Zark's

The Future Human Race

We have many decisions that we make throughout our lives.  Many are innocuous, but others have future impacts upon us and others.  We can decide whether to smoke cigarettes, we can decide whether to cheat on income taxes, and so on.  On some of our decisions, we intentionally choose outcomes that are financially or materialistically less desirable.  We might support a colleague instead of trampling upon them to climb higher on the corporate ladder.  We might choose to tithe to the church instead of investing that money in our 401K.
 
Technology is presenting new choices for reproduction that will affect the future human race.  Doctors genetically develop cancer-free child in the U.K. explains that a woman in the U.K. had a history of breast cancer in her husband's family.  By screening her embryos, geneticists were able to select an embryo without the BRCA-1 gene known to be associated with breast cancer.  The correlation is relatively high - According to Baby to be born free of breast cancer after embryo screening, 50% to 75% females born with this gene will develop breast cancer.  This technique, known as preimplantation diagnosis (PGD) selected two embryos for implantation into the woman's uterus.  She is now 14 weeks pregnant.

11 embryos were created through IVF to produce the one surviving embryo now in the woman's womb.  Many of us has at one time or another exclaimed, "I wish I had never been born!"  On a practical side, PGD is permitting designer babies.  Mmm.  Fads change.  Children with a tennis-playing gene might be popular today, but when they are 20 years old, what if everyone is playing chess?  Our success in selecting future traits for the human race is going to be limited by our ability to predict the future.  Sounds alarming, doesn't it?

I am concerned at an even more fundamental level.  What is life?  I believe it is more than a self-sustaining chemical reaction.  If you are interested in how I foresee things such as PGD affecting our future, see my novel, Roman DNA. 

The Problem with Cold Fusion - No Splash

In engineering, we are frequently looking for the flux capacitor - the mythical time machine invention of Doc Browne in Back to the Future.  We are looking for something with splash.  Yet, like the mythical Captain Hook in Peter Pan, waiting to hear the splash of Wendy pushed from the plank, we hear no splash.  But I digress ...

If you recall, nuclear fission is the process of splitting heavier atoms into lighter components and releasing energy.  Nuclear fusion is the process of combining lighter atoms into heavier atoms and harvesting a release of energy.  In the latter, we typically think of fusing hydrogen atoms together to form helium.  The dilemma is that hydrogen atoms repel each other and it takes tremendous energy or pressure to force them close enough to fuse together.  The historical devices for nuclear are called tokamaks.  They are large, complex, and require more energy than they produce. 

A chilly reception for cold fusion tells that Professor Yoshiaki Arati from Osaka University has reported excess heat from a mix of palladium and zirconium oxide and pressurized deutrium gas.  As with the Pons and Fleischmann report of 1989, Arati's problem is that he cannot prove there was actually nuclear fusion.  He can only show that the experiment produces excess energy.  Mmm.  That is better than most tokamaks.  Still, the problem is - no splash.  The water temperature is elevated by about a degree.  Thermodynamics currently does not permit us to power engines with only a degree of temperature change.

It has been hypothesized that palladium can form a solid lattice that overcomes the natural repulsion and permits hydrogen atoms to come close enough for fusion.  The problem is there is no theory that supports this hypothesis.  Professor K P Sinha has been attempting to develop this theory as explained in Time to Defreeze.  Until that theory is developed, or undeniable empirical evidence is presented, most physicsts will continue to categorize cold fusion with astrology.  

The New Cancer Drug Avastin

Avastin added to chemo helps women with advanced cancer tells that including Avastin with traditional chemotherapy drug Taxol doubled progression-free survival.  Progression-free survival is the length of time that a patient lives without the disease becoming worse.  Survival rate is the time that a patient lives because of the drug.  Avastin is Genetech's best-selling drug with sales of $2.3B in 2007. 

Avastin works by inhibiting the blood supply to the tumor - known as an anti-angiogenesis drug.  However, Anti-cancer drug Avastin useless against breast cancer, declares FDA says that the cost-benefit ratio is not positive.  The FDA review said that it did not significantly lengthen the lives of patients.   Also, Avastin is known to have cardiovascular side effects.  It is prescribed for intestinal and breast cancer. 

