Random thoughts, interspersed with wisdom...

Fusion

2018-05-27T22:30:00.000-04:00

I have long wondered what the point of Inertial confinement fusion (ICF) is but I'm starting to really come around. Unlike magnetic confinement fusion (MCF), ignition is not sustained with ICF, so each fusion ignition has to be started with massive input of energy only to have blow itself out a short time later. It seems very inefficient since like a star MCF is ignited and just keeps burning as long as confinement remains. However, sustained fusion is likely a long way away, since confinement failure destroys or damages the tokomak, so ICF which runs like tiny H-bombs in semi-disposable containers could be the way to go. Also, the risk of an "event" from ICF is low since there is no sustained fusion, if the laser stops firing there is no fusion and with a carbon/carbon reactor housing cooled by lithium salts even a massive containment failure wouldn't be uncontainable.

The choice of fuel is what I question. The use of cryogenic fuel could be a problem since even if the lasers get cheaper and smaller having to make, store, and dispense perfectly round spheres of hydrogen isotope ice doesn't seem like the easiest thing especially since the reactor vessel would have a significant neutron flux once it had been used for a while.
The solution could be to use a solid Lithium Hydride/Deuteride blend fuel something like Teller Ulam H-bombs. The ignition temperature of lithium7/hydrogen fusion is lower than hydrogen fusion and the product Li/H fusion is two alpha particles that would ignite additional fusion. The increased mass of the lithium would also increase the compressed density, and act like a tamper.

The Autonomous 500

2018-05-27T22:29:00.002-04:00

I cannot wait for the time when the day after the regular Indy 500 they run a second race with Autonomous/Self Driving cars. The true spirit of the Indy 500 was the cars might or might not finish a 500 mile race because cars were new and experimental. Tires couldn’t handle going 50 mph, and in additional to the driver there was a mechanic in the car too, who pumped the fuel and leaned out of the car while it turned to keep it on the ground. Races like the Indy 500 were how car makers showed off their wares and improved their technology. As recently as the 1970’s you could go to a car dealership and buy the car you saw race that weekend. Having autonomous car race each other to best the technologies ability would sell tickets and cars. Plus with autonomous cars we can go back to lots of fiery crashes, since there are no drivers to be hurt or killed. All in all the Autonomous 500 will be a return to car racing’s roots.

Gravity and gluons

2016-08-06T19:19:00.000-04:00

I am still working it out if you look at the interaction of gravity at the level of neutrons and protons vs quarks, it is clear that gluons must be providing most of the interaction surface for gravity. Interaction surface is not a correct term, but that is closest concept in macroscopic world. The nature the interaction between the strong force (and its mass component) and gravity, could be a big piece of unifying the forces.

As I said I am still figuring it out, but the math should come together...

Minor Medical Predictions

2016-04-23T18:50:00.000-04:00

I haven’t been on here much but I wanted to post a few things that I imagine we’ll see in the medical news for better or worse in a few years.

One:

There will be a backlash and possibly class action lawsuits against thermal printer and paper manufacturers and the users of thermal printer products. The "ink" on thermal printer paper often contains unpolymerized BPA, which rubs off when you touch the paper. The BPA monomer is known to be more bioavailable and bioactive, than the polymerized BPA people worry about leaching out of plastics.

The BPA on the paper is free to be rubbed off and consumed, rubbed into eyes, etc. More concerning is prepubescent and pubescent age people tend to have jobs that involve touching register tape often with damp hands increasing the transfer of BPA to their fingers. All of this puts them at increased risk of chronic, high level BPA exposure at an age where exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals could do the most damage.

Two:

With the discovery that astrocytes are responsible for cleaning metabolic waste out of the brain while you sleep and that poor sleep habits can lead to Alzheimer's and Parkinson’s. It is not clear if poor sleep habits cause disease or having disease causes poor sleep. Either way I can imagine we will soon see clinics where people will undergo anesthesia or other sleep therapies to allow their brains to remove the toxic buildup of proteins from their brains in order to stave off the possibility of disease. This isn’t as crazy as it sounds; people spend enormous amounts of money and endure terrible pain to look better, imagine what they would endure to prevent a slow and terrible death.

