Algae as Hydrogen Factory

Mutant Algae Is Hydrogen Factory by Sam Jaffe, Wired:

Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley have engineered a strain of pond scum that could, with further refinements, produce vast amounts of hydrogen through photosynthesis.

The work, led by plant physiologist Tasios Melis, is so far unpublished. But if it proves correct, it would mean a major breakthrough in using algae as an industrial factory, not only for hydrogen, but for a wide range of products, from biodiesel to cosmetics.
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Melis got involved in this research when he and Michael Seibert, a scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, figured out how to get hydrogen out of green algae by restricting sulfur from their diet. The plant cells flicked a long-dormant genetic switch to produce hydrogen instead of carbon dioxide. But the quantities of hydrogen they produced were nowhere near enough to scale up the process commercially and profitably.

“When we discovered the sulfur switch, we increased hydrogen production by a factor of 100,000,” says Seibert. “But to make it a commercial technology, we still had to increase the efficiency of the process by another factor of 100.

Water and Electricity for All

Segway Creator Unveils His Next Act

Water and Electricity may not seem like something to wish for if you are reading this post. However for over 1 billion people that do without both it is.

Dean Kamen, the engineer who invented the Segway, is puzzling over a new equation these days. An estimated 1.1 billion people in the world don’t have access to clean drinking water, and an estimated 1.6 billion don’t have electricity. Those figures add up to a big problem for the world and an equally big opportunity for entrepreneurs.

To solve the problem, he’s invented two devices, each about the size of a washing machine that can provide much-needed power and clean water in rural villages.

“Eighty percent of all the diseases you could name would be wiped out if you just gave people clean water,” says Kamen. “The water purifier makes 1,000 liters of clean water a day, and we don’t care what goes into it. And the power generator makes a kilowatt off of anything that burns.”
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Kamen’s goal is to produce machines that cost $1,000 to $2,000 each. That’s a far cry from the $100,000 that each hand-machined prototype cost to build.

Quadir is going to try and see if the machines can be produced economically by a factory in Bangladesh. If the numbers work out, not only does he think that distributing them in a decentralized fashion will be good business — he also thinks it will be good public policy. Instead of putting up a 500-megawatt power plant in a developing country, he argues, it would be much better to place 500,000 one-kilowatt power plants in villages all over the place, because then you would create 500,000 entrepreneurs.

More products from his company, Deka Research & Development Corp, including: Hydroflexâ„¢ Irrigation Pump, IBOTâ„¢ Mobility System and Intravascular Stent.

Dean Kamen understands what engineering can do. “Today, almost 200 engineers, technicians, and machinists work in our electronics and software engineering labs, machine shop, and on CAD stations.”

DEKA’s mission, first and foremost, is to foster innovation. It is a company where the questioning of conventional thinking is encouraged and practiced by everyone—engineers and non-engineers alike—because open minds are more likely to arrive at workable solutions. This has been our formula for success since we began, and it will continue to drive our success in the future.

Dean Kamen founded For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST)

Phony Science Gap?

A Phony Science Gap? by Robert Samuelson:

And the American figures excluded computer science graduates. Adjusted for these differences, the U.S. degrees jump to 222,335. Per million people, the United States graduates slightly more engineers with four-year degrees than China and three times as many as India. The U.S. leads are greater for lesser degrees.

It is good to see more people using the data from the Duke study we have mentioned previously: USA Under-counting Engineering Graduates – Filling the Engineering Gap. However, I think he misses a big change. It seems to me that the absolute number of graduates each year is the bigger story than that the United States has not lost the percentage of population rate of science and engineering graduates yet. China significantly exceeds the US and that India is close to the US currently in science and engineering graduates. And the trend is dramatically in favor of those countries.

There has been a Science gap between the United States and the rest of the world. That gap has been between the USA, in the lead, and the rest. That gap has been shrinking for at least 10 years and most likely closer to 20. The rate of the decline in that gap has been increasing and seems likely to continue in that direction.

Despite an eroding manufacturing base and the threat of “offshoring” of some technical services, there’s a rising demand for science and engineering skills. That may explain higher enrollments and why this “crisis” — like the missile gap — may be phony.

