Zark's

Neutrino Speed Test Being Rerun

This photo is of the first neutrino-induced reaction in pure hydrogen produced in the 12-foot bubble chamber. c.1971
Image Credit: Department of Energy

Neutrinos are elementary subatomic particles with no electrical charge and very little mass.  They are affected only by the weak subatomic force, and consequently shoot through matter without striking another particle.  Some physicists have claimed a neutrino of moderate energy could penetrate a block of lead a thousand light years long. 

The neutrino was first proposed in 1930 to explain the beta decay of a neutron.  The energy of a neutron before decaying into an electron and proton was greater than the aggregate electron and proton produced by the beta decay reaction.  The neutrino particle was theorized to preserve energy, momentum, and angular momentum.

In my blog, Did CERN Scientists Discover an "Undo" Button?, I explain that European scientists are puzzled because speed tests of neutrinos resulted in speeds faster than light.  As you have been taught, Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity states no particle can travel faster than light.  A century ago, Michelson and Morely measured the speed of light in the direction of the Earth's spin and against the Earth's spin.  They measured the speed of light the same in both directions. 

In other words, suppose you are on a rocket sled and shine a flashlight.  The photons leaving the flashlight cannot travel faster than the speed of light, even though intuitively the photons should travel at the speed of light plus the speed of the rocket sled.  But they don't, which is one of the strange features of relativity.

Faster-than-light neutrino experiment to be run again explains the scientists published their findings in hope that someone could identify an error.  Over 80 papers have been submitted to CERN in response, but most propose new theories rather than identifying experimental error.  One of the problems confronting researchers is that they cannot produce a single neutrio and measure how long it took to travel from the CERN Geneva laboratory to the Gran Sasso laboratory in Italy.  They can only produce a burst of neutrinos and measure the average time of travel.  In the new experiment, they will generate shorter bursts of neutrinos and calculate whether that makes a difference.

The universe is very bizarre if neutrinos can travel faster than light.

Complex Organic Matter in Outer Space?

Process of inserting iridium into carbon-hydrogen bond
Image Credit: Department of Energy

Wikipedia explains that organic matter is something that originated from a living organism.  Hydrocarbons such as petroleum are considered organic matter because they originated as plant life.  Obviously organic matter is a subset of organic compounds, which simply have molecules containing carbon. 

I have always been puzzled on why carbon was considered special and molecules containing carbon were termed 'organic'.  Wikipedia explains that it dates back to alchemy, when western alchemists believed that some compounds could be created only by vitalism - or a life-force.  These were believed different than compounds that could be produced by purely chemical reactions. 

Perhaps you synthesized urea in a high school or college laboratory experiment.  Urea was considered organic, because it existed only in the urine of living organisms.  Yet your laboratory experiment produced urea without life force, or even intelligent thought, if you enjoyed chemistry labs as little as I did.

Astronomers Discover Complex Organic Matter Exists Throughout the Universe tells that complex organics can be identified in spectrographs of the Orion Nebula.  Professors at the University of Hong Kong have demonstrated these spectrographs are produced from complex organic molecules similar to petroleum or coal instead of elementary organic molecules as previously believed.  What puzzles astronomers and chemists is that the stars seem to produce these molecules when it is theoretically impossible in a vacuum. 

They further speculate on whether these could be precursors to life.  Mmm.  I'm not convinced.

 

 

Controversy Over Monsanto's Genetically Engineered Sweet Corn

American corn
Image Credit: Doug Wilson, USDA

Mmm.  The Monsanto webpage says - "producing more conserving more improving lives  That's sustainable agriculture and that's what Monsanto is all about."  Nothing wrong with that mission statement, is there? 

Monsanto enters into market for fresh sweet corn explains this is the first time the biogiant has genetically engineered a corn intended for consumers.  This new variant has three genetic changes that make it resistant to insects and Monsanto's Roundup herbicide.  Other variants have been used for industrial production and livestock consumption, but this is the first intended for consumers.  (The non-consumer variant has been planted since 1994.)  In The Revenge of the Weeds, I blogged about genetic changes that Monsanto engineers to produce a plant that is Roundup-resistant.