Three:

While it is possible that the increase in the cancer rate over the last several decades is because we are living longer or because the increase in environmental toxins, or it could be because we are living cleaner lives largely free of infectious disease. One of the earliest successful cancer therapies was to inject bacteria into the tumor causing a massive immune response, shrinking the tumor. The advent of modern chemotherapeutics caused less controllable therapies to fall out of favor. However, it is possible that the immune system having to clear up bacterial infections frequently and without any outside “help” could have a similar and sustained antineoplastic effect. With the advent of antibiotics to treat bacterial infections, and the fact that the world is in general a cleaner and healthier place than it once was, the immune system no longer has to work as hard or as long to fight off infections. While not being sick is generally perceived as good, immune inaction or lack of simulation could allow cancerous growths to be missed by the immune system. I am not suggesting that giving up antibiotics will end cancer but it is possible that by letting a non-life threatening illness run its course and forcing the immune system to work at beating back the infection might be a good thing.

For anyone who reads this remember that modern cancer treatment is extremely immunosuppressive so injecting bacteria even killed bacteria into someone receiving chemo or radiation would be extremely bad.

Happy New Year!

2014-12-31T14:08:00.001-05:00

I have not been overly diligent about posting but many of my creative juices are going into actual projects. I wish you all a happy New Year, and stay tuned perhaps the I will find my inspiration.

Renewable work

2014-06-08T19:28:00.000-04:00

Everyone always talks about renewable energy, but it is important to remember that energy is just we use to do work. At every step from making the solar panels or fiberglass for a wind turbine, to transmitting the energy to using the energy to do work there is a loss of efficiency. This loss of efficiency translates to heat, and the bigger the city the more energy and therefore heat is released. Instead of investing solely in renewable energy we should invest in renewable sources of work. One of the biggest uses of energy is air conditioners. More interestingly air conditioners dump huge amounts of heat outdoors, and in some cases the use of air conditioners actually raises the outdoor temperature.

(Seriously Google it.)

My thought for renewable work is designing absorption air conditioning to work on either the low level heat from solar collectors that would heat water for homes or on a larger scale using reflectors or Fresnel lenses. With lots of these systems picking up the load from electrical ACs a real impact could be made. Using solar absorption AC during the heat of the day the system would work the hardest, and any additional capacity could be used to make ice or chilled brine to carry the building through the night. Yes, this system is still moving heat from inside to outside but much of the actual work being done, is done with heat that was already there. Additionally since there is no conversion of solar energy to direct current, alternating current to work the possible efficiency is higher than other renewable sources of work.

Acetaminophen linked to ADHD is autism next?

2014-02-25T21:03:00.000-05:00

While I think there are alternate explanations for the link between acetaminophen and ADHD, the information is out there. I imagine that a link between acetaminophen and autism is next, either in utero or during early childhood, since ADHD is an autism spectrum disorder. The parents groups will demand black box warning, and flog the companies and the FDA, but since acetaminophen is in everything and is perceived as safer for children, it is going to be hard find a replacement for pain and fever relief in kids

If you are a lawyer, this could be an opportunity for the kind of class action that buys the lawyers beach houses in Maui, next to Oprah.

A possible opportunity for private equity investment

2014-01-01T14:24:00.002-05:00

If you follow biotech and pharma you know that in recent months the FDA has rejected several high profile drugs. These were late or later stage drugs for some very profitable indications, with reasonable amounts of life left on the patents. The reason for the rejections were for side effects that were highly unpleasant or lethal, but very rare, or the drug worked really well but only for certain people. These are necessarily insurmountable problems; given the ever decreasing cost of DNA sequencing it will soon be possible to find variants and or other biomarkers to predict who should get the drug with enough certainty for the FDA to approve the drug and for CMS to pay for the companion diagnostic. You might be thinking this is old news, and you are right, I’ll been chatting with people about doing this for 5-6 years.

