and radioactive waste that also produces energy and useful materials for construction, would appear to be exactly what environmental groups such as Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, Earth First and WWF would promote. Unfortunately, many of those groups have more mundane monetary and power concerns other than actually making the environment better. Watch and see what they are actually promoting, as opposed to what they ignore. A cleaner, more energetic world may not be what they actually want.

IPCC Climate Models Not Holding Up Well

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The image above shows a plot of solar cycle length against global temperature. As many of you know, we are still in solar cycle 23, waiting for solar cycle 24 to begin. As you can see from the graphic above, the longer the solar cycle, the cooler the global climate.
Current data from the Argos ocean monitoring buoys points to an ongoing cooling trend in Earth's heat content--instead of global warming.

The big problem with the Argo findings is that all the major climate computer models postulate that as much as 80-90% of global warming will result from the oceans warming rapidly then releasing their heat into the atmosphere.

But if the oceans aren't warming, then (please whisper) perhaps the models are wrong.

The supercomputer models also can't explain the interaction of clouds and climate. They have no idea whether clouds warm the world more by trapping heat in or cool it by reflecting heat back into space.___NP

A world-class MIT climatologist who possesses perhaps the highest wattage brain in the field, has already suggested that the IPCC climate models have been falsified by the last 10+ years of satellite data.

This is a time of turmoil within all fields of climate science--although you would never know it from the public front as reflected by the popular media. The orthodoxy is circling the wagons, with the unquestioning assistance of global media and national governments, inter-governments, and non-governmental lobbyist organisations.

Under a Stalinist world government, the climate orthodoxy might have a chance of pulling the wool over the global public's eyes long enough to put an irrevocable "climate change economic regime" into place. Under such an economic regime, market mechanisms would be so painfully and dysfunctionally distorted that even in the case of a significant climate cooling--equivalent to a Maunder Minimum--the ability of human science and technology to respond in a timely or effective fashion will have been hamstrung.

Top-level climate scientists are reaping significant rewards from the alarmist message. It is not in their interest to introduce any element of doubt into the scenarios. The same applies to investors and financiers who are neck-deep in climate cap and trade schemes. Even the world's number 1 polluter--China--is demanding massive technology transfers to its state-owned enterprises, as a condition for considering reducing its greenhouse gas output. Not a bad scam, if you can get in on it before it all collapses.

Update 25March08: IPCC on increasingly shaky ground
The study of the multiple drivers of Earth's climate has just barely begun. The premature identification of mainstream media conglomerates with the catastrophist extreme view of climate reveals the political underpinnings of both the media, and the catastrophist wing of climate modeling. Non-catastrophist climate mavericks--who want to study all the mechanisms of climate and climate change--have a tougher time getting financing, tenure, and publication. But that situation is subject to very rapid and radical change, as the oncoming deluge of better data begins to hit the windscreen.

United Nations Issues Stern Easter Warning to UK

UN Roads Commission spokesperson Likshmi Singh issued a stern weather warning to all roads departments within the UK, at a well-attended press conference in NYC. "UK road conditions are very treacherous, and drivers should stay home and off the roads whenever possible. If they absolutely must be on the roads, FOR GOD'S SAKE, MAKE THEM DRIVE ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE ROAD! The extreme Easter weather conditions will simply not allow the normal UK highway hooliganism to continue."

Shocked reporters from the BBC insisted that Singh be more specific. "Are you saying that drivers in the UK should drive in the opposite lanes, against all conventions?"

Singh was adamant: "The old excuse that "everyone is doing it" is no longer acceptable", Singh said. "Driving on the wrong side of the road is a luxury the UK can no longer afford, now that climate change is making conditions so treacherous. The UK needs to remember that it is not a world empire any more. It cannot set the rules for everyone now."

In the image above, snow-stricken Britons are seen huddling together from the cold at water's edge. Driven from their cars by drift-covered roads, they are seen contemplating swimming south across the waters to warmer climes.

China Racing Insurrection, Corruption, Pollution to Hold Olympics Before It Fall Down

China had wanted the 2008 Olympics in Beijing to be a showcase of its power, accomplishments, and its civilisation. Instead, China's brittle hold on its empire is being shaken at three points of the compass. To the East, Taiwan represents a constant thorn in the side of the petty Beijing autocrats, and acts as a blockade to the PLA's deep water navy. To the South, Tibet rebels against the oppression and injustice of Beijing's foreign invading army. To the West, Xinjiang is in constant insurrection against the brutal CCP invaders.

Inside China proper, a few decades of poorly administered industrial development has left the air, water, and soil of China damaged for centuries. 300 million Chinese live daily in desperate poverty, and discontent is common among all but the fortunate and connected. How long can China survive, much less prosper?

Beijing is trying to put its best foot forward in anticipation of the XXXIX Olympiad to be held in Beijing in August. From the Chinese side, the authorities have put their whole prestige and even more, their hopes, on the Games in an almost mystical way. The Games, awarded to Beijing over the protests of human rights activists the world over who compared it to Hitler’s Olympiad in 1936, were supposed to anoint “the rising China”. They were to be an accolade for a China which after several hundred years of coma after its bitter encounter with the industrial West was again taking its place as one of the world’s oldest and most important civilizations. Everything is being done that Beijing can think of – from employing the world’s chicest architects to mobilizing tens of thousand of collie labor to reinforcing its control apparatus – to make the games "a success”.

But the Chinese capital is perhaps one of the worst places that could be chosen for competitive sports. The climate, the encroaching desert which ladens the air with sand, the incredible pollution created by rapid industrial development that has ignored all environmental standards, a police state that demands the participants and the millions of guests behave according to rigid standards alien to democratic societies, plus all the problems of staging such an event, have made the Beijing games problematical from the beginning. Now the Chinese will be under increased harassment from human rights activists around the world and calls for boycotts.

Whether real or a subterfuge to use as a pretext for repression, the Chinese have identified another threat to the games. They recently reported discovery of plots by the Uighur nationalists in their westernmost province of Singkiang to stage terrorist events at the Games. The Uighurs are a Turkish people, perhaps as many as 10 million, twice the Tibetan population, who came under tenuous Chinese rule only in the late 18th century when the Han Chinese themselves had been conquered by the alien Manchus. every effort has been made by the Chinese to colonize Tibet – after stripping away half its historic territory from the so-called Tibetan Administrative Zone – by encouraging immigration of ethnic Han Chinese to swamp the indigenous population. Lhassa, the traditional religious and political capital, may well have a Han Chinese majority now. It was, after all, China’s President Hu Jintao, as gauleiter of Tibet, who put down with ferocity the last Tibetan resistance to Chinese rule in 1989.

The bloody repression, shielded from the world for the most part by elaborate censorship and suppression, and propaganda exploiting the misery of the Han Chinese victims of the Tibetan mobs, will continue. But it is unlikely that the “national” movements in either of these three appendages of the Chinese empire will be quiescent forever. ___WorldTribune

China's leadership has not lasted as long as that of the late, unlamented USSR. Time is running out for the corrupt autocracy.

Sunspots and Little Ice Ages

Image Source

The solar science community is at a loss to explain the much delayed start of Solar Cycle 24.In the next 20 years, humans should take enormous steps forward in the scientific understanding of their planet's climate. We are not there yet. Until we have the chance to collect more data from satellites, robotic ocean buoy monitors, solar observations, and better ground stations we will not truly know what has been driving Earth's climate. We have to get this right.

Solar irradiance has been monitored from satellites for three sunspot cycles. The sunspot numbers and solar irradiance were shown to be highly correlated. Since sunspot numbers have been increasing since 1935 the irradiance must also be increasing.

The sun was once considered to be constant in its output, hence the term “Solar Constant”. Recent observations suggest that the sun is a variable star. Observations of solar irradiance have been made with great precision from orbiting satellites since about 1978.___WattsUp

The sun remains spotless while Easter blizzards fall across large parts of the northern hemisphere. When trying to explain and predict a chaotic climate, it is difficult to separate cause and effect. But while warmer temperatures could easily cause higher atmospheric CO2 levels, it should be obvious that cooler climates on Earth cannot possibly cause fewer sunspots on Sol.

Update: For an interesting look at an unusually open media glimpse of recent startling climate change, check out this Australian article.

Laundry-Loo: Saving Water

If you do not mind doing your laundry in the loo, this device will save water and space at the same time. In fact, while you are at it, why not put the dishwasher and clothes dryer in the same general space? And be sure to pump the drainwater from the shower into the system.

H/T GadgetDNA

State Capitalism and Poisoned Counterfeits

Faddish financial analysts tend to laud the "State Capitalism" of China for its successes, and for its supposed future dominance of world markets and world politics. Unfortunately for these analysts, state capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction. We are seeing some of these destructive seeds bearing fruit in China and other similarly modeled state economies.

State capitalism fosters corruption, allowing smaller circles of state-connected elites to control more wealth. In China, state dominance has meant that "princelings," relatives of leading Communist Party members, have gained control of some of the nation's most powerful companies. Even one Chinese government study of 3,000 of the nation's richest businesspeople admitted that a significant majority are related to top officials.

In Venezuela, growing state control has made the national oil firm less productive and more opaque, one reason why the country now ranks near the bottom on Transparency International's index of the world's most corrupt nations....despite the national resources that can be poured into business growth, in the long term, state mega-companies are likely to suffer from competition on the global stage. Without exposure to domestic competition, their managers never get enough experience to compete on an open market. They also have no pressure to adopt real corporate governance and oversight measures.___BostonGlobe

State capitalism based upon natural resources such as oil and gas--as in Russia and Venezuela--and state capitalism based upon technology theft and transfer--as in China--necessarily are living on borrowed time.

The CCP led Chinese seem particularly willing to cut corners to make a quick buck, which has led to the poisoning of China's rivers, soil, and air, as well as to poisoning of many exports to the outside world. Counterfeit Chinese drugs are now taking an increasing human toll outside of China.

"It is unacceptable that Americans have died and been seriously injured by what appears to be deliberate tampering," Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), who chairs a panel that oversees the FDA, said in a statement. "Whether this contaminant was introduced intentionally or by accident, the full force of the law must be brought to bear to bring those responsible to justice...."This is not a new problem," said England, who now advises foreign companies on how to comply with U.S. regulations. "This is a close cousin of problems that have presented themselves before."

The level of the contaminant ranged from 2% to 50% in lots of heparin tested by the FDA. An agency official said the contaminant was cheaper to produce than heparin, which is refined through a laborious process from a substance in pigs' intestines....."If I had to guess, I would say this is a lot like the pet food case," said Larry D. Sasich, chairman of pharmacy practice at the LECOM School of Pharmacy in Erie, Pa. "This sounds like somebody in China figured out a way to make the active ingredient look or test like heparin when it was not."
___LATimes

Whether poisoned drugs, toys, toothpaste--or counterfeit aircraft and automobile parts that lead to fatal accidents--the problem of Chinese corruption is a rapidly growing problem for the entire world.

Up until now, it has been relatively easy for the Chinese companies and government to bribe US bureaucrats and elected officials, to look the other way. Should the American public ever learn the true extent of the underlying problem within the Chinese system of production, the complacency of current official US attitudes toward the China trade might be shaken at the polls. Information is the greatest enemy of corrupt state capitalist enterprises such as China's. Because in the US--unlike in China and Tibet--information still wants to be free.

Springtime Snows Hit England, Scotland

In yet another blow to the climate orthodoxy dogma of "warmer, ever warmer", an arctic freeze is descending over much of England and Scotland for Easter this year.

Arctic winds are forecast to sweep across Britain and bring widespread frosts over the Easter weekend, with snow in eastern regions....Conditions will be worst in Scotland and northern England but below-freezing temperatures and a sprinkling of snow are possible even in the South East – alongside strong winds and driving rain.....Helen Chivers, of the Met Office, said that weather conditions would deteriorate across the country this week. “It looks as though we are going to have a white Easter. We’ve got northerly winds sweeping in from Thursday,” she said. “We will be looking at nighttime temperatures of minus 2C (28F) or minus 3C in quite a lot of rural areas.”___Times

Europe had been experiencing a mild winter up to now. But based upon an abnormally sluggish sun--and recently discovered lack of warming in the oceans--it looks as if the earth is giving up previously stored heat from a more active sun in the late 1990s and early 2000s. If solar activity continues relatively low for the next two or more solar cycles (20 + years), it is likely that the climate regime of Earth will stabilise within a colder range of expectations.

Has Anyone Seen Canada? Never Mind, I'll Just Hang Out on the Water On this Solar Boat

When searching for Canada this spring, one should probably have a high-volume snow blower at hand. Snow records have been broken for many Canadian cities, and Canada is not finished with snow this spring, by any means. In fact, you might say that Canadians have gone a bit crazy over all the snow they have had to deal with Meanwhile, global sea ice on both northern and southern polar areas have grown impressively over the past year's ice extent.

Global warming catastrophe is looking less likely by the day. In fact, climate scientists are rather reluctantly and ruefully coming to terms with the knowledge that the oceans do not seem to be following the warming script given them by Al Gore and the IPCC. Ocean heat has gone missing, which throws a spanner wrench into the entire CAGW works. Even worse, scientists do not quite understand what is going on with the sun.But enough about global warming! For now, I'd rather lean back, pop the top of a cold bottle of island brew, and enjoy the warm tropical waters from the deck of my hybrid solar / pedal powered boat.

When you are on such a holiday, you want peace and quiet with some private space. My favorite hang out is the isolated coastline near my hometown which is nothing more than a small village of Fishermen. I have the best time while going in one of their wooden boats that is powered by nothing but their muscle and the sea.

The big and loud boats are more of a disturbance than help. Now here is an answer to some of those noise woes that we constantly face. French designer Jonathan Mahieddine has designed the Solar and Human Powered Concept Boat, which works both by pedaling and by the solar power offered by its panels. The designer has already developed defined concept boats and this new concept is nothing short of being the simplest green solution on the blue waves.___Source

So maybe I'll just relax a while and let them dig Canada out from under all that inconvenient snow, before I take my yearly trip north.

H/T Icecap

Baby-Face Hero Fights Rear-Guard Action Against the Coming Dark Age of Europe

The clock is running down on the future of Europe. After centuries of war, Europe has finally found peace and prosperity--time to relax and enjoy the pleasures, the historical vistas, the peace that comes from submission . . . Not if Dutch politician Geert Wilders has anything to say about it!