Enough Tricks: Consumers Speak Up Against Monsanto's GE Sweet Corn tells that consumer advocates are alarmed that the product will not be labeled as genetically modified.  A coalition of several groups has collected petition signatures and asking retailers and food processors to refuse the genetically engineered corn. The coalition tells that General Mills and Trader Joe's has responded favorably to their request.

In the graphic above from the USDA, HT corresponds to herbicide resistant and Bt corresponds to insect resistant.  The new Monsanto sweet corn incorporates both of these traits.

It is complicated isn't it?  Very likely without the innovation of biotechs, we will not be able to feed this planet of 7 billion humans, far exceeding the estimates of Thomas Robert Malthus.  On the other hand, we are witnessing genetic pollution.  In one example, a genetically engineered flax variant, believed to have been destroyed, has escaped into the wild.  We have experienced environmental catastrophes with invasive species, that are natural, and not man-made.  Imagine the havoc that could be produced by a manmade species.  Mmm.  As I said, it is complicated.

 

 

Stress is a Killer

Chair designed to make sitting down and rising safer and easier
Image Credit: Brian Donnelly, LifeSpan Furnishings, LLC

Mmm.  Wikipedia explains that psychological stress is not directly caused by external events, but instead, by internal perceptions.  External or environmental stimulus that elevates an individual's stress is appropriately named a stressor.  Major life events such as death of a spouse, divorce, marital separation, or imprisonment are considered stressful.  In addition there can be a crisis produced by floods, earthquakes, etc. 

High to moderate levels of stress lead to higher mortality rate concludes that continual stress over several years results in a 50 percent higher mortality rate.  The study was based upon 1000 middle-class and working class males for an 18 year period.  All were in good health at the beginning of the study.

They identified three groups a) two or less major stress events a year, b) average of three, and c) up to six.  The mortality rate was about the same for the first two groups, however, the last group had a 50 percent higher mortality rate.  Apparently the human body can tolerate some stress, but only so much.

The Oregon State researchers also had the surprising finding - being a teetotaler increased the mortality rate.  As you would expect, smoking was harmful, but the finding that moderate drinkers outlived non-drinkers was not expected. 

Their advice - be married, minimize stress, and have a glass of wine every night.

 

Hacking Bacterial Communications

Quorum-sensing antagonists that function by stabilizing closed receptor conformations
Image Credit: Brookhaven National Laboratory

In The Amazing Language of Bacteria, I explain that bacteria communicate chemically using two different languages.  They have one chemical molecule that is recognized by the receptors on all bacteria.  Consider it a bacterial Esperanto.

In addition, bacteria have many different other chemical languages, but each family has it own unique language.  So any bacteria recognizes two chemical languages - the universal molecule and the family-unique molecule.

Quorum sensing is the surprising ability of bacteria to count how many other bacteria in the immediate vicinity.  Then if they detect a sufficient number of bacteria are around, they will change their behavior.  For vibrio fishori, that means they will initiate bioluminescence. For bacteria such as Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), it can signal the bacteria to become aggressive - that the host organism can be overwhelmed.

Princeton University researchers have been studying the bacterium Chromobacterium violaceum, common in tropical soils and water.  They have identified a protein, C6-HSL, which is responsible for switching on the genes within the bacterium upon reception of messages.  They label it an autoinducer.  Even better, they have discovered a molecule which disables the autoinducer.  This, they label an antagonist.  Unknown is whether the bacteria will develop a resistance.  (Hopefully not, because this does not kill the bacterium, just disables some of its capability.) 

As told in Scientists Target Bacteria "Quorum Sensing" as a Route to New Antibacterial Therapies, the researchers have been using new x-ray equipment to observe the molecular structure of the quorum-sensing receptor being disabled by an antagonist.  All of this will helpfully develop new therapies for fighting infections which are desperately needed since so many bacteria have developed resistance to our antibiotics.

Insufficient Outside Play Harms Vision

Human Eye
Image Credit: National Eye Institute, National Institutes of Health

The human eye is a complex mechanism.  It has diaphragm that regulates the amount of light entering the eye.  It has a lens that focuses the light the photoreceptors that convert light into electro-chemical impulses that can be transported by the nervous system.

Frequently the light is not focused properly upon the retina and the objects are perceived out of focus.  Myopia is nearsightedness where the person is able to see near objects clearly, but far away objects are blurry.  Hyperopia is farsightedness, which is the exact opposite condition.  Astigmatism is when all images are blurry and stretched out.  Presbyopia happens as people age (say, greater than 35)  - the lens can no longer change shape sufficiently to focus upon close objects.