The difference is right now we are in the sweet spot for this type of activity, since the necessary sequencing technologies needed aren’t ready yet but should be there soon, so the investors will only have to sit on the IP for a year or two. This means it is not yet prohibitively expense for a fund to pick up the rights to a few late stage failed drugs or biologicals for 10-25 cents on the dollar. Then in the 2015-16 timeframe hire CROs or academic labs to figure out the companion diagnostic for predicting who should or shouldn’t get the drug and bring the drug to market in the 2018 timeframe (this assumes you have the ability to market and distribute the drug without eating up the profits.) Less risky but also potentially less profitable would be to develop the companion diagnostic and selling it and rights to the drug either back or to a third party, and letting them bring the drug and companion diagnostic to market. However, the window is closing since once the sequencing technologies are mature enough to actually be useful the drug companies themselves will do this, or hire special CROs to salvage drugs. If you are reading this a couple years from now, and think this seems similar to something you read in Forbes/WSJ or saw on TV, then it is way too late. (Hopefully by then we’ll start with the diagnostic and make the drug.)

If you like the idea and have tens of millions of dollars you are looking to turn into hundreds of millions dollars, I am available do drop me a line

If you have a few million dollars you want to turn into tens of millions you could partner with an information company like (Lexis Nexis, Elsevier, etc) to do the research to find really good drugs that failed in the late stages and are off patent, and develop the companion diagnostic and bring the drug to market by leveraging the old safety with a small clinical trial. Since there is no patent protection the business model is to license the diagnostic to generic companies to do the actual manufacture and distribution.

Salvage Pharmaceuticals or Second Chance Pharmaceuticals would be good names.

A plan to save Radioshack

2013-12-31T20:22:00.000-05:00

When I think about my childhood the two companies that come to mind are Nintendo and Radioshack. To a preteen and teenage boy Radioshack was a wondrous place with gadgets and wires and books filled with helpful ideas.

Recently Radioshack has lost its way and instead of trying to stay true to its roots by doing what made it successful, it is trying to retain the customers it had last century. Today you can buy cell phones, satellite dishes and toy cars at Radioshack, back in the day you could buy the things to build those things or at least what would evolve into those things.

It will be very, very painful, but for Radioshack to return to its former glory it will have to be a place for tinkerers, and innovators and not a place for buying C cell batteries. (When was the last time you need a C cell battery?)

To change back into what it was the company will have to close stores and invest heavily but the new Radioshack will be a place for people to build the future. At the new Radioshack you will be able to pick up 3D printed objects from CAD files you uploaded via the RadioShack plugin for open source CAD/CAM tools. You'll be able to buy lab equipment for everything from Synthetic Biology to Molecular Gastronomy, and take night and weekend classes to get certifications for owning and using the equipment. There will be development environments for using hardware/software/sensor systems you can buy at the new Radioshack. They will sell Maker magazine and have an online community to foster innovation.

Appliance finishes – the post stainless steel era

2013-11-27T21:28:00.002-05:00

At some point stainless steel will be passé and the appliance makers will need to find a new finish that people will gush over, since I doubt Harvest Gold, or Avocado will be making a comeback. I would recommend for regular people who think Stainless Steel is behind the times to consider Tungsten Carbide (WC) and for people with bolder tastes Titanium Nitride. Solid Tungsten Carbide is a normally a deeper gray than steel and is attractive in its own right, but if the surface is coated via vapor deposit WC is a deep black, as in it appears to have depth. WC is very, very scratch resistant, and easy to clean. I think either Tungsten Carbide would be a beautiful and practical kitchen surface.

For those with bolder tastes Titanium Nitride is a rich gold color, but unlike gold it is very, very scratch resistant, and as compared to gold. Imagine a gold colored SubZero fridge, matched with a gold colored Wolf range against a marble counters and backsplash.

A less than practical way to harness vacuum energy

2013-04-27T14:55:00.001-04:00

In June of 2008 I wrote a post called “A “practical” way to harness vacuum energy”, in which I described the creation of near Planck’s length quantum foam as a way to harness vacuum energy. Firstly note that practical is in quotes, since it is not actually practical at all, but people love the concept of tapping vacuum energy. In the nearly 5 years since I wrote the post I have learned much about physics and quantum mechanics, and I realize that I am both right and wrong, but mostly wrong about what would happen. There would be a huge number of particles and antiparticles created and destroyed, and a massive burst of energy, but the neutrinos would escape and for all practical purposes the system would be a spectacular experiment but highly endothermic and self quenching. If someone could find a way to control the weakforce and capture the energy from neutrinos, and put it back into the system that could make it sustainable or even energy positive. However, if we had the technology to control the weakforce, we could do much cooler things than make a tiny quantum foam.