Geert Wilders’s 15-minute film reportedly juxtaposes excerpts from the Koran with beheadings and stonings on a split screen, a warning of “the threat of the growing Islamization of Western society,” he said in an interview with a Danish TV station, Reuters reported.

Even before the film’s release, Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen of Denmark has stated on at least two occasions that his country did not share the views of Mr. Wilder, who is the subject of death threats — threats made all the more unsettling by the 2004 murder of another Dutch filmmaker, Theo van Gogh, who was killed for being “an enemy of Islam,” the killer said.

“I strongly condemn Geert Wilders’ condescending statements about Muslims,” Mr. Rasmussen said on Wednesday, according to Reuters. “I find these expressions extremely offensive.”

But the show seems likely to go on, even after every television station in the country decided against airing it. After all, Mr. Wilders still has YouTube to turn to. ___NYT

Pim Fortuyn spoke out publicly against European surrender to the dark force. He was murdered. Theo van Gogh spoke out, and presented the film "Submission" with the help of Ayaan Hirsi Ali. van Gogh was brutally murdered. Hirsi Ali lives in constant fear of her life. Geert Wilders himself must be under constant armed guard, to prevent his murder.

Europe has accepted too many Trojan Horses inside its walls--they are influential far beyond their numbers and reproducing rapidly. The dark side of honour killings, mosques and community centers that have become violent jihadist nuclei of hate, increasing gang rape and violence based upon gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation, is consuming Europe in a nearly unstoppable conflagration of ignorant primitivism.

In North America, we are accustomed to the freedom to speak out on any topic. Caricatures in written word, cartoons, mocking films--everything is tolerated here. Apparently in EuropeEurabia, where the dark force of meek submission is swiftly descending, speaking your mind is likely to get you killed.

Image credits to Gates of Vienna and Il Cannocchiale

Next Big Future: Every Day a Future Carnival!

Brian Wang regularly produces flurries of fascinating postings over at NextBigFuture blog. Formerly called "Advanced Nanotechnology Blog", Brian's blog covers an amazingly broad range of advancing future technologies--including nanotechnology, of course.

This look at the use of gene deletion for gene therapy, is one of my recent favourites at NBF.

Two write-ups about recent advances in high temperature superconductors here and here are worth a look.

This discussion of how we might use nuclear fusion reactors profitably--even before commercial scale fusion energy is achieved--should give you some new ideas.

News about DARPA research in rail gun technology applied to weapons systems is both timely, and applicable to the future of aerospace technology.

And don't forget to check out this evaluation of the potentially huge Bakken Oil Field straddling the US/Canada border.

The mainstream media is extremely spotty, in terms of covering relevant research topics and news events. Bloggers such as Brian carefully sift through dozens of the more careful and credible news sources, to provide consistently fascinating information about the advancing wave front of technology.

Try not to be blindsided. Learn as much as you can. Many bloggers such as Brian are quite accessible for questions and requests for information sources. Learn to take advantage of insider knowledge wherever you can.

The Al Fin sidebar is meant to be another resource--above and beyond the eclectic postings on this blog. To keep the sidebar as useful and relevant as possible, please notify us of any dead links that you may run across.

Regional Strengths, Global Weaknesses: Answers to Outsourcing and Global Energy Strangleholds

Economics is boring. Poverty is even more boring, however. In order for a nation or region to avoid poverty, it must be able to run its industrial base without paying exorbitant energy costs. In the year 2008, the term "energy costs" generally refers to the cost of oil and gas.

It seems that if a country or region is not rich in oil and gas resources, its economy is being held ransom to high energy costs. Most oil and gas is controlled by autocratic and oligarchic governments in control of national oil companies. High oil prices put more money into their corrupt government coffers and private Swiss bank accounts, so it is not in the interest of the oil tyrants to produce more oil and gas--which might cause the value of their underground assets to decrease.

Nations without oil and gas cannot grow healthy economies in current circumstances. In order to strengthen local and regional economies, it is important to match the region's strengths with economic opportunities and needs. Find what your region can produce at a reasonable profit, and look for ways to cleanly and economically develop that resource.North America happens to be particularly blessed by bio-potential. The North American economy is the world's most prolific--in terms of all around research, development, invention, and production--and it also has an abundant potential for vastly more bio-energy production to fuel much of its future growth.

Biomass is particularly suitable for regional development--at the small and intermediate scale. Small and medium sized regional hubs of bio-energy are likely to grow up in areas that are currently relatively impoverished, away from the mega-cities that are becoming increasingly top-heavy and unstable.

We propose a network of regional biomass processing centers (RBPC) to address many of these issues. The RBPC, in its mature form, is conceptualized as a flexible processing facility capable of pre-treating and converting various types of biomass into appropriate feedstocks for a variety of final products such as fuels, chemicals, electricity, animal feeds etc. as shown in Figure 3. It is envisioned that a number of such RBPC will form an extended biomass supply infrastructure feeding into large biomass ethanol refineries and other processing facilities.

Preprocessing is designed to improve biomass handling, transport, storageability, and potentially add value by making biomass more fit for final conversion to fuels, power, and chemicals. Preprocessing includes: cleaning, separating and sorting, chopping, grinding, mixing/blending, moisture control and potentially densifying. In most of existing literature, biorefineries have been typically designed to accept baled biomass and carry out all the preprocessing onsite at the biorefinery, followed by further processing stages of pretreatment, hydrolysis, fermentation, ethanol recovery. (e.g. Wooley et al., 1999; Aden et al., 2002; Hamelinck, 2005). We propose to strip both preprocessing and pretreatment steps out of the biorefinery and carry these out at RBPCs. A number of RBPCs will then supply pre-treated biomass to the biorefinery for further processing. While some prior research has looked at potential small scale on-farm preprocessing of biomass, mainly physical state alteration by chopping and grinding to improve transportability, we propose more advanced preprocessing, which will involve both physical transformation and chemical pre-treatment, in relatively large, intermediate, geographically distributed facilities.

...Distributed preprocessing can potentially reduce overall supply chain costs. Because chopping and grinding carried out prior to pretreatment nearly doubles the bulk density of biomass, a two stage collection system where the raw baled biomass from a smaller collection area is first transported to the RBPC, pretreated into more uniform and denser feedstock, and then transported to the central biorefinery may be less costly. However, actual cost savings are a function of the additional costs of handling the feedstock twice, and spatial distribution of the biomass sources relative to the biorefinery and the transportation infrastructure. RBPCs can also be designed to serve as appropriately designed, intermediate storage facilities that can reduce spoilage and deterioration of biomass compared to open on-farm storage. Further, RBPC locations can be chosen to ensure all weather access, so that the biorefinery can draw uniformly from the inventory at the RBPCs even during winter months. Because of high fixed costs, high capacity utilization is critical for financial success of a biorefinery, and on-field storage can be problematic in areas with poor access during some seasons. Distributed preprocessing can also reduce local environmental impacts of biorefineries, e.g. traffic congestion and associated air quality effects, and odor from stored biomass. Distributed preprocessing facilities can also be designed to receive different local feedstocks and mix them appropriately to deliver uniform quality feedstock in terms of composition, size, density, moisture etc. to the biorefinery. In fact, research has shown that growing a mixture of grasses instead of a single variety of grass may increase the biomass energy yield per acre by as much as 238% (Tilman et al., 2007). _Source__Feasiblity of Regional Biomass Centers__via__QiBioenergy

Looking for small and medium sized opportunities is a smart way for a person to get into business for himself. Bio-energy is a ground floor opportunity for those intelligent enough to perceive the energy future for the next several decades.

North Americans have been well-indoctrinated in the "job mentality", working for someone else, indentured servitude. The idea of stepping out on one's own, of taking the risks involved in working for oneself, causes too many academically lobotomised, psychological neotenates to quake in fear.

For all the high school and college dropouts, who rejected that indoctrination, these opportunities for starting small on the ground floor most definitely exist. Even for the well-established professional or working person, the prospect of hundreds or thousands of these small to medium regional biomass pre-processing and processing centers should suggest some investment opportunities.

It is a different way of looking at the world. Locally, regionally, in a distributed and more accessible manner.

Image Sources: Biomass Processing and Anthonares blog

8 Hours of Boating Fun on One Gallon of Gasoline!

This little hybrid cat will take you on an eight hour tour around the lake or bay for the cost of one gallon of gasoline! Powered by a 55 pound thrust electric motor, this open-air 2 seater hybrid will give you plenty of time to see the sights, have an on-the-water picnic, and catch a few rays of sun--courtesy of an easily removable, portable gasoline generator.

The Hybrid is powered by both gas and electric, and is available in two models: the CraigCat Hybrid and the CraigCat E2 Hybrid. Both models feature an easily removable portable gas generator, which can be used for camping, fishing and hunting. Additionally, both models are equipped with deluxe seats for comfortable side-by-side seating, convertible bimini top for shade protection, and a powerful 55-pound thrust electric outboard motor for zero water pollution. The hybrid models are easy to operate and great fun in either fresh or salt water.

The E2 Hybrid has twin 55-watt halogen docking lights, two NAV lights, anchor light and a fishing rod holder for four rods and a cooler. Both boats are super-stable and unsinkable.___NextEnergy

More observant readers will notice that the CraigCat zipping along in the image above is not the hybrid model. But it does give the hybrid something to shoot for!

A serial hybrid is the most efficient of current hybrid designs. The gasoline powered generator provides the electric current for the super-efficient electric motor that provides the boat's propulsion. The same basic principle is operative in a serial hybrid automobile--even in a serial hybrid locomotive!

Using a gasoline or diesel generator in place of bulky, heavy batteries, takes advantage of the superior energy density of liquid fuels such as gasoline, diesel, or butanol. You should keep an eye out for liquid fuel-powered fuel cells, though. Boat designs incorporating a methanol fuel cell, for example, could dispense with the less efficient internal combustion driven generator altogether.

Why CAGW Heretics are Better Informed than the Orthodox Climate Change True Believers

Orthodox believers need only profess their belief, and express astonishment that anyone in their right minds would doubt the orthodoxy. It requires very little cognitive ability. There are no risks and substantial benefits to orthodox belief.

Heretics have to be better informed than the orthodox. There are substantial costs associated with heresy, and most heretics will not step out of the mainstream lightly. Most heretics stepped away from the comforting fellowship of true believers out of a strong sense of logic and evidence. In fact, most heretics were compelled to doubt by their own cognitive integrity.

The recent divergence of satellite and ground station temperatures away from CO2 levels, as illustrated by the image above, has happened fairly recently--within the past ten years at most.
The divergence of temperatures away from IPCC projections as illustrated in the image directly above, is even more recent--over the past eight years at most.

An even more recent divergence from expected trends--the recent cessation of warming of upper ocean levels--is only four years old.

These changes are recent trends, and well within the range of short-term climate/weather variability. But they do raise the question: "what evidence is required to falsify IPCC models and projections?" It is a question worth considering, given that a hypothesis such as CAGW can only be science if it is falsifiable.

Returning to recent climate/weather trends, beyond the ENSO and PDO weather patterns, what might be responsible for the downturn in global satellite, ground, and sea temperature readings?

1. The sun heats the earth, repository of most of the CO2 on the planet.

2. Some stored CO2 comes out by a process known as outgassing ( from the soil ) and the champagne effect ( from the oceans ).

3. Sloppy "scientists" see the warming, and the CO2, but overlook the changes in the sun, don't see the fine differences in timing... and proceed to blame the increasing temperature on CO2 and mankind as the culprit in a classic knee-jerk reaction.
__Source__via__Greenwatch

Well, the numbered list above is a summary that follows a longer argument, but it may actually be an accurate summing up of much of the current confusion in climate science, typified by the confused ramblings of James Hansen, Michael Mann, Gavin Schmidt, et al.

The fact remains, in order to be a heretic--whether in religion, climate orthodoxy, political correctness etc--one must know more about the underlying ideas involved, than must a true believer, who must only profess belief. To a believer, insistence on evidence and consistency is often considered a sign of a lack of faith. In many belief orthodoxies, such lack of faith could easily mean the loss of funding, employment, or even loss of one's life.

Heresy is a risk. Be sure you are ready to take the risk before you take the plunge.

Another Way to Get High on Ethanol

High fuel costs are sending aircraft manufacturers and airlines scurrying to find ways to run their aircraft on cheaper fuels. Brazilian manufacturer of crop-dusters, Neiva, is producing an ethanol-powered crop-duster, and has sold 50 of the grog-powered 'dusters so far.

Embraer subsidiary Neiva is set to deliver the latest Ipanema agricultural aircraft to a Brazilian customer this month.

The low-wing Ipanema entered service in 1973 and 30 years later Embraer introduced an ethanol-fuelled version. It continues to manufacture around two aircraft a month for the Latin American market - mainly Brazil.

"We have sold 50 new ethanol Ipanemas to date and more than 200 $40,000 ethanol conversion kits [manufactured by Textron Lycoming] as this fuel is around 40% cheaper to purchase in Brazil than traditional avgas," says Embraer.___Source__via__BiofuelsDigest

Peak oil doomseekers have long predicted that high prices of petroleum fuels will spell the end of aviation, large-scale transport, and high yield agriculture. The problem with these dime-a-dozen, dimwitted prophecies of doom, is that humans have been reacting to adversity for over a hundred thousand years.

The fact that humans can live and prosper in a wider range of habitats than any other large animal, suggests that the unsightly knot residing between human shoulders has a function other than consuming food and water, or making silly and irrelevant noises.

Ultimately, liquid bio-energy will be of much better quality than ethanol, and will work better within existing engine systems, storage systems, and pipeline systems, than does ethanol. Between now and then, expect ethanol from cane, beets, sorghum, and bio-engineered maize to merge with cellulosic ethanol/butanol to provide a bridge to better bio-energy--within the next 10 years.

Foam Metals: Lighter than Water and More Uses than You Can Imagine

Scientists are just beginning to find uses for foam metals: metals that are 90% air bubbles, many of which will float on water. One interesting new use was discovered by University of Quebec at Montreal researchers: producing hydrogen from water.

Metafoam Technologies Inc. proudly announces that its metal foam electrodes have yielded promising results for hydrogen production....Metafoam's nickel foams used as porous electrodes in water electrolysis have shown exciting results thanks to their high surface area. Actually, Metafoam's material has reached roughness factors 2 to 25 times higher than standard porous meshes and competing metal foams.____Source__via__NextEnergy

Metal foams can be made to possess a wide range of properties.

