New ‘Biofuel Cell’ Produces Electricity From Hydrogen In Plain Air

A pioneering “biofuel cell” that produces electricity from ordinary air spiked with small amounts of hydrogen offers significant potential as an inexpensive and renewable alternative to the costly platinum-based fuel cells that have dominated discussion about the “hydrogen economy” of the future, British scientists reported here today.

The research was presented at the week-long 233rd national meeting of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society.

Fraser Armstrong, Ph.D., described how his research group at Oxford University built the biofuel cell with hydrogenases - enzymes from naturally occurring bacteria that use or oxidize hydrogen in their metabolism. The cell consists of two electrodes coated with the enzymes placed inside a container of ordinary air with 3 percent added hydrogen.

That is just below the 4 percent danger level at which hydrogen becomes an explosion hazard. The research established for the first time that it is possible to generate electricity from such low levels of hydrogen in air, Armstrong said.

Prototype versions of the cell produced enough electricity to power a wristwatch and other electronic devices. Armstrong foresees advanced versions of the device as potential power sources for an array of other electronic products that only require low amounts of power.

“The technology is immensely developable,” Armstrong said. “We are at the tip of a large iceberg, with important consequences for the future, but there is still much to do before this generation of enzyme-based fuel cells becomes commercially viable. The idea of electricity from hydrogen in air, using an oxygen-tolerant hydrogenase is new, although other scientists have been investigating enzymes as electrocatalysts for years. Most hydrogenases have fragile active sites that are destroyed by even traces of oxygen, but oxygen tolerant hydrogenases have evolved to resist attack.”

The biofuel cell has a number of advantages over conventional fuel cells, devices that convert the chemical energy in a fuel into electricity without combustion, Fraser explained. A hydrogen fuel cell uses hydrogen and oxygen, producing water as the only waste product. Platinum is the most commonly used catalyst in conventional (proton exchange membrane) fuel cells, making the devices an expensive alternative energy source with sharply limited uses.

As a precious metal, platinum is in short supply, raising questions about the sustainability of platinum-based fuel cell technology. Platinum is more costly than gold, with recent prices topping $1,000 per ounce. In addition, platinum catalysts are easily poisoned or inactivated by carbon monoxide that often exists as an impurity in industrially produced hydrogen. Carbon monoxide can be removed, but that further increases the cost of conventional fuel cells.

Armstrong pointed out that naturally occurring hydrogenase enzymes can be produced at lower cost, with carbon-monoxide poisoning not being a problem. Since the hydrogenases are chemically selective and tolerant, they work in mixtures of hydrogen and oxygen, avoiding the need for expensive fuel-separation membranes required in other types of fuel cells. Hydrogenases also work at about the same rate as platinum-based catalysts.

The biofuel cell uses enzymes from Ralstonia metallidurans (R. metallidurans), an ancient bacterium believed to have been one of the first forms of life on Earth. It evolved 2.5 billion years ago, when there was no oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere, and survived by metabolizing hydrogen.

One focus of Armstrong’s research is understanding how the active site of the R. metallidurans hydrogenase developed the ability to cope with oxygen as Earth’s atmosphere changed. That could enable scientists to adapt the chemistry in the active site - the working end of the enzyme - into biofuel cells that are more tolerant of oxygen. In the current version of the cell, the enzyme is not attached tightly to the electrode and the cell runs for only about two days. The researchers also are investigating the use of enzymes from other organisms.

Root Beer May Be “Safest” Soft Drink For Teeth

Exposing teeth to soft drinks, even for a short period of time, causes dental erosion - and prolonged exposure can lead to significant enamel loss. Root beer products, however, are non-carbonated and do not contain the acids that harm teeth, according to a study in the March/April 2007 issue of General Dentistry, the AGD’s clinical, peer-reviewed journal. That might be something to consider during the next visit to the grocery store.

Consumers often consider soft drinks to be harmless, believing that the only concern is sugar content. Most choose to consume “diet” drinks to alleviate this concern. However, diet drinks contain phosphoric acid and/or citric acid and still cause dental erosion - though considerably less than their sugared counterparts.

“Drinking any type of soft drink poses risk to the health of your teeth,” says AGD spokesperson Kenton Ross, DMD, FAGD. Dr. Ross recommends that patients consume fewer soft drinks by limiting their intake to meals. He also advises patients to drink with a straw, which will reduce soda’s contact with teeth.

“My patients are shocked to hear that many of the soft drinks they consume (are comparable to) battery acid,” Dr. Ross explains. For example, one type of cola ranked 2.39 on the acid scale, compared to battery acid, which is 1.0.

Researchers concluded that non-colas cause a greater amount of erosion than colas. Citric acid is the predominant acid in non-cola drinks and is a major factor in why non-cola drinks are especially erosive. There is a significant difference between sugared and diet colas.

“The bottom line,” Dr. Ross stresses, “is that the acidity in all soft drinks is enough to damage your teeth and should be avoided.”

Safeguard Your Home And Business Against Lock Bumping

Since “lock bumping” is well-publicized on the Web, and is certainly a matter of security (regarding not only computers but everything else of value in your home or office), I believe this to be quite pertinent. Disclaimer: I have no personal nor business connection with this woman or her company.

Videos on lock bumping are all over the Internet and on local news stations throughout the country. It is becoming common knowledge how to bypass a lock using the method called lock bumping. The spread of this information is causing great concern for individual safety and security for home and business.

As a security professional, I am often asked, “Can people really open locks that easy?” “Should I be concerned?” “What can I do about it?” and “What do you recommend?”

The method of lock bumping using bump keys has been around for many years. The recent spread of this information on lock bumping across the Internet and the news has increased the use of this technique for illegal purposes, and now requires individuals to take precautionary action to protect themselves and their property.

In addition to the security concern, there is an insurance issue. If your home or businesses is burglarized and there are no signs of forced entry, does your insurance cover the loss?

If the method used to break into your home or business was the lock bumping method, the signs of forced entry would likely be minimal and might not even be visible.

Installing bump proof locks will provide better safety and security. One of the best bump proof locks on the market is the BiLock cylinder. Most locks have both top and bottom pins and locks with the top pins susceptible to lock bumping. BiLock is a 12 pin locking system with no top pins. The BiLock cylinder also has two sidebars and a trigger mechanism within the key. BiLock is also a restricted key, high security system which allows you to have greater key control. These lock cylinders can be purchased as part of the deadbolt or door knob lock. They can be added to most commercial locks and some residential locks without having to replace the entire deadbolt or doorknob.

For homeowners, the easiest solution is to purchase the deadbolt with the Bilock cylinder and replace your existing deadbolt. This is normally a simple installation and usually fits within the existing holes currently on the door.

The BiLock lock system with its patented U-shaped key design and trigger mechanism within the key, require two proprietary key machines to produce a key. These key machines are only available to authorized BiLock dealers, and helps eliminate unauthorized key duplication. This provides another layer of security knowing that no one has copied the key to your home or business. All keys are numbered at the time they are issued. Simply keep an accurate record of the distribution of your keys - as long as all keys can be accounted for, there is no need to change the locks.