Future battleships

2013-04-20T21:22:00.001-04:00

I toured an aircraft carrier and while it was an awesome experience it made me sad to think about the demise of the battleship. However, aircraft carrier based navies, largely aren't compatible with a battleship-centric projection of national power. Aircraft carriers aren't going anywhere, but with unmanned aircraft being used more and more, the role of the super carrier will decrease and smaller more numerous carriers built to support primarily helicopter and UAV operations will become key to supporting the distributed battlefields of the future. We cannot as a nation afford 12 Ford class carriers but we cannot afford not to have a large number of carrier groups.

However, it was not my goal to armchair QB Naval policy; I wanted to talk about the return of the battleship. The battleship of the future will not have 18" gun batteries. It will have massive reactors to feed banks of rail guns or other kinetic projectile systems, firing rounds several hundred miles, at the cost of a few grand per shot, with a sustained fire rate of less than minute between rounds. (Right now the Army is using artillery rounds that cost over a hundred grand each, and they do not fly several hundred miles so this would be a bargain.)

To create a low pressure atmospheric conduit for the rounds from the guns to ride in without melting or decelerating, the future battleship will have to have batteries of high power lasers. The lasers will fire before and during the acceleration of projectiles in the gun to heat or convert the air in the rounds projected trajectory to plasma. It is reasonable to think that with lasers this powerful they would be great offensive weapons, but lasers are line of sight weapons and that is very limiting for a weapons system. Lasers are perfect for defensive purposes, the lasers will fire at or around the incoming missile creating super heated air pockets and shockwaves to destabilize or damage it. A direct hit while preferred would be unnecessary, since an object traveling fast enough and low enough to avoid radar guided autocannon fire would be unlikely to recover from a large loss of stability event caused by a big change in air pressure on the control surfaces. Aircraft which are larger and slower could be destroyed as soon as they crossed the horizon. Ballistic objects would be easy prey too, since some of the laser energy would be used to destroy the incoming object and rest would steer the debris away since the energy of impact would still be very damaging. (The laser thing might seem farfetched, but the Navy is currently deploying lasers on ships to destroy ships and aircraft.)

The role of the future battleship would be similar to their role in WWI and WWII bombardment of land targets and the destruction of mobile targets. The difference would be that the ship could sit 200 miles off shore and the shells can still impact 100+ miles inland. When/if such a battleship can be built it would be a second golden age of navel warfare.

You might be thinking why not just build the same kinetic impactor/laser based system on land but make it super powerful? Super powerful rail guns would probably be built, but they would be used fire bulk cargo (water, food, raw materials, etc) into space to support a moon base or other extra-orbital missions. The reason land based rail guns wouldn’t be built as military weapons is the same that land based superguns always fail; they aren't mobile so they can be overwhelmed and destroyed at the enemy’s leisure.

The MBA bubble and the future educational derivatives market

2013-04-20T19:03:00.000-04:00

I had a chance meeting with a top professor in finance and we had a very interesting discussion about market and capital modeling. The most important thing I learning is business schools have a very interesting mechanism for funding itself, since they have to compete against Goldman Sachs, and other investment firms for talent and that got me thinking.

First some background in graduate school for the hard sciences and other areas the mentor is training their replacements, and they invest huge amounts of time and money into their students, and initially get very little in return. In effect the mentor is reproducing academically, and so they must be selective since the student’s future successes are a reflection of their training. That is to say if a student becomes a star that reflects well on their mentor, and the converse is true as well. Lest any one think is the same altruistic relationship as parent/child it is not the balance is still in the favor of the mentor, since the students give more than they get for the opportunity to learn. The relationship is critical for the funding model; since it is the combination of the professor’s prestige and guidance plus the student’s work that creates the work product that justifies ongoing funding. But since the student and mentor will likely share similar interests once the student has completed their education they will compete for resources against their former mentor and their former peers. This situation is one of the reasons the funding model for the hard sciences is becoming untenable, too many smart people competing for the same resources, and to run a productive lab to get enough funding mentor’s have to train too many students. Even if many of the students don’t go into academia, you still end up with a glut of people who do and the funding can’t keep up. (Crafty mentors will even take largely unsuitable students just to have the labor force.) This is the cause of Ph.D. bubble, but that is not my point.