Metal foams are a new class of material, as yet imperfectly characterised, but with alluring properties.

They are light and stiff, they have good energy-absorbing characteristics (making them good for crash-protection and packaging) and they have attractive heat-transfer properties (used to cool electronic equipment and as heat exchangers in engines).

Some have open cells (Figure 1), very much like polymer foams but with the characteristics of metals (ductility, electrical conductivity, weld ability, and so forth).

Others have closed cells, like metallic cork.

And they are visually appealing, suggesting use in industrial design.

There are currently some 12 producers marketing a range of metal foams, mostly based on aluminum, but other metals – copper, nickel, stainless steel and titanium – can be foamed and are available on order.

The most promising applications for metal foams appear to be as cores for light-stiff sandwich panels; as stiffeners to inhibit buckling in light shell structures; as energy absorbing units, both inside and outside of motor vehicles and trains; as efficient heat exchanges to cool high powered electronics (by blowing air through the open cells of the aluminum foam, like that of Figure 1, attached to the heat source) and as light cores for shell casting. Several industrial designers have seen potential in exploiting the reflectivity and light-filtering of open cell foams, and the interesting textures of those with closed cells.___Source

The uses for metal foams listed in the above paragraph are clearly already out of date, given the entry of metal foams into the catalysis and electrode business. Many more uses for these interesting materials are waiting to be found.

We at Al Fin have been looking for suitable materials for building "Seasteads"--floating cities on the ocean. Such materials would need to be lightweight but strong, and resistant to corrosive forces common on the sea. It is easy to visualize many areas of seastead construction that might involve the use of closed cell metal foams.

As better forms of molecular manufacturing come on line, we should expect better metal foams, with custom designed surface area ratios, and complex mixes of materials for specific purposes, to be created.

Bio-Butanol--A Better Liquid Bio-Fuel

Butanol--a four carbon alcohol--is a much better fuel for automobiles than ethanol, a two carbon alcohol. Smarter investors and bio-technologists understand that a longer carbon chain provides better physical properties to a fuel--including higher energy density.

Qi Bioenergy Blog provides a series of articles looking at Bio-Butanol in today's blog postings.

Biobutanol’s Advantages

* Can be easily added to conventional gasoline, due to its low vapour pressure.
* Has an energy content closer to that of gasoline than ethanol so consumers face less of a compromise on fuel economy – this is particularly important as the amount of biofuel in the fuel blend increases.
* Can be blended at higher concentrations than bioethanol for use in standard vehicle engines. Currently biobutanol can blended up to 10%v/v in European gasoline and 11.5%v/v in US gasoline.
* Well suited to current vehicle and engine technologies.
* Does not require automakers to compromise on performance to meetenvironmental regulations.
* Can be used in higher blend concentrations than ethanol without requiring specially adapted vehicles. There is the potential in the future to increase the maximum allowable use in gasoline up to a 16% volume.
* Is less susceptible to separation in the presence of water than ethanol/gasoline blends, and therefore allows it to use the industry’s existing distribution infrastructure without requiring modifications in blending facilities, storage tanks or retail station pumps.
* Is expected to be potentially suitable for transport in pipelines, unlike existing biofuels; as a result, biobutanol has the potential to be introduced into gasoline quickly and avoid the need for additional large-scale supply infrastructure.
___Bio-Butanol

Much more from QiBioenergy, including current biobutanol projects:

1. Butanol Production by E Coli
2. Butanol from E Coli
3. Isobutanol
4. Bio Butanol
5. Butyl Fuel

Here are some abstracts from the work of James Liao at UCLA
The reality of biofuels is much richer and complex than you will read in newspapers, mainstream magazines, or see on television news. Genetic engineering of micro-organisms will eventually allow large-scale production of any liquid or gaseous fuel which we want.

Until such mastery over the genetics of micro-organisms is achieved, the race is on for less masterful but quite effective uses of biology and chemistry, to create petrol alternatives.

Safer, More Efficient Nuclear Power

Current high oil prices add an exclamation mark to the need for new, reliable energy sources. Converting our automobiles from petrol to electricity will require new high capacity power plants--like nuclear fission reactor plants. It is important to make nuclear power so safe that the public becomes more accepting of the necessary expansion.

Brian Westenhaus at New Energy and Fuel explains some clever modifications of nuclear fuel that will make the fuel both safer for use and disposal--and--much less likely to be used to make nuclear weapons.

The technology is about the coatings that are applied to particles of fuel. Two paths are being followed, one is a cylinder shaped pellet of particles and the other is the pebble or spherical shaped pellet. The choices are made due to the diverging engineering sets that are going to pebbles that are entered into a fuel system and reside until burned through and rods filled with cylindrical pellets in common use today. The paths exist to accommodate the helium-cooled reactor where the helium gas is used to transfer the heat out to the electrical generation plant.

Spherical pellets are planned for use in systems that would meter through the fuel so avoiding a full shutdown to refuel. Cylindrical pellets would be used in rods that would produce larger reactors while still requiring a shutdown to refuel.

The advantages of the research and development of coating technology offers more beyond the increase of burnup percentage. The effects yield that the total fuel used is reduced, the amount needed to produce a given output is reduced and most importantly, the operating temperatures can be raised which brings a dramatic increase in the efficiency, or much more electricity is generated for a given amount of fuel. Nevertheless, the main concern for utility owners and customers is the safety increases as the coatings are stable beyond the reactive temperatures of the active fuel so blanking the “meltdown” or being a rich deposit of fuel that could be made into weapons.___NewEnergy

This technology appears to offer several advantages in both safety and operational efficiency over current types of fission fuel.

Brian Wang at NextBigFuture explains that nuclear energy is actually much safer than people believe--even in its worst designs.

Those who talk about PV solar power (millions of roofs) need to consider roof worker safety. About 1000 construction fatalities per year in the US alone. 33% from working at heights.

Falls are the leading cause of fatalities in the construction industry. An average of 362 fatal falls occurred each year from 1995 to 1999, with the trend on the increase. 269 deaths (combined falls from ladders and roofs in 2002).___NextBigFuture

As Brian explains at his post, only 50 workers died at Chernobyl, the worst commercial nuclear reactor accident. And of course, no one died at Three Mile Island, the most celebrated nuclear reactor mishap in the western world.

Ambitious planners who wish to see solar panels put on every rooftop, would likely be responsible for the deaths of many thousands of workers from accidental falls. Similar safety problems apply to the use of wind generators--which can be particularly hazardous.

China: Poisoning its Way to Riches, Power, and Responsible Solar Energy?

Polysilicon is a popular material for building photovoltaic (PV) panels, but has been in short supply. Consequently, the price of polysilicon has gone up from US $20 per kg to over US $300 per kg in 5 years. Chinese industrialists intend to cash in on the production of this newly valuable commodity. Chinese polysilicon factories are poised to produce double the polysilicon currently being produced around the world. Is there a downside to this Chinese boom in solar energy?

In China, a country buckling with the breakneck pace of its industrial growth,...stories of environmental pollution are not uncommon. But the Luoyang Zhonggui High-Technology Co., here in the central plains of Henan Province near the Yellow River, stands out for one reason: It's a green energy company, producing polysilicon destined for solar energy panels sold around the world. But the byproduct of polysilicon production -- silicon tetrachloride -- is a highly toxic substance that poses environmental hazards.

...

Because of the environmental hazard, polysilicon companies in the developed world recycle the compound, putting it back into the production process. But the high investment costs and time, not to mention the enormous energy consumption required for heating the substance to more than 1800 degrees Fahrenheit for the recycling, have discouraged many factories in China from doing the same. Like Luoyang Zhonggui, other solar plants in China have not installed technology to prevent pollutants from getting into the environment or have not brought those systems fully online, industry sources say.

"The recycling technology is of course being thought about, but currently it's still not mature," said Shi Jun, a former photovoltaic technology researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Shi, chief executive of Pro-EnerTech, a start-up polysilicon research firm in Shanghai, said that there's such a severe shortage of polysilicon that the government is willing to overlook this issue for now.

"If this happened in the United States, you'd probably be arrested," he said.__WaPo

On the one hand, Chinese suppliers are making an important material in solar energy production more available. On the other hand, these Chinese factories are ignoring common rules of toxic waste disposal, while paying Chinese government officials to look the other way.

Apparently the news media considers this situation remarkable because the pollution is being done in the name of green energy. But honestly, the monstrous pollution spewed into China's air, onto its soil, and into its waters should be reported as important news every day--until something is done to stop it.

False, invented crises such as "climate change catastrophe" take up far too much of the media's (and the public's) attention, while serious and genuine environmental catastrophes go looking for interested parties.

China is poisoning itself in the name of wealth, power, and world clout. It is also poisoning the rest of the world through its pollution, and its poisoned toys, medicines, toiletries, and unsafe parts for critical machines.

How fascinating that the media cannot be bothered, and the public cannot be concerned over that.

Hat tip Earth2Tech

Genetic Engineering: Drew Endy's Edge Interview

Drew Endy is one of the young and edgy bio-engineers who as an MIT professor is shaping the next generation of bio-engineers to be even edgier. Dizzy times? Even dizzier times coming!

Programming DNA is more cool, it's more appealing, it's more powerful than silicon. You have an actual living, reproducing machine; it's nanotechnology that works. It's not some Drexlarian (Eric Drexler) fantasy. And we get to program it. And it's actually a pretty cheap technology. You don't need a FAB Lab like you need for silicon wafers. You grow some stuff up in sugar water with a little bit of nutrients.

...in 2003 I taught a course at MIT, the Synthetic Biology Lab with some colleagues, and we had 16 students. For the last four years this course has been doubling every year, and it's now taught independently at about 60 schools in 30 or 40 countries worldwide, it's called IGEM, the International Genetically Engineered Machines competition. There are teams of teenagers from Germany programming DNA happily there, as well as Australia, Russia, Japan, China. The competition was won by the team from Peking University this year, and six or seven hundred students participated....How do you recognize this exponential and serve it and bring more people to participate in it?

...the previous generation of people working in biotechnology are scientists, and the ones coming up now are engineers. We're going to have to invent our new world of biotechnology and I suspect we'll learn lessons around biological safety from the past generation, but all the other lessons are up for grabs. The bio-security framework is going to collapse. The IT framework based on patents isn't going to scale, and the questions of playing God or not are so superficial and embarrassingly simple that they're not going to be useful in discussion.

There are some people who understand what's going on, and who are in a position, or who have comfort acting on time scales that are relevant. It is interesting for me to learn how difficult it is for folks to appreciate what an exponential technology really implies. The fact that sequencing goes from approximately zero to human genomes in ten years. The same thing is happening with construction of genomes. And with the parts collection—the standard biological parts doubling every year. And the same thing is happening with the number of teenagers who would like to do genetic engineering; it's doubling every year. How do you actually live in a world where you're surfing that exponential in a way that's constructive and responsible? Very few people get that.___Edge.org

Anyone trying to predict the future beyond the next 5 or 10 years in bio-medicine, bio-energy, bio-weapons, bio-nanotech, etc. is clearly at a disadvantage. Because there is absolutely no way of knowing what this djinn is going to do, now that it is out of its bottle.

New technology is allowing the talented and skilled youth of today and tomorrow entry into worlds of power and performance previously limited to only a few. The need for wise oversight and guidance has never been greater.

Climate Basics: Earth's Heat Content

Intelligent people understand that they can trust neither politicians, nor the media. What some of them have not yet learned, is that they cannot blindly trust anyone, regardless of academic or scientific credentials.

Consider the science behind climate change. A scientific theory must contain falsifiable hypotheses. The key to understanding and testing current orthodox theories of anthropogenic global warming, is to identify the falsifiable hypotheses and to attempt to falsify them.

"Global Warming" requires an ongoing accumulation of heat. This heat accumulation should be reflected in temperature measurements -- allowing for normal climate and weather cycles. The best measurement of Earth's heat content is ocean temperature measurements, rather than the ground surface station measurements that currently feed data into GCMs.

The simplest form of "fact-checking" of IPCC GCM climate projections, is to see if Earth's heat content is growing.

...global warming requires a more-or-less monotonic increase in the accumulation of heat (in Joules) within the climate system. The use of a global average surface temperature, regardless if it is increasing or decreasing is an inadequate and inaccurate metric of global warming as the heat is not only a function of temperature but also mass over which the heat change occurs! This is why the ocean is the dominate reservoir of heat content change.

With respect to the change in upper ocean heat content, as reported on a Climate Science weblog on February 15 2008, the paper

Willis, J. K., D. P. Chambers and R. Steven Nerem, 2008: Assessing the Globally Averaged Sea Level Budget on Seasonal and Interannual Time Scales. Journal of Geophysical Research-Oceans (in press),

reports on no upper (700m) ocean warming since 2004.

Thus while we cannot state that the recent widely distributed cold waves or overall cooling of the troposphere are evidence of the end of global warming over decadal and longer time scales, we can state that global warming has not occurred in the last 4 years. This is a major issue for both climate science and for policymakers, as only those who blindly (or deliberately) ignore the scientific evidence can still accept the 2007 IPCC conclusions as settled science.___ClimateScience

The question is, how long will the heat content of Earth's climate system be allowed to diverge from orthodox climate models, before the climate orthodoxy begins to modify its approach to GCM's and climate projection?

The current climate orthodoxy is based upon a set of assumptions--incorporated into its models--that must eventually be pared down enough to a form which can be falsified. We are not at that point as of yet. Currently, the orthodoxy has taken care to obscure and complicate its theories so as to present a front to the world which is indistinguishable from an unfalsifiable belief system, a religion.

But if catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) orthodoxy is to be taught in university science departments, rather than in cloistered seminaries and monasteries, curious students, post-grads, and junior professors will attempt to formulate the issues in terms of science--falsifiable hypotheses. As these un-initiated supplicants produce a body of work based upon pre-orthodox mindsets, it should be possible to tease out a set of hypotheses which are falsifiable.

More time. More data. Cleaner theories. More honest science. The orthodoxy can consider itself under siege.

Your Kids Will Not Go to Brick and Mortar Colleges

First of all, traditional education is becoming too expensive. Secondly, the nature of education itself is changing to address the rapid-change nature of contemporary realities.