The cost to upgrade your locks to prevent lock bumping is more than your average lock but it is a worthwhile investment to maintain the security of your home or business. The cost is small when compared to a denied claim for loss from your insurance company!

You should, of course, be aware that there are a number of other companies that both produce and provide sales of other bump-proof locks. The research I have done seems to indicate that Michelle’s company is competitive in price. Apart from that, you’re on your own.

Video Games Shown To Improve Vision

According to a new study from the University of Rochester, playing action video games sharpens vision. In tests of visual acuity that assess the ability to see objects accurately in a cluttered space, game players scored higher than their non-playing peers.

“Action video game play changes the way our brains process visual information,” says Daphne Bavelier, professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester. “After just 30 hours of training, people who normally don’t play video games showed a substantial increase in the spatial resolution of their vision, meaning they could see small, closely packed letters more clearly.”

Most of the factors that affect a normal person’s ability to read an eye-chart are optical (size of the eye, the shape/thickness of the cornea and lens) and video games will not change those factors. However, there are some types of visual deficits that aren’t optical in nature but are instead neural. “It is our hope that video game training can help these people,” says Bavelier.

Only certain games create this effect; first-person action games. Shooting games, such as Unreal Tournament, improved vision. More sedate games, such as the puzzle game Tetris, showed no effect. “When people play action games, they’re changing the brain’s pathway responsible for visual processing,” says Bavelier. “These games push the human visual system to the limits and the brain adapts to it. That learning carries over into other activities and possibly everyday life.”

This could mean that video games will find a future role in the medical world. Patients with visual impairment from conditions such as amblyopia (commonly known as ‘lazy-eye’), or even normal aging of the brain, could use video games as rehabilitation therapy.

This study is published in Psychological Science.

New Biofuels Process Promises To Meet all U.S. Transportation Needs

Purdue University chemical engineers have proposed a new environmentally friendly process for producing liquid fuels from plant matter - or biomass - potentially available from agricultural and forest waste, providing all of the fuel needed for “the entire U.S. transportation sector.”

The new approach modifies conventional methods for producing liquid fuels from biomass by adding hydrogen from a “carbon-free” energy source, such as solar or nuclear power, during a step called gasification. Adding hydrogen during this step suppresses the formation of carbon dioxide and increases the efficiency of the process, making it possible to produce three times the volume of biofuels from the same quantity of biomass, said Rakesh Agrawal, Purdue’s Winthrop E. Stone Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering.

The researchers are calling their approach a “hybrid hydrogen-carbon process,” or H2CAR.

“Further research is needed to make this a large-scale reality,” Agrawal said. “We could use H2CAR to provide a sustainable fuel supply to meet the needs of the entire U.S. transportation sector - all cars, trucks, trains and airplanes.”

The process, which would make possible the dawning of a “hydrogen-carbon economy,” is detailed in a research paper appearing online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The paper was written by Agrawal, chemical engineering doctoral student Navneet R. Singh, and chemical engineering professors Fabio H. Ribeiro and W. Nicholas Delgass.

A conventional method for turning biomass or coal into liquid fuels involves first breaking down the raw material with a chemical process that “gasifies” it into carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and hydrogen. Then those constituents are turned into a liquid fuel with other processes.

In the H2CAR concept, hydrogen would be harvested by splitting water molecules, possibly with a well-known method called electrolysis. Then the hydrogen would be added during the gasification step, making the process more efficient by suppressing the formation of carbon dioxide and converting all of the carbon atoms to fuel.

When conventional methods are used to convert biomass or coal to liquid fuels, 60 percent to 70 percent of the carbon atoms in the starting materials are lost in the process as carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, whereas no carbon atoms would be lost using H2CAR, Agrawal said.

“This waste is due to the fact that you are using energy contained in the biomass to drive the entire process,” he said. “I’m saying, treat biomass predominantly as a supplier of carbon atoms, not as an energy source.”

Power for the electrolysis would be provided by carbon-free energy sources, such as solar, wind or nuclear power. And, unlike conventional methods of producing liquid fuels from plant matter and coal, H2CAR would not emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

“The goal is to accomplish the complete transformation of every carbon atom in the feedstock to liquid fuel by supplementing the conversion process with hydrogen from a carbon-free energy source,” Agrawal said.

Other researchers have estimated that the United States has a sustainable supply of about 1.4 billion tons of biomass each year that could be used specifically for the production of liquid fuels. With conventional methods, that quantity of biomass would provide 30 percent of the fuel required for the nation’s annual transportation needs. But the same quantity of biomass would provide enough fuel to meet all transportation needs using the new H2CAR method, Agrawal said.

“This is possible without using any additional land,” he said.

A federal study indicates that 1 billion tons of biomass is potentially available every year from agricultural sources such as crop wastes, animal manure, grains and other crops. The remaining biomass could come from sources including fuel wood from forests, wastes left over from wood processing mills and paper mills, and construction and demolition debris.

The process also offers potential advantages over producing liquid fuels from coal using conventional methods, which emit carbon dioxide. Because H2CAR would not emit this additional carbon dioxide, the process would eliminate the need for proposed carbon dioxide “sequestering.”

Sequestering would involve pumping carbon dioxide emissions into saltwater aquifers and hollow underground pockets that used to contain oil, natural gas and coal deposits. But the procedure poses several potential pitfalls.

“Clearly, massive quantities of carbon dioxide would be sequestered during a century-long production of liquid fuels from coal,” Agrawal aid. “This would place extreme demands on the carbon dioxide capture, storage and monitoring systems.”

The new process also would be more practical than all-electric or hydrogen-powered cars, in part because of the limited storage capacity of batteries and hydrogen storage tanks.

“The tremendous convenience provided by the existing infrastructure for delivering and storing today’s fuels is a huge deterrent to introducing technologies that use only batteries or hydrogen alone,” Agrawal said. “A major advantage of our process is that it would enable us to use the current infrastructure and internal combustion engine technology. It is quite attractive for hybrid electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.”

To grow enough biomass for the entire nation’s transportation needs using the conventional method for producing biofuels would require a land area 25 percent to 55 percent the size of the United States, compared with about 6 percent to 10 percent for the H2CAR process.

“This large reduction of land area needed for H2CAR provides an opportunity for sustainable production of hydrocarbon fuel for the foreseeable future,” Agrawal said.

A major reason less land would be needed is because of the overall higher efficiency of generating hydrogen by splitting water molecules using solar energy to drive the electrolysis. Usually, the hydrogen in liquid fuels made from biomass comes from the plant matter itself. But it typically takes more than 10 times the solar energy to grow crops than it does to produce the equivalent quantity of hydrogen possessing the same energy content by using the solar-power electrolysis method, he said.

