Why do I think perpetual motion machines will be appearing frequently in the news? Because, with today’s focus on clean and efficient energy, we are going to find numerous good-willed, if scientifically challenged, inventors producing machines that seek to defy that little, old field we like to call “physics.”

Background Reading

Perpetual Motion (Wikipedia)

History of perpetual motion machines (Wikipedia)

The Museum of Unworkable Devices

Powertread: Stealing Power from Cars

The first PMM post is highlighting Powertread, a device for capturing energy from cars in traffic and converting it into electricity.

It’s literally a series of tubes filled with water that, when run over, force their contents through a turbine to generate electricity. One car driving over one of the things generates 580 watts of electricity at 36 amps. That’s not an awful lot power, but imagine a dozen of the things lined up at a busy off-ramp, run over by thousands of impatient drivers every day, and you can see the potential. The Singaporean government does too, providing grants to fund the project and two shopping malls there have already signed up to purchase the results.

via Powertread turns gridlock into electricity with a series of tubes from Engadget.com

Here’s what’s wrong this idea:

Any energy that is captured by this device must be taken directly from the vehicle crossing its tubes. If the device captured, say, 100 Joules from a passing car, the car itself will end up with about 300 Joules less energy, once the efficiency of electricity generation is considered. (These numerical values are assumptions for the sake of this post.)

In essence, what’s been created is a very roundabout method of electricity generation. Gasoline is converted from chemical energy to kinetic energy in a moving vehicle. This energy is then transferred from the vehicle to water to a turbine blade to a generator. The overall efficiency of this system can’t be greater than 10%, and it will certainly be expensive, to boot.

Now, the argument of the inventors is that cars in traffic will be braking anyway, and this device will slow down vehicles rather than allowing the vehicle’s braking energy to be wasted as heat. From an energy standpoint, that is a more defensible. However, the device is still worthless from a practical standpoint.

First, we are growing our fleet of hybrid vehicles which have built-in capabilities to recapture braking energy and store it in batteries. If cars already have the capability to capture braking energy everywhere they drive, why try to capture energy outside the car only where you’ve placed Powertreads? Second, the energy captured by these devices will be very intermittent-not a continuous flow of steady wattage-and that creates practical challenges for inverters and storage devices. Third, driving over these tubes will feel like hitting a speed bump, and drivers will certainly hate the experience.

I’m glad these inventors are working to help save energy, but I’m sorry to say that they should tread away from the Powertread idea today and start working on something a bit more practical for tomorrow.

The facts in this story prove yet again that, in science at least, truth is often stranger than fiction.

I had heard previously of applying this new microbial science as a potential new forensic tool. (CSI needs something new-they use the same human DNA tests every episode.) In this application, they would utilize the trail of microbes we leave behind as tool for identifying criminals. Think living, microbial fingerprints. Here’s an article about microbe fingerprints. (Bonus, the article is written for kids. Kids need science for their futures, and science needs kids for its future.)

I would not be surprised if the link grows stronger between underexposure to bacteria during childhood (too many antibiotics and not enough dirt) and the occurrence of allergies and asthma.

Here are a few excerpts from the NYT article:

“We have over 10 times more microbes than human cells in our bodies,” said George Weinstock of Washington University in St. Louis.

…

The new surveys are helping scientists understand the many ecosystems our bodies offer microbes. In the mouth alone, Dr. Relman estimates, there are between 500 and 1,000 species. “It hasn’t reached a plateau yet: the more people you look at, the more species you get,” he said. The mouth in turn is divided up into smaller ecosystems, like the tongue, the gums, the teeth. Each tooth-and even each side of each tooth-has a different combination of species.

…

Lungs have traditionally been considered to be sterile because microbiologists have never been able to rear microbes from them. A team of scientists at Imperial College London recently went hunting for DNA instead. Analyzing lung samples from healthy volunteers, they discovered 128 species of bacteria. Every square centimeter of our lungs is home to 2,000 microbes.

…

Out of the 500 to 1,000 species of microbes identified in people’s mouths, for example, only about 100 to 200 live in any one person’s mouth at any given moment. Only 13 percent of the species on two people’s hands are the same. Only 17 percent of the species living on one person’s left hand also live on the right one.

…

In addition to helping us digest, the microbiome helps us in many other ways. The microbes in our nose, for example, make antibiotics that can kill the dangerous pathogens we sniff. Our bodies wait for signals from microbes in order to fully develop. When scientists rear mice without any germ in their bodies, the mice end up with stunted intestines.

…

Caesarean sections have also been linked to an increase in asthma and allergies in children. So have the increased use of antibiotics in the United States and other developed countries. Children who live on farms – where they can get a healthy dose of microbes from the soil – are less prone to getting autoimmune disorders than children who grow up in cities.

via How Microbes Defend and Define Us from NYTimes.com

In a study published in May in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, they reported that, to no one’s surprise, the men who sat the most had the greatest risk of heart problems. Men who spent more than 23 hours a week watching TV and sitting in their cars as passengers or as drivers had a 64 percent greater chance of dying from heart disease than those who sat for 11 hours a week or less. What was unexpected was that many of the men who sat long hours and developed heart problems also exercised. Quite a few of them said they did so regularly and led active lifestyles. The men worked out, then sat in cars and in front of televisions for hours, and their risk of heart disease soared, despite the exercise. Their workouts did not counteract the ill effects of sitting.

via Phys Ed: The Men Who Stare at Screens – Well Blog – NYTimes.com

I’m an active person. I enjoy running, cycling, and hiking. But maybe those mobile activities just aren’t enough to keep me safe from the 8+ hours I spend 5 days a week sitting at my desk in the office. I’m not alone–the desk job seems to be the default job in the U.S. in the 21st century.

So, how do we continue to reap the rewards of our technologically advanced, service-based economy, without slowly killing ourselves in the process?

Dr. James Levine, an endocrinologist at the Mayo Clinic, has one possible solution: the treadmill desk.

In 2005, Dr. Levine led a study showing that lean people burn about 350 more calories a day than those who are overweight, by doing ordinary things like fidgeting, pacing or walking to the copier.

To incorporate extra movement into the routines of sedentary workers (himself included), Dr. Levine constructed a treadmill desk by sliding a bedside hospital tray over a $400 treadmill.

Without breaking a sweat, the so-called work-walker can burn an estimated 100 to 130 calories an hour at speeds slower than two miles an hour, Mayo research shows.

via I Put In 5 Miles at the Office – NYTimes.com

Work-walker? I want to be a work-walker. Not only would it be good for my heart and muscles, but it will keep me more-awake after lunch and add variety to my posture position. Sitting hunched over a keyboard for so many hours is terrible for my back and shoulders. Reports also say that walking helps avoid A.D.D.-like distraction.

Now, would I $400o for a Walkstation? No way. Besides the fact that the name sounds like a Sony gas station, that’s way too much for a desk.

Instead, I’m going to pick up a treadmill of Craigslist and attach a desk myself. I already paid for a mechanical engineering degree, anyway. Hell, an engineering degree is practically a license to be a cheap-o and build my own stuff from scratch.

Typing while walking on a treadmill–much safer than texting while walking across a street!

The utility industry has some serious work ahead to prepare for the emergence of plug-in electric vehicles from the development pipeline. Customers will be expecting high-voltage power in places where it’s not available today, like parking lots at the office. Customers will also need a way to pay for this electricity, with a new metering and billing system. In the long-run, a smart-grid that can pull power from vehicles, as well as charge them, could help smooth out the variation in solar and wind power.

It’s not surprising that one of the utilities working at the edge of electric car infrastructure is in California — the state leads in renewable energy and energy efficiency deployment as well. Southern California Edison isn’t blanketing its territory with upgrades, an unaffordable venture; rather, it’s using innovative measures to estimate where electric vehicles will be parked in the future and beginning the upgrades far in advance.

It’s refreshing to see forward thinking like this in the utility industry. Between the Smart Grid deployments funded by the recovery act and these preparations for electric vehicles, we’ll have much more flexibility to take advantage of renewable energy and next-gen vehicles in coming decades.

Electric Vehicle-Ready Smart Grid

Find more details at FastCompany:

One utility that thinks it will: Southern California Edison. The utility covers a massive swath of land that includes 5 million meters, 14 million residents. By 2020, the utility’s customers could have up to 1 million EVs on the road. But SoCal Edison is already gearing up for the early adopters, explained Pedro Pizarro, the executive vice president of Power Operations for Southern California Edison. “If you have a block with three or four Priuses, that’s probably an early adopter neighborhood,” he said. SoCal Edison is in the midst of surveying its customers to find out which ones plan on buying EVs early. The zip codes with the highest amount of early adopters will likely receive upgraded wiring and circuitry that can handle all the excess pressure on the grid from EVs.