Roche, NICE in Avastin data standoff explains the drug has been denied for U.K. patients as too costly. It costs roughly $4,000 a month for the treatment.   Cancer pair win fight for top-up drugs tells the denial is springing leaks, because two patients have legally won the right to pay for the drug themselves while still receiving U.K. medical benefits. 

Approximately 1/3 of world's industrialized population will develop some form of cancer in their lives.  In Dose of reality: health services curb drug costs, Harpal Kumar explains, "The vast majority of cancer patients are cured by surgery and radiotherapy, not by drugs."  "... Most of the drugs are not saving lives but extending them by a small number of months."

I dunno.  It seems mankind is making progress against cancer.  We all know people that have recovered from the disease due to the advanced procedures, detection, and drugs.  Today cancer drugs already exceed the sales of any other treatment area.  Sales are expected to double in five years.  This is one of those tough problems ...

Fun With Hydrogen at Home

I've posted several times lately about hydrogen, and it looks like the technology is about to fulfill the promise of almost a decade ago - see hydrogen economy.  Environmentalists are not happy about producing hydrogen with natural gas.  This process called steam reforming creates carbon monoxide as a byproduct.  An alternative that looks far more environmentally friendly is electrolysis.  I say "looks" because the overall environmental/business case may show some problems as we think about fueling more of our transportation fleet with hydrogen.

I searched the web for a simple home experiment about electrolysis and located Homemade hydrogen.  This home experiment simply uses a DC power supply (which could be a battery) around 9 volts, and two bare wires immersed in water.  Little bubbles are formed next to the wires and can be ignited with a match.  Bubbles on one wire will be hydrogen and the bubbles on the other wire will be oxygen. 

Since I have been intrigued by the transformation of transportation by hydrogen, I played with this experiment a little.  I used a variable voltage HP power supply and eventually cranked the voltage up to 24 volts.  See the link on homemade hydrogen for some of the interesting things you can do with this experiment such as salt, dishwashing soap, etc., but do read the article first!

In my experiment, I used two zinc-coated hurricane screws for the electrodes.  It produced substantial hydrogen bubbles at the cathode (negative terminal) but only a few oxygen bubbles on the anode, or positive terminal.  Wikipedia explains that the oxygen was probably reacting with the zinc electrode.  Indeed, the water color was turning slightly rusty.  Commercial electrolysis uses platinum electrodes to avoid the contamination of the water.

Electrolysis only makes sense if we can produce electricity economically and without using fossil fuels.  It is considerably more expensive than steam reforming, but Plants May Point Way to Clean Hydrogen Fuel explains photosynthesis might be an even cleaner and efficient method of creating hydrogen.  Solar power could be used directly to split water into its hydrogen and oxygen components.

A Different Type of Hydrogen Car

I discussed Honda's hydrogen car earlier this week.  Recall it uses a hydrogen fuel cell to produce the electricity for its motor and accessories.  As detailed in Mazda test drives hydrogen hybrid vehicle, the rotary engine pioneer has stayed with its strength.  Instead of a fuel cell, the Mazda vehicle has a special hydrogen rotary engine.  Mazda tells us that hydrogen requires less energy to ignite than gasoline, so the rotary engine is better suited for hydrogen than a traditional internal combustion engine.  Mazda says the only exhaust is water vapor, completely CO2 free.

The Mazda Premacy Hydrogen Hybrid can operate either with conventional gasoline or hydrogen.  Mazda claims their new rotary engine requires little adaptation for hydrogen, so manufacturing costs are low.  The technical details are sketchy - it somehow uses an AC electric motor for actual propulsion, but the rotary engine powers a generator that recharges the Lithium battery.  The vehicle has a range of 124 miles on its hydrogen tank.  

The LA Times describes the new Shell hydrogen pumping stations that will open in California today (Thursday).  The new stations will sell both conventional gasoline and hydrogen with the pumps in the familiar Shell colors.  According to the report, the facility produces hydrogen onsite by electrolysis.  (Attaboy Shell!)   Hydrogen will be initially priced at $4.50 a pound, or about $40 a tank. 

I'm encouraged.  Technology has advanced substantially in the last two years.  I'm beginning to believe hydrogen may be the future fuel of transportation.

Is There Such a Thing as Clean Coal?