“So providing hydrogen derived from water through solar electrolysis reduces the amount of biomass needed,” Agrawal said. “The average energy efficiency of growing crops is typically less than 1 percent, whereas the energy efficiency of photovoltaic cells to split water into hydrogen and oxygen is about 8-10 percent. I am getting hydrogen at a higher efficiency than I get biomass, meaning I need less land.”

Using coal exclusively to produce liquid fuels for the nation’s transportation sector could deplete all coal deposits in the United States in about 90 years, whereas H2CAR would enable the known coal reserves to last 140 years.

The researchers suggest in the paper the chemical processing steps needed to make the new approach practical. But making the concept economically competitive with gasoline and diesel fuel would require research in two areas: finding ways to produce cheap hydrogen from carbon-free sources and developing a new type of gasifier needed for the process.

“Having said that, this is the first concept for creating a sustainable system that derives all of our transportation fuels from biomass,” Agrawal said.

Purdue has filed a patent for the concept. The approach is in the conceptual stages, and a plan for experimental research is in progress.
The work is supported by the Energy Center in Purdue’s Discovery Park.

The A To Z Guide To Political Interference In Science

In recent years, scientists who work for and advise the federal government have seen their work manipulated, suppressed, and distorted, while agencies have systematically limited public and policy maker access to critical scientific information. To document this abuse, the Union of Concerned Scientists has created the A to Z Guide to Political Interference in Science.

From air pollution to Ground Zero, the A to Z Guide showcases dozens of examples of the misuse of science on issues like childhood lead poisoning, toxic mercury contamination, and endangered species.

Engineers Design Affordable, Clean Car Using Existing Technology and Fuels

Automotive engineers at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) today unveiled a minivan design that shows automakers can build affordable vehicles with existing technology that would meet or exceed global warming pollution standards for cars and trucks adopted by California and 10 other states. Automakers are currently fighting these standards in court.

The minivan, dubbed the UCS Vanguard, features off-the-shelf engine, transmission and fueling systems and other technologies that would save consumers money, maintain vehicle safety and performance, and cut global warming pollution by more than 40 percent. All of the technologies in the Vanguard are in vehicles on the road today, but automakers have yet to combine them all in one single package. (For a computer-generated animation of the Vanguard’s features and the full report, go here.)

Abandoning Net Neutrality Discourages Improvements In Service

Charging online content providers such as Yahoo! and Google for preferential access to the customers of Internet service providers might not be in the best interest of the millions of Americans, despite claims to the contrary, a new University of Florida study finds.

“The conventional wisdom is that Internet service providers would have greater incentive to expand their service capabilities if they were allowed to charge,” said Kenneth Cheng, a professor in UF’s department of decision and information sciences. Cheng and his co-authors are scheduled to present the findings at the International Conference on Information, Technology and Management in New Delhi, India, next week. “That was completely the opposite of what we found.”

The research discovered that cable and telephone companies providing broadband to deliver the content of companies such as Google and Yahoo! are more likely to expand their infrastructure - resulting in quicker loading and response in a customer’s personal computer - if they don’t charge these companies for preferential treatment, Cheng said.

The findings are timely because of industry pressure on Congress to consider legislation that would allow broadband service providers to give preferential Internet service to online content providers willing to pay a fee. That would, in effect, end the current practice of “net neutrality,” he said.

“Abandoning net neutrality has far-reaching and rippling effects when you consider how the Internet has become part of our daily life experience,” said Subhajyoti Bandyopadhyay, a professor in UF’s department of decision and information sciences, who did the study with Cheng. “If the broadband service providers are allowed to charge the content providers and my favorite content provider does not happen to pay my local broadband service provider, would I have to switch favorites in order to have a faster Internet experience?”

The UF researchers, who took no position on the issue, developed an analytical model based on game theory to determine the winners and losers if net neutrality were abandoned, as well as whether the practice’s demise would give broadband service providers greater incentive to expand capacity.

Not surprisingly, they found that broadband service providers were the ones to gain the most from ending net neutrality because they could collect fees from content providers. The content providers such as Yahoo! and Google, in turn, would be the biggest losers.

Consumers will “win” if their favorite online provider is the one paying a fee to the telephone or cable company because it comes with a guarantee that its site would have the opportunity to load faster than its competitors, Cheng said. But those consumers who prefer a content provider that paid no such fee will “lose” in having to endure slower service, he said.

More important, the researchers found that the incentive for broadband service providers to expand and upgrade their service actually declines if net neutrality ends. Improving the infrastructure reduces the need for online content providers to pay for preferential treatment, Bandyopadhyay said.

“The whole purpose of charging for preferential treatment to content providers is that one content provider gains some edge over the other,” he said. “But when the capacity is expanded, this advantage becomes negligible.”

He gave the analogy of the expansion of a two-lane highway where drivers willing to pay a toll to subsidize road improvements are rewarded with exclusive use of a faster lane.

“If the road is upgraded from two to four lanes, with one express lane, these drivers might say ‘Three lanes are good enough for me. I don’t want to have to pay a toll any longer,’” he said. “So the desire to pay a toll when the road is expanded gets lesser.”

The experience of other countries also suggests that better service - up to three times faster - results when there is greater competition, Cheng said.

“In Japan and Korea, where there is net neutrality and much greater competition among broadband providers than in the United States, there are also higher broadband speeds,” he said.”

Tim Wu, a Columbia Law School professor who is credited with popularizing the term ‘network neutrality,’ praised the study. “Kenneth Cheng is doing important research on a topic that is vital to the future of networking,” he said.

Survey Finds Emotional Reactions To Nanotechnology

“The U.S. public’s perception of nanotechnology is up for grabs. It could divide along the lines of nuclear power, global warming and other contentious environmental issues absent a major public education and engagement effort by industry, government, civic groups and scientists. People who know little or nothing about ‘nanotechnology’ instantly react in an emotionally charged way to the concept, and their opinions divide along cultural lines as they learn more about it,” according to Dan M. Kahan, the Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor at Yale Law School.

His conclusions are based on the findings of a new Web-based public opinion survey of U.S. public perceptions of nanotechnology. “Essentially, when asked what they think about this new technology, Americans go with their gut instinct - which usually reflects their views toward other issues like climate change and nuclear power. When they learn more, they tend to adopt a stance about nanotechnology that fits their political and cultural predispositions,” said Kahan, one of the principal investigators in the study.

“Nothing in our findings suggests that public polarization over nanotechnology is inevitable,” noted Don Braman, a professor at The George Washington University. “Our results indicate that another outcome is possible but unlikely unless government, business, and educators take a more proactive approach to nanotechnology public engagement and communication. How people learn about nanotechnologies, from whom, and with what message, will be critical to public perceptions in the future.”

The results from this study of 1,800 persons who were recruited to participate in an online survey experiment were released today by the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. The research was conducted by The Cultural Cognition Project - an interdisciplinary team of top experts from Yale University, the University of Washington, The George Washington University, and Decision Research.