Of course, it is absurd for parents and schools to try to send every child to college. Even in Finland, where K-12 schools are actually pretty good, they aim for roughly 50% college bound from high school. As Charles Murray points out, based upon mental aptitude only 25% to 30% of youth can fully benefit from a four year college education and degree. This is true in the US, it is true in Germany, and it is true in China.

There are clutters of billionaires who never graduated from college--even several who never graduated from high school. Even if a student plans to finish a four year college or more, it might pay off for him to take a year or so off to reflect on things. Or he may want to look into a year of "college alternative," to inject a huge dose of "world knowledge" into his experience.

Personally, I agree with Charles Murray that for many "hands on" young people, more practical alternatives to college might be a much quicker way to wealth, enlightenment, and genuine knowledge than most four year college degrees will be.

Society does not need the current inflated level of college graduates. What is more, society does not need the academically lobotomised products being produced by so many academic departments of indoctrination, on "post-modern" bricks and mortar campuses.

Rapid change in the workforce requires an education that is "faster on its feet", more adaptable to the fleet future on our doorstep. Parents who want their children to have a life off the government dole, should consider some of these things early.

Energy Where You Least Expect It

Can you really get energy from garbage? From exhaust gases? From forestry and agricultural biowaste? In all the brouhaha about biofuels taking food out of the mouths of babies, who would have the imagination to take a negative such as garbage and exhaust gases, and turn them into a positive such as useful energy? Only intelligent people, which is why you hear so little about the idea in the mainstream media.

Brian Westenhaus at New Energy and Fuel looks at the "pyrolysis reaction," one of several ways of extracting useful energy from waste.

Modern science is exploring and improving on pyrolysis. Scientists know what temperatures yield what products and how time at temperature can affect the product production. The modern goal is to have no oxidized products and yield products that can be made into other products. What is common is to try to yield pyrolysis oil, a complex mixture of oxygenated hydrocarbons that can be refined into most things that crude oil can also be used to make. The advantage is that modern techniques yield liquid products that are much easier to use, easier to transport and can be made into a wide array of products.

The latest technology is in gaseous pyrolysis. Gaseous pyrolysis has been around for well over 100 years when coal was first treated by pyrolysis to make “coal gas” that was piped around to homes and businesses for lighting lamps before electricity became commonplace. Today the target is “syn-gas” or “syngas” and to achieve the highest yield with the least possible liquid and solid products.

Its not all that simple, pyrolysis is a complex reaction and results can be products out of equilibrium with difficult to predict properties. Nevertheless, technology marches on and the control expertise has good results now in managing the process temperatures, the timing, ambient surroundings, and the “contaminates” of oxygen, water and other gases. A pure or consistent feedstock can yield excellent results. Keep in mid that only a very small fraction of the energy locked in the feedstock is all that’s required to make the necessary heat run the pyrolysis.___NewEnergy

Pyrolysis reactions are the subject of intensive research by those who understand the energy revolution that is coming.

Here is more about energy from garbage, and energy from exhaust gases. Even the US military in Iraq is learning to replace diesel generators with trash fueled generators.

For those who are stuck on stupid the mainstream media's perceptions of biofuels, take a quick peak at the different approaches to biomass energy and energy from garbage. No need to do anything as drastic as to change your mind. Just let some new information in, and allow fermentation to occur.
;-)
Image Source

Nano, Micro, Merely Small, etc.

The curious shapes you see pictured above are DNA building blocks, examples of what a DNA architecture might achieve.

A team of scientists has created a versatile strategy for building three dimensional structures on the nanometre (billionth of a metre) scale by coaxing strands of DNA to from a basic building block that can then assemble spontaneously into complex three dimensional shapes over distances of around ten to twenty billionths of a metre.___Telegraph

Meanwhile, inside living organisms, modifications to DNA seem to determine whether an individual will be schizophrenic, bi-polar, or normal.

Arturas Petronis, senior scientist at the Krembil Family Epigenetic Laboratory at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, has found there is a distinctive pattern in the on-off switches controlling roughly 40 different genes in the brains of psychiatric patients suffering from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder....They looked at 12,000 genes and found significant differences in the brains of the patients who suffered from serious mental illnesses. There were distinct differences in the methylation of 40 genes. Some of the differences were shared between the schizophrenia and bipolar patients, and some were unique to each disease.___GlobeandMail

This "epigenetic" control of gene expression can lead to different experiences of health and disease in two individuals whose genomic DNA sequences are identical. Clearly, epigenetics is a huge repository of "environmental" effect.

Meanwhile, in worm and yeast DNA, scientists are zeroing in on genes that may account for differences in lifespan between individuals.

The researchers began by scouring the scientific literature for genes that have an influence on the life span of nematode worms. The worms are often used in ageing research because they have a short natural life span and are easy to genetically modify. The scientists found that of the 276 genes known to affect ageing in nematode worms, only 25 were also present in yeast. At least 15 of these have similar versions in humans.___Guardian

Learning how to trigger or block certain of these genes (or gene products) may provide the first effective treatments for "aging".

Japanese researchers are developing nano-sized mechanical computers capable of performing massively parallel simultaneous computations.

The team plans to turn the 2D wheel of 16 molecules into a 3D sphere - a structure that would consist of 1,024 molecules. This spherical device could perform 1,024 instructions at once, theoretically making it capable of 4^1024 different states. ___Source

On a larger scale, "sugar cube-sized" robots that are capable of linking up and forming larger robots for various purposes, announce the application of the "swarm concept" to robotics.

If a machine has to travel a long distance, it could assemble into a rolling ball, before changing shape into a four-legged machine to clamber over rubble, said Winfield. By mimicking evolution, the robot will test different strategies and settle on whichever seems to work best.

The principle is similar to an ant or termite colony, where individuals cooperate to such a degree they behave like one large organism, even though there is no central "brain" instructing it what to do.

"A Symbrion swarm could be released into a collapsed building following an earthquake ... they could form themselves into teams searching for survivors or to lift rubble off stranded people. Some might form a chain allowing rescue workers to communicate with survivors while others assemble themselves into a 'medicine-bot' to give first aid," Winfield added.___Source

While human disciplines are organised by "field of study", in real life there are no "fields of study." In real life, everything is interdisciplinary. More intelligent humans will adapt their educational practises to reflect the interdisciplinary nature of the real universe. Hyper-specialisation is a fact of life at universities, but in nature it is a certain recipe for extinction.

New Fuel Cell Technologies

A UK company, Acal Energy Limited, has demonstrated a new fuel cell approach that replaces expensive platinum cathodes with a liquid metal "flow" cathode.

The FlowCath system replaces the standard—and expensive—platinum cathode found in conventional fuel cells with a liquid, non-precious metal catalyst system. This not only reduces the cost of the cell, but also humidifies the membrane naturally, eliminating the need for additional hydration systems, and better manages the heat which is generated....ACAL’s core technology is the liquid catalyst chemistry. The company currently uses a polyoxometallate inorganic association complex that is very stable and robust, and offers the same power density as platinum (unpressurized), with an additional 100% performance improvement possible.

For its next-generation system, the company is developing a transition metal-ligand complex. This is a higher potential catalyst, capable of delivering 2-3x the performance of platinum, according to ACAL. ___GCC

Fuel cells appear particularly promising for stationary applications--such as home combined-heat-power (CHP), plus for industrial and commercial CHP and backup power applications.

No matter how reliable electrical power grids are made to be, grid failure is always a possibility. By decentralising power generation, and by providing backup power supplies to critical industries and services, society is made more resistant to accidents and terror strikes that cripple the power supply.

More about ACAL technology PDF

Why Wait for Venter? Gene-Engineered Biomass Coming Ready or Not!

The Bio-Energy revolution is coming. As genetic engineering creates plants that need no fertiliser, plants that can thrive in drought conditions and grow well in saline soil--the arguments against biomass and advanced biofuels are sounding rather empty.

By means of genetic modification, Dixit managed to transfer the HARDY gene to rice. The HARDY rice plants also turned out to be tolerant to both drought and salt. To Dixit's surprise, these improved rice plants also performed at least as well in optimal cultivation conditions as ordinary rice plants. The general rule in plant biology is that plants with increased stress tolerance perform worse in optimal conditions than plants without tolerance. This makes the HARDY system even more promising in practical applications.

The HARDY gene encodes for a so-called transcription factor, meaning that a whole chain of genes is regulated. A plant can therefore turn an entire drought or salt tolerance mechanism on or off with a single switch. Dixit also discovered that the SHINE gene, which also encodes for a transcription factor, is capable of making rice tolerant to salt as well.___Source

Using marginal land not considered fit for food crops will open up huge areas of the planet for growing biomass. Another huge breakthrough would be to engineer plants to thrive without fertiliser.

Some plants have the capacity to grow well in nutrient poor soils without additional fertilizers. This is the result of a very efficient symbiosis between either nitrogen fixing bacteria that interact with the plant's roots, or between these roots and mycorrhizal fungi. These symbioses allow plants to strongly improve their uptake of nitrogen, phosphorus and water. Now a team of French and German scientists has discovered [*.pdf French/Spanish] the common genetic mechanism at work that allows the elements of the symbiosis to interact.

Their findings might make it possible to transfer the nitrogen fixing capacity of legumes to a wide range of crops that do not have this ability, including maize and rice. Ultimately, this could lead to a massive reduction of inorganic fertilizer consumption.___Biopact

While governments of advanced nations are content to cause energy prices to skyrocket through their foolish regulatory schemes, and seem to be "waiting for GodotVenter" for meaningful bio-Energy progress, science may be inadvertently pulling the rug out from under dubious government schemes.

Update: Sun Continues Warming Earth

Image Source

Solar variance is responsible for up to 69% of Earth's warming over the past century.

We contend that the changes in Earth’s average surface temperature are directly linked to two distinctly different aspects of the Sun’s dynamics: the short-term statistical fluctuations in the Sun’s irradiance and the longer-term solar cycles. This argument for directly linking the Sun’s dynamics to the response of Earth’s climate is based on our research and augments the interpretation of the causes of global warming presented in the United Nations 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.1

...Thus the average global temperature record presents secular patterns of 22 and 11-year cycles and a short timescale fluctuation signature ( with apparent inverse power-law statistics ), both of which appear to be induced by solar dynamics. The same patterns are poorly reproduced by present-day GCMs and are dismissively interpreted as internal variability (noise) of climate. The non equilibrium thermodynamic models we used suggest that the Sun is influencing climate significantly more than the IPCC report claims. If climate is as sensitive to solar changes as the above phenomenological findings suggest,the current anthropogenic contribution to global warming is significantly over estimated. We estimate that the Sun could account for as much as 69% of the increase in Earth’s average temperature, depending on the TSI reconstruction used.5 Furthermore, if the Sun does cool off, as some solar forecasts predict will happen over the next few decades, that cooling could stabilize Earth’s climate and avoid the catastrophic consequences predicted in the IPCC report. ___PDFSource__via__Greenwatch

Evidence continues to accumulate which disassociates recent temperature trends from CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. Yet at the same time, governments of Earth's advanced nations are maneuvering their economies into a collision course with artificially created energy shortages--out of baseless fears of CO2 gas. By using fear of CO2 to artificially raise the costs of oil, nuclear, coal, biofuels, tar sands, and other sources of energy, the US Democratic Party-controlled US Congress along with various US state governments, the EU government, various Canadian governments etc., are creating predictable hardships for their own citizens.

The high cost of living in advanced countries is directly attributable to government spending and regulations. While governments use a trumped-up excuse of CO2 warming to raise the cost of heat, transport, and electricity for citizens, they gradually increase their control over more and more of the citizens' actions and lives.

The logical course of action for intelligent citizens is to change their governments--as quickly as possible. Replace corrupt fear-mongering officials with educated and reasonable individuals who are capable of creating the framework for a clean, sustainable, limitless future. There is enough totalitarianism in China, North Korea, Venezuela, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Zimbabwe without our leaders recreating the poverty and oppression--based on empty fears--here in the advanced world.

If unable to change their governments, the next step for intelligent citizens of corrupt governments is to create their own parallel infrastructure of living, that bypasses government regulations and controls to the greatest extent possible. It may be time for libertarians to stop wasting time playing in the sandbox of conventional politics, and to begin laying out a framework of alternative, low-government living.

Surrogate Mothers vs. Artificial Wombs

Yonatan Gher and his partner, who are Israeli, plan eventually to tell their child about being made in India, in the womb of a stranger, with the egg of a Mumbai housewife they picked from an Internet lineup.__NYT__via_Impactlab

Outsourcing child-bearing and child-birth to India? Yes, of course. In India a surrogacy will cost roughtly US $25,000, while in the US it would cost over $75,000. The Indian surrogate mothers will likely practise healthier lifestyles--better food, less likelihood of alcohol, tobacco, and drugs in the system etc.--than their American counterparts.

Under guidelines issued by the Indian Council of Medical Research, surrogate mothers sign away their rights to any children. A surrogate’s name is not even on the birth certificate.

This eases the process of taking the baby out of the country. But for many, like Lisa Switzer, 40, a medical technician from San Antonio whose twins are being carried by a surrogate mother from the Rotunda clinic, the overwhelming attraction is the price. “Doctors, lawyers, accountants, they can afford it, but the rest of us — the teachers, the nurses, the secretaries — we can’t,” she said. “Unless we go to India.” __NYT

Until we actually have a viable artificial womb option, we will not be able to compare the advantages and disadvantages of surrogacy vs. artificial wombs. Artificial wombs within the western country would free the parents from the need to travel to India to collect the child, and would simplify the legality of the parental situation. The cost of providing artificial gestation and monitoring may easily make up for those savings, however.

Certainly the demographic shrinking of Europe, Japan, and other western nations points to the need for some form of child-bearing that relieves educated and liberated career women from the chore. A chore that more women are clearly choosing to do without.

Go See Europe: While It Lasts

The fertility rate for Spain is 1.15 children per woman. Replacement level is 2.1 children per woman. European levels across the board are below 1.5. Europe is shrinking, Europe is dying. Looking at Spain (from a Dennis Mangan comment):1.15 Children per female birthrate in Spain...

200 people have 115 children.
115 children have 66 grandchildren.
66 grandchildren have 38 great grandchildren.......