Yes, this is the kind of thing I would read for leisure… don’t judge.

Next step: Planning a trip to visit China and India and learn about their innovation cultures first-hand.

Description of the report:

The return of the once-dormant economies of China and India to dynamism and growth is one of the most remarkable stories in recent history. The two countries are home to nearly 40 percent of the world's population, but until recently neither had played an influential role in the contemporary global economy.

In the past two decades, China and India have liberalized internal economic policy, treatment of foreign investment, and trade, and have experienced economic growth at sustained high rates. From the point of view of the United States, however, the most important development in the Chinese and Indian economies in the long term may be the strides they are making in developing their own domestic innovation capacities. After a long period of underinvestment, both countries have committed to growing their science and education systems to bolster research and further economic expansion.

Some observers of the recent growth have said that both countries are surging in their efforts to spur innovation; others have emphasized the potential of one country over the other; and still others have suggested that both China and India have a long way to go before achieving innovation-driven growth. With such a range of views, The National Academies set out to describe developments in both countries, in relation to each other and the rest of the world, by organizing a conference in Washington, D.C. The conference, summarized in this volume, discussed recent changes at both the macroeconomic level and also in selected industries, and explored the causes and implications of those changes.

via The Dragon and the Elephant: Understanding the Development of Innovation Capacity in China and India: Summary of a Conference.

Considering that riding my bike through DC streets feels about as foolish as diving into a shark tank, this is good news. Hopefully these recommendations will be backed up with the big, honkin’ carrot of federal DOT funding for projects with comprehensive bike and walking path improvement provisions.

Today, I want to announce a sea change. People across America who value bicycling should have a voice when it comes to transportation planning. This is the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of non-motorized.

We are integrating the needs of bicyclists in federally-funded road projects. We are discouraging transportation investments that negatively affect cyclists and pedestrians. And we are encouraging investments that go beyond the minimum requirements and provide facilities for bicyclists and pedestrians of all ages and abilities.

To set this approach in motion, we have formulated key recommendations for state DOTs and communities:

• Treat walking and bicycling as equals with other transportation modes.
• Ensure convenient access for people of all ages and abilities.
• Go beyond minimum design standards.
• Collect data on walking and biking trips.
• Set a mode share target for walking and bicycling.
• Protect sidewalks and shared-use paths the same way roadways are protected (for example, snow removal)
• Improve nonmotorized facilities during maintenance projects.

Source: My view from atop the table at the National Bike Summit

I worked from home on Monday due to the remnants of the Snowpocalypse, and I couldn’t resist cooking some soup for warmth and comfort. A survey of the ingredients on hand led me down the road to Tom Ka Gai, or Thai Coconut Chicken Soup.

The result was very satisfying, with creamy coconut and earthy mushrooms providing rich, comforting flavors while the lime and lemon zest sent off an irresistible aroma. I took the easy way out and prepared this soup in the slow cooker, simmering the chicken, stock, mushrooms, garlic, and ginger at a low, slow setting before adding the remaining ingredients.

Enjoy.

Thai Chicken-Coconut Soup

4 ounces cellophane noodles
6 cups low-sodium chicken broth
1–2 red Thai (or jalapeño) peppers, seeded and finely chopped (plus slices for garnish)
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tablespoon grated ginger
2 teaspoons grated lemon zest
1 teaspoon grated lime zest
1/4 cup fresh lemon (or lime) juice
4 tablespoons Thai fish sauce, divided
1/2 pound shiitake mushrooms, sliced (3 cups)
2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (about 5 ounces each), cut into 2 1/2-inch-long by 1/4-inch-wide strips
1 cup regular or light coconut milk
2 cups baby spinach
2 tablespoon chopped cilantro (plus sprigs for garnish)

Place noodles in a bowl; add enough warm water to cover and let sit until soft, about 15 minutes. Drain. Combine broth, pepper, garlic, ginger, lemon zest, lime zest, lemon juice and 3 tablespoon fish sauce in a medium saucepan. Season with salt. Bring to a simmer, add noodles and cook 3 minutes more. Using tongs, transfer noodles to a bowl and cover with foil to keep warm. Add mushrooms to broth; season with salt, if desired; simmer 3 minutes more. Add chicken and coconut milk and simmer, stirring, until chicken is just cooked, about 3 minutes. Stir in spinach until it begins to wilt, about 1 minute. Add chopped cilantro and season with remaining 1 tablespoon fish sauce. Using tongs, divide noodles among 4 bowls. Ladle soup into bowls and garnish with sprigs of cilantro and slices of pepper.

Well, when you skydive from 22.7 miles above the earth, it turns out you have time for 6 minutes of life flashing before your eyes.

I’ve got a lot of living left to do; I’m not sure there are six minutes of highlights from my life worthy for that montage.

Six minutes is more like a short film, or an infomercial, than it is any fleeting vision of memories past.

But Felix Baumgartner, the Austian lunatic who will attempt this record-breaking skydive, is an adventurous guy, so six minutes shouldn’t be a problem for him.

Excerpt:

Baumgartner, who became the first person to cross the English Channel in freefall in 2003, will be lofted to a height of 36,575 metres in a helium balloon. After floating up for roughly three hours, he will open the door of a 1-tonne pressurised capsule, grab the handrails on either side of the exit, and step off, potentially breaking records for the highest parachute jump, as well as the fastest and longest freefall.

He will face extreme peril. He should reach supersonic speeds 35 seconds after he jumps, and the resulting shock wave “is a big concern”, the project’s technical director, Art Thompson, said at a press briefing on Friday. “In early aircraft development, they thought it was a wall they couldn’t pass without breaking apart. In our case, the vehicle is flesh and blood, and he’ll be exposed to some extreme forces.”

Still, project medical director Jonathan Clark noted there has been one known instance of a pilot surviving the destruction of a plane at three times the speed of sound. “We know it’s not just theoretically possible, it’s possible,” he said.

After falling for about six minutes, Baumgartner should open his parachute at roughly 1520 metres.

The jump height is above a threshold at 19,000 metres called the Armstrong line, where the atmospheric pressure is so low that fluids start to boil. “If he opens up his face mask or the suit, all the gases in your body go out of suspension, so you literally turn into a giant fizzy, oozing fluid from your eyes and mouth, like something out of a horror film,” Thompson explained. “It’s just seconds until death.”

via ‘Space diver’ to attempt first supersonic freefall – space – 22 January 2010 – New Scientist.

J&G Steakhouse is a well-appointed restaurant in the W Hotel serving beautiful, flavor-filled dishes beyond just cuts of beef.

I sampled the offerings at J&G during Restaurant Week, helping bring the price down to a level as palatable as the food. Fortunately, the presence of RW didn’t seem to diminish the quality of food or level of service provided, a phenomenon that I’ve encountered at other establishments during this event. (Of course, this being my first visit to J&G, I draw this conclusion without a frame of reference.)

Atmosphere:

Small, star-like lights dot the ceiling, casting dim light that sets a mood without hiding the beauty of the food or one’s date. The tables down the center of the restaurant abut on one side large, sofa-like, mauve benches. So large, in fact, that when combined with the room’s high ceilings and tall windows, one feels though he has started to shrink. I was pleasantly reassured when my feet still were able to reach the floor.

J&G Steakhouse and its large sofa seating

Food:

The dishes enjoyed off the RW menu included, with comments appended:

First course:

Salmon tartare, ginger dressing, fresh radish (a better dish than any salmon sushi I’ve eaten)
Rice cracker crusted tuna, citrus-chili sauce (very nice tuna, although I’d prefer without the crust)

Main course:

Roasted golden tilefish, glazed mushrooms, poblano and dill (my first tilefish, I was impressed with the intense, seared crust obtained; a rich mix of mushrooms was more satisfying than the typical buttons)
Seared cod, scallion-chili sauce, basil and celery (had just a bite of this; firm and buttery)

Dessert:

Pot de crème, liquid caramel (heaven in a pot; my favorite desserts are, like this, simple in presentation but rich in flavor)
Green apple crisp, cinnamon ice cream (dining partner: “possibly the best crisp I’ve ever had.”)

My overall impression of the food is excellent. The ingredients are high quality; the dishes provide interesting flavor combinations that are balanced, not off the wall; the preparation is careful; the plating is attractive; and result is success.

Service:

Attentive. (Sometimes excessively so. I had to keep one eye on my half-eaten first course to prevent it from being whisked away while I was absorbed in conversation.)

Conclusion:

I recommend J&G for a fine dining experience that provides an upscale yet comfortable setting and that serves high-quality, attractive food without being haughty. I will certainly return. And I’ll try the steak.