However, business schools are smarter they do things like create models of optimal utilization in a resource limited environment, so they can see that the Ph.D. model at the scale needed for the hard sciences is untenable. So, they created a way to fund themselves using students without the possibility of over reproducing and depleting the available resources, the MBA. The MBA is a degree that is mostly about book learning, “branding” and making connections with current and future leaders. (That might be an overstatement, but I think there are many that would agree with me.) However, to get this degree the student spends enormous sums of money with minimal material gain, but the anticipation of a higher earning potential. In the “Business School model” a mentor can churn through hundreds or thousands of MBA students, getting money or money and labor. Since an MBA isn’t a terminal degree none of these people actually go into academic finance, so the mentors can support their research and salaries without ever actually reproducing academically. Occasionally, someone will want a Ph.D. in finance, but that isn’t an issue since it is a rare event compared to the number of MBA, and even the occasional doubling of the number of people in the field won’t dramatically reduce the funding. You might think that that is counterintuitive, but as with pyramid schemes as long as the base grows faster than the top the situation is stable. Unlike a pyramid scheme the MBA’s coming out of a Business School don’t expect to rise higher at the Business School they go back to the commercial sector, so the base is constantly renewed. When the market can bare new Ph.D. graduates expands the top, which creates capacity and widens the base. It is truly a brilliant model, I bow to their brilliance!!!

The only issue is that this model is solely dependent on the community valuing the MBA and its brand. While the top schools have little to worry about since their brand is secure and they remain very selective, the “MBA” itself is becoming devalued. People can get MBA’s online, the lower and middle tier schools are being undermined as the value of the letters after people’s names become less valuable. Sometime there will be a tipping point, (I am sure a modeler at a business school could determine at what percent of the workforce having an MBA, the ROI of an MBA is no longer worth it.) Once the MBA bubble pops, for Business Schools to sustain their financial model, they will have to invent a new product to offer to keep the cash flowing (like the emergence of exotic derivatives). The MBA will be obsolesced as the hot degree at the base of the pyramid and replaced with more specialized educational products like a Masters in Business Statistics or Masters in Commerce Analytics. I expect to see these educational products come out at the top schools first as a way for their graduates to distinguish themselves from all the other people out there with MBA after their name on business cards. (Thus sustaining both their brand and revenue stream.) As is traditional when an over hyped market collapses, the people who most recently shelled out tens of thousands of dollars to get an MBA, in order to have an opportunity for future gain, will be left holding the bag…

Winter corn and other trades

2012-09-03T16:20:00.000-04:00

With Midwest corn and soy crop ruined by the drought, this will be an excellent year for the tropical and subtropical farmers in the US to grow winter corn for Ethanol and finishing live stock. Florida and Puerto Rico can't make up for the crop failure in the Midwest but depending on the availability of seed the farmers could make an excellent profit. The issue is that the acreage that will be used for corn will not be available for whatever crop would normally be planted there, so while we might have corn for Ethanol we might not have lettuce or tomatoes this winter.

Obamacare decision is not what it seems

2012-06-29T22:44:00.001-04:00

People are saying that Chief Justice Roberts is a traitor to the conservative ideals for upholding Obamacare. However, in the long term I think he will be hailed as a hero of the conservative movement and the Republican Party.

By upholding Obamacare and forcing it to be called a tax, Roberts has given the RNC an incredible gift.

I am talking full Fox News sainthood, Gretchen Carlson will wear a WWRD bracelet, Sarah Palin will have a sparkly Roberts pin, and all Fox New staff will have to genuflect when Roberts’ name is mentioned.