It is clear that as indigenous Spaniards, Russians, Germans, and French decline rapidly, third world immigrants to Europe will be procreating at rates well above 3.0 children per woman. With polygamy fueled by young female immigration and supported by state welfare payments, the fertility rate for third worlders in Europe could easily reach 5.0, per 1st generation woman. But if you think about it, even with a fertility rate barely above replacement, third worlders would replace Europeans within a few generations! You must include European decline juxtaposed to third world incline, when looking at demographic projections.

Russian Population

The poorer the nation, the higher the fertility rate. Understand that the poorer the nation, the greater the motivation to emigrate away from the third world toward the first world. The overcrowding from high fertility accelerates the poverty, and acts as a physical force to push uneducated third worlders over to Europe.As illiterate third worlders replace the voting populations of modern Europe, the outlook of European governments will necessarily change. Infrastructure will necessarily break down for lack of upkeep. Cities of Europe will resemble Beirut at its worst. Recent elections in Kenya will become the model for European elections. Europe is growing old, while poorer and less literate nations are remaining young, and reproducing rapidly. The surplus young will continue pouring across porous borders, looking for opportunity wherever it presents itself. While the opportunity held out by the USA is the opportunity to work hard and prosper, the opportunity that Europe presents to the third world is the opportunity to receive generous state welfare payments. Europe may as well erect billboards across the third world: "Come to Europe and have many children--on our dime!"

If you take into account that a large slice of Europe's best educated and most energetic people are emigrating from Europe to the far-flung Anglosphere, the situation appears particularly bleak for Europe. And Europe's brightest and most ambitious who choose to stay at home? Their fertility rate is even lower than that of their nation's as a whole. Much lower. So visit while you can. While Europe still exists as Europe.

Transition of Europe and Japan to labour shortage economies
Fascinating Philip Longman PDF presentation on depopulation
Russian plans to reverse population decline
No Easy Answers

Making Photovoltaics Cheaper and Easier

Three different approaches to speeding up the production of photovoltaic surfaces--print-on PV , paint-on PV, and quantum PV--may provide product designers and architects with novel energy solutions. First, "print-on PV" uses ink-jet printer technology to rapidly print out PV surfaces.

Konarka Technologies, the Massachusetts-based company we first recognized with a 2005 Breakthrough Award for its affordable Power Plastic solar film, said this week that it has successfully manufactured those thin solar cells using an inkjet printer. In addition to decreasing production costs because it relies on existing inkjet technology, the printable Power Plastic cells can be applied to a range of small-scale, highly variable power opportunities, from indoor sensors to small RFID installations. ___PopMech__via__BayouRenaissanceMan

Next, paint-on PV

The University of Swansea said it would now begin working with Bangor University, the University of Bath and Imperial College London on the project....Dr Dave Worsley, a reader in the Materials Research Centre at the University's School of Engineering, who led the first phase of research said that the breakthrough could have enormous implications for the way new buildings are powered.

"[Corus' pre-finished steel division] Corus Colours produces around 100 million square metres of steel building cladding a year," he observed. "If this was treated with the photovoltaic material, and assuming a conservative five per cent energy conversion rate, then we could be looking at generating 4,500Gw of electricity through the solar cells annually. That's the equivalent output of roughly 50 wind farms."

It is also hoped that the solar cell material could be applied to steel using existing paint rollers used during steel manufacturing processes. The researchers said they hoped to develop a way of applying layers of solar cells to a flexible steel service at a rate of 30-40m sq per minute, potentially making the process relatively cost effective.___Source

Eventually, every conceivable (non-living) surface could be generating electricity while the sun is shining. As engineers provide more flexible methods of adding PV to virtually any product, it is up to designers to incorporate the technology in such a way as to be unobtrusive, safe, and reliable.The third new PV approach is custom-sized quantum dot PV for catching solar energy across the solar spectrum.

The researchers used four different sizes of quantum dots (between 2.3 and 3.7 nm in diameter) which exhibited absorbent peaks at different wavelengths (between 505 and 580 nm). The group observed a trade-off in performance corresponding with quantum dot size: smaller quantum dots could convert photons to electrons at a faster rate than larger quantum dots, but larger quantum dots absorbed a greater percentage of incoming photons than smaller dots. The 3-nm quantum dots offered the best compromise, but the researchers plan to improve both the conversion and absorption performances in future prototypes.

Besides investigating the quantum dots’ size quantization effect, the researchers also experimented with two different nano architectures – particle films and nanotubes – that act as scaffolds for transporting electrons from the quantum dots to the electrodes. The group found that the hollow 8000-nm-long nanotubes, where both the inner and outer surfaces were accessible to quantum dots, could transport electrons more efficiently than films. ___NextBigFuture

Solar energy is available in quantities too large for humans to use. By incorporating PV into more products and installations, we can use ever more of the plentiful resource.

Of course, the real solar revolution happens when we can store as much energy as we can collect.

Brain Boost: Neural Wave "Surfer's Helper"

In a recent commentary in the journal Nature, two Cambridge University researchers reported that about a dozen of their colleagues had admitted to regular use of prescription drugs like Adderall, a stimulant, and Provigil, which promotes wakefulness, to improve their academic performance. The former is approved to treat attention deficit disorder, the latter narcolepsy, and both are considered more effective, and more widely available, than the drugs circulating in dorms a generation ago.

NYTimesThese are competitive times for top brains. The person who can best keep up with trends while developing his own competitive approach to his field, has the best chance of success. One must ride the wave of discovery--and inject unique input into the wave at the same time. Brains strain to stay "on" all the time. An assist is often needed.

One person who posted anonymously on the Chronicle of Higher Education Web site said that a daily regimen of three 20-milligram doses of Adderall transformed his career: “I’m not talking about being able to work longer hours without sleep (although that helps),” the posting said. “I’m talking about being able to take on twice the responsibility, work twice as fast, write more effectively, manage better, be more attentive, devise better and more creative strategies.”___NYTimes

Cognitive enhancers are being used in many areas where focus and alertness are valued, beyond the academic and research setting.

Cognitive-enhancing drugs are increasingly being used in non-medical situations such as shift work and by active military personnel....There are also situations in which many would agree that the use of drugs to improve concentration or planning may be tolerated, if not encouraged, such as by air-traffic controllers, surgeons and nurses who work long shifts. One can even imagine situations where such enhancing-drug-taking would be recommended, such as for airport-security screeners, or by soldiers in active combat.

...In future, drug treatment may be better tailored to individuals through a better understanding of how genes influence the body's response to drugs. Because domain-specific effects vary between individuals depending on their genetic make-up, drug efficacy may ultimately be enhanced and side effects reduced. Many believe that with increasingly sophisticated and targeted treatments, truly smart drugs with moderate-to-large effects on cognition, will become feasible in the future.___Nature

Investment analysts, stock brokerages, venture firms, commodities traders, and the like certainly support the manufacturers of methylphenidate, adderall, and modafenil. The military is another big customer. And we all know medical students or grad students who swear by the stuff--insist it keeps them going.

The tradeoff is the main consideration. What do you gain, what do you lose? A few drinks of alcohol can make it harder to refuse the next drink. Perhaps once on the mental enhancers, coming off of them becomes doubly or triply hard?

Never forget the evolutionary origins of life. Life is competition. Competition entails risk. For modern humans, making sense of information can be craved more desperately than food or drink.

Bio-Energy Exceeds World Energy Use

Bio-Energy stands to become one of the main energy pillars of the Earth within twenty years (alongside nuclear fission, enhanced geothermal, and solar thermal/PV). Failure to understand that simple and obvious fact is allowing fear and confusion about energy prospects to obscure the near-future energy picture. Every year, land biomass alone stores 6 times more energy than the total world annual energy consumption.

• Total mass of living matter (including moisture) - 2000 billion tonnes
• Total mass in land plants - 1800 billion tonnes
• Total mass in forests -1600 billion tonnes
• Per capita terrestrial biomass - 400 tonnes
• Energy stored in terrestrial biomass 25 000 EJ
• Net annual production of terrestrial biomass - 400 000 million tonnes
• Rate of energy storage by land biomass - 3000 EJ/y (95 TW)
• Total consumption of all forms of energy - 400 EJ/y (12 TW)
• Biomass energy consumption - 55 EJ/y ( 1. 7 TW)

SourceExciting and revolutionary breakthroughs with clear implications for Bio-Energy such as this and this, combined with the huge and growing work in biomass, liquid biofuels, garbage to energy projects, and synthetic biology projects suggest that the government-academia-industrial complex has just begun to tap into the potential resources of bio.

Turning the huge potential of biomass into usable energy is the purpose of the rapidly growing Bio-Energy industry. It takes time to develop the necessary infrastructure for a global bio-energy industry, but the economic and energy promise of such an industry makes the project worthwhile. The very de-centralised nature of Bio-Energy should allow much larger numbers of small and medium-scale enterprises to take advantage of the money flow--as opposed to the mega-centralised oil industry.

The biosphere is hugely expandable, unlike global oil deposits. Bio-Energy potential, once developed, dwarfs any conceivable human energy needs projections for the next several hundred years. Bio-Energy should not compete with food for feedstock, and third generation projects are featuring the use of agro-waste and forestry waste as feedstocks.

First generation approaches to biofuels such as soybean biodiesel and maize ethanol, were corrupt and misguided mega-farm industry insider deals, involving US Senators such as Ben Nelson and Chuck Grassley. Corrupt politicians from farm states should be held to account for their huge waste of US taxpayer resources and wasted time.

As long as the media continues to trumpet faux crises such as CAGW and Peak Oil, and demonise hopeful energy solutions such as Bio-Energy and safe nuclear, the public will continue to be "dumbed down" and incapable of making informed decisions on energy.

Global Warming: Politics, Science, Loot

There is a lot more to the "catastrophic anthropogenic global warming" (CAGW) scheme of things than what you typically read in the papers or see on television news. Tonight I focus on the politics, the (uncertain) science, and the loot.

First, politics:

”Many individuals, including a large portion of environmentalists, believe that a purely technological approach to stablizing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere could lead to social apathy towards climate change.

Ted Parsons, a professor at the School of National Resources and Environment at the University of Michigan, writes that the promises of air capture could carry a ‘moral hazard’ because political pressure for near-term efforts to curtail climate change may be reduced.

Air capture also addresses one of many factors adversely affecting the environment. The climate crisis is a powerful tool to motivate change - like checking the ever-expanding global population and excessive resource consumption - and if the urgency of climate change is compromised, other environmental projects may fall by the wayside.”

Thus we have the reasoning as to why the science issues on Climate Science have been mostly ignored - the issue is not about climate science. The goal is to use the term “global warming” (with “climate change” used to make the concept cover all aspects of climate) not to ”motivate” change, but to force the public and policymakers to adopt specific policy and political actions that promotes particular agendas. ___ClimateScience

Next, the uncertain science:

"Runaway greenhouse theories contradict energy balance equations," Miskolczi states. Just as the theory of relativity sets an upper limit on velocity, his theory sets an upper limit on the greenhouse effect, a limit which prevents it from warming the Earth more than a certain amount.

How did modern researchers make such a mistake? They relied upon equations derived over 80 years ago, equations which left off one term from the final solution.____DailyTech

Finally the loot:

There’s money to be made by cultivating a green image. And there’s lots of money to be doled out to researchers studying climate change and new energy technologies.___NYTimes

Just ask Al Gore: he, can, tell, you, plenty, of ways to make money on a convenient scam. Not bad, if you have the cold blood to pull it off.

Climate change is a euphemism referring to a jigsaw puzzle that is lacking most of its pieces. Some people can take the puzzle, pretend it is solved and complete, and turn the world into their own private paradise. Woe to the others, though. Everyone else.

The Oil Price Bubble: How Low Can It Go?

While most people are asking "How high can oil go?", a lot of informed analysts are wondering how far the price of oil will drop when the bubble bursts. T. Boone Pickens is shorting oil, the chief of the IMF considers an oil price drop more than just possible, Saudi oil minister Naimi suspects prices may fall into the $60 to $70 range for a while, and the IEA has thought for several weeks that international oil prices are likely to fall for many reasons.

Many "doomseekers" would like to think that oil production has peaked, and prices will keep climbing to $200/bbl, $300/bbl and higher. But the inside analysts in the industry believe that prices are more likely to fall--significantly--before they go that high, if they ever do.

Oil has been on a tear since last summer, when investors began reacting to financial turmoil and economic weakness in the United States – and the resulting decline in American dollar and interest rates – by moving aggressively into crude oil futures markets.

Since then, crude prices have climbed nearly 50 per cent from $70 a barrel. That increase came even as analysts were reducing their forecasts of global demand growth this year, in light of growing economic weakness in the United States and elsewhere.

The stunning price rise has been driven almost exclusively by investors who were bailing out of the dollar and other financial assets and pouring into commodities, Judith Dwarkin, chief economist at Calgary-based Ross Smith Energy Group, said yesterday.

“The fundamentals don't support prices at $80, let alone $100,” Ms. Dwarkin said. She said global demand growth has slowed in recent years, while spare capacity among members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries has expanded somewhat, even as inventories of gasoline are at robust levels.

“The greater prices diverge from what is fundamentally supportable, and the longer they stay at a distance from what is fundamentally supportable, the greater the risk of a correction, and a large one.”...She has forecast an average price of $75 a barrel for this year.

Oil consumption in the developed world is dropping more sharply than anticipated just a few months ago because the subprime crisis has contributed to increasing economic weakness, Mr. Lynch said. Even emerging economies have slowed their demand growth in the face of record high prices, he added.

Prices are remaining high owing to speculation. “It's people saying the stock market doesn't look good, real estate doesn't look good, the dollar doesn't look good, so let's buy commodities,” he said.

He said prices could drop below $50 a barrel over the next three to five years, if OPEC is unable to significantly cut production in the face of weaker demand.___GlobeandMail_via__EnvironmentalRepublic

Other analysts think the prices will remain in the US $90 to $110 range for the foreseeable future, if world economies continue to grow.

Al Fin readers understand that far more oil is still in the ground, than has been pumped. The price of pumping and refining that oil will likely rise as the more attainable oil is depleted. High oil prices (above US $60 a barrel) are likely from now on. Anything above $60 at this time is likely due to lively speculation by hedge investors, and perhaps even manipulation by high level traders in the run-up to US presidential elections this November. A lower dollar and higher oil could have a significant impact on US voter mood in November.