The study produced two major findings. The first is that “affect,” or emotion, plays a major role in people’s perceptions toward nanotechnology. According to Paul Slovic, a professor of psychology at the University of Oregon and president of Decision Research, “individuals’ visceral reactions to nanotechnology play a bigger role in their perception of its risks and benefits than any other factor.” “This is perfectly consistent,” Slovic said, “with research on how people form opinions on complicated issues involving environmental and technological risks.”

The second major finding of the study is that individuals’ values determine their reaction to information about nanotechnology. “We exposed one group of subjects to information about the benefits and risks of nanotechnology, and we compared their views to those subjects who did not receive such information,” explained Kahan.

“We found that when people who hold largely ‘individualistic’ values - and who tend to dismiss claims that commerce and industry are dangerous and need regulation - receive information about nanotechnology, they tend to focus on the benefits. When those who hold ‘egalitarian’ and ‘communitarian’ values - and who are relatively more community-oriented and sensitive to environmental and technological risks - get the same information, they focus on the risks.”

“Social psychologists call this a polarization effect,” Kahan said. The study showed that political liberals and conservatives polarize, too, when exposed to information about nanotechnology. Differences also emerged between whites and African Americans.

“Based on our results, it is fair to anticipate that as nanotechnology assumes a higher profile in the media and public imagination, people’s attitudes may divide along the same lines that nuclear power or climate change have,” said John Gastil, professor at the University of Washington. Gastil indicated that the Cultural Cognition Project team plans to engage in future research on ways to communicate about nanotechnology that doesn’t polarize people.

The study also confirmed a major finding of an earlier poll conducted by Hart Research that Americans remain largely unaware of nanotechnology - despite government and industry investments of $10 billion annually in nanotechnology research and development. The new survey found that over 80 percent of U.S. respondents had heard “little” or “nothing at all” about nanotechnology.

Nevertheless, the vast majority of subjects - more than 90 percent - held an opinion about whether nanotechnology’s benefits would outweigh its risks, even when supplied with no additional information.

“When it comes to nanotechnology, the American public is probably like people from Missouri - the ‘Show Me’ State,” according to David Rejeski, director of the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies. “They have to be convinced that the benefits of this new technology - with its valuable applications in medicine, the environment, and energy production - will outweigh its risks. This survey indicates that just providing the public with factual scientific information about nanotechnology will not guarantee popular acceptance and support. The window of opportunity for reaching out to the public about nanotechnology - before polarization occurs - is closing fast. The current government strategy for educating and engaging the public is weak, and industry strategies are almost nonexistent,” said Rejeski.

Solar Energy Conversion Offers A Solution To Help Mitigate Global Warming

Solar energy has the power to reduce greenhouse gases and provide increased energy efficiency, says a scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, in a report published in the March issue of Physics Today.

Last month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of the United Nations released a report confirming global warming is upon us and attributing the growing threat to the man-made burning of fossil fuels.

Opportunities to increase solar energy conversion as an alternative to fossil fuels are addressed in the Physics Today article, co-authored by George Crabtree, senior scientist and director of Argonne’s Materials Science Division, and Nathan Lewis, professor of Chemistry at Caltech and director of its Molecular Materials Research Center.

Currently, between 80 percent and 85 percent of our energy comes from fossil fuels. However, fossil fuel resources are of finite extent and are distributed unevenly beneath Earth’s surface. When fossil fuel is turned into useful energy through combustion, it often produces environmental pollutants that are harmful to human health and greenhouse gases that threaten the global climate. In contrast, solar resources are widely available and have a benign effect on the environment and climate, making it an appealing alternative energy source.

“Sunlight is not only the most plentiful energy resource on earth, it is also one of the most versatile, converting readily to electricity, fuel and heat,” said Crabtree. “The challenge is to raise its conversion efficiency by factors of five or ten. That requires understanding the fundamental conversion phenomena at the nanoscale. We are just scratching the surface of this rich research field.”

Argonne carries out forefront basic research on all three solar conversion routes. The laboratory is creating next-generation nanostructured solar cells using sophisticated atomic layer deposition techniques that replace expensive silicon with inexpensive titanium dioxide and chemical dyes. Its artificial photosynthesis program imitates nature using simple chemical components to convert sunlight, water and carbon dioxide directly into fuels like hydrogen, methane and ethanol. Its program on thermoelectric materials takes heat from the sun and converts it directly to electricity.

The Physics Today article is based on the conclusions contained in the report of the Basic Energy Sciences Workshop on Solar Energy Utilization sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy. Crabtree and Lewis served as co-chairs of the workshop and principal editors of the report. The key conclusions of the report identified opportunities for higher solar energy efficiencies in the areas of:

• Electricity - important research developments lie in the development of new, less expensive materials for solar cells, including organics, thin films, dyes and shuttle ions, and in understanding the dynamics of charge transfer across nanostructured interfaces.
• Fuel - solar photons can be converted into chemical fuel more resourcefully by breeding or genetically engineering designer plants, connecting natural photosynthetic pathways in novel configurations and using artificial bio-inspired nanoscale systems.
• Heat - controlling the size, density and distribution of nanodot inclusions during bulk synthesis could enhance thermoelectric performance and achieve more reliable and inexpensive electricity production from the sun’s heat.

Fungus Genome Sequenced To Be Harnessed For Improved Biofuels Production

On the road to making biofuels more economically competitive with fossil fuels, there are significant potholes to negotiate. For cellulosic ethanol production, one major detour has being addressed with the characterization of the genetic blueprint of the fungus Pichia stipitis, by the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI) and collaborators at the U.S. Forest Service, Forest Products Laboratory (FPL). The research, entailing the identification of numerous genes in P. stipitis responsible for its fermenting and cellulose-bioconverting prowess, and an analysis of these metabolic pathways, is featured in the March 4 advanced online publication of Nature Biotechnology.

P. stipitis is the most proficient microbial fermenter in nature of the five-carbon “wood sugar” xylose-abundant in hardwoods and agricultural leftovers, which represent a motherlode of bioenergy fodder.

“Increasing the capacity of P. stipitis to ferment xylose and using this knowledge for improving xylose metabolism in other microbes, such as Saccharomyces cerevisiae, brewer’s yeast, offers a strategy for improved production of cellulosic ethanol,” said Eddy Rubin, DOE JGI Director. “In addition, this strategy could enhance the productivity and sustainability of agriculture and forestry by providing new outlets for agricultural and wood harvest residues.”

Ligonocellulosic biomass, a complex of cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin, is derived from such plant-based “feedstocks” as agricultural waste, paper and pulp, wood chips, grasses, or trees such as poplar, recently sequenced by DOE JGI. Under current strategies for generating lignocellulosic ethanol, these forms of biomass require expensive and energy-intensive pretreatment with chemicals and/or heat to loosen up this complex. Enzymes are then employed to break down complex carbohydrate into sugars, such as glucose and xylose, which can then be fermented to produce ethanol. Additional energy is required for the distillation process to achieve a fuel-grade product. Now, the power of genomics is being directed to optimize this age-old process.

