Direct Conversion of Biomass to Fuel

Renewable technology marches on.   This technique uses engineered microbes. 

"Now, without any pretreatment, we can simply take switchgrass, grind it up, add a low-cost, minimal salts medium and get ethanol out the other end," Westpheling said. "This is the first step toward an industrial process that is economically feasible."

Hydrogen Into Liquid Fuel

A technique for storing hydrogen in a liquid form has been developed that uses atmospheric CO2.  It's a catalytic process that combines hydrogen and CO2 into formic acid.  Then another catalytic process releases the hydrogen for use in combustion. 

Copy and Delete Text in Images

This new Google Chrome extension called Naphtha, really works.  I think it's pretty cool.

Nuclear Startups

While the government has dropped its fee to power plants for disposal of spent fuel and the fuel continues to pile up, same new nuclear startups are working to generate more power from the spent fuel stockpiles.  The technique is to dissolve the fuel into a molten salt and completely burn the fissile material in it (something that can't be done with fuel in a solid form).  Molten salt reactors were successful experimentally back in the 50's but have yet to be built commercially.

WSU Students Win International Hydrogen Competition

Kudos to  the winners of the annual Hydrogen Student Design Contest.

The WSU team's fueling station design was safe and reliable while also lowering building costs of current stations by 75 percent.

Conducting an economic analysis, the students determined that filling a hydrogen fuel tank to go 300 miles would cost about $48, which is comparable to regular gasoline. They developed a business plan in which a portable hydrogen fuel station could work in conjunction with existing gas stations in a way that would benefit both entities.

"The design the students developed looks to be completely implementable right now,'' said Jake Leachman, assistant professor in the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering and an advisor on the project. "We want to build one, and we should. The business model/idea is innovative and could lead to a startup company.''

I'm happy to say that my son, Austin Miller, was on that team handling the economics and public policy issues.  Way to go!

Crowdfunding Safe Fusion Power?

An alternative nuclear fusion process is proposed by LPP Fusion that doesn't need the astronomic investments required by such this as the ITER.  Developers think they can have a 5 MW reactor by the end of the decade for a mere half million dollars. It would produce electrical power for about 0.06 cents per kWh. Rather than fight plasma instability, it capitalizes on it.  By fusing carbon and boron, ionized helium ions are produced without any radiated neutrons. The other isotopic products have a half-life of only 20 minutes which means the apparatus can be brought back to background levels in about 9 hours.  Since the output is charged particles, electricity can directly generated.  It could be a game-changer.

New Porous Silicon

From Penn State we have this: a method of producing porous silicon with much more surface area than the standard method.  It can be used to catalyze the production of hydrogen from water with only sunlight as the energy input. That would be interesting to see at an industrial scale.

The Single Mother, Child Poverty Myth

It's often said that the high child poverty figures in the U.S. are due to the high numbers of single mothers.  This analysis shoots that hypothesis full of holes.  Other countries with similar rates of single mothers have much lower rates of children in poverty.  That's mainly because they do something about it with better welfare programs.

...high child poverty in the US is not caused by some overwhelming crush of single mother parenting. The lowest of the low-poverty countries manage to get along in the world with similar levels of single mother parenting just fine. Morever, relatively high child poverty rates are the rule in every single family type in the US, not just some single mother phenomenon. We plunge more than 1 in 5 of our nation's children into poverty because we choose to. It would be easy to dramatically cut that figure, but we'd rather not.

Salvation Gets Cheap

Advances in renewable energy have made a carbon-free energy regime financially achievable.  So it's time for those on the right who believe in the power of the market to surmount all obstacles (except environmental restrictions) and those on the left who believe that reduced economies are the price we must pay for a livable environment to just give it up.  We CAN have a better environment without sacrificing economic growth.

Ginseng and Influenza

Ginseng has shown anti-viral effects against influenza A and other viral infections of lung tissue.  It's another case of folk medicine proving itself in the laboratory.

A Breakthrough?

A human-made compound in animal tests has been shown to reverse the process of artherosclerosis.

Specifically, the experiments showed that treatment with D-PDMP led to:

a drop in the animals' levels of so-called bad cholesterol or low-density lipoprotein, LDL; 

a drop in oxidized LDL, a particularly virulent form of fat that forms when LDL encounters free radicals. Oxidized LDL easily sticks to the walls of blood vessels, where it ignites inflammation, damaging the vessel walls and promoting the growth of fatty plaque; 

a surge in good cholesterol or high-density lipoprotein, HDL, known to counteract the effects of LDL by mopping it up; and 

a significant drop in triglycerides, another type of plaque-building fat.

The treatment also prevented fatty plaque and calcium deposits from building up inside the animals' vessels. These effects were observed in animals on a daily D-PDMP treatment even though they ate a diet made up of 20 percent triglycerides -- the human equivalent of eating a greasy burger for breakfast, lunch and dinner. In addition, the researchers say, D-PDMP appears to precision-target the worst byproducts of aberrant cell growth signaling, such as oxidized LDL and the activity of certain chemicals that fuel vessel inflammation, without altering cell growth itself.

This all sounds like great stuff.  Furthermore, the compound has been well-tested in animals and hasn't produced any side effects even at 10 times the effective dose.