In the long run, however, technology is king. Better oil production technologies will keep the EROEI for oil from skyrocketing. Within the decade we will see unexpected growth of the bio-energy sector, reducing demand for petro-crude. Nuclear energy growth in many countries--probably including the US--will reduce demand for other petro products due to shifts in transportation and home heating from oil to electricity. Better utility-scale electrical storage will bring more large-scale renewables into the energy picture. More efficient electricity transmission and distribution (high temp superconductors, HVDC, etc) will make electricity more invisible to the landscape, but more reliably available. And better efficiencies in energy use across the board will further reduce use of oil. It will all add up.

The oil dictatorships of the middle east, Africa, Russia, Venezuela, and the far east will need to find other sources of income if they do not want to end up like North Korea and Zimbabwe.

Update: Brian Wang at NextBigFuture has an update on the huge oil field that straddles the US:Canadian border, the Bakken field. With oil prices high, you can expect oil exploration to enjoy a huge boost.

Why Jenny Flunks Math 55

Math 55 is supposed to be the hardest math course in US higher education. "Honors Calculus and Linear Algebra". Classes meet three hours a week, and class homework requires up to 60 hours a week. Few women take Math 55. Fewer still ever pass.

Math 55 does not look like America. Each year as many as 50 students sign up, but at least half drop out within a few weeks. As one former student told The Crimson newspaper in 2006, “We had 51 students the first day, 31 students the second day, 24 for the next four days, 23 for two more weeks, and then 21 for the rest of the first semester.” Said another student, “I guess you can say it’s an episode of ‘Survivor’ with people voting themselves off.” The final class roster, according to The Crimson: “45 percent Jewish, 18 percent Asian, 100 percent male.”

Why do women avoid classes like Math 55? Why, in fact, are there so few women in the high echelons of academic math and in the physi­cal sciences?

Women now earn 57 percent of bachelors degrees and 59 percent of masters degrees. According to the Survey of Earned Doctorates, 2006 was the fifth year in a row in which the majority of research Ph.D.’s awarded to U.S. citizens went to women. Women earn more Ph.D.’s than men in the humanities, social sciences, education, and life sciences. Women now serve as presidents of Harvard, MIT, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, and other leading research universities. But elsewhere, the figures are different. Women comprise just 19 percent of tenure-track professors in math, 11 percent in physics, 10 percent in computer science, and 10 percent in electrical engineering. And the pipeline does not promise statistical parity any time soon: women are now earning 24 percent of the Ph.D.’s in the physical sciences—way up from the 4 percent of the 1960s, but still far behind the rate they are winning doctorates in other fields.

...So why are there so few women in the high echelons of academic math and in the physical sciences? In a recent survey of faculty atti­tudes on social issues, sociologists Neil Gross of Harvard and Solon Simmons of George Mason University asked 1,417 professors what accounts for the relative scarcity of female pro­fessors in math, science, and engineering. Just 1 percent of respondents attributed the scarcity to women’s lack of ability, 24 percent to sexist discrimination, and 74 percent to differences in what characteristically interests men and women.___American__via_SteveSailer

But the truth may be a bit less politically correct. La Griffe du Lion looks at sex differences in mathematics and concludes:

Mathematics is a man's game. A gender gap appears early in life, blossoms with the onset of puberty and reaches full bloom by mid-adolescence. It indelibly shapes women's prospects for doing significant mathematics. In this account of cognitive sex differences, Prodigy shows how sex-differentiated ability in 15 year-olds accounts for the exiguous female representation at the highest levels of mathematical research. A female Fields Medalist is predicted to surface once every 103 years.

Another look at women and minorities in science concludes:

Prospects for women and minority doctoral scientists in engineering and other math-intensive areas are examined. A calculation of the ethnic-gender profile of this segment of the workforce is made for U.S. citizens and permanent residents. Rank ordering on mathematical reasoning ability predicts that women will top off at approximately 27 percent of this market. Similarly, rank ordering predicts almost 99 percent of math-intensive doctoral jobs will go to whites and Asians of primarily Chinese, Japanese, Korean and South Asian descent. Asians will continue to be represented in these fields well beyond their numbers in the general population. A study of the math-intensive academic marketplace predicts that women will top off there at about 22 to 23 percent.

In fact, women are already topping off at roughly 24% in the physical sciences which are more math intensive. If you read the Christina Hoff Sommers article you will find that politically, this lack of gender equity is simply unacceptable. Regardless of how many other academic fields and professions that women may be coming to dominate, if even a few fields remain where male dominance appears unchallenged, political feminists will cry foul. And when that happens, billions of dollars suddenly change hands, department heads and college deans will fall, and congress suddenly shakes a leg to please.

This is simply power politics for high powered feminist heavyweights, such as those mentioned in the article. But for academia, it sounds more like the death knell of minimally politicized science and math. The further entrenching of ideology into every aspect of academic thought and training. Make the world conform to your insular views, at all costs. Regardless of who is finally elected US President in November, there is no doubt who is at the wheel. PC--a cold and killing dogma.

Women Scream, Swoon, then Become Prickly

A recent Washington Post article by Charlotte Allen took a light-hearted poke at womanly quirks and eccentricities.

What is it about us women? Why do we always fall for the hysterical, the superficial and the gooily sentimental? Take a look at the New York Times bestseller list. At the top of the paperback nonfiction chart and pitched to an exclusively female readership is Elizabeth Gilbert's "Eat, Pray, Love." Here's the book's autobiographical plot: Gilbert gets bored with her perfectly okay husband, so she has an affair behind his back. Then, when that doesn't pan out, she goes to Italy and gains 23 pounds forking pasta so she has to buy a whole new wardrobe, goes to India to meditate (that's the snooze part), and finally, at an Indonesian beach, finds fulfillment by -- get this -- picking up a Latin lover!__We Scream, We Swoon ...

Reaction from women readers was swift and hostile. In gracious fashion, Ms. Allen took the time to answer some of her female accusers.

Memphis, Tenn.: Ms. Allen, I am confused about The Post editors' "it was satire, stupid" defense of your article. Could you explain why (or how) you thought the reader could have (or should have) picked up on the satirical tone? I recognize that this question may provoke a response not unlike the Supreme Court's "I know it when I see it" approach to obscenity, but I have read a lot of satire, and I just don't see it in your article. Perhaps you could give me a quick and dirty review of my eighth-grade English class?

Charlotte Allen: I'm not sure whether I'd characterize the piece as satire, but I'd certainly characterize it as humor: my poking fun at the dumb things my sex does.

West Lafayette, Ind.: You said, in reference to women in typically male-dominated fields, that "the number of women in these fields will always lag behind the number of men, for good reason." Do you honestly believe there is any good reason that women are excluded from these fields? As a woman, don't you have any kind of desire at all to see women succeed in the same areas as men?

Charlotte Allen: I don't think women are excluded. They used to be, but no more. And I believe passionately that no woman should be excluded from choosing any career she desires--but I don't believe in quotas, double standards, etc.

Woodbridge, Va.: Congratulations on a hilarious article. Do you think the hysterical response to it provides further proof that feminists have no sense of humor?

Charlotte Allen: Is the pope German? ___WaPo

And so on. Very entertaining.

I suppose I should have expect the prickliness and absence of good humour shown by most women responding to the article, just from watching Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Hopkins, Drew Faust, etc. But honestly, can half the human race be this hyper-sensitive to the least criticism? How can they ever find the time to get anything productive done, when they are so busy addressing imagined or implied criticisms?

Imagine North American women being placed in an Islamic country such as Saudi Arabia or Iran, to live the rest of their lives. Is it even possible for them to imagine such an hostile environment for women? But there is no need for that.

North American women are on a roll. They are successful beyond the fondest dreams of women 100 years ago. One woman stands at the brink of the most powerful political position on Earth. Except for a few fields where the top rank of men are clearly better suited for elite performance--math, physics, engineering and CS specialties requiring higher math, fighter pilots, etc--women are virtually taking over the professions, by the numbers.

Some people think that is good, some think it is bad. Actually, it is neither. What is important is that society put its best people in critical positions, regardless of gender, ethnicity, or religion. And we desperately need people who can laugh at themselves sincerely, at least a little.

Solar Thermal: The More Mature Older Solar Sister

Of the "Solar sisters", PV and Thermal, Thermal is clearly the more mature and ready for primetime. Why? Because Thermal solar contains its own storage.

...Some of the new plants will feature systems that allow them to store heat and generate electricity for hours after sunset..

..The workability of solar thermal power was established in the 1980s, when developers in California built a series of plants in the Mojave Desert, eventually reaching 354 megawatts of capacity. A megawatt is enough electricity to run 1,000 room air-conditioners at once.

The California plants grew more sophisticated and costs shrank as the project progressed. But then the price of a competing fuel, natural gas, collapsed in the 1990s and building new solar plants became uneconomic.

...solar plants do tend to produce peak power during the hottest part of the day, when demand is highest and electricity is costly, so at certain times they are already competitive with plants using natural gas. And they have an advantage over the other widely available form of renewable power, wind turbines: they are more predictable.___NYTimes__via_KurzweilAI.net

Heat is currently easier to store for later use than is electricity. With photovoltaic, when the sun is gone the power is gone. With solar thermal, the heat can be stored and used for several hours after sundown, until people go to bed.

Al Fin has argued for the superiority of solar thermal over PV for years. Incorporating phase change materials in thermal storage systems should extend heat storage through most of the night.

Top Down Brain, Bottom Up Brain

Cognitive Science has embarked upon the epic quest to understand--and recreate--a functioning "human-equivalent" brain. With such a daunting task of unprecedented magnitude, different teams of scientists are approaching the problem from different directions. A UC Berkeley team used an fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) scanner to learn how the visual cortex (occipital lobe) of the brain decodes visual images.

Writing in the journal Nature, the scientists, led by Dr Jack Gallant from the University of California at Berkeley, said: "Our results suggest that it may soon be possible to reconstruct a picture of a person's visual experience from measurements of brain activity alone. Imagine a general brain-reading device that could reconstruct a picture of a person's visual experience at any moment in time."

...The technique relies on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a standard technique that creates images of brain activity based on changes in blood flow to different brain regions. The first step is to train the software decoder by scanning a subject's visual cortex while they view thousands of images over five hours. This teaches the decoder how that person's brain codes visual information. The next stage is to take a new set of images and use the decoder to predict the brain activity it would expect if the subject was viewing each of them. Finally, the subject views images from this second set while in the scanner. "We simply look through the list of predicted activities to see which one is most similar to the observed activity, and that's our guess," said Gallant.

...The team estimate that if they used 1bn images (roughly the number on Google) it would have a success rate of 20%. With that many images, Gallant said, the software is close to doing true image reconstruction - working out what you are seeing from scratch. "There is no reason we shouldn't be able to solve this problem ... That's what we are working on now."___Guardian

A better understanding of brain coding for various tasks done by different parts of the brain, should facilitate better neurochips to serve as temporary "neural-scaffolding" after stroke or brain injury. The neurochip would allow continued brain processing for the damaged parts of the brain, while ongoing stimulation encourages natural brain connections to re-form.The opposite, bottom-up approach to understanding the brain is being done by IBM researchers in Switzerland. The researchers are attempting to "recreate", or simulate a rat brain cortex with advanced silicon parallel processors.

In the basement of a university in Lausanne, Switzerland sit four black boxes, each about the size of a refrigerator, and filled with 2,000 IBM microchips stacked in repeating rows. Together they form the processing core of a machine that can handle 22.8 trillion operations per second. It contains no moving parts and is eerily silent.

...Each of its microchips has been programmed to act just like a real neuron in a real brain. The behavior of the computer replicates, with shocking precision, the cellular events unfolding inside a mind. "This is the first model of the brain that has been built from the bottom-up," says Henry Markram, a neuroscientist at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and the director of the Blue Brain project. "There are lots of models out there, but this is the only one that is totally biologically accurate. We began with the most basic facts about the brain and just worked from there."

Every brain is made of the same basic parts. A sensory cell in a sea slug works just like a cortical neuron in a human brain. It relies on the same neurotransmitters and ion channels and enzymes. Evolution only innovates when it needs to, and the neuron is a perfect piece of design...In theory, this meant that once the Blue Brain team created an accurate model of a single neuron, they could multiply it to get a three-dimensional slice of brain.

...After assembling a three-dimensional model of 10,000 virtual neurons, the scientists began feeding the simulation electrical impulses, which were designed to replicate the currents constantly rippling through a real rat brain. Because the model focused on one particular kind of neural circuit—a neocortical column in the somatosensory cortex of a two-week-old rat—the scientists could feed the supercomputer the same sort of electrical stimulation that a newborn rat would actually experience.

It didn't take long before the model reacted. After only a few electrical jolts, the artificial neural circuit began to act just like a real neural circuit. Clusters of connected neurons began to fire in close synchrony: the cells were wiring themselves together. Different cell types obeyed their genetic instructions. The scientists could see the cellular looms flash and then fade as the cells wove themselves into meaningful patterns. Dendrites reached out to each other, like branches looking for light. "This all happened on its own," Markram says. "It was entirely spontaneous." ___Seed__via__NextBigFuture

Read the full article at the link above.

Of course, that is just a bare beginning in the approach to simulating a real rat brain. A human brain will be much harder. Still, there is much to be said for the bottom-up approach.

The goal is for researchers taking opposite approaches in understanding the brain to meet somewhere in the middle--like the US intercontinental railroad builders. The reality will probably be more interesting. We will likely see the two approaches feeding off each other--each result from one suggesting new experiments for the other.

Both approaches rely largely upon the ability of processor chips to analyse information, and put it in a form that allows the human brains of the researchers to generate logical hypotheses for testing and falsifying. The final goal of understanding human cognition well enough to recreate it in a machine, is still some distance off. Expect significant spinoffs to occur from such research long before the final goal is reached.

Frozen China Uncovers Corrupt Infrastructure

This has been an exceptionally cold winter for China. Hundreds of millions were affected with loss of power, loss of heating, low food supplies, and disrupted transportation. One of the most shameful revelations coming out of China this winter is the widespread criminal corruption in infrastructure.