“The information embedded in the genome sequence of Pichia has helped us identify several gene targets to improve xylose metabolism,” said Pichia paper lead author Thomas W. Jeffries of the Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin. “We are now engineering these genes to increase ethanol production.” Jeffries said that yeast strains like Pichia have evolved to cope with the oxygen-limited environment rich in partially digested wood that is encountered in the gut of insects, from where the sequenced strain was originally isolated.

FPL has a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) in place with a New York City-based bioenergy company, Xethanol Corporation, which plans to integrate Dr. Jeffries’ findings into its large-scale biofuels production processes.

Pichia joins white rot fungus in the growing portfolio of bioenergy-relevant fungus genomes sequenced by DOE JGI through its user programs and contributed freely to the worldwide scientific community.

Research Shows BMI Often Not An Accurate Indicator Of Body Fat

Body mass index, or BMI, long considered the standard for measuring the amount of fat in a person’s body, may not be as accurate as originally thought, according to new research.

A research team from Michigan State University and Saginaw Valley State University measured the BMI of more than 400 college students - some of whom were athletes and some not - and found that in most cases the student’s BMI did not accurately reflect his or her percentage of body fat.

The research is published in the March issue of Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, the official journal of the American College of Sports Medicine.

BMI is determined by this equation: A person’s weight divided by his or her height squared. Generally a BMI of 25 or above indicates a person is overweight; 30 or above indicates obesity. A person with a higher BMI is thought to be at a greater risk of heart disease, diabetes and other weight-related problems.

“The overlying issue is the same criteria for BMI are used across the board,” said Joshua Ode, a Ph.D. student in the MSU Department of Kinesiology and an assistant professor of kinesiology at Saginaw Valley. “Whether you’re an athlete or a 75-year-old man, all the same cut points are used.”

“BMI should be used cautiously when classifying fatness, especially among college-age people,” said Jim Pivarnik, an MSU professor of kinesiology and epidemiology. “It really doesn’t do a good job of saying how fat a person really is.”

The problem, especially among younger people and athletes, is that BMI does not distinguish between body fat and muscle mass, said Ode.

“A previous study of NFL football players found that a large percentage of them - around 60 percent - were considered obese,” he said. “But when you look at an athlete like that, you see that in many cases he is not obese. Many athletes have huge BMIs because of muscle mass, but in many cases are not fat.”

The answer, said Pivarnik, is instead of having one cutoff point for everyone, perhaps have different classifications for different people.

“Is a BMI of 25 for overweight and 30 for obese the right ones to use with 20- to 29-year-olds in terms of disease risk?” he asked. “Maybe it could be as simple as this: If you’re a regular exerciser or an athlete, maybe 28 is overweight for you and 33 is considered obese.”

BMI, said Pivarnik, is used as a “surrogate” for percent fat, even though body fat doesn’t really fit into the equation.

“What if you take fat out of the equation?” he said. “Is there something unique about BMI that may increase a person’s risk of chronic disease, unrelated to fatness? Are people with high BMIs but low fatness as much at risk of heart disease as other people? The answer is no one knows.”

In their research, Ode and Pivarnik used carefully measured height and weight to calculate BMI in more than 400 college-age people. They then used a standard method of measuring body fatness and found that BMI was not providing an accurate portrayal of the amount of fat a student had.

Other members of the research team included Mathew Reeves, an associate professor of epidemiology at MSU, and Jeremy Knous, a Ph.D. student in the MSU Department of Kinesiology.

Software Patch Makes Car More Fuel-Efficient

A car wastes energy almost continuously. Whether it is running in first, second, or a higher gear, there is only one position of the accelerator that guarantees optimal performance. Accelerating a little less or a little bit more can cause considerable loss of energy. John Kessels has designed a way to save energy by enabling the car to achieve optimal engine performance more frequently. With a relatively small modification it is possible to reduce fuel consumption by 2.6%. Kessels obtained his doctorate from the Technical University Eindhoven (TU/e) on Wednesday February 14, 2007.

Car manufacturers are frequently criticized for failing to reduce fuel consumption. In order to meet the Kyoto objectives, European car manufacturers have agreed to reduce the emission of CO2 for their fleet to 140 grams per kilometer in 2008. Many car manufacturers have not yet attained this reduced emission. Ford is one of them and the company has been diligently searching for a way to further increase the fuel-efficiency of its cars.

Hybrid cars
One way to reduce fuel consumption is to build so-called hybrid cars. In these cars the internal combustion engine is more fuel-efficient because a secondary power source is available: a generator. If the power from the combustion engine exceeds the actual power demand for driving, this generator stores the excess power in the car’s battery. It also works the other way around. The generator can provide extra power if the car needs more power than the combustion engine can provide at optimum performance. Hybrid vehicles thus reduce fuel consumption by 25% or more.

Electric energy systems
Kessels examined the possible savings without using the advanced hybrid technology. He found that excess power can be used to charge the car battery. In addition, the generator, which charges the car battery, can be turned off when it is inefficient for the engine to power it, which leads to reduced fuel consumption. The car can also brake electrically, generating energy, which can be stored in the battery. Finally, he found that it is possible to partly shut off the electric energy systems, such as rear window and seat heating, for further improvement of the power supply system.

Software patch
With his new method Kessels can achieve a total fuel savings of 2.6%, without having to replace any of the parts of the car. Simply uploading a software patch to the car’s computer and adding one single small cable suffices. If it were possible to shut the engine off when it is idle, a savings of 5 to 6% could be achieved. This, however, would require significant adjustments to the car, including installing a more powerful starter motor and an automatic gearbox.

Creating New Life Forms That May Help Eradicate Cancer Affecting Women

Instead of using the usual cancer-fighting modalities, surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation, researchers from a drug development company called Advaxis, have embarked on a novel approach to fighting cancer: Engaging the immune system to attack cancer in the same the way it would a flu vaccine, by creating new life forms.

Dr. Vafa Shahabi, Advaxis’ Director of Research and Development, reports that because the human immune system is not designed to fight cancer on its own, she and her colleagues are trying to harness its power through a new kind of life form: specifically a family of vaccines, which they call Lovaxin. The vaccines are comprised of new strains of bacteria created in Advaxis’ laboratory that are programmed to kill off specific cancers.

The Key: A Microbe Found in Dairy Products
Central to this startling discovery is the microbe Listeria monocytogenes, a common bacterium found in milk, cheese and other dairy products. This microorganism apparently aids in fighting cancer by activating the body’s own killer (cytotoxic T) cells to elicit a stronger than normal immune response to the presence of cancer cells. The vaccines “teach” the immune system to mount a specialized, targeted response that is lethal to cancer.

When Listeria is introduced in the body, it has a powerful, direct stimulatory effect on the activities of tumor-killing T cells. “Essentially the modified Listeria vaccines harness the power of the immune system against this infectious agent,” explains Dr. Shabahi, “and then directs it to successfully attack cancer cells. The bacterium in effect then becomes a cancer-fighting ‘Trojan horse,’ with the enemy tucked inside.”