For expert reviews, look here:  Washington Post Full Review by Tom Sietsema and Washington Post 2009 Fall Dining Guide.

Let’s see if photos work. Here’s an example.

One more kitchen gadget for the junk heap. As Alton Brown would say, this is an undeniable uni-tasker. It’s a martini machine. Why do you need a machine to make a martini? Well, because shaking a shaker is so much darned work.

Uni-tasking martini machine

I never assumed that filming cooking shows was easy, but this article gives some idea of all the preparation that is required before filming can begin. And it turns out that the TV chefs have little people on their shoulders giving them cooking advice the whole time!

Excerpt:

One of the most surprising behind-the-scenes facts is the tiny earphone worn by many of the cooking show hosts. “Cooking on TV is a hard job,” Novatt says. “You need to really actually cook while listening to the culinary producer whispering in your ear telling you to smile and to move your hand because it's blocking the celery, all while you also have to pay attention to the studio director on the floor who is pointing to which camera you have to face.”

“What's great about the Food Network studio environment,” says Sunny Anderson, star of “Cooking for Real,” “is having a team where, if I miss an ingredient in the rush or forget how much time I have left, a gentle voice chimes in my ear to keep me on track.”

via Behind the scenes on Food Network – latimes.com.

Now a British architectural design firm is giving the more conventional combustion power plant a much-needed makeover. Of course, this plant doesn’t burn coal, but substitutes palm kernel shells instead.

Why not make these facilities good-looking and integrated into the environment? Sure, they lose their attraction as a movie setting for climactic clashes between humans and alien invaders, but they’re likely to endear much more good will with the surrounding community who views the plant out their kitchen windows.

Fancy-schmancy biomass plant

Excerpt:

Heatherwick Studio has just released its design for a biomass station on the banks of the River Tees in British town Stockton-on-Tees, for British company BEI.

The facility is expected to pump out 49 MWe–enough to power 50,000 homes. Those homes are expected to see their per capita carbon footprint cut by as much as 80%, since the electricity will be generated simply by biomass generators that will burn palm kernel shells, rather than coal.

Thomas Heatherwick, Heatherwick Studio’s founder, has a genius for offbeat architecture, made with experimental techniques–for example, he designed a colony of houses with tinfoil and a bridge that curls up like a snail.

This time, the building has been conceived as less of a power station, and more of a local attraction and amenity. The building’s skin will literally be green, made up of exterior panels planted with local grasses. Inside, in addition to offices and the biomass factory, there will be a visitor’s center.

via Heatherwick Turns Biomass Into a Thing of Beauty | Design & Innovation | Fast Company.

The dish is tostadas with mango pomegranate guacamole, black beans, cotija, and cabbage slaw. Here’s a photo:

I was able to pick up all the ingredients at Lily’s Mexican Market in Columbia, MD near the office. It’s a wonderful little Mexican grocery with a kitchen in the back, and I’m always the only gringo there. They make fresh tortillas every day, and they also have a meat counter (carniceria), produce, and baked goods (panaderia).

As you’d guess, the guacamole is complimented with fresh mango and pomegranate seeds. Next comes cilantro-lime black beans, followed by crumbly, salty, irresistible cotija chese. The cabbage slaw (ensalada de repollo in Spanish, translates to cabbage salad) is in a cilantro/lime/garlic/chipotle dressing with radish. This was all layered on either crispy tostadas or tender tortillas made the same day. Me gusta.

Recipes:

Mango Pomegranate Guacamole
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/350568

4 ripe avocados (2 pounds total) 
1 cup finely chopped white onion
2 fresh serrano chiles, finely chopped (2 tablespoons), including seeds
1/4 cup fresh lime juice, or to taste
3/4 cup pomegranate seeds (from 1 pomegranate)
3/4 cup diced peeled mango 
1/2 cup chopped cilantro

Accompaniment: plantain chips
Garnish: lime wedges

Halve, pit, and peel avocados. Coarsely mash in a bowl. Stir in onion, chiles, 1/4 cup lime juice, and 1 1/4 teaspoons salt, then fold in pomegranate seeds, mango, and cilantro. Season with salt and additional lime juice.

Cooks’ note: 
Guacamole can be made 4 hours ahead and chilled, its surface covered with parchment paper or plastic wrap. Bring to room temperature and stir before serving.

Gourmet
November 2008
by Lillian Chou

Mexican Cabbage Slaw (Ensalada de Repollo)

1 clove garlic, minced
1 tablespoon ancho chili paste or adobo sauce (from a can of chipotles in adobo)
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
2 teaspoons brown sugar
1/4 cup oil
2 cups finely shredded green or red cabbage
1 bunch radishes (about 6), julienned
1/2 bunch fresh cilantro, roughly chopped
1/2 teaspoon salt

Whisk the garlic, chili paste, lime juice, sugar, and salt in a large bowl. Slowly whisk in oil to make a dressing. Add the cabbage, radish, and cilantro and toss.

The terminology Poundstone uses seems roughly analogous to that employed by other businesses in portfolio planning, the BCG Growth-Share Matrix.

From the New York article:

Puzzles, anchors, stars, and plowhorses; those are a few of the terms consultants now use when assembling a menu (which is as much an advertisement as anything else). “A star is a popular, high-profit item-in other words, an item for which customers are willing to pay a good deal more than it costs to make,” Poundstone explains. “A puzzle is high-profit but unpopular; a plowhorse is the opposite, popular yet unprofitable. Consultants try to turn puzzles into stars, nudge customers away from plowhorses, and convince everyone that the prices on the menu are more reasonable than they look.”

Instead of puzzles, anchors, stars, and plowhorses charted based on popularity and profit margin, the BCG matrix uses stars, cash cows, dogs, and question marks organized by market growth rate and relative market share. So, the tools are similar in their mechanism but analyze slightly different marketing situations.

While a cash cow sounds like an expensive filet mignon, I can see why Poundstone wouldn’t want to label any restaurant dish with “dog”. These are both simple but powerful tools that can be used in strategic planning exercises to illuminate options for improving future profitability.

Another indispensible but deliciously simple strategy tool? SWOT.

Via Tyler Cowen’s Ethnic Dining Guide via Marginal Revolution via New York Magazine.

Well, Sugapil is here to fill the void created by those stillborn dream drugs. With sugar pills.

It’s such a relief to see honesty in marketing.

From Sugapil.com:

Harness the power of your mind.

Sugapil©-like placebo has been shown to work effectively in hundreds of randomised control trials.

Most recently Sugapil©-like placebo was shown to help 60.1% of patients suffering from painful knee arthritis(1).

via Sugapil – harness the power of your mind.

Have you ever heard a pianissimo on the radio? Nope. How can a song build to a rewarding musical climax without crescendo?

As we come to the end of the decade, we turn to one of the more dramatic changes we’ve heard in music over those 10 years: It seems to have gotten louder.We’re talking about compression here, the dynamic compression that’s used a lot in popular music. There’s actually another kind of compression going on today — one that allows us to carry hundreds of songs in our iPods. More on that in a minute.

But first, host Robert Siegel talked to Bob Ludwig, a record mastering engineer. For more than 40 years, he’s been the final ear in the audio chain for albums running from Jimi Hendrix to Radiohead, from Tony Bennett to Kronos Quartet.

Bob pointed to a YouTube video titled The Loudness War. The video uses Paul McCartney’s 1989 song “Figure of Eight” as an example, comparing its original recording with what a modern engineer might do with it.

“It really no longer sounds like a snare drum with a very sharp attack,” Ludwig says. “It sounds more like somebody padding on a piece of leather or something like that,” Ludwig says. He’s referring to the practice of using compressors to squash the music, making the quiet parts louder and the loud parts a little quieter, so it jumps out of your radio or iPod.

Ludwig says the “Loudness War” came to a head last year with the release of Metallica’s album Death Magnetic.

“It came out simultaneously to the fans as [a version on] Guitar Hero and the final CD,” Ludwig says. “And the Guitar Hero doesn’t have all the digital domain compression that the CD had. So the fans were able to hear what it could have been before this compression.”

According to Ludwig, 10,000 or more fans signed an online petition to get the band to remix the record.

“That record is so loud that there is an outfit in Europe called ITU [International Telecommunication Union] that now has standardization measurements for long-term loudness,” he says. “And that Metallica record is one of the loudest records ever produced.”

via The Loudness Wars: Why Music Sounds Worse : NPR.

Take Christmas lights. As a teenager, I had no intrinsic motivation to hang the family Christmas lights. In my mind, hanging the lights had competition only with before-school snow-blowing as the most torturous task associated with miserable Midwest winters. Lights tangle. Ladders are a hassle and liability. And, inevitably, no amount of pre-hanging electrical testing will prevent one strand from inexplicably dying as soon as the decorating is complete.