I wonder what eroding manufacturing base he is referring to? The United States is the world’s largest manufacturer. The United States continues to increase its share of the world manufacturing and increase, incrementally year over year. Yes manufacturing employment has been declining (though manufacturing employment has declined far less in the United States than in China). Granted China has been growing tremendously quickly, but they are still far behind the United States in manufacturing output.
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Reducing Antibiotic Use

‘Natural’ chickens take flight by Elizabeth Weise

Four of the nation’s top 10 chicken producers have virtually ended a practice that health and activist groups for years charged was causing a public health crisis: feeding broiler chickens low doses of antibiotics to make them grow faster and stay healthy.

Tyson Foods, Gold Kist, Perdue Farms and Foster Farms say they stopped using antibiotics for growth promotion. In addition to ending a practice that Europe banned and McDonald’s ended a month ago, the four companies also have severely limited antibiotic use for routine disease prevention, though antibiotics are still used to treat disease outbreaks.

Are health groups against healthy chickens? No. They worry about the danger of creating resistance to antibiotics. Our past, and current, misuse of antibiotics is leading us to a future where our currently effective antibiotics will not be effective.

Tyson Foods, the nation’s largest chicken producer, has led the way with a 93% reduction, from 853,000 pounds in 1997 to just 59,000 in 2004. In 2004, less than 1% of the company’s broilers received antibiotics, says chief veterinarian Patrick Pilkington.

Perdue Farms stopped using antibiotics for growth promotion about five years ago. “It became obvious that it was a concern,” says chief veterinarian Bruce Stewart-Brown. Now at any given farm in the system, only one flock in five years receives antibiotics, either to halt a disease outbreak or because birds are threatened with infection, he says.

Positive steps to reducing our overuse of anti-biotics still leave us with much more to improve.

Computer Science Revolution

The Computer Science Conundrum: Why the revolution is yet to come:

At the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Bernard Chazelle, professor of computer science at Princeton University, plans to issue a call to arms for his profession, challenging his colleagues to grab society by the lapels and evangelize the importance of studying computer science. According to the most recent data available, the top 36 computer science departments in the United States saw enrollments drop nearly 20 percent between 2000 and 2004.

“The big paradox is that the computer science revolution is just unfolding,” Chazelle said. “Why, then, are students are running away from it; why is there this decline when the field has never been more exciting?”

First, computer science is integral to all of the sciences. Biology, for example, is very quantitatively driven, so a computer science background is imperative.

At Princeton I am part of a pioneering course developed by the eminent geneticist David Botstein and others. The course simultaneously incorporates physics, molecular biology, chemistry, mathematics, and computer science. Mathematics has long been the lingua franca, the Esperanto, of science. But I would argue that science now has two Esperantos: math and computer science. Science magazine recently ran an article listing all of the interesting scientific problems of the 21st century. Not once did the article use the term “computer science”; yet many of the problems listed were fundamentally about computer science.

Second, for those of an entrepreneurial bent, the Internet is paramount; if you don’t understand computer science you are lost. I don’t think it is just coincidence that two of the biggest Internet visionaries — Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Eric Schmidt of Google — are products of the computer science and electrical engineering departments at Princeton.

Third, and (since I am a theorist) most important, are careers in the field of theoretical computer science. Theoretical computer science would exist even if there were no computers. Computer science is not bound by the laws of physics; it is inspired by them but, like mathematics, it is something that is completely invented by man.

What exactly is an algorithm?
An algorithm is not a simple mathematical formula. It is a set of rules that govern a complex operation. You can look at Google as a giant algorithm. Or you can think of an economy or an ecological system as an algorithm in action. Physics, astronomy, and chemistry are all sciences of mathematical formulae. The quantitative sciences of the 21st century such as proteomics and neurobiology, I predict, will place algorithms rather than formulas at their core. In a few decades we will have algorithms that will be considered as fundamental as, say, calculus is today.

For more see the Princeton University press release

Spray-On Solar-Power Cells

Spray-On Solar-Power Cells Are True Breakthrough by Stefan Lovgren for National Geographic News:

The plastic material uses nanotechnology and contains the first solar cells able to harness the sun’s invisible, infrared rays. The breakthrough has led theorists to predict that plastic solar cells could one day become five times more efficient than current solar cell technology.
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At a current cost of 25 to 50 cents per kilowatt-hour, solar power is significantly more expensive than conventional electrical power for residences. Average U.S. residential power prices are less than ten cents per kilowatt-hour, according to experts.