Piketty

I'm sure this is a far too serious book for me to wade through, so I leave the heavy lifting to others who have the smarts and the inclination to do so.  However, I think it may become a landmark publication in the world of macro-economics.  It appears to be well researched and well thought out.  It supports the idea that a natural outcome of unfettered capitalism isn't a utopia but rather the banana-republic oligarchy toward which the U.S. is headed if not already arrived.  A possible prescription to keep that from happening could be a tax on wealth to balance out the rich-get-richer-just-because-they-are-rich trend.  It also clearly demonstrates the need for strong inheritance taxes and capital-gains taxes.  Concentration of wealth in the hands of the rentiers instead of the laborers distorts democracy.

Natural Experiment with Unemployment Benefits

The results are in.  By cutting off unemployment benefits we got to see if that incentivised the long-term unemployed to find more jobs.  It didn't.  It just managed to create more misery for no good reason.  On the other hand, the loss of that money going into the hands of spenders has further reduced the demand that is needed to really bring an expansion of job opportunities.

The Sociopathic One Percent

When Tim Draper did his polling on turning California into 6 new states, he was surprised at how poorly it was supported by the wealthier regions of the state.  Under his plan, the wealthier areas would no longer have to supported the more disadvantaged areas of the state.

It's always a big shock to selfish rich people that most other well-to-do people aren't as selfish as they are. It's important to remember that many of the very wealthy are like Warren Buffett, people who vote primarily for Democrats and aren't afraid to pay a little more in taxes to have a fruitful, stable and fairer society. It's not even the 1% that are ruining things for the rest of us; it's a very sociopathic, very energetic fraction of that 1%. And they're really shocked when other people don't behave as asininely as they do.

Oligarchy is US

When put the numbers to it, it turns out that the US is, in fact, an oligarchy.

 "Despite the seemingly strong empirical support in previous studies for theories of majoritarian democracy, our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts. Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association, and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But, ..." and then they go on to say, it's not true, and that, "America's claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened" by the findings in this, the first-ever comprehensive scientific study of the subject, which shows that there is instead "the nearly total failure of 'median voter' and other Majoritarian Electoral Democracy theories [of America]. When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy."

So, who is surprised at that finding?

Carbon and Taxes

In November, the Obama administration set the social cost of carbon dioxide at $37 per ton.  Many argue that that figure is too low. 

The recent IPCC report estimates that it would take $0.15/kg of CO2 to solve the climate change problem.  If I do my math right, that works out to be a little less that $150/ per ton.

The British Columbia carbon tax experiment at a rate of $30 per ton has proven to be a success.  Carbon emissions are down without any severe economic impacts despite the poor economy.  Note that there are special provisions in the BC law that mitigate the economic impact on low income households.

That puts a framework around it.  We can start moving the right direction with a $30/ton figure.  But to really solve the problem we need to get closer to the $150/ton level.  With the higher taxes, there should be sufficient economic incentive for carbon sequestration efforts to begin to pay off.

The Citizens Climate Lobby has produced legislation that starts with a $20/ton tax with an annual increase in the rate.  Unlike the BC law, only 60% of the proceeds are returned to the taxpayers with 25% going into the general fund and 10-15% going towards green energy subsidies.

Personally, I think there is little need for any of this money to go into the general fund.  That is better addressed by income tax reform.  Nor, do I see a need for channeling any of the money into green energy subsidies.  The tax itself should be sufficient incentive for green energy development.

Update:
I went looking for oppositional articles to the BC carbon tax and found none.  Actually, many who opposed the tax have come to love it.  Because of the kickback to taxpayers, any repeal of the tax would have to be defended as a net tax increase--not a very popular idea.

Furthermore, a carbon tax is much easier to administer than a cap-and-trade regime.  A carbon tax can be revenue-neutral way to modify economic behavior and perhaps even create a few new jobs as markets shift away from carbon emissions.

Surviving a Nuclear Bomb: Update

Some of us can still remember the days of backyard bomb shelters that eventually evolved into teeange makeout pads.  Just to keep current, here's today's best guide to surviving a nuclear explosion.  Best option is to be somewhere else.  It all gets worse from there.

Solar Danger

Even something as perceptually benign as a solar power plant can have unexpected and unintentional consequences, such as becoming a solar energy equivalent of the La Brea tar pits.  Birds and insects get singed and thereby attract more birds and insects.

What Your Metadata Has To Say

In a study of only 546 volunteers, it was shown that a great deal of sensitive information can be gleaned from a person's telephone metadata.  That's why the first thing investigators do in CSI shows is pull the suspects phone records.

Mayer and his team showed that participants called public numbers of “Alcoholics Anonymous, gun stores, NARAL Pro-Choice, labor unions, divorce lawyers, sexually transmitted disease clinics, a Canadian import pharmacy, strip clubs, and much more.” ...

“It highlights three key points. First, that the key part of the NSA’s argument—we weren’t collecting sensitive information so what is the bother?—is factually wrong. Second, that the NSA and the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] Court failed to think this through; after all, it only takes a little common sense to realize that sweeping up all numbers called will inevitably reveal sensitive information. Of course the record of every call made and received is going to implicate privacy. And third, it lays bare the fallacy of the Supreme Court’s mind-numbingly broad wording of the third-party doctrine in an age of big data: just because I reveal data for one purpose—to make a phone call—does not mean that I have no legitimate interest in that information, especially when combined with other data points about me.”

Policies Have Consequences

Some people may have lost their insurance because of Obamacare. But when states refuse to fully implement it, some people lose their lives.  What a country!

Virginia is another state where it sucks to be among the working poor.  One can only hope that voters come to their senses and make some changes in their governors and in their state houses.