But Ric Turner sees the winter differently. And he certainly has a better touch with electricity and lights. Take his recent project, turning his house and yard into an interactive Guitar Hero game sprinkled with over 21,000 lights.

Ric, you are engineering geek (guitar) hero of the week. I’m impressed by your imagineerativity. (Aren’t you impressed by my language innovation?)

By the way, I can safely compliment Ric only because I live too far from home to be conscripted into light-hanging service.

Read this explanation from Ric of how he created the lighting system.

And watch the video here:

And the presence of Andrew Bird at #5 on the list tosses stinging salt in my influenza wounds – I had tickets to see Bird when he came to DC recently, but in the end had to sell my tickets because I was sick with H1N1. Ouch.

I can’t fault the selections in terms of quality. I am thoroughly enjoying the music while typing this post. In the end, however, this playlist represents just one dimension of the multi-faceted musical world in which I choose to exist.

So, go ahead, download some of these albums. But find yourself some music from other countries and genres, too.

Regina Spektor (left), Grizzly Bear (top middle), Dirty Projectors (bottom middle), M. Ward (top right), Andrew Bird (bottom right)

Excerpt:

We could tell early on that 2009 was going to be an outstanding year for music. Bands such as Animal Collective, Andrew Bird, Bon Iver and Antony and the Johnsons all released new music, and that was just in January. By the time we posted our online ballot to vote for the year’s best music, we had a dizzying array of albums and artists from which to choose.

Thousands of votes poured in and, just as it is every year, the race was very close. In our mid-year ballot, Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion was the most popular album. But by the end of this year, Grizzly Bear had edged its way to the top, with Animal Collective, Phoenix, Neko Case and Andrew Bird rounding out the top five.

Story: All Songs Considered Listeners Pick The Best Music Of 2009

Apparently DARPA is funding research to develop a synthetic “black ice” that can be deployed to keep the enemy from following them, you know, across narrow bridges. Think of it as a very high-tech banana peel from Mario Kart.

From DARPA:

The unrestricted mobility of enemy forces in the crowded urban battlespace severely reduces the effectiveness of military and peacekeeping operations. This, coupled with difficulties in the identification of adversaries amongst the local populace, creates a dangerous environment that risks coalition and civilian casualties. In response to this challenge, DSO is developing the Polymer Ice Program, which aims to replicate the properties of “black ice” for use in a broad range of hot, arid environments as found in the Middle East. The polymer-based artificial ice material will achieve effective mobility control by the precise and reversible reduction of ground traction. A nontoxic reversal agent will also be developed for both man and machine to achieve instantaneous traction restoration on contact. Polymer Ice will ideally provide asymmetric mobility capabilities to our warfighters while adversary mobility is simultaneously severely restricted.

via Defense Sciences Office – Polymer Ice.

From the BBC:

In a document published on the agency’s website, officials point out that “to get from point A to point B, one must have sufficient traction with the ground”.

Darpa believes a polymer-based compound could replicate the properties of black ice – a thin, translucent slippery coating, typically found on roads in winter – to reduce traction.

The agency’s wish list for the “Mobility Control System” includes the polymer ice or raw materials to produce it very quickly, a spray-on reversal agent and a means to clean the ice up.

“Such a system will provide unprecedented situational control and sustained operational tempo,” said Darpa.

“It would degrade the ability of our adversaries to shoot and chase us.”

via US military looks to ‘black ice’.

Well, novel if you don’t count the fact that evolution invented this technique first.

A company called Carbozyme is finishing lab tests to mimic the method used by our bodies for transporting CO2 by applying it to the challenge of capturing and sequestering CO2 from coal power plants.

As cells pump CO2 produced during respiration into the blood, the enzyme carbonic anhydrase converts the gas into bicarbonate for easier transport to the lungs. There the same enzyme works in reverse, turning the molecules back into the CO2 gas you exhale. This action could play the critical role of selectively capturing CO2 from mixed gas emissions for later sequestration.

The company Carbozyme is finishing up lab tests of a system that consists of millions of microscale, porous tubes coated with a synthetic version of the enzyme. As a mixture of smokestack gases passes through the tubes, the enzyme pulls CO₂ from the mix and turns it into bicarbonate and back, isolating CO₂ so it could be pumped underground and stored in layers of basalt rock. Based on lab tests and models, the system should use about a third less energy than other methods while avoiding the hazardous chemicals typically used to grab CO₂.

via Human Blood May Hold the Secret to Clean Coal | Popular Science.

So cool. Don’t give up on this challenge just yet.

This sounds like a significant technical challenge. If one desires to take advantage of aerodynamic gains, as the article suggests, the vehicles will need to be driving with very little space between (think NASCAR). Safely executing automated bumper-hugging driving will require nearly instantaneous ability for the auto to perform an emergency breaking procedure, in the case of the vehicle directly in front doing the same.

Better hope you’re not about to take a sip of hot coffee when your car decides to do that.

Excerpt:

Researchers in the European Union are using telematics to create “road trains” that join the benefits of carpooling with the freedom of driving alone.

The latest concept, part of the EU’s Safe Road Trains for the Environment initiative, groups cars with similar destinations into road trains over long stretches of highway. The lead vehicle will be driven by an experienced motorist — it may even be a bus that regularly travels the route — while the functions of each following vehicle will be automatically controlled and tethered to the actions of the lead car so that individual drivers can hammer out e-mails or eat breakfast. Despite the project’s name, cars can exit at any time.

While the project, which goes by the acronym SARTRE, sounds futuristic, all it requires are navigation systems that communicate with the lead vehicle and control acceleration and steering. The project’s lead agencies estimate that vehicles will begin testing in 2011 and say a full-scale rollout is likely within a decade.

With Road Trains, Highways Become Public Transportation | Autopia | Wired.com.

For example, take a simple-sounding question like, “How much energy is required to produce a ton of iron?”

This is a relatively straightforward analysis if the scope of energy usage includes only the iron plant. You count the fuel and electricity going in; you count the iron coming out. Divide the former by the latter and badda-bing. Done.

But what about the energy consumed to mine the iron ore out of the ground? And to transport the ore to the iron plant? And to transport the iron from the plant to its destination? And to mine the coal out of the ground? And to convert the coal to coke? And to manufacture the bulldozers and trucks that mine the coal and ore? And to manufacture the steel that goes into the equipment? Now we’re back to iron, again. We’re not close to done and we’ve already tied ourselves in a knot.

In practical terms, it’s impossible to include all the factors in an energy analysis like this. At some point, the analyst has to draw an arbitrary line and say, “Good enough.” Hopefully, this line is drawn in a place where the ignored factors constitute an insignificant percentage of the total result.

A recent report from the National Research Council tries to expand the scope of the analysis of energy costs. It takes into consideration the health impacts of energy use, which are rarely specified in quantitative terms.

By design, this report does not include the costs of energy use in terms of climate change, but that is a beast of a study on its own. Analyzing climate change costs requires forecasting the future, while this report is based on historical data.

The report also ignores the national security costs of energy use. I understand why this is hard to measure, but it should definitely not be ignored. What is the cost of wars over control of the terrorist-riddled oil-producing nations that we are dependent upon for importing petroleum, both in dollar terms and in lives lost?

Food price increases are not considered, either. What is the cost, particularly to the poorest in the world, of using food crops to produce ethanol? An economist could, if necessary, produce a figure tying these figures together. “Malnutrition deaths per gallon”, perhaps.

Nonetheless, this is a valuable report that will hopefully illuminate for many the hidden costs of our energy use. Understanding these costs allows us to make better-informed decisions, considering all the benefits and pitfalls before creating unforeseen negative side effects.

Don’t forget the importance of scope. It’s always a bigger picture than you can imagine.

Excerpt:

“Hidden Costs of Energy: Unpriced Consequences of Energy Production and Use,” a new report from the National Research Council, a branch of the National Academies, tries to put a dollar figure on what economists call externalities.

The study, however, comes with a major caveat: it did not look at the impact of energy on climate change and ecosystems, or at rising food prices and the risks to national security.

Still, the report, which was requested by Congress in 2005, estimated that the hidden cost of energy on human health was $120 billion in 2005, the last year for which full data was available.

Unsurprisingly, the biggest contributors to these extra costs were coal-fired power plants, which generate half of the nation’s power but which also accounted for $62 billion in hidden damages associated with the emissions of pollutants like sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, and particulate matter like soot or fine dust.

The report also found that in 2005 the vehicle sector produced $56 billion in health and other non-climate-change damages, with $36 billion from light-duty vehicles and $20 billion from heavy-duty vehicles.

via Report Shows Hidden Costs of Energy – Green Inc. Blog – NYTimes.com.

