All in the Name of Science

Spent four hours at the Lucas Center at Stanford, part of the time inside a massive GE fMRI machine while wearing an electrode cap in order to conduct an EEG simultaneously. While scanning, it’s as loud as a jackhammer going off at five paces, though I surprisingly didn’t feel claustrophobic. It’s quite easy to fall asleep, which is a good thing as the researchers’ eventual goal is to study sleep apnea, though I was just a guinnea pig to calibrate some new EEG equipment. The tests themselves were banal – staring at changing checkerboard patterns, circles (beamed with a projector onto a mirror above my head), and listening to two alternating tones. I wish I could have seen if a different part of my brain is used when I read upside down, as I tend to do every now and then to see how I’ll fare.

The caption reads ‘always check that photoplethysmograph is mounted correctly.’

A few years ago a Canadian neuroscientist by the name of Persinger zapped the frontal lobes of his patients with a magnetic field and found that they pretty much all went through “religious” experiences, sensing another presence in the room. Unfortunately the paper was published in an obscure journal, but you can find coverage of the “God helmet” on BBC’s Horizon, Wired, and Discover.

Khosla & Somerville on Energy

A few weeks ago Prof. Chris Somerville and Vinod Khosla gave separate talks at Stanford on future energy sources; I’ll begin with Somerville’s talk on ethanol production. He motivated the subject with Nate Lewis‘s estimate of how much land would be necessary to satisfy the country’s energy needs with ethanol. Biodiesel wasn’t covered, although he alluded to the fact that you can make it in your bathtub! He stated that while current corn grain ethanol plants are so profitable that they can raise $12 million in funding within a day, the future is in cellulosic ethanol. His best bet is miscanthus (switchgrass perennial – seen on the right, courtesy U Illinois) which grows on the east coast (as it depends on decent rainfall). You can’t simply burn the biomass as it’s not efficient (you can’t get it into small enough particles like you can with coal – 100 microns), so you have to boil it with acid, neutralize it, separate the sugars, ferment, and treat with enzymes to finally get 12% ethanol which is sold for about $3 a gallon today (see historical prices here – ethanol began trading on the Chicago Board of Trade in 2005). Went into detail about the inability of enzymes to break down biomass if it has more than 25% lignin, as well as efforts to sequence relevant plant genomes with the Joint Genome Institute.

On to Khosla. His VC firm hasn’t published their investments, but he went through some of them in his talk – in addition to the list here there is nanoh2o. One of the companies, LS9, was cofounded by Chris Somerville. Another, Amyris Biotechnology, has an interesting story. Founded to originally develop synthetic artimisinin for cheap malaria drugs with the help of the Gates Foundation, Khosla approached him to see if the same techniques could be applied to biofuels.

Further points from the speech:
- ethanol yields have been gowing up in Brasil for 25 years without advanced technologies
- biodiesel & corn ethanol won’t scale in terms of gallons per acre
- a report from the IPCC detailed how you can potentially have negative carbon emissions for driving your car, as plants sequester carbon while they grow
- imagines solar being used for electricity and biofuels for cars
- is betting on solar (concentrated) thermal such as power towers, not photovoltaics themselves. believes will be able to eliminate coal (though his estimates rely on the cost of carbon)
- thinks a cellulosic ethanol breakthrough is easier than a battery breakthrough as lithium batteries have a theoretical max that is 2-3x of today’s capacity
- imagines an entire industry of bio-refineries instead oil refineries, producing platform chemicals like succinic and lactic acid
- the time from financing to manufacture of a solar thermal plant is 10 months, compared to > 5 years for a nuclear plant
- coal power plants emit more uranium/thorium into air than from all nuclear accidents
- railed against the American Petroleum Institute’s claims that ethanol can’t be transported in existing pipelines – claimed is possible (they do it in Brazil), as long as it’s not mixed with oil
- the subsidy on ethanol went from the growers to the oil companies thanks to the ADM

Finally, he opined that people need to treat global warming as a tractable problem, instead of focusing on the symptoms. I’m guessing this is in reference to Branson’s carbon sequestration challenge. Just as in medicine, there are prophylactic treatments to prevent the problem, and palliative treatments to alleviate the symptoms. The best metaphor for carbon sequestration as a solution to global warming I can think of is that of my friend who used to smoke his way through a pack of cigarettes, and then scramble for his asthma inhaler when overcome with a coughing fit. Repeat ad infinitum until you drop dead or need a refill cartridge, whichever comes first.