For breast cancer, Dr. Shababi’s team fused Listeria with a tumor-associated protein, HER-2/Neu, to immune cells, to create a vaccine called Lovaxin B. What these cells do is enlist killer T cells to seek and destroy tumor cells that over-express the HER-2/Neu molecule. This is significant because HER-2/Neu is over- expressed in 20%- 40% of all breast cancers.

As Dr. Shababi explains: “We not only created a new breast cancer vaccine, but also have a new life form, since the modified Listeria becomes a new strain, not seen in nature. In effect, it becomes a cancer fighting “superbug” capable of treating breast cancer in patients whose tumors express the HER-X/Neu protein.” Advaxis has already created several strains for potential use in future vaccines to treat other cancers. The company is also currently testing its cervical cancer vaccine, Lovaxin C, in phase I/II trials.

Investigation Reveals Widespread Suppression Of Federal Climate Research

An investigative report by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and the Government Accountability Project (GAP) has uncovered new evidence of widespread political interference in federal climate science. The report, which includes a survey of hundreds of federal scientists at seven federal agencies and dozens of in-depth interviews, documents a high regard for climate change research but broad interference in communicating scientific results.

“The new evidence shows that political interference in climate science is no longer a series of isolated incidents but a system-wide epidemic,” said Dr. Francesca Grifo, Director of the UCS Scientific Integrity Program. “Tailoring scientific fact for political purposes has become a problem across many federal science agencies.”

UCS distributed surveys to 1,600 climate scientists, asking for information about the state of federal climate research. The scientists who responded reported experiencing at least 435 occurrences of political interference in their work over the past five years. Nearly half of all respondents (46 percent) perceived or personally experienced pressure to eliminate the words “climate change,” “global warming,” or other similar terms from a variety of communications. Forty-three percent of respondents reported they had perceived or personally experienced changes or edits during review of their work that changed the meaning of their scientific findings. And nearly half (46 percent) perceived or personally experienced new or unusual administrative requirements that impair climate-related work.

In contrast, scientists at the independent but federally-funded National Center for Atmospheric Research, who are not federal employees, reported far fewer instances of interference.

The GAP investigation, consisting of 40 in-depth interviews with climate scientists and a review of 2,000 agency documents, revealed that agency media policies often unnecessarily hinder scientists’ interaction with the media rather than facilitate public dissemination of their research. For instance, Dr. Drew Shindell, an ozone specialist and NASA climatologist, submitted a press release to announce the publication of a paper on climate change. Press officers significantly watered down language that described his findings, and the new research received little notice by the media.

“Increasingly, scientists and support staff at federal research facilities have been getting signals that climate science is a ’sensitive’ topic,” said GAP Staff Attorney Tarek Maassarani. “With an issue of this significance, we should be encouraging scientists to tell us what they know about it, and we should listen.”

While a large majority of respondents (88 percent) agreed that federal climate research is of generally excellent quality, respondents reported decreasing job satisfaction and a worsening environment for climate science in federal agencies. Two-thirds of respondents (67 percent) said that today’s environment for federal government climate research is worse compared to five years ago. At NASA, three in five scientists reported decreased job satisfaction.

“Every day that the government stifles climate science is a day we fail to protect future generations and our planet from the consequences of global warming,” said Dr. Grifo. “We need reforms that affirm the right of scientists to fully communicate their research and to blow the whistle when important science is suppressed.”

The report urges the federal government to ensure basic scientific freedoms and support scientists in sharing their research with the public, including respecting scientists’ constitutional right to speak about any subject in their private lives and allowing scientists to make ultimate decisions about the communication of their research.

“The new Congress must act to prevent the continued interference with science for political purposes,” said Maassarani. “A good first step would be for Congress to amend current whistle blower protections to specifically protect the rights of federal government scientists.”

From Farm Waste To Fuel Tanks

Using corncob waste as a starting material, researchers have created carbon briquettes with complex nanopores capable of storing natural gas at an unprecedented density of 180 times their own volume and at one seventh the pressure of conventional natural gas tanks.

The breakthrough, announced today in Kansas City, Mo., is a significant step forward in the nationwide effort to fit more automobiles to run on methane, an abundant fuel that is domestically produced and cleaner burning than gasoline.

Supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Partnership for Innovation program, researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia (MU) and Midwest Research Institute (MRI) in Kansas City developed the technology. The technology has been incorporated into a test bed installed on a pickup truck used regularly by the Kansas City Office of Environmental Quality.

The briquettes are the first technology to meet the 180 to 1 storage to volume target set by the U.S. Department of Energy in 2000, a long-term goal of principal project leader Peter Pfeifer of MU.

“We are very excited about this breakthrough because it may lead to a flat and compact tank that would fit under the floor of a passenger car, similar to current gasoline tanks,” said Pfeifer. “Such a technology would make natural gas a widely attractive alternative fuel for everyone.”

According to Pfeifer, the absence of such a flatbed tank has been the principal reason why natural gas, which costs significantly less than gasoline and diesel and burns more cleanly, is not yet widely used as a fuel for vehicles.

Standard natural gas storage systems use high-pressure natural gas that has been compressed to a pressure of 3600 pounds per square inch and bulky tanks that can take up the space of an entire car trunk. The carbon briquettes contain networks of pores and channels that can hold methane at a high density without the cost of extreme compression, ultimately storing the fuel at a pressure of only 500 pounds per square inch, the pressure found in natural gas pipelines.

The low pressure of 500 pounds per square inch is central for crafting the tank into any desired shape, so ultimately, fuel storage tanks could be thin-walled, slim, rectangular structures affixed to the underside of the car, not taking up room in the vehicle.

Pfeifer and his colleagues at MU and MRI discovered that that fractal pore spaces (spaces created by repetition of similar patterns at different scales) are remarkably efficient at storing natural gas.

“Our project is the first time a carbon storage material has been made from corncobs, an abundantly available waste product in the Midwest,” said Pfeifer. “The carbon briquettes are made from the cobs that remain after the kernels have been harvested. The state of Missouri alone could supply the raw material for more than 10 million cars per year. It would be a unique opportunity to bring corn to the market for alternative fuels–corn kernels for ethanol production, and corncob for natural gas tanks.”

The test pickup truck, part of a fleet of more than 200 natural gas vehicles operated by Kansas City, has been in use since mid-October and the researchers are monitoring the technology’s performance, from mileage data to measurements of the stability of the briquettes.

In addition to efforts to commercialize the technology, the researchers are now focusing on the next generation briquette, one that will store more natural gas and cost less to produce. Pfeifer believes this next generation of briquette might even hold promise for storing hydrogen.