But sadly, sickeningly, this story is real. We can’t ignore the gruesome and depressing reality of situations like this one, where people’s ignorance leads to unjust suffering by innocent children. Until the world is aware of what’s happening, these kids won’t be saved.

So much is wrong; where do we begin? It’s not a simple scientific misunderstanding, an old wives’ tale like eating too soon before swimming, that leads to torture and execution of humans. This is a fundamentally disrupted society, one based upon hideous dogma and a lack of real education.

Teaching people that witches, in fact, don’t exist will not repair the splintered holes in this society. The damage is so tremendous, the gap between reality and an ideal so large, I don’t know what tools will stand to do the repairs.

Excerpt:

EKET, Nigeria (AP) — The nine-year-old boy lay on a bloodstained hospital sheet crawling with ants, staring blindly at the wall.

His family pastor had accused him of being a witch, and his father then tried to force acid down his throat as an exorcism. It spilled as he struggled, burning away his face and eyes. The emaciated boy barely had strength left to whisper the name of the church that had denounced him — Mount Zion Lighthouse.

A month later, he died.

Nwanaokwo Edet was one of an increasing number of children in Africa accused of witchcraft by pastors and then tortured or killed, often by family members. Pastors were involved in half of 200 cases of “witch children” reviewed by the AP, and 13 churches were named in the case files.

Some of the churches involved are renegade local branches of international franchises. Their parishioners take literally the Biblical exhortation, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”

via Churches involved in torture, murder of thousands of African children denounced as witches — latimes.com.

In essence, cheaper CCS will produce a greater volume of carbon credits, thereby dropping the price of the credits supply-and-demand-style.

Hopefully this reevaluation of the costs of capping carbon emissions will give a helping hand to cap and trade regulations that have yet to reach the Senate floor.

Excerpt:

STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS — There’s good news for supporters of the Waxman-Markey climate bill from Professor Stefan Reichelstein. Although passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in June 2009, the bill is expected to spur a contentious debate in the Senate starting this fall. Opponents argue that the bill’s proposed “cap-and-trade” system will take a high financial toll on energy consumers and companies alike, and devastate the economy at a time the country can least afford it.

Reichelstein and doctoral student Ozge Islegen believe they have evidence to the contrary. Reichelstein and Islegen have examined the financial impact of regulating coal-fired power plants that produce carbon dioxide emissions under a cap-and-trade system and found the financial burden to be much less than previously projected.

via Reducing CO2 Emissions Could Be Significantly Less Costly Than Predicted.

Excerpt:

If all this talk of moon bombing has you curious about space exploration, you’re in luck: National Geographic recently produced this astonishingly elegant map of every space exploration in the last 50 years. Every. Single. One. (If you’re annoyed by that zoomable map, you can view a large version here or here.)

The trick lies in the graphing system itself: What looks like arbitrary squiggles from afar is actually a record of the path traced by various missions. In turn, these become a handy chart of the places we’ve visited most frequently–our moon leads at 73 missions, followed by Venus at 43 and Mars at 40.

via 50 Years, 200 Missions: Flybys, Gravity Assists, Asteroid Touchdowns Mapped Out | Design & Innovation | Fast Company.

How about designing a power system that needs to survive temperatures ten times hotter than the center of the sun?

This is the intimidating challenge facing the scientists and engineers who are blazing a trail in nuclear fusion research. The technical scope and scale of this challenge is as large as the clean energy reward should they ever succeed in their mission.

If you are attracted to high risk and high reward technology, this might be the place to be.

Excerpt:

At a fusion power plant, the fuel needs to be burned on human, not cosmological, timescales. The heavier isotopes deuterium and tritium are a little easier to burn than ordinary hydrogen, but even so, to get a good blaze going inside ITER the temperature will have to be racked up to a hellish 150 million kelvin. That brings a mountain of engineering problems. Not least is how to contain a plasma of electrons and atomic nuclei that is 10 times as hot as the sun’s core.

Even the most hardy of construction materials cannot withstand temperatures of more than a few thousand kelvin. So the solution is to weave a cage for the plasma from magnetic fields.

via Building a second sun: Take $10 billion, add coconuts – tech – 12 October 2009 – New Scientist.

But the statistics from ISU still show a disturbing dark side. Of 5,086 undergraduates, only 755 are female (15%). I can tell you from my experience as a male engineering student, it would be much easier to get excited about going to thermodynamics class if more than only 1 out of 5 in the class were female…

With 5,086 undergraduates majoring in engineering this fall, the Iowa State University College of Engineering has achieved a 25-year high in enrollment. The increase is 410 more students than last fall.

The college, which is routinely among the top 10 in the nation for undergraduate enrollment, has averaged more than 4,600 students per year since 1998. Enrollment has exceeded 5,000 students just three other years—1982–1984.

The biggest increases for 2009 are for resident freshmen (45) and resident transfers (39) followed by foreign transfers (36) and nonresident freshmen (29). The enrollment figures also show positive trends in gender and ethnic diversity. The number of females is 755, up from 681 in 2008. The number of underrepresented students is up 79 from last year and represents 8.6% of the engineering student body.

via ISU College of Engineering News – Engineering enrollment exceeds 5,000.

Climate bankruptcy would not be so benign. How much is saving the lives of billions of people worth?

Another study has been released which estimates the cost of long-term climate change mitigation is not that high, with figures in this case of only 1 to 3 percent of GDP.

“The net cost to U.S. households and the economy looks to be pretty small,” said Frank Ackerman, a professor at Tufts University and a senior economist with the Stockholm Environmental Institute, in a recent interview with Green Inc.

He suggested that the 1 percent to 3 percent estimate was akin to one year of foregone economic growth in the United States.

The article:

A group of eight leading climate economists has a message for United States senators now considering a bill to cap emissions: don’t think of long-term mitigation costs as a massive expenditure, but rather a form of reasonably-priced “planetary climate insurance.”

via The Economics of Climate Stabilization – Green Inc. Blog – NYTimes.com.

Wright Brand bacon and its sexy new packaging

Wright and Interbrand have done their part in advancing bacon branding from an art into a science, as they finished a recent multi-stage, two-year bacon marketing project. You have to read some of the impressive marketing-speak stuffed in this press release:

… reposition Wright Brand so it could … become more emotionally relevant to consumers.

Emotionally relevant bacon? I guess that’s not implausible. I do occasionally turn to bacon for comfort when I’ve had a bad day.

… recommended brand position of “More of what you love about bacon”

Bacon is what I love about bacon. Are you selling free bacon?

… the strategic foundation for the updated brand mark and packaging system …

A plastic bag is now referred to as a “packaging system”?

… rooted in understanding and delighting the target market of bacon enthusiasts who love bacon …

I now have another item to add to my list of hobbies on my Facebook profile: “bacon enthusiast.”

via Package Design eSolutions #61, May 29, 2009.

How about we slip some science education reform into the health care reform bill before passing that baby through Congress?

From MediaMatters:

The Truth Is Out There

As health insurance reform makes its way through congress, it’s easy to observe the partisan fighting in Washington and believe the country is deeply divided over a “public option.”

Luckily, that is not the case. Americans love choices. They want the opportunity to choose to purchase a public health insurance plan.

A recent New York Times/CBS News poll found that 65% favored a public option, with only 26% opposed to it.

To put that number in perspective: a 2007 Associated Press/Ipsos poll found that 34% of Americans believe in UFOs.

It speaks volumes about the status of the health care debate among the public when it is more mainstream to believe aliens are flying around in spaceships than to oppose the public option.

The people of this country have spoken. It’s time Washington listened.

via More Americans Believe In UFOs Than Oppose A Public Option | Media Matters Action Network.

The answer is 145 miles. In other words, you’re never more than 2 1/2 hours from a Big Mac.

Excerpt:

“For maximum McSparseness, we look westward, towards the deepest, darkest holes in our map. There, in a patch of rolling grassland, loosely hemmed in by Bismarck, Dickinson, Pierre, and the greater Rapid City-Spearfish-Sturgis metropolitan area, we find our answer. Between the tiny Dakotan hamlets of Meadow and Glad Valley lies the McFarthest Spot: 107 miles distant from the nearest McDonald’s, as the crow flies, and 145 miles by car!”

via Infographic of the Day: McDonald’s Heat Wave | Designage | Fast Company.

Congratulations to all the area breweries who took home awards! Flying Dog Brewery came in with 4 medals (3 golds!) and Dogfish Head with 3 medals.

I also have to throw some props out to Pizza Port/Lost Abbey Brewing back in San Diego. They treated me well back there, both with their amazing brews and their delicious pizza. At GABF, they wrangled up 11 awards alone! Nice work.