But that could change with the new material.

“Flexible, roller-processed solar cells have the potential to turn the sun’s power into a clean, green, convenient source of energy,” said John Wolfe, a nanotechnology venture capital investor at Lux Capital in New York City.

Quantum Mechanics Made Relatively Simple Podcasts

Three Lectures by Hans Bethe

In 1999, legendary theoretical physicist Hans Bethe delivered three lectures on quantum theory to his neighbors at the Kendal of Ithaca retirement community (near Cornell University).

Intended for an audience of Professor Bethe’s neighbors at Kendal, the lectures hold appeal for experts and non-experts alike. The presentation makes use of limited mathematics while focusing on the personal and historical perspectives of one of the principal architects of quantum theory whose career in physics spans 75 years.

Colorado Science Teacher of the Year

Here’s a secret that I learned years ago… constantly seek out amazing teachers. Read about them… watch them in action… study their writings… find out what makes them tick. As teachers, we all benefit when one of our own receives this type of well-deserved recognition. She’s been teaching for eight years, mostly at Grand Junction’s New Emerson. Every day is something new, usually something new a kid thought up.

“The kids make it new,” she said. “I don’t think we give kids enough credit. They can do much more than we ask of them.”

She doesn’t spend a bunch of time on student discipline. The kids want to do what she says because it’s always interesting. Her kids achieve, which leads us back to her being tabbed by the Colorado Association of Science Teachers as the Science Teacher of the Year.

Right now she’s handling a herd of kindergartners every day. They’re trying out all kinds of life with all kinds of different experiments.

It’s pretty basic stuff — predicting/hypothesis, observing and concluding — the elements of science at all levels.

Great stuff. Teaching science should be about building on students natural curiously, not in getting them to sit at their desks politely.

Feel-Bad Education, The Cult of Rigor and the Loss of Joy by Alfie Kohn
Discipline Is The Problem — Not The Solution by Alfie Kohn
Books and articles by Alfie Kohn

Mystery of High-Temperature Superconductivity

photo of magnet levitating above a superconductor

Pseudogaps Are Not The Answer: The Continuing Mystery of High-Temperature Superconductivity. Photo: Because superconductivity repels a magnetic field, this permanent magnet levitates above a cuprate high-temperature superconductor. Scientists were surprised to find the same pseudogap energy signature in both high-Tc cuprates and ferromagnetic manganites.

A phenomenon of solid state physics known as “pseudogaps,” suspected by some scientists of playing a key role in the mystery of high-temperature superconductors, has now been found to occur in materials of a completely different nature. This discovery casts new doubts on any direct link between pseudogaps and high-temperature superconductivity.
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Stanford University physicist Zhi-Xun Shen, a leader in the study of high-Tc superconductivity, says, “I think our findings will add fire to the debate over one of the great scientific mysteries of our time: what is behind the phenomenon of high-Tc superconductivity? Are many of the anomalous properties we see in the cuprates manifestations of high-Tc superconductivity and CMR? What is the underlying physics ingredient that gives rise to these two competing sibling states? These are important questions that future experiments will try to answer.”

This is one of several great articles in the latest issue of Science @ Berkeley Labs

Engineering Graduates Get Top Salary Offers

table of highest paid degrees

Most lucrative college degrees by David Ellis, CNNMoney.com:

The data reflects, college seniors in most majors are experiencing an increase in starting-salary offers, according to a quarterly survey published by the National Association of Colleges & Employers’ (NACE). 83 private and public schools were included in this survey.

Topping the list of highest-paid majors were chemical engineers who fetched $55,900 on average, followed by electrical engineering degrees at $52,899. Despite taking a 0.3 percent dip compared to the 2004-2005 academic year, mechanical engineers took third place with an average salary of $50,672.

Last year 6 of the to 7 highest paid degrees were in engineering (computer science was in 4th place). The graphic to the left leaves off: computer engineering, aerospace engineering and industrial engineering.

NACE press release on salary data