Grounds for Change

In the brightly colored basement of an old fraternity house in Bloomington, Indiana, an eclectic group of customers gather daily over coffee. Proudly home to kitschy 1970s furniture and vintage wall hangings depicting Neil Armstrong, JFK and dogs playing poker, the independent coffeehouse Soma serves up lattes, mochas, macchiatos and regular cups of joe. “In the morning, we normally have a crowd of middle-aged professionals who hang out here and get coffee before they head to work, and in the afternoon groups of punk rock kids come here on their bikes,” says Abe Morris, a former manager of Soma who has recently cut back on his hours to make time for graduate school. “On weekends, a retired couple often drops by to meet with their grown-up kids, and they all have family time,” he says.

The coffee offered at Soma is as diverse as its customers, and in addition to flavored varieties, includes colorful packets of certified “shade grown” (i.e., “songbird friendly”), “organic” and “Fair Trade” java. Down the street in this college town, the Theater Café serves only organic coffee and blends at prices that guarantee farmers a living wage. Clearly, many consumers—even cash-strapped college students—are willing to pay extra for a dose of political correctness along with their morning jolt.

To most casual browsers, coffee has as much to do with songbirds as chalk does to cheese, but a growing movement centering on coffee’s many political dimensions is beginning, like the caffeine in the cup, to wake up a disinterested public.

According to 2005 data from the National Coffee Association (NCA), 80 percent of Americans drink coffee occasionally, while 53 percent drink it daily. America’s 236 million coffee consumers spent an estimated $19 billion on the beverage in 2004, or $80.50 per person. Coffee accounts for 91 percent of the U.S. hot drink market by volume and 76 percent by value, according to the market research firm Euromonitor International.

See the rest of this great article here...

Cold Storage Solution For Global Warming?

Researchers from the University of Leicester and the British Geological Society (BGS) have proposed storing CO2 in huge underground reservoirs as a way of reducing emissions- and have even identified sites in Western Europe that would be suitable.

Their research, published in the journal, Planet Earth, reveals that CO2 can be contained in cool geological aquifers or reservoirs, where it can remain harmlessly for many thousands of years.

PhD research student, Ameena Camps, is working with Professor Mike Lovell at the University’s Department of Geology and with Chris Rochelle at BGS, investigating the storage of CO2.

Storing the gas in a solid form as a gas hydrate, or as a pool of liquid CO2 below a cap of hydrate cemented sediments, is believed to offer an alternative method of geological sequestration to the current practices of storage in warm, deep sediments in the North Sea.

Recently quoted in Planet Earth, Ameena Camps explained: “Hydrates (also known as clathrates) are ice-like crystalline minerals that look like normal ice and form when gas and water freeze together at low temperature and high pressure. They are made of a cage of frozen water molecules with the gas molecules trapped inside.”

Although gas hydrates were first discovered two centuries ago, the possible use of carbon dioxide hydrate as a means to help resolve problems of global climate change, and of naturally occurring methane hydrate as a future source of energy, have only recently been suggested.

Laboratory experiments carried out as part of Ameena Camps’ PhD project have indicated that carbon dioxide hydrate should form stable structures in sediments under oceans. By employing geophysical techniques and computer modelling, Ms Camps has identified a number of sites in Western Europe with the potential to store carbon dioxide by this method.

She is also exploring further implications of her research that may benefit geologists’ understanding of the stability of deep submarine slopes and contribute to improvements in global water supplies through further understanding of desalination processes.

Professor Mike Lovell, of the University of Leicester Department of Geology commented: “Ms Camps’ work is at the forefront of gas hydrate research, and has produced some very exciting results, highlighting the importance of investment in further studies of hydrates.

“Investigations of natural methane hydrates will help our understanding of their role as a natural hazard, while carbon dioxide hydrates are a potential sink for greenhouse gas emissions. This work also has application in other fields such as space research into hydrates on other planetary bodies.”

KidRocket Web Browser v1.0

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A New Worm Creeps All Over MySpace

It’s great to meet people online and befriend them, to share your thoughts, photographs, movies, and much more. Even better when the community Web site is easy to log in to and manage; until your network intermingles with the criminal gangs of the Web underground!

Security Experts at MicroWorld Technologies inform that a Worm named ‘Win32.Ofigel’ is spreading in large numbers across the world among a 70 million strong user base of the highly successful community portal, MySpace.com. Security experts have long raised concerns about the vast opportunity that Web sites like MySpace provide to online thieves and criminals in exploiting their open nature and easy access.

When a member of the community views an infected profile, a QuickTime movie carrying the Ofigel worm is played, which exploits an XSS vulnerability in the network using a Java script. The Worm then replaces the user’s MySpace menu with a fraudulent one and the menu items redirect the user to a phishing Web site identical to MySpace, where the username and password of the victim are captured.

Then the Worm logs onto certain Web sites to download the malicious QuickTime movie and adds it to the user’s profile. When a new user, mostly the victim’s contact, watches the movie, his or her computer gets infected and the chain goes on.

As if that’s not enough, Ofigel later harvests the email IDs of a victim’s contacts and starts sending spam mails to them with subject lines like: What else is there to do on a Sunday, You better not forget about this, Hehe that was so funny, Better see this one last time lol, Who’s coming to the party tonight, etc. All messages are quite in sync with the youth culture of MySpace.

“This is just one of the many recent incidents that goes on to prove how multi-tiered and multi-pronged the online threats have become in recent times,” says Sunil Kripalani, Vice President, Global Sales and Marketing, MicroWorld Technologies. “The attack involves a worm, a media player, phishing and spamming. It also gives a clear indication that community Web sites are fast becoming one of the most preferred vectors of malware proliferation.”

MySpace officials inform that they are acting to minimize the impact of this worm on users by identifying the URLs attempting to exploit this vulnerability. Those URLs are being blocked, while the infected profiles being removed.

About the Author
Btv Raj is the Content Writer and Creative Visualizer of MicroWorld Technologies.

Soot From Wood Stoves In Developing World Impacts Global Warming More Than Expected

New measurements of soot produced by traditional cook stoves used in developing countries suggest that these stoves emit more harmful smoke particles and could have a much greater impact on global climate change than previously thought, according to a study scheduled to appear in the Nov. 1 issue of the American Chemical Society journal Environmental Science & Technology.

Perhaps as many as 400 million of these stoves, fueled by wood or crop residue, are used daily for cooking and heating by more than 2 billion people worldwide, according to the study’s lead authors, Tami Bond, Ph.D., and doctoral candidate Chris Roden of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. In a field test in Honduras, the researchers found that cook stoves there, which are similar to those used in other developing nations, produce two times more smoke particles than expected, based on previous laboratory studies. These dark, sooty particles, which are darker than those produced by grassland or forest fires, have a climate warming effect because they absorb solar energy and heat the atmosphere, according to Roden.

In earlier work, Bond estimated that burning firewood - the principal fuel for cook stoves in the developing world - produces 800,000 metric tons of soot worldwide each year. In comparison, diesel cars and trucks generate about 890,000 metric tons of soot annually. These two sources each account for about 10 percent of the soot emitted into the world’s atmosphere each year, she said.

In addition to its environmental effects, smoke from cook stove fires is a major cause of respiratory problems, eye infections and tuberculosis, according to the researchers.