Delaware breweries

Maryland breweries

Virginia breweries

Pizza Port/Lost Abbey Brewing Co. (San Diego, CA)

via 2009 GABF Winners.

Excerpt:

AFTERMATH

Once the true brews were revealed, the tasters were – as Schultz predicted – surprised and delighted by Starbucks VIA, which was just as good (if not better) than some upscale coffee drinks. Nobody made immediate plans to switch their morning routine, since the idea of instant coffee remained “kind of gross.”

But one taster saw potential: “This is dangerous news for us café junkies,” she joked. “It’s the coffee equivalent of carrying around a needle.”

via Starbucks Instant Coffee: Our Be-All, End-All Taste Test | Popwise | Fast Company.

(And watch for the spelling of words such as “public.”)

The Funniest Protest Signs Of 2009

Then, read this.

Thank you, someecards. Thank you very much.

Why is the Chamber so opposed to our nation taking action to prevent further climate change? According to at least 3 major reports, a green economy will create a net number of new jobs, anywhere from 3 to 30 million, depending on your source.

All these new green businesses are just the kind of company that should find friends in a chamber of commerce. But something tells me the clean tech industry and the Chamber don’t see eye to eye today.

Excerpt:

A new report released today says that if we shift our economy — to a greener, low-carbon economy — we will have more jobs, not fewer.

Earlier this week, Tony Blair (former prime minister of the UK) and the Climate Group reported that if we worked to avoid climate change we’d create 10 million new jobs by 2020 — worldwide. Another recent study by Greenpeace and the European Renewable Energy Council says that such a shift could increase employment in the EU by 2.7 million jobs by 2030.

One more report, released today by the Global Climate Network (an alliance of nine influential think tanks) comes to similar conclusions.

via Green Economy = More Jobs : CleanTechnica.

I respect the right of people to pay for porcupining (acupuncture) or extra-expensive bottled water (homeopathy) out of their own pockets, but I certainly don’t want to pay for this useless treatments out of my taxes.

Hmmm… Unless I can include “microbrew therapy” as an alternative medicine. Now you’re speaking my medical language.

Think Tank Objects to Taxpayer Funding for Therapeutic Touch, other Alternative Medicine Therapies

Health-care reform should prohibit the use of taxpayer dollars to cover non-evidence-based medicine, says CFI report

(Washington, D.C.) –The Center for Inquiry’s Office of Public Policy (OPP), a group that lobbies for sound science in government policy, today released a report titled A Fracture in our Health Care: Paying for Non-Evidence Based Medicine. The report is highly critical of an effort underway to amend current health care reform legislation with provisions allowing taxpayer dollars to support unsubstantiated “alternative” medical treatments.

Americans are increasingly turning to various forms of alternative medicine. The Washington Post has reported that 38% of adults in the United States have turned to acupuncturists, holistic chiropractors, herbal and homeopathic healers, and various other forms of non-standard treatments. Now senators Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), and Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland), along with support from the ranking member on the Senate health committee Senator Mike Enzi (R-Wyoming), are sponsoring an amendment to the health care reform bill which would support funding for alternative medicine, and also require all insurance companies to cover state-licensed alternative medicine providers, under the guise of prohibiting “discrimination” against such providers.

“Our report seeks to sound some alarm bells: we are coming dangerously close to having lawmakers legitimize quackery by putting the government stamp of approval on these unproven treatments,” said Ronald A. Lindsay, President and CEO of the Center for Inquiry. “We call upon the legislative branch to follow President Obama’s lead and insist that public policy be informed by sound scientific evidence.”

The CFI report focuses specifically on the lack of evidence for therapeutic touch (TT), an example of the kind of non-evidence-based medicine that would be covered under the Harkin amendment. During therapeutic touch, practitioners purport to massage the patient’s “biomagnetic field” with their hands. The report exposes this as nonsense, revealing that the purported magnetic field is far too weak to affect any biochemical processes, and is billions of times less energetic than the energy our eye receives when viewing even the brightest star in the night sky. The report points out that a study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found that  “Twenty-one experienced TT practitioners were unable to detect the investigators ‘energy field’. Their failure to substantiate TT’s most fundamental claim is unrefuted evidence that the claims of TT are groundless and that further professional use is unjustified.”

“CFI strongly opposes the wasting of taxpayer dollars on this and other non-evidence based medicine,” said Dr. Lindsay.

Dr. Wallace Sampson, a well-known critic of alternative medicine and a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, an affiliate of CFI, said “Therapeutic Touch, an example of ‘Distant Healing,’ is a scientific absurdity. This is bold foolishness, elected representatives legislating into policy their own personal delusions. This is abuse of public office; and reason enough for recall or being voted out of office.”

The Center for Inquiry’s specific policy recommendations contained in the report are as follows:

• Government should spend no taxpayer dollars in support of any alleged medical treatments or healing protocols, such as Therapeutic Touch, that have no grounding in experiment or in our understanding of basic scientific fact.
• Any health care reform bill Congress passes should prohibit the use of taxpayer dollars to cover non-evidence-based medicine.
• Congress should greatly reduce or eliminate funding for the NIH National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), as a decade of study has shown that most alternative cures work no better than placebos.

“The United States can ill afford to continue wasting precious resources on unproven – and often disproven – medical techniques. (In the process of) reining in the ballooning cost of medical care, every dollar of health care funding is needed to provide tested, proven medical treatment to those who require it.  It is inexcusable to squander scarce resources by funding unsubstantiated, non-evidence-based medical techniques that have no basis in theory or experiment,” states the report.

A Fracture in our Health Care: Paying for Non-Evidence Based Medicine was authored by Eugenie V. Mielczarek, emeritus professor of physics at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA., with assistance from Derek C. Araujo, general counsel of the Center for Inquiry; Adam Magazine, a volunteer attorney for CFI in New York City; and Lori Sommerfelt, a sociology major at American University in Washington, DC.

A downloadable PDF copy of the full report is available online at www.centerforinquiry.net/touch.

I have included below the text from a PDF document attached to an online course, BCH 5045 – Graduate Survey of Biochemistry, at the University of Florida. I assume it was written by the course’s instructor, Dr. Charles Guy.

http://hort.ifas.ufl.edu/teach/guyweb/bch5045/Vampires%20and%20Biochemistry.pdf

Vampires and Biochemistry

Perhaps you are a fan of Twilight the movie or the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer, or True Blood the television drama series created and produced by Alan Ball, based on The Southern Vampire Mysteries series of novels by Charlaine Harris. Vampires with their frightening appearance and unusual powers and weaknesses can cause one to pause and question how this is possible. Can this mythicalogical being brought to life in Dracula, the 1897 novel by Irish author Bram Stoker, featuring as its primary antagonist the vampire Count Dracula, have any basis in reality? Is there any connection to what we know about biological systems that could explain vampirism? I doubt that you would be surprised if I said yes, since this is a biochemistry course website.

Although I am no expert on the vampire mythology or the speculative scientific explanations, there are a few possibilities that others have proposed. Perhaps the most robust explanation is that the vampirism is based on the viral disease rabies (Gomez, 1982; 1992; 1998). The vampire folklore originated in Central Europe in the latter half of the 18th century where injuries caused by rabid dogs and wolves was common (Theodorides 1986). At this time, Eastern Europe was rife with claims of vampire sightings. The 3-dimensional structure of the rabies virus nucleoprotein-RNA complex is shown to the right, and what an incredibly amazing structure it has.

Perhaps the most defining characteristic of a vampire is the biting of its human victim. This affirms the fact that a vampire is a living being, and as such he or she becomes inclined to bite those around them and not only to feed on a victim’s blood, but potentially spread the disease that has already infected them (Theodorides 1998). This is strikingly similar to what can occur when rabies has been transmitted to a person. Disease symptoms include cerebral dysfunction, anxiety, insomnia, confusion, agitation, paranoia and a terror progressing to delirium. Large quantities of saliva and tears are produced, and difficulty swallowing stemming from throat and jaw paralysis causes panic when the person cannot drink or quench his or her thirst. Who hasn’t heard of rabid animals indiscriminately attacking and biting someone?

Dr. David H. Dolphin in a lecture at an AAAS meeting is attributed to have proposed an alternative explanation for the vampire myth that werewolves and vampires may have been based on people suffering from a rare class of genetic diseases known as porphyrias. He suggested that characteristics commonly associated with vampirism such as protruding teeth, avoidance of sunlight, drinking blood, and disfigurement could have been the symptoms of people with a porphyria. Porphyrias are a group of rare genetic diseases that primarily manifest their effects in blood as a result of a defect in the production and synthesis of the heme prosthetic group in hemoglobin (Cox 1995). Symptoms of the disorder porphyria cutanea tarda include disfigurement by light-induced blisters that can cause scarring and skin discoloration. In severe cases, excessive hair growth on the face and hands, gum degeneration, and neurological disorders can occur. Those suffering from a porphyria must avoid the sun and some compounds that can exacerbate the symptoms, including certain metabolites that accumulate in, you guessed it, garlic. Repeated blood transfusions can be required to treat the disease.

