The Homely Scientist

The most pressing issue with alternative fuels like biodiesel is supply.  If you can’t make it in quantity not only does this prevent people from getting the fuel, it makes it more expensive than it really needs to be.  Looks like that’s about to change:

The Grays Harbor, Wash., biodiesel refinery being opened by Imperium Renewables. The 12-acre facility will be capable of churning out 100 million gallons of biodiesel by the end of the year, the company says.

Imperium wants to build three copycat plants over the next 18 months. When it comes to total diesel consumption, 100 million gallons is a drop in the bucket, but it’s a start. Besides, Imperium, run by the rather imperial Martin Tobias, says it can produce biodiesel cheaper than competitors. Source: Photos: 100 million gallons of biodiesel | CNET News.com

Here in Victoria, our city buses are now running on 30% biodiesel … a first for Canada and maybe North America.  All it takes is more supply to also increase demand and lower prices.

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When looking at the world of infectious diseases, once of the huge questions is how fast it spreads and lethal it is (both in terms of number of people who die and how quickly).  The Spanish Flu of 1918, there hasn’t been a flu that deadly since, why?  Ebola, pretty much 100% lethal, very infectious, but because people die so quickly (not to mention horribly) it tends to burn out quickly.  Scientists looking at West Nile Virus have found that a minor change in the amino acids of the virus can have profound effects:

The amino acid change in question alters the sequence of a protein called a helicase that’s involved in the process of making copies of the virus. A scan of WNV sequences from around the world show that this appears to be the only site in the entire viral genome that’s under positive selective pressure. As a result, the amino acid change found in the North American strain appears to have arisen at least three times in the virus’ history.

Typically, viruses that rapidly kill their host have a very short history, as they rapidly run out of places to reproduce. The authors suggest that the Kenyan WNV strain is actually at a reproductive disadvantage, however, in that the amount of circulating virus in the blood is so low that it is unlikely to be picked up by the mosquitos that spread it. In contrast, the lethal strain not only hits levels in the blood that are five orders of magnitude higher, but it causes its victims to become feverish and lethargic, making them easy targets for mosquitos. These mosquitos then help the virus hop to species where it is less deadly, such as blue jays, sparrows, and humans, which can act as reservoirs for WNV. Source: Single amino acid change turns West Nile Virus into a killer

Applying this knowledge gives epidemiologists another way to both track viruses and potentially a way to combat them as well.

I keep putting Germs, Guns, and Steel on my reading list, but if this post interests you, this book might as well:

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No, this is not a goofy free energy thing like I saw at Gnomedex on Saturday (ugh, it still bugs me).  This is real science, real physics, and doesn’t violate the laws of thermodynamics: heck it uses them!

This papercraft engine only needs to sit on a cup of hot coffee to drive its pistons. No, it’s not the precious caffeine that drives the motion, but the Stirling engine design, in which the difference between alternating hot and cold gas pressure is harnessed for power. Source: Cheaper Than Gas: Paper Stirling Engine Runs Off Hot Coffee - Gizmodo

Boing Boing has the best description of what’s going on–but essentially what you’re seeing is the expansion, contraction, and circulation of the air in the little area below the engine will drive it.  This strengthens something I was probably boring people to death with later on Saturday evening, there are hundreds, probably thousands of creative ways we can take current technology and improve it or apply it in creative ways.  That’s freakin’ open sourcing energy man!

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On my bacteria making hydrocarbons post, Dave commented on what if something hadn’t been discovered or had been discovered by a different person…how would things be different.  Which leads to ethics and science.  Both Einstein and Oppenheimer decried the use of their discoveries.  Yes, Oppenheimer is noted as “the father of the atomic bomb”, but he also didn’t want the world destroyed either.  Nobel invented dynamite, but was so morally devastated by its use that the Nobel Prize was created.

We scientists often discuss how discoveries are ethically “neutral”, it is their use that matters.  Is that entirely true, though?  Are all discoveries neutral?  I would say they aren’t.  Nuclear power, has both good and bad uses.  However regardless of the use, the waste and radioactivity left behind is not good.

Electricity, lots of good there, and bad.  Silly putty … as failed synthetic rubber (I’ve also heard plastic explosive).

But what if Gandhi, and not Einstein, discovered E=mc^2?  Would it have come to the same end?  Would The Bomb have been made?

What if gunpowder had never been discovered?  Or petroleum?  What about something as seemingly innocuous as the colour mauve (the book Mauve is an amazing read, do look it up)?  Mauve was the first human created colour.  The aniline dye, which gave us mauve was invented by Sir William Perkin gave us the whole petrochemical industry…plastics, medicines, everything.  He was a very, very interesting man.

Consider then, what, if undiscovered, would change.  Perhaps, even the smallest change would do that.  Of course that’s where Chaos Theory (and the book Chaos another recommended read) comes in … and that’s a post of a different colour (pun intended).

Books:
 

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From Lifehacker …

How To Pull A Van Uphill (with Only A Rope) - video powered by Metacafe

This video shows one of the simplest machines, the pulley–not a lever as Lifehacker says–and how it increases your ability to lift/pull heavy things.

If you want to try this at home … try something other than a car … log or something.

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 One of the problems with our dependence on petroleum is that it isn’t “renewable” (technically, it is … it just takes so long that it isn’t functionally), but what if we could “grow” gasoline?  Looks like that might not be such a pipe dream after all:

LS9, a company based in San Carlos, CA, and founded by geneticist George Church, of Harvard Medical School, and plant biologist Chris Somerville, of Stanford University, had previously said that it was working on what it calls “renewable petroleum.” But at a Society for Industrial Microbiology conference on Monday, the company began speaking more openly about what it has accomplished: it has genetically engineered various bacteria, including E. coli, to custom-produce hydrocarbon chains.