If parts had been struck down planning could have been held off well into 2013. But instead the victory was decisive, now the Democrats actually have to start planning for implementation before Nov 6 and they don’t want that. Also they have to talk about their victory as creating a health care tax. On the other side of the aisle the Republicans will unify and with a single voice pin what will likely be the biggest tax increase in history solidly on Obama and the Democrats. The debate will shift from Obamacare being about health care to being about paying for it and the massive complexity of running a program that pays or penalizes in advance, then once the year ends requires people to go back and justify the amount they received. It puts a massive paperwork burden on the people who generally have the least interaction with the tax code, and can least afford to repay any overpayments.

In my mind Roberts used the liberal judges, and has to set the stage for a full legislative repeal of Obamacare, instead of the long slog the Republicans would have had to endure to dismantle it piece by piece. I am sure where ever Niccolò Machiavelli is, he is smiling.

What is a kilogram?

2012-06-25T21:29:00.001-04:00

I know that everyone lays awake at night worrying about this, but the international prototype kilogram (IPK) the world's reference kilogram is losing weight. It has lost less weight than a single grain of dust, but it a world where so many things are reference against mass having the kilogram get lighter is a dangerous thing.

I think the kilogram should be referenced off the electron Volt (eV). But wait you say the eV has Joule as unit and the Joule is based on the kilogram, so you can't do that!

However, I would counter that even if you don't know what the resting mass of an electron or proton is, as long as all the particles of interest have the same resting mass and we can accurately measure speed we can accurately derive mass. There are even artifacts of the speed of a particle related the color spectrum of the photons produced, etc so instruments can be double checked.

The next complaint is that to accelerate a particle to speeds where the mass would be a significant fraction of a kilogram would require a particle accelerator and every particle accelerator would be slightly different. However, there are lots of natural processes that produce beta and alpha particles of fairly tight spectrum's that could be used as a natural source of non-resting mass particles. There are also a variety or fission or fusion events that could be a source of data for meaureing the nature of the kilogram.

Final critism of my eV plan is that it is an abitrary measure, however a meter is the distance light travels in 1/299792458 of a second. If we can measure time and speed accurately enough to base a unit of measurement on a time scale that small it should be a simple matter to determine the speed of a subatomic particle moving at less than 99% the speed of light.

That is just my thought...

Ping

2012-05-27T20:27:00.001-04:00

I'm not dead, I just have a lot to do.

Groupon business model

2011-02-06T21:46:00.000-05:00

The companies that need to be looking at the Groupon business model is the credit card companies. By offering to sell people gift cards at a discount if they use their credit card, the card companies could do a brisk business in the getting people to make additional purchases. The card companies could do even better by offering an additional discount if the customer uses the purchasing card on the transaction that redeems the gift card. A Groupon like model is a win/win for the card companies since it drives use and could be used to get red ink off their books by getting people to redeem points for discount gift cards

Flower Revolution

2011-01-30T15:37:00.000-05:00

With Tunisia’s government collapsing in the Jasmine Revolution and Egypt about to undergo the Lotus Revolution the destabilization of Middle Eastern governments is going to drag down the world economies. If the Suez Canal closes then gas prices could be $4 by the end of the week. That would kill the global recovery; even if the Suez Canal remains open the new government will be an unknown quantity controlling one of world’s most vital shipping routes. If the new government is not at least as pro-Western as the current government then America’s Middle East policy is shot. If Israel feels threatened then that will further destabilize the region, and open conflict with a weakened nation state could lead to a regional conflict as neighboring countries rally to defend Egypt.

Regardless of how it turns out in Egypt a second successful overthrow of a government will embolden dissidents in other countries. If things go well and the various human rights organization and clandestine services do their job, we might find out what flower the fall of the Iranian government would get. If things go badly then Saudi Arabia could fall, and be replaced with a hard line government that will not be as ready to sell the Western world oil at reasonable prices. If Saudi Arabia falls I think it should be the Titan Arum Revolution, because the symbology is right… If you haven’t guessed the Titan Arum’s common name is the Corpse Flower.

Still around

2011-01-16T12:29:00.002-05:00

I know I haven't written anything in almost a year, but I am not gone. Things are very busy and most of the ideas I've had are not for public release.