You know the phrase - if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck  ... it probably is a duck.  I am a little  dubious of sequestering CO2 emissions from coal burning electrical power plants.  In Is it safe to bury carbon dioxide to reduce global warming, an Indian geologist explains that there are geologic formations that can probably safely store the CO2.  I'm not a geologist, but his explanations sound plausible.  Norway may store CO2 under North Sea from 2011 explains that the Norwegian government is funding development of a coal plant at Mongstad that will pipe the CO2 under the sea bed.  They are currently pumping CO2 into the seabed from a nearby liquid natural gas plant.

However, "Just because you can, doesn't mean that you should."  CO2 is not a poisonous gas, but too much of it is a bad thing.  Wouldn't it be better to not create the CO2 and then not have to worry about sequestering it?

NASA's Hansen Tells Congress "Stop Burning Coal" 20 Years After His First Global Warming Warning   explains that we are already at 385 ppm CO2 when in 1960, we were at 320 ppm.  The rate of growth is 2ppm per year.  We should not continue burning fossil fuels and releasing the CO2 into the atmosphere.  However, with the new price point of oil, India, China, and even the United States are going to be under great economic pressure to build new coal-powered electrical generating plants.

I have to admit - I just don't like the idea of pumping CO2 underground.  I don't think it is a good engineering solution.

A Closer Look at the Hydrogen Car

LZ 129 Hindenburg was the unlucky German airship which ignited in 1937 while landing in New Jersey.  As everyone remembers, it floated with seven million cubic feet of hydrogen.  Hydrogen is very reactive - there is a reason it is placed in the first column of the periodic table of elements.  The German engineers knew hydrogen was risky, but they did it anyway.

With considerable hype, last week Honda rolls out fuel cell car.  Similar to the fuel cells used in the U.S. space program since Gemini V in 1965, the car is powered by the chemical combination of hydrogen and oxygen.  This chemical reaction produces energy and water.  While the storage of hydrogen gas similar to the Hindenburg is higher risk than some alternatives, I think today's technology can make it safe enough for highways. 

A concern is the source of hydrogen.  In your high school chemistry class you probably performed hydrolysis where an electric current is passed through water and hydrogen is generated at one electrode, and hydrogen at another electrode.  This is most feasible in a laboratory.  Commercially, hydrogen is obtained from steam reforming of natural gas.  Yes, natural gas is combined with high-temperature water vapor to form hydrogen and carbon monoxide.  Does this sound green?

Hydrogen cars and hot air describes some of the other objections to fleets of hydrogen cars.  Supporters of the hydrogen car claim we simply need the will to expend electricity for generation of hydrogen rather than chemically reacting natural gas.  However why not use the electricity directly for the automobile through batteries, road conductors, etc.? 

The real question is  - what is the best form to store potential energy?  Is it chemical storage like a battery?  We currently don't have battery technology to support all-electric cars.  Will we ever have electro-chemical storage with thousands of charge-recharge cycles?  Storing the energy in hydrogen and oxygen for a fuel cell is an interesting alternative, but only if we produce it through electrolysis, and not hydrocarbons such as natural gas.  But an entire new energy distribution system needs to be developed for hydrogen stations, etc. 

Undoubtedly there are other ways of storing potential energy for transportation.  As long as it is good enough, engineers can make a solution work.  We don't need to spend years and years trying to find the perfect solution.

Horseshoes, 8-Track Tapes, and Winnebagos

There are many variations, but time is a like a river ... (fill in your favorite.)  In one of my favorite movies - Groundhog Day, Bill Murray laments, "that was a pretty good day, why can't I have that one over?"  The human memory is a wonderful thing - we don't remember climbing the steps to the university's administration building in a cold, miserable rain, but we remember a homecoming parade in full, living color.  Actually - there were so many students in my auditorium-style freshman calculus class that we received our graded quizzes in the campus mail.  To this day, I still have a phobia about the daily mail.

Engineers tend to pick upon horseshoes as a product that is no longer needed.  Actually, horseshoes are still produced and even available in carbon composition or titanium materials, although the demand is nothing similar to the horse-drawn 19th century.  8-track tapes of course, were far more portable than 45 rpm records, and began the technology movement to the embedded MP-3 players we have in our cell phones today.  It is ironic that you can purchase new horseshoes, but not new 8-track players.  

Winnebagos of course, must be having a terrible time with the new gasoline price points.  As long as NFL broadcaster John Madden continues to travel between NFL games, there will be the Madden Cruiser on the highways.  But it appears that these American icons will soon become historical curios like 8-track players. 