Lack of outdoor play linked to short-sighted children tells that each additional hour spent outside per week reduces the risk of myopia by 2 percent.  The study does not identify the responsible mechanism, but it could be exposure to natural light or focusing upon far away objects.  University of Cambridge researchers noted that near-sighted children on average spend 3.7 hours less outside than their normal-sighted peers. 

They had suspected the near-sighted children to spend more time with computers or reading, perhaps straining their vision more than those that played more outside, but the study did not show that correlation.  Near-sightedness is more common than 30 years ago, with 1 to 2 percent of UK children between 5 and 7 already afflicted with myopia.

The EIA Releases its Annual Energy Review

Basin Electric Leland Olds Station located near Stanton, North Dakota. It is a coal-fired power plant that use the Missouri River water for cooling.
Image Credit: Joel M. Galloway, USGS

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released Annual Energy Outlook 2010 today.  I'll try to provide the highlights of the report.

While a bit 'busy', the figure below contains a lot of information.  For example, petroleum represents 37 percent of the U.S. energy consumption, and of that, 71 percent is used by the transportation sector.  After all these years, we still cannot identify a portable, economical energy source to replace petroleum.  94 percent of the energy used by the transportation sector comes from petroleum.

Energy Consumption by source and sector, 2010
Image Credit: U.S. Energy Information Administration

  Image Credit: U.S. Energy Information Administration

On the left, the petroleum reserves are identified.   The U.S. consumes about 19 million barrels of petroleum a day, or 7 billion barrels a year.  The graphic on the left shows technically recoverable, not proven reserves, which are about 27 billion barrels.

This was the biggest takeaway in the report for me.  The U.S. has substantial reserves, but because the technology is lagging or too expensive, practical recovery remains out of reach.  Hence, the U.S. is currently importing about 10 million barrels of petroleum a day, or about $1 Billion dollars of imports a day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Ozone Hole is Still There

The Antarctic ozone hole reached its annual peak on Sept. 12, and was the ninth largest ozone hole on record.
Image Credit: NASA

Ozone is formed in the upper atmosphere when oxygen molecules are struck by a medium-wave ultraviolet photon and transform into two oxygen ions.  The ions subsequently combine with another oxygen molecule to form ozone, or O3. 

Ozone in the upper atmosphere is responsible for most ultraviolet B (UVB) absorption.  The primary risk to humans from ozone depletion is increased probability of skin cancer, although tropospheric ozone is also increased, which is a health hazard.  Ozone is a triatomic form of oxygen, different from the diatomic molecule that we breathe.  (Ozone smells like chlorine bleach and is very harmful to our lung tissue.)

Ozone-depleting gases in the atmosphere destroy ozone molecules through several different chemical reactions.  Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) have been one of the primary villains in the destruction of the ozone layer.  They were widely used for air conditioning and refrigeration until the Montreal Protocol was signed in 1987.  The USA had earlier banned CFCs for aerosol cans in 1978. 

NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) use a variety of observations (satellite, ground-based, balloon, etc) to monitor the ozone depletion in the Antarctic. NASA, NOAA Data Show Significant Antarctic Ozone Hole Remains explains on September 12, it stretched 10.05 square miles.  NASA advises that eventually the ozone layer should begin healing because of the CFC ban, but those chemicals have a long lifetime in the atmosphere and we are still experiencing destruction perpetrated by the 1960s and 1970s.

Mmm.  After 25 years, we would hope for better news.  I'm a bit suspicious of another chemical reaction reducing the impact of the Montreal Protocol. 

Jobs' Thermonuclear War Against Android Illustrates Something Needs to Change

The technology and consumer worlds are buzzing with Steve Jobs Wanted Android Destroyed.  It is important to understand the trigger was not Android, but Windows.  The Macintosh, introduced on January 24, 1984, changed the computing and consumer worlds forever.  The leap from the IBM PC to the Macintosh was larger than the leap from Blackberry to the iPhone.  Computer historians or us older technologists know that Apple did not invent the graphical interface or mouse - it was Xerox.  Steve Jobs and all those engineers whose signatures are inside the first Macintoshes generated a product that freed the users from the details of computer operating systems.  But the underlying ideas were not their own.