More on wind turbines: Green ramjets/ wind jets

2010-02-28T19:14:00.000-05:00

It seems flying helps my creative process, since most of my creativity has been going to my actual job.

In many places wind energy is generated during non-peak demand times. What can’t be sold at full price is sold at a discount or is sent to a dump load. (Giant resistive heaters.)

Long ago I suggested that the excess energy could be used to make renewable hydrogen, however moving hydrogen is difficult and it is not energy rich, so it isn’t really worth the money. However, with a ramjet at the end of the turbine blades, there is something to be done with the hydrogen. Traditional jet engines (they tried so called tipjets in helicopters with little success) could be used but there complexity and cost, combined with the inefficiencies of using such a large wind swept area makes them a poor choice. However, if you have a source of near or faster than the speed of sound air then the low complexity and high efficiency of a ramjet make it the perfect choice. (Ramjets have no moving parts so they have to be brought to operating velocity by other means.)

By making hydrogen when electric demand is low it can be stored, then used as fuel in the ramjet to turn the blades when the wind is not blowing or not blowing very hard. The generator could briefly draw power from the grid to start the feathered blades, then once up to speed the ramjet would ignite and drive the blades with the exhaust gases. Since the ramjet would run in a very fixed speed range and altitude it could be designed to be highly efficient, and run very lean. Ramjet/scramjet wind turbines would have to be in very isolated areas, because the exhaust gases would exceed the speed of sound. However the shockwave would be away from the blade itself, reducing the wear on the to rotating mass.

Without a source of a fuel that was cheaper to sell as electricity than it was to move, this idea is not practical. You might be thinking why not put the hydrogen through a fuel cell since it is more efficient? Well if you already have a wind turbine with ramjet tips, then the equipment is already there, and isn’t as service intensive as a fuel cell.

Improving the design and output of wind turbines

2010-02-28T19:13:00.000-05:00

It seems that the two biggest problems with wind turbines are bug drag and super-sonic tips.

Bug drag:
By adding a additional structures to the lead edge of the blades like a razor edge or spikes the air could shaped in advance of the blade itself to push the impacting bug or dust sideways into the airstream so that it would have a reduced chance of impacting the blade. Also, by adding those little raised wings or a longer sweep on edge like you see on the end of new aircraft wings the tip would be less turbine have a shape that prevents end strikes and reduces noise.

Super-sonic tips:
As the blades on wind turbines get longer and they spin faster they approach the speed of sound. The sonic boom makes them bad neighbors and puts a great deal of wear and strain on the parts. A ramjet at the end of the blade in the super-sonic region would reduce the sound and increase the energy captured. A ramjet has no moving parts, so it is hard to break, (in this case it would have a set of spring loaded doors that would open only as the blade approached the speed of sound.)
The air moving through the inlet would be slowed, increasing the overall drag but as it exited it would accelerate contributing to the thrust. The shockwave would be damped inside the body of the ram, making the blade quieter even at high speeds.

Second generation probiotics

2010-02-28T11:15:00.004-05:00

Second generation probiotics
I saw a talk about the skin microbiome (all the organisms mostly bacteria that call our outer surfaces home). If you think I don't care my skin is clean you might be interested to know that we are out numbered in our own bodies ten to one.

Your immune system has a cease fire with the numerous species of bacteria that cover every inch of your body. They are the gate keepers they alter your skins chemistry to their liking and zealously guard their patch from all other comers. As long as they don't try and come in the immune system largely tolerates them. The system works well, you can see this in the fact that some seriously nasty bugs are on you right now but the other bugs keep them in check.
Like it or not most of the skin diseases like are caused by bacterial imbalances. If your immune system or bacterial population gets out of balance the bad bugs begin to overwhelm the natural suppression and begin to invade the body. The immune system responds and a vicious and itchy cycle begins. Moisturizers swell and seal the skin hindering access and movement of bacteria. Cortisone reduces the over enthusiast immune system letting the bacteria settle things amongst themselves.
Antibiotics kill certain classes of bacteria partly restoring the balance and letting the bacteria settle it amongst themselves. If you noticed that the last two scenarios ended with the bacteria settling amongst themselves, you might have figured out that the immune system holds little sway in the epidermis. It is like the situation in less stable countries the where along the border region warlords or tribal chiefs enter into deals to keep mutual enemies at bay. The central government and the UN might not like it, but if they don’t have to resources to stabilize the region then it is the only way to bring order.