I am puzzled at how the early American population distributed to little towns scattered across the country.  Almost every town had a shoe factory, lumberyard, and small industry.  Usually, the small towns were connected by the L&M, Frisco, or other railroad.  Today, many of these towns have been completely abandoned or a shell of their former economic and population status.  The factories have closed and the young people moved to the coasts or larger cities, seeking employment.

What made these little towns viable at one time, but not now?  Has our national DNA changed?  Perhaps the analogy of time and the river is closer to the flooding now experienced by the Midwest.  There are social and economic floods that force our culture from its riverbanks and sometimes divert culture in a different course.  The social and economic forces recede, but civilization has been changed permanently.  Like horseshoes, 8-track tapes, and Winnebagos, the small towns that once provided the social fabric that today's social networking attempts to imitate are gone. 

Choking on Intellectual Property

Intellectual property has many edges.  We want to protect the composer, inventor, or whomever, of the protected work.  But as many attributes of our culture, it seems that the dial has spun to an extreme.  As an example, let's consider the Eagles' single, Hotel California, recorded in 1977.  That song was penned and recorded over 30 years ago, yet it still has complete copyright  protection.  U.S. copyright law provides protection for either 95/120 years or the life of the author plus 70 years. 

In racing competition, we generally want all competitors to run the same distance, have the same headwind, similar clothing, shoes, etc.  But that is impossible in human culture - there are people being born today that will not be able to use the phrase Hotel California, or similar ideas in this old song without violating copyright protection.  Don Henley, Glenn Fry, and Don Felder, were very talented and clever, but they were simply born before someone equally bright and talented.  Because of that, they have legal protection for a song about someone visiting a hotel in California.  

Why is copyright now essentially a birthright?  The original intent of patents was that an inventor would be protected by the government for a period of years (now 20, which is probably too long) and after that, the invention was a public work.  The concept being that in exchange for protection, the inventor surrenders sole ownership after a period of time.  Why are copyrights different?  The government is providing protection, so why shouldn't it become a public work after a reasonable time period?

It is really, really, hard to have truly original thought or ideas.  As more of mankind's ideas and compositions are protected behind copyrights, I'm concerned that copyright protection is going to limit our culture's ability to create and innovate. 

Where Have All the Bees Gone?

Stung by Bees tells how villagers in China now have to use pollination sticks of chicken feathers and cigarette filters and climb through their fruit trees to physically pollinate the blossoms.  It sounds bizarre, that humans must now do the work of bees.  The problem is called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) and basically what happens, is the bees do not return to the colony.  The female adults known as foragers simply abandon the nest. 

The actual cause of CCD is a mystery.  In the early 90s, it became noticed in France, and it was suspected that pesticides were the culprit.  The pesticides were banned, but the six-legged insects have never come back.  UGA given $1.4 million to study disappearing bees explains that almost 50% of the U.S. bee colonies died last winter.  Almost 1/2 of the bees in the U.S. are required for pollination of the California almond trees. 

Some speculation is that there might be a new virus, or a combination of pesticides and environmental stresses.  If you care to see the PBS video, Silence of the Bees, see this Nature website.  The video tells that 1/3 of all food produced in the U.S. is pollinated by bees.  I learned something I did not know - the honey bee has three eyes on the top of its head in addition to the large compound eyes in front.  It is marvelously engineered - if only our mechanical devices were so carefully constructed.  When bees become sick, they will leave the hives as a sacrifice to avoid infecting the entire hive.  The problem is, they are all leaving.  

Other than humans, bees are the only living animal that can communicate ins a symbolic language, known as the "waggle dance".  As you probably remember, this dance allows a forager to tell other bees where to find a particularly lucrative source of nectar.  Columbia University has discovered that bees are suffering from many pathogens. Most of these have been present for years, so it is difficult to determine what has changed. 

Paralysing virus a suspect in disappearing bee mystery explains that the latest suspected cause is Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (IAPV) which may have originated with the Australian honeybee.  Jeff Pettis from the Bee Research Laboratory of the USDA, still believes there are multiple factors, although the IAPV may be making the bees more vulnerable.

Some have claimed that the disappearance of the bees could be like the canary in a coal mine for humans. Let's hope for a quick recovery of the bee population.  Without bees, our world could become very black-and-white.