Macintosh users paid a premium - their hardware and software was priced at least 50 percent higher than IBM-compatible products.  But because of the improved productivity and quality of their products, Apple was favored among both engineers and creative arts.  Bill Gates of Microsoft subsequently began steering its products toward the graphical interface.  Windows 1.0 was released in November 1985, but it was not until Windows 3.0 in 1990 that the IBM/Windows products could attract serious interest. 

Windows 95 in August 1995 essentially caught up with Apple and layoffs began at the California-based company.  Never again would Apple have the market share in personal and enterprise computers it once enjoyed because of its graphical interface and intuitive software. 

Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997 and began steering the Apple brand from computers to consumer products.  Of course it was the iPod in 2001 that ushered in today's consumer-oriented Apple.  It is my belief that Jobs was determined to never again tolerate someone to catch up with a product like the Macintosh that resulted in his hatred for the Android.

Jobs continued to innovate with the iPhone, but his chief attack against the Android was patent litigation.  As the world's leading consumer products company (remember when it was Sony?), Apple doesn't need the money it is making from patent litigation, but it is to protect the package it introduced in 2007. 

This illustrates the tension that today's world faces with intellectual property.  Back in the halcyon days of computers with IBM, Data General, Hewlett Packard, Digital Equipment Company, etc, it required more than an idea to be successful.  It also required manufacturing, sales, and support.  Today, all of those are a commodity.  I'm continually amazed at Apple's stock cap of $364B.  Because unlike the General Motors, General Electric, and IBM of yesterday, it does not have hard assets that even approach a single-digit percentage of its stock evaluation.

Long before the iPhone was introduced, you had probably noticed that your laptop computer's touchpad could respond to something other than a tap.  Two decades ago, we had created touchscreens with LED arrays and photodetectors around the bezel of a CRT that allowed you to interact with a graphical interface without a keyboard or mouse.  The technology was much cruder, but the idea was already there. 

As a Blackberry user, you had also probably had several ideas about how to make a better phone before the iPhone was introduced.  Quite possibly the iPhone featured some of the ideas you had conceived.  So why does Apple obtain a world monopoly on an idea that you might have had earlier? And further, does 'first' even count, if you were not born yet and came up with the idea independently?  Chances are that a court might agree with you, but you also understand the legal party with the deepest pockets usually prevails.

On the other side, with today's Asian manufacturing engines and American-style merchandising, no company is willing to design a product if a Taiwan or Chinese manufacturer can under price it within six months of market introduction.  We have reached a milestone in civilization when we need a different form of protection for inventors, designers, manufacturers, and consumers.  I'm not certain what it is, but I don't believe ideas alone should be protected.  Ideas belong to civilization. 

 

Fish-Friendly Hydroelectric Turbine

The new turbine that reduces fish passage injury and mortality, while effectively maintaining power production.
Image Credit: Electric Power Research Institute

Fish-Friendly Turbine Making a Splash in Water Power explains the Department of Energy, Electric Power Research Institute, and Alden Laboratories have collaborated to design a better turbine. 

As depicted on the left, it has three blades, no gaps, and rotates slower than traditional turbines.  Conventional designs have between 5 and 18 blades separated by gaps that strike and trap fish. 

Under optimum conditions, it will be about 94 percent energy efficient which is comparable to modern designs.  Fish survivability however, should increase from conventional's 80-85 percent to 98 percent with the new design.  It achieves the efficiency through a larger turbine design with improved fluid dynamics.

The white paper explains that to protect Pacific salmon and shad, spillways have typically been installed at dams to safely passage juvenile fish downstream.  But these spillways reduce power generation since the turbines are bypassed, and one estimate is $237M lost annual revenue for dams on the Columbia River.  The new design achieves survivability of 98 percent for 7.9 inch fish and 100 percent for 3.9 inch fish, which accounts for 90 percent of the fish entrained at U.S. hydroelectric projects.

School Street Power House in upstate New York
Image Credit: Electric Power Research Institute

As engineers know, many designs look good on paper, or even work in a laboratory, but fail miserably in the real world.  The pilot installation of the new turbine is planned as a 10 MW project in Cohoes, New York.  The installation and demonstration will take about three years.