Enough background…

While Americas spend billions to fill our gut with "healthy" bacteria we insist that our skin should be sterile. We slather ourselves in Purell in a vain attempt to reduce our bacterial load. Mostly what we accomplish with Purell is to dry our skin, open the keratin and smear the dirty around. I am not saying Purell doesn't reduce the spread of the
flu. I am saying that hand washing if done properly is better, and likely healthier.

(If the Purell people are reading this, drop me a note and I'd be happy to explain to you how to make a product that is microbiome friendly.)

I predict that once evidence that sterile skin is both not possible and it is generally a bad idea to try (at least for otherwise healthy people) we will see the emergence of probiotics for the skin.

At first they will be targeted to conditions that have a fixed location on the body like Eczema and Psoriasis so a generic bacterial blend is possible. (The bacteria from behind you ear or in your armpit in most cases are not the same ones as on the skin of your forearm or scalp. So, a whole body blend will be hard to make.) Other locations will follow soon after probably scalp (dandruff control), face (acne control), nail bed (fungus control) and elbow pit (reduction in hospital acquired infections).

Then designer second generation probiotics will follow. Bacteria that colonize the hair follicles and suppress sterol synthesis and processing could regrow hair. Bacteria that make and secrete UV absorbing compounds would act as natural sun screen by decreasing the skin’s UV exposure. These bacteria need not even be generically engineered, they could be found by Bioprospecting for people that regrew hair spontaneously or resisted a clear linage of baldness, or people who despite being fair skinned and getting high sun exposure were sunburn resistant.

Vanity second generation probiotics could follow, with bugs that made vanillin or other esters, so dirty socks and sweaty shirts would smell nice, probiotic deodorant. GFP or pigment producing bugs, habitat restricted to the hair follicles, so people could have bacterial dyed hair. Going gray would be a thing of the past, since bacteria would produce natural pigments into the forming keratin. (This could also make self painting nails by colonizing the nail bed with pigment producing strains.) Bugs could straighten or curl your hair, by altering the oxidative environment of the hair follicle. In most people the effects would temporary since without repeated application the natural bacterial strains would be overwhelmed and pushed out.

As you can see second generation probiotics are more than a regular bowel movement, they are a whole new market.

Pumice rafts

2009-10-08T16:00:00.002-04:00

Even if all you took was rocks for jocks you should know that certain types pumice float on water. With the need for stable, ocean sensor platforms man made pumice could fill that need. By injecting scrubbed flue gas into molten coal slag in a standard size mold, modular synthetic pumice blocks could be made with little additional expanded energy. If the mold includes protrusions that allow the blocks to be interlocked, large stable platforms can be built while the blocks could remain easy to transport. The pumice blocks can be epoxied together in a dry dock to produce the platforms, which can be floated and towed to the station.
By coating the exterior with a mix of epoxy and ground tires the effects of sea action and impacts could mitigated on long term sensor platforms. For a more environmental contentious application the pumice rafts could be anchored off shore at a depth where they would induce the formation of sand bars or provide artificial reefs. By creating barrier islands out of industrial wastes and sequestered CO2 we could solve a number of problems and the environment could benefit. By planting tidal trees and grasses in rock wool on top, nutrients could be removed from the water by the roots, avian and aquatic habitats created and soil formation encouraged. The hope is that eventually the blocks will be buried taking the CO2 and ash waste with them while renewing the world’s barrier islands without massive dredging.

What they should teach in genetics class

2009-09-27T17:55:00.002-04:00

The curse of the geneticist is being out to dinner or whatever and seeing a family with a young child and instantly being able to tell that the child is not related to the man. Brown eyed kid, with blue eyed parents, etc. It seems like something you should mention, hey buddy you should talk to your wife about... But it really isn't your business. The Punnett square is like the Force, it is has a light and a dark side, and those who understanding wield a great but terrible power… ;)