As reported by the Chinese media, an unspecified number of concrete power poles in South China's Guizhou province, which were jack-knifed by the snowstorms to interrupt electricity supply, have been found to have had no required reinforcing steel bars inside. Instead, small iron wires were used to replace the reinforcing steel bars. Vast areas in mountainous Guizhou province suffered the worst power blackouts amid the snowstorms due to the collapse of pylons and poles for overhead transmission.
Critics said flaws in the government system had led to incompetence in combating corruption, which in turn made the situation even worse.

A devastating natural disaster like the snowstorms is certainly beyond human control. However, analysts say, what a government can and must do is to prevent man-made factors from worsening the damage caused by the natural disaster. In the case of Guizhou, had qualified materials been used, power blackouts might not have been so serious or lasted so long.

The Beijing News, an outspoken and influential daily based in the Chinese capital, reported that in Guizhou's Kaili prefecture, a huge number of power poles turned out to be produced with substandard materials, as no reinforcing steel bars were found inside when they broke and collapsed in snowstorms.

...According to reports, most of the broken poles exposed small-diameter iron wire instead of strong reinforcing steel bars as required by production standards. In one estimate, in Kaili prefecture alone, over 10,000 poles were broken and still need to be replaced...As it is clear power shortages in many places were caused by the poor quality of electricity poles rather than by the snowstorms, the Chinese government is obligated to launch a thorough investigation. Producers and suppliers of the substandard poles, and those who approved the purchase and use of them, are in the firing line. As is often the case, official corruption is likely involved in such massive production and use of substandard products.

...Blogs and websites across the country are urging the the government to make a thorough investigation into the scandals - including the possible involvement of official corruption - and to punish those who used their power to protect groups with vested interests...Beijing is being called on to review and improve its mechanisms aimed at curbing the corruption that now runs rampant in almost every sector of society. ___AsiaTimes

Of course, these shoddy construction methods would have revealed themselves eventually. There really is no good time for bridges and buildings to collapse, or for power poles to snap. For this to happen in the midst of such a cold, cruel winter makes it all the worse.

This is the type of corruption upon which China's "miraculous growth" is based. It lies unseen, for the most part, for now. As long as foreign media and foreign investors choose to look the other way, the effect on China's financial rise will be minimal. But just as substandard powerlines tend to snap at the worst possible time, so does the collapse of public and investor confidence in a corrupt financial and political system tend to collapse at the worst time.

Islam in Europe

Europe is said to be a dying continent. Europeans are breeding--in some countries--at approximately half of replacement rate. Meanwhile, new immigrants are largely uneducated and unassimilated, from different cultures and religions (mostly Muslim) than Europe is accustomed to. Within the century, given current trends, large swathes of Europe will be Muslim.

It is obvious to intelligent people that unassimilated immigrants, particularly those of a militant nature, tend to have an influence over the population out of all proportion to their actual numbers, particularly where violent, unassimilated sub-populations settle in cities where much of the business of the country is carried out. When well-intentioned reverse discrimination against majority populations begins to drive indigenous majorities to emigrate away from Europe, one should understand that the problem is already critical.

Blogger Kantor, at Social Equilibrium blog, demonstrates the results of his Kantor Web spreadsheet created to look at this issue.

The following hypotheses are done in all the scenarios:
1) Muslim and non-muslim populations are supposed totally separated, ignoring conversion and inter-marriage. In fact, this paper proves (for the Austrian case) the high level of separation between the two populations.
2) Fertility structure is given by the convex model (see Demo-tool readme)
3) The age structure of the European population in 2005 is extrapolated from the Netherlands. Also its mortality curve.
4) The European Muslim population in 2005 is supposed to be 8% of total; its age structure and fertility is extrapolated from the Algerian population (UN stats), whose fertility (of 2.38 children/woman) is taken as Muslim fertility in 2005.
5) The European non-muslim population is the 92% of total EU population of 463 millions (425 million aproxx); its fertility in 2005 was 1.52 children/woman (European Comission).
6) For migration flows, the Eurostat statistical Yearbook (pag.53) quantifies total net immigration in the EU-15 in 1.5 million/year (2002). We suppose that 400.000 immigrants are from the New EU countries (EU-10), leaving a net inflow into the EU of 1.1 million. Our hypothesis is that 60% of those immigrants are Muslim.

The three scenarios differ are about the fertility paths of both populations and the migration flows received.

1) Business as usual (with migration): fertility is locked in its 2005 levels (Muslim 2.38, non Muslim 1.52) for the whole century. Europe receives 1.5 million immigrants a year, 60% Muslims, for the rest of the century.
2) Business as usual (without migration): fertility is locked in its 2005 levels (Muslim 2.38, non Muslim 1.52) for the whole century. Migration is halted in 2005.
3) Linear convergence 2030 (with migration): Fertility moves linearly for both populations, converging to 2 children per woman in 2030. Europe receives 1.5 million immigrants a year, 60% Muslims, for the rest of the century.
4) Linear convergence 2030 (without migration): Fertility moves linearly for both populations, converging to 2 children per woman in 2030. Migration is halted in 2005.____SocialEquilibrium___via_HiberniaGirl

Read Kantor's entire article to fully understand how he produced his population scenarios graph (pictured above).

It is my opinion that Kantor underestimated the rate of Muslim population increase--perhaps out of a desire to use the most conservative assumptions. Since it is unlikely that Europe will halt immigration, we can expect immigration to accelerate, due to the natural aging of the European population. Muslim immigration into Europe will accelerate more quickly than Eastern European immigration, due to larger birthrates and excess youth populations in Muslim countries, along with far inferior prospects for advancement in Muslim countries, and the tendency of Muslim youth in Europe to send away for multiple wives (often cousins) from the old country. It is no problem for the Muslim youth to support these wives, since he will simply place each one on welfare. As European countries tolerate polygamy with its accelerated muslim population growth (far above Kantor's assumptions), the path to dhimmitude lies clear.

In a parliamentary government, it is not necessary for a group to attain an absolute majority in order to be the controlling power. It is only necessary to dominate a controlling coalition. The natural coalition partners for Islamic and Islamist political parties within Europe are the leftist political parties of Europe. If leftists believe that they will be able to dominate their Muslim political parties, they will have an interesting education ahead of them.

If a sizable population group is also a group known for violent intimidation, the attainment of influence far out of proportion to the group's size comes much more quickly along the growth curve. Consolidation of power continues to occur as the growth curve is climbed.

Update: Read this interesting AsiaTimes article on Geert Wilder's lonely struggle against the Muslim conquest of Holland. Given the Dutch government's willingness to surrender Holland to the invaders, Wilder's stubborn defense of his homeland appears all the more heroic.

Utility Scale Energy Storage

For electric powered automobiles, Lithium Ion batteries appear to be state of the art, for now. For large-scale energy storage, something "bigger" is necessary. While we are waiting for redox flow cell technology to mature, Sodium Sulfide (NaS) batteries appear ready to step in and provide enough heavy-duty electrical storage for utility load-leveling. Brian Westenhaus at New Energy and Fuel looks at NaS battery storage and comes away hopeful.

NaS is one of the oldest technologies in battery chemistry. By the 1960s, Ford Motor Company pioneered the modern design in hopes of powering early electric automobile designs. NGK and Tokyo Electric have refined it for power grid applications. NaS is actually a quite advanced technology. The anodes and cathodes are not vulnerable to the corrosive effects that plague lead (Pb) acid batteries, which makes the NaS battery very long lasting. The NaS is about 5 times more energy dense by volume than Pb acid.

Over the years, Tokyo Electric and NGK have installed enough battery storage in Japan for 155,000 homes. In the U.S. the latest installation is by AEP who installed a unit large enough to supply 260 homes with the idea that it would charge at night and discharge onto the grid by day during peaks, so leveling the demand and reducing costs.

...The ability to buy power off peak and use it during high peak offers large users a way to cut costs. Today the batteries are still quite expensive. At $2,500 per kilowatt they cost about 110% of a new coal plant per kw. Industry people say the one source and limited production of today replaced by mass production can greatly reduce the costs.

One of the more curious quotes comes from Imre Gyuk the head of the U.S. Department of Energy who said, “Stick it any place you can stick it.” I take that to mean that the biggest batteries ever can make a big difference in the total generating capacity required to run a modern economy.___NewEnergy

Large scale energy storage is important for several reasons:

1. Demand is higher in the day and early evening than overnight. This makes night-time power cheaper, if you have the means to store it and use it during peak demand.
2. Large scale storage helps to smooth out transient supply:demand mismatches in the grid.
   
3. Large scale storage helps compensate for temporary grid power outages when located at hospitals, industrial plants, high rise buildings (elevators), city traffic light systems, etc.
4. Large scale storage allows much greater scaling and utilisation of renewable energy power generation, such as wind and solar.

As time goes by, and large scale storge gets better and cheaper, we will find that the economics of power systems works out much better with large scale storage in the mix.

More information on NaS batteries at Energy Blog.

Peak Oil: 2050

The price of oil hovers above US $100, but then the dollar is not what it used to be. Even without the huge reserves of tar sands, oil shales, heavy oils, or biofuels breakthroughs, there is enough crude oil underground to last a few more decades. The price is apt to remain high, however, which in terms of attracting investment in alternatives, is a very good thing.

...Hundred-dollar oil will provide a clear incentive for reinvigorating fields and unlocking extra barrels through the use of new technologies. The consequences for emerging oil-rich regions such as Iraq can be far more rewarding. By 2040 the country's production and reserves might potentially rival those of Saudi Arabia.

Paradoxically, high crude prices may temporarily mask the inefficiencies of others, which may still remain profitable despite continuing to use 1960-vintage production methods. But modernism will inevitably prevail: The national oil companies that hold over 90% of the earth's conventional oil endowment will be pressed to adopt new and better technologies.

- What will be the average rate of crude consumption between now and peak oil? Current daily global consumption stands around 86 million barrels, with projected annual increases ranging from 0% to 2% depending on various economic outlooks. Thus average consumption levels ranging from 90 to 110 million barrels represent a reasonable bracket. Any economic slowdown -- as intimated by the recent tremors in the global equity markets -- will favor the lower end of this spectrum.

...When will peak oil arrive? This widely accepted tipping point -- 50% of ultimately recoverable resources consumed -- is largely a tribute to King Hubbert, a distinguished Shell geologist who predicted the peak oil point for the U.S. lower 48 states. While his timing was very good (he forecast 1968 versus 1970 in fact), he underestimated peak daily production (9.5 million barrels actual versus eight million estimated).

But modern extraction methods will undoubtedly stretch Hubbert's "50% assumption," which was based on Sputnik-era technologies. Even a modest shift -- to 55% of recoverable resources consumed -- will delay the onset by 20-25 years.

Where do reasonable assumptions surrounding peak oil lead us? My view, subjective and imprecise, points to a period between 2045 and 2067 as the most likely outcome.

Cambridge Energy Associates forecasts the global daily liquids production to rise to 115 million barrels by 2017 versus 86 million at present. Instead of a sharp peak per Hubbert's model, an undulating, multi-decade long plateau production era sets in -- i.e., no sudden-death ending.___WSJ

If one factors in new nuclear plants to power larger fleets of electric vehicles, increasing use of biomass CHP, and enhanced geothermal power plants alongside larger-scale solar thermal plants--which are highly scalable--one discovers ways to make the oil supply last longer.

Transportation needs diesel fuel and jet fuel. Aviation, maritime shipping, rail freight, truck freight--civilisation depends on these petro-fuels. Clearly, biofuels will eventually provide sustainable substitutes for every liquid fuel humans need. Just as clearly, new in situ methods of crude recovery from oil shale, tar sands, and heavy oil deposits will provide more petroleum than humans are likely to need--assuming biofuels scale up in the next 50 years to the size infrastructure they are capable of building.

There is still a minority view, held largely by a small band of retired petroleum geologists and some members of Congress, that oil production has peaked, but the theory has been fading. Equally contentious for the oil companies is the growing voice of environmentalists, who do not think that pumping and consuming an ever-increasing amount of fossil fuel is in any way desirable.___NYT

Peak oil panic belongs with other fashionable panics of modern times--the holy warmer climate orthodoxy, the overpopulation dieoff.orgians, the gray-goo nano-apocalypse, etc. Even the determined march of the leftist-islamist alliance is not likely to spell the ultimate doom of civilisation, as hard as the duo may try.

Humans will survive, and they will prosper. But they will need to learn to love a challenge. And that will be very difficult for the psychological neotenates among us. Psychological neotenates crave tenure--cradle to grave security provided by others. The future is not likely to provide that.

Invisible Death and Pain: Welcome to Your Future

If you go to war, if you die in war, the chances are you will be killed by an invisible force. By a rocket fired from miles above, by invisible energy beams, by invisible tanks and ships. Death is easy. Living is hard, and getting harder for combatants.

The “stealthiest” ship that currently exists is Sweden’s Visby Corvette. Apart from being painted in grey dazzle camouflage and made of low-radar reflectivity materials, it also does not use propellers, which are the noisiest part of a ship. The vessel also has the lowest “magnetic signature” of any current warship.

But the next generation of warships could be truly invisible by exploiting “metamaterials” – artificially engineered structures first dreamt up by physicist John Pendry at Imperial College, London. Metamaterials are tailored to have specific electromagnetic properties not found in nature. In particular, they can bend light around an object, making it appear to an observer as though the waves have passed through empty space.___Source

The US Pentagon is developing futuristic energy weapons, of course. High power lasers, microwaves, sound waves...

It's a gun that doesn't look anything like a gun: it's that flat dish antenna which shoots out a 100,000-watt beam at the speed of light, hitting any thing in its path with an intense blast of heat.

An operator uses a joystick to zero in on a target. Visible only with an infrared camera, the gun, when fired emits a flash of white hot energy -- an electromagnetic beam made up of very high frequency radio waves. ___CBS

The Active Denial System causes exquisite pain, but does not kill. But a slight modification to the system could change that. Current sentimental non-lethality is not likely to survive the next large scale terror attack on a western homeland.

It is not just the Pentagon that is getting into the high-tech energy weapons. China is doing its best to keep up, and possibly get ahead here and there.

"China is developing a multi-dimensional program to limit or prevent the use of space-based assets by its potential adversaries during times of crisis or conflict," the report said.

The report said the Chinese People's Liberation Army had developed a range of weapons and jammers to prevent an enemy from using space-based systems such as satellites.