To do this, the company is employing tools from the field of synthetic biology to modify the genetic pathways that bacteria, plants, and animals use to make fatty acids, one of the main ways that organisms store energy. Fatty acids are chains of carbon and hydrogen atoms strung together in a particular arrangement, with a carboxylic acid group made of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen attached at one end. Take away the acid, and you’re left with a hydrocarbon that can be made into fuel. Source: Technology Review: Making Gasoline from Bacteria

Clearly this is in early stages of work, essentially proving that you can get something refinable out of these little buggers.  One thing that I’d like to know is if these hydrocarbon chains are complex enough for all the other things we use petroleum for (plastics, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, etc).  That is probably the Holy Grail of breaking our addiction to oil.

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 Think of all the small, free-standing structures you see in a given day.  Bus stops, small sheds, fixed awnings.  They are put there to keep sun (yes and rain, I know) off people.  What about the roofs of those structures?  Looks like there could be a product that will let us take advantage of a lot of small surfaces and use them as solar collectors:

Soliant’s primary customer is commercial building owners but the company’s product design is flexible enough that it has developed a specialized solar-power generator for car parks, or roofs that shade cars during the day.

“One thing we realized about a year ago was that we could make very large panels, which is something that ordinary solar panels can’t do,” said company CEO Brad Hines.

The company’s traditional “heliotube” concentrator, which is meant to be the same size as traditional solar panels, has 10 tubes that shine light onto solar cells.

To make a product to shade cars it used the same basic design, but by stringing together 16 tubes, Soliant makes the panel a little over 8 feet long, said Hines. The company is planning to ship its commercial products by the end of this year. Source: Solar power while you park the car | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

I know I’m sounding like a broken record here, but it’s these kinds of simple innovations that can add up to the big stuff.  Heck I saw one today on GearLive’s unboxing–instead of having a screensaver come on after five minutes, just have the screen turn off then.  Simple, easy and will save a lot of power … a lot.

Let’s just brainstorm and think of more things … like what about micro-hydropower generators in downspouts?  Out here when it rains, it rains.  Why not use the power of the water going down the drain pipe generate a little power.  If nothing else they could charge batteries to power outside lights.

Together I know we can work through this.

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A recent study looked at the whys of people wanting to have sex.  Now, yes, there are some of the obvious ones there, but there are some interesting ones like getting closer to God, and my favourite (for the shock value only) wanting to give someone and STD:

“Why people have sex is extremely important, but rarely studied. Surprisingly, many scientists assume the answer is obvious, but people have different reasons for having sex, some of which are rather complex,” Buss said in a statement.

The top reason both men and women gave was that “I was attracted to the person,” but some motivations were ranked very differently by the two sexes. The study authors found an “astonishing” 123 of the 237 motivations were cited more frequently by one sex or the other. Topping the list was “The person wore revealing clothes,” which as social stereotypes might lead one to expect was cited by men more often than women. Source: Why have sex with thee? Let me count the ways | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

Does this show some kind of evolutionary change or just a reflection that in human society right now procreation doesn’t have to be at the top of the list anymore?  I think these results strengthen the arguments  for sexual attraction and sexual fulfillment being intertwined.  Okay that and people are varied, quirky and strange beings.

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Remember me talking about wind-power hitting a tipping point and how solar was almost there?  In a case of news almost made to order is this bit of news:

The University of Delaware has inched up the record for solar cell efficiency with a new device that can convert 42.8 percent of the light that strikes it into electricity.

That beats the old record of 40.7 percent hit in December. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, has been funding research to get efficiency up to 50 percent.

The cell, created by Christina Honsberg and Allan Barnett of UD, splits incoming light into three buckets: high energy, low energy, and medium energy light. The light is then directed to different materials, which then extract electrons out of the photons that make up sunlight.

The device also has an optical concentrator, sort of like a lens that directs more sunlight to the solar cell than would occur naturally and thereby increasing efficiency. Source: A new record in solar cells | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

While this might not seem huge, the combination of technologies is extremely important.  By using three different materials to extract the electrons and a concentrator the stage is set for more improvements to follow.  This development isn’t something we’ll see on people’s houses anytime soon, they are going to be very expensive to produce at first, but all innovations, all breakthroughs aren’t mystical bolts from the blue, they all build on the work done before.  This is just one of those steps or pieces of the puzzle.

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While coastal upwelling is generally a good thing, like many things in nature, you can have too much of a good thing.  In this case the upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich deep water causes not only a plankton bloom, but the death and decomposition of the buggers have a dark side:

Unlike the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, which is caused by fertilizer washing down the Mississippi River, the Oregon dead zone is triggered by northerly winds, which create an ocean-mixing condition called upwelling.

This brings low-oxygen waters from deep in the ocean close to shore, and spreads nitrogen and other nutrients through the water column, kicking off a population boom of plankton, the tiny plants and animals at the foundation of the ocean food web.

Normally, this is good for salmon, giving them lots of food to eat. But when huge amounts of plankton die, they fall to the bottom of the ocean, where they decompose, depleting the water of oxygen. Source: Wired News - AP News

How is this connected to global warming?  It’s all in the winds.  Stronger northerly winds cause the upwelling.  Stronger winds come from the increased energy in the whole system because the Earth is getting warmer.  Remember a large portion of our climate and weather is powered by heat.  Hotter, more energy, more energy, stronger winds and storms ….. and so on.

Is it too late?  Frankly I don’t think so, if you think in geologic time.  Pity is that humans might not be around to see things work out.  Or maybe that’s a good thing.

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