“Emissions from wood cook stoves affect the health of users - especially of women and children - neighborhood air quality, and global climate. Reducing these emissions, through the use of cleaner burning stoves and fuels, should have far-reaching benefits,” Bond said.

In the past, scientists have relied on laboratory measures of pollutants from cooking fires because field tests have been difficult to conduct, in part, because of limited access to remote locations and a lack of power to operate the scientific equipment, according to Roden. To get a more accurate measure of the environmental impact of these stoves, Roden and Bond developed a portable battery-operated sampling cart, which includes sensors for measuring carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, particle soot absorption, particle color and concentration, which they took to Honduras for field tests.

Honduras is typical of Central American countries, where more than 80 percent of families cook their meals over open wood fires, according to Trees, Water & People, an American nonprofit agency which, along with the Honduran Association for Development, helped facilitate this study. In most cases, these families can’t afford or don’t have access to electricity, gas or alternative fuel sources.

“We expected field measurements to be different from lab measurements, and we suspected the amount of black carbon from these stoves would be higher than open burning, but we were surprised by how much,” Roden said.

Trees, Water & People and other nonprofit agencies are distributing new low-cost, wood-burning cook stoves in Honduras and other Latin American countries that appear to be less polluting and more fuel efficient, according to the researchers. However, further analysis is needed.

“Designing and distributing improved cook stoves may be an effective method of mitigating global climate change, and can improve the health of the users,” Roden said. “However, the cook stoves must be well designed and properly tested. They must be built with local traditions and practices in mind and must be easy to use, or they may become expensive doorstops.”

Iowa State Researchers Improving Plastics Made From Corn And Soy Proteins

David Grewell picked up the little plastic model of a molecule he keeps in his office.

He scrunched the model’s folding pieces into a ball. That’s about the shape of a soy or corn protein, said Grewell, an Iowa State University assistant professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering. Then he unfolded the model into a long, straight loop. That’s what happens when researchers add some glycerin - a byproduct of biodiesel production - and some water to the molecule. And that’s how biorenewable, biodegradable plastics can be made from the proteins in Iowa crops.

But those aren’t the strongest plastics. So Grewell is working with a team of Iowa State researchers to reinforce the plastics with nanoclays, pieces of clay that are just 10 to 20 billionths of a meter thick.

It’s not easy to work with those tiny pieces of clay. They tend to stick together in clumps because of electrostatic forces, said Michael Kessler, an Iowa State assistant professor of materials science and engineering who’s also working on the project. Those clay platelets need to be separated and mixed evenly throughout the plastic to be much good as a reinforcing agent.

The researchers are turning to high-powered ultrasonics - high-frequency sound waves too high for human hearing - to separate and disperse the platelets. It’s a technology Grewell knows a lot about: he worked 12 years in research and development for the Branson Ultrasonics Corp. of Danbury, Conn. He has used ultrasonics to freeze strawberries, process rice and handle many other applications.

The researchers are also using microcellular foaming technologies from Trexel Inc. of Woburn, Mass., to mold and extrude the plastics. The processing technology is expected to enhance the biodegradable plastics while allowing the researchers to use less base material to make the plastics.

Grewell said the potential applications for plastics from crop proteins include disposable wraps for hay bales, pots for plants and packaging for the food industry.

Grewell, Kessler, Howard Van Auken, a professor of management, and Gowrishankar Srinivasan, a graduate student in industrial and agricultural technology, are working on the plastics project with two Iowa companies, the Vermeer Manufacturing Co. of Pella and Vibroacoustics Solutions Inc. of Ames. The project is partially supported by a $68,758 grant from the Grow Iowa Values Fund, a state economic development program.

Jay Van Roekel, the segment manager for Vermeer’s ag product group, said the company will test hay wraps made from the plastics developed by the Iowa State researchers. Van Roekel said the company is very interested in helping the research project.

“It’s exciting to be involved in the development of biorenewable technologies and the harvesting of biomass,” he said. “We see biorenewables taking hold and expanding every day.”

Sam Senti, an application specialist for Vibroacoustics Solutions Inc., said the company would like to use biorenewable and biodegradable plastics in a stick lubricant it has developed. The bio-based lubricant rubs off on metals - it, for example, can be used to help locomotive wheels roll more easily around curves in a track. Senti said biodegradable plastics that add rigidity to the company’s product would be very useful in outdoor applications. And so the company wants to help the researchers with some field tests.

The researchers’ plastics aren’t quite ready to leave the laboratory. Grewell said he’s working on production recipes, processing techniques and ultrasonics applications. Kessler will also work to characterize the plastics’ strength plus its thermal and mechanical properties.

Working with the two companies should help move all that work ahead, Kessler said.

“Collaborating with these companies will be useful,” he said. “And we hope it will help us come up with other ideas.”

Support the Wilberforce!

Many people find it hard to believe that slavery still exists. Whether it's bonded slavery with men, women and children toiling on plantations, in rice mills, brick kilns and many other industries; or, the deplorable and prevalent trade in humans to serve as sex slaves, slavery is flourishing in many parts of the world. It is still every bit as ugly as it was 200 years ago and it must end.

“In the nineteenth century, Frederick Douglass and some other former slaves and abolitionists understandably objected when people extended the term ‘slavery’ to factory workers and other groups who, even if brutally exploited, were not deprived of membership in a family and did not pass on to their children an inherited status as private property. Scholars, reformers, and diplomats still debate the inclusiveness pf the term ‘slave.’ The issue has become more complex given the fact that inmates of the Soviet gulags or Nazi concentration camps were totally expendable in the eyes of the authorities. Chattel slaves [i.e. regarded as an object of personal property; owned] at least represented a valuable investment, an investment of rising value in much of the New World, but that slightly protective aspect of chattel slavery was absent from twentieth-century “state slavery” and does not apply to many millions of bonded and coerced workers in today’s so-called developing world.

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General Purpose

The general purpose of this web log may be changing as we go. But as it stands now our intent is to be able to bring your attention to some things that are both directly and indirectly associated with Mocha Maya's. I am exploring ways to be able to interact more efficiently with our patrons and our musicians and artists and all of the people that effect or are effected by the presence of Mocha Maya's. I have been wanting to do surveys to get a more accurate sense of what people want from the store, or in our newsletter or from the events we have there or on any number of topics. I also come across a number of articles and websites in my travels that I would like to bring to the attention of whoever may be interested. Some are directly related to the coffee industry or the arts while others may be tech related or environmental in nature but I would like to put forth nonetheless. So I am hoping to post some of things here for people to peruse. I am still debating on whether a blog or a message forum would be a better way to "take a survey", but as I said, I may try it here only to move it elsewhere if a more effective way presents itself.

Anyway, I hope that this is yet another facet of what we are trying to do at Mocha Maya's that will enrich, provoke thought or otherwise make your life just that much better. Comments and input are encouraged but anything that is blatantly rude or out of place will be removed from the site with all diligence.

Thank you all so much for your support!