"The PLA is also exploring satellite jammers, kinetic energy weapons, high-powered lasers, high-powered microwave weapons, particle beam weapons, and electromagnetic pulse weapons for counterspace application," it said.___Source

China is still dependent on the US and the west for its economic and industrial well-being. Consider the way Asian and Chinese stock markets get pneumonia when the US markets catch cold. Still, when the time is right, and Chinese leaders feel they are ready economically to act against the US, they intend to be ready militarily.

Consider it an arms race to the singularity. Eventually satellites will be armed with energy beam weapons as well. But the truly dangerous weapons are those that are invisible because they are so small. Nano-bio weapons. You will not be relieved to know that the US and China are racing for superiority on that front as well.

Meanwhile, back in the current capital of western civilisation, the US public is consumed by the political spectacle of the 2008 presidential election campaign. Of the candidates likely to win--either Senator Obama or Senator Clinton--both lack a firm grasp of the larger reality they will be expected to face in the real world outside US politics. Psychological neotenates in oblivion, living in a dream world on borrowed time.

My suggestion to readers. Think about what is likely to happen. Where do you want to be when it does? Who do you want to be with, and what sort of environment do you want to create for yourself? Do not count on affirmative action. Do not count on political correctness. Do not count on society or relief agencies.

Clearly Superior

Westerners are not supposed to recognise that they are living in a civilisation that is superior to other civilisations. But the smarter ones have trouble not seeing it, and in their more honest moments they admit the superiority of western civilisation, at least to themselves.

The great ideas of the West—rationalism, self-criticism, the disinterested search for truth, the separation of church and state, the rule of law and equality under the law, freedom of thought and expression, human rights, and liberal democracy—are superior to any others devised by humankind. It was the West that took steps to abolish slavery; the calls for abolition did not resonate even in Africa, where rival tribes sold black prisoners into slavery. The West has secured freedoms for women and racial and other minorities to an extent unimaginable 60 years ago. The West recognizes and defends the rights of the individual: we are free to think what we want, to read what we want, to practice our religion, to live lives of our choosing.___CityJournal

One could characterize the difference between the West and the Rest as a difference in epistemological principles. The desire for knowledge, no matter where it leads, inherited from the Greeks, has led to an institution unequaled—or very rarely equaled—outside the West: the university. Along with research institutes and libraries, universities are, at least ideally, independent academies that enshrine these epistemological norms, where we can pursue truth in a spirit of disinterested inquiry, free from political pressures. In other words, behind the success of modern Western societies, with their science and technology and open institutions, lies a distinct way of looking at the world, interpreting it, and recognizing and rectifying problems.

...A culture that gave the world the novel; the music of Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert; and the paintings of Michelangelo, da Vinci, and Rembrandt does not need lessons from societies whose idea of heaven, peopled with female virgins, resembles a cosmic brothel. Nor does the West need lectures on the superior virtue of societies in which women are kept in subjection under sharia, endure genital mutilation, are stoned to death for alleged adultery, and are married off against their will at the age of nine; societies that deny the rights of supposedly lower castes; societies that execute homosexuals and apostates. The West has no use for sanctimonious homilies from societies that cannot provide clean drinking water or sewage systems, that make no provisions for the handicapped, and that leave 40 to 50 percent of their citizens illiterate.

Western civilisation has worked its way through periods of monarchy, world colonialism, battles of totalitarian ideologies that took themselves too seriously--and has mostly come out on the side of facilitating the healing of the world's sick, feeding of the world's hungry, and helping to enable the impoverished of the world to acquire a measure of comfort. All of that, and much more typifies the prevailing spirit of the achieving west.

The suicidal west is another matter, but I suspect we can deal with them. All the doomseekers, holy warmers, lefty dieoff.orgies, and the like. But we cannot allow the suicidal insiders to sabotage us in our resistance to the bloody outsiders who would take our freedom and our lives.

Single Sex Education, Mind the Difference

Boys and girls have different ways of learning. But modern schools are biased toward a girl's way of learning. This hurts boys, which is evident by educational statistics showing increasing numbers of boys driven away from higher education over time.

Boys are currently behind their sisters in high-school and college graduation rates. School, the boy-crisis argument goes, is shaped by females to match the abilities of girls (or, as Sax puts it, is taught “by soft-spoken women who bore” boys). In 2006, Doug Anglin, a 17-year-old in Milton, Mass., filed a civil rights complaint with the United States Department of Education, claiming that his high school — where there are twice as many girls on the honor roll as there are boys — discriminated against males. His case did not prevail in the courts, but his sentiment found support in the Legislature and the press. That same year, as part of No Child Left Behind, the federal law that authorizes programs aimed at improving accountability and test scores in public schools, the Department of Education passed new regulations making it easier for districts to create single-sex classrooms and schools.

...Among advocates of single-sex public education, there are two camps: those who favor separating boys from girls because they are essentially different and those who favor separating boys from girls because they have different social experiences and social needs. Leonard Sax represents the essential-difference view, arguing that boys and girls should be educated separately for reasons of biology: for example, Sax asserts that boys don’t hear as well as girls, which means that an instructor needs to speak louder in order for the boys in the room to hear her; and that boys’ visual systems are better at seeing action, while girls are better at seeing the nuance of color and texture.

...After visiting a handful of single-sex schools, Sax threw himself into studying neurological differences between males and females, eventually focusing on how to protect boys from a syndrome he calls “failure to launch,” which Sax often characterizes as caring more about getting a Kilimanjaro in Halo 3 than performing well in high school or taking a girl on a date. Among his early proposals was that boys should start kindergarten at age 6, a year later than girls, in order to ease the “sense of scholastic incompetence” that so many boys feel early on because they tend to develop later. Several friends quickly convinced Sax that American families would never go for this. So Sax started thinking it might be better for boys and girls to be in different classrooms.

...For boys, he said: “You need to get them up and moving. That’s based on the nervous system, that’s based on eyes, that’s based upon volume and the use of volume with the boys.” Chadwell, like Sax, says that differences in eyesight, hearing and the nervous system all should influence how you instruct boys. “You need to engage boys’ energy, use it, rather than trying to say, No, no, no. So instead of having boys raise their hands, you’re going to have boys literally stand up. You’re going to do physical representation of number lines. Relay races. Ball tosses during discussion.” For the girls, Chadwell prescribes a focus on “the connections girls have (a) with the content, (b) with each other and (c) with the teacher. If you try to stop girls from talking to one another, that’s not successful. So you do a lot of meeting in circles, where every girl can share something from her own life that relates to the content in class.”___NYT

Boys are different than girls? Well, who cares? Certainly not teachers' unions, the ACLU, university schools of education, and most of the rest of the education-industrial complex.

Another important factor being ignored in North American education is that boys need male role models. Since male role models are often not provided at home, boys need to see male role models at school. But North American early education is becoming a woman's profession. Alternative certification methods that could bring in many more qualified male teachers are rejected by teachers' unions, school boards, and the education bureaucracy.

Perhaps the enormous anti-male bias seen throughout North American society will blow over in the next few decades. Probably not, but even should it do so, it will be far too late for at least three generations of boys thrown on the trash heap.

H/T to Half Sigma

Also see Dennis Mangan's discussion of why boys are falling behind.

Wiping Out the Human Population of Earth Lovelock: This is the Real Thing Dammit

James Lovelock is the revered, grand old man of doom. Lovelock is quite cheerful about the coming demise of humanity. After all, what has humanity ever done for Lovelock?

Lovelock believes global warming is now irreversible, and that nothing can prevent large parts of the planet becoming too hot to inhabit, or sinking underwater, resulting in mass migration, famine and epidemics. Britain is going to become a lifeboat for refugees from mainland Europe, so instead of wasting our time on wind turbines we need to start planning how to survive. To Lovelock, the logic is clear. The sustainability brigade are insane to think we can save ourselves by going back to nature;....But he fears we won't invent the necessary technologies in time, and expects "about 80%" of the world's population to be wiped out by 2100. Prophets have been foretelling Armageddon since time began, he says. "But this is the real thing."

Faced with two versions of the future - Kyoto's preventative action and Lovelock's apocalypse - who are we to believe?...when I ask if he attributes the conflicting predictions to differences in scientific understanding or personality, he says: "Personality." ___Guardian

Lovelock...appears to have laughed and grinned and smiled his way through this interview. He predicts doom for almost all, and laughs about it.

"Well I'm cheerful!" he says, smiling. "I'm an optimist. It's going to happen."___Source

Lovelock is not the only one of his generation to predict massive human die-off. Modern prophets of doom have been profiting from the apocalypse since the late 1960s and early 1970s, when eco-apocalyptic books became best sellers. Paul Ehrlich, the Club of Rome, Rachel Carson--all these and more preceded Lovelock and Al Gore through the Valley of the Shadow of Human Apocalypse, and made money doing it.

According to these prophets, NYC should be underwater, the population of the Earth should already be below 1 billion from starvation and resource depletion, the entire Earth should be a wasteland, and the new Dark Ages should have long since fallen onto surviving human populations.

Remember Y2K? Sure you do. Unless you are too intent on the prophets making profits from the crises du jour, such as CAGW and Peak Oil? The Ozone hole scare has taken a backseat for now, but it can always be re-cycled, once the climate scare dies down and alternative energy sources predictably come on line one by one.

Or perhaps as Lovelock says, this is "the real thing." The evidence suggests otherwise, and it should be noted that Lovelock is promoting a new book. Should we simply put Lovelock up on the shelf alongside Ehrlich, the Club of Rome, the Y2K thrillers, and Al Gore? Perhaps we will.

Education in Finland: Can High Finnish Test Scores be Replicated in Other Countries?

What Makes Finnish Kids So Smart?, reads a Wall Street Journal Headline. It seems that test scores for Finnish children are among the highest of all advanced countries, and a lot of educators from North America and elsewhere want to know "why?"

...by one international measure, Finnish teenagers are among the smartest in the world. They earned some of the top scores by 15-year-old students who were tested in 57 countries. American teens finished among the world's C students even as U.S. educators piled on more homework, standards and rules....In the most recent test, which focused on science, Finland's students placed first in science and near the top in math and reading, according to results released late last year. An unofficial tally of Finland's combined scores puts it in first place overall, says Andreas Schleicher, who directs the OECD's test, known as the Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA.

...The academic prowess of Finland's students has lured educators from more than 50 countries in recent years to learn the country's secret, including an official from the U.S. Department of Education. What they find is simple but not easy: well-trained teachers and responsible children. Early on, kids do a lot without adults hovering. And teachers create lessons to fit their students.

...The Norssi School is run like a teaching hospital, with about 800 teacher trainees each year. Graduate students work with kids while instructors evaluate from the sidelines. Teachers must hold master's degrees, and the profession is highly competitive: More than 40 people may apply for a single job. Their salaries are similar to those of U.S. teachers, but they generally have more freedom.

Finnish teachers pick books and customize lessons as they shape students to national standards. "In most countries, education feels like a car factory. In Finland, the teachers are the entrepreneurs," says Mr. Schleicher, of the Paris-based OECD, which began the international student test in 2000.

...Finland separates students for the last three years of high school based on grades; 53% go to high school and the rest enter vocational school. (All 15-year-old students took the PISA test.) Finland has a high-school dropout rate of about 4% -- or 10% at vocational schools -- compared with roughly 25% in the U.S., according to their respective education departments.

...Once school starts, the Finns are more self-reliant. While some U.S. parents fuss over accompanying their children to and from school, and arrange every play date and outing, young Finns do much more on their own. At the Ymmersta School in a nearby Helsinki suburb, some first-grade students trudge to school through a stand of evergreens in near darkness. At lunch, they pick out their own meals, which all schools give free, and carry the trays to lunch tables. There is no Internet filter in the school library. They can walk in their socks during class, but at home even the very young are expected to lace up their own skates or put on their own skis.___WSJ

It seems that teachers in Finland are much better trained and are given more freedom to teach to their students' needs and interests. Teaching is seen as a desirable job in Sweden, and the enthusiasm of teachers helps keep students interested.

Although Finnish people do not have higher IQs than other Europeans--and it is not likely the children are born with higher Executive Function or short-term memories--the nature of child up-bringing, and early education likely contributes to a more independent mind-set, and a tendency to understand the need to follow the guidance of parents and teachers in preparing for the future. Life in Finland can be hard, due to extremes of climate and insolation. All of these things are likely to help Finnish children learn more self-reliance than more coddled children of lower Europe and North America.

Psychological neoteny is a very real problem for North American children and children in many other first world countries. Children are too often treated as fragile, pampered parental trophies, rather than as human beings who have to learn to deal for themselves with a real and often dangerous world.

H/T to Dennis Mangan and Steve Sailer , who have provided interesting comments on the WSJ article, and its topic. Check out their take on the article.

No Sunspot, Mumblings of Mutiny

The sun continues quiet--eerily quiet. People are starting to notice.

Cooler weather has the blogosphere alight with speculation about the climate’s real changes. Short-term temperature moves fire up both camps. From Planet Gore:

Hopefully this will cool the hysteria in the U.S. Congress and parliaments around the world so that we can understand the science of our climate before we pursue policies that could wreck our economy and quality of life.

Environmental Defense says one month does not a trend make:

Global warming is a process that occurs over decades. It can’t be proven or disproven by a single month’s temperature.

There are theories for all tastes. Daily Tech started it all, arguing that last year’s nippy weather “wipes out a century of warming.” Energy Outlook pored through the data and points at the sea. Maybe it’s the sun? Environmental Economics did the heavy lifting, parsed all the sunspot data from Goddard, and concluded that’s not to blame:

The current downturn in temperatures may be caused by a valley in the sunspot cycle. But that doesn’t mean that global cooling is taking place. It just means that temperatures are likely to be more variable until sunspot activity increases again.

Whether it’s sunspots, La Nina, or something else altogether, the timing couldn’t be better for the Heartland Institute, set to host a global warming skeptics powow Monday on Broadway. Friends in high places?___WSJblog

Who would have thought a few cold days and a little snow in Baghdad would get people talking about "global cooling?" What is worse, northern polar ice caps are growing and thickening, glaciers on Mount Kilimanjaro are growing again, and preliminary research findings on the cosmic ray hypothesis of solar climate influence are provocative.

Periods of extended low sunspot activity correspond historically to cooler climates on Earth. The details are still being worked out.

Image from SolarCycle24.com H/T TomNelson and GreenWatch