While there seem to be a few E85 (85% ethanol, 15% gasoline) cars on the road, there’s not a single station offering it within 100 miles of me. Though I was shocked when I saw this notice on a Shell pump in a nearby station about ethanol mixed in with the gas.

Veterans of Future Wars

Before Catch-22 and before M*A*S*H, there was the student group at Princeton formed to satirize the World War I veterans who had, during the depression, gotten the Treasury to grant them their pensions ten years earlier than planned. Lewis Gorin reasoned, well then, given the inevitability of wars, why not grant us our pensions now for risking our life and limb in future American wars? Within a year of the publication of their manifesto, they had 50,000 members across the country rallying to the repurposed John Paul Jones quote “I have not yet begun to fight!” Like all wacky groups, this one had to have a salute, and in short order they came up with theirs – “hand outstretched, palm up and expectant,” a “mockery of the fascist salute then gaining currency in Europe.” I managed to find a copy of their book, Patriotism Prepaid, in the Hoover library. some excerpts:

“

The veterans of the war of 1812 did not get their general service pensions until 1871 – an interval of fifty-seven years. The veterans of the Mexican War languished through 39 years of unpaid patriotism before securing the first installment of theirs…We demand that, as is customary, the federal government pass immediately a law guaranteeing us each a bonus of one thousand dollars in 1965… plus three per cent interest retroactively compounded… call it ‘adjusted service compensation’…. Let us seize time by the forelock and follow the advice of Prof. Reining to ‘look to the future rather than to the past‘… the plan of compensation… is just because it gives to the veteran who willl die a right to enjoy his honors and emoluments while yet alive… there is nothing particularly intellectual about walking nowhere down the middle of the street, but the American people eat it up, so it must be worthwhile. In all these parades we must insist that the veterans of future wars be given a place ahead of all other veterans organizations. it is a matter of right, for the future should come before the past… we suggest that all veterans of future wars who are conscientious objectors to a bonus, should forthwith be incarcerated in concentration camps for the duration of the peace.

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I almost fell out of my chair when I read this:

“

this idea was first advanced by a great ruler, the Nizam-al-Mulk, back in 1073 A.D.
According to our informant… ‘this celebrated statesman’s experiment is fully set out by the renowned Arab historian, Ibn Khaldun, in his monumental work, Kitab-al-Ibar… from the scroll of the calligraphy permit me to quote from book II, surah 3, how the vizier paid a bonus in 1073 to veterans of future wars: ‘in those days following, when sultan Alp Arslan had spread the fan of his arrows before him and by the will of Allah, of whom there is no other, victory had been given him… it came that Nizam-al-Mulk ruled the land as vizier… gave largesses to the soldiers who survived, as was the custom. Then it was that the vizier bethought himself how there were thousands plucked like fruit from the tree of life by the garnering scimitar to whom no earthly reward could be given… called a council of the philosophers, cadis, and imams at Basra to see how best it might be brought about that the young men who would yiled their lives in the harvest of wars to come might beforetime come to enjoy a reward while yet on earth… and a register was mode of those who in the coming four years might be called upon to grasp the scimitar and loosen the arrow… called these ‘utaqa-ul-hurub quisma-t “fated veterans of unborn wars”… decreed that ten jeribs of tax free land be given together with yearly stipend of one hundred pieces of silver to the veterans to be….’

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Reminds me of the recent story of the Kuwaiti government rejecting a bill asking them to write off $27 billion of its citizens private debts (like Solon did way back when).