Porphyria cutanea tarda results from a dominant mutation in the gene encoding the enzyme urophopyrinogen decarboxylase (Taylor 1998). This enzyme catalyzes the fifth step in the porphyrin biosynthetic pathway that produces precursors for the synthesis of heme-containing molecules. Mutant skin cells accumulate uroporphyrinogen, the enzyme’s immediate precursor. Uroporphyrinogen when illuminated by light will become highly reactive and begin transferring electrons to molecular oxygen. The resulting production and accumulation of reactive oxygen species will cause extensive damage to skin cells and can kill them.

Hampl and Hampl (1997) have suggested that a deficiency of niacin and tryptophan could produce symptoms compatible with being the basis for the vampire myth. Pellagra is a vitamin deficiency disease characterized by lack of niacin (vitamin B3) caused by decreased intake of niacin, tryptophan, or possibly leucine. The protein amino acid tryptophan is a precursor of niacin biosynthesis and niacin is a building block of the nicotinamide coenzymes essential for a host of biochemical processes. People suffering from pellagra are hypersensitive to sunlight. The skin of a pellargrin exposed to sunlight becomes red, scaly and marked by hyperkeratosis. Inflammation and edema can occur and lead to depigmented, shiny skin and/or brown scaly areas. Niacin deficiency will also cause brain degeneration and dementia with symptoms that include insomnia, anxiety, unjustified aggression, and depression. Pica can accompany pellagra. Pica is a craving for substances not usually regarded as food such as ice, clay or other crunchy substances. This odd symptom can be a cause of iron deficiency, or a symptom of an iron deficiency in the person who has become anemic. A pellagrin who happens to become extremely anemic because of gastrointestinal bleeding could give the impression of being ‘the living dead’ (Hampl and Hampl 1997).

So there you have it. There could be a connection between the folklore of vampirism, and clinical symptoms of known diseases, or just as likely perhaps not. We will never know for sure, but this little story briefly illustrates how biochemistry can relate to myths and classical literature and suggest interesting possibilities.

Albertini A.A., Wernimont A.K., Muziol T., Ravelli R.B., Clapier C.R., Schoehn G., Weissenhorn W., Ruigrok R.W. (2006) Crystal structure of the rabies virus nucleoprotein-RNA complex. Science 313, 360-363.

COX A.M. 1995. Porphyria and vampirism: another myth in the making. Postgrad. Med. J. 71: 643–644.

Gomez-Alonso J. 1982.Rabia y vampirismo: hiptjtesis sobre una interpretacion medica del vampirismo. Jano (Barcelona) 514: 30-33.

Gomez-Alonso J. Rabia y Vampirismo en la Europa de los Siglos XVIII y XIX. Tesis Doctoral. Madrid: Facultad de Medicina

Gomez-Alonso, J. 1998. Rabies A possible explanation for the vampire legend. Neurology 51: 856-859

Hampl J.S. and Hampl W.S. 1997. Pellagra and the origin of a myth: evidence from European literature and folklore. J. Royal Soc. Med. 90: 636-639.

Taylor, C.B. 1998. Vampire Plants? Plant Cell. 10: 1071-1073.

Theodorides J. 1986. Histoire de la Rage, Cave Canem, Paris: Masson, 78-9

Theodorides J. 1998. Origin of the myth of vampirism. J. Royal Soc. Med. 91: 114.

I particularly stunned by the cost difference for MRIs in the US versus Japan: greater than an order of magnitude, which is to say, shockingly different.

Excerpts:

Overseas, strict cost controls actually drive innovation. In the United States, an MRI scan of the neck region costs about $1,500. In Japan, the identical scan costs $98. Under the pressure of cost controls, Japanese researchers found ways to perform the same diagnostic technique for one-fifteenth the American price. (And Japanese labs still make a profit.)

and

U.S. health insurance companies have the highest administrative costs in the world; they spend roughly 20 cents of every dollar for nonmedical costs, such as paperwork, reviewing claims and marketing. France’s health insurance industry, in contrast, covers everybody and spends about 4 percent on administration. Canada’s universal insurance system, run by government bureaucrats, spends 6 percent on administration. In Taiwan, a leaner version of the Canadian model has administrative costs of 1.5 percent; one year, this figure ballooned to 2 percent, and the opposition parties savaged the government for wasting money.

and

Which, in turn, punctures the most persistent myth of all: that America has “the finest health care” in the world. We don’t. In terms of results, almost all advanced countries have better national health statistics than the United States does. In terms of finance, we force 700,000 Americans into bankruptcy each year because of medical bills. In France, the number of medical bankruptcies is zero. Britain: zero. Japan: zero. Germany: zero.

via By T.R. Reid — Five Myths About Health Care in the Rest of the World.

In fact, there is some concern that the deluge of antibacterial products sold today may have more negative side-effects than positive. For one, the products may lead to the evolution of bacteria resistant to antibacterial formulations. The use of such products may also increase the frequency of allergies in children because the kids are not exposed adequately to naturally occurring bacteria.

Excerpt:

There are some things it is better just not to think about. Like the 10,000 bacteria you inhale with each breath in the average office building. Or the 10 million bacteria in each glass of tap water. Microbiologists have now added something else to the list of things too gross to contemplate: the deluge of bacteria that hit your face and flow deep into your lungs in the morning shower.

via Bathing, but Not Alone – NYTimes.com.

Excerpt:

I can’t believe I am standing today in a Christian church defending the proposition that we should lessen the suffering of those who cannot afford health care in an economic system that often treats the poor as prey for the rich. I cannot believe there are Christians around this nation who are shouting that message down and waving guns in the air because they don’t want to hear it. But I learned along time ago that churches are strange places; charity is fine, but speaking of justice is heresy in many churches. The late Brazilian bishop Dom Hélder Câmara said it well: “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a Communist.” Too often today in the United States, if you talk about helping the poor, they call you Christian, but if you actually try to do something to help the poor, they call you a socialist.

via Why Is Universal Health Care ‘Un-American’? | CommonDreams.org.

Excerpt:

The clear message Chu took home from China was that its leaders are dead serious about climate change and clean energy. They won’t accept an emissions cap before we do — understandably, since our per capita emissions are still four times higher — but they’re preparing for a carbon-constrained economy. They already have cars that are more fuel-efficient than ours, and they’re developing more-advanced transmission lines. They’re still building a new coal-fired plant almost every week, but two years ago, they were building two of them every week. They’re making a huge push into wind and solar and should be the world’s largest producer of renewables by 2010. “Every Chinese leader I met was absolutely determined to do something about their carbon emissions,” Chu said. “Some U.S. policymakers still don’t think this is a problem.” (Read “One Voice in a Billion: Changing the Climate in China.”)

In fact, GOP leaders have said that global warming is a hoax, that fears about carbon are “almost comical,” that the earth is actually cooling. When I asked Chu about the earth-is-cooling argument, he rolled his eyes and whipped out a chart showing that the 10 hottest years on record have all been in the past 12 years — and that 1998 was the hottest. He mocked the skeptics who focus on that post-1998 blip while ignoring a century-long trend of rising temperatures: “See? It’s gone down! The earth must be cooling!” But then he got serious, almost plaintive: “You know, it’s totally irresponsible. You’re not supposed to make up the facts.”

Welcome to Washington, where a Nobel Prize winner’s opinion is just another opinion, where facts are malleable and sometimes irrelevant. It’s tough to be Mr. Outside in a town where policy happens on the inside. Congress is blocking Chu’s plan to create eight “Bell lablets” to investigate his game changers, along with his efforts to scuttle hydrogen-car research he considers futile. He’s trying to make DOE’s bureaucracy more nimble, but it still pushed less than 1% of its stimulus funds out the door in five months. And while Chu ends speeches with Martin Luther King Jr.’s quote about “the fierce urgency of now” — one of Obama’s favorites — the clean-energy bill is on hold until health care is done. There’s still a broad perception in Washington that dealing with climate change will require sacrifices that Americans won’t tolerate.

The Chinese don’t seem to worry about that. At one point, Chu acknowledged that democracy makes change a lot tougher, although he hastened to add that he’s a big fan of democracy. “We just have to do a better job communicating the facts so the electorate can educate themselves,” he said. Soon he sounded like he was talking to himself again: “Let’s be positive. The facts really do matter to the American people.”

via Steven Chu, A Political Scientist — Printout — TIME.

This should be good news for those bemoaning the decline of the industrial manufacturing segment of the American economy. We can replace the forging of automobiles with the forging of controversy by the media.

If the media can whip up a storm this quickly 0ver a pair of shorts, then one finds some insight into how much of this health care debate, and the oft-covered clashing between progressives and conservatives, might be just a illusory flame fanned by news outlets.

After all, how much of health reform coverage is about issues and how much is about “death panel” sound bites? Yes, an ill-minded politician must first utter those drivel words, but after they leave his or her mouth, they are born into a life of their own via the resuscitative breath of the news. I’d rather the phrase were never spoken at all, but avoiding the over-exposure of such distracting and worthless issues would be a worthy consolation.

Next story: Justice Sotomayor photographed on vacation not wearing her judge’s robe!

(See poignant story below from Newsweek about the “news” of Michelle’s shorts.)

Who, Exactly, Is Outraged At Michelle Obama’s Shorts?

Kate Dailey

(Dana Felthauser/AP)

Michelle Obama wore shorts to visit the Grand Canyon. Have you heard? Everyone is up in arms—if by “everyone” you mean no one, or rather a large, shadow-y group of no ones.

According to the Today show, “some” are calling her fashion choice inappropriate—but the article quotes only those who support the look or, in the case of Washington Post fashion writer Robin Gihven, those who are “ambivalent” about bare legs for an August hiking trip in Arizona.

The Examiner declares Obama beautiful, then bemoans the fact that “some members of the media and the public” are upset. Who are those members of the media and the public? We don’t know—the article then goes on to endorse Obama and rebuke the nameless attackers. Even in the comments, readers overwhelmingly approved of Obama’s choices, save for the few spare trolls that will always criticize a photographed celeb (the shorts are unflattering, etc). My experience from reading the NEWSWEEK comments shows that if there’s something negative to be said about the administration, an anonymous reader will usually say it, often in several consecutive posts. If the comments are mostly positive, then there probably isn’t much of a controversy.

Continue reading at:

The Human Condition : Who, Exactly, Is Outraged At Michelle Obama’s Shorts?.

From the New York Times:

The Swiss Menace

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: August 16, 2009

It was the blooper heard round the world. In an editorial denouncing Democratic health reform plans, Investor’s Business Daily tried to frighten its readers by declaring that in Britain, where the government runs health care, the handicapped physicist Stephen Hawking “wouldn’t have a chance,” because the National Health Service would consider his life “essentially worthless.”

Professor Hawking, who was born in Britain, has lived there all his life, and has been well cared for by the National Health Service, was not amused.

Besides being vile and stupid, however, the editorial was beside the point. Investor’s Business Daily would like you to believe that Obamacare would turn America into Britain — or, rather, a dystopian fantasy version of Britain. The screamers on talk radio and Fox News would have you believe that the plan is to turn America into the Soviet Union. But the truth is that the plans on the table would, roughly speaking, turn America into Switzerland — which may be occupied by lederhosen-wearing holey-cheese eaters, but wasn’t a socialist hellhole the last time I looked.

… continue reading here: Op-Ed Columnist – The Swiss Menace – NYTimes.com.

It is important to also look at the concept of healthcare “rationing” from a global perspective.

Healthcare Rationing: What Price Is A Life?

Was Dick Cheney’s quadruple bypass surgery worth the money?

In the United States healthcare reform is policy wonk talk for changing up the way Americans ration health. Conservatives criticize change in the healthcare status quo as “rationing”. Liberals blithely promise reform will not include “rationing”. Both are fibbing.

Rationing healthcare is what health systems do. No scheme, no government, no insurer, no individual (save perhaps the über-rich) has unlimited money to buy all the healthcare everyone wants.

In America, we ration healthcare by place of employment. If you have a steady job with a large employer, you probably have decent health insurance. If you are self-employed, maybe not.

Vice President Dick Cheney suffered four heart attacks beginning at age 37. Thanks to American socialized medicine for elected officials, Cheney has been cared for at the very best taxpayer-subsidized hospitals. His is a life worth saving.

If Cheney were a poor, young, Latina private housekeeper, most likely he would not have had health insurance when he needed it. And, it is damn certain he would not have gotten any preventive checkups in, no doubt, a “secure, undisclosed location”.

If Mr. Cheney were born in the developing world, he might well have died in infancy. Dr. Donald R. Hopkins, Vice President, The Carter Center, writes, “Children born in most advanced industrialized countries…experience infant mortality rates of 10 per 1,000 live births…and can expect to live an average of more than 70 years. Children born in developing countries…face infant mortality rates of 150 or higher (with) a life expectancy of 50 years or less.”

The cure for measles, a highly contagious disease, has been in use for over 30 years. As a result, measles has been wiped out in the developing world. In poorer countries, measles still infects 30 million people annually, mostly kids.

Would you deny the Vice President, a former heavy smoker, his quadruple bypass surgery (estimated cost: $45,000.00) to pay for inoculating 180,000 children against measles (estimated cost: 25 cents per child)? That is reality of global healthcare rationing.

900,000 poor children are annually sentenced to death because measles inoculations are unavailable (rationed?). Would you spend a quarter to save a child’s life?

via Healthcare Rationing: What Price Is A Life? — Social Edge.

Plastic reshaping wine trade — latimes.com.

1 c sugar
3 1/2 T corn starch
2 T white corn syrup
1 c water
1 pinch salt
3 T peach Jello (1/2 package)
Peaches (peeled, sliced, enough to fill the crust)

Add all ingredients except Jello mix and peaches to a saucepan and boil until clear. Remove from heat and add Jello. Stir. Let filling cool a bit at room temperature.

Pour over peaches in pie crust. Cool pie in refrigerator to sit. Top with whipped cream.

Easy no-rolling-pin crust:

1 1/2 flour
2 T powdered sugar (or granulated in a pinch)
1/2 t salt
1/2 c oil
2 T milk

Mix all ingredients and press into pie pan. Bake at 325 for 30 minutes.

Obama at Newton, Iowa factory

Obama used the town of Newton, Iowa and the Trinity Structural Towers factory there as an example of the potential for clean energy businesses to replace jobs lost in mature manufacturing industries. The Maytag appliance factory in Newton — now inhabited by Trinity with 90 employees — once employed 4,000 people before closing entirely as manufacturing shifted overseas.

This is only one example, but it does illustrate the gap between America’s past manufacturing heyday and the size of today’s clean energy industry, even considering the potential growth of the latter. We certainly need these new jobs in order to replace those recently lost, particularly in the auto industry. But how do we encourage the manufacturing of these new clean energy innovations to occur in the US rather than overseas? Will clean energy companies make their global operations decisions any differently than hundreds of other industries already have, shifting production to low-cost countries like China?

I hope so. This is not only an employment issue but a national security issue. We need control of local clean energy resources to replace our dependence on petroleum from the Middle East.

I am excited to hear that a cap-and-trade program might finally emerge in the US. As I’ve written before, until carbon emissions impose a cost on emitters commensurate with the impact of the emissions on the climate, none of our ambitious goals to cut energy consumption and increase renewable energy usage will be feasible.

Obama’s speech barely addressed the piece of the clean energy economy that will have the greatest impact on the state of Iowa — biofuels. Iowa already produces large amounts of corn-based ethanol, but most agree that ethanol derived from food crops is not a long-term solution. Moving forward, advanced liquid biofuels will be essential to reduce petroleum consumption, as many applications, particularly diesel engines, cannot typically not be replaced with batteries and electric motors. Future biofuels, such as cellulosic ethanol, will grow into a huge section of the agricultural economy, and agriculture is certainly Iowa’s backbone.

I look forward to watching these initiatives move forward. Let’s see what Congress does next.

Flag of America, United States of

The renaming is intended to quickly move the position of the United States to 4th on the alphabetized list of countries, behind only Afghanistan, Albania, and Algeria, from its previous position of 186th out of about 195. This new positioning promises dramatic reductions in list scrolling when AUS citizens complete the country field on internet address forms.

President Obama said of the change, “The United States has always been the number one country in our hearts. Now it is a bit closer to number one on the internet, too. No longer will you, your children, or your children’s children, face the wasteful and frustrating burden of scanning a long list of countries when ‘America, United States of’ is right near the top. Can we save our fingers and our mouse scroll wheels from penalizing, unending wear and tear? Yes we can.”

Economists estimate that the change will shorten the average form-filling process by 0.4 seconds. Extrapolated over the AUS population, this change will save approximately 7 million hours of form-filling per year and reduce energy usage by 560,000 kWh per year.

The change goes into effect today, April 1st, 2009, also known as April Fool’s Day.